Search results for: sentence completion task

Authors: Sunaitan Al Mutairi

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A perfect start is a key factor for project completion on time. The study examined the effects of delayed mobilization of resources during the initial phases of the project. This paper mainly highlights the identification and categorization of all delays during the initial construction phase and their root cause analysis with corrective/control measures for the Kuwait Oil Company oil and gas projects. A relatively good percentage of the delays identified during the project execution (Contract award to end of defects liability period) attributed to mobilization/preliminary activity delays. Data analysis demonstrated significant increase in average project delay during the last five years compared to the previous period. Contractors had delays/issues during the initial phase, which resulted in slippages and progressively increased, resulting in time and cost overrun. Delays/issues not mitigated on time during the initial phase had very high impact on project completion. Data analysis of the delays for the past five years was carried out using trend chart, scatter plot, process map, box plot, relative importance index and Pareto chart. Construction of any project inside the Gathering Centers involves complex management skills related to work force, materials, plant, machineries, new technologies etc. Delay affects completion of projects and compromises quality, schedule and budget of project deliverables. Works executed as per plan during the initial phase and start-up duration of the project construction activities resulted in minor slippages/delays in project completion. In addition, there was a good working environment between client and contractor resulting in better project execution and management. Mainly, the contractor was on the front foot in the execution of projects, which had minimum/no delays during the initial and construction period. Hence, having a perfect start during the initial construction phase shall have a positive influence on the project success. Our research paper studies each type of delay with some real example supported by statistic results and suggests mitigation measures. Detailed analysis carried out with all stakeholders based on impact and occurrence of delays to have a practical and effective outcome to mitigate the delays. The key to improvement is to have proper control measures and periodic evaluation/audit to ensure implementation of the mitigation measures. The focus of this research is to reduce the delays encountered during the initial construction phase of the project life cycle.

Keywords: Construction activities delays, delay analysis for construction projects, mobilization delays, oil and gas projects delays.

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Authors: Mikel Alonso López

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In order to begin the process of studying the task of making consumer decisions, the main decision models must be analyzed. The objective of this task is to see if there is a presence of emotions in those models, and analyze how authors that have created them consider their impact in consumer choices. In this paper, the most important models of consumer behavior are analysed. This review is useful to consider an unproblematic background knowledge in the literature. The order that has been established for this study is chronological.

Keywords: Consumer behaviour, emotions, decision making, consumer psychology.

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Authors: Maha ALjohani, James Blustein

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Communicating users' needs, goals and problems help designers and developers overcome challenges faced by end users. Personas are used to represent end users’ needs. In our research, creating personas allowed the following questions to be answered: Who are the potential user groups? What do they want to achieve by using the service? What are the problems that users face? What should the service provide to them? To develop realistic personas, we conducted a focus group discussion with undergraduate and graduate students and also interviewed a university librarian. The personas were created to help evaluating the Institutional Repository that is based on the DSpace system. The profiles helped to communicate users' needs, abilities, tasks, and problems, and the task scenarios used in the heuristic evaluation were based on these personas. Four personas resulted of a focus group discussion with undergraduate and graduate students and from interviewing a university librarian. We then used these personas to create focused task-scenarios for a heuristic evaluation on the system interface to ensure that it met users' needs, goals, problems and desires. In this paper, we present the process that we used to create the personas that led to devise the task scenarios used in the heuristic evaluation as a follow up study of the DSpace university repository.

Keywords: Heuristic Evaluation, Institutional Repositories, User Experience, Human Computer Interaction, User Profiles, Personas, Task Scenarios, Heuristics.

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Authors: Mourad Ykhlef, Hebah ElGibreen

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Mining Sequential Patterns in large databases has become an important data mining task with broad applications. It is an important task in data mining field, which describes potential sequenced relationships among items in a database. There are many different algorithms introduced for this task. Conventional algorithms can find the exact optimal Sequential Pattern rule but it takes a long time, particularly when they are applied on large databases. Nowadays, some evolutionary algorithms, such as Particle Swarm Optimization and Genetic Algorithm, were proposed and have been applied to solve this problem. This paper will introduce a new kind of hybrid evolutionary algorithm that combines Genetic Algorithm (GA) with Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) to mine Sequential Pattern, in order to improve the speed of evolutionary algorithms convergence. This algorithm is referred to as SP-GAPSO.

Keywords: Genetic Algorithm, Hybrid Evolutionary Algorithm, Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm, Sequential Pattern mining.

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Authors: Olimpia Matarazzo, Fabrizio Ferrara

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In two studies we tested the hypothesis that the appropriate linguistic formulation of a deontic rule – i.e. the formulation which clarifies the monadic nature of deontic operators - should produce more correct responses than the conditional formulation in Wason selection task. We tested this assumption by presenting a prescription rule and a prohibition rule in conditional vs. proper deontic formulation. We contrasted this hypothesis with two other hypotheses derived from social contract theory and relevance theory. According to the first theory, a deontic rule expressed in terms of cost-benefit should elicit a cheater detection module, sensible to mental states attributions and thus able to discriminate intentional rule violations from accidental rule violations. We tested this prevision by distinguishing the two types of violations. According to relevance theory, performance in selection task should improve by increasing cognitive effect and decreasing cognitive effort. We tested this prevision by focusing experimental instructions on the rule vs. the action covered by the rule. In study 1, in which 480 undergraduates participated, we tested these predictions through a 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 (type of the rule x rule formulation x type of violation x experimental instructions) between-subjects design. In study 2 – carried out by means of a 2 x 2 (rule formulation x type of violation) between-subjects design - we retested the hypothesis of rule formulation vs. the cheaterdetection hypothesis through a new version of selection task in which intentional vs. accidental rule violations were better discriminated. 240 undergraduates participated in this study. Results corroborate our hypothesis and challenge the contrasting assumptions. However, they show that the conditional formulation of deontic rules produces a lower performance than what is reported in literature.

Keywords: Deontic reasoning; Evolutionary, linguistic, logical, pragmatic factors; Wason selection task

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Authors: Jae Kyung Son, Wan Shik Jang, Sung hyun Shim, Yoon Gyung Sung

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This paper is concerned with the application of the vision control algorithm for robot's point placement task in discontinuous trajectory caused by obstacle. The presented vision control algorithm consists of four models, which are the robot kinematic model, vision system model, parameters estimation model, and robot joint angle estimation model.When the robot moves toward a target along discontinuous trajectory, several types of obstacles appear in two obstacle regions. Then, this study is to investigate how these changes will affect the presented vision control algorithm.Thus, the practicality of the vision control algorithm is demonstrated experimentally by performing the robot's point placement task in discontinuous trajectory by obstacle.

Keywords: Vision control algorithm, location of obstacle region, range of obstacle region, point placement.

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Authors: Lai Yi-Hsiu

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The present study addressed the nature of bilingual semantic processing in Mandarin Chinese and Southern Min and examined category effects and age effects. Nineteen bilingual adults of Mandarin Chinese and Southern Min, nine monolingual seniors of Mandarin Chinese, and ten monolingual seniors of Southern Min in Taiwan individually completed two semantic tasks: Picture naming and category fluency tasks. The instruments for the naming task were sixty black-and-white pictures, including thirty-five object pictures and twenty-five action pictures. The category fluency task also consisted of two semantic categories – objects (or nouns) and actions (or verbs). The reaction time for each picture/question was additionally calculated and analyzed. Oral productions in Mandarin Chinese and in Southern Min were compared and discussed to examine the category effects and age effects. The results of the category fluency task indicated that the content of information of these seniors was comparatively deteriorated, and thus they produced a smaller number of semantic-lexical items. Significant group differences were also found in the reaction time results. Category effects were significant for both adults and seniors in the semantic fluency task. The findings of the present study will help characterize the nature of the bilingual semantic processing of adults and seniors, and contribute to the fields of contrastive and corpus linguistics.

Keywords: Bilingual semantic processing, aging, Mandarin Chinese, Southern Min.

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Authors: Zehra Sultan

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The study is based on the Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT) approach which is found to be very effective in the EFL/ESL classroom. This approach engages learners to acquire the usage of authentic language skills by interacting with the real world through a sequence of pedagogical tasks. The use of technology enhances the effectiveness of this approach. This study throws light on the historical background of TBLT, and its efficacy in the EFL /ESL classroom. In addition, this study precisely talks about the implementation of this approach in the General Foundation Program (GFP) of Muscat College, Oman. It furnishes the list of the pedagogical tasks embedded in the language curriculum of the GFP which are skillfully allied to the College graduate attributes. Moreover, the study also discusses the challenges pertaining to this approach from the point of view of teachers, students and its classroom application. Additionally, the operational success of this methodology is gauged through formative assessments of the GFP which is apparent in the students’ progress.

Keywords: Task-based language teaching, authentic language, communicative approach, real world activities, ESL/EFL activities.

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Authors: S. da Costa, D. Páez, E. Martínez, A. Torres, M. Beramendi, D. Hermosilla, M. Muratori

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This study examined the association between creative performance, organizational climate and leadership, affectivity, shared flow, and group decision making. The sample consisted of 315 cadets of a military academic unit of South America. Satisfaction with the decision-making process during a creative task was associated with the usefulness and effectiveness of the ideas generated by the teams with a weighted average correlation of r = .18. Organizational emotional climate, positive and innovation leadership were associated with this group decision-making process r = .25, with shared flow, r = .29 and with positive affect felt during the performance of the creative task, r = .12. In a sequential mediational analysis positive organizational leadership styles were significantly associated with decision-making process and trough cohesion with utility and efficacy of the solution of a creative task. Satisfactory decision-making was related to shared flow during the creative task at collective or group level, and positive affect with flow at individual level.This study examined the association between creative performance, organizational climate and leadership, affectivity, shared flow, and group decision making. The sample consisted of 315 cadets of a military academic unit of South America. Satisfaction with the decision-making process during a creative task was associated with the usefulness and effectiveness of the ideas generated by the teams with a weighted average correlation of r = .18. Organizational emotional climate, positive and innovation leadership were associated with this group decision-making process r = .25, with shared flow, r = .29 and with positive affect felt during the performance of the creative task, r = .12. In a sequential mediational analysis positive organizational leadership styles were significantly associated with decision-making process and trough cohesion with utility and efficacy of the solution of a creative task. Satisfactory decision-making was related to shared flow during the creative task at collective or group level, and positive affect with flow at individual level.

Keywords: Creativity, innovation, military, organization, teams.

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Authors: Bastian Hartmann, Christoph Schauer, Norbert Link

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This paper addresses the problem of recognizing and interpreting the behavior of human workers in industrial environments for the purpose of integrating humans in software controlled manufacturing environments. In this work we propose a generic concept in order to derive solutions for task-related manual production applications. Thus, we are able to use a versatile concept providing flexible components and being less restricted to a specific problem or application. We instantiate our concept in a spot welding scenario in which the behavior of a human worker is interpreted when performing a welding task with a hand welding gun. We acquire signals from inertial sensors, video cameras and triggers and recognize atomic actions by using pose data from a marker based video tracking system and movement data from inertial sensors. Recognized atomic actions are analyzed on a higher evaluation level by a finite state machine.

Keywords: activity recognition, task modeling, marker-based video-tracking, inertial sensors.

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Authors: K. Atashgar

Abstract:

When an assignable cause(s) manifests itself to a multivariate process and the process shifts to an out-of-control condition, a root-cause analysis should be initiated by quality engineers to identify and eliminate the assignable cause(s) affected the process. A root-cause analysis in a multivariate process is more complex compared to a univariate process. In the case of a process involved several correlated variables an effective root-cause analysis can be only experienced when it is possible to identify the required knowledge including the out-of-control condition, the change point, and the variable(s) responsible to the out-of-control condition, all simultaneously. Although literature addresses different schemes to monitor multivariate processes, one can find few scientific reports focused on all the required knowledge. To the best of the author’s knowledge this is the first time that a multi task model based on artificial neural network (ANN) is reported to monitor all the required knowledge at the same time for a multivariate process with more than two correlated quality characteristics. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated numerically when different step shifts affect the mean vector. Average run length is used to investigate the performance of the proposed multi task model. The simulated results indicate the multi task scheme performs all the required knowledge effectively.

Keywords: Artificial neural network, Multivariate process, Statistical process control, Change point.

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Authors: Dimitrios Ntardas, Alexandros Tzanetos, Georgios Dounias

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High Voltage Substations (HVS) are the intermediate step between production of power and successfully transmitting it to clients, making them one of the most important checkpoints in power grids. Nowadays - renewable resources and consequently distributed generation are growing fast, the construction of HVS is of high importance both in terms of quality and time completion so that new energy producers can quickly and safely intergrade in power grids. The resources needed, such as machines and workers, should be carefully allocated so that the construction of a HVS is completed on time, with the lowest possible cost (e.g. not spending additional cost that were not taken into consideration, because of project delays), but in the highest quality. In addition, there are milestones and several checkpoints to be precisely achieved during construction to ensure the cost and timeline control and to ensure that the percentage of governmental funding will be granted. The management of such a demanding project is a NP-hard problem that consists of prerequisite constraints and resource limits for each task of the project. In this work, a hybrid meta-heuristic method is implemented to solve this problem. Meta-heuristics have been proven to be quite useful when dealing with high-dimensional constraint optimization problems. Hybridization of them results in boost of their performance.

Keywords: High voltage substations, nature-inspired algorithms, project management, meta-heuristics.

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Authors: Medya Fathi

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When public transportation projects were delivered through design-bid-build and later design-build, governments found a serious issue: inadequate funding. With population growth, governments began to develop new arrangements in which the private sectors were involved to cut the financial burden. This arrangement, Public-Private Partnership (PPP), has its own risks; however, performance outputs can motivate or discourage its use. On top of such output are time and budget, which can be affected by the type of project delivery methods. Project completion within or ahead of schedule as well as within or under budget is among any owner’s objectives. With a higher application of PPP in the highway industry in the US and insufficient research, the current study addresses the schedule and cost performance of PPP highway projects and determines which one outperforms the other. To meet this objective, after collecting performance data of all PPP projects, schedule growth and cost growth are calculated, and finally, statistical analysis is conducted to evaluate the PPP performance. The results show that PPP highway projects on average have saved time and cost; however, the main benefit is a faster delivery rather than an under-budget completion. This study can provide better insights to understand PPP highways’ performance and assist practitioners in applying PPP for transportation projects with the opportunity to save time and cost.

Keywords: Cost, delivery method, highway, public-private partnership, schedule, transportation.

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Authors: Nobue T. Ellis

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This preliminary study attempts to see if a learning environment influences instructor’s teaching strategies and learners’ in-class activities in a foreign language class at a university in Japan. The class under study was conducted in a computer room, while the majority of classes of the same course were offered in traditional classrooms without computers. The study also sees if the unplanned blended learning environment, enhanced, or worked against, in achieving course goals, by paying close attention to in-class artefacts, such as computers. In the macro-level analysis, the course syllabus and weekly itinerary of the course were looked at; and in the microlevel analysis, nonhuman actors in their environments were named and analyzed to see how they influenced the learners’ task processes. The result indicated that students were heavily influenced by the presence of computers, which lead them to disregard some aspects of intended learning objectives.

Keywords: Computer-assisted language learning, actor-network theory, English as a foreign language, task-based teaching.

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Authors: Jiabei Zhang, Amanda Rapelje, Christopher Farr, Kristin Colwell, Zezhao Chen

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The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of a recreational workout program for adults with disabilities over two semesters. This investigation was an action study conducted in a naturalistic setting. Participants included equal numbers of adults with severe cognitive impairments (n = 35) and adults without disabilities (n = 35). Adults with disabilities severe cognitive impairments were trained 6 self-initiated workout activities over two semesters by adults without disabilities. The numbers of task-analyzed steps of each activity performed correctly by each participant at the first and last weeks of each semester were used for data analysis. Results of the paired t-tests indicate that across two semesters, significant differences between the first and last weeks were found on 4 out of the 6 task-analyzed workout activities at a statistical level of significance p < .05. The recreational workout program developed in this study was effective.

Keywords: Workout program, exercise performance, adults, sever cognitive impairment.

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Authors: Madhuri Khambete, Madhuri Joshi

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Quality evaluation of an image is an important task in image processing applications. In case of image compression, quality of decompressed image is also the criterion for evaluation of given coding scheme. In the process of compression -decompression various artifacts such as blocking artifacts, blur artifact, ringing or edge artifact are observed. However quantification of these artifacts is a difficult task. We propose here novel method to quantify blur and ringing artifact in an image.

Keywords: Blur, Compression, Objective Quality assessment, Ringing artifact.

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Authors: D. Maneetham, L. Sivhour

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Robotic arm manipulators are widely used to accomplish many kinds of tasks. SCORBOT-ER 4u is a 5-degree of freedom (DOF) vertical articulated educational robotic arm, and all joints are revolute. It is specifically designed to perform pick and place task with its gripper. The pick and place task consists of consideration of the end effector coordinate of the robotic arm and the desired position coordinate in its workspace. This paper describes about forward kinematics modeling and analysis of the robotic end effector motion through joint space. The kinematics problems are defined by the transformation from the Cartesian space to the joint space. Denavit-Hartenberg (D-H) model is used in order to model the robotic links and joints with 4x4 homogeneous matrix. The forward kinematics model is also developed and simulated in MATLAB. The mathematical model is validated by using robotic toolbox in MATLAB. By using this method, it may be applicable to get the end effector coordinate of this robotic arm and other similar types to this arm. The software development of SCORBOT-ER 4u is also described here. PC-and EtherCAT based control technology from BECKHOFF is used to control the arm to express the pick and place task.

Keywords: Forward kinematics, D-H model, robotic toolbox, PC-and EtherCAT based control.

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Authors: Matthias Dehmer1 Jürgen Kilian

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Problems on algebraical polynomials appear in many fields of mathematics and computer science. Especially the task of determining the roots of polynomials has been frequently investigated.Nonetheless, the task of locating the zeros of complex polynomials is still challenging. In this paper we deal with the location of zeros of univariate complex polynomials. We prove some novel upper bounds for the moduli of the zeros of complex polynomials. That means, we provide disks in the complex plane where all zeros of a complex polynomial are situated. Such bounds are extremely useful for obtaining a priori assertations regarding the location of zeros of polynomials. Based on the proven bounds and a test set of polynomials, we present an experimental study to examine which bound is optimal.

Keywords: complex polynomials, zeros, inequalities

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Authors: Bekim Fetaji, Majlinda Fetaji

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The development and use of mobile devices as well as its integration within education systems to deliver electronic contents and to support real-time communications was the focus of this research. In order to investigate the software engineering issues in using mobile devices a research on electronic content was initiated. The Developed MP3 mobile software solution was developed as a prototype for testing and developing a strategy for designing a usable m-learning environment. The mobile software solution was evaluated using mobile device using the link: http://projects.seeu.edu.mk/mlearn. The investigation also tested the correlation between the two mobile learning indicators: electronic content and attention, based on the Task Based learning instructional method. The mobile software solution ''M-Learn“ was developed as a prototype for testing the approach and developing a strategy for designing usable m-learning environment. The proposed methodology is about what learning modeling approach is more appropriate to use when developing mobile learning software.

Keywords: M-learning, mobile software development, mobiledevices, learning instructions, task based learning.

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Authors: Anurag Jain, Rajneesh Kumar

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Cloud computing is the outcome of rapid growth of internet. Due to elastic nature of cloud computing and unpredictable behavior of user, load balancing is the major issue in cloud computing paradigm. An efficient load balancing technique can improve the performance in terms of efficient resource utilization and higher customer satisfaction. Load balancing can be implemented through task scheduling, resource allocation and task migration. Various parameters to analyze the performance of load balancing approach are response time, cost, data processing time and throughput. This paper demonstrates a two level load balancer approach by combining join idle queue and join shortest queue approach. Authors have used cloud analyst simulator to test proposed two level load balancer approach. The results are analyzed and compared with the existing algorithms and as observed, proposed work is one step ahead of existing techniques.

Keywords: Cloud Analyst, Cloud Computing, Join Idle Queue, Join Shortest Queue, Load balancing, Task Scheduling.

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Authors: K.R. Aida–Zade, C. Ardil, A.M. Sharifova

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In this paper, the main principles of text-to-speech synthesis system are presented. Associated problems which arise when developing speech synthesis system are described. Used approaches and their application in the speech synthesis systems for Azerbaijani language are shown.

Keywords: synthesis of Azerbaijani language, morphemes, phonemes, sounds, sentence, speech synthesizer, intonation, accent, pronunciation.

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Authors: Nancy DiTunnariello, Jenna L. Currie-Mueller

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Totalistic organizations include organizations that operate by playing a prominent role in the life of its members through embedding values and practices. The Church of Scientology (CoS) is an example of a religious totalistic organization and has recently garnered attention because of the questionable treatment of members by those with authority, particularly when members try to leave the Church. The purpose of this study was to analyze exit communication and evaluate the task and relational messages discussed on online discussion boards for individuals with a previous or current connection to the totalistic CoS. Using organizational exit phases and interaction process analysis (IPA), researchers coded 30 boards consisting of 14,179 thought units from the Exscn.net website. Findings report that all stages of exit were present, and post-exit surfaced most often. Posts indicated more tasks than relational messages, where individuals mainly provided orientation/information. After a discussion of the study’s contributions, limitations and directions for future research are explained.

Keywords: Bales’ IPA, organizational exit, relational messages, scientology, task messages, totalistic organizations.

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Authors: Leo Galambos

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The majority of today's IR systems base the IR task on two main processes: indexing and searching. There exists a special group of dynamic IR systems where both processes (indexing and searching) happen simultaneously; such a system discards obsolete information, simultaneously dealing with the insertion of new in¬formation, while still answering user queries. In these dynamic, time critical text document databases, it is often important to modify index structures quickly, as documents arrive. This paper presents a method for dynamization which may be used for this task. Experimental results show that the dynamization process is possible and that it guarantees the response time for the query operation and index actualization.

Keywords: Search engine, inverted file, index management.

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Authors: Zoltán Szabó, Blanka Štorková

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We analyze hand dexterity in Parkinson-s disease patients (PD) and control subjects using a natural manual transport task (moving an object from one place to another). Eight PD patients and ten control subjects performed the task repeatedly at maximum speed both in OFF and ON medicated status. The movement parameters and the grip and load forces were recorded by a single optoelectronic camera and force transducers built in the especially designed object. Using the force and velocity signals, ten subsequent phases of the transport movement were defined and their durations were measured. The outline of 3D optical measurement is presented to obtain more precise movement trajectory.

Keywords: Manual transport, movement phases, Parkinson's disease.

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Authors: Tommaso Adamo, Gianpaolo Ghiani, Antonio D. Grieco, Emanuela Guerriero

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Batch production plants provide a wide range of scheduling problems. In pharmaceutical industries a batch process is usually described by a recipe, consisting of an ordering of tasks to produce the desired product. In this research work we focused on pharmaceutical production processes requiring the culture of a microorganism population (i.e. bacteria, yeasts or antibiotics). Several sources of uncertainty may influence the yield of the culture processes, including (i) low performance and quality of the cultured microorganism population or (ii) microbial contamination. For these reasons, robustness is a valuable property for the considered application context. In particular, a robust schedule will not collapse immediately when a cell of microorganisms has to be thrown away due to a microbial contamination. Indeed, a robust schedule should change locally in small proportions and the overall performance measure (i.e. makespan, lateness) should change a little if at all. In this research work we formulated a constraint programming optimization (COP) model for the robust planning of antibiotics production. We developed a discrete-time model with a multi-criteria objective, ordering the different criteria and performing a lexicographic optimization. A feasible solution of the proposed COP model is a schedule of a given set of tasks onto available resources. The schedule has to satisfy tasks precedence constraints, resource capacity constraints and time constraints. In particular time constraints model tasks duedates and resource availability time windows constraints. To improve the schedule robustness, we modeled the concept of (a, b) super-solutions, where (a, b) are input parameters of the COP model. An (a, b) super-solution is one in which if a variables (i.e. the completion times of a culture tasks) lose their values (i.e. cultures are contaminated), the solution can be repaired by assigning these variables values with a new values (i.e. the completion times of a backup culture tasks) and at most b other variables (i.e. delaying the completion of at most b other tasks). The efficiency and applicability of the proposed model is demonstrated by solving instances taken from a real-life pharmaceutical company. Computational results showed that the determined super-solutions are near-optimal.

Keywords: Constraint programming, super-solutions, robust scheduling, batch process, pharmaceutical industries.

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Authors: Hani Shafeek, Muhammed Marsudi

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The purpose of this work is examining the multiproduct multi-stage in a battery production line. To improve the performances of an assembly production line by determine the efficiency of each workstation. Data collected from every workstation. The data are throughput rate, number of operator, and number of parts that arrive and leaves during part processing. Data for the number of parts that arrives and leaves are collected at least at the amount of ten samples to make the data is possible to be analyzed by Chi-Squared Goodness Test and queuing theory. Measures of this model served as the comparison with the standard data available in the company. Validation of the task time value resulted by comparing it with the task time value based on the company database. Some performance factors for the multi-product multi-stage in a battery production line in this work are shown. The efficiency in each workstation was also shown. Total production time to produce each part can be determined by adding the total task time in each workstation. To reduce the queuing time and increase the efficiency based on the analysis any probably improvement should be done. One probably action is by increasing the number of operators how manually operate this workstation.

Keywords: Production line, manufacturing, performance measurement, queuing theory.

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Authors: Herbert Ugrinowitsch, Suziane Peixoto dos Santos-Naves, Michele Viviene Carbinatto, Rodolfo NovellinoBenda, Go Tani

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An experiment was conducted to examine the effect of the level of performance stabilization on the human adaptability to perceptual-motor perturbation in a complex coincident timing task. Three levels of performance stabilization were established operationally: pre-stabilization, stabilization, and super-stabilization groups. Each group practiced the task until reached its level of stabilization in a constant sequence of movements and under a constant time constraint before exposure to perturbation. The results clearly showed that performance stabilization is a pre-condition for adaptation. Moreover, variability before reaching stabilization is harmful to adaptation and persistent variability after stabilization is beneficial. Moreover, the behavior of variability is specific to each measure.

Keywords: Adaptation, motor skill, perturbation, stabilization.

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Authors: Bia Kim, Sewon Lee, Jaesik Lee

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This study aims to investigate the gender differences in spatial navigation using the tasks of 2-D matrix navigation and recognition of real driving scene. The results can be summarized as followings. First, female subjects responded faster in 2-D matrix navigation task than male subjects when landmark instructions were provided. Second, in recognition task, male subjects recognized the key elements involved in the past driving scene more accurately than female subjects. In particular, female subjects tended to miss peripheral information. These results suggest the possibility of gender differences in spatial navigation.

Keywords: Gender differences, Spatial navigation, 2-D matrixnavigation, Recognition of driving scene.

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Authors: William H. O'Brien, Erin Bannon, M.A., Heather McCarren, Eileen Delaney

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Employees commonly encounter unpredictable and unavoidable work related stressors. Exposure to such stressors can evoke negative appraisals and associated adverse mental, physical, and behavioral responses. Because Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) emphasizes acceptance of unavoidable stressors and diffusion from negative appraisals, it may be particularly beneficial for work stress. Forty-five workers were randomly assigned to an ACT intervention for work stress (n = 21) or a waitlist control group (n = 24). The intervention consisted of two 3-hour sessions spaced one week apart. An examination of group process and outcomes was conducted using the Revised Sessions Rating Scale. Results indicated that the ACT participants reported that they perceived the intervention to be supportive, task focused, and without adverse therapist behaviors (e.g., feelings of being criticized or discounted). Additionally, the second session (values clarification and commitment to action) was perceived to be more supportive and task focused than the first session (mindfulness, defusion). Process ratings were correlated with outcomes. Results indicated that perceptions of therapy supportiveness and task focus were associated with reduced psychological distress and improved perceived physical health.

Keywords: Work stress, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, therapy process.

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Authors: S. Da Costa, D. Páez, F. Sánchez

Abstract:

We examine the causal role of positive affect on creativity, the association of creativity or innovation in the ideation phase with functional emotional regulation, successful adjustment to stress and dispositional emotional creativity, as well as the predictive role of creativity for positive emotions and social adjustment. The study examines the effects of modification of positive affect on creativity. Participants write three poems, narrate an infatuation episode, answer a scale of personal growth after this episode and perform a creativity task, answer a flow scale after creativity task and fill a dispositional emotional creativity scale. High and low positive effect was induced by asking subjects to write three poems about high and low positive connotation stimuli. In a neutral condition, tasks were performed without previous affect induction. Subjects on the condition of high positive affect report more positive and less negative emotions, more personal growth (effect size r = .24) and their last poem was rated as more original by judges (effect size r = .33). Mediational analysis showed that positive emotions explain the influence of the manipulation on personal growth - positive affect correlates r = .33 to personal growth. The emotional creativity scale correlated to creativity scores of the creative task (r = .14), to the creativity of the narration of the infatuation episode (r = .21). Emotional creativity was also associated, during performing the creativity task, with flow (r = .27) and with affect balance (r = .26). The mediational analysis showed that emotional creativity predicts flow through positive affect. Results suggest that innovation in the phase of ideation is associated with a positive affect balance and satisfactory performance, as well as dispositional emotional creativity is adaptive.

Keywords: Affectivity, creativity, induction, innovation, psychological factors.

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