Free2Thee.com

Posts Tagged ‘research’

Roberta “Bobbie” White, chair of the Environmental Sciences department at Boston University School of Public Health, discusses the research that helped redefine the causes and scope of Gulf War Illness.

See the article here:
Roberta White — 2011 BUSPH Dean’s Report.mov

Customer service is no longer about someone sitting at a desk answering the phones. Although still a crucial element to success, it is not the only channel we have today. We have the internet, social media, email and much more, they all revolve around the same mission of satisfying the customer. In this webcast, focusing on web customer service, you’ll learn about the necessary elements for success and where knowledge management fits into the equation. Michael Maoz, Research VP/Distinguished Analyst with featured analyst firm Gartner, Inc. and Tim Hines, VP of Product Management and CRM with Consona will walk you through core key components of knowledge management and channels that have the biggest impact on service and support, while providing insight into what approaches other organizations are taking with implementation of these channel components. Request Free!

See more here:
Making Knowledge Management Central to High-Tech Customer Service

Public relations personnel are charged with managing the way organizational crises are perceived by the public, but they are also responsible for encouraging a public response that benefits both the organization involved and the people and things impacted by the crisis. Recent research published in the journal Communications Research shows that the way the news of a disaster or tragedy is framed during initial media coverage has a strong impact on the way the public responds to the organization at the center of the crisis. Researchers led by Glen Cameron of the University of Missouri showed participants two different news stories covering the same crisis. Some participants were given an article that took an “anger-frame” perspective, blaming the organization involved for the situation. A second group received an article that took a “sadness-frame” point-of-view, focusing on the victims and the negative impact on them of the crisis. Participants who were shown the “anger-frame” story tended to skim over the information and to come away with more negative attitudes toward the organization than the ones who saw the “sadness-frame” article. Not only were their emotions influenced by the news slant used, but their information processing patterns were influenced as well, with “anger-frame” readers less likely to evaluate the information carefully and draw their own conclusions and quicker to join the article’s author in condemning the company involved. The researchers also examined how the corporate response to a crisis affects public perception of the organization. They found that an official response that focuses on relief efforts and the welfare of victims led to an improved image of the corporation in the minds of the public. However, messages that focused on promises of justice sought to distance the company from culpability based upon legal principles had the opposite effect. These results held true regardless of whether people received their first account of the news in an anger- or sadness-framed presentation. According to Cameron, the results show the importance of taking quick control of the message when a crisis occurs. Putting a human face on what may otherwise appear to observers to be a faceless, soulless corporate entity is crucial during such times, he said. “If a corporation can focus on the wellbeing of the victims and how the corporation will improve following the crisis, they have a better chance of influencing “sadness-frame” news coverage as opposed to “anger-frame” coverage,” said Cameron. The focus of the research is not to find ways to help organizations avoid responsibility, according to Cameron, but instead to help them handle crises as effectively as possible. “Crises are going to happen,” he said. “Unfortunately, planes will crash and there will be oil spills. This study helps to show how the public will react to different types of news coverage of crises, and subsequently, what the best ways are for corporations to handle any crises they may encounter.” Related posts: September 11 Text Messages Reveal Emotional Timeline, Says Researchers How Israeli Media Framing Is Causing a Division Among Its People Scientists map what factors influence the news agenda

Continue reading here:
News Framing Affects the Public’s Emotional Response [Study]

Forked Fungus Beetles Maybe they are your younger brother’s gang. Maybe they are the guys you hung out with in high school before you had your growth spurt and went off to college. Regardless of how you know them, chances are you can name a group of guys who live their lives like perpetual middle-schoolers, hanging out with each other but rarely dating and never really establishing long-term romantic relationships. A new study by evolutionary biologists from the University of Virginia’s College of Arts & Sciences takes a closer look at these males who live on the fringes of the social world in order to determine how social interactions shape and are shaped by natural selection. Like many other insects, forked fungus beetles live in complex societies. While most of them live highly engaged social lives, a surprising minority have a lot in common with the former members of your old garage band. You know; the ones who are always trying to get you to ditch the wife and kids and come hang out like you used to back in the good old days. These beetles spend most of their time in small groups composed solely of males. The biologists, led by Vince Formica and Butch Broody, could not help noticing what your wife remarked on from day one: The males in these groups were less likely to have encounters with females that lead to mating and reproduction. Formica and Brodie are interested in what happens in beetle societies because social interactions are inextricably intertwined with natural selection, which is Darwin’s term for the natural process that occurs when members of a species possess characteristics that help them survive and pass those beneficial characteristics on to their offspring. The flip side of the evolutionary coin is that characteristics that tend to get members of a species killed at an early age or that make them less likely to mate often die along with the childless individuals who possess them. Formica and Brodie, both from the University of Virginia’s College of Arts & Sciences, conducted their research on the evolution of social behavior by studying the society-in-miniature that is the milieu of the forked fungus beetle. Specifically, their team wondered whether a beetle’s social role had any connection to its chances of producing offspring. The results of their investigation were published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology . Forked fungus beetles were chosen as subjects because in addition to their rich social life, they were readily available for the researchers to study in the wild and they can easily be captured, tagged and observed. Once the beetles were tagged for easy tracking, the researchers were able to observe and map their social activities. The research team noticed that the beetles with the most active social lives had large social circles and had a lot of sexual encounters, leading to a lot of reproduction on their part. The males with small social circles made up of just a few males rarely had social encounters with females and had little opportunity to pass their genes on to a new generation. According to Formica, learning how social networks operate is crucial to understanding the evolution of societies. “We’ve shown that the trait of sociability is under natural selection, but we don’t know yet if it’s heritable,” he said. “This is one of only a few studies that have shown that position in a social network is a trait that can experience natural selection and therefore has the potential to evolve. It is clear in this study that being central in a large social network is key to high reproductive success. If a trait – such as an individual’s position in a network – is related to reproductive success, you can say it is experiencing natural selection and has the potential to evolve.” Related posts: Social Network Analysis and the Dynamics of Web-Based Networking [Study]

Read the original:
Want More Sex? Widen Your Social Network, Beetle Research Says

“Math is hard!” cries Teen Talk Barbie. Those words made Matel revamp the doll so that she did not say she found math hard after protesters insisted that it was degrading to women. It turns out that they were right according to a study researched at the University of Missouri. According to the study titled, “Can stereotype threat explain the sex gap in mathematics performance and achievement?” there is no gender difference when it comes to math skills. Many people believe that women are worse at quantitative reasoning then men. In fact, it has become a theory so widely accepted that even a toy company felt compelled to agree and the stereotype has plagued women around the world. But, the research at the University of Missouri disproves the theory partly due to no evidence on the contrary. This stereotype has been fueled because there are typically more men in the higher tiers of in fields requiring math. And, previous studies on the subject have been conducted using wrongly projected statistics and no actual scientific base. The birth of this idea was thanks to an article found in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology printed in 1999. The idea was that due to a stereotype threat, women are doomed to be less superior than men in math. In turn, this makes women without confidence quantitative reasoning and less willing to develop math skills. The research found is going to be published in the Review of General Psychology as it explains the lack of fundamental controls in previous experiments. This was the basis of the study as researchers discovered past studies lacked proper statistics because males were not subjected to the same experiment varieties and controls as women. However, as a result of these finding, people accepted that women were worse off in math. As this theory persisted, many researchers dedicated their resources to fixing a problem that didn’t need fixing. Researchers have found that when a subject is told that they will not perform well on a difficult test, then the subject performs below average regardless of their sex. This recent study proves that there is no basis for the stereotype that men are better at math. Individual results in math are based solely on a person’s ability to work through a problem and not whether they are male or female. Understandably, the lead research physiologist, David Geary, is concerned with how the stereotype is affecting women, [There are a] “disproportionate number of men in top levels of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. We need more women to succeed in these fields for our economy and for our future.” Hopefully, this study will help spread the wrongness of this stereotype and women will gain momentum in these fields. Related posts: Modesty Important for Women, But Not for Men [Study] Evidence Says Women Are Better Multitaskers Than Men [Study] Social Connections in the Workplace Do Not Benefit Women [Study]

Here is the original post:
Stereotype Busted! Women Are Not Worse At Math Than Men [Study]

Why manufacturers are reading this research right now: Even the smartest decision-makers are confused by ERP Even one piece of insight can deliver tremendous value, prestige and profits This is a free resource written by an ERP expert exclusively for manufacturers This brief will help you understand how the functions link together, help reduce the overwhelm and highlight where you can realize the most value. Request Free!

Read the original:
2010 Essential Features of Manufacturing ERP Software