R. Richard Sabo
Management and Human Resources
Over the last ten years American business has downsized, limited annual wage increases for its workers, and decreased workers’ health and welfare benefits, while the salaries of its management including their bonuses have continually increased. As a result, strikes by workers for their rights to jobs and benefits are on the rise with sympathy coming from the American public, many of whom are in the same position but without the support of a union.
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| Gary A. Cretser
Behavioral Sciences |
Dorene Doherty
Behavioral Sciences |
| William K. Lombardo
Behavioral Sciences |
Matt Olson
Behavioral Sciences |
| Heather Dickerson
Behavioral Sciences |
Michelle Peñaflor
Behavioral Sciences |
An open-ended questionnaire regarding various aspects of the mutual-help program of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) was administered to a sample of 25 AA members. The questionnaire was designed to examine which elements of the AA program members considered most important in helping them overcome problems with alcohol. The data were also analyzed to determine which program element(s) were most responsible for maintaining membership in the organization. Our typical sample member was in their 30’s, a member of AA for at least 5 years, attended between 8 and 15 meetings a month, and became involved with AA through an order of the court or hospitalization. Our primary findings were that the spiritual, affiliative, and cognitive aspects were perceived as being most important. Although for most of the members surveyed, the entire program (i.e. the twelve steps, ‘Big Book,’ meetings and sponsor etc.) was perceived as critical in making it possible for them to overcome alcohol problems. Some evidence was found for the importance of ‘fellowship,’ broadly defined, in terms of the retention of members. The relation of these findings to earlier work on AA and 12-Step groups in general is discussed.
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As the Aerocaribe DC 9 began to descend into Havana, 45 minutes after
it took off from Cancun, Mexico, I read that Fidel was preparing to leave
Cuba for Venezuela to attend the inauguration of President Hugo Chavez.
Almost 39 years since my first visit to revolutionary Cuba, I felt almost
dizzy when I encountered the new, European-looking airport, replete with
decorative plastic bars criss-crossed under the ceiling, a newly tiled
floor and vast spaces for people. Deja vu set in when the bored immigration
official yawned at me, just as others had two, three, many years ago when
I routinely visited. He slowly scanned the information on my
passport and stamped the separate piece of paper containing my visa.
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The Hollywood Bowl represented a dramatic change in the musical culture of Southern California. Los Angeles by the 1920s had become a burgeoning metropolis; the population had increased from about 11,000 in 1880 to almost one million by 1920: the fastest-growing city in the United States. Yet there were few venues for classical music concerts. Up to this time, theaters were the main places people might hear an orchestra; traveling orchestras had performed in Los Angeles theaters at least since the 1880s, and with the founding of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1919, the city had its own professional orchestra. There was a problem, however, with theaters and concert halls. They could be hot and stuffy, especially during the summer months; the location downtown was not always convenient, such as for those who lived in the suburbs; and the formal atmosphere of a theater might dissuade some people from attending, even those who had a genuine interest in listening to classical music. With such perfect weather conditions, why not have an open-air venue which took advantage of the climate? The Hollywood Bowl changed entirely the experience of listening to orchestral music by presenting that music outdoors. When it opened officially in 1922, it was one of the first open-air theaters for orchestral music in the world. In this article I would like to emphasize the role of community support of the arts as an essential component in the establishment of an outdoor theater for music.
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This article 1 summarizes the results of a survey of customer satisfaction with Techsploration Days, a community service of the Cal Poly Pomona Department of Teacher Education, that allows persons with disabilities and their families, as well as professionals working with them, to evaluate hardware and software as part of their decision-making process toward possible purchase of assistive computer devices. Techsploration Days participants completed a survey on customer satisfaction and outcomes from Techsploration recommendations. Results indicated that Techsploration Days was generally positively received by the persons who used it, with the majority of participants using the recommendations to purchase hardware/software. For most participants, IEP objectives were written as a result of the Techsploration recommendations. The results of this study suggest that a university based AT service delivery model can meet the needs of its customers. Additional research is recommended to further explore the subject of customer satisfaction.
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There are many distinctive models of distance education. North American models have generally done more to incorporate state-of-the-art technologies than European; European models, here represented principally by the British Open University, have generally done more to establish political legitimacy, exploit economies of scale, and provide course productions for large numbers, subject to rigorous academic quality controls. Both models have been shaken by the arrival of the Internet, whose future trajectory for distance education is still very uncertain.
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Very long span suspension bridges are flexible structural systems. The introduction of these cable suspended structures has been profoundly enhanced by the development of new structural materials and computer methods of analysis. Cable suspended systems comprise both categories of suspension bridges and cable stayed bridges. These flexible systems are susceptible to the dynamic effects of wind and earthquake loads.
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Making sense of the broad transformations underway within society ought to become the raison d’être of the large publicly supported universities. In the new university, it is not information and data transfer that will inform knowledge transfer and education opportunity, but rather structures and opportunities for critically evaluating and gaining competencies in evaluating that data and information. An integrated curriculum informed by active learning strategies and linking the college experience to broader societal can change the nature of the education enterprise.
“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”
—H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.
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As a population of virtual professors emerges, universities need to
find ways to value their contributions and give them access to the same
benefits as their non-virtual counterparts. A great risk exists in that
virtual professors could become nomadic loners, wandering from one institution
to the next, with no reflection on their teaching, service, and role as
a faculty member. Institutions of higher education would suffer, having
no permanent faculty to ensure a cohesive curriculum and academic mission.
Virtual faculty will suffer from a lack of interdisciplinary exposure,
collegiality and infrastructure support that improves teaching and research.
This paper explores the parallels between virtual and traditional faculty
review. Of
the three criteria, teaching, research and service, service is the
most difficult to ensure effective participation of virtual faculty. This
paper summarizes gains and losses to virtual faculty work and suggests
remedies for successfully integrating virtual faculty."Law is not theoretical.
Beware of fixed rules that look appealing... that can be a trap rather
than an aid for judges."
Justice Stephen G. Breyer
(July, 1994)
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The subject of this article is a new mapping transforming points or figures in the hyperpolar plane into other points or figures in the same plane relative to a fixed hyperpolar circle. This transformation is similar to the Euclidean inversion with respect to a circle in the Cartesian plane and is therefore called hyperpolar inversion. We apply this transformation to the hyperpolar images of Sierpinski triangles placed in an advantageous position with respect to the hyperpolar circle of inversion in order to obtain their images of inversion which are also new types of interesting fractals.
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Louise L. Soe
Computer Information Systems
Lara Preiser-Houy
Computer Information Systems
Telecommuting is one of the fastest growing trends in the world of business. However, in spite of its popularity, some businesses are still reluctant to offer this option to their workforce. The findings of this investigation, which include data collected from cross-sectional surveys of telecommuters and their managers, provides strong evidence that the benefits of telecommuting outweigh the costs. Tangible or quantifiable benefits include increased productivity, financial savings from reductions in real estate, facility and overhead costs, and environmental improvements from reductions in automobile emissions. Intangible benefits include a better quality of work life, an improved working environment, greater flexibility, and less stress for workers. However, telecommuting is not for every individual or job task. The key obstacles to telecommuting are technological problems, loss of personal interaction with coworkers, and legal issues pertinent to labor laws. In spite of these drawbacks, the findings suggest that most telecommuters have a high level of job satisfaction and view the telecommuting arrangement as a positive force in their careers. The critical issues in implementing effective telecommuting programs are top management support, careful selection of the telecommuting candidates, employee training, and formal policies and procedures detailing performance standards and measures.
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Teachers currently find themselves adrift in a seemingly endless sea of school reform literature and policies. Moreover, the often acrimonious, and increasingly politicized public debates about educational issues (phonics versus whole language, immersion versus English as a second language, basic skills versus problem solving) contribute to the feelings of helplessness and frustration experienced by many classroom practitioners, especially those working in large, urban settings. As if teaching weren’t demanding enough, these practitioners face additional challenges, including poverty, violence, overcrowding, and huge bureaucracies, which drain precious energy from the primary goal of opening students’ minds. Teachers are increasingly being mandated to address societal issues and complex global problems in their classrooms. These issues, such as poverty, crime, drugs, family dynamics, etc., are far beyond the school’s means to solve. Yet, they create a high level of stress for both teachers and students, with an undeniable impact on what does, or doesn’t, happen in class. Unfortunately, two of the major disciplines teachers have to confront are often at odds in United States society. Those disciplines are multicultural education and global education. This paper will seek to describe the background of these two disciplines as well as propose ways to have them cooperate rather than work at cross purposes.
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George Rainey
Physics
The rotation of the disk of the Milky Way Galaxy is analyzed. It rotates neither as a solid disk, nor in accordance with individual keplerian orbits. Rather the disk executes a form of differential rotation which suggests that a considerable fraction of its mass resides in the outer portions of the Galaxy.
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Ahmad Sohrabian
Finance, Real Estate and Law
This study explores the impact of acquisitions on shareholders’ return within the insurance industry which took place between 1993 and 1996. The results reveal that acquiring firms do not post any significant abnormal returns during the announcement period, while the target firms get positive significant abnormal returns. When acquisitions are analyzed based on transaction price, cumulative average abnormal returns for large acquisitions are signifi-cantly higher than for medium-to-small acquisitions. In terms of payment methods, stock acquisitions are the ones with the greatest return. Finally, when acquisitions are grouped based on type, the returns on conglomerate mergers are superior to non-conglomerate mergers.
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Industrial refrigeration systems such as those present in an ethylene plant or an ammonia plant are designed based on the demand of refrigerant in the associated processes. Once the duties of the heat exchangers and the temperatures of the refrigerant are specified, the refrigeration system consisting of compressors, condensers and flash drums can be designed. Process simulators such as Provision or Aspen can be used to design the refrigeration system by using feed-forward or feed-back controllers to determine required refrigerant flow rates and the resulting compressor capacities. This technique often results in many control loops, each requiring many iterations to converge. This paper describes a novel technique in which HYSIS, a process simulator is used to design a complex refrigeration system without resorting to numerous control and recycle loops. The same technique can be applied to the design of steam systems in which specified amounts of steam at different pressure levels are demanded. These steam systems are often used for heating as well as providing power to compressors and pumps in a process plant.
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The purpose of this study was to provide information for stimulating
dialogue on matters of race and ethnicity within the university community.
1,424 students were surveyed in the College of Business Administration,
College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences, College of Engineering and
College of Science to determine how students of different ethnicities perceive
each other. Statistically significant
differences were found in our students’ perceptions that could be explained
by the respondents’ ethnicity, generation in the U.S., the number of different
ethnic groups from which they “had a friend with whom they worked pretty
closely,” and their own perception of “how others saw them.” Certain ethnic
groups were perceived less favorably by all other groups. There is evidence
of prejudice and ethnocentrism. It is also clear, however, that certain
factors are associated with student perceptions of each other that are
more positive. As Cornel West wrote, “Race Matters.” We must address these
issues of race and ethnicity as a
university community.
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The argument may be made that a “picture-with-text” commercial advertisement
in a magazine or on a poster may sometimes be considered an art form in
its own right. Leo Spitzer, an eminent philologist/linguist, in the late
1940s bolstered that argument, invoking art history primarily, but did
not really continue this line of investigation. Here, after examples of
verse and short fiction in pictorial
advertising are given, an attempt will be made to present certain eye-catching
advertisements as examples of a separate literary genre, based on these
criteria: (1) a powerfully suggestive icon or symbolic picture is offered,
(2) something is left out of the big picture, which the viewer makes up
for with an enlarged
interpretation, (3) the advertisement generates a whole range of ideas
beyond what is immediately perceived. A “classic” example of such a literay-genre
ad is suggested in this paper.
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This article surveys the empirical testing of discretionary disclosure theory. Currently, few studies achieve strict controlled tests of identifiable disclosure models. This occurs primarily because live stock market data fail to describe the analytical environment of discretionary disclosure. Traditional archival study precludes the identification of private information receipt and the observability of managerial disclosure action. Empiricists find it necessary to use experimentation as the primary methodology for this research. Experiments provide the ability to observe the dynamics of disclosure decisions, to control the information used in making disclosures, and to develop the empirical environment specified by theory.
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For the Comedie-Francaise’s 1995 production of Racine’s Phaedra, Director
Anne Delbee chose world-famous French photographer Lucien Clergue to illustrate
the accompanying theatre program with ten black-and-white photographs.
Drawing from his background in newspaper and theatre photography, and with
the full cooperation of the Comedie-Francaise, Lucien Clergue expanded
the initial assignment into a high-quality hardcover book—Phaedra—which
successfully blended Racine’s original text, Christian Lacroix’s original
costume drawings, Director Anne Delbee’s commentary, and his own black-and-white
and color photography. This article examines the nature of photojournalism
and the
photo essay, as well as the elements of poetic photographic vision,
and discusses Lucien Clergue’s Phaedra as an expression of what the author
calls “poetic photojournalism”.
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This study investigated whether implementing a requirement that students
completed a core set of courses before taking any upper division courses
had an effect on performance. In particular, the study attempted to see
if the implementation of the core requirement improved student performance
in Cost Accounting and Intermediate Accounting courses, as reflected in
their grades. Data on grades in
these two courses, which were the first upper division courses in the
accounting major, was obtained before and after the implementation of the
core requirements. The data included grades in courses taught by
the same professors before and after the core requirement was implemented.The
results indicated that implementation of the core requirement significantly
improved students' grades in the first upper division accounting courses
that students took.
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In this paper we present a brief history of attempts to calculate surface area for those surfaces whose area cannot be calculated using standard techniques of integral calculus, and we show the role played by abstract category theory, affectionately known as “abstract nonsense”, in this very concrete subject. We then show that the technique used to find the length of a curve, or “arc length” does not work when generalized to find surface area, give a valid technique that is based on a “parametrizaion” of the surface, and investigate the problem of whether different parametrizaions result in different values for the surface area. It is in this that “abstract nonsense” plays an important role.
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Joumana McGowan
University Community
Educators confront many issues when considering moving to distance-learning modalities for instruction. One of those issues, faculty compensation, is addressed in this paper. The paper reports the results of a survey of College of Business Deans throughout the California State University; it also examines one viable working model for this complex issue from the State University of New York.
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The business Strategy and Computer Simulation (SPAS) model consists
of instructor and student software developed to simulate a competitive
industry. It accommodates up to 10 firms that manufacture two products
which can be sold in three markets. A competitive industrial environment
and customized business environment make this software unique in that it
aims to improve the skill and
ability of decision makers in a dynamic business setting.
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Cheryl A. Cruz
California State University, Los Angeles
John Karayan
Accounting
The decision of Sweden to accept the German model for the regulation of insider trading has profound consequences for traders throughout the world in an increasingly interdependent, global economy. This paper examines the Swedish approach to the regulation of insider trading and evaluates the implications for business people in all countries.
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