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Used Terms (used + term)
Selected AbstractsEvaluating human capital: an exploratory study of management practiceHUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, Issue 4 2004Juanita Elias The article explores the development of systems of human capital evaluation in a number of large UK firms. Human capital is a much used term in business literature, and it is widely recognised that firms need to develop mechanisms to determine the value of their employee base. An extensive human capital literature has developed in which the authors propose elaborate systems for measuring a firm's human assets. This article does not seek to offer yet another human capital model. Rather, the aim is to examine the management practices through which human capital evaluation is undertaken. The article is based on an exploratory study of such practices in 11 major firms in the UK. The findings are highlighted as follows. First, we note the preference for internal over external (static accountancy-based) reporting. Secondly, we highlight the diverse nature of human capital evaluation systems that exist across UK business. Thirdly, we explore the relationship between practices of evaluation and the role and position of the HR function within the firm. Finally, in conclusion, we address the implications of the human capital perspective for practitioners, arguing that there is no single formula that can be applied to its evaluation. We go on to suggest that the importance of the human capital concept and its measurement may lie in its ability to re-frame perceptions of the relationship between the contribution of employees and the competitive performance of the business. [source] The experience of practice development: an exploratory telephone interview studyJOURNAL OF CLINICAL NURSING, Issue 1 2001Rob Garbett MSc , ,Practice development is a widely used term within British nursing. However, there is a lack of consistency and clarity in the way that the term is used. , ,A small-scale qualitative telephone interview study was therefore conceived to explore practitioners' views of practice development. , ,Qualitative telephone interviews were carried out with 26 nurses working in a range of settings and roles around the UK. Informants reported varying degrees of awareness of practice development roles and activities ranging from little awareness to being closely involved. , ,Most informants seemed to place more emphasis on issues of personal development and educational aspects of practice development than is found in the literature. , ,Practice development staff were seen as having a range of functions ranging from working with individual practitioners to the co-ordination of education and training within an organization. The credibility of practice development staff was closely related to their clinical experience and ability. [source] Front and Back Covers, Volume 25, Number 2.ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, Issue 2 2009April 200 Front cover caption, volume 25 issue 2 Front cover Ethnicity, Race and the Limits of Human Identity The front and back covers show artist Sean Weisgerber's interpretation of the theme of this issue, the problem of classifying human identity in a world of fusion and change. Articles address biometric security, the use of the concept of ,tribe' in US army counter-insurgency programmes, and human identity as constituted in and through debate among Afghani refugees recently returned from northern Pakistan to Afghanistan. The difficulty of fitting human diversity into strictly defined categories is most acutely evident in questions asked on census forms. In this issue, Peter Aspinall considers the broad range of terms proposed and debated for the ,mixed race' population. Many have complex histories and have been used to subsume individuals of varied and sometimes disparate ethnic and racial origins. Dissatisfaction with the widely used term ,mixed race', contested by anthropologists and sociologists among others on the grounds that it references the now discredited concept of ,race', has led to the search for an alternative. In 1994 the Royal Anthropological Institute advanced ,mixed origins', although such advocacy has gained little momentum. ,Mixed race' now competes with terms such as ,mixed heritage', ,dual heritage' and ,mixed parentage' amongst data users, and UK government usage also reflects this diversity in terminology. However, research indicates that the term of choice of most respondents in general and student samples of this population is ,mixed race'. Terms invoking just two groups , such as ,mixed parentage', ,dual heritage', and ,biracial', are preferred by few. While ,mixed origins' is likely to have a continuing niche role in professional practice, such as legal usage and assessment of health risks, it is premature to argue that the umbrella term ,mixed race' should be replaced by candidates that are not self-descriptors. Bruno Latour's editorial places such questions in a broader context as he draws attention to a lively debate on the biggest question of all, the essence of nature itself. In the context of an emergent multi-naturalism, has anthropological theory itself been ,decolonizing enough'? [source] Individual versus social complexity, with particular reference to ant coloniesBIOLOGICAL REVIEWS, Issue 2 2001CARL ANDERSON ABSTRACT Insect societies , colonies of ants, bees, wasps and termites , vary enormously in their social complexity. Social complexity is a broadly used term that encompasses many individual and colony-level traits and characteristics such as colony size, polymorphism and foraging strategy. A number of earlier studies have considered the relationships among various correlates of social complexity in insect societies; in this review, we build upon those studies by proposing additional correlates and show how all correlates can be integrated in a common explanatory framework. The various correlates are divided among four broad categories (sections). Under ,polyphenism' we consider the differences among individuals, in particular focusing upon ,caste' and specialization of individuals. This is followed by a section on ,totipotency' in which we consider the autonomy and subjugation of individuals. Under this heading we consider various aspects such as intracolony conflict, worker reproductive potential and physiological or morphological restrictions which limit individuals' capacities to perform a range of tasks or functions. A section entitled ,organization of work' considers a variety of aspects, e.g. the ability to tackle group, team or partitioned tasks, foraging strategies and colony reliability and efficiency. A final section,,communication and functional integration', considers how individual activity is coordinated to produce an integrated and adaptive colony. Within each section we use illustrative examples drawn from the social insect literature (mostly from ants, for which there is the best data) to illustrate concepts or trends and make a number of predictions concerning how a particular trait is expected to correlate with other aspects of social complexity. Within each section we also expand the scope of the arguments to consider these relationships in a much broader sense of'sociality' by drawing parallels with other ,social' entities such as multicellular individuals, which can be understood as ,societies' of cells. The aim is to draw out any parallels and common causal relationships among the correlates. Two themes run through the study. The first is the role of colony size as an important factor affecting social complexity. The second is the complexity of individual workers in relation to the complexity of the colony. Consequently, this is an ideal opportunity to test a previously proposed hypothesis that ,individuals of highly social ant species are less complex than individuals from simple ant species' in light of numerous social correlates. Our findings support this hypothesis. In summary, we conclude that, in general, complex societies are characterized by large colony size, worker polymorphism, strong behavioural specialization and loss of totipotency in its workers, low individual complexity, decentralized colony control and high system redundancy, low individual competence, a high degree of worker cooperation when tackling tasks, group foraging strategies, high tempo, multi-chambered tailor-made nests, high functional integration, relatively greater use of cues and modulatory signals to coordinate individuals and heterogeneous patterns of worker-worker interaction. Key words: Ants, insect societies, individual complexity, social complexity, polyphenism, totitpotency, work organization, functional integration, sociality. [source] Architectural changes in the developing human brain based on the matrix cell theoryCONGENITAL ANOMALIES, Issue 3 2002Yasuhiro Nakamura ABSTRACT, Architectural changes in the developing human brain are discussed based on the matrix cell theory. Neural stem cells/matrix cells with self-renewing ability and multipotency exist in the developing human brain in vivo. The brain development is divided into three stages and the cell differentiation is time regulated. Immunohistochemical distribution of various markers for brain development is summarized and categorized along with differentiation lineages. Particularly, the existence of glial fibrillary acidic protein is re-evaluated in the developing human brain. The commonly used terms and concepts "radial glial fiber" or "subventricular zone" are also re-evaluated. [source] Drug-elicited systemic allergic (contact) dermatitis , update and possible pathomechanismsCONTACT DERMATITIS, Issue 4 2008Jacob Pontoppidan Thyssen An allergic dermatitis reaction may develop after systemic exposure to a hapten that reaches the skin through haematogenous transport. This condition can be observed with and without previous cutaneous sensitization to the hapten but has traditionally been described following topical exposure. A heterogeneous clinical picture, in combination with limited insight to its pathomechanisms, makes such systemic reactions an area in need of further study. This article summarizes knowledge about systemic dermatitis elicited by drugs, with a special emphasis on possible pathomechanisms. A list of putative pathomechanisms is offered for future research. Literature was examined using PubMed,MEDLINE, EMBASE, Biosis, and Science Citation Index. Based on the literature, it is likely that humoral type 3, delayed-type hypersensitivity, and drug-driven (i.e. p-i concept) reactions are involved. As commonly used terms may be misleading because skin contact is not a prerequisite, we suggest that the term ,systemic allergic dermatitis' should be used in the future. [source] Classification of soil microorganisms based on growth properties: a critical view of some commonly used terms.JOURNAL OF PLANT NUTRITION AND SOIL SCIENCE, Issue 3 2004Klassifikation von Bodenmikroorganismen anhand von Wachstumseigenschaften: eine kritische Betrachtung einiger allgemein verwendeter Begriffe [source] The Language of Intoxication: Preliminary InvestigationsALCOHOLISM, Issue 3 2009Ash Levitt Background:, The extensive vocabulary individuals use to describe alcohol's subjective effects has largely gone unexamined in contemporary alcohol research. The present study examined the language drinkers use to describe their own intoxication. It is argued that this language can provide a more complete characterization of alcohol's subjective effects than is available from existing objective and subjective measures of alcohol use and can inform future self-report research. Method:, Toward this goal, a preliminary, cross-sectional, web-based study of the familiarity and usage of current intoxication-related words was conducted in 2 different samples (n = 290 and 146, respectively) of university undergraduates. Results:, Exploratory factor analyses using data from the first sample and confirmatory factor analyses using data from the second sample similarly showed that commonly used terms loaded onto 2 factors, which directly reflected the number of drinks required to be considered moderately or heavily intoxicated, respectively. Gender differences were also found in the familiarity and self-use of some terms across both samples. Conclusions:, The findings suggest that alcohol researchers include multiple intoxication-related terms in future self-report research, and to periodically assess current intoxication-related vocabulary considering demographic, generational, and socio-cultural differences. [source] Abstracts of the 8th Meeting of the Italian Peripheral Nerve Study Group: 46JOURNAL OF THE PERIPHERAL NERVOUS SYSTEM, Issue 1 2003L Padua Traditional outcome assessment in neurological diseases has always been based on physician-derived and instrumental findings. Over the last two decades, clinical and public health researchers emphasized the need for a thorough evaluation of concepts such as Health Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) to study the impact of chronic illnesses and their treatments on the patient's life. The most frequent inherited neuropathy is Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT). CMT Patients develop progressive weakness and sensory disturbances, becoming sometimes severely disabled even at very young age. In CMT clinic, neurophysiologic, pathologic and genetic evaluation, are considered fundamental to assess nerve involvement and diagnose, but how these findings are related to HRQoL and disability is not assessed. We propose a prospective follow-up (24,30 months) of CMT patients with multiple measurements of CMT. Besides conventional clinic, pathologic, neurophysiologic and genetic measurements we adopt validated patient-oriented measurements to assess HRQoL and disability. Aims of the study are: 1) to assess HRQoL and disability of CMT patients in a wide and well-represented sample and to evaluate the relationships between conventional parameters and the patient's perception of his own HRQoL and disability; 2) to evaluate natural history of HRQoL and disability in CMT, and to evaluate the predictive value of phenotype, genetic picture, neurophysiological and pathological pattern 3) to develop a national network and a database on CMT disease (this aim includes the standardization, based on a consensus validation process, of the most used terms and measurements in CMT and the development of a database software). In a preliminary reunion, the authors developed a dedicated database for patients affected by CMT. Details about this database will be presented. [source] Recommended diagnostic criteria for multiple sclerosis: Guidelines from the international panel on the diagnosis of multiple sclerosisANNALS OF NEUROLOGY, Issue 1 2001W. Ian McDonald FRCP The International Panel on MS Diagnosis presents revised diagnostic criteria for multiple sclerosis (MS). The focus remains on the objective demonstration of dissemination of lesions in both time and space. Magnetic resonance imaging is integrated with clinical and other paraclinical diagnostic methods. The revised criteria facilitate the diagnosis of MS in patients with a variety of presentations, including "monosymptomatic" disease suggestive of MS, disease with a typical relapsing-remitting course, and disease with insidious progression, without clear attacks and remissions. Previously used terms such as "clinically definite" and "probable MS" are no longer recommended. The outcome of a diagnostic evaluation is either MS, "possible MS" (for those at risk for MS, but for whom diagnostic evaluation is equivocal), or "not MS." [source] | |||||||||||||