Understanding Kindness – A Moral Duty of Human Resource Leaders

The role of leaders in the modern organization has evolved as scholars and practitioners have recognized that a key element to long-term profitability is the creation of high trust and high commitment work systems that treat employees as valued partners (Kim & Wright, 2011; Block, 2013; Beer, 2009; Caldwell & Floyd, 2014). Effective leaders create aligned organizational cultures with systems, processes, practices, and programs reinforcing the organization’s espoused values in achieving its mission (Schein, 2010). Human resource professionals (HRPs) play a critical leadership role in ensuring that human resource management (HRM) cultural elements are properly integrated, communicated effectively to employees, and followed in a manner that builds trust and increases commitment (Lengnick-Hall, 2009; McEvoy, et al., 2005). The purpose of this paper is to identify the importance of kindness as a moral duty of HRPs in serving their organizations and the employees within them. As HRPs perform their strategic and operational roles in the modern organization, properly understanding the nature of kindness is an important factor in carrying out HRM roles. This paper begins by defining kindness and its specific application to HRPs — equating the definition of kindness as a leadership trait with six elements of kindness and seven kindness-related ethical perspectives. The paper concludes with a summary of its contribution for HRP practitioners and scholars in understanding the nuances of kindness as a morally-and ethically-related HRM leadership virtue

Structural Induction Principles for Functional Programmers

User defined recursive types are a fundamental feature of modern functional programming languages like Haskell, Clean, and the ML family of languages. Properties of programs defined by recursion on the structure of recursive types are generally proved by structural induction on the type. It is well known in the theorem proving community how to generate structural induction principles from data type declarations. These methods deserve to be better know in the functional programming community. Existing functional programming textbooks gloss over this material. And yet, if functional programmers do not know how to write down the structural induction principle for a new type - how are they supposed to reason about it? In this paper we describe an algorithm to generate structural induction principles from data type declarations. We also discuss how these methods are taught in the functional programming course at the University of Wyoming. A Haskell implementation of the algorithm is included in an appendix.Comment: In Proceedings TFPIE 2013, arXiv:1312.221

Neutrino Mass and Dark Matter

Despite direct observations favoring a low mass density, a critical density universe with a neutrino component of dark matter provides the best existing model to explain the observed structure of the universe over more than three orders of magnitude in distance scale. In principle this hot dark matter could consist of one, two, or three species of active neutrinos. If all present indications for neutrino mass are correct, however, only the two-species (muon neutrino and tau neutrino) possibility works. This requires the existence of at least one light sterile neutrino to explain the solar electron neutrino deficit via nu(e)->nu(s), leaving nu(mu)->nu(tau) as the explanation for the anomalous nu(mu)/nu(e) ratio produced by atmospheric neutrinos, and having the LSND experiment demonstrating via anti-nu(mu)-> anti-nu(e) the mass difference between the light nu(e)-nu(s) pair and the heavier nu(mu)-nu(tau) pair required for dark matter. Other experiments do not conflict with the LSND results when all the experiments are analyzed in the same way, and when analyzed conservatively the LSND data is quite compatible with the mass difference needed for dark matter. Further support for this mass pattern is provided by the need for a sterile neutrino to rescue heavy-element nucleosynthesis in supernovae, and it could even aid the concordance in light element abundances from the early universe.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, IDM 98 conferenc

A Sterile Neutrino Needed for Heavy-Element Nucleosynthesis

A neutrino mass-mixing scheme which successfully avoids the "alpha effect," allowing r-process nucleosynthesis in the neutrino-heated ejecta of supernovae, quite independently requires the same parameters as the scheme which best fits all current indications for neutrino mass. The significance for particle physics is this independent evidence for (1) at least one light sterile neutrino, nu_s; (2) a near maximally-mixed nu_mu-nu_tau doublet split from a lower mass nu_mu-nu_s doublet; (3) nu_mu-nu_e mixing >~ 10^-4; and (4) a splitting between the doublets (measured by the nu_mu-nu_e mass difference) >~ 1 eV^2, favoring the upper part of the LSND range. If correct, it is tantalizing that neutrinos with tiny masses which mix with sterile species have profound effects on massive objects and the creation of the heaviest elements.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, PASCOS '99 conference tal

Some developments in the feeding of coal to fluidized bed combustors

Research is being done in the development of fluid bed combustors for high sulphur coal, using limestone or dolomite in the bed for removal of the sulphur. Operating units to date have proven the inadequacies of available material handling techniques for introduction and control of the coal and adsorbent to the beds. Larger units now being contemplated will pose formidable problems in this area. Some of the techniques which were developed for the existing pilot units and novel ideas under consideration for future, large production units are illustrated and described