23 research outputs found
Evaluation of the US Airline Industry: The Airline Quality Rating 2012
Get PDFThe Airline Quality Rating (AQR) was developed and first announced in early 1991 as an objective method for assessing airline quality on combined multiple performance criteria. This current report, the Airline Quality Rating 2012, reflects monthly Airline Quality Rating scores for calendar year 2011. AQR scores for 2011 are based on 15 elements in four major areas that focus on airline performance aspects important to air travel consumers.
The Airline Quality Rating 2012 is a summary of month-by-month quality ratings for U.S. airlines that are required to report performance by virtue of having at least 1% of domestic scheduled-service passenger revenue during 2011. Using the Airline Quality Rating system of weighted averages and monthly performance data in the areas of on-time arrivals, involuntary denied boardings, mishandled baggage, and a combination of 12 customer complaint categories, airlines’ comparative performance for the calendar year of 2011 is reported. This research monograph contains a brief summary of the AQR methodology, detailed data and charts that track comparative quality for domestic airline operations for the 12-month period of 2011, and industry results. Also, comparative Airline Quality Rating data for 2010 are included, where available, to provide historical perspective regarding performance quality in the industry
An Innovative Leadership Effectiveness Measure: Applied Analytic Indicators of High-Consequence Industry Performance
Get PDFLeadership effectiveness in high-consequence industries has more than a bottom-line fiscal impact; it is linked to critical issues of human safety. Performance, productivity and overall quality of service have to be managed with focus on improvement in systemic safety while simultaneously maintaining a viable and profitable organization. This premise is specifically foremost in the leadership of airline organizations. The Airline Quality Rating has become a recognized and lauded indicator of airline performance in the United States. A valid case is presented herein to confirm that the Airline Quality Rating’s applied analytic methodology effectively provides a tool for assessing organizational leadership. These results provide a benchmark for global adoption in the world airline industry
A study of attitudes concerning desegregation of Catholic parishes among northeast Atlanta's white and negro Catholics, 1970
Get PDFAssociation analyses of 249,796 individuals reveal 18 new loci associated with body mass index
Get PDFObesity is globally prevalent and highly heritable, but its underlying genetic factors remain largely elusive. To identify genetic loci for obesity susceptibility, we examined associations between body mass index and similar to 2.8 million SNPs in up to 123,865 individuals with targeted follow up of 42 SNPs in up to 125,931 additional individuals. We confirmed 14 known obesity susceptibility loci and identified 18 new loci associated with body mass index (P < 5 x 10(-8)), one of which includes a copy number variant near GPRC5B. Some loci (at MC4R, POMC, SH2B1 and BDNF) map near key hypothalamic regulators of energy balance, and one of these loci is near GIPR, an incretin receptor. Furthermore, genes in other newly associated loci may provide new insights into human body weight regulation
On the Semantics and Ontology of Race: Constructivism against Realism
Get PDFThis paper is an essay in philosophical ontology tasked with defending a constructionist approach to race. Anthony Appiah, in his In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture , argues that the concept of race is an “empty concept” precisely because it is both a semantic and an ontological fiction. He advises us to segregate race to the realm of the vague and fuzzy because all racial discourse, which he claims must transcendentally presuppose a biological notion of race in order to be meaningful, seductively misleads us to the extent that such discourse presupposes that the term "race" names a natural kind. While identifying the concept of race as deficient, he challenges us to learn “to think beyond race.” His rebuke of race as a dysfunctional concept takes the form of casting race as a virus spreading the contagion of bad thinking, that is, delusional, even paranoid thinking.
This paper argues that while Appiah's theoretical interrogation of the concept of race is mainly accurate, race, nevertheless, is meaningful from a socio-cultural perspective . Discourse about race need not require that races exist in the sense of being natural kinds. Race, I shall be arguing, is a construction, i. e., human agents with varied interests, purposes, and linguistic resources devise the conditions of meaningfulness for the term "race".
The general structure of the paper is as follows. I first present a critical discussion of Appiah’s view on race by examining his realist view of meaning and reference. Next, I critically review his main arguments against the concept of race. In part two of the essay, I offer a discussion of constructionism. I describe this position, offer examples, and say why it more adequately accommodates a defense of the concept of race by treating it as a socio-historical construction rather than a scientific natural kind. It is obvious that I challenge Appiah’s realist view that a meaningful concept is one that is intelligible and that the deciding grounds of the intelligibility is a matter of a concept referring to something that has existence. Meaningful concepts refer to objects whereas meaningless concepts do not refer to anything that has being
The Oxford handbook of world philosophy /
No full text"First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 2013".-- Verso de la page de titre.Publié originalement: 2011.Comprend des références bibliographiques et un index.World philosophy / Jay L. Garfield and William Edelglass -- Chinese philosophy / Chenyang Li -- The Yijing : the creative origin of Chinese philosophy / Chung-Ying Cheng -- Classical Confucianism I : Confucius / Peimin Ni -- Classical Confucianism II : Mencius and Zunzi / Manyul Im -- Daoism : Laozi and Zhuangzi / Liu Xiaogan -- Major rival schools : Mohism and Legalism / Chris Fraser -- Chinese Buddhist philosophy / Brook Ziporyn -- Neo-Confucianism / John Berthrong -- Contemporary Confucianism / Shu-hsien Liu -- Non-Buddhist Indian philosophy / Nalini Bhushan -- Nyaya-Vaisesika philosophy / Amita Chatterjee -- Sakhya-Yoga / T.S. Rukmani -- Mimasa / Dan Arnold -- Vedanta / John Taber -- Jain philosophy / Jeffery D. Long -- Anglophone philosophy in colonial India / Nalini Bhushan -- Indo-Tibetan Buddhist philosophy / William Edelglass and Jay Garfield -- Abhidharma philosophy / Jan Westerhoff -- Madhyamaka in India and Tibet / John Dunne -- Yogacara / John PowersBuddhist epistemology (Pramaavada) / Tom J.F. Tillemans -- Buddhist thought in Tibet : an historical introduction / Matthew T. Kapstein -- Dzogchen / Anne Carolyn Klein -- Buddhist ethics / Barbra R. Clayton -- Japanese and Korean philosophy / Koji Tanaka -- The philosophy of Zen Master Dogen : egoless perspectivism / Bret W. Davis -- Nishida Kitaro : self, world, and the nothingness underlying distinctions / John C. Maraldo -- Japanese aesthetics and philosophy of art / Mara Miller -- Japanese ethics / Robert E. Carter -- Natural freedom : human/nature nondualism in Japanese thought / Bret W. Davis -- Korean Buddhist philosophy / Jin Y. Park -- Re-introducing Islamic philosophy : the persisting problem of "smaller orientalisms" / Tamara Albertini -- The Hellenizing philosophers / Andrey Smirnov -- Philosophy of illumination / Hossein Ziai -- Sufism / Erik S. Ohlander -- Islamic theology / Eric Ormsby -- Muslim jurisprudence / Robert GleavePhilosophy in Africa and the African diaspora / Stephen C. Ferguson II -- African philosophy / Barry Hallen -- Africana philosophy : prospects and possibilities / Tsenay Serequeberhan -- Afro-Caribbean philosophy / Clevis Headley -- African American philosophy : a historical outline / John H. McClendon III and Stephen C. Ferguson II -- Race in contemporary philosophy / Albert Mosley -- Affirmative action / Rodney C. Roberts -- Recent trends in global philosophy / Cynthia Townley -- Global feminism / Christine M. Koggel -- Native American philosophy / Adam Arola -- Indigenous environmental philosophy / Workineh Kelbessa -- Cosmopolitanism / Gillian Brock -- Reparations / J. Angelo Corlett
Effects of childhood maltreatment on adult threat processing
No full textChildhood maltreatment (CM) is a major risk factor for developing psychopathology. It has been suggested that hyperactivity during threat-processing acts as a mechanism linking CM to later psychopathology, particularly transdiagnostic symptoms of anxiety. However, few studies have directly tested the relationship between CM, neurophysiological signatures of threat processing, and symptoms of anxiety. One barrier to progress in the field is the lack of understanding of human threat processing across the threat imminence continuum. Thus, work presented in this thesis aimed to first expand our knowledge of neural circuits involved in threat imminence processing, and then assess the relationship between CM and anxiety using the newly identified neural correlates. To do so, the Risk-Reward Interaction task was adapted for humans and allowed an investigation of two threat processes: responses to distal (low imminence) and proximal (high imminence) threat cues. Using this task, the first study utilized electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate the temporal and oscillatory responses to threats. This revealed two putative biomarkers of threat processing, namely right posterior theta for proximal threats and midline parietal gamma for distal threats. The second study utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging to localize the neural circuitry. Consistent with the literature, proximal threats engaged stronger midcingulate cortex, thalamus, and periaqueductal gray activity. Moreover, activity that covaried with anxiety severity involved brain regions related to self-referential spatial processing in response to all cues in the task. The final study investigated whether CM was related to symptoms of anxiety through alterations in the EEG biomarkers identified in the first study. I demonstrated that midline parietal gamma fully mediated the relationship between CM and anxiety, and that this mechanism is specific to CM individuals. These findings suggest that midline parietal gamma reflects hyper-awareness of threats in a spatial environment and provides a neural mechanism through which anxiety may develop in CM individuals. Therefore, midline parietal gamma has the potential to be used clinically to identify at risk individuals and improve clinical endpoints. Overall, this thesis expanded on existing research about threat-imminence related processing in humans and revealed novel neural markers of anxiety vulnerability associated with CM.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical reference
Multimodal imaging and closed-loop brain stimulation of human theta oscillations during spatial navigation
No full textThe phase of the theta rhythm created by cells in the parahippocampal cortex (PHC) and its reset are linked to the encoding of spatial memories in rodents. This theta coding mechanism has been studied extensively in animals and intracranial recordings in humans. However, less is known about the relationship of theta oscillations recorded in EEG and spatial memory encoding during spatial navigation. My thesis has two overarching goals: 1) map the neural circuitry and investigate the properties of right posterior theta (RPT) oscillations in human EEG during spatial navigation, and 2) test whether there is a causal link between PHC phase and memory by using a novel real-time closed-loop (RT-CL) system for EEG-TMS. Closed-loop stimulation is a novel approach for tailoring neurostimulation protocols to individual brain rhythms, which allows for more direct causal testing of the relationship between memory and the properties of neuronal oscillations. Across three aims I present evidence for an EEG signature of PHC theta phase resets in response to encountering motivational spatial information, demonstrate its relationship with spatial memory performance, outline the development of the RT-CL capable of instantly delivering phase-locked TMS pulses at a higher precision than state-of-the-art systems, and finally combine these lines of research by targeting different phases of RPT with the RT-CL. This allowed me to investigate the causal role of RPT in spatial memory encoding. These findings about RPT as a potential scalp-level marker of PHC phase resetting and memory encoding in conjunction with the RT-CL could be used as a versatile tool for non-invasive research and therapeutic interventions in clinical populations suffering from memory-related disorders.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical reference
Potential of capillary electrophoresis mass spectrometry for the characterization and monitoring of amine-derivatized naphthenic acids from oil sands process-affected water
No full textCapillary electrophoresis coupled to mass spectrometry (CE-MS) was used for the analysis of naphthenic acid fraction compounds (NAFCs) of oil sands process-affected water (OSPW). A standardmixture of amine-derivatized naphthenic acids is injected directly onto the CE column and analyzed by CE-MS in less than 15 min. Time of flight MS analysis (TOFMS), optimized for high molecular weight ions, showed NAFCs between 250 and 800 m/z. With a quadrupole mass analyzer, only low-molecular weight NAFCs (between 100 and 450 m/z) are visible under our experimental conditions. Derivatization of NAFCs consisted of two-step amidation reactions mediated by 1-ethyl-3-(3-dimethylaminopropyl) carbodiimide (EDC), ormediated by amixture of EDC and N-hydroxysuccinimide, in dimethyl sulfoxide, dichloromethane or ethyl acetate. The optimum background electrolyte composition was determined to be 30% (V/V) methanol in water and 2% (V/V) formic acid. NAFCs extracted from OSPW in the Athabasca oil sands region were used to demonstrate the feasibility of CE-MS for the analysis of NAFCs in environmental samples, showing that the labeled naphthenic acids are in the mass range of 350 to 1500 m/z. (C) 2016 The Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V.Walter C. Sumner Memorial Foundation; PGSD Fellowship from Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada; Environment Canada; NSERCSCI(E)中国科技核心期刊(ISTIC)[email protected]; [email protected]
