4 Signs It's Time To Fire An Employee - Business Insider

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Not everyone is going to fit in with the mission and goals of your company. Keeping an employee around who isn't contributing positively can really hurt a company?especially a small business where culture can be closely tied to success. If an employee is showing any of these four signs, it might be time to let them go.

1. Not performing up to expectations

It doesn?t matter how much you appreciate employees' efforts?if they?re failing to meet their expectations month after month, they may not be a good fit for your business. Not only are they costing you money, but?they?re pushing responsibilities onto other colleagues, causing?stress within an organization.?

One solution, when you spot a poor performer, is to offer this employee a short-term improvement plan. However, if this person fails to improve within this specific time period, you should work on a transition plan to give him or her time to find another job while you find a replacement.

2. Can't handle change

Growth is crucial, especially for small, fast-moving companies. If an employee, when first hired, was a high performer but can't keep pace?or move in the same direction as the company, then he or she is no longer the right fit. Companies need to continue to improve and evolve to be successful, and so do their workers.

?Change is inevitable, especially at a fast-moving company. Employees need to be comfortable with change and eager to improve our abilities,? says Matthew Bellows, CEO of Yesware. ?We need to keep our skills growing at pace with the company.?

3.?Lacks enthusiasm and drive

It's easy?to be motivated in the early stages,?but?as a company grows and hits a few bumps, that's when it's easy to see who's aligned with the company's values and committed to?carrying a company through the long term, and who isn't.

?Everyone who gets through our interview process is excited for the opportunities ahead. But we all need to maintain, and even increase, our motivation in those months ahead,? Bellows says. ?Bravery is required. We won?t all feel motivated and brave all the time. But we value people who are passionate about our work and motivated to lean in further.?

4. Doesn't fit into company's culture

Most of the time, hiring managers are so focused on hiring someone with the right skills, they forget that it?s also important to hire someone who understands the goals of your company.??Many people default into choosing people who have high competence but a low cultural fit. This is a deadly mistake in a startup, as this is exactly the wrong person to hire,??Brad Feld, a managing director at Foundry Group,?wrote for?The Wall Street Journal.??While they may have great skills for the role you are looking for, the overhead of managing and integrating this person into your young team will be extremely difficult.??

?This is especially true if they are in a leadership position, as they will hire other people who have a cultural fit with them, rather than with the organization, creating even more polarization within your young company,? Feld adds.

Feld says?the perfect?candidate?is a culture fit with ?medium? competence, who is ambitious enough to learn new?skills within a short period of time.?

Next Steps

If you have evaluated an employee's performance, attitude toward growth, motivation and cultural fit, and decide it's in your company's best interest to let him or her go, you still need to consider one more thing: legal issues. According to?employment law firm?Stone Business Law, one of the most important things to consider is whether or not you?re firing someone for the right reasons. If there is even the slightest chance that the reason you?re asking someone to leave has anything to do with age, race, sex, national origin, religion and disability, you should consult with a lawyer or HR specialist immediately before making any decisions.

Also, plan on having two people in the room when you?re telling someone he or she is fired. It not only will help you be more rational and?keep your emotions in check, but the?other person can serve as a witness and take?notes, in the event the employee files a claim against?the company.

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Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/4-signs-its-time-to-fire-an-employee-2013-5

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Studying meteorites may reveal Mars' secrets of life

May 1, 2013 ? In an effort to determine if conditions were ever right on Mars to sustain life, a team of scientists, including a Michigan State University professor, has examined a meteorite that formed on the Red Planet more than a billion years ago.

And although this team's work is not specifically solving the mystery, it is laying the groundwork for future researchers to answer this age-old question.

The problem, said MSU geological sciences professor Michael Velbel, is that most meteorites that originated on Mars arrived on Earth so long ago that now they have characteristics that tell of their life on Earth, obscuring any clues it might offer about their time on Mars.

"These meteorites contain water-related mineral and chemical signatures that can signify habitable conditions," he said. "The trouble is by the time most of these meteorites have been lying around on Earth they pick up signatures that look just like habitable environments, because they are. Earth, obviously, is habitable.

"If we could somehow prove the signature on the meteorite was from before it came to Earth, that would be telling us about Mars."

Specifically, the team found mineral and chemical signatures on the rocks that indicated terrestrial weathering -- changes that took place on Earth. The identification of these types of changes will provide valuable clues as scientists continue to examine the meteorites.

"Our contribution is to provide additional depth and a little broader view than some work has done before in sorting out those two kinds of water-related alterations -- the ones that happened on Earth and the ones that happened on Mars," Velbel said.

The meteorite that Velbel and his colleagues examined -- known as a nakhlite meteorite -- was recovered in 2003 in the Miller Range of Antarctica. About the size of a tennis ball and weighing in at one-and-a-half pounds, the meteorite was one of hundreds recovered from that area.

Velbel said past examinations of meteorites that originated on Mars, as well as satellite and Rover data, prove water once existed on Mars, which is the fourth planet from the sun and Earth's nearest Solar System neighbor.

"However," he said, "until a Mars mission successfully returns samples from Mars, mineralogical studies of geochemical processes on Mars will continue to depend heavily on data from meteorites."

Velbel is currently serving as a senior fellow at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C.

The research is published in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, a bi-weekly journal co-sponsored by two professional societies, the Geochemical Society and the Meteoritical Society.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Michigan State University.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Julie D. Stopar, G. Jeffrey Taylor, Michael A. Velbel, Marc D. Norman, Edward P. Vicenzi, Lydia J. Hallis. Element abundances, patterns, and mobility in Nakhlite Miller Range 03346 and implications for aqueous alteration. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, 2013; 112: 208 DOI: 10.1016/j.gca.2013.02.024

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130501193212.htm

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Ender's Game Still: Ben Kingsley as Mazer Rackham

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/05/enders-game-still-ben-kingsley-as-mazer-rackham/

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UAE head feted in Britain, Cameron urged to raise torture claims

By Mohammed Abbas

LONDON (Reuters) - The president of the United Arab Emirates met Queen Elizabeth on Tuesday on a visit to Britain where Prime Minister David Cameron is under pressure to raise allegations that UAE police tortured British citizens.

Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahayan's visit poses a delicate diplomatic challenge for Cameron who has already expressed concern about the torture accusations but is keen to boost lucrative trade and strategically important diplomatic relations in the Gulf. The two men are due to meet on Wednesday.

The three Britons, who were jailed in the UAE for four years on Monday for drug offences, said police beat them and threatened them with guns, allegations the police deny. Cameron has called for an inquiry.

Making matters tricky for Cameron is the UAE's status as a key destination for British arms and other exports.

Hanging in the balance is the fate of a British bid to sell BAE Systems-backed Eurofighter Typhoon jets to the UAE, on which a decision is expected soon, and an energy deal expected to be signed on Wednesday with Emirati energy firm Masdar.

Buckingham Palace declined to comment on the torture issue. The Foreign Office said in a statement: "We remain concerned by the allegations of mistreatment on arrest and continue to raise these with the UAE authorities."

New-York-based Human Rights Watch, which labels the UAE's human rights record "increasingly poor", said economic considerations should not stop Cameron pressing Sheikh Khalifa on the issue.

"David Cameron once promised that he would 'stand against ? regimes that persecute their people,' so let's see him do that for these men who have made serious allegations of torture in the UAE," the rights group's Sarah Leah Whitson said.

"The UAE has become a country where people who speak their mind get locked up, and those who get locked up face torture."

Tensions between the West and Iran have increased the strategic importance of the UAE and other states that face the Islamic Republic across the Gulf.

Rights groups accuse Western nations of softening their criticism of abuses in allied Gulf states, including Bahrain, where crackdowns on pro-democracy protests in recent months have garnered a relatively muted response.

(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/uae-head-feted-britain-cameron-urged-raise-torture-170053836.html

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One step closer to a quantum computer

Apr. 30, 2013 ? Professor Weimin Chen and his colleagues at Link?ping University, in cooperation with German and American researchers, have succeeded in both initializing and reading nuclear spins, relevant to qubits for quantum computers, at room temperature.

The results have just been published in the journal Nature Communications.

A quantum computer is controlled by the laws of quantum physics; it promises to perform complicated calculations, or search large amounts of data, at a speed that exceeds by far those that today's fastest supercomputers are capable of.

"You could say that a quantum computer can think several thoughts simultaneously, while a traditional computer thinks one thought at a time," says Weimin Chen, professor in the Division of Functional Electronic Materials at the Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology at LiU, and one of the main authors of the article in Nature Communications.

A traditional computer stores, processes and sends all information in the form of bits, which can have a value of 1 or 0. But in the world of quantum physics, at the nano- and atomic level, other rules prevail and a bit in a quantum computer -- a qubit -- can have any value between 1 and 0. A spin-based qubit makes use of the fact that electrons and atomic nuclei rotate around their own axes -- they have a spin. They can rotate both clockwise and counterclockwise (equivalent to 1 and 0), and in both directions simultaneously (a mix of 1 and 0) -- something that is completely unthinkable in the traditional, "classical" world.

An atomic nucleus consists of both protons and neutrons, and the advantage of using the nuclear spin as a qubit is that the nucleus is well protected, and nearly impervious to unwanted electromagnetic disturbance, which is a condition for keeping the sensitive information in the qubit intact.

The first step in building a quantum computer is to assign each qubit a well-defined value, either 1 or 0. Starting, or initiating, the spin-based qubits then requires all the atomic nuclei to spin in the same direction, either 'up' or 'down' (clockwise or counterclockwise). The most common method for polarising nuclear spin is called dynamic nuclear polarisation; this means that the electrons' spin simply influences the nucleus to spin in the same direction. The method requires strongly spin polarised electrons and functions superbly at lower temperatures. Dynamic nuclear polarisation via conduction electrons has, however, not yet been demonstrated at room temperature -- which is crucial for the method to be useful in practice for the development of quantum computers. The main problem is that the spin orientation in the electrons can easily be lost at room temperature, since it is sensitive to disruptions from its surroundings.

Link?ping University researchers Yuttapoom Puttisong, Xingjun Wang, Irina Buyanova and Weimin Chen, together with their German and American colleagues, have now discovered a way of getting around this problem.

Back in 2009, Chen and his research group presented a spin filter that works at room temperature; the filter lets through electrons that have the desired spin direction and screens out the others.

With the help of the spin filter, they have now succeeded in producing a flow of free electrons with a given spin in a material -- in this case GaNAs (gallium nitrogen arsenide). The spin polarisation is so strong that it creates a strong polarisation of the nuclear spin in extra Ga atoms that are added as defects in the material -- and this takes place at room temperature. This is the first time that strong nuclear spin polarisation of a defect atom in a solid is demonstrated at room temperature by spin-polarised conduction electrons.

"We prove experimentally that the measurable magnetic field from the nuclei, as well as the strong polarisation of the nuclear spins in the material at room temperature, comes from the dynamic polarisation of the nuclear spin in the extra added Ga atoms," says Chen.

The researchers have also shown that the polarisation of the nuclear spin happens very quickly -- potentially in less than a nanosecond (one-billionth of a second).

The method proposed also has the advantage of making use of free electrons. This makes it possible to control the polarisation of the spin in the nucleus electrically; in this way the information lying in the spin can both be initiated and read.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Link?ping Universitet.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Y. Puttisong, X.J. Wang, I.A. Buyanova, L. Geelhaar, H. Riechert, A.J. Ptak, C.W. Tu, W.M. Chen. Efficient room-temperature nuclear spin hyperpolarization of a defect atom in a semiconductor. Nature Communications, 2013; 4: 1751 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2776

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/6O3ktbwqZO0/130430092420.htm

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Limor Fried Explains Why Adafruit Industries Likes Manufacturing In North America

There's a long-held notion that China should be the go-to place for those in need of inexpensive manufactured products, but some prominent makers don't buy it. Our own John Biggs sat down with Adafruit Industries founder Limor Fried (perhaps better known as Lady Ada) for a chat on the Disrupt Ny stage that quickly turned to deal with the benefits of manufacturing hardware close to home.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/jjZFsfqm1Bc/

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The Engadget Show won two Webby Awards, now we're giving away two Nexus 7s!

We'd like to thank the Academy and all the little people who helped along the way -- but mostly we'd like to thank you, our viewers, for helping The Engadget Show win not one, but two Webby Awards this year. That's right, our plucky little show managed to pick up two of the coveted coils, and we're frankly overjoyed. We're so pumped, in fact, that we don't want the winning to end. As our way of thanking you for the support you've given the show in the past year, we're giving away a shiny new 32GB HSPA+ Nexus 7 to two lucky winners (one for each Webby, naturally), which you can use to watch the latest episode! And once you're done with that, there's an included $25 Google Play gift card to find more stuff to watch (there are plenty more free episodes for you, once that runs out).

Note: Please enter using the widget below, as comments are no longer valid methods of entry. The widget only requires your name and email address so we know how to get in touch with you if you win (your information is not given out to third parties), but you will have an option to receive an additional entry by liking us on Twitter if you so desire.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/01/engadget-show-giveaway/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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