Institutions and service employment: a panel study for OECD countries

OpenAIRE

Messina, Julián

2004-01-01

We live in a service economy, but the extent of development of service employment differs across developed countries. This paper assesses the role of structural factors and institutions in explaining the common patterns and main di?erences in the recent expansion of service employment in OECD countries. It finds that GDP per capita, the size of the government sector and the extent of urbanization are positively associated with the service employment share. However, the evidence suggests that ...

75 FR 53786 - Senior Community Service Employment Program; Final Rule

Science.gov (United States)

2010-09-01

... Part IV Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration 20 CFR Part 641 Senior... Administration 20 CFR Part 641 RIN 1205-AB48 and RIN 1205-AB47 Senior Community Service Employment Program; Final... implement changes in the Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP) resulting from the 2006...

The influence of social capital on employers' use of occupational health services: a qualitative study.

Science.gov (United States)

Ståhl, Christian; Åborg, Carl; Toomingas, Allan; Parmsund, Marianne; Kjellberg, Katarina

2015-10-23

Occupational health services may have a strategic role in the prevention of sickness absence, as well as in rehabilitation and return to work after sick leave, because of their medical expertise in combination with a close connection to workplaces. The purpose of this study was to explore how employers and occupational health service providers describe their business relations and the use of occupational health services in rehabilitation in relation to the organization of such services. The study uses a theoretical framework based on social capital to analyse the findings. Interviews and focus groups with managers with Swedish public employers (n = 60), and interviews with occupational health services professionals (n = 25). Employers emphasized trustful relationships, local workplace knowledge, long-term contracts and dialogue about services for good relationships with occupational health providers. Occupational health providers strove to be strategic partners to employers, promoting preventive work, which was more easily achieved in situations where the services were organized in-house. Employers with outsourced occupational health services expressed less trust in their providers than employers with internal occupational health provision. Social capital emerges as central to understanding the conditions for cooperation and collective action in the use of occupational health services, with reference to structural (e.g. contracts), relational (e.g. trust) as well as cognitive (e.g. shared vision) dimensions. The study suggests that attention to the quality of relationships is imperative for developing purposeful occupational health service delivery in rehabilitation and return to work.

Economic benefits of employment transportation services : final report

Science.gov (United States)

2008-06-30

This report examines the benefits that accrue from employment transportation services implemented as a result of changes in welfare policy, namely the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996. Employment transp...

Health service utilisation of rural-to-urban migrants in Guangzhou, China: does employment status matter?

Science.gov (United States)

Song, Xiaolei; Zou, Guanyang; Chen, Wen; Han, Siqi; Zou, Xia; Ling, Li

2017-01-01

To describe the self-reported health status and service utilisation of employed, retired and unemployed migrants in Guangzhou, a megacity in southern China. A cross-sectional study adapted from the National Health Service Survey was conducted between September and December in 2014. Based on the distribution of occupation of migrants, multistage sampling was used to recruit individuals. Logistic regression was applied to explore the factors influencing their service utilisation. Of 2906 respondents, 76.6% were employed, 9.2% retired and 14.2% unemployed. Only 8.1% reported having an illness in the previous 2 weeks, and 6.5% reported having been hospitalised in the previous year. Employed migrants had the lowest recent physician consultation rate (3.4%) and the lowest annual hospitalisation rate (4.5%) (P rates (6.8% and 14.5% respectively, P employed (1.5%) and unemployed migrants (3.4%) (P gender, employment status remained significant in explaining the recent two-week treatment-seeking behaviour of migrants (P Employed migrants make the least use of health services. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Employment Effects of Service Offshoring: Evidence from Matched Firms

OpenAIRE

Rosario Crinò

2009-01-01

This paper studies the effects of service offshoring on the level and skill composition of domestic employment, using a rich data set of Italian firms and propensity score matching techniques. The results show that service offshoring has no effect on the level of employment but changes its composition in favor of high skilled workers.

E-government and employment services a case study in effectiveness

CERN Document Server

Fugini, Maria Grazia; Valles, Ramon Salvador

2014-01-01

This book explores the factors that affect the efficiency and effectiveness of electronic government (e-Government) by analyzing two employment- service systems in Italy and Catalonia: the Borsa Lavoro Lombardia Portal (Lombardy Employment Services Portal) and the Servei d'Ocupació de Catalunya (Catalan Employment Services Portal). The evaluation methodology used in the case studies and the related set of technical, social, and economic indicators are clearly described. The technological and organizational features of the systems of the two systems are then compared and their impacts assessed

Interpreting the marketisation of employment services in Great Britain and Denmark

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Larsen, Flemming; Wright, Sharon

2014-01-01

Marketization is an important component of international shifts in the governance of employment services. Despite contrasting underlying welfare systems and employment services of different scale and character, both Denmark and the UK were distinct from many other comparable countries in contract......Marketization is an important component of international shifts in the governance of employment services. Despite contrasting underlying welfare systems and employment services of different scale and character, both Denmark and the UK were distinct from many other comparable countries...... in contracting-out employment services in the late 1990s. We compare the starting positions and divergent trajectories of marketization; then assess the extent to which it delivered on its promises. We find that in neither case did contracting-out reduce bureaucracy; save money through innovation; realise user...... choice; prevent poor quality services; or increase efficiency/effectiveness through better job outcomes. In the absence of the intended effects, we question why policymakers in such different socio-political contexts continued to support the marketization strategy. The explanation is found in combination...

The Effectiveness of Paid Services in Supporting Unpaid Carers' Employment in England.

Science.gov (United States)

Pickard, Linda; King, Derek; Brimblecombe, Nicola; Knapp, Martin

2015-07-01

This paper explores the effectiveness of paid services in supporting unpaid carers' employment in England. There is currently a new emphasis in England on 'replacement care', or paid services for the cared-for person, as a means of supporting working carers. The international evidence on the effectiveness of paid services as a means of supporting carers' employment is inconclusive and does not relate specifically to England. The study reported here explores this issue using the 2009/10 Personal Social Services Survey of Adult Carers in England . The study finds a positive association between carers' employment and receipt of paid services by the cared-for person, controlling for covariates. It therefore gives support to the hypothesis that services for the cared-for person are effective in supporting carers' employment. Use of home care and a personal assistant are associated on their own with the employment of both men and women carers, while use of day care and meals-on-wheels are associated specifically with women's employment. Use of short-term breaks are associated with carers' employment when combined with other services. The paper supports the emphasis in English social policy on paid services as a means of supporting working carers, but questions the use of the term 'replacement care' and the emphasis on 'the market'.

Employment differences in services: the role of wages, productivity and demand

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Glyn, A.; Salverda, W.; Möller, J.; Schmitt, J.; Sollogoub, M.

2005-01-01

recent decades reflected the failure of services-employment rates in Europe to converge to American levels whilst European employment rates in goods production were falling rapidly towards those of the USA. The services-employment gap is concentrated in distribution (retail and hotels and catering)

45 CFR 149.41 - Consequences of Non-Compliance, Fraud, or Similar Fault.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... Fault. 149.41 Section 149.41 Public Welfare DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES REQUIREMENTS... Eligible Employment-Based Plans § 149.41 Consequences of Non-Compliance, Fraud, or Similar Fault. Upon failure to comply with the requirements of this part, or if fraud, waste, and abuse, or similar fault are...

The development of supported employment services for people with mental illness: local experience in Hong Kong.

Science.gov (United States)

Chiu, Frank P.F.

2000-01-01

Before the 1960s in Hong Kong, specialized vocational services for people with mental illness were very limited, and sheltered workshop seemed to be the only option for their future vocational placement at that time. As discussed in the literature, there are still many shortcomings of the sheltered workshop model, that brings us to the emergence of another community-based vocational service: Supported Employment. Unlike traditional vocational services, the concept of supported employment emphasizes the placing of the clients into integrated work environments and then providing on-going support and work-related skills training in the job post. Though supported employment services help many clients to sustain a job in the competitive market, many service barriers and problems still remain unsolved. These service barriers and problems will be discussed in this article, and suggestions will be made.

Competition in Telecoms-Implications for Universal Service and Employment

OpenAIRE

Petrazzini, Ben A.

1996-01-01

The author argues that competition in domestic telecommunications markets promotes both universal service and employment in developing countries. Thus, incumbent monopoly operators should be reformed. And since incumbents are subject to increasingly fierce international competition from callback services, Internet phone services, mobile satellite services, and global operators, this reform ...

Designing a New Car Rental Service Using Location-Based Services

OpenAIRE

Dessie, Solomon

2015-01-01

This thesis concentrates on improving the car rental services offered by the case company by introducing location-based services. For many years, the company has conducted a rental business in a similar manner with other car rental companies, and now it is introducing a new service system based on online interaction and location-based services. The outcome of the study is a blueprint for the case company regarding the design of a car rental service using location-based services. This stud...

In-school service predictors of employment for individuals with intellectual disability.

Science.gov (United States)

Park, Jiyoon; Bouck, Emily

2018-04-17

Although there are many secondary data analyses of the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 (NLTS-2) to investigate post-school outcome for students with disabilities, there has been a lack of research with in-school service predictors and post-school outcome for students with specific disability categories. This study was a secondary data analysis of NLTS-2 to investigate the relationship between current employment status and in-school services for individuals with intellectual disability. Statistical methods such as descriptive statistics and logistic regression were used to analyze NLTS-2 data set. The main findings included that in-school services were correlated with current employment status, and that primary disability (i.e., mild intellectual disability and moderate/severe intellectual disability) was associated with current employment status. In-school services are critical in predicting current employment for individuals with intellectual disability. Also, data suggest additional research is needed to investigate various in-school services and variables that could predict employment differences between individuals with mild and moderate/severe intellectual disability. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Employers' Perspective on Childcare Services for Hired Farm Workers.

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, Barbara C; Salzwedel, Marsha A; Chyou, Po-Huang; Liebman, Amy K

2017-01-01

The goal of this project was to protect children while parents work in agriculture by improving off-farm services for children of migrant and seasonal farm workers. Large agricultural enterprises have policies forbidding children in the worksite. At the same time, their employees, who are trying to generate income, seek as many work hours as possible but often lack viable options for childcare services. As employers strive to increase their labor pool, and workers seek off-farm childcare, there is mutual interest in improving access to childcare services in agricultural regions dependent on large numbers of full-time and seasonal workers. This report describes the employers' perspectives on childcare needs of hired farm workers' families and their barriers and motivators to facilitating off-farm childcare services. Using descriptive survey research methodology, data were collected from a convenience sample of 102 agribusiness owners and Human Resource directors attending an agricultural conference regarding labor laws or personnel management. Results revealed significant differences for those companies employing more than 25 workers compared to their counterparts. Primary motivators for offering childcare as an employment benefit were improved employee morale, enhanced company reputation, and a more stable workforce. A major barrier was that half of large-scale enterprises lack guidance on how to provide childcare options for their workers. Survey results are being used to facilitate collaboration among employers, farm workers, and childcare providers to offer a safe, nurturing environment for children while their parents work in agriculture.

LDA-Based Unified Topic Modeling for Similar TV User Grouping and TV Program Recommendation.

Science.gov (United States)

Pyo, Shinjee; Kim, Eunhui; Kim, Munchurl

2015-08-01

Social TV is a social media service via TV and social networks through which TV users exchange their experiences about TV programs that they are viewing. For social TV service, two technical aspects are envisioned: grouping of similar TV users to create social TV communities and recommending TV programs based on group and personal interests for personalizing TV. In this paper, we propose a unified topic model based on grouping of similar TV users and recommending TV programs as a social TV service. The proposed unified topic model employs two latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) models. One is a topic model of TV users, and the other is a topic model of the description words for viewed TV programs. The two LDA models are then integrated via a topic proportion parameter for TV programs, which enforces the grouping of similar TV users and associated description words for watched TV programs at the same time in a unified topic modeling framework. The unified model identifies the semantic relation between TV user groups and TV program description word groups so that more meaningful TV program recommendations can be made. The unified topic model also overcomes an item ramp-up problem such that new TV programs can be reliably recommended to TV users. Furthermore, from the topic model of TV users, TV users with similar tastes can be grouped as topics, which can then be recommended as social TV communities. To verify our proposed method of unified topic-modeling-based TV user grouping and TV program recommendation for social TV services, in our experiments, we used real TV viewing history data and electronic program guide data from a seven-month period collected by a TV poll agency. The experimental results show that the proposed unified topic model yields an average 81.4% precision for 50 topics in TV program recommendation and its performance is an average of 6.5% higher than that of the topic model of TV users only. For TV user prediction with new TV programs, the average

Employment-related information for clients receiving mental health services and clinicians.

Science.gov (United States)

King, Joanne; Cleary, Catherine; Harris, Meredith G; Lloyd, Chris; Waghorn, Geoff

2011-01-01

Clients receiving public mental health services and clinicians require information to facilitate client access to suitable employment services. However, little is known about the specific employment-related information needs of these groups. This study aimed to identify employment-related information needs among clients, clinicians and employment specialists, with a view to developing a new vocational information resource. Employment-related information needs were identified via a series of focus group consultations with clients, clinicians, and employment specialists (n=23). Focus group discussions were guided by a common semi-structured interview schedule. Several categories of information need were identified: countering incorrect beliefs about work; benefits of work; disclosure and managing personal information; impact of earnings on welfare entitlements; employment service pathways; job preparation, planning and selection; and managing illness once working. Clear preferences were expressed about effective means of communicating the key messages in written material. This investigation confirmed the need for information tailored to clients and clinicians in order to activate clients' employment journey and to help them make informed decisions about vocational assistance.

45 CFR 400.81 - Criteria for appropriate employability services and employment.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... and from a child care facility, unless a longer commuting distance or time is generally accepted in... community standards. (4) When child care is required, the care must meet the standards normally required by..., 1989, as amended at 65 FR 15448, Mar. 22, 2000] Failure or Refusal To Accept Employability Services or...

Employer Relations and Recruitment Services: An Essential Part of Postsecondary Career Services. Monograph Series

Science.gov (United States)

Hoover, Myrna P.; Lenz, Janet G.; Garis, Jeff

2013-01-01

This monograph is intended for any career services provider seeking a guide for developing employer relations and recruitment services at a postsecondary institution. It serves to inform readers about the changing meaning of "placement" over the years and the role it currently plays in career services. The publication describes…

Job coach factors associated with community-based employment service programme outcome measures for people with disabilities--a Taiwan case study.

Science.gov (United States)

Yun-Tung, Wang

2010-01-01

The aim of this study is to explore whether/which job coach factors were significantly associated with the community-based employment service (CBES) programme outcome measures in Taiwan. This study used the 2003-2005 CBES programme for People with Disabilities Database in Taipei City in Taiwan (n = 3924) to do a secondary data analysis using hierarchical multiple linear regression. This study found that 'occurrences of the services provided by the job coaches' variable was definitely the dominant predictor and explained additional 19.6% and 27.8% of the variances of annual salary and annual working month outcome measures, respectively. In addition, among six composition variables of 'occurrences of the services provided by the job coaches', 'occurrences of follow-up guidance', 'occurrences of intensive guidance', and 'occurrences of consultation before interviews with employer/director of human resources' were more powerful than the other three in predicting outcomes. Job coach factors in this study were significantly correlated with CBES programme outcome measures for people with disabilities in Taiwan after controlling for the socio-demographic variables. It indicates that the more inputs in the people with disabilities made by job coaches equates to better outcomes in this Taiwan case study.

Preventing violence : service station employer handbook

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

NONE

2007-07-01

According to part 3 of British Columbia's Workers Compensation Act, employers must ensure the health and safety of their employees and any other workers present at their worksite. Workers are also responsible for following established safe work procedures and protecting their own health and safety. This handbook was designed for service station employers who do not already have adequate violence-prevention procedures. In addition to providing guidelines, it describes employment standards for workplace health and safety. It describes general duties of supervisors, owners and suppliers and includes the forms needed to fill out, notably an inspection list; an action plan; a violent incident report for workers to fill out in the event of a violent incident; a suspect and vehicle identification form; an employer incident investigation report; and a safety and security feedback report for workers. Regulations that relate to young and new worker orientation and training were also provided along with regulations for working alone or in isolation, violence in the workplace, and high-visibility apparel.

Re-engineering pre-employment check-up systems: a model for improving health services.

Science.gov (United States)

Rateb, Said Abdel Hakim; El Nouman, Azza Abdel Razek; Rateb, Moshira Abdel Hakim; Asar, Mohamed Naguib; El Amin, Ayman Mohammed; Gad, Saad abdel Aziz; Mohamed, Mohamed Salah Eldin

2011-01-01

The purpose of this paper is to develop a model for improving health services provided by the pre-employment medical fitness check-up system affiliated to Egypt's Health Insurance Organization (HIO). Operations research, notably system re-engineering, is used in six randomly selected centers and findings before and after re-engineering are compared. The re-engineering model follows a systems approach, focusing on three areas: structure, process and outcome. The model is based on six main components: electronic booking, standardized check-up processes, protected medical documents, advanced archiving through an electronic content management (ECM) system, infrastructure development, and capacity building. The model originates mainly from customer needs and expectations. The centers' monthly customer flow increased significantly after re-engineering. The mean time spent per customer cycle improved after re-engineering--18.3 +/- 5.5 minutes as compared to 48.8 +/- 14.5 minutes before. Appointment delay was also significantly decreased from an average 18 to 6.2 days. Both beneficiaries and service providers were significantly more satisfied with the services after re-engineering. The model proves that re-engineering program costs are exceeded by increased revenue. Re-engineering in this study involved multiple structure and process elements. The literature review did not reveal similar re-engineering healthcare packages. Therefore, each element was compared separately. This model is highly recommended for improving service effectiveness and efficiency. This research is the first in Egypt to apply the re-engineering approach to public health systems. Developing user-friendly models for service improvement is an added value.

School-Based Mental Health Services: Definitions and Models of Effective Practice

Science.gov (United States)

Doll, Beth; Nastasi, Bonnie K.; Cornell, Laura; Song, Samuel Y.

2017-01-01

School-based mental health services are those delivered by school-employed and community-employed providers in school buildings. With the implementation of provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010) that funds school-based health centers, school-based mental health services could become more broadly available in…

Health assessment of self-employed in the food service industry.

Science.gov (United States)

Grégoris, Marina; Deschamps, Frédéric; Salles, Julie; Sanchez, Stéphane

2017-07-01

Objectives This study's objective was to assess the morbidity of self-employed workers in the food service industry, an industry with a large amount of occupational health risks. Methods A cross-sectional study, consisting of 437 participants, was conducted between 2011 and 2013 in Champagne-Ardenne, France. The health questionnaire included an interview, a clinical examination, and medical investigations. Results The study population consisted of 146 self-employed workers (not working for an employer) and 291 employees (working with employment contracts for an employer). Logistic regression analysis revealed that self-employed workers had a higher morbidity than employees, after adjusting for age (OR: 3.45; 95% CI: 1.28 to 9.25). Main adverse health conditions were joint pain (71.2% self-employed vs. 38.1% employees, p < 0.001), ear disorders (54.1% self-employed vs. 33.7%, employees, p < 0.001), and cardiovascular diseases (47.3% self-employed vs. 21% employees, p < 0.001). Conclusions The study highlights the need for occupational health services for self-employed workers in France so that they may benefit from prevention of occupational risks and health surveillance. Results were presented to the self-employed healthcare insurance fund in order to establish an occupational health risks prevention system.

Implementation of evidence-based supported employment in regional Australia.

Science.gov (United States)

Morris, Adrienne; Waghorn, Geoffrey; Robson, Emma; Moore, Lyndell; Edwards, Emma

2014-06-01

To implement the Individual Placement and Support (IPS) approach at 4 locations in regional New South Wales, Australia. Outcomes attained were compared with a national non-IPS program and with international trials of IPS within and outside the United States. Four IPS programs were established through formal partnerships between mental health services and disability employment services. Ninety-five mental health service clients commenced employment assistance and were tracked for a minimum of 12 months. Two sites achieved good fidelity to IPS principles, and 2 sites achieved fair fidelity. IPS clients had 3.5 times greater odds of attaining 13 weeks' employment than those receiving assistance in the national network of disability employment services. Implementing IPS is challenging in the Australian service delivery context. Factors other than program fidelity appear to contribute to excellent employment outcomes. Further research is needed to identify these factors.

38 CFR 21.6519 - Eligibility of qualified veterans for employment and counseling services.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... veterans for employment and counseling services. 21.6519 Section 21.6519 Pensions, Bonuses, and Veterans... employment and counseling services. (a) General. A qualified veteran for whom vocational rehabilitation and achievenment of a vocational goal are reasonably feasible may be provided the employment and counseling...

EMPLOYER CHOICES IN EAP DESIGN AND WORKSITE SERVICES.

Science.gov (United States)

McCann, Bernard; Azzone, Vanessa; Merrick, Elizabeth L; Hiatt, Deirdre; Hodgkin, Dominic; Horgan, Constance M

2010-01-01

In today's complex private healthcare market, employers have varied preferences for particular features of behavioral health products such as Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs). Factors which may influence these preferences include: establishment size, type of organization, industry, workplace substance abuse regulations, and structure of health insurance benefits. This study of 103 large employer purchasers from a single managed behavioral healthcare organization investigated the impact of such variables on the EAP features that employers select to provide to workers and their families. Our findings indicate that for this group of employers, preferences for the type and delivery mode of EAP counseling services are fairly universal, while number of sessions provided and choices for EAP-provided worksite activities are much more varied, and may be more reflective of the diverse characteristics, organizational missions and workplace culture found among larger employers in the US.

29 CFR 552.101 - Domestic service employment.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... considered domestic service employees. The places where they work are not private homes but commercial or... private home of the employer whether that home is a fixed place of abode or a temporary dwelling as in the case of an individual or family traveling on vacation. A separate and distinct dwelling maintained by...

78 FR 60303 - Agency Information Collection Activities: Online Survey of Web Services Employers; New...

Science.gov (United States)

2013-10-01

...-NEW] Agency Information Collection Activities: Online Survey of Web Services Employers; New... information collection. (2) Title of the Form/Collection: Online Survey of Web Services Employers. (3) Agency... USCIS obtains data on the E-Verify Program Web Services. Gaining an understanding of the Web Services...

EnviroAtlas - Employment Activity in the Conterminous U.S. Web Service

Data.gov (United States)

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — This EnviroAtlas web service includes maps that illustrate job activity in each census block group. Employment diversity, employment density, and proximity of...

Supporting lifelong competence development and employability using TENCompetence services

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Manderveld, Jocelyn; Griffiths, Dai; Kew, Chris; Krekels, Bas

2009-01-01

Manderveld, J., Griffiths, D., Kew, C., & Krekels, B. (2008). Supporting lifelong competence development and employability using TENCompetence services. Presentation at Online Educa Berlin, December, 3, 2008, Berlin, Germany.

Public Service Motivation and Employment Sector: Attraction or Socialization?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kjeldsen, Anne Mette; Jacobsen, Christian Bøtcher

2013-01-01

Numerous studies have shown that public service motivation (PSM) is positively associated with public sector employment. However, the question of whether PSM influences or is influenced by employment decisions remains open, since previous studies have mostly relied on cross-sectional samples...... with experienced employees. This article investigates the relationship between PSM and employment sector in pre-entry and post-entry settings using data from a panel of Danish physiotherapy students surveyed before and after their first job in the public or private sector. The analyses show that PSM is neither...

The Impact of Institutions on the Destandardization of Female Employment Patterns in the Services Sector

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Leschke, Janine

Increasing female labour market participation is arguably one of the decisive factors in explaining a destandardisation of the European employment model. Due to a lack in institutions that allow combining wage and care work and in light of unequal gender distribution of care work women...... of women in specific occupations with the services sector. This paper makes use of the cross-country variation in terms of destandardisation of female employment as compared to male employment and tries to explain the country differences by way of institutions (particularly child- and elderly care but also...... at the country level the OECD family data base is used. Besides presenting descriptive statistics on the gender gaps in the services sector with regard to flexible forms of work, including their overlaps, the paper also makes use of multilevel analysis to explain the country differences in the gender gaps...

Efficient Provision of Employment Service Outputs: A Production Frontier Analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Cavin, Edward S.; Stafford, Frank P.

1985-01-01

This article develops a production frontier model for the Employment Service and assesses the relative efficiency of the 51 State Employment Security Agencies in attaining program outcomes close to that frontier. This approach stands in contrast to such established practices as comparing programs to their own previous performance. (Author/CT)

Employability of offshore service sector workers in the Philippines: opportunities for upward labour mobility or dead-end jobs?

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Beerepoot, N.; Hendriks, M.

2013-01-01

Critical concerns have been raised about the quality of employment in the offshore service sector in developing countries, suggesting that many activities have an inherent paradox of highly educated workers performing low-skilled jobs. Based on empirical data collected in the offshore service sector

Employers' and patients' evaluations of the services of private versus ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Employers were asked to compare the service provision performance of private higher education graduates and private health service provision with that of government. The comparative criteria for each are listed in tables 2 and 3. In both education and health, with respect to each of the criterion, respondents were asked to ...

A Descriptive Study of Occupational Health Services in Self-employed Enterprises (Nanoscale Enterprises, Shiraz, Iran

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mehdi Jahangiri

2016-12-01

Conclusion: This study revealed a poor level of the implementation of occupational health services in Iranian self-employed enterprises. Based on the findings, providing basic training on the occupational health, more enforcing in conduction of health examinations and providing PPE, and taking appropriate strategies aimed at eliminating or minimizing work environment harmful agents are the major factor that should be considered to improve the level of occupational health services among the studied enterprises.

Causal relations between knowledge-intensive business services and regional employment growth

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Brenner, T.; Capasso, M.; Duschl, M.; Frenken, K.; Treibich, T.G.

2015-01-01

This paper studies the causal relations between regional employment growth in Knowledge-Intensive Business Services (KIBS) and overall regional employment growth using German labour-market data for the period 1999-2012. Adopting a recently developed technique, we are able to estimate a structural

An evaluation of an employment pilot to support forensic mental health service users into work and vocational activities.

Science.gov (United States)

Samele, Chiara; Forrester, Andrew; Bertram, Mark

2018-02-01

Few employment programmes exist to support forensic service users with severe mental health problems and a criminal history. Little is known about how best to achieve this. The Employment and Social Inclusion Project (ESIP) was developed and piloted to support forensic service users into employment and vocational activities. This pilot service evaluation aimed to assess the number of service users who secured employment/vocational activities and explored services users' and staff experiences. Quantitative data were collected to record the characteristics of participating service users and how many secured employment and engaged in vocational activities. Eighteen qualitative interviews were conducted with service users and staff. Fifty-seven service users engaged with the project, most were men (93.0%) and previously employed (82.5%). Four service users (7.0%) secured paid competitive employment. Eight (14.0%) gained other paid employment. Tailored one-to-one support to increase skills and build confidence was an important feature of the project. Creation of a painting and decorating programme offered training and paid/flexible work. This exploratory project achieved some success in assisting forensic service users into paid employment. Further research to identify what works well for this important group will be of great value.

Activity Based Training Employed in Quality Assurance Training

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Liviu Moldovan

2011-06-01

Full Text Available This paper presents the employment of the Activity Based Training at the “Petru Maior” University of Tîrgu Mureş. The draft of the training activities in each of the 10 modules in the Quality Audit process is illustrated. It is an achievement of the project entitled “Disseminating Open and Innovative Tools and Services for Vocational Education and Training in Quality Assurance” (acronym Do-IT financed by European Commission.

An Algorithm Creating Thumbnail for Web Map Services Based on Information Entropy and Trans-scale Similarity

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

CHENG Xiaoqiang

2017-11-01

Full Text Available Thumbnail can greatly increase the efficiency of browsing pictures,videos and other image resources and improve the user experience prominently. Map service is a kind of graphic resource coupling spatial information and representation scale,its crafting,retrieval and management will not function well without the support of thumbnail. Sophisticated designed thumbnails bring users vivid first impressions and help users make efficient exploration. On the contrast,coarse thumbnail cause negative emotion and discourage users to explore the map service positively. Inspired by video summarization,key position and key scale of web map service were proposed. Meanwhile,corresponding quantitative measures and an automatic algorithm were drawn up and implemented. With the help of this algorithm,poor visual quality,lack of map information and low automation of current thumbnails was solved successfully. Information entropy was used to determine areas richer in content and tran-scale similarity was calculated to judge at which scale the appearance of the map service has changed drastically,and finally a series of static pictures were extracted which can represent the content of the map service. Experimental results show that this method produced medium-sized,content-rich and well-representative thumbnails which effectively reflect the content and appearance of map service.

75 FR 78939 - Senior Community Service Employment Program; Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Additional Indicator...

Science.gov (United States)

2010-12-17

... Community Service Employment Program; Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Additional Indicator on Volunteer Work... Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP), Additional Indicator on Volunteer Work that was... number of exiting participants who enter volunteer work. The relevant Office of Management and Budget...

49 CFR 40.17 - Is an employer responsible for obtaining information from its service agents?

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... 49 Transportation 1 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Is an employer responsible for obtaining... Responsibilities § 40.17 Is an employer responsible for obtaining information from its service agents? Yes, as an employer, you are responsible for obtaining information required by this part from your service agents...

49 CFR 40.331 - To what additional parties must employers and service agents release information?

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... service agents release information? 40.331 Section 40.331 Transportation Office of the Secretary of... Release of Information § 40.331 To what additional parties must employers and service agents release information? As an employer or service agent you must release information under the following circumstances...

Parks and recreation employment status: implications from a civil service perspective

Science.gov (United States)

Joel Frater; Arthur Graham

2002-01-01

Current research on the credentialing process in parks, recreation and leisure services has focused primarily on accreditation and certification and has largely ignored the civil service exam as a credentialing toll or condition of employment in many state and municipal parks and recreation departments.

26 CFR 31.3306(c)-2 - Employment; services performed after 1954.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... service is entered into is immaterial. The citizenship or residence of the employee or of the person... or other employees on or in connection with the vessel or aircraft may constitute employment. (v) A... citizenship or residence of the employee is immaterial, and the citizenship or residence of the employer is...

Community Reintegration, Participation, and Employment Issues in Veterans and Service Members With Traumatic Brain Injury.

Science.gov (United States)

Dillahunt-Aspillaga, Christina; Powell-Cope, Gail

2018-02-01

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) has been called the signature injury of the post-9/11 wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and neighboring countries. Although similarities exist between veterans and service members with TBI, levels of severity and different constellations of coexisting comorbid conditions affect them differently. These conditions affect physical, cognitive, and emotional function, which in turn can complicate community reintegration (CR), or the ability to return to family, vocational, and community life. This special supplement of the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation consists of articles written by accomplished teams from multiple disciplines, including anthropology, neuropsychology, nursing, occupational therapy, psychology, and rehabilitation sciences. Each article brings a different perspective to bear on what CR means for veterans and service members from examination of predictors and perceptions of veterans and service members and others to measurement studies. Collectively, this group of articles represents current thinking about CR and lays the groundwork for testing interventions to improve CR outcomes for veterans and service members (eg, employment, living situation, family life). Published by Elsevier Inc.

Alcohol and substance use history among ADHD adults: the relationship with persistent and remitting symptoms, personality, employment, and history of service use.

Science.gov (United States)

Huntley, Zoe; Young, Susan

2014-01-01

To profile substance use, personality, service use, and employment in adults with ADHD. The sample consisted of 216 consecutive referrals to an adult ADHD service and classified with ADHD, partially or fully remitted ADHD, or no ADHD. Normal controls (n = 33) were recruited from a general practitioner's center. Participants completed measures of alcohol and illicit substance use, employment, service use, ADHD symptoms, and personality. High rates of substance use were found in participants with current ADHD diagnoses. ADHD participants showed increased rates of personality trait or disorder scores and unemployment. There was some indication that those with ADHD and substance-related impairment place higher demand on services. Individuals with partially remitted ADHD showed similar substance use to those with current ADHD, whereas those in full remission were comparable with normal controls. Although ADHD symptoms may remit with time, individuals retaining persisting or partial symptoms have substantial needs in adulthood.

Service patterns related to successful employment outcomes of persons with traumatic brain injury in vocational rehabilitation.

Science.gov (United States)

Catalano, Denise; Pereira, Ana Paula; Wu, Ming-Yi; Ho, Hanson; Chan, Fong

2006-01-01

This study analyzed the Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA) case service report (RSA-911) data for fiscal year 2004 to examine effects of demographic characteristics, work disincentives, and vocational rehabilitation services patterns on employment outcomes of persons with traumatic brain injuries (TBI). The results indicated that European Americans (53%) had appreciably higher competitive employment rates than Native American (50%), Asian Americans (44%), African Americans (42%), and Hispanic/Latino Americans (41%). Clients without co-occurring psychiatric disabilities had a higher employment rate (51%) than those with psychiatric disabilities (45%). Clients without work disincentives showed better employment outcomes (58%) than those with disincentives (45%). An important finding from this analysis was the central role of job search assistance, job placement assistance, and on-the-job support services for persons with TBI in predicting employment outcomes. A data mining technique, the exhaustive CHAID analysis, was used to examine the interaction effects of race, gender, work disincentives and service variables on employment outcomes. The results indicated that the TBI clients in this study could be segmented into 29 homogeneous subgroups with employment rates ranging from a low of 11% to a high of 82%, and these differences can be explained by differences in work disincentives, race, and rehabilitation service patterns.

Capping the tax exclusion for employment-based health coverage: implications for employers and workers.

Science.gov (United States)

Fronstin, Paul

2009-01-01

HEALTH CARE TAX CAP: With health reform a major priority of the new 111th Congress and President Barack Obama, this Issue Briefexamines the administrative and implementation issues that arise from one of the major reform proposals: Capping the exclusion of employment-based health coverage from workers' taxable income. The amount that employers contribute toward workers' health coverage is generally excluded, without limit, from workers' taxable income. In addition, workers whose employers sponsor flexible spending accounts are able to pay out-of-pocket expenses with pretax dollars. Employers can also make available a premium conversion arrangement, which allows workers to pay their share of the premium for employment-based coverage with pretax dollars. In 2005, a presidential advisory board concluded that limiting the amount of tax-preferred health coverage could lower overall private-sector health spending. The panel recommended a cap on the amount of employment-based health coverage individuals can exclude from their income tax, as a way to reduce health spending. In his 2008 "Call to Action" for health care reform, Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, states that "Congress should explore ways to restructure the current tax incentives to encourage more efficient spending on health and to target our tax dollars more effectively and fairly." While a tax cap on health coverage sounds simple, for many employers, it could be difficult to administer and results would vary by employer based on the type of health benefit plan, the size and demographics of their work force, and even where the workers live. The change would be especially difficult for self-insured employers that do not pay insurance premiums, since they would have to set the "premium equivalent" for each worker. This would not only be costly for employers, depending upon the requirements set out by law, but could also create fairness and tax issues for many affected workers

26 CFR 31.3121(b)(15)-1 - Services in employ of international organization.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... 26 Internal Revenue 15 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Services in employ of international... OF THE TREASURY (CONTINUED) EMPLOYMENT TAXES AND COLLECTION OF INCOME TAX AT SOURCE EMPLOYMENT TAXES AND COLLECTION OF INCOME TAX AT SOURCE Federal Insurance Contributions Act (Chapter 21, Internal...

Computational prediction of drug-drug interactions based on drugs functional similarities.

Science.gov (United States)

Ferdousi, Reza; Safdari, Reza; Omidi, Yadollah

2017-06-01

Therapeutic activities of drugs are often influenced by co-administration of drugs that may cause inevitable drug-drug interactions (DDIs) and inadvertent side effects. Prediction and identification of DDIs are extremely vital for the patient safety and success of treatment modalities. A number of computational methods have been employed for the prediction of DDIs based on drugs structures and/or functions. Here, we report on a computational method for DDIs prediction based on functional similarity of drugs. The model was set based on key biological elements including carriers, transporters, enzymes and targets (CTET). The model was applied for 2189 approved drugs. For each drug, all the associated CTETs were collected, and the corresponding binary vectors were constructed to determine the DDIs. Various similarity measures were conducted to detect DDIs. Of the examined similarity methods, the inner product-based similarity measures (IPSMs) were found to provide improved prediction values. Altogether, 2,394,766 potential drug pairs interactions were studied. The model was able to predict over 250,000 unknown potential DDIs. Upon our findings, we propose the current method as a robust, yet simple and fast, universal in silico approach for identification of DDIs. We envision that this proposed method can be used as a practical technique for the detection of possible DDIs based on the functional similarities of drugs. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Workplace Breastfeeding Support Varies by Employment Type: The Service Workplace Disadvantage.

Science.gov (United States)

Snyder, Kailey; Hansen, Kelli; Brown, Sara; Portratz, Amy; White, Kate; Dinkel, Danae

The majority of women are returning to work full-time after childbirth, and support within their place of employment may influence intention and duration for breastfeeding, but more research is needed. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore the influence of employment type on breastfeeding duration upon return to work by examining informal (i.e., verbal encouragement) and direct (i.e., lactation space, flexible time) factors of support. This was a retrospective survey of women's returning-to-work experiences while breastfeeding. Survey contents included respondent demographics as well as questions surrounding perceptions of employer support, work environment, and goal/satisfaction regarding breastfeeding. Data were analyzed via crosstabs and chi-square goodness of fit tests. A total of 1,002 women completed the survey. Significant differences were seen across different employment types. Women within the professional/management industry were most likely to receive informal and direct support for breastfeeding upon return to work. Women within the service industry and production/transportation industry reported receiving the lowest levels of informal and direct support. Workplace support varies by employment type and women in the service and production/transportation industry appear to be at a disadvantage compared with other employment types. There is a need for more breastfeeding support programs to be developed that target specific workplace characteristics.

26 CFR 31.3306(c)(16)-1 - Services in employ of international organization.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... 26 Internal Revenue 15 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Services in employ of international... OF THE TREASURY (CONTINUED) EMPLOYMENT TAXES AND COLLECTION OF INCOME TAX AT SOURCE EMPLOYMENT TAXES AND COLLECTION OF INCOME TAX AT SOURCE Federal Unemployment Tax Act (Chapter 23, Internal Revenue Code...

Trust-Enhanced Cloud Service Selection Model Based on QoS Analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Pan, Yuchen; Ding, Shuai; Fan, Wenjuan; Li, Jing; Yang, Shanlin

2015-01-01

Cloud computing technology plays a very important role in many areas, such as in the construction and development of the smart city. Meanwhile, numerous cloud services appear on the cloud-based platform. Therefore how to how to select trustworthy cloud services remains a significant problem in such platforms, and extensively investigated owing to the ever-growing needs of users. However, trust relationship in social network has not been taken into account in existing methods of cloud service selection and recommendation. In this paper, we propose a cloud service selection model based on the trust-enhanced similarity. Firstly, the direct, indirect, and hybrid trust degrees are measured based on the interaction frequencies among users. Secondly, we estimate the overall similarity by combining the experience usability measured based on Jaccard's Coefficient and the numerical distance computed by Pearson Correlation Coefficient. Then through using the trust degree to modify the basic similarity, we obtain a trust-enhanced similarity. Finally, we utilize the trust-enhanced similarity to find similar trusted neighbors and predict the missing QoS values as the basis of cloud service selection and recommendation. The experimental results show that our approach is able to obtain optimal results via adjusting parameters and exhibits high effectiveness. The cloud services ranking by our model also have better QoS properties than other methods in the comparison experiments.

Bases for Vocational Education for Food Service Industry Employees.

Science.gov (United States)

Iowa State Univ. of Science and Technology, Ames.

As a preliminary step in establishing bases for food service training programs, data were collected from a sample of institutions including 4,496 restaurants, 158 hospitals, 436 nursing homes, and 343 custodial homes. A second phase involved developing inventories of attitudes toward food service employment and administering them to high school…

20 CFR 667.262 - Are employment generating activities, or similar activities, allowable under WIA title I?

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... enterprise zone vouchering services, (4) Active participation in local business resource centers (incubators... employers for the purpose of placement of WIA participants; (2) Participation in business associations (such as chambers of commerce); joint labor management committees, labor associations, and resource centers...

Job Sharing: An Employment Alternative for the Career Services Professional.

Science.gov (United States)

Johnson, Louise; Meerdink, Lois A.

1985-01-01

Describes and assesses job sharing as an employment alternative for career services professionals. Discusses the job-sharing format with regard to fringe benefits, scheduling, advantages, client reactions, potential problems, and specific factors that contribute to successful job sharing. (BH)

Data from a professional society placement service as a measure of the employment market for radiation oncologists

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bhargavan, Mythreyi; Sunshine, Jonathan H.; Schepps, Barbara

2002-01-01

Purpose: To aid in understanding the employment market for radiation oncologists, we present annual data for 1991 to 2000 from the American College of Radiology's placement service, the Professional Bureau. This data series is twice as long as any previously available. Secondarily, we compare these data with other data on the employment market. Methods and Materials: The trends in job listings, job seekers, and listings per seeker in the Bureau are tabulated and graphed. We calculate correlations and graph relationships between the last of these and measures of the job market calculated from annual surveys. Results: Bureau data show listings per job seeker declined from 0.53 in 1991 to a nadir of 0.30 in 1995 and then recovered to 1.48 in 2000. Bureau listings and job seekers, each considered separately, show a similar pattern of job market decline and then eventual recovery to better than the 1991 situation. Bureau listings per job seeker correlate 0.895 with a survey-derived index of program directors' perceptions of the job market, but statistical significance is limited (p=0.04), because very few years of survey data are available. Conclusions: The employment market for radiation oncologists weakened in the first half of the 1990s, as had been widely reported; we present the first systematic data showing this. Data from a professional society placement service provide useful and inexpensive information on the employment market

45 CFR 1232.9 - General prohibitions against employment and volunteer service discrimination.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... activity under which volunteers are assigned to work in a number of work stations will assure that a... volunteer service discrimination. 1232.9 Section 1232.9 Public Welfare Regulations Relating to Public... IN PROGRAMS OR ACTIVITIES RECEIVING FEDERAL FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE Employment and Volunteer Service...

Examination of Veterans Affairs disability compensation as a disincentive for employment in a population-based sample of Veterans under age 65.

Science.gov (United States)

Tsai, Jack; Rosenheck, Robert A

2013-12-01

Concerns that disability benefits may create disincentives for employment may be especially relevant for young American military veterans, particularly veterans of the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who are facing a current economic recession and turning in large numbers to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for disability compensation. This study describes the rate of employment and VA disability compensation among a nationally representative sample of veterans under the age of 65 and examines the association between levels of VA disability compensation and employment, adjusting for sociodemographics and health status. Data on a total of 4,787 veterans from the 2010 National Survey of Veterans were analyzed using multinomial logistic regressions to compare employed veterans with two groups that were not employed. Two-thirds of veterans under the age of 65 were employed, although only 36 % of veterans with a VA service-connected disability rating of 50 % or higher were employed. Veterans who received no VA disability compensation or who were service-connected 50 % or more were more likely to be unemployed and not looking for employment than veterans who were not service-connected or were service-connected less than 50 %, suggesting high but not all levels of VA disability compensation create disincentives for employment. Results were similar when analyses were limited to veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Education and vocational rehabilitation interventions, as well as economic work incentives, may be needed to maximize employment among veterans with disabilities.

Service quality and corporate social responsibility, influence on post-purchase intentions of sheltered employment institutions.

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Chao-Chien; Lin, Shih-Yen; Cheng, Chia-Hsin; Tsai, Chia-Ching

2012-01-01

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of service quality and corporate social responsibility (CSR) on customer satisfaction, and customer satisfaction toward post-purchase intentions from sheltered employment institutions. Work experience plays an important role in career development for those people with intellectual disabilities. When they are not yet capable of obtaining a job in the open market, they must receive job training and daily care in sheltered employment institutions. If the sheltered employment institutions cannot operate properly, they will greatly affect intellectual disabilities. From the study of "Children Are Us Bakeries and Restaurants" sheltered employment institutions are one kind of food service business that has been found to request and improve service quality and execution of CSR. These are two main factors which can enhance brand value and create a good reputation for sheltered employment institutions. The questionnaire results indicate that perceived service quality has a positive relationship with customer satisfaction and the reliability dimension is the most important factor for customers to assess service quality. Meanwhile, correlation analysis shows that customer satisfaction regarding service quality influences post-purchase intentions, indicating that friendly and helpful employees can please customers and enhance their satisfaction level and also induce positive post-purchase intentions of consumers. Regarding the CSR of "Children Are Us Bakeries and Restaurants" sheltered employment institutions, the analysis reveals a statistical significance: the greater customer satisfaction of CSR, the higher the post-purchase intention. In addition, in the work, paired-sample t test analysis reveals there is a significant difference (pperceived" and "expected" responses. In summary, since those with intellectual disabilities usually are enthusiastic at work and do their best to provide good service and execute CSR

The psychological contract: is the UK National Health Service a model employer?

Science.gov (United States)

Fielden, Sandra; Whiting, Fiona

2007-05-01

The UK National Health Service (NHS) is facing recruitment challenges that mean it will need to become an 'employer of choice' if it is to continue to attract high-quality employees. This paper reports the findings from a study focusing on allied health professional staff (n = 67), aimed at establishing the expectations of the NHS inherent in their current psychological contract and to consider whether the government's drive to make the NHS a model employer meets those expectations. The findings show that the most important aspects of the psychological contract were relational and based on the investment made in the employment relationship by both parties. The employment relationship was one of high involvement but also one where transactional contract items, such as pay, were still of some importance. Although the degree of employee satisfaction with the relational content of the psychological contract was relatively positive, there was, nevertheless, a mismatch between levels of importance placed on such aspects of the contract and levels of satisfaction, with employees increasingly placing greater emphasis on those items the NHS is having the greatest difficulty providing. Despite this apparent disparity between employee expectation and the fulfilment of those expectations, the overall health of the psychological contract was still high.

Collaboration between employers and occupational health service providers: a systematic review of key characteristics.

Science.gov (United States)

Halonen, Jaana I; Atkins, Salla; Hakulinen, Hanna; Pesonen, Sanna; Uitti, Jukka

2017-01-05

Employees are major contributors to economic development, and occupational health services (OHS) can have an important role in supporting their health. Key to this is collaboration between employers and OHS. We reviewed the evidence regarding the characteristics of good collaboration between employers and OHS providers that is essential to construct more effective collaboration and services. A systematic review of the factors of good collaboration between employers and OHS providers was conducted. We searched five databases between January 2000 and March 2016 and back referenced included articles. Two reviewers evaluated 639 titles, 63 abstracts and 20 full articles, and agreed that six articles, all on qualitative studies, met the predetermined relevance and publication criteria and were included. Data were extracted by one reviewer and checked by a second reviewer and analysed using thematic analysis. Three themes and nine subthemes related to good collaboration were identified. The first theme included time, space and contract requirements for effective collaboration with three subthemes (i.e., key characteristics): flexible OHS/flexible contracts including tailor-made services accounting for the needs of the employer, geographical proximity of the stakeholders allowing easy access to services, and long-term contracts as collaboration develops over time. The second theme was related to characteristics of the dialogue in effective collaboration that consisted of shared goals, reciprocity, frequent contact and trust. According to the third theme the definition of roles of the stakeholders was important; OHS providers should have competence and knowledge about the workplace, become strategic partners with the employers as well as provide quality services. Although literature regarding collaboration between the employers and OHS providers was limited, we identified several key factors that contribute to effective collaboration. This information is useful in

Collaboration between employers and occupational health service providers: a systematic review of key characteristics

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jaana I. Halonen

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Employees are major contributors to economic development, and occupational health services (OHS can have an important role in supporting their health. Key to this is collaboration between employers and OHS. We reviewed the evidence regarding the characteristics of good collaboration between employers and OHS providers that is essential to construct more effective collaboration and services. Methods A systematic review of the factors of good collaboration between employers and OHS providers was conducted. We searched five databases between January 2000 and March 2016 and back referenced included articles. Two reviewers evaluated 639 titles, 63 abstracts and 20 full articles, and agreed that six articles, all on qualitative studies, met the predetermined relevance and publication criteria and were included. Data were extracted by one reviewer and checked by a second reviewer and analysed using thematic analysis. Results Three themes and nine subthemes related to good collaboration were identified. The first theme included time, space and contract requirements for effective collaboration with three subthemes (i.e., key characteristics: flexible OHS/flexible contracts including tailor-made services accounting for the needs of the employer, geographical proximity of the stakeholders allowing easy access to services, and long-term contracts as collaboration develops over time. The second theme was related to characteristics of the dialogue in effective collaboration that consisted of shared goals, reciprocity, frequent contact and trust. According to the third theme the definition of roles of the stakeholders was important; OHS providers should have competence and knowledge about the workplace, become strategic partners with the employers as well as provide quality services. Conclusion Although literature regarding collaboration between the employers and OHS providers was limited, we identified several key factors that contribute

The Active Subjects of Welfare Reform: a Street-Level Comparison of Employment Services in Australia and Denmark

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

2005-11-01

Full Text Available This paper explores the similarities and differences between Denmark and Australia in adopting welfare reform activation measures in the field of employment services. In Australia and Denmark the discourse of welfare reform centres the 'activation' of citizens through 'mutual obligation' type requirements. Through various forms of case management, unemployed individuals are encouraged to act upon themselves in creating the right set of ethical dispositions congruent with 'active citizenship'. At the same time any resistance to heightened conditionality on the part of the unemployed person is dealt with through a range of coercive and disciplinary techniques. A comparative case study between these two countries allows us to consider how similar ideas, discourse and principles are shaping policy implementation in countries that have very different welfare state trajectories and institutional arrangements for the delivery of social welfare generally and employment services specifically. And in research terms, a comparison between a Nordic welfare state and an Anglo-Saxon welfare state provides an opportunity to critically examine the utility of 'welfare regime' type analyses and the neo-liberal convergence thesis in comparative welfare research. On the basis of empirical analysis, the article concludes that a single focus on abstract typologies or political ideologies is not very helpful in getting the measure of welfare reform (or any other major policy development for that matter. At the 'street-level' of policy practice there is considerably more ambiguity, incoherence and contradiction than is suggested by linear accounts of welfare reform.

Perceptions of the software skills of graduates by employers in the financial services industry

Science.gov (United States)

Kyng, Tim; Tickle, Leonie; Wood, Leigh N.

2013-12-01

Software, particularly spreadsheet software, is ubiquitous in the financial services workplace. Yet little is known about the extent to which universities should, and do, prepare graduates for this aspect of the modern workplace. We have investigated this issue through a survey of financial services employers of graduates, the results of which are reported in this paper, as well as surveys of university graduates and academics, reported previously. Financial services employers rate software skills as important, would like their employees to be more highly skilled in the use of such software, and tend to prefer 'on-the-job' training rather than university training for statistical, database and specialized actuarial/financial software. There is a perception among graduates that employers do not provide adequate formal workplace training in the use of technical software.

76 FR 57635 - Restrictions on Operators Employing Former Flight Standards Service Aviation Safety Inspectors...

Science.gov (United States)

2011-09-16

... Standards Service Aviation Safety Inspectors; Correction AGENCY: Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), DOT... ``Restrictions on Operators Employing Former Flight Standards Service Aviation Safety Inspectors'' (76 FR 52231... of, a Flight Standards Service Aviation Safety Inspector, and had direct responsibility to inspect...

Vocational rehabilitation services and employment outcomes for adults with cerebral palsy in the United States.

Science.gov (United States)

Huang, I-Chun; Holzbauer, Jerome J; Lee, Eun-Jeong; Chronister, Julie; Chan, Fong; O'Neil, John

2013-11-01

The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between vocational rehabilitation services provided and work outcomes among people with cerebral palsy (CP), taking in to account demographic characteristics. From the US Department of Education Rehabilitation Service Administration Case Service Report (RSA-911) database, data from 3162 individuals with CP (1820 males [57.6%] and 1342 females [42.4% age range 16-54 y) whose cases were closed in 2009, were used in this study. A total of 1567 cases (49.6%) were closed with clients being categorized as 'successful employment' and 1595 cases (50.4%) were closed with clients being classified as unemployed. Multivariate logistic regression was used to examine the relationship between services provided and work outcomes with regard to demographic characteristics. Males aged between 26 and 54 years old with higher education attainment were more likely to be employed. Individuals receiving disability benefits were less likely to be employed. After controlling for the effect of demographic and work disincentive variables, five vocational rehabilitation services significantly predicted employment outcomes (pemployability, to address their much needed work adjustment skills, to establish independent living, and to eventually reach their full potential in participation in society. © 2013 Mac Keith Press.

78 FR 42537 - Agency Information Collection Activities: Online Survey of Web Services Employers; New...

Science.gov (United States)

2013-07-16

...-NEW] Agency Information Collection Activities: Online Survey of Web Services Employers; New... sector. It is necessary that USCIS obtains data on the E-Verify Program Web Services. Gaining an understanding of the Web Services process should enable USCIS to identify programmatic improvements to better...

OS2: Oblivious similarity based searching for encrypted data outsourced to an untrusted domain

Science.gov (United States)

Pervez, Zeeshan; Ahmad, Mahmood; Khattak, Asad Masood; Ramzan, Naeem

2017-01-01

Public cloud storage services are becoming prevalent and myriad data sharing, archiving and collaborative services have emerged which harness the pay-as-you-go business model of public cloud. To ensure privacy and confidentiality often encrypted data is outsourced to such services, which further complicates the process of accessing relevant data by using search queries. Search over encrypted data schemes solve this problem by exploiting cryptographic primitives and secure indexing to identify outsourced data that satisfy the search criteria. Almost all of these schemes rely on exact matching between the encrypted data and search criteria. A few schemes which extend the notion of exact matching to similarity based search, lack realism as those schemes rely on trusted third parties or due to increase storage and computational complexity. In this paper we propose Oblivious Similarity based Search (OS2) for encrypted data. It enables authorized users to model their own encrypted search queries which are resilient to typographical errors. Unlike conventional methodologies, OS2 ranks the search results by using similarity measure offering a better search experience than exact matching. It utilizes encrypted bloom filter and probabilistic homomorphic encryption to enable authorized users to access relevant data without revealing results of search query evaluation process to the untrusted cloud service provider. Encrypted bloom filter based search enables OS2 to reduce search space to potentially relevant encrypted data avoiding unnecessary computation on public cloud. The efficacy of OS2 is evaluated on Google App Engine for various bloom filter lengths on different cloud configurations. PMID:28692697

A multi-site randomised controlled trial of evidence-based supported employment for adults with severe and persistent mental illness.

Science.gov (United States)

Waghorn, Geoffrey; Dias, Shannon; Gladman, Beverley; Harris, Meredith; Saha, Sukanta

2014-12-01

The Individual Placement and Support (IPS) approach is an evidence-based form of supported employment for people with severe and persistent mental illness. This approach is not yet widely available in Australia even though there is mounting evidence of its generalisability outside the USA. One previous Australian randomised controlled trial found that IPS is effective for young people with first episode psychosis. The aim of the current trial was to assess the effectiveness of evidence-based supported employment when implemented for Australian adult consumers of public mental health services by utilising existing service systems. A four-site randomised control trial design (n = 208) was conducted in Brisbane (two sites), Townsville and Cairns. The intervention consisted of an IPS supported employment service hosted by a community mental health team. The control condition was delivered at each site by mental health teams referring consumers to other disability employment services in the local area. At 12 months, those in the IPS condition had 2.4 times greater odds of commencing employment than those in the control condition (42.5% vs. 23.5%). The conditions did not differ on secondary employment outcomes including job duration, hours worked, or job diversity. Attrition was higher than expected in both conditions with 28.4% completing the baseline interview but taking no further part in the study. The results support previous international findings that IPS-supported employment is more effective than non-integrated supported employment. IPS can be successfully implemented this way in Australia, but with a loss of effect strength compared to previous USA trials. © 2014 Occupational Therapy Australia.

Using Holland's Theory in Employment Counseling: Focus on Service Occupations

Science.gov (United States)

Ohler, Denise L.; Levinson, Edward M.

2012-01-01

This article presents the basic tenets of Holland's (1997) theory of vocational personalities and work environments and discusses its use by employment counselors in service occupations. The authors describe Holland's 6 personality types and research on the theory, as well as formal and informal assessment and counseling strategies within the…

Public Service Motivation and Attraction to Public Versus Private Sector Employment

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Pedersen, Mogens Jin

2013-01-01

of economics, political science, and law, this article tests (1) the relationship between PSM and attraction to public versus private sector employment, and (2) the moderating effect on this relationship of students’ academic field of study (i.e., their profession once graduated). Overall, results underscore...... the multidimensionality of the PSM construct, as the PSM dimension of “public interest” is positively associated with attraction to public sector employment and negatively associated with attraction to private sector employment, while the PSM dimension of “compassion” is unrelated to both. Importantly, however......Despite extensive public service motivation (PSM) research, our knowledge of PSM’s influence on individuals’ sector employment preferences is limited. Few studies examine this relationship by suitable research designs and the empirical findings are mixed. Using a sample of 718 Danish students...

26 CFR 31.3121(b)(5)-1 - Services in employ of an instrumentality of the United States specifically exempted from the...

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... Internal Revenue INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY (CONTINUED) EMPLOYMENT TAXES AND... employ of an instrumentality of the United States specifically exempted from the employer tax. Services... 26 Internal Revenue 15 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Services in employ of an instrumentality of the...

Interpreting the marketisation of employment services in the UK and Denmark

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Larsen, Flemming; Wright, Sharon

and unstated effects of marketising employment services. Our focus is on the implications of marketisation in shaping a new set of conditions for subsequent policy directions, on the premise that reliance on a quasi-market model creates new conditions for steering and governing both the labour market...... security and employment policy. Second, we will review the conceptual literature on quasi-market analysis (including different approaches to understanding ‘types’ of governance as distinct and in combination) in order to interpret the meanings and significance of changes and to consider their impact...

[Formula: see text]: Oblivious similarity based searching for encrypted data outsourced to an untrusted domain.

Science.gov (United States)

Pervez, Zeeshan; Ahmad, Mahmood; Khattak, Asad Masood; Ramzan, Naeem; Khan, Wajahat Ali

2017-01-01

Public cloud storage services are becoming prevalent and myriad data sharing, archiving and collaborative services have emerged which harness the pay-as-you-go business model of public cloud. To ensure privacy and confidentiality often encrypted data is outsourced to such services, which further complicates the process of accessing relevant data by using search queries. Search over encrypted data schemes solve this problem by exploiting cryptographic primitives and secure indexing to identify outsourced data that satisfy the search criteria. Almost all of these schemes rely on exact matching between the encrypted data and search criteria. A few schemes which extend the notion of exact matching to similarity based search, lack realism as those schemes rely on trusted third parties or due to increase storage and computational complexity. In this paper we propose Oblivious Similarity based Search ([Formula: see text]) for encrypted data. It enables authorized users to model their own encrypted search queries which are resilient to typographical errors. Unlike conventional methodologies, [Formula: see text] ranks the search results by using similarity measure offering a better search experience than exact matching. It utilizes encrypted bloom filter and probabilistic homomorphic encryption to enable authorized users to access relevant data without revealing results of search query evaluation process to the untrusted cloud service provider. Encrypted bloom filter based search enables [Formula: see text] to reduce search space to potentially relevant encrypted data avoiding unnecessary computation on public cloud. The efficacy of [Formula: see text] is evaluated on Google App Engine for various bloom filter lengths on different cloud configurations.

26 CFR 31.3121(b)-3 - Employment; services performed after 1954.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... where the contract of service is entered into is immaterial. The citizenship or residence of the... may constitute employment. (v) A vessel includes every description of watercraft, or other contrivance... American vessel or American aircraft, the citizenship or residence of the employee is immaterial, and the...

49 CFR 40.289 - Are employers required to provide SAP and treatment services to employees?

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... 49 Transportation 1 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Are employers required to provide SAP and... Professionals and the Return-to-Duty Process § 40.289 Are employers required to provide SAP and treatment services to employees? (a) As an employer, you are not required to provide a SAP evaluation or any...

Health and social support services to HIV/AIDS infected individuals in Tanzania: employees and employers perceptions.

Science.gov (United States)

Kassile, Telemu; Anicetus, Honest; Kukula, Raphael; Mmbando, Bruno P

2014-06-20

HIV is a major public health problem in the world, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. It often leads to loss of productive labour and disruption of existing social support system which results in deterioration of population health. This poses a great challenge to infected people in meeting their essential goods and services. This paper examines health and social support services provided by employers to HIV/AIDS infected employees in Tanzania. This was a cross-sectional study, which employed qualitative and quantitative methods in data collection and analysis. Structured questionnaires and in-depth interviews were used to assess the health and social support services provision at employers and employees perspectives. The study participants were employees and employers from public and private organizations. A total of 181 employees and 23 employers from 23 workplaces aged between 18-68 years were involved. The results show that 23.8% (i.e., 20.4% males and 27.3% females) of the employees had at least one member of the family or close relatives living with HIV at the time of the study. Fifty six percent of the infected employees reported to have been receiving health or social support from their employers. Employees' responses were consistent with those reported by their employers. A total of 12(52.2%) and 11(47.8%) employers reported to have been providing health and social supports respectively. Female employees (58.3%) from the private sector (60.0%) were more likely to receive supports than male employees (52.6%) and than those from the public sector (46.2%). The most common health and social support received by the employees were treatment, and nutritional support and reduction of workload, respectively. HIV/AIDS infected employees named treatment and nutritional support, and soft loans and reduced workload respectively, as the most important health and social supports they needed from their employers. This study provides baseline information for further studies

26 CFR 31.3306(c)(10)-2 - Services of student in employ of school, college, or university.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... before 1962. Services performed in the employ of a school, college, or university not exempt from income..., college, or university. 31.3306(c)(10)-2 Section 31.3306(c)(10)-2 Internal Revenue INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY (CONTINUED) EMPLOYMENT TAXES AND COLLECTION OF INCOME TAX AT SOURCE...

26 CFR 31.3306(c)(8)-1 - Services in employ of religious, charitable, educational, or certain other organizations exempt...

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... Internal Revenue INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY (CONTINUED) EMPLOYMENT TAXES AND... Unemployment Tax Act (Chapter 23, Internal Revenue Code of 1954) § 31.3306(c)(8)-1 Services in employ of religious, charitable, educational, or certain other organizations exempt from income tax. (a) Services...

Patient Similarity in Prediction Models Based on Health Data: A Scoping Review

Science.gov (United States)

Sharafoddini, Anis; Dubin, Joel A

2017-01-01

data, wavelet transform and term frequency-inverse document frequency methods were employed to extract predictors. Selecting predictors with potential to highlight special cases and defining new patient similarity metrics were among the gaps identified in the existing literature that provide starting points for future work. Patient status prediction models based on patient similarity and health data offer exciting potential for personalizing and ultimately improving health care, leading to better patient outcomes. PMID:28258046

Burnout among Volunteers in the Social Services: The Impact of Gender and Employment Status

Science.gov (United States)

Kulik, Liat

2006-01-01

This study examines whether gender and employment status affect burnout, motives for volunteering, and difficulties associated with volunteer activity in social and community services in Israel. The sample included 375 men and women aged 16 through 80. Participants were divided into four groups by employment status: high school students, employed…

Neural Substrates of Similarity and Rule-based Strategies in Judgment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Bettina eVon Helversen

2014-10-01

Full Text Available Making accurate judgments is a core human competence and a prerequisite for success in many areas of life. Plenty of evidence exists that people can employ different judgment strategies to solve identical judgment problems. In categorization, it has been demonstrated that similarity-based and rule-based strategies are associated with activity in different brain regions. Building on this research, the present work tests whether solving two identical judgment problems recruits different neural substrates depending on people's judgment strategies. Combining cognitive modeling of judgment strategies at the behavioral level with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI, we compare brain activity when using two archetypal judgment strategies: a similarity-based exemplar strategy and a rule-based heuristic strategy. Using an exemplar-based strategy should recruit areas involved in long-term memory processes to a larger extent than a heuristic strategy. In contrast, using a heuristic strategy should recruit areas involved in the application of rules to a larger extent than an exemplar-based strategy. Largely consistent with our hypotheses, we found that using an exemplar-based strategy led to relatively higher BOLD activity in the anterior prefrontal and inferior parietal cortex, presumably related to retrieval and selective attention processes. In contrast, using a heuristic strategy led to relatively higher activity in areas in the dorsolateral prefrontal and the temporal-parietal cortex associated with cognitive control and information integration. Thus, even when people solve identical judgment problems, different neural substrates can be recruited depending on the judgment strategy involved.

Perceptions of the Software Skills of Graduates by Employers in the Financial Services Industry

Science.gov (United States)

Kyng, Tim; Tickle, Leonie; Wood, Leigh N.

2013-01-01

Software, particularly spreadsheet software, is ubiquitous in the financial services workplace. Yet little is known about the extent to which universities should, and do, prepare graduates for this aspect of the modern workplace. We have investigated this issue through a survey of financial services employers of graduates, the results of which are…

Effects of service provider attitudes and employment status on citizenship behaviors and customers' attitudes and loyalty behavior.

Science.gov (United States)

Payne, Stephanie C; Webber, Sheila Simsarian

2006-03-01

The relationship among job satisfaction, affective commitment, service-oriented organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs), customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty were examined for a sample of 249 hairstylists and 1 of their corresponding customers. Employee satisfaction was positively related to service-oriented OCBs, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty, whereas affective commitment was not related to these outcomes. The extent to which the predictor variables interacted with one another and the role of employment status on these relationships was also explored. High levels of job satisfaction or affective commitment resulted in more service-oriented OCBs for employees and self-employed workers, whereas high levels of both resulted in more service-oriented OCBs for owners.

EKF-GPR-Based Fingerprint Renovation for Subset-Based Indoor Localization with Adjusted Cosine Similarity.

Science.gov (United States)

Yang, Junhua; Li, Yong; Cheng, Wei; Liu, Yang; Liu, Chenxi

2018-01-22

Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) localization using fingerprint has become a prevailing approach for indoor localization. However, the fingerprint-collecting work is repetitive and time-consuming. After the original fingerprint radio map is built, it is laborious to upgrade the radio map. In this paper, we describe a Fingerprint Renovation System (FRS) based on crowdsourcing, which avoids the use of manual labour to obtain the up-to-date fingerprint status. Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) and Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) in FRS are combined to calculate the current state based on the original fingerprinting radio map. In this system, a method of subset acquisition also makes an immediate impression to reduce the huge computation caused by too many reference points (RPs). Meanwhile, adjusted cosine similarity (ACS) is employed in the online phase to solve the issue of outliers produced by cosine similarity. Both experiments and analytical simulation in a real Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) environment indicate the usefulness of our system to significant performance improvements. The results show that FRS improves the accuracy by 19.6% in the surveyed area compared to the radio map un-renovated. Moreover, the proposed subset algorithm can bring less computation.

EKF–GPR-Based Fingerprint Renovation for Subset-Based Indoor Localization with Adjusted Cosine Similarity

Science.gov (United States)

Yang, Junhua; Li, Yong; Cheng, Wei; Liu, Yang; Liu, Chenxi

2018-01-01

Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) localization using fingerprint has become a prevailing approach for indoor localization. However, the fingerprint-collecting work is repetitive and time-consuming. After the original fingerprint radio map is built, it is laborious to upgrade the radio map. In this paper, we describe a Fingerprint Renovation System (FRS) based on crowdsourcing, which avoids the use of manual labour to obtain the up-to-date fingerprint status. Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) and Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) in FRS are combined to calculate the current state based on the original fingerprinting radio map. In this system, a method of subset acquisition also makes an immediate impression to reduce the huge computation caused by too many reference points (RPs). Meanwhile, adjusted cosine similarity (ACS) is employed in the online phase to solve the issue of outliers produced by cosine similarity. Both experiments and analytical simulation in a real Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) environment indicate the usefulness of our system to significant performance improvements. The results show that FRS improves the accuracy by 19.6% in the surveyed area compared to the radio map un-renovated. Moreover, the proposed subset algorithm can bring less computation. PMID:29361805

Employment of personnel of a security service company does not require the consent of the works council

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Anon.

1992-01-01

If a company or institution hires personnel of a security service company to protect its premises, this kind of employment does not mean the company carries on temporary employment business. Within the purview of section 99, sub-section 1 of the BetrVG (Works Constitution Act), the security service personnel is not 'employed' in the proper sense even if the security tasks fulfilled by them are done at other times by regular employees of the company or institution. The court decision also decided that the Works Council need not give consent to employment of foreign security personnel. Federal Labour Court, decision dated May 5, 1992 - 1 ABR 78/91. (orig./HP) [de

Longitudinal employment outcomes of an early intervention vocational rehabilitation service for people admitted to rehabilitation with a traumatic spinal cord injury.

Science.gov (United States)

Hilton, G; Unsworth, C A; Murphy, G C; Browne, M; Olver, J

2017-08-01

Longitudinal cohort design. First, to explore the longitudinal outcomes for people who received early intervention vocational rehabilitation (EIVR); second, to examine the nature and extent of relationships between contextual factors and employment outcomes over time. Both inpatient and community-based clients of a Spinal Community Integration Service (SCIS). People of workforce age undergoing inpatient rehabilitation for traumatic spinal cord injury were invited to participate in EIVR as part of SCIS. Data were collected at the following three time points: discharge and at 1 year and 2+ years post discharge. Measures included the spinal cord independence measure, hospital anxiety and depression scale, impact on participation and autonomy scale, numerical pain-rating scale and personal wellbeing index. A range of chi square, correlation and regression tests were undertaken to look for relationships between employment outcomes and demographic, emotional and physical characteristics. Ninety-seven participants were recruited and 60 were available at the final time point where 33% (95% confidence interval (CI): 24-42%) had achieved an employment outcome. Greater social participation was strongly correlated with wellbeing (ρ=0.692), and reduced anxiety (ρ=-0.522), depression (ρ=-0.643) and pain (ρ=-0.427) at the final time point. In a generalised linear mixed effect model, education status, relationship status and subjective wellbeing increased significantly the odds of being employed at the final time point. Tertiary education prior to injury was associated with eight times increased odds of being in employment at the final time point; being in a relationship at the time of injury was associated with increased odds of being in employment of more than 3.5; subjective wellbeing, while being the least powerful predictor was still associated with increased odds (1.8 times) of being employed at the final time point. EIVR shows promise in delivering similar return

Privacy vs. Reward in Indoor Location-Based Services

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Fawaz Kassem

2016-10-01

Full Text Available With the advance of indoor localization technology, indoor location-based services (ILBS are gaining popularity. They, however, accompany privacy concerns. ILBS providers track the users’ mobility to learn more about their behavior, and then provide them with improved and personalized services. Our survey of 200 individuals highlighted their concerns about this tracking for potential leakage of their personal/private traits, but also showed their willingness to accept reduced tracking for improved service. In this paper, we propose PR-LBS (Privacy vs. Reward for Location-Based Service, a system that addresses these seemingly conflicting requirements by balancing the users’ privacy concerns and the benefits of sharing location information in indoor location tracking environments. PR-LBS relies on a novel location-privacy criterion to quantify the privacy risks pertaining to sharing indoor location information. It also employs a repeated play model to ensure that the received service is proportionate to the privacy risk. We implement and evaluate PR-LBS extensively with various real-world user mobility traces. Results show that PR-LBS has low overhead, protects the users’ privacy, and makes a good tradeoff between the quality of service for the users and the utility of shared location data for service providers.

20 CFR 668.700 - What process must an INA grantee use to plan its employment and training services?

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... it uses to plan other activities and services. (b) However, in the process of preparing its Two Year... 20 Employees' Benefits 3 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false What process must an INA grantee use to plan its employment and training services? 668.700 Section 668.700 Employees' Benefits EMPLOYMENT AND...

Experiences of Social Inclusion and Employment of Mental Health Service Users in a European Union Project

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nieminen, Irja; Ramon, Shulamit; Dawson, Ian

2012-01-01

users experienced improvement in their social life. Employment and participation in meaningful activities continued to improve to the end of the EMILIA project, although at a slower pace. In addition, users were motivated for work and actively searched for employment. Having a mental illness, stigma......, and discrimination were reported to be obstacles to social inclusion. The difficulties identified in social relationships continued to exist. Conclusions: Train- ing intervention impact positively on mental health service users’ social inclusion and employment. However stigma, discrimination, and having a mental......ABSTRACT: Aims: The aim of this study is to describe how the mental health service users experienced social inclusion and employment in the EU EMILIA project. Methods: The study design is an intervention group follow-up study, with data collection at three points: baseline (T0), at 10-month follow...

High-power Yb-fiber comb based on pre-chirped-management self-similar amplification

Science.gov (United States)

Luo, Daping; Liu, Yang; Gu, Chenglin; Wang, Chao; Zhu, Zhiwei; Zhang, Wenchao; Deng, Zejiang; Zhou, Lian; Li, Wenxue; Zeng, Heping

2018-02-01

We report a fiber self-similar-amplification (SSA) comb system that delivers a 250-MHz, 109-W, 42-fs pulse train with a 10-dB spectral width of 85 nm at 1056 nm. A pair of grisms is employed to compensate the group velocity dispersion and third-order dispersion of pre-amplified pulses for facilitating a self-similar evolution and a self-phase modulation (SPM). Moreover, we analyze the stabilities and noise characteristics of both the locked carrier envelope phase and the repetition rate, verifying the stability of the generated high-power comb. The demonstration of the SSA comb at such high power proves the feasibility of the SPM-based low-noise ultrashort comb.

A Comparison of Quality of Life Outcomes for People with Intellectual Disabilities in Supported Employment, Day Services and Employment Enterprises

Science.gov (United States)

Beyer, Stephen; Brown, Tony; Akandi, Rachel; Rapley, Mark

2010-01-01

Background: Policy objectives for people with intellectual disabilities include day service modernization and the promotion of paid employment and quality of life. Quality of life is under represented as an outcome measure in vocational research. This research compares subjective and objective quality of life, and quality of work environment for…

Costs and benefits of employment transportation for low-wage workers: an assessment of job access public transportation services.

Science.gov (United States)

Thakuriah Vonu, Piyushimita; Persky, Joseph; Soot, Siim; Sriraj, P S

2013-04-01

This paper focuses on an evaluation of public transportation-based employment transportation (ET) services to transport low-wage workers to jobs in the US. We make an attempt to capture a more comprehensive range of intended and unintended outcomes of ET services than those traditionally considered in the case of public transportation services. Using primary data from 23 locations across the country, we present a framework to evaluate how transportation improvements, in interaction with labor markets, can affect users' short-run economic welfare, users' long-run human capital accumulation and non-users' short-run economic welfare. These services were partially funded by a specialized program - the Job Access and Reverse Commute (JARC) program - which was consolidated into larger transit funding programs by recent legislation. In the sites examined, we found that low wage users benefited from self-reported increased access to jobs, improvements in earnings potential, as well as from savings in transport cost and time. Simulations show the potential of users to accrue long-term worklife benefits. At the same time, users may have accrued changes in leisure time as a result of transitioning from unemployment to employment, and generated a range of societal impacts on three classes of non-users: the general tax-paying public, the general commuting public in the service operating area and other low-wage workers in local labor markets. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Does an employee assistance programme benefit employers and employees alike?

Science.gov (United States)

MacAlister, E

1999-09-01

EAPs are not a psychological sticking plaster. They are a clinically and corporately balanced service which benefits the employee, via the direct services and the employer, via the feedback in the form of usage statistics derived from the continuous tracking of the account through which organizational and employment issues are identified. Well positioned EAPs offer employees confidential counselling, and information services including legal, financial and child-based issues and are able to offer employers tailored training and consultancy.

20 CFR 1002.265 - If the employee is reemployed with his or her pre-service employer, is the employee's pension...

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... 20 Employees' Benefits 3 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false If the employee is reemployed with his or her pre-service employer, is the employee's pension benefit the same as if he or she had remained continuously employed? 1002.265 Section 1002.265 Employees' Benefits OFFICE OF THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR VETERANS' EMPLOYMENT AND TRAINING SERVICE,...

What are the odds? How demographic similarity affects the prevalence of perceived employment discrimination.

Science.gov (United States)

Avery, Derek R; McKay, Patrick F; Wilson, David C

2008-03-01

Because research is needed to identify the conditions that facilitate or impede the prevalence of perceived workplace discrimination, the authors examined the effects of demographics and demographic similarity on the prevalence of sex- and race/ethnicity-based perceived workplace discrimination. Results from a national survey of 763 full-time, United States employees show perceived sex-based discrimination at work was more prevalent among female than male employees, and perceived race-based discrimination at work was more prevalent among Black and Hispanic than White employees. Additionally, perceived racial/ethnic discrimination was less prevalent among those with same-race/ethnicity supervisors. The effect of employee-coworker sex similarity on perceived sex discrimination was significant only for women, and the effects of supervisor-subordinate racial similarity on the prevalence of perceived racial discrimination varied between Black and White respondents, depending on employee-residential-community racial similarity. Copyright 2008 APA

Employment-based abstinence reinforcement as a maintenance intervention for the treatment of cocaine dependence: post-intervention outcomes

Science.gov (United States)

DeFulio, Anthony; Silverman, Kenneth

2011-01-01

Aims Due to the chronicity of cocaine dependence, practical and effective maintenance interventions are needed to sustain long-term abstinence. We sought to assess the effects of long-term employment-based reinforcement of cocaine abstinence after discontinuation of the intervention. Design Participants who initiated sustained opiate and cocaine abstinence during a 6-month abstinence reinforcement and training program worked as data entry operators and were randomly assigned to a group that could work independent of drug use (Control, n = 24), or an abstinence-contingent employment (n = 27) group that was required to provide cocaine- and opiate-negative urine samples to work and maintain maximum rate of pay. Setting A nonprofit data entry business. Participants Unemployed welfare recipients who persistently used cocaine while in methadone treatment. Measurements Urine samples and self-reports were collected every six months for 30 months. Findings During the employment year, abstinence-contingent employment participants provided significantly more cocaine-negative samples than controls (82.7% and 54.2%; P = .01, OR = 4.61). During the follow-up year, the groups had similar rates of cocaine-negative samples (44.2% and 50.0%; P = .93), and HIV-risk behaviors. Participants’ social, employment, economic, and legal conditions were similar in the two groups across all phases of the study. Conclusions Employment-based reinforcement effectively maintains long-term cocaine abstinence, but many patients relapse to use when the abstinence contingency is discontinued, even after a year of abstinence-contingent employment. Relapse could be prevented in many patients by leaving employment-based abstinence reinforcement in place indefinitely, which could be facilitated by integrating it into typical workplaces. PMID:21226886

Uniframe: A Unified Framework for Developing Service-Oriented, Component-Based Distributed Software Systems

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Raje, Rajeev R; Olson, Andrew M; Bryant, Barrett R; Burt, Carol C; Auguston, Makhail

2005-01-01

.... It describes how this approach employs a unifying framework for specifying such systems to unite the concepts of service-oriented architectures, a component-based software engineering methodology...

Case-based reasoning diagnostic technique based on multi-attribute similarity

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Makoto, Takahashi [Tohoku University, Miyagi (Japan); Akio, Gofuku [Okayama University, Okayamaa (Japan)

2014-08-15

Case-based diagnostic technique has been developed based on the multi-attribute similarity. Specific feature of the developed system is to use multiple attributes of process signals for similarity evaluation to retrieve a similar case stored in a case base. The present technique has been applied to the measurement data from Monju with some simulated anomalies. The results of numerical experiments showed that the present technique can be utilizes as one of the methods for a hybrid-type diagnosis system.

Protein-protein interaction inference based on semantic similarity of Gene Ontology terms.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Shu-Bo; Tang, Qiang-Rong

2016-07-21

Identifying protein-protein interactions is important in molecular biology. Experimental methods to this issue have their limitations, and computational approaches have attracted more and more attentions from the biological community. The semantic similarity derived from the Gene Ontology (GO) annotation has been regarded as one of the most powerful indicators for protein interaction. However, conventional methods based on GO similarity fail to take advantage of the specificity of GO terms in the ontology graph. We proposed a GO-based method to predict protein-protein interaction by integrating different kinds of similarity measures derived from the intrinsic structure of GO graph. We extended five existing methods to derive the semantic similarity measures from the descending part of two GO terms in the GO graph, then adopted a feature integration strategy to combines both the ascending and the descending similarity scores derived from the three sub-ontologies to construct various kinds of features to characterize each protein pair. Support vector machines (SVM) were employed as discriminate classifiers, and five-fold cross validation experiments were conducted on both human and yeast protein-protein interaction datasets to evaluate the performance of different kinds of integrated features, the experimental results suggest the best performance of the feature that combines information from both the ascending and the descending parts of the three ontologies. Our method is appealing for effective prediction of protein-protein interaction. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Statistical potential-based amino acid similarity matrices for aligning distantly related protein sequences.

Science.gov (United States)

Tan, Yen Hock; Huang, He; Kihara, Daisuke

2006-08-15

Aligning distantly related protein sequences is a long-standing problem in bioinformatics, and a key for successful protein structure prediction. Its importance is increasing recently in the context of structural genomics projects because more and more experimentally solved structures are available as templates for protein structure modeling. Toward this end, recent structure prediction methods employ profile-profile alignments, and various ways of aligning two profiles have been developed. More fundamentally, a better amino acid similarity matrix can improve a profile itself; thereby resulting in more accurate profile-profile alignments. Here we have developed novel amino acid similarity matrices from knowledge-based amino acid contact potentials. Contact potentials are used because the contact propensity to the other amino acids would be one of the most conserved features of each position of a protein structure. The derived amino acid similarity matrices are tested on benchmark alignments at three different levels, namely, the family, the superfamily, and the fold level. Compared to BLOSUM45 and the other existing matrices, the contact potential-based matrices perform comparably in the family level alignments, but clearly outperform in the fold level alignments. The contact potential-based matrices perform even better when suboptimal alignments are considered. Comparing the matrices themselves with each other revealed that the contact potential-based matrices are very different from BLOSUM45 and the other matrices, indicating that they are located in a different basin in the amino acid similarity matrix space.

UltiMatch-NL: a Web service matchmaker based on multiple semantic filters.

Science.gov (United States)

Mohebbi, Keyvan; Ibrahim, Suhaimi; Zamani, Mazdak; Khezrian, Mojtaba

2014-01-01

In this paper, a Semantic Web service matchmaker called UltiMatch-NL is presented. UltiMatch-NL applies two filters namely Signature-based and Description-based on different abstraction levels of a service profile to achieve more accurate results. More specifically, the proposed filters rely on semantic knowledge to extract the similarity between a given pair of service descriptions. Thus it is a further step towards fully automated Web service discovery via making this process more semantic-aware. In addition, a new technique is proposed to weight and combine the results of different filters of UltiMatch-NL, automatically. Moreover, an innovative approach is introduced to predict the relevance of requests and Web services and eliminate the need for setting a threshold value of similarity. In order to evaluate UltiMatch-NL, the repository of OWLS-TC is used. The performance evaluation based on standard measures from the information retrieval field shows that semantic matching of OWL-S services can be significantly improved by incorporating designed matching filters.

UltiMatch-NL: A Web Service Matchmaker Based on Multiple Semantic Filters

Science.gov (United States)

Mohebbi, Keyvan; Ibrahim, Suhaimi; Zamani, Mazdak; Khezrian, Mojtaba

2014-01-01

In this paper, a Semantic Web service matchmaker called UltiMatch-NL is presented. UltiMatch-NL applies two filters namely Signature-based and Description-based on different abstraction levels of a service profile to achieve more accurate results. More specifically, the proposed filters rely on semantic knowledge to extract the similarity between a given pair of service descriptions. Thus it is a further step towards fully automated Web service discovery via making this process more semantic-aware. In addition, a new technique is proposed to weight and combine the results of different filters of UltiMatch-NL, automatically. Moreover, an innovative approach is introduced to predict the relevance of requests and Web services and eliminate the need for setting a threshold value of similarity. In order to evaluate UltiMatch-NL, the repository of OWLS-TC is used. The performance evaluation based on standard measures from the information retrieval field shows that semantic matching of OWL-S services can be significantly improved by incorporating designed matching filters. PMID:25157872

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN EMPLOYMENT AND GROWTH FROM INDUSTRIAL PERSPECTIVE BY CONSIDERING EMPLOYMENT INCENTIVES: THE CASE OF TURKEY

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Emre Aksoy

2013-01-01

Full Text Available By using quarterly data this study applied Toda-Yamamoto (1995 method for the period 1988-2010 to uncover the relationship between growth and employment in aggregate and industrial respects and also to investigate the impacts of investment and employment incentives on employment for Turkish Economy. The findings showed that the relationship between growth and employment varied with the industries. The study covers ten industries and there were causalities detected for four out of ten industries, either one or two ways. For the rest six industries covered in the study, there was no causal relationship obtained. The incentives impacts on employment, similarly, vary with industries. The law numbered as 5084 had positive and statistically significant influences on social service, manufacturing, and transportation and communication industries while the law numbered as 5763 extracted positive and significant influences on energy production and distribution, and financial intermediation industries.

Semantic Agent-Based Service Middleware and Simulation for Smart Cities.

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Ming; Xu, Yang; Hu, Haixiao; Mohammed, Abdul-Wahid

2016-12-21

With the development of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) technology, a variety of embedded and mobile devices is integrated to interact via the platform of the Internet of Things, especially in the domain of smart cities. One of the primary challenges is that selecting the appropriate services or service combination for upper layer applications is hard, which is due to the absence of a unified semantical service description pattern, as well as the service selection mechanism. In this paper, we define a semantic service representation model from four key properties: Capability (C), Deployment (D), Resource (R) and IOData (IO). Based on this model, an agent-based middleware is built to support semantic service enablement. In this middleware, we present an efficient semantic service discovery and matching approach for a service combination process, which calculates the semantic similarity between services, and a heuristic algorithm to search the service candidates for a specific service request. Based on this design, we propose a simulation of virtual urban fire fighting, and the experimental results manifest the feasibility and efficiency of our design.

Semantic Agent-Based Service Middleware and Simulation for Smart Cities

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ming Liu

2016-12-01

Full Text Available With the development of Machine-to-Machine (M2M technology, a variety of embedded and mobile devices is integrated to interact via the platform of the Internet of Things, especially in the domain of smart cities. One of the primary challenges is that selecting the appropriate services or service combination for upper layer applications is hard, which is due to the absence of a unified semantical service description pattern, as well as the service selection mechanism. In this paper, we define a semantic service representation model from four key properties: Capability (C, Deployment (D, Resource (R and IOData (IO. Based on this model, an agent-based middleware is built to support semantic service enablement. In this middleware, we present an efficient semantic service discovery and matching approach for a service combination process, which calculates the semantic similarity between services, and a heuristic algorithm to search the service candidates for a specific service request. Based on this design, we propose a simulation of virtual urban fire fighting, and the experimental results manifest the feasibility and efficiency of our design.

Semantic Agent-Based Service Middleware and Simulation for Smart Cities

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Ming; Xu, Yang; Hu, Haixiao; Mohammed, Abdul-Wahid

2016-01-01

With the development of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) technology, a variety of embedded and mobile devices is integrated to interact via the platform of the Internet of Things, especially in the domain of smart cities. One of the primary challenges is that selecting the appropriate services or service combination for upper layer applications is hard, which is due to the absence of a unified semantical service description pattern, as well as the service selection mechanism. In this paper, we define a semantic service representation model from four key properties: Capability (C), Deployment (D), Resource (R) and IOData (IO). Based on this model, an agent-based middleware is built to support semantic service enablement. In this middleware, we present an efficient semantic service discovery and matching approach for a service combination process, which calculates the semantic similarity between services, and a heuristic algorithm to search the service candidates for a specific service request. Based on this design, we propose a simulation of virtual urban fire fighting, and the experimental results manifest the feasibility and efficiency of our design. PMID:28009818

Social Services programs for social inclusion through employment: facing challenges of transverslity, multidimensionality and creation of job opportunities

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lucía Martínez-Virto

2017-12-01

Full Text Available In a context without employment and with high labour precarity it is necessary to rethink the activation commitments linked to the inclusion policies of social services. The main goal of this paper is to debate about the limitations, potentialities and differences in terms of inclusion capacity, about 9 socio labour programs of social services. The analysis identifies three key outcomes: the need of collaboration between social services and employment departments, the importance of creating employment opportunities for people at risk of social exclusion and guaranty the multidimensionality of the intervention. Especially in a context of high unemployment and low quality jobs. These results highlight the need to reconsider the care system that, in line of European recommendations, must focus on social investment policies.

Self-similar continued root approximants

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Gluzman, S.; Yukalov, V.I.

2012-01-01

A novel method of summing asymptotic series is advanced. Such series repeatedly arise when employing perturbation theory in powers of a small parameter for complicated problems of condensed matter physics, statistical physics, and various applied problems. The method is based on the self-similar approximation theory involving self-similar root approximants. The constructed self-similar continued roots extrapolate asymptotic series to finite values of the expansion parameter. The self-similar continued roots contain, as a particular case, continued fractions and Padé approximants. A theorem on the convergence of the self-similar continued roots is proved. The method is illustrated by several examples from condensed-matter physics.

26 CFR 31.3121(b)(8)-2 - Services in employ of religious, charitable, educational, or certain other organizations exempt...

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... 26 Internal Revenue 15 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Services in employ of religious, charitable, educational, or certain other organizations exempt from income tax. 31.3121(b)(8)-2 Section 31.3121(b)(8)-2 Internal Revenue INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY (CONTINUED) EMPLOYMENT TAXES AND...

Employment of security personnel of a security service company does not need approval by the works council

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Anon.

1990-01-01

If a company or institution hires personnel of a security service company to protect its premises, this kind of employment does not mean the company carries on temporary employment business. Within the purview of section 99, sub-secion 1 of the BetrVG (Works Constitution Act), the security service personnel is not 'employed' in the proper sense even if the security tasks fulfilled by them are done at other times by regular employees of the company or institution. The court decision also decided that the Works Council need not give consent to employment of foreign security personnel. The court decision was taken for settlement of court proceedings commenced by Institute of Plasma Physics in Garching. (Federal Labour Court, decision dated November 28, 1989 - 1 ABR 90/88). (orig./HP) [de

Evaluation of an employment program for people with mental illness using the Supported Employment Fidelity Scale.

Science.gov (United States)

Cocks, Errol; Boaden, Ross

2009-10-01

The Individual Placement and Support (IPS) model aims to achieve open employment for people with mental illness. The Supported Employment Fidelity Scale (SEFS) is a 15-item instrument that evaluates the extent to which a service follows the IPS principles of best practice. This paper describes the IPS model and an evaluation of a specialist employment program for people with mental illness using the SEFS. The SEFS enabled a quantitative assessment of service provision against the criteria of evidence-based practice principles. Data were collected from multiple sources. In addition, a literature review was conducted, and personnel engaged in implementation of the IPS model at other Australian employment programs were consulted. The program achieved a score of 59 of a possible 75 on the SEFS, which is described as fair supported employment. Analysis of the 15-scale items resulted in the identification of strengths, areas for further development, and a set of recommendations. The program was operating substantially in line with evidence-based practice principles and had considerable scope for further development. Issues arising from the evaluation, areas of applicability of the SEFS and the underlying literature, and implications for occupational therapy are highlighted.

Employer Toolkit.

Science.gov (United States)

Thuli, Kelli J.; Hong, Esther

This document consists of two guides intended for either employers or service providers involved in school to work partnerships for students with disabilities. "Tools for Service Providers" is intended to be used for training local-level providers who are developing school to work linkages with employers. Following an introduction, this…

A Robust Service Selection Method Based on Uncertain QoS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yanping Chen

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Nowadays, the number of Web services on the Internet is quickly increasing. Meanwhile, different service providers offer numerous services with the similar functions. Quality of Service (QoS has become an important factor used to select the most appropriate service for users. The most prominent QoS-based service selection models only take the certain attributes into account, which is an ideal assumption. In the real world, there are a large number of uncertain factors. In particular, at the runtime, QoS may become very poor or unacceptable. In order to solve the problem, a global service selection model based on uncertain QoS was proposed, including the corresponding normalization and aggregation functions, and then a robust optimization model adopted to transform the model. Experiment results show that the proposed method can effectively select services with high robustness and optimality.

Active Aging for Individuals with Intellectual Disability: Meaningful Community Participation through Employment, Retirement, Service, and Volunteerism

Science.gov (United States)

Fesko, Sheila Lynch; Hall, Allison Cohen; Quinlan, Jerrilyn; Jockell, Catherine

2012-01-01

As individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities become more engaged in community employment, it will be critical to consider how their employment experience changes as they age. Similar to other seniors, individuals will need to consider whether they want to maintain their employment, reduce their work commitment, or retire…

The Impact of Project-Based Learning on Pre-Service Teachers' Technology Attitudes and Skills

Science.gov (United States)

Alexander, Curby; Knezek, Gerald; Christensen, Rhonda; Tyler-Wood, Tandra; Bull, Glen

2014-01-01

Researchers in this study looked at the effect of content-specific, technology-rich project-based learning activities on EC-8 pre-service teachers' competencies and skills, as well as pre-service teacher's attitudes toward science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Researchers employed a quantitative design involving participants in…

Choosing Whether to Buy or Make : The Contracting Out of Employment Reintegration Services by Dutch Municipalities

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Plantinga, Mirjam; de Ridder, Ko; Corra, Alex

The Western welfare states are under reform. An important part of these reforms is the introduction of market type mechanisms for the deliverance of public services. Over the years, many countries have chosen to contract out employment reintegration services. The underlying notion of contracting out

Employer-provided support services and job dissatisfaction in Canadian registered nurses.

Science.gov (United States)

Wilkins, Kathryn; Shields, Margot

2012-10-01

Previous research indicates that nurses' job dissatisfaction relates to their work organization and environment; rarely has the contribution of employer provided support services been examined while controlling for the influence of other factors. The objective of this study was to examine job dissatisfaction among Canadian registered nurses in relation to employer-provided programs for child care and fitness or recreation. Data are from 2,993 respondents to the 2005 National Survey of the Work and Health of Nurses, weighted to represent Canada's 91,600 registered nurses in full-time, permanent positions who deliver direct care in hospitals or long-term care facilities. Multivariate modeling was used to examine job dissatisfaction in relation to employer-provided support programs, controlling for personal characteristics and variables reflecting work organization and the work environment. Employer-provided child care assistance programs were available to 16% of nurses, and fitness or recreation programs were available to 38%. An estimated 13% of nurses were dissatisfied with their jobs. Even when controlling for personal characteristics, overtime, shift work, shift length, weekly hours, overload, staffing inadequacy, autonomy, nurse-physician relations, and coworker respect, inverse associations with job dissatisfaction emerged for employer-supported child care (odds ratio = 0.49, 95% confidence interval = 0.27-0.88) and fitness programs (odds ratio = 0.65, 95% confidence interval = 0.42-0.99). This study provides new information suggesting that employer-provided support programs are protective against nurses' job dissatisfaction. This is a key finding in view of nursing shortages and the importance of job satisfaction to retention.

77 FR 76074 - Advisory Committee on Veterans' Employment, Training and Employer Outreach (ACVETEO): Meeting

Science.gov (United States)

2012-12-26

... Department of Labor's Veterans' Employment and Training Services' (VETS) core programs and new initiatives... DEPARTMENT OF LABOR Advisory Committee on Veterans' Employment, Training and Employer Outreach (ACVETEO): Meeting AGENCY: Veterans' Employment and Training Service, Labor. ACTION: Notice of open meeting...

Link-Based Similarity Measures Using Reachability Vectors

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Seok-Ho Yoon

2014-01-01

Full Text Available We present a novel approach for computing link-based similarities among objects accurately by utilizing the link information pertaining to the objects involved. We discuss the problems with previous link-based similarity measures and propose a novel approach for computing link based similarities that does not suffer from these problems. In the proposed approach each target object is represented by a vector. Each element of the vector corresponds to all the objects in the given data, and the value of each element denotes the weight for the corresponding object. As for this weight value, we propose to utilize the probability of reaching from the target object to the specific object, computed using the “Random Walk with Restart” strategy. Then, we define the similarity between two objects as the cosine similarity of the two vectors. In this paper, we provide examples to show that our approach does not suffer from the aforementioned problems. We also evaluate the performance of the proposed methods in comparison with existing link-based measures, qualitatively and quantitatively, with respect to two kinds of data sets, scientific papers and Web documents. Our experimental results indicate that the proposed methods significantly outperform the existing measures.

Zero-based budgeting: implications for social services?

Science.gov (United States)

Otten, G L

1977-01-01

It is now fact that there is a commitment to the implementation of Zero-Based Budgeting (ZBB) at the federal level. In all likelihood, the adoption of the zero-based approach will have unique implications for the administration and administrators of social service agencies. The following article explores the impetus behind budgetary reform, with a primary focus on the current appeal of ZBB. The author strongly suggests that there are similarities between the now passé Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System and ZBB that permit inferences about any implementation difficulties that ZBB may experience. It is further suggested that ZBB will present social workers with situations and opportunities that will severely challenge many on their current approaches to social service administration.

Similarity-based pattern analysis and recognition

CERN Document Server

Pelillo, Marcello

2013-01-01

This accessible text/reference presents a coherent overview of the emerging field of non-Euclidean similarity learning. The book presents a broad range of perspectives on similarity-based pattern analysis and recognition methods, from purely theoretical challenges to practical, real-world applications. The coverage includes both supervised and unsupervised learning paradigms, as well as generative and discriminative models. Topics and features: explores the origination and causes of non-Euclidean (dis)similarity measures, and how they influence the performance of traditional classification alg

20 CFR 1002.35 - Is a successor in interest an employer covered by USERRA?

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... VETERANS' EMPLOYMENT AND TRAINING SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR REGULATIONS UNDER THE UNIFORMED SERVICES... facilities, machinery, equipment, and methods of production; (c) Whether there has been a substantial continuity of employees; (d) Whether there is a similarity of jobs and working conditions; (e) Whether there...

Automatic Optimizer Generation Method Based on Location and Context Information to Improve Mobile Services

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yunsik Son

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Several location-based services (LBSs have been recently developed for smartphones. Among these are proactive LBSs, which provide services to smartphone users by periodically collecting background logs. However, because they consume considerable battery power, they are not widely used for various LBS-based services. Battery consumption, in particular, is a significant issue on account of the characteristics of mobile systems. This problem involves a greater service restriction when performing complex operations. Therefore, to successfully enable various services based on location, this problem must be solved. In this paper, we introduce a technique to automatically generate a customized service optimizer for each application, service type, and platform using location and situation information. By using the proposed technique, energy and computing resources can be more efficiently employed for each service. Thus, users should receive more effective LBSs on mobile devices, such as smartphones.

Veteran Services - Welcome Employers

Science.gov (United States)

Assistance Crosswalk websites Transition GPS National Career Readiness Certificate Post Traumatic Stress Credits (PDF) Fidelity Bonding Program National Career Readiness (PDF) Veteran Recruitment State/Federal veteran recruitment process Military Veteran Employment Guide Veterans Hiring Toolkit Other Information

39 CFR 255.5 - Employment.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... 39 Postal Service 1 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Employment. 255.5 Section 255.5 Postal Service... Employment. No qualified individual with a disability shall, on the basis of disability, be subjected to discrimination in employment with the Postal Service. The definitions, requirements, and procedures of section...

32 CFR 1656.7 - Employer responsibilities.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... 32 National Defense 6 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Employer responsibilities. 1656.7 Section 1656.7... SERVICE § 1656.7 Employer responsibilities. Employers participating in the Alternative Service Program are responsible for: (a) Complying with the employment agreement with Selective Service; (b) Providing a clear...

Advancing Collaboration between School- and Agency-Employed School-Based Social Workers: A Mixed-Methods Comparison of Competencies and Preparedness

Science.gov (United States)

Bronstein, Laura R.; Ball, Annahita; Mellin, Elizabeth A.; Wade-Mdivanian, Rebecca; Anderson-Butcher, Dawn

2011-01-01

The purpose of this article is to share results of a mixed-methods research study designed to shed light on similarities and differences between school-employed and agency-employed school-based social workers' preparation and practice as a precursor for collaboration in expanded school mental health. Online survey data from a national sample of…

75 FR 71513 - Senior Community Service Employment Program; Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Additional Indicator...

Science.gov (United States)

2010-11-23

... additional performance indicator for volunteer work. The Proposed Rule adds a new additional indicator to... Program; Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Additional Indicator on Volunteer Work; Proposed Rule #0;#0... work in the Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP). Specifically, this rule proposes to...

20 CFR 345.403 - Multiple base year employers.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

..., benefits will be charged in reverse chronological order, but the amount charged to each base year employer...) In all other cases, benefits will be charged in the same ratio as the compensation paid to such... 20 Employees' Benefits 1 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Multiple base year employers. 345.403 Section...

22 CFR 42.32 - Employment-based preference immigrants.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... and children of a graduate of a foreign medical school or of a person qualified to practice medicine... whether or not named in the petition, the child or spouse of an employment-based first preference... named in the petition, the child or spouse of an employment-based second preference immigrant, if not...

Finding occurrences of melodic segments in folk songs employing symbolic similarity measures

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Janssen, Berit; van Kranenburg, P.; Volk, A.

2017-01-01

Much research has been devoted to the classification of folk songs, revealing that variants are recognised based on salient melodic segments, such as phrases and motifs, while other musical material in a melody might vary considerably. In order to judge similarity of melodies on the level of melodic

Phishing Detection: Analysis of Visual Similarity Based Approaches

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ankit Kumar Jain

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Phishing is one of the major problems faced by cyber-world and leads to financial losses for both industries and individuals. Detection of phishing attack with high accuracy has always been a challenging issue. At present, visual similarities based techniques are very useful for detecting phishing websites efficiently. Phishing website looks very similar in appearance to its corresponding legitimate website to deceive users into believing that they are browsing the correct website. Visual similarity based phishing detection techniques utilise the feature set like text content, text format, HTML tags, Cascading Style Sheet (CSS, image, and so forth, to make the decision. These approaches compare the suspicious website with the corresponding legitimate website by using various features and if the similarity is greater than the predefined threshold value then it is declared phishing. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of phishing attacks, their exploitation, some of the recent visual similarity based approaches for phishing detection, and its comparative study. Our survey provides a better understanding of the problem, current solution space, and scope of future research to deal with phishing attacks efficiently using visual similarity based approaches.

Ecosystem services as a common language for coastal ecosystem-based management.

Science.gov (United States)

Granek, Elise F; Polasky, Stephen; Kappel, Carrie V; Reed, Denise J; Stoms, David M; Koch, Evamaria W; Kennedy, Chris J; Cramer, Lori A; Hacker, Sally D; Barbier, Edward B; Aswani, Shankar; Ruckelshaus, Mary; Perillo, Gerardo M E; Silliman, Brian R; Muthiga, Nyawira; Bael, David; Wolanski, Eric

2010-02-01

Ecosystem-based management is logistically and politically challenging because ecosystems are inherently complex and management decisions affect a multitude of groups. Coastal ecosystems, which lie at the interface between marine and terrestrial ecosystems and provide an array of ecosystem services to different groups, aptly illustrate these challenges. Successful ecosystem-based management of coastal ecosystems requires incorporating scientific information and the knowledge and views of interested parties into the decision-making process. Estimating the provision of ecosystem services under alternative management schemes offers a systematic way to incorporate biogeophysical and socioeconomic information and the views of individuals and groups in the policy and management process. Employing ecosystem services as a common language to improve the process of ecosystem-based management presents both benefits and difficulties. Benefits include a transparent method for assessing trade-offs associated with management alternatives, a common set of facts and common currency on which to base negotiations, and improved communication among groups with competing interests or differing worldviews. Yet challenges to this approach remain, including predicting how human interventions will affect ecosystems, how such changes will affect the provision of ecosystem services, and how changes in service provision will affect the welfare of different groups in society. In a case study from Puget Sound, Washington, we illustrate the potential of applying ecosystem services as a common language for ecosystem-based management.

Social Security And Mental Illness: Reducing Disability With Supported Employment

Science.gov (United States)

Drake, Robert E.; Skinner, Jonathan S.; Bond, Gary R.; Goldman, Howard H.

2010-01-01

Social Security Administration disability programs are expensive, growing, and headed toward bankruptcy. People with psychiatric disabilities now constitute the largest and most rapidly expanding subgroup of program beneficiaries. Evidence-based supported employment is a well-defined, rigorously tested service model that helps people with psychiatric disabilities obtain and succeed in competitive employment. Providing evidence-based supported employment and mental health services to this population could reduce the growing rates of disability and enable those already disabled to contribute positively to the workforce and to their own welfare, at little or no cost (and, depending on assumptions, a possible savings) to the government. PMID:19414885

20 CFR 204.7 - Employment relation-service to a local lodge or division of a railway labor organization.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... 20 Employees' Benefits 1 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Employment relation-service to a local lodge... relation—service to a local lodge or division of a railway labor organization. Service by an individual to a local lodge or division of a railway labor organization shall be creditable under the Railroad...

Authentication of commercial spices based on the similarities between gas chromatographic fingerprints.

Science.gov (United States)

Matsushita, Takaya; Zhao, Jing Jing; Igura, Noriyuki; Shimoda, Mitsuya

2018-06-01

A simple and solvent-free method was developed for the authentication of commercial spices. The similarities between gas chromatographic fingerprints were measured using similarity indices and multivariate data analyses, as morphological differentiation between dried powders and small spice particles was challenging. The volatile compounds present in 11 spices (i.e. allspice, anise, black pepper, caraway, clove, coriander, cumin, dill, fennel, star anise, and white pepper) were extracted by headspace solid-phase microextraction, and analysed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. The largest 10 peaks were selected from each total ion chromatogram, and a total of 65 volatiles were tentatively identified. The similarity indices (i.e. the congruence coefficients) were calculated using the data matrices of the identified compound relative peak areas to differentiate between two sets of fingerprints. Where pairs of similar fingerprints produced high congruence coefficients (>0.80), distinctive volatile markers were employed to distinguish between these samples. In addition, hierarchical cluster analysis and principal component analysis were performed to visualise the similarity among fingerprints, and the analysed spices were grouped and characterised according to their distinctive major components. This method is suitable for screening unknown spices, and can therefore be employed to evaluate the quality and authenticity of various spices. © 2017 Society of Chemical Industry. © 2017 Society of Chemical Industry.

POSTED WORKERS IN THE TRANSNATIONAL PROVISION OF SERVICES – TREATMENT AND OBLIGATIONS OF EMPLOYERS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mihaela Catană

2013-11-01

Full Text Available This study aims to clarify some issues concerning the rules applicable to posted workers within the framework of the transnational provision of services and obligations incumbent upon employers, both of those the post and the provision of services to beneficiaries , issues raises a number of practical problems with regard to the distinction in regulating the notion of posting, relative to the internal regulation of the Labour Code (Act 53/2003 - republished on the one hand and the European legislation by the other hand. Thus, the contractual relationships between the employer post their workers to perform work for the benefit of its contractual partner, must be very defined very clearly the relationships between employees and employer posted in Romania and that to which they are posted abroad and the obligations each of them. In preparing this paper were used qualitative and quantitative research methods specific depth research of legal sciences, the sociological method, deductive method on regulations, concepts and theories, comparative method. Expected results of the study consist of a summary of the main regulations, solutions and doctrinal views on the development of an suggestions of law, clarification of the regulations with significance implications for business, citizens in their capacity as workers and also for legal practitioners.

Occupational health of self-employed women workers. Experiences from community based studies of the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA).

Science.gov (United States)

Chatterjee, M

1993-02-01

The Self-Employed Workers' Association (SEWA) has conducted 4 longitudinal, community-based studies to survey the occupational health of self-employed women in Ahmedabad and Indore, India. It included the workers in all stages of research. SEWA staff examined women in readymade garment, bidi, agarbatti, and masala fields. Since SEWA did not use control groups, they could not establish cause and effect relationships. Masala workers had the highest illiteracy rate (66%). At least 50% of all workers (89% of readymade garment workers) worked 8-12 hours/day. Daily wages of most workers did not exceed Rs.10, confirming their low poverty level. The most common occupational health problem while working was pain in the limbs for bidi (63%) and readymade garment workers (80%). They also experienced back pain and headaches. After work, back pain was common among agarbatti (73%) and masala (39%) workers. Masala workers also suffered from blisters and calluses (51%) and burning sensation (45%), particularly in their hands. Gynecological problems (e.g., early periods, white discharge, and burning sensation while urinating) and abdominal pain were common in all 4 groups. These results demonstrated a need for further research on occupational health and gynecological diseases; health facilities to adjust services to meet self-employed workers needs; provision of safe and subsidized tools, safety equipment, benefits (e.g., sick leave and child care), and health insurance; and health education. SEWA recommends that self-employed workers receive identity cards, the government enforce minimum wage laws and regulate working hours, and workers are provided basic amenities (e.g., potable water and sanitation).

Domain similarity based orthology detection.

Science.gov (United States)

Bitard-Feildel, Tristan; Kemena, Carsten; Greenwood, Jenny M; Bornberg-Bauer, Erich

2015-05-13

Orthologous protein detection software mostly uses pairwise comparisons of amino-acid sequences to assert whether two proteins are orthologous or not. Accordingly, when the number of sequences for comparison increases, the number of comparisons to compute grows in a quadratic order. A current challenge of bioinformatic research, especially when taking into account the increasing number of sequenced organisms available, is to make this ever-growing number of comparisons computationally feasible in a reasonable amount of time. We propose to speed up the detection of orthologous proteins by using strings of domains to characterize the proteins. We present two new protein similarity measures, a cosine and a maximal weight matching score based on domain content similarity, and new software, named porthoDom. The qualities of the cosine and the maximal weight matching similarity measures are compared against curated datasets. The measures show that domain content similarities are able to correctly group proteins into their families. Accordingly, the cosine similarity measure is used inside porthoDom, the wrapper developed for proteinortho. porthoDom makes use of domain content similarity measures to group proteins together before searching for orthologs. By using domains instead of amino acid sequences, the reduction of the search space decreases the computational complexity of an all-against-all sequence comparison. We demonstrate that representing and comparing proteins as strings of discrete domains, i.e. as a concatenation of their unique identifiers, allows a drastic simplification of search space. porthoDom has the advantage of speeding up orthology detection while maintaining a degree of accuracy similar to proteinortho. The implementation of porthoDom is released using python and C++ languages and is available under the GNU GPL licence 3 at http://www.bornberglab.org/pages/porthoda .

The impact of self-reported health and register-based prescription medicine purchases on re-employment chances

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Svane-petersen, Annemette Coop; Dencker-Larsen, Sofie

2016-01-01

In this paper, we investigate the influence of self-reported health and register-based prescription medicine purchases on re-employment chances, and whether these health indicators measure similar aspects of health in this analysis. Data came from a 2006 Danish unemployment survey among a random...... on individual prescription medicine purchases for somatic illnesses and prescription medicine purchases for mental illnesses, information on re-employment and various socio-demographic variables. We conducted binary logistic regression analyses to investigate the impact of self-reported health and prescription...... medicine purchases measured in 2006 on re-employment chances in 2007 and 2008. Our analyses show that unemployed workers with poor self-reported health and workers who had prescription medicine purchases for mental illnesses were less likely to be re-employed in 2007 and 2008. Furthermore, the impact...

Reference-based pricing: an evidence-based solution for lab services shopping.

Science.gov (United States)

Melton, L Doug; Bradley, Kent; Fu, Patricia Lin; Armata, Raegan; Parr, James B

2014-01-01

To determine the effect of reference-based pricing (RBP) on the percentage of lab services utilized by members that were at or below the reference price. Retrospective, quasi-experimental, matched, case-control pilot evaluation of an RBP benefit for lab services. The study group included employees of a multinational grocery chain covered by a national health insurance carrier and subject to RBP for lab services; it had access to an online lab shopping tool and was informed about the RBP benefit through employer communications. The reference group was covered by the same insurance carrier but not subject to RBP. The primary end point was lab compliance, defined as the percentage of lab claims with total charges at or below the reference price. Difference-in-difference regression estimation evaluated changes in lab compliance between the 2 groups. Higher compliance per lab claim was evident for the study group compared with the reference group (69% vs 57%; Ponline shopping tool was used by 7% of the matched-adjusted study group prior to obtaining lab services. Lab compliance was 76% for study group members using the online tool compared with 68% among nonusers who were subject to RBP (P<.01). RBP can promote cost-conscious selection of lab services. Access to facilities that offer services below the reference price and education about RBP improve compliance. Evaluation of the effect of RBP on higher-cost medical services, including radiology, outpatient specialty, and elective inpatient procedures, is needed.

Profile of job coaches in supported employment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Esther MERCADO GARCÍA

2017-02-01

Full Text Available This study analyzes the figure of the job coach in various Supported Employment services in Spain. A quality-oriented study carried out, based on the case study. Twenty-three semi-structured interviews held with professionals, along with thirtysix participant observations at different stages of Supported Employment. The results show disparity in the profiles associated with various areas of knowledge, as well as a diversity of functions related to the roles performed by the job coach depending on the number of staff taken on. The most significant competencies combined with personal skills and communicative abilities. It recommended that employment programs improve vocational retraining programs to make up for training deficiencies and provide professional skills for intervention in each service.

Evaluation of information-theoretic similarity measures for content-based retrieval and detection of masses in mammograms

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Tourassi, Georgia D.; Harrawood, Brian; Singh, Swatee; Lo, Joseph Y.; Floyd, Carey E.

2007-01-01

The purpose of this study was to evaluate image similarity measures employed in an information-theoretic computer-assisted detection (IT-CAD) scheme. The scheme was developed for content-based retrieval and detection of masses in screening mammograms. The study is aimed toward an interactive clinical paradigm where physicians query the proposed IT-CAD scheme on mammographic locations that are either visually suspicious or indicated as suspicious by other cuing CAD systems. The IT-CAD scheme provides an evidence-based, second opinion for query mammographic locations using a knowledge database of mass and normal cases. In this study, eight entropy-based similarity measures were compared with respect to retrieval precision and detection accuracy using a database of 1820 mammographic regions of interest. The IT-CAD scheme was then validated on a separate database for false positive reduction of progressively more challenging visual cues generated by an existing, in-house mass detection system. The study showed that the image similarity measures fall into one of two categories; one category is better suited to the retrieval of semantically similar cases while the second is more effective with knowledge-based decisions regarding the presence of a true mass in the query location. In addition, the IT-CAD scheme yielded a substantial reduction in false-positive detections while maintaining high detection rate for malignant masses

LOCATION-BASED SERVICES USING SIP

OpenAIRE

Abdullah Azfar,; Md. Sakhawat Hossen,; María José Peroza Marval; Razib Hayat Khan

2010-01-01

Due to the popularity of Location-Based Services and IP telephony, we decided to review a number of different proposals to implement Location-Based Services over a SIP-based mobile network. The result is an interesting overview about the potential functionalities of Location-Based Services and the capabilities of SIP for implementingthese services.

Cultural Distance-Aware Service Recommendation Approach in Mobile Edge Computing

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yan Li

2018-01-01

Full Text Available In the era of big data, traditional computing systems and paradigms are not efficient and even difficult to use. For high performance big data processing, mobile edge computing is emerging as a complement framework of cloud computing. In this new computing architecture, services are provided within a close proximity of mobile users by servers at the edge of network. Traditional collaborative filtering recommendation approach only focuses on the similarity extracted from the rating data, which may lead to an inaccuracy expression of user preference. In this paper, we propose a cultural distance-aware service recommendation approach which focuses on not only the similarity but also the local characteristics and preference of users. Our approach employs the cultural distance to express the user preference and combines it with similarity to predict the user ratings and recommend the services with higher rating. In addition, considering the extreme sparsity of the rating data, missing rating prediction based on collaboration filtering is introduced in our approach. The experimental results based on real-world datasets show that our approach outperforms the traditional recommendation approaches in terms of the reliability of recommendation.

Traditional and robust vector selection methods for use with similarity based models

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hines, J. W.; Garvey, D. R.

2006-01-01

Vector selection, or instance selection as it is often called in the data mining literature, performs a critical task in the development of nonparametric, similarity based models. Nonparametric, similarity based modeling (SBM) is a form of 'lazy learning' which constructs a local model 'on the fly' by comparing a query vector to historical, training vectors. For large training sets the creation of local models may become cumbersome, since each training vector must be compared to the query vector. To alleviate this computational burden, varying forms of training vector sampling may be employed with the goal of selecting a subset of the training data such that the samples are representative of the underlying process. This paper describes one such SBM, namely auto-associative kernel regression (AAKR), and presents five traditional vector selection methods and one robust vector selection method that may be used to select prototype vectors from a larger data set in model training. The five traditional vector selection methods considered are min-max, vector ordering, combination min-max and vector ordering, fuzzy c-means clustering, and Adeli-Hung clustering. Each method is described in detail and compared using artificially generated data and data collected from the steam system of an operating nuclear power plant. (authors)

A Mediator-Based Approach to Resolving Interface Heterogeneity of Web Services

Science.gov (United States)

Leitner, Philipp; Rosenberg, Florian; Michlmayr, Anton; Huber, Andreas; Dustdar, Schahram

In theory, service-oriented architectures are based on the idea of increasing flexibility in the selection of internal and external business partners using loosely-coupled services. However, in practice this flexibility is limited by the fact that partners need not only to provide the same service, but to do so via virtually the same interface in order to actually be interchangeable easily. Invocation-level mediation may be used to overcome this issue — by using mediation interface differences can be resolved transparently at runtime. In this chapter we discuss the basic ideas of mediation, with a focus on interface-level mediation. We show how interface mediation is integrated into our dynamic Web service invocation framework DAIOS, and present three different mediation strategies, one based on structural message similarity, one based on semantically annotated WSDL, and one which is embedded into the VRESCo SOA runtime, a larger research project with explicit support for service mediation.

Graduate Employability: A Conceptual Framework for Understanding Employers' Perceptions

Science.gov (United States)

Cai, Yuzhuo

2013-01-01

This study provides a conceptual framework for understanding what employers think about the value of graduates with similar educational credentials in the workplace (their employability), using insights from the new institutionalism. In this framework, the development of employers' beliefs about graduates' employability is broken into a number of…

ICT-based Innovation and Employability for Women

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marios A Pappas

2017-06-01

Full Text Available The utilization of ICTs in creating new jobs and eliminating gender based inequalities in employability and entrepreneurship, employs increasingly more researchers, governments and organizations around the world. In this article we analyze the current situation regarding the impact of ICTs, social networks and media on creating new opportunities for the employability of women. We also present the new market requirements, the new e-skills that will be acquired by women in order to take advantage of new labor market opportunities. Finally special reference is made to new trends in women's entrepreneurship as well as the supportive role of ICTs.

29 CFR 2550.408b-6 - Statutory exemption for ancillary services by a bank or similar financial institution.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

....408b-6 Statutory exemption for ancillary services by a bank or similar financial institution. (a) In... service is consistent with sound banking and financial practice, as determined by Federal or State... 29 Labor 9 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Statutory exemption for ancillary services by a bank or...

Employment, MSMes and e-commerce : a framework for a research ...

International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Digital Library (Canada)

2005-11-30

Nov 30, 2005 ... the social impact of mobile on poverty alleviation5. Studies found that ... ICT dimensions, e.g. cost effectiveness for direct poverty alleviation, on developed .... networks, with similar employment effects; and in higher value-added service ... operate does not generate incentives for them to take up ICTs. If and ...

SSP Plus at 36 Months: Effects of Adding Employment Services to Financial Work Incentives.

Science.gov (United States)

Lei, Ying; Michalopoulos, Charles

A study examined effects of the Self-Sufficiency Project (SSP) Plus program. A small group of long-term income assistance (IA) recipients in New Brunswick was offered an earnings supplement and employment services (SSP Plus); a second group was offered the regular SSP earnings supplement only; and a third group was offered neither supplement nor…

Hybrid employment recommendation algorithm based on Spark

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Zuoquan; Lin, Yubei; Zhang, Xingming

2017-08-01

Aiming at the real-time application of collaborative filtering employment recommendation algorithm (CF), a clustering collaborative filtering recommendation algorithm (CCF) is developed, which applies hierarchical clustering to CF and narrows the query range of neighbour items. In addition, to solve the cold-start problem of content-based recommendation algorithm (CB), a content-based algorithm with users’ information (CBUI) is introduced for job recommendation. Furthermore, a hybrid recommendation algorithm (HRA) which combines CCF and CBUI algorithms is proposed, and implemented on Spark platform. The experimental results show that HRA can overcome the problems of cold start and data sparsity, and achieve good recommendation accuracy and scalability for employment recommendation.

Impact of office-based intravenous deep sedation providers upon traditional sedation practices employed in pediatric dentistry.

Science.gov (United States)

Tarver, Michael; Guelmann, Marcio; Primosch, Robert

2012-01-01

This survey intended to determine how the implementation of office-based IV deep sedation by a third party provider (OIVSED) impacted the traditional sedation practices employed in pediatric dentistry private practice settings. A digital survey was e-mailed to 924 members of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry practicing in California, Florida, and New York, chosen because these states had large samples of practicing pediatric dentists in geographically disparate locations. 151 pediatric dentists using OIVSED responded to the survey. Improved efficiency, safety and quality of care provided, and increased parental acceptance were reported advantages of this service. Although less costly than hospital-based general anesthesia, the average fee for this service was a deterrent to some parents considering this option. Sixty-four percent of respondents continued to provide traditional sedation modalities, mostly oral sedation, in their offices, as parenteral routes taught in their training programs were less often selected. OIVSED users reported both a reduction in the use of traditional sedation modalities in their offices and use of hospital-based GA services in exchange for perceived improvements in efficiency, safety and quality of care delivered. Patient costs, in the absence of available health insurance coverage, inhibited accessing this service by some parents.

Consultation Services for the Employer

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

1997-01-01

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is sensitive to the difficulties faced by employers who are genuinely concerned with their employees' safety and health and who wish to comply with OSHA regulations...

Service Quality and Corporate Social Responsibility, Influence on Post-Purchase Intentions of Sheltered Employment Institutions

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Chao-Chien; Lin, Shih-Yen; Cheng, Chia-Hsin; Tsai, Chia-Ching

2012-01-01

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of service quality and corporate social responsibility (CSR) on customer satisfaction, and customer satisfaction toward post-purchase intentions from sheltered employment institutions. Work experience plays an important role in career development for those people with intellectual…

Tööturuasutuste võrgustik EURES = The European employment services network in Estonia / Heleri Hermanson

Index Scriptorium Estoniae

Hermanson, Heleri

2006-01-01

EURES (EURopean Employment Services) on Euroopa Komisjoni riiklike tööturuasutuste koostöövõrgustik. Eestlaste võimalustest leida tööd Euroopa Liidu liikmesmaades. Lisad: Töötu sotsiaalse kaitse kulutuste jaotus, 2005; Töötu sotsiaalse kaitse kulutused, 1994-2005; Kõnekaid fakte

Employment of security personnel

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Anon.

1990-01-01

If a company or institution hires personnel of a security service company to protect its premises, this kind of employment does not mean the company carries on temporary employment business. Within the purview of section 99, sub-section 1 of the BetrVG (Works Constitution Act), the security service personnel is not 'employed' in the proper sense even if the security tasks fulfilled by them are done at other times by regular employees of the company or institution. The court decision also decided that the Works Council need not give consent to employment of foreign security personnel. The court decision was taken for settlement of court proceedings commenced by Institute of Plasma Physics in Garching. In his comments, W. Hunold accedes to the court's decision and discusses the underlying reasons of this decision and of a previous ruling in the same matter by putting emphasis on the difference between a contract for services and a contract for work, and a contract for temporary employment. The author also discusses the basic features of an employment contract. (orig./HP) [de

Similar words analysis based on POS-CBOW language model

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dongru RUAN

2015-10-01

Full Text Available Similar words analysis is one of the important aspects in the field of natural language processing, and it has important research and application values in text classification, machine translation and information recommendation. Focusing on the features of Sina Weibo's short text, this paper presents a language model named as POS-CBOW, which is a kind of continuous bag-of-words language model with the filtering layer and part-of-speech tagging layer. The proposed approach can adjust the word vectors' similarity according to the cosine similarity and the word vectors' part-of-speech metrics. It can also filter those similar words set on the base of the statistical analysis model. The experimental result shows that the similar words analysis algorithm based on the proposed POS-CBOW language model is better than that based on the traditional CBOW language model.

An employee total health management-based survey of Iowa employers.

Science.gov (United States)

Merchant, James A; Lind, David P; Kelly, Kevin M; Hall, Jennifer L

2013-12-01

To implement an Employee Total Health Management (ETHM) model-based questionnaire and provide estimates of model program elements among a statewide sample of Iowa employers. Survey a stratified random sample of Iowa employers, and characterize and estimate employer participation in ETHM program elements. Iowa employers are implementing less than 30% of all 12 components of ETHM, with the exception of occupational safety and health (46.6%) and workers' compensation insurance coverage (89.2%), but intend modest expansion of all components in the coming year. The ETHM questionnaire-based survey provides estimates of progress Iowa employers are making toward implementing components of Total Worker Health programs.

Accessible user profile modeling for academic services based on MOOCs

OpenAIRE

Iniesto, Francisco; Rodrigo, Covadonga

2015-01-01

MOOCs are examples of the evolution of eLearning environments, it is a fact that the flexibility of the learning services allows students to learn at their own time, place and pace, enhances continuous communication and interaction between all participants in knowledge and community building, benefits people with disabilities and therefore can improve their level of employability and social inclusion. MOOCs are leading a revolutionary computer and mobile-based scenario along with social techn...

A service oriented approach for guidelines-based clinical decision support using BPMN.

Science.gov (United States)

Rodriguez-Loya, Salvador; Aziz, Ayesha; Chatwin, Chris

2014-01-01

Evidence-based medical practice requires that clinical guidelines need to be documented in such a way that they represent a clinical workflow in its most accessible form. In order to optimize clinical processes to improve clinical outcomes, we propose a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) based approach for implementing clinical guidelines that can be accessed from an Electronic Health Record (EHR) application with a Web Services enabled communication mechanism with the Enterprise Service Bus. We have used Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) for modelling and presenting the clinical pathway in the form of a workflow. The aim of this study is to produce spontaneous alerts in the healthcare workflow in the diagnosis of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). The use of BPMN as a tool to automate clinical guidelines has not been previously employed for providing Clinical Decision Support (CDS).

49 CFR 40.15 - May an employer use a service agent to meet DOT drug and alcohol testing requirements?

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... drug and alcohol testing requirements? 40.15 Section 40.15 Transportation Office of the Secretary of Transportation PROCEDURES FOR TRANSPORTATION WORKPLACE DRUG AND ALCOHOL TESTING PROGRAMS Employer Responsibilities § 40.15 May an employer use a service agent to meet DOT drug and alcohol testing requirements? (a...

The benefits of a life-first employment program for Indigenous Australian families: Implications for ‘Closing the Gap’

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lynsey Brown

2017-09-01

Full Text Available There are significant and enduring inequities in education and employment outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. In taking a ‘life-first’ approach to service provision the Building Family Opportunities Program (BFO was able to successfully increase Indigenous Australians’ engagement with education and employment in South Australia. The evaluation of the BFO included quantitative administrative and survey data for 110 Indigenous families collected over a three year period, and qualitative data from interviews with 13 Indigenous jobseekers and focus groups with 24 case managers. Quantitative data revealed that similar proportions of Indigenous and non-Indigenous jobseekers achieved positive education/training and employment outcomes as a result of the program. Qualitative data were able to identify the strengths of this program as perceived by Indigenous families and case managers, including the practical and socio-emotional support offered to whole families, using a strengths-based, life-first approach. In the context of broader education and employment disadvantages experienced by Indigenous Australians, these results are significant and illustrate key lessons which can inform future policy and service delivery initiatives aiming to close the gap.

26 CFR 31.3306(c)(10)-1 - Services in the employ of certain organizations exempt from income tax.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... to the exception of services performed by certain students in the employ of a school, college, or... quarter of 1955 (that is, January 1, 1955, through March 31, 1955, both dates inclusive) A earns a total..., both dates inclusive), A earns $60. Although all of the services performed by A during the first...

Why rapid urbanization process cannot improve employment absorption capacity of service industry in China – also on the interactive mode innovation between service industry development with urbanization under the background of transformation and upgrading

OpenAIRE

Zeng, Shi-hong; Xia, Jie-chang

2016-01-01

Background: China is experiencing rapid urbanization and service industrial developement. Methods: In this paper, the relationship between urbanization and service employment is studied by using mathematical model and econometric test method. Results: This paper documents that there is a significant positive correlation between rapid urbanization process and services absorbing employment ability by the regression result using time-series data since China's reform and opening up. China's urban...

Making sense of employer collectivism

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ibsen, Christian Lyhne

2016-01-01

This conceptual article argues that preferences of employers for collective action cannot be reduced to rational actors making decisions based on market structures or institutional logics. Both markets and institutions are inherently ambiguous and employers therefore have to settle for plausible...... – rather than accurate – rational strategies among many alternatives through so-called sensemaking. Sensemaking refers to the process by which employers continuously make sense of their competitive environment by building causal stories of competitive advantages. The article therefore tries to provide......, unlike countries in similar situations, for example Finland and Sweden, Danish employers retained a coordinated industry-level bargaining system, which makes it an interesting paradox to study from the vantage point of sensemaking....

A Framework for Automatic Web Service Discovery Based on Semantics and NLP Techniques

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Asma Adala

2011-01-01

Full Text Available As a greater number of Web Services are made available today, automatic discovery is recognized as an important task. To promote the automation of service discovery, different semantic languages have been created that allow describing the functionality of services in a machine interpretable form using Semantic Web technologies. The problem is that users do not have intimate knowledge about semantic Web service languages and related toolkits. In this paper, we propose a discovery framework that enables semantic Web service discovery based on keywords written in natural language. We describe a novel approach for automatic discovery of semantic Web services which employs Natural Language Processing techniques to match a user request, expressed in natural language, with a semantic Web service description. Additionally, we present an efficient semantic matching technique to compute the semantic distance between ontological concepts.

An Employee Total Health Management–Based Survey of Iowa Employers

Science.gov (United States)

Merchant, James A.; Lind, David P.; Kelly, Kevin M.; Hall, Jennifer L.

2015-01-01

Objective To implement an Employee Total Health Management (ETHM) model-based questionnaire and provide estimates of model program elements among a statewide sample of Iowa employers. Methods Survey a stratified random sample of Iowa employers, characterize and estimate employer participation in ETHM program elements Results Iowa employers are implementing under 30% of all 12 components of ETHM, with the exception of occupational safety and health (46.6%) and worker compensation insurance coverage (89.2%), but intend modest expansion of all components in the coming year. Conclusions The Employee Total Health Management questionnaire-based survey provides estimates of progress Iowa employers are making toward implementing components of total worker health programs. PMID:24284757

Senior Managers' and Recent Graduates' Perceptions of Employability Skills for Health Services Management

Science.gov (United States)

Messum, Diana; Wilkes, Lesly; Peters, Cath; Jackson, Debra

2017-01-01

If work-integrated learning (WIL) is intended by universities to meet the demand for work-ready graduates, identification of skill requirements for development on placements is a critical part of the learning process. Health services management specific employability skills perceived to be important by managers and recent graduates working in the…

Similarity-based Polymorphic Shellcode Detection

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Denis Yurievich Gamayunov

2013-02-01

Full Text Available In the work the method for polymorphic shellcode dedection based on the set of known shellcodes is proposed. The method’s main idea is in sequential applying of deobfuscating transformations to a data analyzed and then recognizing similarity with malware samples. The method has been tested on the sets of shellcodes generated using Metasploit Framework v.4.1.0 and PELock Obfuscator and shows 87 % precision with zero false positives rate.

Employing Semantic Technologies for the Orchestration of Government Services

Science.gov (United States)

Sabol, Tomáš; Furdík, Karol; Mach, Marián

The main aim of the eGovernment is to provide efficient, secure, inclusive services for its citizens and businesses. The necessity to integrate services and information resources, to increase accessibility, to reduce the administrative burden on citizens and enterprises - these are only a few reasons why the paradigm of the eGovernment has been shifted from the supply-driven approach toward the connected governance, emphasizing the concept of interoperability (Archmann and Nielsen 2008). On the EU level, the interoperability is explicitly addressed as one of the four main challenges, including in the i2010 strategy (i2010 2005). The Commission's Communication (Interoperability for Pan-European eGovernment Services 2006) strongly emphasizes the necessity of interoperable eGovernment services, based on standards, open specifications, and open interfaces. The Pan-European interoperability initiatives, such as the European Interoperability Framework (2004) and IDABC, as well as many projects supported by the European Commission within the IST Program and the Competitiveness and Innovation Program (CIP), illustrate the importance of interoperability on the EU level.

Employment certificates on HRT

CERN Multimedia

HR Department

2008-01-01

As part of the ongoing drive to simplify and streamline administrative procedures and processes, the IT and HR Departments have made employment certificates available on a self-service basis on the HRT application, in the main menu under "My self services". All members of the personnel can thus obtain a certificate of employment or association, in French or in English, for the present or past contractual period. The HR Department’s Records Office remains responsible for issuing any special certificates that might be required. IT-AIS (Administrative Information Services) HR-SPS (Services, Procedures & Social) Records Office – Tel. 73700

Important skills for biomedical services: The perspectives of Malaysian employers and employees.

Science.gov (United States)

Buntat, Yahya; Saud, Muhammad Sukri; Mokhtar, Mahani; Kamin, Yusri; Feh, Lim Set

2016-10-17

Increase in the occurrence of existing diseases, continual emergence of new or exotic diseases and re-emergence of old diseases have placed increasing demands on biomedical services in Malaysia. Biomedical technicians play an important role in operating biomedical instruments. However, there are no clear specifications about characteristics and traits for these semi-professional employees. Employers in a few studies claimed that biomedical graduates are not ready to enter and face challenges in the job market. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify technical and generic skills for a biomedical technician from the perspectives of the biomedical technicians and their employers. A quantitative survey design was employed whereby data were obtained through the administration of an instrument developed by the researchers. The sample consisted of 20 hospital managers and 186 biomedical technicians who are currently working in Malaysian government hospitals. The findings show that there are no difference in the perceptions of hospital managers and biomedical technicians regarding technical and non-technical skills. These findings resulted in a checklist which can be used for institutions to produce future biomedical technician graduates in order to meet job demands. However, future research is needed to validate the findings and explore the variables in depth.

AN AUTOMATED END-TO-END MULTI-AGENT QOS BASED ARCHITECTURE FOR SELECTION OF GEOSPATIAL WEB SERVICES

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

M. Shah

2012-07-01

With the proliferation of web services published over the internet, multiple web services may provide similar functionality, but with different non-functional properties. Thus, Quality of Service (QoS offers a metric to differentiate the services and their service providers. In a quality-driven selection of web services, it is important to consider non-functional properties of the web service so as to satisfy the constraints or requirements of the end users. The main intent of this paper is to build an automated end-to-end multi-agent based solution to provide the best-fit web service to service requester based on QoS.

M-Health Service for Train Passengers Using Mobile GPS System: An ArchiMate Service Layer Model

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

MUHAMMAD SAJID

2017-01-01

Full Text Available EA (Enterprise Architecture is an instrument that is employed to describe the organization?s structure, business layout and operations within the IT (Information Technology environment. Different types of organizations extensively employed EA for aligning their business and operations with IT resources. EA may also be employed in non-organizational setting such as service providing agencies; rescue, medical emergency and education services. This paper suggests an EAF (Enterprise Architecture Framework for non-organizational setting by critically analyzing the top four EAs. The paper also proposes a new m-Health service model based on the mobile GPS (Global Positioning System for train/rail passengers by employing the ArchiMate modeling language and compares the proposed model with existing service providers.

A Profile-Based Framework for Factorial Similarity and the Congruence Coefficient.

Science.gov (United States)

Hartley, Anselma G; Furr, R Michael

2017-01-01

We present a novel profile-based framework for understanding factorial similarity in the context of exploratory factor analysis in general, and for understanding the congruence coefficient (a commonly used index of factor similarity) specifically. First, we introduce the profile-based framework articulating factorial similarity in terms of 3 intuitive components: general saturation similarity, differential saturation similarity, and configural similarity. We then articulate the congruence coefficient in terms of these components, along with 2 additional profile-based components, and we explain how these components resolve ambiguities that can be-and are-found when using the congruence coefficient. Finally, we present secondary analyses revealing that profile-based components of factorial are indeed linked to experts' actual evaluations of factorial similarity. Overall, the profile-based approach we present offers new insights into the ways in which researchers can examine factor similarity and holds the potential to enhance researchers' ability to understand the congruence coefficient.

Computer-aided beam arrangement based on similar cases in radiation treatment-planning databases for stereotactic lung radiation therapy

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Magome, Taiki; Shioyama, Yoshiyuki; Arimura, Hidetaka

2013-01-01

The purpose of this study was to develop a computer-aided method for determination of beam arrangements based on similar cases in a radiotherapy treatment-planning database for stereotactic lung radiation therapy. Similar-case-based beam arrangements were automatically determined based on the following two steps. First, the five most similar cases were searched, based on geometrical features related to the location, size and shape of the planning target volume, lung and spinal cord. Second, five beam arrangements of an objective case were automatically determined by registering five similar cases with the objective case, with respect to lung regions, by means of a linear registration technique. For evaluation of the beam arrangements five treatment plans were manually created by applying the beam arrangements determined in the second step to the objective case. The most usable beam arrangement was selected by sorting the five treatment plans based on eight plan evaluation indices, including the D95, mean lung dose and spinal cord maximum dose. We applied the proposed method to 10 test cases, by using an RTP database of 81 cases with lung cancer, and compared the eight plan evaluation indices between the original treatment plan and the corresponding most usable similar-case-based treatment plan. As a result, the proposed method may provide usable beam arrangements, which have no statistically significant differences from the original beam arrangements (P>0.05) in terms of the eight plan evaluation indices. Therefore, the proposed method could be employed as an educational tool for less experienced treatment planners. (author)

Automatic Voltage Control System with Market Price Employing Large Wind Farms

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Qin, Nan; Bak, Claus Leth; Abildgaard, Hans

2018-01-01

of the voltage control service provided by the power plant owners. The benefit of employing the large offshore wind farms in this AVC system is investigated. The simulation based on the measurement data from the Danish electricity control center demonstrates the superiority of the proposed approach in terms...... of the cost minimization. The gained profit by employing the wind farms can be an argument to purchase the voltage control service provided by these wind farms....

39 CFR 10.3 - Post-employment activities.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... 39 Postal Service 1 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Post-employment activities. 10.3 Section 10.3 Postal Service UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE THE BOARD OF GOVERNORS OF THE U.S. POSTAL SERVICE RULES OF CONDUCT FOR POSTAL SERVICE GOVERNORS (ARTICLE X) § 10.3 Post-employment activities. Governors are subject...

A competence-based and multidimensional operationalization and measurement of employability

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van der Heijde, C.M.; van der Heijden, Beatrice

2006-01-01

Employability is a critical requirement for enabling both sustained competitive advantage at the firm level and career success at the individual level. We propose a competence-based approach to employability derived from an expansion of the resource-based view of the firm. In this contribution, we

Socioeconomic Differences in and Predictors of Home-Based Palliative Care Health Service Use in Ontario, Canada.

Science.gov (United States)

Cai, Jiaoli; Guerriere, Denise N; Zhao, Hongzhong; Coyte, Peter C

2017-07-18

The use of health services may vary across people with different socioeconomic statuses, and may be determined by many factors. The purposes of this study were (i) to examine the socioeconomic differences in the propensity and intensity of use for three main home-based health services, that is, home-based palliative care physician visits, nurse visits and personal support worker (PSW) hours; and (ii) to explore the determinants of the use of home-based palliative care services. A prospective cohort study was employed. A total of 181 caregivers were interviewed biweekly over the course of the palliative care trajectory, yielding a total of 994 interviews. The propensity and intensity of health service use were examined using logistic regression and negative binomial regression, respectively. The results demonstrated that both the propensity and intensity of home-based nurse and PSW visits fell with socioeconomic status. The use of home-based palliative care services was not concentrated in high socioeconomic status groups. The common predictors of health service use in the three service categories were patient age, the Palliative Performance Scale (PPS) score and place of death. These findings may assist health service planners in the appropriate allocation of resources and service packages to meet the complex needs of palliative care populations.

Classification trees for identifying non-use of community-based long-term care services among older adults.

Science.gov (United States)

Penkunas, Michael James; Eom, Kirsten Yuna; Chan, Angelique Wei-Ming

2017-10-01

Home- and center-based long-term care (LTC) services allow older adults to remain in the community while simultaneously helping caregivers cope with the stresses associated with providing care. Despite these benefits, the uptake of community-based LTC services among older adults remains low. We analyzed data from a longitudinal study in Singapore to identify the characteristics of individuals with referrals to home-based LTC services or day rehabilitation services at the time of hospital discharge. Classification and regression tree analysis was employed to identify combinations of clinical and sociodemographic characteristics of patients and their caregivers for individuals who did not take up their referred services. Patients' level of limitation in activities of daily living (ADL) and caregivers' ethnicity and educational level were the most distinguishing characteristics for identifying older adults who failed to take up their referred home-based services. For day rehabilitation services, patients' level of ADL limitation, home size, age, and possession of a national medical savings account, as well as caregivers' education level, and gender were significant factors influencing service uptake. Identifying subgroups of patients with high rates of non-use can help clinicians target individuals who are need of community-based LTC services but unlikely to engage in formal treatment. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Location choice of Chinese urban fringe residents on employment, housing, and urban services: A case study of Nanjing

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Xingping Wang

2016-03-01

Full Text Available Urban fringe area is the most important space for city development. It includes several complicated elements, such as population, space, and management organization. On the basis of local population attributes in the city fringe area combined with people’s movement characteristics in time and space, this article reclassifies basic public service facilities and discusses the relationship between facility layout and housing, employment, and commuter transportation. Through a questionnaire survey in Qiaobei District of the urban fringe area in Nanjing and on the basis of comparative analysis, we discuss the impact factor on the choice of housing, urban services, and the tolerance of commuting time. Our findings indicate mutual promoting and restricting connections among living, employment, and services. Workers’ living situation determines their daily behavior, such as dining, shopping, and entertainment. Furthermore, different income levels have a great influence on residents’ choices with regard to places to live and develop their careers.

Barriers to Employment Among Social Security Disability Insurance Beneficiaries in the Mental Health Treatment Study.

Science.gov (United States)

Milfort, Roline; Bond, Gary R; McGurk, Susan R; Drake, Robert E

2015-12-01

This study examined barriers to employment among Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) beneficiaries who received comprehensive vocational and mental health services but were not successful in returning to work. This study examined barriers to employment among 430 SSDI beneficiaries with mental disorders who received evidence-based vocational and mental health services for two years but worked less than one month or not at all. Comprehensive care teams, which included employment specialists, made consensus judgments for each participant, identifying the top three barriers to employment from a checklist of 14 common barriers. Teams most frequently identified three barriers to employment: poorly controlled symptoms of mental illness (55%), nonengagement in supported employment (44%), and poorly controlled general medical problems (33%). Other factors were identified much less frequently. Some SSDI beneficiaries, despite having access to comprehensive services, continued to experience psychiatric impairments, difficulty engaging in vocational services, and general medical problems that limited their success in employment.

Office-based deep sedation for pediatric ophthalmologic procedures using a sedation service model.

Science.gov (United States)

Lalwani, Kirk; Tomlinson, Matthew; Koh, Jeffrey; Wheeler, David

2012-01-01

Aims. (1) To assess the efficacy and safety of pediatric office-based sedation for ophthalmologic procedures using a pediatric sedation service model. (2) To assess the reduction in hospital charges of this model of care delivery compared to the operating room (OR) setting for similar procedures. Background. Sedation is used to facilitate pediatric procedures and to immobilize patients for imaging and examination. We believe that the pediatric sedation service model can be used to facilitate office-based deep sedation for brief ophthalmologic procedures and examinations. Methods. After IRB approval, all children who underwent office-based ophthalmologic procedures at our institution between January 1, 2000 and July 31, 2008 were identified using the sedation service database and the electronic health record. A comparison of hospital charges between similar procedures in the operating room was performed. Results. A total of 855 procedures were reviewed. Procedure completion rate was 100% (C.I. 99.62-100). There were no serious complications or unanticipated admissions. Our analysis showed a significant reduction in hospital charges (average of $1287 per patient) as a result of absent OR and recovery unit charges. Conclusions. Pediatric ophthalmologic minor procedures can be performed using a sedation service model with significant reductions in hospital charges.

Office-Based Deep Sedation for Pediatric Ophthalmologic Procedures Using a Sedation Service Model

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kirk Lalwani

2012-01-01

Full Text Available Aims. (1 To assess the efficacy and safety of pediatric office-based sedation for ophthalmologic procedures using a pediatric sedation service model. (2 To assess the reduction in hospital charges of this model of care delivery compared to the operating room (OR setting for similar procedures. Background. Sedation is used to facilitate pediatric procedures and to immobilize patients for imaging and examination. We believe that the pediatric sedation service model can be used to facilitate office-based deep sedation for brief ophthalmologic procedures and examinations. Methods. After IRB approval, all children who underwent office-based ophthalmologic procedures at our institution between January 1, 2000 and July 31, 2008 were identified using the sedation service database and the electronic health record. A comparison of hospital charges between similar procedures in the operating room was performed. Results. A total of 855 procedures were reviewed. Procedure completion rate was 100% (C.I. 99.62–100. There were no serious complications or unanticipated admissions. Our analysis showed a significant reduction in hospital charges (average of $1287 per patient as a result of absent OR and recovery unit charges. Conclusions. Pediatric ophthalmologic minor procedures can be performed using a sedation service model with significant reductions in hospital charges.

When Location-Based Services Meet Databases

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dik Lun Lee

2005-01-01

Full Text Available As location-based services (LBSs grow to support a larger and larger user community and to provide more and more intelligent services, they must face a few fundamental challenges, including the ability to not only accept coordinates as location data but also manipulate high-level semantics of the physical environment. They must also handle a large amount of location updates and client requests and be able to scale up as their coverage increases. This paper describes some of our research in location modeling and updates and techniques for enhancing system performance by caching and batch processing. It can be observed that the challenges facing LBSs share a lot of similarity with traditional database research (i.e., data modeling, indexing, caching, and query optimization but the fact that LBSs are built into the physical space and the opportunity to exploit spatial locality in system design shed new light on LBS research.

75 FR 452 - Applied Materials, Inc. Including On-Site Leased Workers From Adecco Employment Services, Aerotek...

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-05

... NSTAR, Austin, Texas. The notice was published in the Federal Register on November 17, 2009 (74 FR 59253... Resources, SQA Services and NSTAR; Austin, TX; Amended Certification Regarding Eligibility To Apply for... NSTAR, Austin, Texas, who became totally or partially separated from employment on or after June 25...

Introduction to Mobile Trajectory Based Services: A New Direction in Mobile Location Based Services

Science.gov (United States)

Khokhar, Sarfraz; Nilsson, Arne A.

The mandate of E911 gave birth to the idea of Location Based Services (LBS) capitalizing on the knowledge of the mobile location. The underlying estimated location is a feasible area. There is yet another class of mobile services that could be based on the mobility profiling of a mobile user. The mobility profile of a mobile user is a set of the routine trajectories of his or her travel paths. We called such services as Mobile Trajectory Based Services (MTBS). This paper introduces MTBS and functional architecture of an MTBS system. Suitability of different location estimation technologies for MTBS has been discussed and supported with simulation results.

49 CFR 40.287 - What information is an employer required to provide concerning SAP services to an employee who...

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... provide concerning SAP services to an employee who has a DOT drug and alcohol regulation violation? 40.287... § 40.287 What information is an employer required to provide concerning SAP services to an employee who... (including an applicant or new employee) who violates a DOT drug and alcohol regulation a listing of SAPs...

Natural texture retrieval based on perceptual similarity measurement

Science.gov (United States)

Gao, Ying; Dong, Junyu; Lou, Jianwen; Qi, Lin; Liu, Jun

2018-04-01

A typical texture retrieval system performs feature comparison and might not be able to make human-like judgments of image similarity. Meanwhile, it is commonly known that perceptual texture similarity is difficult to be described by traditional image features. In this paper, we propose a new texture retrieval scheme based on texture perceptual similarity. The key of the proposed scheme is that prediction of perceptual similarity is performed by learning a non-linear mapping from image features space to perceptual texture space by using Random Forest. We test the method on natural texture dataset and apply it on a new wallpapers dataset. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed texture retrieval scheme with perceptual similarity improves the retrieval performance over traditional image features.

On self-similarity of crack layer

Science.gov (United States)

Botsis, J.; Kunin, B.

1987-01-01

The crack layer (CL) theory of Chudnovsky (1986), based on principles of thermodynamics of irreversible processes, employs a crucial hypothesis of self-similarity. The self-similarity hypothesis states that the value of the damage density at a point x of the active zone at a time t coincides with that at the corresponding point in the initial (t = 0) configuration of the active zone, the correspondence being given by a time-dependent affine transformation of the space variables. In this paper, the implications of the self-similarity hypothesis for qusi-static CL propagation is investigated using polystyrene as a model material and examining the evolution of damage distribution along the trailing edge which is approximated by a straight segment perpendicular to the crack path. The results support the self-similarity hypothesis adopted by the CL theory.

The Great Recession and Job Loss Spillovers : Impact of Tradable Employment Shocks on Supporting Services

OpenAIRE

Nguyen, Ha; Rezaei, Shawheen

2016-01-01

This paper explores the spillover effects of job losses via input linkages during the Great Recession. Exploiting exogenous variation in tradable employment shocks across U.S. counties, the paper finds that job losses in the tradable sectors cause further job losses in local supporting services. The result is not due to reverse causation, construction job losses, or credit shortages. In ad...

Corporate culture and employment of people with disabilities: role of social workers and service provider organizations.

Science.gov (United States)

Samant, Deepti; Soffer, Michal; Hernandez, Brigida; Adya, Meera; Akinpelu, Omolara; Levy, Joel M; Repoli, Elizabeth; Kramer, Michael; Blanck, Peter

2009-01-01

Corporate culture reflects an organization's value system and impacts the recruitment, retention, and promotion of employees. Individuals with disabilities are positively impacted by a corporate culture that espouses and establishes a diverse workforce as a priority. This article provides an overview of corporate culture and the employment of individuals with disabilities, and presents a case example of the corporate culture of a large not-for-profit disability service organization. With an in-depth understanding of corporate culture and disability issues, social workers can be particularly helpful to applicants and employees with disabilities as well as employers.

Organizational factors affecting successful adoption of innovative eHealth services: a case study employing the FITT framework.

Science.gov (United States)

Tsiknakis, Manolis; Kouroubali, Angelina

2009-01-01

The paper presents an application of the "Fit between Individuals, Task and Technology" (FITT) framework to analyze the socio-organizational-technical factors that influence IT adoption in the healthcare domain. The FITT framework was employed as the theoretical instrument for a retrospective analysis of a 15-year effort in implementing IT systems and eHealth services in the context of a Regional Health Information Network in Crete. Quantitative and qualitative research methods, interviews and participant observations were employed to gather data from a case study that involved the entire region of Crete. The detailed analysis of the case study based on the FITT framework, showed common features, but also differences of IT adoption within the various health organizations. The emerging picture is a complex nexus of factors contributing to IT adoption, and multi-level interventional strategies to promote IT use. The work presented in this paper shows the applicability of the FITT framework in explaining the complexity of aspects observed in the implementation of healthcare information systems. The reported experiences reveal that fit management can be viewed as a system with a feedback loop that is never really stable, but ever changing based on external factors or deliberate interventions. Management of fit, therefore, becomes a constant and complex task for the whole life cycle of IT systems.

An analysis of the procedural components of supported employment programs associated with employment outcomes.

OpenAIRE

McDonnell, J; Nofs, D; Hardman, M; Chambless, C

1989-01-01

This study examined the relation between the procedural components of supported employment programs and employment outcomes for 120 individuals with disabilities. These individuals were involved in supported employment programs established through the Utah Supported Employment Project. The results suggest that successful implementation of supported employment services led to ongoing employment of study participants in community work sites, increased wages, and ongoing opportunities for worker...

A Model-Based Approach to Constructing Music Similarity Functions

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lamere Paul

2007-01-01

Full Text Available Several authors have presented systems that estimate the audio similarity of two pieces of music through the calculation of a distance metric, such as the Euclidean distance, between spectral features calculated from the audio, related to the timbre or pitch of the signal. These features can be augmented with other, temporally or rhythmically based features such as zero-crossing rates, beat histograms, or fluctuation patterns to form a more well-rounded music similarity function. It is our contention that perceptual or cultural labels, such as the genre, style, or emotion of the music, are also very important features in the perception of music. These labels help to define complex regions of similarity within the available feature spaces. We demonstrate a machine-learning-based approach to the construction of a similarity metric, which uses this contextual information to project the calculated features into an intermediate space where a music similarity function that incorporates some of the cultural information may be calculated.

A Model-Based Approach to Constructing Music Similarity Functions

Science.gov (United States)

West, Kris; Lamere, Paul

2006-12-01

Several authors have presented systems that estimate the audio similarity of two pieces of music through the calculation of a distance metric, such as the Euclidean distance, between spectral features calculated from the audio, related to the timbre or pitch of the signal. These features can be augmented with other, temporally or rhythmically based features such as zero-crossing rates, beat histograms, or fluctuation patterns to form a more well-rounded music similarity function. It is our contention that perceptual or cultural labels, such as the genre, style, or emotion of the music, are also very important features in the perception of music. These labels help to define complex regions of similarity within the available feature spaces. We demonstrate a machine-learning-based approach to the construction of a similarity metric, which uses this contextual information to project the calculated features into an intermediate space where a music similarity function that incorporates some of the cultural information may be calculated.

Public Employment Services and European Law

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Freedland, Mark; Craig, Paul; Jacqueson, Catherine

jobformidling i EU: institutioner, aktiviteter og regulering - økonomisk/social regulering, privat/offentlig aktivitet - EU-ret - komparativ ret: Danmark, Frankrig, England, Tyskland og Italien - EU kompetence, sociale anliggende og offentlige tjenesteydelser - "Public service" modeler i EU - reg...... - regulerings teknikker og "governance" - jobformidling som "public service" - udlicitering - aktivering - uddanneslsestilbud - menneskerettigheder - "making work pay" - forholdet mellem jobmidlingsinstitutioner og den arbejdssøgende...

Outcome based commissioning: lessons from contracting out employment and skills programmes in Australia and the USA

OpenAIRE

Finn, Dan

2010-01-01

Despite the relative effectiveness of recent reforms to the employment and skills system the Leitch Review (1996)identified some key problems. Welfare to work programmes had few incentives to focus on skills, job retention and progression; the skills system had little focus on employment outcomes; and the targets and incentives in both systems did not encourage a joined-up service for individuals or employers. The UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES) subsequently proposed the integ...

Exploring product and service innovation similarities and differences

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Nijssen, E.J.; Hillebrand, B.; Vermeulen, P.A.M.; Kemp, R.G.M.

2006-01-01

This paper aims to provide an initial step towards a synthesis of new service and new product development research. Using a baseline model of innovation, applicable to innovation in general, we hypothesize differential context effects between new service and product development in order to better

Average is Boring: How Similarity Kills a Meme's Success

Science.gov (United States)

Coscia, Michele

2014-09-01

Every day we are exposed to different ideas, or memes, competing with each other for our attention. Previous research explained popularity and persistence heterogeneity of memes by assuming them in competition for limited attention resources, distributed in a heterogeneous social network. Little has been said about what characteristics make a specific meme more likely to be successful. We propose a similarity-based explanation: memes with higher similarity to other memes have a significant disadvantage in their potential popularity. We employ a meme similarity measure based on semantic text analysis and computer vision to prove that a meme is more likely to be successful and to thrive if its characteristics make it unique. Our results show that indeed successful memes are located in the periphery of the meme similarity space and that our similarity measure is a promising predictor of a meme success.

Personalization of Rule-based Web Services.

Science.gov (United States)

Choi, Okkyung; Han, Sang Yong

2008-04-04

Nowadays Web users have clearly expressed their wishes to receive personalized services directly. Personalization is the way to tailor services directly to the immediate requirements of the user. However, the current Web Services System does not provide any features supporting this such as consideration of personalization of services and intelligent matchmaking. In this research a flexible, personalized Rule-based Web Services System to address these problems and to enable efficient search, discovery and construction across general Web documents and Semantic Web documents in a Web Services System is proposed. This system utilizes matchmaking among service requesters', service providers' and users' preferences using a Rule-based Search Method, and subsequently ranks search results. A prototype of efficient Web Services search and construction for the suggested system is developed based on the current work.

Activity of public employment services in the Poznan agglomeration for the benefit of the disabled persons

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Robert Talaga

2009-01-01

Full Text Available In 2002-2007 public employment services enlarged the range of service offers within the frames of active policy of labour market for handicapped persons living in the city of Poznań and the poviat (commune. The attempt was successful despite permanent and not very high expenditure on solving the handicapped persons’ problems. Simultaneously there was an observable increase of expenditure on the whole active policy of Poznań agglomeration labour market. Owing to the law changes a lot of positive progress was achieved which introduced professional activation of handicapped people in the forms inaccessible to this group of citizens so far. It should be mentioned here that it came about also thanks to undertakings cofinanced with European funds, alongside with the assistance of private and non-governmental institutions. A constant ratio of the handicapped persons’ employment as well as slightly changeable number of handicapped persons registered at Poznań District Work Office, prove that the present situation does not develop in handicapped youth the necessary skills to actively search work, and it strengthens attitudes of professional passivity.

42 CFR 54.6 - Employment practices.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... Health PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES GRANTS CHARITABLE CHOICE... participant from employing individuals of a particular religion to perform work connected with the carrying on... participant must certify: that it sincerely believes that employing individuals of a particular religion is...

Generic-distributed framework for cloud services marketplace based on unified ontology

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Samer Hasan

2017-11-01

Full Text Available Cloud computing is a pattern for delivering ubiquitous and on demand computing resources based on pay-as-you-use financial model. Typically, cloud providers advertise cloud service descriptions in various formats on the Internet. On the other hand, cloud consumers use available search engines (Google and Yahoo to explore cloud service descriptions and find the adequate service. Unfortunately, general purpose search engines are not designed to provide a small and complete set of results, which makes the process a big challenge. This paper presents a generic-distrusted framework for cloud services marketplace to automate cloud services discovery and selection process, and remove the barriers between service providers and consumers. Additionally, this work implements two instances of generic framework by adopting two different matching algorithms; namely dominant and recessive attributes algorithm borrowed from gene science and semantic similarity algorithm based on unified cloud service ontology. Finally, this paper presents unified cloud services ontology and models the real-life cloud services according to the proposed ontology. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt to build a cloud services marketplace where cloud providers and cloud consumers can trend cloud services as utilities. In comparison with existing work, semantic approach reduced the execution time by 20% and maintained the same values for all other parameters. On the other hand, dominant and recessive attributes approach reduced the execution time by 57% but showed lower value for recall.

Generic-distributed framework for cloud services marketplace based on unified ontology.

Science.gov (United States)

Hasan, Samer; Valli Kumari, V

2017-11-01

Cloud computing is a pattern for delivering ubiquitous and on demand computing resources based on pay-as-you-use financial model. Typically, cloud providers advertise cloud service descriptions in various formats on the Internet. On the other hand, cloud consumers use available search engines (Google and Yahoo) to explore cloud service descriptions and find the adequate service. Unfortunately, general purpose search engines are not designed to provide a small and complete set of results, which makes the process a big challenge. This paper presents a generic-distrusted framework for cloud services marketplace to automate cloud services discovery and selection process, and remove the barriers between service providers and consumers. Additionally, this work implements two instances of generic framework by adopting two different matching algorithms; namely dominant and recessive attributes algorithm borrowed from gene science and semantic similarity algorithm based on unified cloud service ontology. Finally, this paper presents unified cloud services ontology and models the real-life cloud services according to the proposed ontology. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first attempt to build a cloud services marketplace where cloud providers and cloud consumers can trend cloud services as utilities. In comparison with existing work, semantic approach reduced the execution time by 20% and maintained the same values for all other parameters. On the other hand, dominant and recessive attributes approach reduced the execution time by 57% but showed lower value for recall.

Web-based Analysis Services Report

CERN Document Server

AUTHOR|(CDS)2108758; Canali, Luca; Grancher, Eric; Lamanna, Massimo; McCance, Gavin; Mato Vila, Pere; Piparo, Danilo; Moscicki, Jakub; Pace, Alberto; Brito Da Rocha, Ricardo; Simko, Tibor; Smith, Tim; Tejedor Saavedra, Enric; CERN. Geneva. IT Department

2017-01-01

Web-based services (cloud services) is an important trend to innovate end-user services while optimising the service operational costs. CERN users are constantly proposing new approaches (inspired from services existing on the web, tools used in education or other science or based on their experience in using existing computing services). In addition, industry and open source communities have recently made available a large number of powerful and attractive tools and platforms that enable large scale data processing. “Big Data” software stacks notably provide solutions for scalable storage, distributed compute and data analysis engines, data streaming, web-based interfaces (notebooks). Some of those platforms and tools, typically available as open source products, are experiencing a very fast adoption in industry and science such that they are becoming “de facto” references in several areas of data engineering, data science and machine learning. In parallel to users' requests, WLCG is considering to c...

How to construct a service quality index in performance based ratemaking

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Alexander, B.R.

1996-04-01

Nothing will derail the movement to competition quicker than a falloff in service quality. During the uncertain transition to a more competitive electricity market, utility regulators should carry out their duty to ensure adequate service quality by adopting innovative performance tracking methods. Despite all the talk - and there is plenty of that - the restructuring of the electric utility industry is not yet upon us. But many state regulatory bodies - having already experienced restructuring in the telecommunications industry, in which many employed new regulatory models known under the rubric of performance-based regulation - are beginning to experiment with some form of PBR in the increasingly competitive electricity industry. PBR is usually undertaken on the assumption that, in a more competitive industry, a lighter regulatory hand coupled with the discipline of market competition will produce better results for both utility customers and shareholders. PBR, as an alternative to traditional base rate regulation, typically retains strict control over basic service rates for core customers, either by freezing prices or establishing a formula that restricts the utility`s ability to raise prices for these customer groups. The utilty is usually given significant pricing and marketing flexibility over more competitive services and the ability to retain earnings from these services. A hallmark of these alternative schemes is their multi-year nature: the utility is offered the opportunity to earn higher profits over, say, a two-to-five year period, in return for stricter regulatory controls on prices charged to core customers. The purpose of this article, based in large part on the telecommunications experience, is to describe why it is necessary to address customer service issues that are inherent in PBR and to provide the basic tools to create a customer service and reliability index that can be included in any alternative rate plan for a utilty.

A competence-based and multi-dimensional operationalization and measurement of employability.

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van der Heijde, C.M.; van der Heijden, B.I.J.M.

2006-01-01

Employability is a critical requirement for enabling both sustained competitive advantage at the firm level and career success at the individual level. We propose a competence-based approach to employability derived from an expansion of the resource-based view of the firm. In this contribution, we

5 CFR 315.603 - Appointment based on former incumbency of a position brought into the competitive service.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT CIVIL SERVICE REGULATIONS CAREER AND CAREER-CONDITIONAL EMPLOYMENT Career or Career-Conditional Appointment Under Special Authorities § 315.603 Appointment based on former... type of case from this requirement. (b) Review of disapproved recommendations. Agencies shall establish...

Optimum hospice at home services for end-of-life care: protocol of a mixed-methods study employing realist evaluation.

Science.gov (United States)

Butler, Claire; Brigden, Charlotte; Gage, Heather; Williams, Peter; Holdsworth, Laura; Greene, Kay; Wee, Bee; Barclay, Stephen; Wilson, Patricia

2018-05-16

Hospice at home (HAH) services aim to enable patients to be cared for and die in their place of choice, if that is at home, and to achieve a 'good death'. There is a considerable range of HAH services operating in England. The published evidence focuses on evaluations of individual services which vary considerably, and there is a lack of consistency in terms of the outcome measures reported. The evidence, therefore, does not provide generalisable information, so the question 'What are the features of hospice at home service models that work, for whom, and under what circumstances?' remains unanswered. The study aims to answer this question. This is a mixed-methods study in three phases informed by realist evaluation methodology. All HAH services in England will be invited to participate in a telephone survey to enable the development of a typology of services. In the second phase, case study sites representing the different service types will collect patient data and recruit carers, service managers and commissioners to gather quantitative and qualitative data about service provision and outcomes. A third phase will synthesise and refine the results through consensus workshops. The first survey phase has university ethics approval and the second phase, Integrated Research Application System (IRAS) and Health Research Authority (HRA) approval (IRAS ID:205986, REC:17/LO/0880); the third phase does not require ethics approval. Dissemination will be facilitated by project coapplicants with established connections to national policy-making forums, in addition to publications, conference presentations and reports targeted to service providers and commissioners. © Article author(s) (or their employer(s) unless otherwise stated in the text of the article) 2018. All rights reserved. No commercial use is permitted unless otherwise expressly granted.

Payroll tax reduction in Brazil : Effects on employment and wages

OpenAIRE

Scherer, Clóvis

2015-01-01

textabstractThis paper evaluates the effects of the elimination of a payroll tax on employment and wages in four manufacturing and service sectors in Brazil in early 2012. This tax, which accounted for 20 percent of the wage bill, was levied on employers and financed social security programmes. This study is based on administrative records from the Brazilian Ministry of Labour which contained information on formal employment contracts. Exploring the fact that the tax reform only covered firms...

Employability skills for the Romanian outsourcing industry

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Foerster-Pastor Foerster-Metz Ulrike Stefanie

2017-07-01

Full Text Available The Romanian outsourcing sector as part of the service sector has evolved enormously in the last decade in Romania. Foreign Direct Investments in this sector continue to grow, thus the sector employs more than 100.000 people in 2016 in Romania. However, companies claim not to get the right skills from employees which will allow them to move the latter from a purely service sector to more value-added services. Therefore, there is a need to generate a workforce with the necessary employability skills which will serve the industry, thus allowing the continuity of growth as well as permitting to be competitive in regards to other East European countries in the outsourcing industry as salaries rise in the Romanian industry and the industry is being pressured by the 4th industrial revolution. So far, many Romanian studies have been done reflecting the skills need from the sector by using in first instance the questionnaire methodology or global surveys mostly on a very holistic view. This paper shows a new approach by deriving the skills needed by employers from their own data base: mainly job descriptions published in companies or recruitment sites by analysis of job entry positions. This allows a close and accelerated approach to define skills needed without a too high time delay in addition it permits to understand if the outsourcing industry is moving towards digitalization. The job descriptions are analyzed by using the method of qualitative content analysis according to Mayring (2014 using specific criteria based on literature review of employability skills. Key findings show that there is a need for specific skills technical skills but a trend to a higher demand in soft skills.

Evaluating the effectiveness of Facebook to impact the knowledge of evidence-based employment practices by individuals with traumatic brain injury: A knowledge translation random control study.

Science.gov (United States)

Inge, Katherine J; Graham, Carolyn W; McLaughlin, James W; Erickson, Doug; Wehman, Paul; Seward, Hannah E

2017-09-14

Individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) experience difficulty with obtaining and maintaining employment post-injury. Although vocational rehabilitation (VR) can be one option to provide individuals with TBI support and services to lead to successful employment outcomes, information about these services can be difficult and confusing to navigate. Providing information on evidence-based employment practices to individuals with TBI through social media could be an effective approach. The objective of this study was to compare the effect of a knowledge translation (KT) strategy and the use of a secret Facebook group, on the knowledge of evidence-based employment research by individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI). The study used a randomized pretest-posttest control group design. Sixty individuals with TBI were recruited through clubhouse programs in the state where the authors resided as well as through support groups nationally for individuals with TBI, and were randomly assigned to one of two groups. Both groups received information on evidence-based employment practices for individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) over a three month period. One group received the information via participation in a secret Facebook group while the comparison group received information as an "e-news" email blast. Participants were assessed pre- and post-intervention with a Likert-scale instrument designed to measure knowledge of evidenced-based employment information for TBI. Both groups gained a significant amount of knowledge between baseline and post-intervention. However, there were no significant differences between groups in knowledge gained at post-intervention. While the study did not identify the most effective means of delivering information to individuals with TBI, it does provide some guidance for future KT research.

Database Aspects of Location-Based Services

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jensen, Christian Søndergaard

2004-01-01

in the databases underlying high-quality services. Several integrated representations - which capture different aspects of the same infrastructure - are needed. Further, all other content that can be related to geographical space must be integrated with the infrastructure representations. The chapter describes...... the general concepts underlying one approach to data modeling for location-based services. The chapter also covers techniques that are needed to keep a database for location-based services up to date with the reality it models. As part of this, caching is touched upon briefly. The notion of linear referencing......Adopting a data management perspective on location-based services, this chapter explores central challenges to data management posed by location-based services. Because service users typically travel in, and are constrained to, transportation infrastructures, such structures must be represented...

Introduction of a university-based counselling service for older adults.

Science.gov (United States)

Bhar, Sunil S; Silver, Mark

2014-03-01

Despite the growing number of older adults in Australia, many do not access counselling, partly because of the lack of trained mental health professionals for older people. This paper describes an innovative solution for providing counselling services to older adults, and geropsychology training to postgraduate psychology students. A university-based counselling clinic for older adults was described – an outreach service for older adults living in the community or in residential aged care facilities in metropolitan Melbourne, Australia. Over its first 13 months, the clinic provided a total of 266 sessions of counselling to 57 clients (41 living in residential aged care), and involved six postgraduate students. This paper describes the potential benefits of the clinic for clients and students and the resources needed to support this model of service delivery. Thus, it provides a blueprint for other universities for developing similar services for older adults.

26 CFR 31.3121(b)(10)-1 - Services for remuneration of less than $50 for calendar quarter in the employ of certain...

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... dates inclusive) A earns a total of $30. For services performed by certain student quarter B earns $180... inclusive), A earns a total of $60. Although all of the services performed by A during the first quarter...)(10)-2, relating to services performed by certain students in the employ of a school, college, or...

Multicriteria decision-making method based on a cosine similarity ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

the cosine similarity measure is often used in information retrieval, citation analysis, and automatic classification. However, it scarcely deals with trapezoidal fuzzy information and multicriteria decision-making problems. For this purpose, a cosine similarity measure between trapezoidal fuzzy numbers is proposed based on ...

A COMPARISON OF SEMANTIC SIMILARITY MODELS IN EVALUATING CONCEPT SIMILARITY

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Q. X. Xu

2012-08-01

Full Text Available The semantic similarities are important in concept definition, recognition, categorization, interpretation, and integration. Many semantic similarity models have been established to evaluate semantic similarities of objects or/and concepts. To find out the suitability and performance of different models in evaluating concept similarities, we make a comparison of four main types of models in this paper: the geometric model, the feature model, the network model, and the transformational model. Fundamental principles and main characteristics of these models are introduced and compared firstly. Land use and land cover concepts of NLCD92 are employed as examples in the case study. The results demonstrate that correlations between these models are very high for a possible reason that all these models are designed to simulate the similarity judgement of human mind.

Factors influencing the demand of the service of community based animal health care in Zimbabwe.

Science.gov (United States)

Mutambara, J; Dube, I; Matangi, E; Majeke, F

2013-11-01

This study was done to find out about animal health service providers and factors that determined demand for community based veterinary service delivery in smallholder sector of Zimbabwe. Focus group discussions and a questionnaire was used to collect data on veterinary services providers and socio-economic factors related to animal health from a sample (N=333) smallholder livestock farmers from Gutu district of Masvingo province in Zimbabwe. Analytical techniques used were descriptive statistics, K-mean cluster analysis and Tobit regression model. Results showed that the majority of farmers (45%) obtained services from both Community Based Animal Health Workers (CBAHWs) and Department of Veterinary Service (DVS), 25% DVS only, 20% used CBAHWs while 10% did not seek any services. Further analysis showed that distance to CBAHW, distance to AHMC and employment status were significantly related to demand for CBAHWs with coefficients of -1.5, 0.7 and -10.3, respectively. The study thus concluded that CBAHW is an alternative animal health service delivery approach already practiced in smallholder farming sectors of Zimbabwe. Socio-economic factors significantly influenced the demand for CBAHW services. Given limited resources by state sponsored veterinary services, it is recommended that the CBAHWs approach should be encouraged as supplementary service provider especially in areas further DVS. These community organizations can be empowered by the state to deliver more improved services based on hygiene and modern science at a relatively low cost to farmers. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Color-Based Image Retrieval from High-Similarity Image Databases

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hansen, Michael Adsetts Edberg; Carstensen, Jens Michael

2003-01-01

Many image classification problems can fruitfully be thought of as image retrieval in a "high similarity image database" (HSID) characterized by being tuned towards a specific application and having a high degree of visual similarity between entries that should be distinguished. We introduce...... a method for HSID retrieval using a similarity measure based on a linear combination of Jeffreys-Matusita (JM) distances between distributions of color (and color derivatives) estimated from a set of automatically extracted image regions. The weight coefficients are estimated based on optimal retrieval...... performance. Experimental results on the difficult task of visually identifying clones of fungal colonies grown in a petri dish and categorization of pelts show a high retrieval accuracy of the method when combined with standardized sample preparation and image acquisition....

26 CFR 31.3121(b)(3)-1 - Family employment.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... existence of a family relationship between the employee and the individual employing him. The exceptions are...) Services not in the course of the employer's trade or business, or domestic service in a private home of... son or daughter; (iii) Services not in the course of the employer's trade or business, or domestic...

78 FR 75471 - Section 3504 Agent Employment Tax Liability

Science.gov (United States)

2013-12-12

... 3504 Agent Employment Tax Liability AGENCY: Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Treasury. ACTION: Final... home care services, which are subject to taxes under the Federal Unemployment Tax Act. The final... the agent and employer are liable for the employment taxes and penalties associated with the employer...

Housing and Employment Outcomes for Mental Health Self-Direction Participants.

Science.gov (United States)

Croft, Bevin; İsvan, Nilüfer; Parish, Susan L; Mahoney, Kevin J

2018-05-15

In self-direction, participants control individual budgets, allocating service dollars according to needs and preferences within program parameters to meet self-defined recovery goals. Mental health self-direction is associated with enhanced wellness and recovery outcomes at lower or similar cost than traditional service arrangements. This study compared outcomes of housing independence and employment between individuals who participated in self-direction and those who did not. This quasi-experimental study involved administrative data from 271 self-directing participants. Using coarsened exact matching with observed demographic, diagnostic, and other characteristics, the authors constructed a comparison group of non-self-directing individuals (N=1,099). The likelihood of achieving positive outcomes between first and last assessments during the approximately four-year study period was compared for self-directing and non-self-directing individuals. Self-directing participants were more likely than nonparticipants to increase days worked for pay or maintain days worked at 20 or more days in the past 30 days (number needed to treat [NNT]=18; small effect size) and maintain or attain independent housing (NNT=16; small effect size), when analyses controlled, to the extent possible, for observed individual characteristics. Based on data from the nation's largest and longest-standing program of its kind, results suggest that mental health self-direction is associated with modest improvements or maintenance of positive outcomes in employment and housing independence. This research adds to the literature examining self-direction in the context of mental health and begins to fill the need for a greater understanding of self-direction's relationship to outcomes of interest to service users and families, providers, and system administrators.

Gender Differences in Vocational Rehabilitation Service Predictors of Successful Competitive Employment for Transition-Aged Individuals with Autism

Science.gov (United States)

Sung, Connie; Sánchez, Jennifer; Kuo, Hung-Jen; Wang, Chia-Chiang; Leahy, Michael J.

2015-01-01

As males and females with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience different symptomology, their needs for vocational rehabilitation (VR) are unique as they transition into adulthood. This study examined the effects of gender differences in VR service predictors on employment outcomes for transition-aged individuals with ASD. A total of 1696…

Evaluating the effectiveness of Washington state repeated job search services on the employment rate of prime-age female welfare recipients☆

Science.gov (United States)

Hsiao, Cheng; Shen, Yan; Wang, Boqing; Weeks, Greg

2014-01-01

This paper uses an unbalanced panel dataset to evaluate how repeated job search services (JSS) and personal characteristics affect the employment rate of the prime-age female welfare recipients in the State of Washington. We propose a transition probability model to take into account issues of sample attrition, sample refreshment and duration dependence. We also generalize Honoré and Kyriazidou’s [Honoré, B.E., Kyriazidou, E., 2000. Panel data discrete choice models with lagged dependent variables. Econometrica 68 (4), 839–874] conditional maximum likelihood estimator to allow for the presence of individual-specific effects. A limited information test is suggested to test for selection issues in non-experimental data. The specification tests indicate that the (conditional on the set of the confounding variables considered) assumptions of no selection due to unobservables and/or no unobserved individual-specific effects are not violated. Our findings indicate that the first job search service does have positive and significant impacts on the employment rate. However, providing repeated JSS to the same client has no significant impact. Further, we find that there are significant experience-enhancing effects. These findings suggest that providing one job search services training to individuals may have a lasting impact on raising their employment rates. PMID:26052178

Virtual reality job interview training and 6-month employment outcomes for individuals with schizophrenia seeking employment.

Science.gov (United States)

Smith, Matthew J; Fleming, Michael F; Wright, Michael A; Roberts, Andrea G; Humm, Laura Boteler; Olsen, Dale; Bell, Morris D

2015-08-01

Individuals with schizophrenia have low employment rates and the job interview presents a critical barrier for them to obtain employment. Virtual reality training has demonstrated efficacy at improving interview skills and employment outcomes among multiple clinical populations. However, the effects of this training on individuals with schizophrenia are unknown. This study evaluated the efficacy of virtual reality job interview training (VR-JIT) at improving job interview skills and employment outcomes among individuals with schizophrenia in a small randomized controlled trial (n=21 VR-JIT trainees, n=11 waitlist controls). Trainees completed up to 10h of virtual interviews using VR-JIT, while controls received services as usual. Primary outcome measures included two pre-test and two post-test video-recorded role-play interviews scored by blinded raters with expertise in human resources and self-reported interviewing self-confidence. Six-month follow-up data on employment outcomes were collected. Trainees reported that the intervention was easy-to-use, helpful, and prepared them for future interviews. Trainees demonstrated increased role-play scores between pre-test and post-test while controls did not (p=0.001). After accounting for neurocognition and months since prior employment, trainees had greater odds of receiving a job offer by 6month follow-up compared to controls (OR: 8.73, p=0.04) and more training was associated with fewer weeks until receiving a job offer (r=-0.63, pjob interview skills in individuals with schizophrenia. Moreover, trainees had greater odds of receiving a job offer by 6-month follow-up. Future studies could evaluate the effectiveness of VR-JIT within community-based services. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Promoting the freedom of thought of mental health service users: Nussbaum's capabilities approach meets values-based practice.

Science.gov (United States)

Stenlund, Mari

2017-08-09

This article clarifies how the freedom of thought as a human right can be understood and promoted as a right of mental health service users, especially people with psychotic disorder, by using Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach and Fulford's and Fulford et al 's values-based practice. According to Nussbaum, freedom of thought seems to primarily protect the capability to think, believe and feel. This capability can be promoted in the context of mental health services by values-based practice. The article points out that both Nussbaum's approach and values-based practice recognise that people's values differ. The idea of involving different actors and service users in mental healthcare is also common in both Nussbaum's approach and values-based practice. However, there are also differences in that values-based practice relies on a 'good process' in decision-making, whereas the capabilities approach is oriented towards a 'right outcome'. However, since process and outcome are linked with each other, these two approaches do not necessarily conflict despite this difference. The article suggests that absolute rights are possible within the two approaches. It also recognises that the capabilities approach, values-based practice and human rights approach lean on liberal values and thus can be combined at least in liberal societies. © Article author(s) (or their employer(s) unless otherwise stated in the text of the article) 2017. All rights reserved. No commercial use is permitted unless otherwise expressly granted.

A study of concept-based similarity approaches for recommending program examples

Science.gov (United States)

Hosseini, Roya; Brusilovsky, Peter

2017-07-01

This paper investigates a range of concept-based example recommendation approaches that we developed to provide example-based problem-solving support in the domain of programming. The goal of these approaches is to offer students a set of most relevant remedial examples when they have trouble solving a code comprehension problem where students examine a program code to determine its output or the final value of a variable. In this paper, we use the ideas of semantic-level similarity-based linking developed in the area of intelligent hypertext to generate examples for the given problem. To determine the best-performing approach, we explored two groups of similarity approaches for selecting examples: non-structural approaches focusing on examples that are similar to the problem in terms of concept coverage and structural approaches focusing on examples that are similar to the problem by the structure of the content. We also explored the value of personalized example recommendation based on student's knowledge levels and learning goal of the exercise. The paper presents concept-based similarity approaches that we developed, explains the data collection studies and reports the result of comparative analysis. The results of our analysis showed better ranking performance of the personalized structural variant of cosine similarity approach.

Web-Based Self-Service Systems for Managed IT Support: Service Provider Perspectives of Stakeholder-Based Issues

Science.gov (United States)

Cooper, Vanessa A.; Lichtenstein, Sharman; Smith, Ross

This chapter explores the provision of after-sales information technology (IT) support services using Web-based self-service systems (WSSs) in a business-to-business (B2B) context. A recent study conducted at six large multi-national IT support organisations revealed a number of critical success factors (CSFs) and stakeholder-based issues. To better identify and understand these important enablers and barriers, we explain how WSSs should be considered within a complex network of service providers, business partners and customer firms. The CSFs and stakeholder-based issues are discussed. The chapter highlights that for more successful service provision using WSSs, IT service providers should collaborate more effectively with enterprise customers and business partners and should better integrate their WSSs.

Effects of an Employer-Based Intervention on Employment Outcomes for Youth with Significant Support Needs Due to Autism

Science.gov (United States)

Wehman, Paul; Schall, Carol M.; McDonough, Jennifer; Graham, Carolyn; Brooke, Valerie; Riehle, J. Erin; Brooke, Alissa; Ham, Whitney; Lau, Stephanie; Allen, Jaclyn; Avellone, Lauren

2017-01-01

The purpose of this study was to develop and investigate an employer-based 9-month intervention for high school youth with autism spectrum disorder to learn job skills and acquire employment. The intervention modified a program titled Project SEARCH and incorporated the use of applied behavior analysis to develop Project SEARCH plus Autism…

Design of College Students’ employment management system based on WEB

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Cao Yu

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Since at the end of last century, our country cancelled the allocation of national college students employment, college graduates employment pressure also with the increasing trend of the expansion of enrollment in Colleges and universities. At the same time, it also greatly increased difficulty in the college students employment management, under this background, the traditional manual management mode obviously can not meet the required at present. In the information technology increasingly perfect today, how it has become an important task of university reform through the digital management information system technology research and development of College Students’ employment. In this paper, a management system based on Web Technology College Students Employment launches the analysis, aimed at through the information technology, to promote the management of information, efficient development, so as to provide an important reference for the employment decision.

26 CFR 31.3306(b)(7)-1 - Payments other than in cash for service not in the course of employer's trade or business.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY (CONTINUED) EMPLOYMENT TAXES AND COLLECTION OF INCOME... cash, such as lodging, food, or other goods or commodities, for service not in the course of the... 26 Internal Revenue 15 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Payments other than in cash for service not in...

26 CFR 31.3401(a)(11)-1 - Remuneration other than in cash for service not in the course of employer's trade or business.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... Revenue INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY (CONTINUED) EMPLOYMENT TAXES AND COLLECTION... Tax at Source § 31.3401(a)(11)-1 Remuneration other than in cash for service not in the course of... other than cash, such as lodging, food, or other goods or commodities, for services not in the course of...

Concurrence of rule- and similarity-based mechanisms in artificial grammar learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Opitz, Bertram; Hofmann, Juliane

2015-03-01

A current theoretical debate regards whether rule-based or similarity-based learning prevails during artificial grammar learning (AGL). Although the majority of findings are consistent with a similarity-based account of AGL it has been argued that these results were obtained only after limited exposure to study exemplars, and performance on subsequent grammaticality judgment tests has often been barely above chance level. In three experiments the conditions were investigated under which rule- and similarity-based learning could be applied. Participants were exposed to exemplars of an artificial grammar under different (implicit and explicit) learning instructions. The analysis of receiver operating characteristics (ROC) during a final grammaticality judgment test revealed that explicit but not implicit learning led to rule knowledge. It also demonstrated that this knowledge base is built up gradually while similarity knowledge governed the initial state of learning. Together these results indicate that rule- and similarity-based mechanisms concur during AGL. Moreover, it could be speculated that two different rule processes might operate in parallel; bottom-up learning via gradual rule extraction and top-down learning via rule testing. Crucially, the latter is facilitated by performance feedback that encourages explicit hypothesis testing. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment program--self-employment. Final rule.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-20

This document amends the vocational rehabilitation and employment regulations of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) concerning self-employment for individuals with qualifying disabilities. We are making changes to conform VA's regulations for self-employment programs for veterans, and for servicemembers awaiting discharge, to statutory provisions, including provisions limiting eligibility for certain supplies, equipment, stock, and license fees to individuals with the most severe service-connected disabilities. We are also making related changes in VA's regulations affecting eligibility for such assistance for certain veterans' children with birth defects in self-employment programs. In addition, we are amending our regulations regarding the approval authority for self-employment plans to make certain requirements less restrictive and less burdensome, to remove a vague and overly broad requirement, to make changes to reflect longstanding VA policy, and to make nonsubstantive clarifying changes.

The effect of performance related pay in employment services

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sofie Johansen, Ann; Holm, Anders; Rosdahl, Anders

This paper investigates the effects of performance-related pay (PRP) in Danish local employment administration on unemployed social clients’ employment outcomes. PRP implies here that employees in the employment administration are rewarded each time a social client gets a job. There are different...... schemes involved in the programme – schemes with collective payoffs and schemes with private payoffs and schemes with monetary payoffs and non-monetary payoffs, such as training activities. The main conclusion is that PRP seems to promote employment chances of social clients. Especially it seems that PRP...

EMPLOYING DECENTRING TO ASSESS QUALITY OF SERVICES AND ITS CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS SATISFACTION

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Usman YOUSAF

2012-01-01

Full Text Available The higher education scenario in Pakistan has gone through tremendous changes and improvements in the last decade. Competition resulting from a sudden surge in the number of higher education imparting institutions and the active role of Higher Education Commission has increased the pressure on the universities to continuously enhance the quality of educational services being provided by them. The aim of the researchers in this endeavor is to employ decentering in order to assess the quality of services being provided by the universities. The study has used the SERVQUAL tool by Parasuraman, Zeithmal and Berry (1991 on a five point Liker scale in order to gauge the responses of the students. Analysis was conducted on a total of 156 valid questionnaires. The sample included the students of the top five HEC (Higher Education Commission recognized universities in the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Data was analyzed using Pearson correlation and regression. Factor analysis was also carried out so as to classify the most important dimensions for the students with respect to higher education in Pakistan. Statistical analysis disclosed a positive and significant association between service quality and customer satisfaction. The factor analysis revealed that the most significant dimension with respect to the Pakistan’s higher education sector are the level of management support, responsiveness of the service providers and the adequacy of physical facilities. The study highlights the importance of treating students as valued customers as the competition in the industry along with the regulatory requirements of HEC as well. The service providers need to be provided adequate support and backing of the top management. The physical facilities and the infrastructure must also be adequate enough to meet the growing and ever changing demands of the industry. The current study is the first of its kind that covers the higher education imparting

Adolescent school absenteeism and service use in a population-based study.

Science.gov (United States)

Askeland, Kristin Gärtner; Haugland, Siren; Stormark, Kjell Morten; Bøe, Tormod; Hysing, Mari

2015-07-09

School absenteeism is linked to a range of health concerns, health risk behaviors and school dropout. It is therefore important to evaluate the extent to which adolescents with absenteeism are in contact with health care and other services. The aim of the current study was to investigate service use of Norwegian adolescents with moderate and high absenteeism in comparison to students with lower rates of absence. The study employs data from a population-based study from 2012 targeting all pupils in upper secondary education in Hordaland County, Norway (the youth@hordaland-survey). A total of 8988 adolescents between the ages of 16 and 18 were included in the present study. Information on service use was based on adolescent self-report data collected in the youth@hordaland-survey. Absence data was collected using administrative data provided by the Hordaland County Council. High absence (defined as being absent 15% or more the past semester) was found among 10.1% of the adolescents. Compared to their peers with low absence (less than 3% absence the past semester), adolescents with high absence were more likely to be in contact with all the services studied, including mental health services (odds ratio (OR) 3.96), adolescent health clinics (OR 2.11) and their general practitioner (GP) (OR 1.94). Frequency of contact was higher among adolescents with moderate and high absence and there seems to be a gradient of service use corresponding to the level of absence. Still, 40% of the adolescents with high absence had not been in contact with any services. Adolescents with high absence had increased use of services, although a group of youth at risk seems to be without such contact. This finding suggests a potential to address school absenteeism through systematic collaboration between schools and health personnel.

Combinational Services for NGN based IPTV

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Mikóczy, E.; Schumann, S.; Stokking, H.M.; Deventer, M.O. van; Niamut, O.A.

2009-01-01

This paper describes the general concept of combinational/blended services for IP-based Television (IPTV) services in next generation networks towards its service oriented architecture concept (SOA). Besides introducing general approaches of service reusability (SOA concepts), the service enables

Similarity Structure of Wave-Collapse

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Rypdal, Kristoffer; Juul Rasmussen, Jens; Thomsen, Kenneth

1985-01-01

Similarity transformations of the cubic Schrödinger equation (CSE) are investigated. The transformations are used to remove the explicit time variation in the CSE and reduce it to differential equations in the spatial variables only. Two different methods for similarity reduction are employed and...

Privacy-Preserving Location-Based Services

Science.gov (United States)

Chow, Chi Yin

2010-01-01

Location-based services (LBS for short) providers require users' current locations to answer their location-based queries, e.g., range and nearest-neighbor queries. Revealing personal location information to potentially untrusted service providers could create privacy risks for users. To this end, our objective is to design a privacy-preserving…

SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE DESIGN OF GIS WEB SERVICE AGGREGATION BASED ON SERVICE GROUP

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

J.-C. Liu

2012-08-01

Full Text Available Based on the analysis of research status of domestic and international GIS web service aggregation and development tendency of public platform of GIS web service, the paper designed software architecture of GIS web service aggregation based on GIS web service group. Firstly, using heterogeneous GIS services model, the software architecture converted a variety of heterogeneous services to a unified interface of GIS services, and divided different types of GIS services into different service groups referring to description of GIS services. Secondly, a service aggregation process model was designed. This model completed the task of specific service aggregation instance, by automatically selecting member GIS Web services in the same service group. Dynamic capabilities and automatic adaptation of GIS Web services aggregation process were achieved. Thirdly, this paper designed a service evaluation model of GIS web service aggregation based on service group from three aspects, i.e. GIS Web Service itself, networking conditions and service consumer. This model implemented effective quality evaluation and performance monitoring of GIS web service aggregation. It could be used to guide the execution, monitor and service selection of aggregation process. Therefore, robustness of aggregated GIS web service was improved. Finally, the software architecture has been widely used in public platform of GIS web service and a number of geo-spatial framework constructions for digital city in Sichuan Province, and aggregated various GIS web services such as World Map(National Public Platform of Geo-spatial Service, ArcGIS, SuperMap, MapGIS, NewMap etc. Applications of items showed that this software architecture was practicability.

A grammar-based semantic similarity algorithm for natural language sentences.

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, Ming Che; Chang, Jia Wei; Hsieh, Tung Cheng

2014-01-01

This paper presents a grammar and semantic corpus based similarity algorithm for natural language sentences. Natural language, in opposition to "artificial language", such as computer programming languages, is the language used by the general public for daily communication. Traditional information retrieval approaches, such as vector models, LSA, HAL, or even the ontology-based approaches that extend to include concept similarity comparison instead of cooccurrence terms/words, may not always determine the perfect matching while there is no obvious relation or concept overlap between two natural language sentences. This paper proposes a sentence similarity algorithm that takes advantage of corpus-based ontology and grammatical rules to overcome the addressed problems. Experiments on two famous benchmarks demonstrate that the proposed algorithm has a significant performance improvement in sentences/short-texts with arbitrary syntax and structure.

A similarity based agglomerative clustering algorithm in networks

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Zhiyuan; Wang, Xiujuan; Ma, Yinghong

2018-04-01

The detection of clusters is benefit for understanding the organizations and functions of networks. Clusters, or communities, are usually groups of nodes densely interconnected but sparsely linked with any other clusters. To identify communities, an efficient and effective community agglomerative algorithm based on node similarity is proposed. The proposed method initially calculates similarities between each pair of nodes, and form pre-partitions according to the principle that each node is in the same community as its most similar neighbor. After that, check each partition whether it satisfies community criterion. For the pre-partitions who do not satisfy, incorporate them with others that having the biggest attraction until there are no changes. To measure the attraction ability of a partition, we propose an attraction index that based on the linked node's importance in networks. Therefore, our proposed method can better exploit the nodes' properties and network's structure. To test the performance of our algorithm, both synthetic and empirical networks ranging in different scales are tested. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can obtain superior clustering results compared with six other widely used community detection algorithms.

Fast Depiction Invariant Visual Similarity for Content Based Image Retrieval Based on Data-driven Visual Similarity using Linear Discriminant Analysis

Science.gov (United States)

Wihardi, Y.; Setiawan, W.; Nugraha, E.

2018-01-01

On this research we try to build CBIRS based on Learning Distance/Similarity Function using Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) and Histogram of Oriented Gradient (HoG) feature. Our method is invariant to depiction of image, such as similarity of image to image, sketch to image, and painting to image. LDA can decrease execution time compared to state of the art method, but it still needs an improvement in term of accuracy. Inaccuracy in our experiment happen because we did not perform sliding windows search and because of low number of negative samples as natural-world images.

The impact of robotics on employment and motivation of employees in the service sector, with special reference to health care.

Science.gov (United States)

Qureshi, Mohammed Owais; Syed, Rumaiya Sajjad

2014-12-01

The economy is being lifted by the new concept of robotics, but we cannot be sure of all the possible benefits. At this early stage, it therefore becomes important to find out the possible benefits/limitations associated with robotics, so that the positives can be capitalized, established, and developed further for the employment and motivation of employees in the health care sector, for overall economic development. The negatives should also be further studied and mitigated. This study is an exploratory research, based on secondary data, such as books on topics related to robotics, websites, public websites of concerned departments for data and statistics, journals, newspapers and magazines, websites of health care providers, and different printed materials (brochures, etc). The impact of robotics has both positive and negative impacts on the employment and motivation of employees in the retail sector. So far, there has been no substantial research done into robotics, especially in the health care sector. Replacing employees with robots is an inevitable choice for organizations in the service sector, more so in the health care sector because of the challenging and sometimes unhealthy working environments, but, at the same time, the researchers propose that it should be done in a manner that helps in improving the employment and motivation of employees in this sector.

Service quality, trust, and patient satisfaction in interpersonal-based medical service encounters.

Science.gov (United States)

Chang, Ching-Sheng; Chen, Su-Yueh; Lan, Yi-Ting

2013-01-16

Interaction between service provider and customer is the primary core of service businesses of different natures, and the influence of trust on service quality and customer satisfaction could not be ignored in interpersonal-based service encounters. However, lack of existing literature on the correlation between service quality, patient trust, and satisfaction from the prospect of interpersonal-based medical service encounters has created a research gap in previous studies. Therefore, this study attempts to bridge such a gap with an evidence-based practice study. We adopted a cross-sectional design using a questionnaire survey of outpatients in seven medical centers of Taiwan. Three hundred and fifty copies of questionnaire were distributed, and 285 valid copies were retrieved, with a valid response rate of 81.43%. The SPSS 14.0 and AMOS 14.0 (structural equation modeling) statistical software packages were used for analysis. Structural equation modeling clarifies the extent of relationships between variables as well as the chain of cause and effect. Restated, SEM results do not merely show empirical relationships between variables when defining the practical situation. For this reason, SEM was used to test the hypotheses. Perception of interpersonal-based medical service encounters positively influences service quality and patient satisfaction. Perception of service quality among patients positively influences their trust. Perception of trust among patients positively influences their satisfaction. According to the findings, as interpersonal-based medical service encounters will positively influence service quality and patient satisfaction, and the differences for patients' perceptions of the professional skill and communication attitude of personnel in interpersonal-based medical service encounters will influence patients' overall satisfaction in two ways: (A) interpersonal-based medical service encounter directly affects patient satisfaction, which represents a

Service quality, trust, and patient satisfaction in interpersonal-based medical service encounters

Science.gov (United States)

2013-01-01

Background Interaction between service provider and customer is the primary core of service businesses of different natures, and the influence of trust on service quality and customer satisfaction could not be ignored in interpersonal-based service encounters. However, lack of existing literature on the correlation between service quality, patient trust, and satisfaction from the prospect of interpersonal-based medical service encounters has created a research gap in previous studies. Therefore, this study attempts to bridge such a gap with an evidence-based practice study. Methods We adopted a cross-sectional design using a questionnaire survey of outpatients in seven medical centers of Taiwan. Three hundred and fifty copies of questionnaire were distributed, and 285 valid copies were retrieved, with a valid response rate of 81.43%. The SPSS 14.0 and AMOS 14.0 (structural equation modeling) statistical software packages were used for analysis. Structural equation modeling clarifies the extent of relationships between variables as well as the chain of cause and effect. Restated, SEM results do not merely show empirical relationships between variables when defining the practical situation. For this reason, SEM was used to test the hypotheses. Results Perception of interpersonal-based medical service encounters positively influences service quality and patient satisfaction. Perception of service quality among patients positively influences their trust. Perception of trust among patients positively influences their satisfaction. Conclusions According to the findings, as interpersonal-based medical service encounters will positively influence service quality and patient satisfaction, and the differences for patients’ perceptions of the professional skill and communication attitude of personnel in interpersonal-based medical service encounters will influence patients’ overall satisfaction in two ways: (A) interpersonal-based medical service encounter directly

Service quality, trust, and patient satisfaction in interpersonal-based medical service encounters

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Chang Ching-Sheng

2013-01-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Interaction between service provider and customer is the primary core of service businesses of different natures, and the influence of trust on service quality and customer satisfaction could not be ignored in interpersonal-based service encounters. However, lack of existing literature on the correlation between service quality, patient trust, and satisfaction from the prospect of interpersonal-based medical service encounters has created a research gap in previous studies. Therefore, this study attempts to bridge such a gap with an evidence-based practice study. Methods We adopted a cross-sectional design using a questionnaire survey of outpatients in seven medical centers of Taiwan. Three hundred and fifty copies of questionnaire were distributed, and 285 valid copies were retrieved, with a valid response rate of 81.43%. The SPSS 14.0 and AMOS 14.0 (structural equation modeling statistical software packages were used for analysis. Structural equation modeling clarifies the extent of relationships between variables as well as the chain of cause and effect. Restated, SEM results do not merely show empirical relationships between variables when defining the practical situation. For this reason, SEM was used to test the hypotheses. Results Perception of interpersonal-based medical service encounters positively influences service quality and patient satisfaction. Perception of service quality among patients positively influences their trust. Perception of trust among patients positively influences their satisfaction. Conclusions According to the findings, as interpersonal-based medical service encounters will positively influence service quality and patient satisfaction, and the differences for patients’ perceptions of the professional skill and communication attitude of personnel in interpersonal-based medical service encounters will influence patients’ overall satisfaction in two ways: (A interpersonal-based medical

Participation in a US community-based cardiovascular health study: investigating nonrandom selection effects related to employment, perceived stress, work-related stress, and family caregiving.

Science.gov (United States)

MacDonald, Leslie A; Fujishiro, Kaori; Howard, Virginia J; Landsbergis, Paul; Hein, Misty J

2017-09-01

Participation in health studies may be inversely associated with employment and stress. We investigated whether employment, perceived stress, work-related stress, and family caregiving were related to participation in a longitudinal US community-based health study of black and white men and women aged ≥45 years. Prevalence ratios and confidence intervals were estimated for completion of the second stage (S2) of a two-stage enrollment process by employment (status, type), and stress (perceived stress, work-related stress, caregiving), adjusting for age, sex, race, region, income, and education. Eligibility and consent for a follow-up occupational survey were similarly evaluated. Wage- but not self-employed participants were less likely than the unemployed to complete S2. Among the employed, S2 completion did not vary by stress; however, family caregivers with a short time burden of care (stress levels. Limited evidence of selection bias was seen by employment and stress within a large US community-based cohort, but findings suggest the need for enrollment procedures to consider possible barriers to participation among wage-employed individuals. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Examining pre-service teacher views on the implementation of screen-based writing instruction

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mehmet Tok

2015-03-01

Full Text Available Today, as new technological developments continue to emerge, education, like many other fields, is going through major changes. Technological developments are causing changes to many common concepts. In particular, studies that benefit from technology in the field of education are becoming increasingly widespread, opening the door for the emergence of new teaching methods by abandoning traditional ones. New technologies, and computers in particular, can benefit the teaching of writing, the most complex of the four basic language skills (reading, writing, speaking, and listening. This study aims to explore pre-service teachers' views on screen-based writing practices via a course they attended. A qualitative case study method (holistic single-case design was employed to explore pre-service teachers’ views. The study participants were selected using a purposeful sampling method among 4th year students majoring in Turkish Language Teaching at a major state university. The study group consisted of sixty-two pre-service teachers who were enrolled in the “Written Expression” I and II courses in the 2013-2014 education year. The study was conducted both in Fall and Spring semesters. All writing activities were conducted in a digital environment. The study results revealed that a majority (77% of the pre-service teachers favored continuation of the screen-based writing instruction. The study supported that digital literacy is important and the advantages of screen-based writing instruction outweighed its disadvantages. Screen-based writing activities should be integrated into the courses and instruction materials of pre-service Turkish teachers’ education programs.

45 CFR 1624.6 - Employment.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... 45 Public Welfare 4 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Employment. 1624.6 Section 1624.6 Public Welfare... DISCRIMINATION ON THE BASIS OF DISABILITY § 1624.6 Employment. (a) No qualified person with a disability shall, on the basis of disability, be subjected to discrimination in employment by any legal services...

Employment Competence based Management to enhance Training Effectiveness

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Le Goff, Solenn; Ristol, Santi; Estévez, José Antonio

2006-01-01

Please, cite this publication as: Le Goff, S., Ristol, S., & Estévez, J.A. (2006). Employing Competence based Management to enhance Training Effectiveness. Proceedings of International Workshop in Learning Networks for Lifelong Competence Development, TENCompetence Conference. March 30th-31st,

Pre-Employment Laboratory Education. Food Service Guidebook.

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Texas Tech Univ., Lubbock. Home Economics Instructional Materials Center.

This guidebook is designed for use in teaching students enrolled in preemployment laboratory education (PELE) food service programs. The first of two major sections includes an overview for teachers on planning, conducting, and evaluating a PELE food service program. Specific topics discussed in section 1 include (1) facilities and equipment, (2)…

A Grammar-Based Semantic Similarity Algorithm for Natural Language Sentences

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Chang, Jia Wei; Hsieh, Tung Cheng

2014-01-01

This paper presents a grammar and semantic corpus based similarity algorithm for natural language sentences. Natural language, in opposition to “artificial language”, such as computer programming languages, is the language used by the general public for daily communication. Traditional information retrieval approaches, such as vector models, LSA, HAL, or even the ontology-based approaches that extend to include concept similarity comparison instead of cooccurrence terms/words, may not always determine the perfect matching while there is no obvious relation or concept overlap between two natural language sentences. This paper proposes a sentence similarity algorithm that takes advantage of corpus-based ontology and grammatical rules to overcome the addressed problems. Experiments on two famous benchmarks demonstrate that the proposed algorithm has a significant performance improvement in sentences/short-texts with arbitrary syntax and structure. PMID:24982952

A Grammar-Based Semantic Similarity Algorithm for Natural Language Sentences

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ming Che Lee

2014-01-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a grammar and semantic corpus based similarity algorithm for natural language sentences. Natural language, in opposition to “artificial language”, such as computer programming languages, is the language used by the general public for daily communication. Traditional information retrieval approaches, such as vector models, LSA, HAL, or even the ontology-based approaches that extend to include concept similarity comparison instead of cooccurrence terms/words, may not always determine the perfect matching while there is no obvious relation or concept overlap between two natural language sentences. This paper proposes a sentence similarity algorithm that takes advantage of corpus-based ontology and grammatical rules to overcome the addressed problems. Experiments on two famous benchmarks demonstrate that the proposed algorithm has a significant performance improvement in sentences/short-texts with arbitrary syntax and structure.

A Web service substitution method based on service cluster nets

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Du, YuYue; Gai, JunJing; Zhou, MengChu

2017-11-01

Service substitution is an important research topic in the fields of Web services and service-oriented computing. This work presents a novel method to analyse and substitute Web services. A new concept, called a Service Cluster Net Unit, is proposed based on Web service clusters. A service cluster is converted into a Service Cluster Net Unit. Then it is used to analyse whether the services in the cluster can satisfy some service requests. Meanwhile, the substitution methods of an atomic service and a composite service are proposed. The correctness of the proposed method is proved, and the effectiveness is shown and compared with the state-of-the-art method via an experiment. It can be readily applied to e-commerce service substitution to meet the business automation needs.

PKI-based secure mobile access to electronic health services and data.

Science.gov (United States)

Kambourakis, G; Maglogiannis, I; Rouskas, A

2005-01-01

Recent research works examine the potential employment of public-key cryptography schemes in e-health environments. In such systems, where a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is established beforehand, Attribute Certificates (ACs) and public key enabled protocols like TLS, can provide the appropriate mechanisms to effectively support authentication, authorization and confidentiality services. In other words, mutual trust and secure communications between all the stakeholders, namely physicians, patients and e-health service providers, can be successfully established and maintained. Furthermore, as the recently introduced mobile devices with access to computer-based patient record systems are expanding, the need of physicians and nurses to interact increasingly with such systems arises. Considering public key infrastructure requirements for mobile online health networks, this paper discusses the potential use of Attribute Certificates (ACs) in an anticipated trust model. Typical trust interactions among doctors, patients and e-health providers are presented, indicating that resourceful security mechanisms and trust control can be obtained and implemented. The application of attribute certificates to support medical mobile service provision along with the utilization of the de-facto TLS protocol to offer competent confidentiality and authorization services is also presented and evaluated through experimentation, using both the 802.11 WLAN and General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) networks.

Dynamic selection mechanism for quality of service aware web services

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D'Mello, Demian Antony; Ananthanarayana, V. S.

2010-02-01

A web service is an interface of the software component that can be accessed by standard Internet protocols. The web service technology enables an application to application communication and interoperability. The increasing number of web service providers throughout the globe have produced numerous web services providing the same or similar functionality. This necessitates the use of tools and techniques to search the suitable services available over the Web. UDDI (universal description, discovery and integration) is the first initiative to find the suitable web services based on the requester's functional demands. However, the requester's requirements may also include non-functional aspects like quality of service (QoS). In this paper, the authors define a QoS model for QoS aware and business driven web service publishing and selection. The authors propose a QoS requirement format for the requesters, to specify their complex demands on QoS for the web service selection. The authors define a tree structure called quality constraint tree (QCT) to represent the requester's variety of requirements on QoS properties having varied preferences. The paper proposes a QoS broker based architecture for web service selection, which facilitates the requesters to specify their QoS requirements to select qualitatively optimal web service. A web service selection algorithm is presented, which ranks the functionally similar web services based on the degree of satisfaction of the requester's QoS requirements and preferences. The paper defines web service provider qualities to distinguish qualitatively competitive web services. The paper also presents the modelling and selection mechanism for the requester's alternative constraints defined on the QoS. The authors implement the QoS broker based system to prove the correctness of the proposed web service selection mechanism.

Extending the similarity-based XML multicast approach with digital signatures

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Azzini, Antonia; Marrara, Stefania; Jensen, Meiko

2009-01-01

This paper investigates the interplay between similarity-based SOAP message aggregation and digital signature application. An overview on the approaches resulting from the different orders for the tasks of signature application, verification, similarity aggregation and splitting is provided....... Depending on the intersection between similarity-aggregated and signed SOAP message parts, the paper discusses three different cases of signature application, and sketches their applicability and performance implications....

Institutionalized Employer Collective Action

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ibsen, Christian Lyhne; Navrbjerg, Steen Erik

2016-01-01

Recent studies show that employer associations continue to exist in new ways despite internationalisation of the economy, liberalisation of markets and the decline of trade unions. This paradox raises two questions regarding EOs in today’s labour markets: Which employers join employer associations...... and what kind of services do EOs offer employers? This article explores these questions using two comprehensive surveys on EOs in Denmark – a prominent case of coordinated market economies. The main finding of the analyses is that collective activities vis-à-vis trade unions and government are still...

Semantic Web based Self-management for a Pervasive Service Middleware

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Zhang, Weishan; Hansen, Klaus Marius

2008-01-01

Self-management is one of the challenges for realizing ambient intelligence in pervasive computing. In this paper,we propose and present a semantic Web based self-management approach for a pervasive service middleware where dynamic context information is encoded in a set of self-management context...... ontologies. The proposed approach is justified from the characteristics of pervasive computing and the open world assumption and reasoning potentials of semantic Web and its rule language. To enable real-time self-management, application level and network level state reporting is employed in our approach....... State changes are triggering execution of self-management rules for adaption, monitoring, diagnosis, and so on. Evaluations of self-diagnosis in terms of extensibility, performance,and scalability show that the semantic Web based self-management approach is effective to achieve the self-diagnosis goals...

The potential of technology for enhancing individual placement and support supported employment.

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Lord, Sarah E; McGurk, Susan R; Nicholson, Joanne; Carpenter-Song, Elizabeth A; Tauscher, Justin S; Becker, Deborah R; Swanson, Sarah J; Drake, Robert E; Bond, Gary R

2014-06-01

The potential of technology to enhance delivery and outcomes of Individual Placement and Support (IPS) supported employment. IPS supported employment has demonstrated robust success for improving rates of competitive employment among individuals with psychiatric disabilities. Still, a majority of those with serious mental illnesses are not employed (Bond, Drake, & Becker, 2012). The need to promote awareness of IPS and expand services is urgent. In this study, we describe ways that technologies may enhance delivery of IPS supported employment across the care continuum and stakeholder groups. Directions for research are highlighted. published literature, clinical observations, IPS learning collaborative. Technology has the potential to enhance direct service as well as workflow in the IPS supported employment process, which may lead to improved fidelity and client outcomes. Mobile and cloud technologies open opportunities for collaboration, self-directed care, and ongoing support to help clients obtain and maintain meaningful employment. Research is needed to evaluate efficacy of technology-based approaches for promoting client employment outcomes, to identify provider and organization barriers to using technology for IPS delivery, and to determine effective strategies for implementing technology with IPS in different settings and with diverse client audiences.

Does Supported Employment Work?

Science.gov (United States)

Morgan McInnes, Melayne; Ozturk, Orgul Demet; McDermott, Suzanne; Mann, Joshua R.

2010-01-01

Providing employment-related services, including supported employment through job coaches, has been a priority in federal policy since the enactment of the Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act in 1984. We take advantage of a unique panel data set of all clients served by the South Carolina Department of Disabilities and…

Random walk-based similarity measure method for patterns in complex object

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Liu Shihu

2017-04-01

Full Text Available This paper discusses the similarity of the patterns in complex objects. The complex object is composed both of the attribute information of patterns and the relational information between patterns. Bearing in mind the specificity of complex object, a random walk-based similarity measurement method for patterns is constructed. In this method, the reachability of any two patterns with respect to the relational information is fully studied, and in the case of similarity of patterns with respect to the relational information can be calculated. On this bases, an integrated similarity measurement method is proposed, and algorithms 1 and 2 show the performed calculation procedure. One can find that this method makes full use of the attribute information and relational information. Finally, a synthetic example shows that our proposed similarity measurement method is validated.

A Framework for Sharing and Integrating Remote Sensing and GIS Models Based on Web Service

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Chen, Zeqiang; Lin, Hui; Chen, Min; Liu, Deer; Bao, Ying; Ding, Yulin

2014-01-01

Sharing and integrating Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographic Information System/Science (GIS) models are critical for developing practical application systems. Facilitating model sharing and model integration is a problem for model publishers and model users, respectively. To address this problem, a framework based on a Web service for sharing and integrating RS and GIS models is proposed in this paper. The fundamental idea of the framework is to publish heterogeneous RS and GIS models into standard Web services for sharing and interoperation and then to integrate the RS and GIS models using Web services. For the former, a “black box” and a visual method are employed to facilitate the publishing of the models as Web services. For the latter, model integration based on the geospatial workflow and semantic supported marching method is introduced. Under this framework, model sharing and integration is applied for developing the Pearl River Delta water environment monitoring system. The results show that the framework can facilitate model sharing and model integration for model publishers and model users. PMID:24901016

A framework for sharing and integrating remote sensing and GIS models based on Web service.

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Zeqiang; Lin, Hui; Chen, Min; Liu, Deer; Bao, Ying; Ding, Yulin

2014-01-01

Sharing and integrating Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographic Information System/Science (GIS) models are critical for developing practical application systems. Facilitating model sharing and model integration is a problem for model publishers and model users, respectively. To address this problem, a framework based on a Web service for sharing and integrating RS and GIS models is proposed in this paper. The fundamental idea of the framework is to publish heterogeneous RS and GIS models into standard Web services for sharing and interoperation and then to integrate the RS and GIS models using Web services. For the former, a "black box" and a visual method are employed to facilitate the publishing of the models as Web services. For the latter, model integration based on the geospatial workflow and semantic supported marching method is introduced. Under this framework, model sharing and integration is applied for developing the Pearl River Delta water environment monitoring system. The results show that the framework can facilitate model sharing and model integration for model publishers and model users.

Efficient Algorithm for Computing Link-based Similarity in Real World Networks

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Cai, Yuanzhe; Cong, Gao; Xu, Jia

2009-01-01

Similarity calculation has many applications, such as information retrieval, and collaborative filtering, among many others. It has been shown that link-based similarity measure, such as SimRank, is very effective in characterizing the object similarities in networks, such as the Web, by exploiti...

Development of an Innovation Model Based on a Service-Oriented Product Service System (PSS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Seungkyum Kim

2015-10-01

Full Text Available Recently, there have been many attempts to cope with increasingly-diversified and ever-changing customer needs by combining products and services that are critical components of innovation models. Although not only manufacturers, but also service providers, try to integrate products and services, most of the previous studies on Product Service System (PSS development deal with how to effectively integrate services into products from the product-centric point of view. Services provided by manufacturers’ PSSes, such as delivery services, training services, disposal services, and so on, offer customers ancillary value, whereas products of service providers’ PSSes enrich core value by enhancing the functionality and quality of the service. Thus, designing an effective PSS development process from the service-centric point of view is an important research topic. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to propose a service-oriented PSS development process, which consists of four stages: (1 strategic planning; (2 idea generation and selection; (3 service design; and (4 product development. In the proposed approach, the PSS development project is initiated and led by a service provider from a service-centric point of view. From the perspective of methodology, customer needs are converted into product functions according to Quality Function Deployment (QFD, while Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP is employed to prioritize the functions. Additionally, this paper illustrates a service-oriented PSS development that demonstrates the application of the proposed process. The proposed process and illustration are expected to serve as a foundation for research on service-oriented PSS development and as a useful guideline for service providers who are considering the development of a service-oriented PSS.

Investigation of psychophysical similarity measures for selection of similar images in the diagnosis of clustered microcalcifications on mammograms

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Muramatsu, Chisako; Li Qiang; Schmidt, Robert; Shiraishi, Junji; Doi, Kunio

2008-01-01

The presentation of images with lesions of known pathology that are similar to an unknown lesion may be helpful to radiologists in the diagnosis of challenging cases for improving the diagnostic accuracy and also for reducing variation among different radiologists. The authors have been developing a computerized scheme for automatically selecting similar images with clustered microcalcifications on mammograms from a large database. For similar images to be useful, they must be similar from the point of view of the diagnosing radiologists. In order to select such images, subjective similarity ratings were obtained for a number of pairs of clustered microcalcifications by breast radiologists for establishment of a ''gold standard'' of image similarity, and the gold standard was employed for determination and evaluation of the selection of similar images. The images used in this study were obtained from the Digital Database for Screening Mammography developed by the University of South Florida. The subjective similarity ratings for 300 pairs of images with clustered microcalcifications were determined by ten breast radiologists. The authors determined a number of image features which represent the characteristics of clustered microcalcifications that radiologists would use in their diagnosis. For determination of objective similarity measures, an artificial neural network (ANN) was employed. The ANN was trained with the average subjective similarity ratings as teacher and selected image features as input data. The ANN was trained to learn the relationship between the image features and the radiologists' similarity ratings; therefore, once the training was completed, the ANN was able to determine the similarity, called a psychophysical similarity measure, which was expected to be close to radiologists' impressions, for an unknown pair of clustered microcalcifications. By use of a leave-one-out test method, the best combination of features was selected. The correlation

Investigation of psychophysical similarity measures for selection of similar images in the diagnosis of clustered microcalcifications on mammograms

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Muramatsu, Chisako; Li Qiang; Schmidt, Robert; Shiraishi, Junji; Doi, Kunio [Department of Radiology, University of Chicago, 5841 South Maryland Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60637 (United States) and Department of Intelligent Image Information, Gifu University, 1-1 Yanagido, Gifu (Japan); Department of Radiology, Duke Advanced Imaging Labs, Duke University, 2424 Erwin Road, Suite 302, Durham, North Carolina 27705 (United States); Department of Radiology, University of Chicago, 5841 South Maryland Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60637 (United States)

2008-12-15

The presentation of images with lesions of known pathology that are similar to an unknown lesion may be helpful to radiologists in the diagnosis of challenging cases for improving the diagnostic accuracy and also for reducing variation among different radiologists. The authors have been developing a computerized scheme for automatically selecting similar images with clustered microcalcifications on mammograms from a large database. For similar images to be useful, they must be similar from the point of view of the diagnosing radiologists. In order to select such images, subjective similarity ratings were obtained for a number of pairs of clustered microcalcifications by breast radiologists for establishment of a ''gold standard'' of image similarity, and the gold standard was employed for determination and evaluation of the selection of similar images. The images used in this study were obtained from the Digital Database for Screening Mammography developed by the University of South Florida. The subjective similarity ratings for 300 pairs of images with clustered microcalcifications were determined by ten breast radiologists. The authors determined a number of image features which represent the characteristics of clustered microcalcifications that radiologists would use in their diagnosis. For determination of objective similarity measures, an artificial neural network (ANN) was employed. The ANN was trained with the average subjective similarity ratings as teacher and selected image features as input data. The ANN was trained to learn the relationship between the image features and the radiologists' similarity ratings; therefore, once the training was completed, the ANN was able to determine the similarity, called a psychophysical similarity measure, which was expected to be close to radiologists' impressions, for an unknown pair of clustered microcalcifications. By use of a leave-one-out test method, the best combination of features

Japan’s Supreme Court Discourse and Lifetime Employment

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Tackney, Charles T.; Sato, Toyoko

to employee participation in managerial prerogative. The comparative social policy aim is to examine and account for observed employment relations variance in the U.S. and Japan, given their similar labor legislation. Japan’s Supreme Court recognizes lifetime employment as an institutionalized practice and we......Our study explores cultural cognition in comparative U.S. – Japan employment relations through interdisciplinary analysis of Japanese Supreme Court regulation of the post-World War II lifetime employment system and the latest data available on Japan's collective bargaining-based approach...... on the Court's discourse. Causally related to this recognition, management councils (a form of employee participation in managerial prerogative) are also a defining feature of Japanese employment relations at the enterprise level. Despite unionization rate declines in both nations, the persistence of Japan...

Feasibility of a UK community-based, eTherapy mental health service in Greater Manchester: repeated-measures and between-groups study of 'Living Life to the Full Interactive', 'Sleepio' and 'Breaking Free Online' at 'Self Help Services'.

Science.gov (United States)

Elison, Sarah; Ward, Jonathan; Williams, Chris; Espie, Colin; Davies, Glyn; Dugdale, Stephanie; Ragan, Kathryn; Chisnall, Leanne; Lidbetter, Nicky; Smith, Keith

2017-07-20

There is increasing evidence to support the effectiveness of eTherapies for mental health, although limited data have been reported from community-based services. Therefore, this service evaluation reports on feasibility and outcomes from an eTherapy mental health service. 'Self Help Services', an Increasing Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) eTherapy service in Greater Manchester. 1068 service users referred to the service for secondary care for their mental health difficulties. Participants were triaged into one of three eTherapy programmes: 'Living Life to the Full Interactive' for low mood, stress and anxiety; 'Sleepio' for insomnia; and 'Breaking Free Online' for substance misuse, depending on clinical need. Standardised psychometric assessments of depression, anxiety and social functioning, collected as part of the IAPT Minimum Data Set, were conducted at baseline and post-treatment. Data indicated baseline differences, with the Breaking Free Online group having higher scores for depression and anxiety than the Living Life to the Full Interactive (depression CI 1.27 to 3.21, pmental health scores were found within all three groups (all pmental health difficulties (pmental health difficulties and suggest that eTherapies may be a useful addition to treatment offering in community-based services. © Article author(s) (or their employer(s) unless otherwise stated in the text of the article) 2017. All rights reserved. No commercial use is permitted unless otherwise expressly granted.

Mental Health Services Utilization and Expenditures Among Children Enrolled in Employer-Sponsored Health Plans.

Science.gov (United States)

Walter, Angela Wangari; Yuan, Yiyang; Cabral, Howard J

2017-05-01

Mental illness in children increases the risk of developing mental health disorders in adulthood, and reduces physical and emotional well-being across the life course. The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA, 2008) aimed to improve access to mental health treatment by requiring employer-sponsored health plans to include insurance coverage for behavioral health services. Investigators used IBM Watson/Truven Analytics MarketScan claims data (2007-2013) to examine: (1) the distribution of mental illness; (2) trends in utilization and out-of-pocket expenditures; and (3) the overall effect of the MHPAEA on mental health services utilization and out-of-pocket expenditures among privately-insured children aged 3 to 17 with mental health disorders. Multivariate Poisson regression and linear regression modeling techniques were used. Mental health services use for outpatient behavioral health therapy (BHT) was higher in the years after the implementation of the MHPAEA (2010-2013). Specifically, before the MHPAEA implementation, the annual total visits for BHT provided by mental health physicians were 17.1% lower and 2.5% lower for BHT by mental health professionals, compared to years when MHPAEA was in effect. Children covered by consumer-driven and high-deductible plans had significantly higher out-of-pocket expenditures for BHT compared to those enrolled PPOs. Our findings demonstrate increased mental health services use and higher out-of-pocket costs per outpatient visit after implementation of the MHPAEA. As consumer-driven and high-deductible health plans continue to grow, enrollees need to be cognizant of the impact of health insurance benefit designs on health services offered in these plans. Copyright © 2017 by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Employer-Based Programs to Support Breastfeeding Among Working Mothers: A Systematic Review.

Science.gov (United States)

Dinour, Lauren M; Szaro, Jacalyn M

2017-04-01

Many mothers experience barriers to maintaining a breastfeeding relationship with their infants upon returning to work and, consequently, terminate breastfeeding earlier than recommended or intended. As such, employers are in a unique position to help further increase breastfeeding rates, durations, and exclusivity. The purpose of this review is to examine the literature regarding employer-based programs, policies, and interventions to support breastfeeding among working mothers. A systematic literature search was conducted for peer-reviewed articles published before April 2016. Studies were included if they focused on workplace-based lactation/breastfeeding support programs, policies, or interventions to promote breastfeeding among employees. For inclusion, articles must have measured at least one outcome, such as breastfeeding duration, breastfeeding exclusivity, or employee satisfaction. Twenty-two articles were included, representing 10 different countries and both public- and private-sector employers, including governmental offices, schools, hospitals, manufacturing/industrial companies, and financial settings, among others. Providing a lactation space was the most common employer-based support accommodation studied, followed by breastfeeding breaks and comprehensive lactation support programs. The majority of studies analyzing these three support types found at least one positive breastfeeding and/or nonbreastfeeding outcome. This review suggests that maintaining breastfeeding while working is not only possible but also more likely when employers provide the supports that women need to do so. Although some employers may have more extensive breastfeeding support policies and practices than others, all employers can implement a breastfeeding support program that fits their company's budget and resources.

Impact of competence-based training on employability of Technical and Vocational graduates in Ethiopia

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Birhane Sime Geressu

2017-11-01

Full Text Available The purpose of this study is to critically examine the impact of competence based training on employability of technical and vocational college graduates in Ethiopia. Mixed methods of research design, predominantly concurrent nested strategy were employed to conduct the study. The study involved 162 instructors, 123 Level III automotive technology trainees, 87 department heads and 89 graduates, a total of 461 respondents as a sample. Moreover, 24 respondents (6 industry owners, 6 TVET college deans, 6 competence-based process owners and 6 industry trainers’ leaders were purposely selected for interview and focus group discussion. Under the study, the researcher used employability of graduates as dependent variable and competency based training as independent variable. Descriptive and inferential statistics were employed for data analysis. The study result showed that technical and vocational education and training (TVET colleges in Ethiopia have been performing below expectations in developing demand-based curriculum and implementing competence-based training in TVET colleges and industries. As a result, among the graduates nearly 50 percent are not employed in the past two years. Hence, it is recommended that constantly consulting and involving relevant stakeholders in setting study profile, identifying intended learning outcomes and strengthening competence based learning style are vital for graduates to demonstrate employability skill, knowledge and attitude into the job that consequentially lead to graduate employment.First published online: 30 November 2017

Calculating the knowledge-based similarity of functional groups using crystallographic data

Science.gov (United States)

Watson, Paul; Willett, Peter; Gillet, Valerie J.; Verdonk, Marcel L.

2001-09-01

A knowledge-based method for calculating the similarity of functional groups is described and validated. The method is based on experimental information derived from small molecule crystal structures. These data are used in the form of scatterplots that show the likelihood of a non-bonded interaction being formed between functional group A (the `central group') and functional group B (the `contact group' or `probe'). The scatterplots are converted into three-dimensional maps that show the propensity of the probe at different positions around the central group. Here we describe how to calculate the similarity of a pair of central groups based on these maps. The similarity method is validated using bioisosteric functional group pairs identified in the Bioster database and Relibase. The Bioster database is a critical compilation of thousands of bioisosteric molecule pairs, including drugs, enzyme inhibitors and agrochemicals. Relibase is an object-oriented database containing structural data about protein-ligand interactions. The distributions of the similarities of the bioisosteric functional group pairs are compared with similarities for all the possible pairs in IsoStar, and are found to be significantly different. Enrichment factors are also calculated showing the similarity method is statistically significantly better than random in predicting bioisosteric functional group pairs.

Organizations' Ways of Employing Early Retirees: The Role of Age-Based HR Policies.

Science.gov (United States)

Oude Mulders, Jaap; Henkens, Kène; Schippers, Joop

2015-06-01

We examine whether from an organizational perspective it is possible to distinguish different ways of employing early retirees and explore how the employment of early retirees is related to the application of 4 age-based human resource (HR) policies, namely demotion, offering training opportunities to older workers, offering early retirement, and allowing flexible working hours. We perform a latent class analysis on a sample of 998 Dutch organizations in order to categorize them based on 3 dimensions of their employment of early retirees. We then run a multinomial logistic regression to relate the employment of early retirees to the 4 age-based HR policies. We distinguish 4 types of organizations based on their way of employing early retirees: nonusers (52.6%), users for mainly standard work (20.8%), users for mainly nonstandard work (9.8%), and users for standard and nonstandard work (16.7%). We find that organizations that apply demotion, offer early retirement, and allow flexible working hours are more likely to be users for mainly standard work. Also, organizations that do not offer early retirement are less likely to employ early retirees. Age-based HR policies, especially demotion, offering early retirement, and allowing flexible working hours, are conducive to the employment of early retirees for mainly standard work. Broader implementation of these policies may provide opportunities for older workers to make a more gradual transition from work to retirement. © The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Process service quality evaluation based on Dempster-Shafer theory and support vector machine.

Science.gov (United States)

Pei, Feng-Que; Li, Dong-Bo; Tong, Yi-Fei; He, Fei

2017-01-01

Human involvement influences traditional service quality evaluations, which triggers an evaluation's low accuracy, poor reliability and less impressive predictability. This paper proposes a method by employing a support vector machine (SVM) and Dempster-Shafer evidence theory to evaluate the service quality of a production process by handling a high number of input features with a low sampling data set, which is called SVMs-DS. Features that can affect production quality are extracted by a large number of sensors. Preprocessing steps such as feature simplification and normalization are reduced. Based on three individual SVM models, the basic probability assignments (BPAs) are constructed, which can help the evaluation in a qualitative and quantitative way. The process service quality evaluation results are validated by the Dempster rules; the decision threshold to resolve conflicting results is generated from three SVM models. A case study is presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the SVMs-DS method.

Designing Personalization in Technology-Based Services

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, Min Kyung

2013-01-01

Personalization technology has the potential to optimize service for each person's unique needs and characteristics. One way to optimize service is to allow people to customize the service themselves; another is to proactively tailor services based on information provided by people or inferred from their past behaviors. These approaches function…

SDL: Saliency-Based Dictionary Learning Framework for Image Similarity.

Science.gov (United States)

Sarkar, Rituparna; Acton, Scott T

2018-02-01

In image classification, obtaining adequate data to learn a robust classifier has often proven to be difficult in several scenarios. Classification of histological tissue images for health care analysis is a notable application in this context due to the necessity of surgery, biopsy or autopsy. To adequately exploit limited training data in classification, we propose a saliency guided dictionary learning method and subsequently an image similarity technique for histo-pathological image classification. Salient object detection from images aids in the identification of discriminative image features. We leverage the saliency values for the local image regions to learn a dictionary and respective sparse codes for an image, such that the more salient features are reconstructed with smaller error. The dictionary learned from an image gives a compact representation of the image itself and is capable of representing images with similar content, with comparable sparse codes. We employ this idea to design a similarity measure between a pair of images, where local image features of one image, are encoded with the dictionary learned from the other and vice versa. To effectively utilize the learned dictionary, we take into account the contribution of each dictionary atom in the sparse codes to generate a global image representation for image comparison. The efficacy of the proposed method was evaluated using three tissue data sets that consist of mammalian kidney, lung and spleen tissue, breast cancer, and colon cancer tissue images. From the experiments, we observe that our methods outperform the state of the art with an increase of 14.2% in the average classification accuracy over all data sets.

Employment for adults with autism spectrum disorders: A retrospective review of a customized employment approach.

Science.gov (United States)

Wehman, Paul; Brooke, Valerie; Brooke, Alissa Molinelli; Ham, Whitney; Schall, Carol; McDonough, Jennifer; Lau, Stephanie; Seward, Hannah; Avellone, Lauren

2016-01-01

Over the past few decades, there has been an increase in prevalence of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and those children are now becoming young adults in need of competitive integrated employment (CIE). Customized employment (CE) is one pathway to employment that has been successful for other individuals with developmental disabilities (DD), though research has been very limited on the effectiveness with individuals with ASD. This paper provides a retrospective review of 64 individuals with ASD who came to our program from 2009 to 2014 for supported employment services as referred by the state vocational rehabilitation services agency. Employment specialists engaged in situational assessment, discovery, job development, customized job descriptions, on-site training and support, positive behavioral supports, and job retention techniques. The employment specialists were responsible for tracking their actual time spent working directly with or for the jobseeker with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). All vocational rehabilitation clients with ASD served during this time successfully secured CIE, and maintained their employment with ongoing supports, with intensity of support time decreasing over time. The majority (63/64, 98.4%) of individuals successfully secured CIE through the use of supported employment, in 72 unique employment positions. Of the majority of the individuals who secured employment, 77% (50) individuals indicated that they had never worked before and additional 18% (12) reported having short intermittent histories of employment. Despite this lack of employment experience, in all cases the jobseeker directed the job search and ultimately the job selection. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Pengaruh Faktor Individual Wisatawan dan Kinerja Bauran Pemasaran terhadap Nilai Jasa Pariwisata Alam (The Effect of Individual Tourist and the Mixed Marketing to Services Value on Nature-Based Tourism Services

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Henry Purnomo

2011-07-01

Full Text Available Perum Perhutani, an Indonesian State Owned Forest Company has been developed nature-based tourism services(a tourism services based on nature or environment services since 1978. Ecotourism is considered as potentialalternative answering the change of paradigm of forest products which had been ignoring forest resourcesproduct as part of the forest products. However, these ecotourism objects have not been optimally managed yet.This research was conducted by the use of descriptive and verificative methods. Structural Equation Modelingwas employed as tool analyses in order to determine proper modeling approach and its solution.  The researchresults showed that internal, external individual factors, and mixed marketing performance gave a significantinfluence to the tourism service value.  A deeper analysis revealed that among the aspects, mixed marketingperformance which was consisted of product, price, place, promotion, people, physical evidence, and processshowed the most significant effect to the tourism service value.  In the other side, the results also showed that themost dominant factor that causing tourist hedonism was services value incrementy. The analyses finally showed thatthe increasing tourist hedonism through the offering a superior service value will  form a superior customer value.Keywords: nature-based tourism, individual factors, services marketing value, mixed marketing, hedonism

47 CFR 25.601 - Equal employment opportunities.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... 47 Telecommunication 2 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Equal employment opportunities. 25.601 Section 25.601 Telecommunication FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION (CONTINUED) COMMON CARRIER SERVICES SATELLITE COMMUNICATIONS Equal Employment Opportunities § 25.601 Equal employment opportunities...

Internet-Based Indoor Navigation Services

OpenAIRE

Zeinalipour-Yazti, Demetrios; Laoudias, Christos; Georgiou, Kyriakos

2017-01-01

Smartphone advances are leading to a class of Internet-based Indoor Navigation services. IIN services rely on geolocation databases that store indoor models, comprising floor maps and points of interest, along with wireless, light, and magnetic signals for localizing users. Developing IIN services creates new information management challenges - such as crowdsourcing indoor models, acquiring and fusing big data velocity signals, localization algorithms, and custodians' location privacy. Here, ...

Optimum survey methods when interviewing employed women.

Science.gov (United States)

Dunning, Kari; LeMasters, Grace K

2009-02-01

While survey studies have examined bias much is unknown regarding specific subpopulations, especially women workers. A population based phone, Internet, and mail survey of workplace falls during pregnancy was undertaken. Participation by industry and occupation and survey approach and bias, reliability, and incomplete data were examined. Of the 3,997 women surveyed, 71% were employed during their pregnancy. Internet responders were most likely to be employed while pregnant and to report a workplace fall at 8.8% compared to 5.8% and 6.1% for mail and phone respondents. Internet responders had the most missing employment data with company name missing for 17.9% compared to 1.3% for phone responders. Mail surveys were best for recruiting those employed in eight of nine industries, and this was especially true for service occupations. To decrease bias and increase participation, mixed approaches may be useful with particular attention for collecting occupational data. Am. J. Ind. Med. 52:105-112, 2009. (c) 2008 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

47 CFR 76.1802 - Annual employment report.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... gender, race and ethnicity of an employment unit's workforce collected in the annual employment report... 47 Telecommunication 4 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Annual employment report. 76.1802 Section 76... MULTICHANNEL VIDEO AND CABLE TELEVISION SERVICE Reports and Filings § 76.1802 Annual employment report. Each...

Staff views on wellbeing for themselves and for service users.

Science.gov (United States)

Schrank, Beate; Brownell, Tamsin; Riches, Simon; Chevalier, Agnes; Jakaite, Zivile; Larkin, Charley; Lawrence, Vanessa; Slade, Mike

2015-02-01

Wellbeing is an important outcome in the context of recovery from mental illness. The views of mental health professionals on wellbeing may influence their approach to supporting recovery. This study aims to explore views held by mental health staff about factors influencing their own wellbeing and that of service users with psychosis. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 mental health staff in South London who had worked with people with psychosis. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data and comparisons were made between staff views of wellbeing for themselves and service users. Staff participants held similar conceptualisations of wellbeing for themselves and for service users. However, they suggested a differential impact on wellbeing for a number of factors, such as balance, goals and achievement, and work. Staff employed a more deficit-based perspective on wellbeing for service users and a more strengths-based view for themselves. Staff stated a recovery orientation in principle, but struggled to focus on service user strengths in practice. A stronger emphasis in clinical practice on amplifying strengths to foster self-management is indicated, and staff may need support to achieve this emphasis, e.g. through specific interventions and involvement of peer support workers.

How can the digital library contribute to employability?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Harbo, Karen; Jensen, Thomas Skov

2016-01-01

platforms. A partnership is made between the digital library (partner libraries involved) and the virtual learning environment (educational institutions), based on the above definition of employability. This is done within the framework of Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Massive Open Online Courses......The DEFF project, E-learning, Information literacy and Library services, supports the education policy ambition of enhancing links between education and employment. The project consortium includes libraries from all Danish universities, university colleges and one business academy. Timeframe...... for the project is 2014-16. The project understands employability as: In close cooperation with study programmes libraries will strengthen students’ ability to perform independently and critically in a professional context by being able to identify, collect, evaluate, organize and present information via digital...

How can the digital library contribute to employability?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Harbo, Karen; Jensen, Thomas Skov

2016-01-01

The DEFF project, E-learning, Information literacy and Library services, supports the education policy ambition of enhancing links between education and employment. The project consortium includes libraries from all Danish universities, university colleges and one business academy. Timeframe...... for the project is 2014-16. The project understands employability as: In close cooperation with study programmes libraries will strengthen students’ ability to perform independently and critically in a professional context by being able to identify, collect, evaluate, organize and present information via digital...... platforms. A partnership is made between the digital library (partner libraries involved) and the virtual learning environment (educational institutions), based on the above definition of employability. This is done within the framework of Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Massive Open Online Courses...

Similarity Solutions for Multiterm Time-Fractional Diffusion Equation

OpenAIRE

Elsaid, A.; Abdel Latif, M. S.; Maneea, M.

2016-01-01

Similarity method is employed to solve multiterm time-fractional diffusion equation. The orders of the fractional derivatives belong to the interval (0,1] and are defined in the Caputo sense. We illustrate how the problem is reduced from a multiterm two-variable fractional partial differential equation to a multiterm ordinary fractional differential equation. Power series solution is obtained for the resulting ordinary problem and the convergence of the series solution is discussed. Based on ...

Engineering Compensations in Web Service Environment

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Schäfer, Micahel; Dolog, Peter; Nejdl, Wolfgang

2007-01-01

Business to business integration has recently been performed by employing Web service environments. Moreover, such environments are being provided by major players on the technology markets. Those environments are based on open specifications for transaction coordination. When a failure in such a......Business to business integration has recently been performed by employing Web service environments. Moreover, such environments are being provided by major players on the technology markets. Those environments are based on open specifications for transaction coordination. When a failure...... in such an environment occurs, a compensation can be initiated to recover from the failure. However, current environments have only limited capabilities for compensations, and are usually based on backward recovery. In this paper, we introduce an engineering approach and an environment to deal with advanced...... compensations based on forward recovery principles. We extend the existing Web service transaction coordination architecture and infrastructure in order to support flexible compensation operations. A contract-based approach is being used, which allows the specification of permitted compensations at runtime. We...

Joining the Dots: Theoretically Connecting the Vona du Toit Model of Creative Ability (VdTMoCA) with Supported Employment

OpenAIRE

de Bruyn, Marna; Wright, Jon

2017-01-01

The Vona du Toit Model of Creative Ability (VdTMoCA) presents a framework for understanding client motivation and action in occupational therapy, emphasising the relationship between motivation and action. Similarly, motivation to work is regarded as the primary and in some instances, the only eligibility criterion for inclusion in supported employment services. This commentary explores the potential theoretical link between the VdTMoCA and supported employment, primarily applied to the South...

Image magnification based on similarity analogy

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Chen Zuoping; Ye Zhenglin; Wang Shuxun; Peng Guohua

2009-01-01

Aiming at the high time complexity of the decoding phase in the traditional image enlargement methods based on fractal coding, a novel image magnification algorithm is proposed in this paper, which has the advantage of iteration-free decoding, by using the similarity analogy between an image and its zoom-out and zoom-in. A new pixel selection technique is also presented to further improve the performance of the proposed method. Furthermore, by combining some existing fractal zooming techniques, an efficient image magnification algorithm is obtained, which can provides the image quality as good as the state of the art while greatly decrease the time complexity of the decoding phase.

An 8 year follow-up of a specialist supported employment service for high-ability adults with autism or Asperger syndrome.

Science.gov (United States)

Howlin, Patricia; Alcock, Jennifer; Burkin, Catherine

2005-12-01

Few supported employment programmes have been specifically designed for people with autism, especially those who are more able. This study examines the outcome of a supported employment service (NAS Prospects) for adults with autism or Asperger syndrome (IQ 60+) over an 8 year period. Approximately 68 percent of clients found employment. Of the 192 jobs, the majority were permanent contracts and most involved administrative, technical or computing work. Assessment of current clients indicates that IQ, language skills and educational attainments are high. However, work has also been found for those of lower abilities. Individuals supported by Prospects show a rise in salaries, contribute more tax and claim fewer benefits. Satisfaction with the scheme is high among clients, employers and support workers. Although the programme continues to incur a financial deficit, this has decreased. Moreover, there are many non-financial benefits, which are difficult to quantify. The importance of specialist employment support of this kind is discussed.

Designing Android Based Augmented Reality Location-Based Service Application

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alim Hardiansyah

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Android is an operating system for Linux based smartphone. Android provides an open platform for the developers to create their own application. The most developed and used application now is location based application. This application gives personalization service for mobile device user and is customized to their location. Location based service also gives an opportunity for the developers to develop and increase the value of service. One of the technologies that could be combined with location based application is augmented reality. Augmented reality combines the virtual world with the real one. By the assistance of augmented reality, our surrounding environment could interact in digital form. Information of objects and environment surround us could be added to the augmented reality system and presented. Based on the background, the writers tried to implement those technologies on now rapidly developing android application as a final project to achieve bachelor degree in Department of Informatics Engineering, Faculty of Information Technology and Visual Communication, Al Kamal Science and Technology Institute. This application could be functioned to locate school by using location based service technology with the assistance of navigational applications such as waze and google maps, in form of live direction process through the smartphone

The effects of the Employment Tax Incentive on South African employment

OpenAIRE

Ebrahim, Amina; Leibbrandt, Murray; Ranchhod, Vimal

2017-01-01

South Africa's Employment Tax Incentive, launched in 2014, aimed to address low youth employment by reducing the cost of hiring young workers. We make use of anonymized tax administrative data from the 2012-2015 tax years to examine the effect of the Incentive on youth employment. We match firms claiming the subsidy with similar firms not claiming the subsidy and observe their hiring behaviour before and after the implementation of the policy. We find no statistically significant impact on yo...

QoS prediction for web services based on user-trust propagation model

Science.gov (United States)

Thinh, Le-Van; Tu, Truong-Dinh

2017-10-01

There is an important online role for Web service providers and users; however, the rapidly growing number of service providers and users, it can create some similar functions among web services. This is an exciting area for research, and researchers seek to to propose solutions for the best service to users. Collaborative filtering (CF) algorithms are widely used in recommendation systems, although these are less effective for cold-start users. Recently, some recommender systems have been developed based on social network models, and the results show that social network models have better performance in terms of CF, especially for cold-start users. However, most social network-based recommendations do not consider the user's mood. This is a hidden source of information, and is very useful in improving prediction efficiency. In this paper, we introduce a new model called User-Trust Propagation (UTP). The model uses a combination of trust and the mood of users to predict the QoS value and matrix factorisation (MF), which is used to train the model. The experimental results show that the proposed model gives better accuracy than other models, especially for the cold-start problem.

OpenID connect as a security service in Cloud-based diagnostic imaging systems

Science.gov (United States)

Ma, Weina; Sartipi, Kamran; Sharghi, Hassan; Koff, David; Bak, Peter

2015-03-01

The evolution of cloud computing is driving the next generation of diagnostic imaging (DI) systems. Cloud-based DI systems are able to deliver better services to patients without constraining to their own physical facilities. However, privacy and security concerns have been consistently regarded as the major obstacle for adoption of cloud computing by healthcare domains. Furthermore, traditional computing models and interfaces employed by DI systems are not ready for accessing diagnostic images through mobile devices. RESTful is an ideal technology for provisioning both mobile services and cloud computing. OpenID Connect, combining OpenID and OAuth together, is an emerging REST-based federated identity solution. It is one of the most perspective open standards to potentially become the de-facto standard for securing cloud computing and mobile applications, which has ever been regarded as "Kerberos of Cloud". We introduce OpenID Connect as an identity and authentication service in cloud-based DI systems and propose enhancements that allow for incorporating this technology within distributed enterprise environment. The objective of this study is to offer solutions for secure radiology image sharing among DI-r (Diagnostic Imaging Repository) and heterogeneous PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication Systems) as well as mobile clients in the cloud ecosystem. Through using OpenID Connect as an open-source identity and authentication service, deploying DI-r and PACS to private or community clouds should obtain equivalent security level to traditional computing model.

Improved personalized recommendation based on a similarity network

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Ximeng; Liu, Yun; Xiong, Fei

2016-08-01

A recommender system helps individual users find the preferred items rapidly and has attracted extensive attention in recent years. Many successful recommendation algorithms are designed on bipartite networks, such as network-based inference or heat conduction. However, most of these algorithms define the resource-allocation methods for an average allocation. That is not reasonable because average allocation cannot indicate the user choice preference and the influence between users which leads to a series of non-personalized recommendation results. We propose a personalized recommendation approach that combines the similarity function and bipartite network to generate a similarity network that improves the resource-allocation process. Our model introduces user influence into the recommender system and states that the user influence can make the resource-allocation process more reasonable. We use four different metrics to evaluate our algorithms for three benchmark data sets. Experimental results show that the improved recommendation on a similarity network can obtain better accuracy and diversity than some competing approaches.

A hybrid supported employment program for persons with schizophrenia in Japan.

Science.gov (United States)

Fuller, T R; Oka, M; Otsuka, K; Yokoyama, N; Liberman, R P; Niwa, S I

2000-07-01

INTRODUCTION BY THE COLUMN EDITORS: Because the mental health system in Japan has emphasized hospital-based treatment (1), patients with schizophrenia often remain institutionalized for long periods, even after their symptoms have stabilized. In addition, the introduction of modern community-based methods of treatment and rehabilitation was delayed by an antipsychiatry movement in the 1970s and the ascendance of a reductionistic biological approach to services (2). Lack of adequate outpatient services and community residential care in Japan has been a serious obstacle to destigmatization of mental disorders and has contributed to the heavy burden and stress experienced by families of mentally ill persons (3). More than 80 percent of patients discharged from mental hospitals return to live with their families, who are ill prepared to provide the supportive services required for community tenure. Involvement in work activities can facilitate community reentry for people with serious and persistent mental illness because employment displaces symptoms, provides structure and meaning in daily life, offers socialization with peers, and permits workers to earn income for shelter and food. In this issue's Rehab Rounds column, the authors describe an innovative vocational rehabilitation program for patients with schizophrenia that was designed to overcome obstacles to discharge and community adjustment. The program at Yabuki Prefecture Psychiatric Hospital, in the northern prefecture of Fukushima, Japan, has been successful in training patients for competitive work while capitalizing on the importance of work in Japanese culture and its traditionally supportive employer-employee relationships. The program is termed "hybrid" because it combines elements of transitional employment with supported employment (4).

Design of Service Net based Correctness Verification Approach for Multimedia Conferencing Service Orchestration

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Cheng Bo

2012-02-01

Full Text Available Multimedia conferencing is increasingly becoming a very important and popular application over Internet. Due to the complexity of asynchronous communications and handle large and dynamically concurrent processes for multimedia conferencing, which confront relevant challenge to achieve sufficient correctness guarantees, and supporting the effective verification methods for multimedia conferencing services orchestration is an extremely difficult and challenging problem. In this paper, we firstly present the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL based conferencing service orchestration, and mainly focus on the service net based correction verification approach for multimedia conferencing services orchestration, which can automatically translated the BPEL based service orchestration into a corresponding Petri net model with the Petri Net Markup Language (PNML, and also present the BPEL service net reduction rules and multimedia conferencing service orchestration correction verification algorithms. We perform the correctness analysis and verification using the service net properties as safeness, reachability and deadlocks, and also provide an automated support tool for the formal analysis and soundness verification for the multimedia conferencing services orchestration scenarios. Finally, we give the comparison and evaluations.

Service creation: a model-based approach

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Quartel, Dick; van Sinderen, Marten J.; Ferreira Pires, Luis

1999-01-01

This paper presents a model-based approach to support service creation. In this approach, services are assumed to be created from (available) software components. The creation process may involve multiple design steps in which the requested service is repeatedly decomposed into more detailed

Which employment interview skills best predict the employability of schizophrenic patients?

Science.gov (United States)

Charisiou, J; Jackson, H J; Boyle, G J; Burgess, P M; Minas, I H; Joshua, S D

1989-06-01

To examine the effects of verbal and nonverbal interview microbehaviors and interview characteristics on employability, Simulated Employment Interviews were conducted with 46 psychiatric inpatients who each met the DSM-III criteria for a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Each interview was videotaped and shown to two raters, who generated independent ratings for six microbehaviors (eye-contact, facial gestures, body posture, verbal content, voice volume, and length of speech) and six subject characteristics (motivation, self-confidence, ability to communicate, manifest adjustment, manifest intelligence and overall interview skill). A panel of three Commonwealth Employment Service psychologists viewed the same videotaped interviews and generated employability ratings. Verbal and nonverbal microbehaviors were relatively independent while subject characteristics were highly interdependent. Microbehaviors and characteristics correlated at a high level. Of the 12 interview microbehaviors and characteristics, manifest adjustment and ability to communicate accounted for 64% of the total variance in predicting employability. Interviewees who were perceived as behaving in an adjusted manner and as being good communicators were rated as more employable.

Employment protection and temporary work agencies

OpenAIRE

Baumann, Florian; Mechtel, Mario; Stähler, Nikolai

2008-01-01

Employers who use temporary agency staff in contrast to regular staff are not affected by employment protection regulations when terminating a job. Therefore, services provided by temporary work agencies may be seen as a substitute for regular employment. In this paper, we analyze the effects of employment protection on the size of the temporary work agency sector in a model of equilibrium unemployment. We find that higher firing costs may even reduce temporary work agency employment if agenc...

Gender differences in occupational mobility and structure of employment in the British Civil Service.

Science.gov (United States)

Roberts, R; Brunner, E; White, I; Marmot, M

1993-12-01

In all industrialized societies health status in adults has been found to vary with social position. Attempts to explain this are usually grouped under headings of artefact, material, lifestyle and selective mobility of the healthiest. Such attempts have to date been unsuccessful in fully accounting for this relationship, and whilst they have merit have left unconsidered the effects of the process whereby social stratification occurs. The present study is a prelude to subsequent studies that will endeavour to distinguish between three separate influences on health--the effects of current social position, the long term effects stemming from one's initial class position, and the effects of the processes governing mobility. The purpose of our present investigation is to describe patterns of occupational mobility, that will enable us to identify possible predictors of subsequent mobility and therefore to indicate to what extent mobility might be a process governed by social rules. The work presented in this paper comprises part of the Whitehall II study of occupational, social and lifestyle influences upon health in a Civil Service population. Using multiple regression techniques almost half the variation in mobility is modelled in terms of educational level, fathers' social class, gender, marital status, age on entry into the Civil Service, length of time in Civil Service employment and grade of entry into the Civil Service. Using estimates derived from this model it is suggested that a number of sub-groups within the Civil Service suffer adverse mobility (mobility appears particularly restricted for women and for those entering the Civil Service above 30 years of age). The results obtained suggest that the issue of obstructed opportunity at the workplace could become a focus for fruitful investigation, linking issues of personal autonomy, expectations and control to health. A number of methodological problems in this kind of work are considered together with

An Automatic Web Service Composition Framework Using QoS-Based Web Service Ranking Algorithm.

Science.gov (United States)

Mallayya, Deivamani; Ramachandran, Baskaran; Viswanathan, Suganya

2015-01-01

Web service has become the technology of choice for service oriented computing to meet the interoperability demands in web applications. In the Internet era, the exponential addition of web services nominates the "quality of service" as essential parameter in discriminating the web services. In this paper, a user preference based web service ranking (UPWSR) algorithm is proposed to rank web services based on user preferences and QoS aspect of the web service. When the user's request cannot be fulfilled by a single atomic service, several existing services should be composed and delivered as a composition. The proposed framework allows the user to specify the local and global constraints for composite web services which improves flexibility. UPWSR algorithm identifies best fit services for each task in the user request and, by choosing the number of candidate services for each task, reduces the time to generate the composition plans. To tackle the problem of web service composition, QoS aware automatic web service composition (QAWSC) algorithm proposed in this paper is based on the QoS aspects of the web services and user preferences. The proposed framework allows user to provide feedback about the composite service which improves the reputation of the services.

A partnership-based model for embedding employability in urban planning education

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Neale Blair

2016-01-01

Full Text Available This paper proposes a partnership-based model for embedding employability in urban planning education. The model is based on the author’s experiences of implementing an international project which supported the development of employability skills in urban and regional planning education in Malawi. Since independence, urban planners have typically trained outside the country, attending university in the UK and other Commonwealth countries. More recently, the paradigm has shifted towards in-country education delivered by academic staff cognisant with the opportunities and challenges of development in Malawi. There remains, though, a gap between graduate knowledge of the subject and the skills necessary to pursue a professional career in the sector. Although there is no consensus yet on the meaning of employability in the literature, lessons from the project indicate that academic–public–private collaboration helps incorporate in curriculum skills that employers anticipate. Applicability of these principles is however context dependent, particularly in the emerging economy context where institutional capacity may be less developed compared to elsewhere.

42 CFR 422.2276 - Employer group retiree marketing.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... 42 Public Health 3 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Employer group retiree marketing. 422.2276 Section 422.2276 Public Health CENTERS FOR MEDICARE & MEDICAID SERVICES, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES (CONTINUED) MEDICARE PROGRAM MEDICARE ADVANTAGE PROGRAM Medicare Advantage Marketing Requirements § 422.2276 Employer group retiree marketing. M...

42 CFR 423.2276 - Employer group retiree marketing.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... 42 Public Health 3 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Employer group retiree marketing. 423.2276 Section 423.2276 Public Health CENTERS FOR MEDICARE & MEDICAID SERVICES, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES (CONTINUED) MEDICARE PROGRAM VOLUNTARY MEDICARE PRESCRIPTION DRUG BENEFIT Part D Marketing Requirements § 423.2276 Employer group retiree...

Process service quality evaluation based on Dempster-Shafer theory and support vector machine.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Feng-Que Pei

Full Text Available Human involvement influences traditional service quality evaluations, which triggers an evaluation's low accuracy, poor reliability and less impressive predictability. This paper proposes a method by employing a support vector machine (SVM and Dempster-Shafer evidence theory to evaluate the service quality of a production process by handling a high number of input features with a low sampling data set, which is called SVMs-DS. Features that can affect production quality are extracted by a large number of sensors. Preprocessing steps such as feature simplification and normalization are reduced. Based on three individual SVM models, the basic probability assignments (BPAs are constructed, which can help the evaluation in a qualitative and quantitative way. The process service quality evaluation results are validated by the Dempster rules; the decision threshold to resolve conflicting results is generated from three SVM models. A case study is presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the SVMs-DS method.

Anomaly Detection in Nanofibrous Materials by CNN-Based Self-Similarity

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Paolo Napoletano

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Automatic detection and localization of anomalies in nanofibrous materials help to reduce the cost of the production process and the time of the post-production visual inspection process. Amongst all the monitoring methods, those exploiting Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM imaging are the most effective. In this paper, we propose a region-based method for the detection and localization of anomalies in SEM images, based on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs and self-similarity. The method evaluates the degree of abnormality of each subregion of an image under consideration by computing a CNN-based visual similarity with respect to a dictionary of anomaly-free subregions belonging to a training set. The proposed method outperforms the state of the art.

Offshoring and Changes in Firms’ Domestic Employment

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Timmermans, Bram; Østergaard, Christian Richter

difference on a set of employment characteristics, i.e. employment growth, growth in high skilled employees, and growth in employees with a background in science and engineering, by using a partial propensity score matching approach. The findings of the analyses show that there are clear differences between......In this paper, we investigate, by merging the Danish linked employer-employee database with a Danish offshoring survey, the difference in employment between offshoring and non-offshoring firms that are active in manufacturing industries and business services in Denmark. We measure the mean...... Danish offshoring and non-offshoring firms in how the employee composition changes over time. The change in employment composition differ considerably between manufacturing industries and business services and on whether firms offshore administrative and technical business functions or other types...

SHOP: scaffold hopping by GRID-based similarity searches

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bergmann, Rikke; Linusson, Anna; Zamora, Ismael

2007-01-01

A new GRID-based method for scaffold hopping (SHOP) is presented. In a fully automatic manner, scaffolds were identified in a database based on three types of 3D-descriptors. SHOP's ability to recover scaffolds was assessed and validated by searching a database spiked with fragments of known...... scaffolds were in the 31 top-ranked scaffolds. SHOP also identified new scaffolds with substantially different chemotypes from the queries. Docking analysis indicated that the new scaffolds would have similar binding modes to those of the respective query scaffolds observed in X-ray structures...

Probability-Based Determination Methods for Service Waiting in Service-Oriented Computing Environments

Science.gov (United States)

Zeng, Sen; Huang, Shuangxi; Liu, Yang

Cooperative business processes (CBP)-based service-oriented enterprise networks (SOEN) are emerging with the significant advances of enterprise integration and service-oriented architecture. The performance prediction and optimization for CBP-based SOEN is very complex. To meet these challenges, one of the key points is to try to reduce an abstract service’s waiting number of its physical services. This paper introduces a probability-based determination method (PBDM) of an abstract service’ waiting number, M l , and time span, τ i , for its physical services. The determination of M i and τ i is according to the physical services’ arriving rule and their overall performance’s distribution functions. In PBDM, the arriving probability of the physical services with the best overall performance value is a pre-defined reliability. PBDM has made use of the information of the physical services’ arriving rule and performance distribution functions thoroughly, which will improve the computational efficiency for the scheme design and performance optimization of the collaborative business processes in service-oriented computing environments.

Similarity-Based Interference and the Acquisition of Adjunct Control

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Juliana Gerard

2017-10-01

Full Text Available Previous research on the acquisition of adjunct control has observed non-adultlike behavior for sentences like “John bumped Mary after tripping on the sidewalk.” While adults only allow a subject control interpretation for these sentences (that John tripped on the sidewalk, preschool-aged children have been reported to allow a much wider range of interpretations. A number of different tasks have been used with the aim of identifying a grammatical source of children’s errors. In this paper, we consider the role of extragrammatical factors. In two comprehension experiments, we demonstrate that error rates go up when the similarity increases between an antecedent and a linearly intervening noun phrase, first with similarity in gender, and next with similarity in number marking. This suggests that difficulties with adjunct control are to be explained (at least in part by the sentence processing mechanisms that underlie similarity-based interference in adults.

Soldier motivation – different or similar?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Brænder, Morten; Andersen, Lotte Bøgh

Recent research in military sociology has shown that in addition to their strong peer motivation modern soldiers are oriented toward contributing to society. It has not, however, been tested how soldier motivation differs from the motivation of other citizens in this respect. In this paper......, by means of public service motivation, a concept developed within the public administration literature, we compare soldier and civilian motivation. The contribution of this paper is an analysis of whether and how Danish combat soldiers differs from other Danes in regard to public service motivation? Using...... surveys with similar questions, we find that soldiers are more normatively motivated to contribute to society than other citizens (higher commitment to the public interest), while their affectively based motivation is lower (lower compassion). This points towards a potential problem in regard...

Indoor location-based services prerequisites and foundations

CERN Document Server

Werner, Martin

2014-01-01

This book delivers concise coverage of classical methods and new developments related to indoor location-based services. It collects results from isolated domains including geometry, artificial intelligence, statistics, cooperative algorithms, and distributed systems and thus provides an accessible overview of fundamental methods and technologies. This makes it an ideal starting point for researchers, students, and professionals in pervasive computing. Location-based services are services using the location of a mobile computing device as their primary input. While such services are fairly e

Designing pharmacy services based on grocery store patron preferences.

Science.gov (United States)

Lindstrom, Nicolette S Raya; Casper, Kristin A; Green, Tara R; Pedersen, Craig A

2007-01-01

To assess preferences of grocery store patrons concerning pharmacy services and identify study participant characteristics that may predict the success of pharmacy services in the community setting. Self-administered survey. Central Ohio from December 16, 2005, to January 12, 2006. 163 grocery store patrons. Eight grocery store survey events. Responses to survey items about (1) perceived importance of 28 pharmacy services, (2) identification of the 3 most important services, (3) frequency of grocery store and pharmacy use, (4) preferred methods of advertising pharmacy services, and (5) socioeconomic demographics. Preferred services delineated by various demographics also were analyzed. A total of 163 surveys were returned from study participants. Nine services appeared in both the top 12 overall preferred services and the 12 highest-ranked services. Statistically significant differences were observed among services ranked as important or very important by age, race, employment, income, caregiver status, and prescription drug coverage status. The three advertising tools selected most frequently included: weekly grocery store ads (68.6%), in-store signs (51.0%), and flyers attached to prescription bags (36.0%). Grocery store patrons would like a wide range of nontraditional pharmacy services that could be implemented into community pharmacies. Pharmacies in grocery stores need to provide both traditional and expanded pharmacy services to meet the desires and expectations of current and potential patients, and expanded marketing methods should be considered.

Public Service Motivation, User Orientation and Job Satisfaction: A Question of Employment Sector?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Andersen, Lotte Bøgh; Kjeldsen, Anne Mette

2013-01-01

not differ significantly between the private and public sector, while the user orientation/job satisfaction association is strongest for private employees. This suggests that to understand the relationships between pro-social motivation, employment sector and job satisfaction, future studies could fruitfully...... satisfaction. Second, the relationship between job satisfaction and these two types of pro-social motivation, PSM and user orientation, may also be found in the private sector. This study tests whether job satisfaction is associated with PSM and user orientation, and whether these associations differ between......Public service motivation (PSM) has been shown to be positively related to job satisfaction in the public sector, but there are two gaps in the literature. First, not only PSM but also pro-social motivation directed towards helping specific others (called user orientation) may affect job...

Automatic geospatial information Web service composition based on ontology interface matching

Science.gov (United States)

Xu, Xianbin; Wu, Qunyong; Wang, Qinmin

2008-10-01

With Web services technology the functions of WebGIS can be presented as a kind of geospatial information service, and helped to overcome the limitation of the information-isolated situation in geospatial information sharing field. Thus Geospatial Information Web service composition, which conglomerates outsourced services working in tandem to offer value-added service, plays the key role in fully taking advantage of geospatial information services. This paper proposes an automatic geospatial information web service composition algorithm that employed the ontology dictionary WordNet to analyze semantic distances among the interfaces. Through making matching between input/output parameters and the semantic meaning of pairs of service interfaces, a geospatial information web service chain can be created from a number of candidate services. A practice of the algorithm is also proposed and the result of it shows the feasibility of this algorithm and the great promise in the emerging demand for geospatial information web service composition.

Is employer-based health insurance a barrier to entrepreneurship?

Science.gov (United States)

Fairlie, Robert W; Kapur, Kanika; Gates, Susan

2011-01-01

The focus on employer-provided health insurance in the United States may restrict business creation. We address the limited research on the topic of "entrepreneurship lock" by using recent panel data from matched Current Population Surveys. We use difference-in-difference models to estimate the interaction between having a spouse with employer-based health insurance and potential demand for health care. We find evidence of a larger negative effect of health insurance demand on business creation for those without spousal coverage than for those with spousal coverage. We also take a new approach in the literature to examine the question of whether employer-based health insurance discourages business creation by exploiting the discontinuity created at age 65 through the qualification for Medicare. Using a novel procedure of identifying age in months from matched monthly CPS data, we compare the probability of business ownership among male workers in the months just before turning age 65 and in the months just after turning age 65. We find that business ownership rates increase from just under age 65 to just over age 65, whereas we find no change in business ownership rates from just before to just after for other ages 55-75. We also do not find evidence from the previous literature and additional estimates that other confounding factors such as retirement, partial retirement, social security and pension eligibility are responsible for the increase in business ownership in the month individuals turn 65. Our estimates provide some evidence that "entrepreneurship lock" exists, which raises concerns that the bundling of health insurance and employment may create an inefficient level of business creation. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

20 CFR 1002.34 - Which employers are covered by USERRA?

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

....34 Section 1002.34 Employees' Benefits OFFICE OF THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR VETERANS' EMPLOYMENT AND TRAINING SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR REGULATIONS UNDER THE UNIFORMED SERVICES EMPLOYMENT AND REEMPLOYMENT... which the workplace is located. ...

Organizational capacity for service integration in community-based addiction health services.

Science.gov (United States)

Guerrero, Erick G; Aarons, Gregory A; Palinkas, Lawrence A

2014-04-01

We examined factors associated with readiness to coordinate mental health, public health, and HIV testing among community-based addiction health services programs. We analyzed client and program data collected in 2011 from publicly funded addiction health services treatment programs in Los Angeles County, California. We analyzed a sample of 14 379 clients nested in 104 programs by using logistic regressions examining odds of service coordination with mental health and public health providers. We conducted a separate analysis to examine the percentage of clients receiving HIV testing in each program. Motivational readiness and organizational climate for change were associated with higher odds of coordination with mental health and public health services. Programs with professional accreditation had higher odds of coordinating with mental health services, whereas programs receiving public funding and methadone and residential programs (compared with outpatient) had a higher percentage of clients receiving coordinated HIV testing. These findings provide an evidentiary base for the role of motivational readiness, organizational climate, and external regulation and funding in improving the capacity of addiction health services programs to develop integrated care.

47 CFR 73.3612 - Annual employment report.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... gender, race and ethnicity of a broadcast station's workforce collected in the annual employment report... 47 Telecommunication 4 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Annual employment report. 73.3612 Section 73... BROADCAST SERVICES Rules Applicable to All Broadcast Stations § 73.3612 Annual employment report. Each...

Information filtering based on transferring similarity.

Science.gov (United States)

Sun, Duo; Zhou, Tao; Liu, Jian-Guo; Liu, Run-Ran; Jia, Chun-Xiao; Wang, Bing-Hong

2009-07-01

In this Brief Report, we propose an index of user similarity, namely, the transferring similarity, which involves all high-order similarities between users. Accordingly, we design a modified collaborative filtering algorithm, which provides remarkably higher accurate predictions than the standard collaborative filtering. More interestingly, we find that the algorithmic performance will approach its optimal value when the parameter, contained in the definition of transferring similarity, gets close to its critical value, before which the series expansion of transferring similarity is convergent and after which it is divergent. Our study is complementary to the one reported in [E. A. Leicht, P. Holme, and M. E. J. Newman, Phys. Rev. E 73, 026120 (2006)], and is relevant to the missing link prediction problem.

A national campaign to finance supported employment.

Science.gov (United States)

Hogan, Michael F; Drake, Robert E; Goldman, Howard H

2014-06-01

Medicaid is now the main payment source and financing mechanism for services for adults with serious mental illness. Services formerly paid with state mental health funds have been converted to Medicaid, lightening the burden on state budgets affected by recession and other factors. The change has allowed states to maintain community care and inpatient services (in general hospitals). Medicaid service benefits include clinic and inpatient care, case management, and some rehabilitation services. But using Medicaid to finance some high-priority services such as supported employment has proven difficult. Now critical changes in Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act allow states to amend their Medicaid State Plans to provide more flexible services to people with serious mental illness. Advocacy and support may be needed to encourage this step. A national campaign to finance supported employment would join various stakeholders in the field, including professional organizations, family and service user groups, and organizations representing service providers. The authors of this editorial pledge their energies to support this campaign. They present suggestions for a campaign, including building a coalition, goals and targets, and online resources.

34 CFR 380.5 - What activities may the Secretary fund under community-based supported employment projects?

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... development, including work site modification and use of advanced learning technology for skills training. (3) On-the-job training. (4) Job placement. (5) Application of rehabilitation technology in providing... EDUCATION SPECIAL PROJECTS AND DEMONSTRATIONS FOR PROVIDING SUPPORTED EMPLOYMENT SERVICES TO INDIVIDUALS...

Innovating job activation by involving employers

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van der Aa, Paul; van Berkel, Rik

2014-01-01

This article explores the nature of innovative employer-oriented activation policies, which aim to influence employers’ willingness to hire or possibly train and guide the unemployed. These policies may focus on responsibilities with regards to activation, which offer services to employers or

The Effectiveness and Cost-Effectiveness of a Rural Employer-Based Wellness Program

Science.gov (United States)

Saleh, Shadi S.; Alameddine, Mohamad S.; Hill, Dan; Darney-Beuhler, Jessica; Morgan, Ann

2010-01-01

Context: The cost-effectiveness of employer-based wellness programs has been previously investigated with favorable financial and nonfinancial outcomes being detected. However, these investigations have mainly focused on large employers in urban settings. Very few studies examined wellness programs offered in rural settings. Purpose: This paper…

Parkinson's disease: a population-based investigation of life satisfaction and employment.

Science.gov (United States)

Gustafsson, Helena; Nordström, Peter; Stråhle, Stefan; Nordström, Anna

2015-01-01

To investigate relationships between individuals' socioeconomic situations and quality of life in working-aged subjects with Parkinson's disease. A population-based cohort comprising 1,432 people with Parkinson's disease and 1,135 matched controls, who responded to a questionnaire. Logistic regression analysis was performed to identify factors associated with life satisfaction and likelihood of employment. In multivariate analyses, Parkinson's disease was associated with an increased risk of dissatisfaction with life (odds ratio (OR) = 5.4, 95% confidence interval (95% CI) = 4.2-7.1) and reduced likelihood of employment (OR = 0.30, 95% CI = 0.25-0.37). Employers' support was associated with greater likelihood of employment (p worked full-time. People with Parkinson's disease also more frequently experienced work demands that exceeded their capacity; this factor and unemployment independently correlated with greater risk of dissatisfaction with life (both p life. Employment situation is important for general life satisfaction among working-aged individuals. People with Parkinson's disease appear to find it difficult to meet the challenge of achieving a balanced employment situation.

Analyzing e-service quality in service-based website by E-SERVQUAL

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Babak Nemati

2012-04-01

Full Text Available Over the past two decades, two-way communication via web-based exchanges has been a popular method for different activities such as electronic transaction, publication, broadcasting, and other service applications. However, it is always necessary to measure the performance quality of web services using different technique such as e-SERVQUAL model. The proposed study of this paper uses this technique for measuring the quality of Iranian university e-services. The proposed study distributes a standard questionnaire among students who use this service through internet. The results indicate that only efficiency and online service quality in the e-service system are desirable. Managerial implications are represented.

Behavioral factors predicting response to employment-based reinforcement of cocaine abstinence in methadone patients

OpenAIRE

Holtyn, August F.; Washington, Wendy Donlin; Knealing, Todd W.; Wong, Conrad J.; Kolodner, Ken; Silverman, Kenneth

2016-01-01

We sought to identify behavioral factors associated with response to an employment-based intervention, in which participants had to provide drug-free urine samples to gain access to paid employment. The present secondary analysis included data from a randomized clinical trial. The trial evaluated whether employment-based reinforcement could decrease cocaine use in community methadone patients. Participants (N=56) in the trial worked in a model workplace for 4 hr every weekday and earned about...

29 CFR 1405.9 - Part-time employment practices.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... 29 Labor 4 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Part-time employment practices. 1405.9 Section 1405.9 Labor Regulations Relating to Labor (Continued) FEDERAL MEDIATION AND CONCILIATION SERVICE PART-TIME EMPLOYMENT Part-time Employment Program § 1405.9 Part-time employment practices. FMCS will review positions which...

20 CFR 669.400 - What are the elements of the Individual Employment Plan that is authorized as an intensive service?

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... customer-centered case management tool, an IEP is a personal record and must receive confidential treatment. ... 20 Employees' Benefits 3 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false What are the elements of the Individual Employment Plan that is authorized as an intensive service? 669.400 Section 669.400 Employees' Benefits...

Employability profile of the Peruvian public accountant

OpenAIRE

Tarazona, Silvia; Maisch, Elena; Arias, Hernán

2014-01-01

The traditional perspective on the Public Accountant's professional services is running out of time and, although such services are still valuable for enterprises, the survival of the latter demands a more open and aggressive professional attitude in this field (Lebrija, 1998). Employability profiles respond to this demand by acknowledging the new abilities required of the labor force, which go beyond professional competencies. It is also these profiles which will allow coping with employment...

Evaluation of a Team Project Based Learning Module for Developing Employability Skills

OpenAIRE

Janice Whatley

2012-01-01

This paper presents a case study, in which a new module, aimed at enhancing students’ employ-ability skills, is evaluated. Employability skills for graduates from higher education are regarded as essential outcomes from their degree programmes, but it can be difficult to provide appropriate opportunities to develop these skills in the context of their studies. This paper describes a new module, called Live Projects, designed to provide project based learning on campus, but involv-ing local bu...

An Automated End-To Multi-Agent Qos Based Architecture for Selection of Geospatial Web Services

Science.gov (United States)

Shah, M.; Verma, Y.; Nandakumar, R.

2012-07-01

Over the past decade, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Web services have gained wide popularity and acceptance from researchers and industries all over the world. SOA makes it easy to build business applications with common services, and it provides like: reduced integration expense, better asset reuse, higher business agility, and reduction of business risk. Building of framework for acquiring useful geospatial information for potential users is a crucial problem faced by the GIS domain. Geospatial Web services solve this problem. With the help of web service technology, geospatial web services can provide useful geospatial information to potential users in a better way than traditional geographic information system (GIS). A geospatial Web service is a modular application designed to enable the discovery, access, and chaining of geospatial information and services across the web that are often both computation and data-intensive that involve diverse sources of data and complex processing functions. With the proliferation of web services published over the internet, multiple web services may provide similar functionality, but with different non-functional properties. Thus, Quality of Service (QoS) offers a metric to differentiate the services and their service providers. In a quality-driven selection of web services, it is important to consider non-functional properties of the web service so as to satisfy the constraints or requirements of the end users. The main intent of this paper is to build an automated end-to-end multi-agent based solution to provide the best-fit web service to service requester based on QoS.

Toward translational incremental similarity-based reasoning in breast cancer grading

Science.gov (United States)

Tutac, Adina E.; Racoceanu, Daniel; Leow, Wee-Keng; Müller, Henning; Putti, Thomas; Cretu, Vladimir

2009-02-01

One of the fundamental issues in bridging the gap between the proliferation of Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) systems in the scientific literature and the deficiency of their usage in medical community is based on the characteristic of CBIR to access information by images or/and text only. Yet, the way physicians are reasoning about patients leads intuitively to a case representation. Hence, a proper solution to overcome this gap is to consider a CBIR approach inspired by Case-Based Reasoning (CBR), which naturally introduces medical knowledge structured by cases. Moreover, in a CBR system, the knowledge is incrementally added and learned. The purpose of this study is to initiate a translational solution from CBIR algorithms to clinical practice, using a CBIR/CBR hybrid approach. Therefore, we advance the idea of a translational incremental similarity-based reasoning (TISBR), using combined CBIR and CBR characteristics: incremental learning of medical knowledge, medical case-based structure of the knowledge (CBR), image usage to retrieve similar cases (CBIR), similarity concept (central for both paradigms). For this purpose, three major axes are explored: the indexing, the cases retrieval and the search refinement, applied to Breast Cancer Grading (BCG), a powerful breast cancer prognosis exam. The effectiveness of this strategy is currently evaluated over cases provided by the Pathology Department of Singapore National University Hospital, for the indexing. With its current accuracy, TISBR launches interesting perspectives for complex reasoning in future medical research, opening the way to a better knowledge traceability and a better acceptance rate of computer-aided diagnosis assistance among practitioners.

45 CFR 1616.6 - Equal employment opportunity.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... 45 Public Welfare 4 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Equal employment opportunity. 1616.6 Section 1616.6 Public Welfare Regulations Relating to Public Welfare (Continued) LEGAL SERVICES CORPORATION ATTORNEY HIRING § 1616.6 Equal employment opportunity. A recipient shall adopt employment qualifications, procedures, and policies that meet the...

42 CFR 102.32 - Benefits for lost employment income.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... 102.32 Public Health PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES VACCINES SMALLPOX... pay for lost employment income or to provide disability or retirement benefits to the requester. As provided in § 102.84, the Secretary retains the right to recover benefits for lost employment income paid...

The impact on advanced economies of north-south trade in manufacturing and services

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Robert Rowthorn

2005-04-01

Full Text Available Many types of production are being transferred from the rich economies of the North to the poorer economies of the South. Such changes began in manufacturing but are now spreading to services. This paper provides estimates of their past and future impact on employment in the North. About 5 million manufacturing jobs have been lost over the past decade because of trade with low-wage economies. A similar number of service jobs may be lost to low-wage economies over the next decade. Although small compared to total employment, such losses may seriously harm certain localities or types of worker.

Outsourced similarity search on metric data assets

KAUST Repository

Yiu, Man Lung

2012-02-01

This paper considers a cloud computing setting in which similarity querying of metric data is outsourced to a service provider. The data is to be revealed only to trusted users, not to the service provider or anyone else. Users query the server for the most similar data objects to a query example. Outsourcing offers the data owner scalability and a low-initial investment. The need for privacy may be due to the data being sensitive (e.g., in medicine), valuable (e.g., in astronomy), or otherwise confidential. Given this setting, the paper presents techniques that transform the data prior to supplying it to the service provider for similarity queries on the transformed data. Our techniques provide interesting trade-offs between query cost and accuracy. They are then further extended to offer an intuitive privacy guarantee. Empirical studies with real data demonstrate that the techniques are capable of offering privacy while enabling efficient and accurate processing of similarity queries.

Similarity-based recommendation of new concepts to a terminology

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Chandar, Praveen; Yaman, Anil; Hoxha, Julia; He, Zhe; Weng, Chunhua

2015-01-01

Terminologies can suffer from poor concept coverage due to delays in addition of new concepts. This study tests a similarity-based approach to recommending concepts from a text corpus to a terminology. Our approach involves extraction of candidate concepts from a given text corpus, which are

Employment specialist competencies for supported employment programs

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Corbière, M.; Brouwers, E.P.M.; Lanctôt, N.; van Weeghel, J.

2014-01-01

Purpose Supported employment (SE) programs are evidence-based programs offered to people with severe mental illness to facilitate obtaining and keeping competitive work. However, significant variations in individuals’ vocational success may be partly explained by differences in their employment

Supporting Employers in the Reserve Operational Forces Era: Are Changes Needed to Reservists’ Employment Rights Legislation, Policies, or Programs?

Science.gov (United States)

2013-01-01

Universal Numbering System EN Employer Notification EP Employer Partnership of the Armed Services EPF Employment Policy Foundation ESGR Employer Support of...on Employers 33 lished in 2005 by the Employment Policy Foundation ( EPF ). According to that report, about half of FMLA leave-takers do not give...Magazine (Bates, 2005), summarizes the findings of a report published in 2005 by EPF ; the original report could not be located because EPF has closed. 4

Structure modulates similarity-based interference in sluicing: An eye tracking study.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jesse A. Harris

2015-12-01

Full Text Available In cue-based content-addressable approaches to memory, a target and its competitors are retrieved in parallel from memory via a fast, associative cue-matching procedure under a severely limited focus of attention. Such a parallel matching procedure could in principle ignore the serial order or hierarchical structure characteristic of linguistic relations. I present an eye tracking while reading experiment that investigates whether the sentential position of a potential antecedent modulates the strength of similarity-based interference, a well-studied effect in which increased similarity in features between a target and its competitors results in slower and less accurate retrieval overall. The manipulation trades on an independently established Locality bias in sluiced structures to associate a wh-remnant (which ones in clausal ellipsis with the most local correlate (some wines, as in The tourists enjoyed some wines, but I don’t know which ones. The findings generally support cue-based parsing models of sentence processing that are subject to similarity-based interference in retrieval, and provide additional support to the growing body of evidence that retrieval is sensitive to both the structural position of a target antecedent and its competitors, and the specificity of retrieval cues.

Trust-based or performance-based management: a study of employment contracting in hospitals.

Science.gov (United States)

Pettersen, Inger Johanne

2011-01-01

Hospitals are frequently changing managerial practices due to numerous public sector reforms taking place. In general, these reforms include the making and monitoring of contracts that regulate relations between the hospitals and their professional staffs. The aim of this paper is to discuss some main characteristics of the contracts that regulate the perceived relations between physicians as employees and the public hospital as employer. The theoretical framework is based on a contract theory approach. The empirical data is based on survey data from full-time employed physicians in the medical and surgical divisions in one of the largest university hospitals in Norway. This study shows that perceived obligations and psychological contracts indicate high degree of relational contracts between the hospital and the physicians. These socio-cultural elements should be recognized as important mechanisms of coordination and communication when policy makers and hospital managers are designing hospital management control systems. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

32 CFR 1656.5 - Eligible employment.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

..., associations or corporations primarily engaged either in a charitable activity conducted for the benefit of the..., park and recreational activities, pollution control and monitoring systems, and disaster relief; (iv... Service Law which civilian employment programs or activities are appropriate for Alternative Service work...

Improving Classification of Protein Interaction Articles Using Context Similarity-Based Feature Selection.

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Yifei; Sun, Yuxing; Han, Bing-Qing

2015-01-01

Protein interaction article classification is a text classification task in the biological domain to determine which articles describe protein-protein interactions. Since the feature space in text classification is high-dimensional, feature selection is widely used for reducing the dimensionality of features to speed up computation without sacrificing classification performance. Many existing feature selection methods are based on the statistical measure of document frequency and term frequency. One potential drawback of these methods is that they treat features separately. Hence, first we design a similarity measure between the context information to take word cooccurrences and phrase chunks around the features into account. Then we introduce the similarity of context information to the importance measure of the features to substitute the document and term frequency. Hence we propose new context similarity-based feature selection methods. Their performance is evaluated on two protein interaction article collections and compared against the frequency-based methods. The experimental results reveal that the context similarity-based methods perform better in terms of the F1 measure and the dimension reduction rate. Benefiting from the context information surrounding the features, the proposed methods can select distinctive features effectively for protein interaction article classification.

An Extended Petri-Net Based Approach for Supply Chain Process Enactment in Resource-Centric Web Service Environment

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Xiaodong; Zhang, Xiaoyu; Cai, Hongming; Xu, Boyi

Enacting a supply-chain process involves variant partners and different IT systems. REST receives increasing attention for distributed systems with loosely coupled resources. Nevertheless, resource model incompatibilities and conflicts prevent effective process modeling and deployment in resource-centric Web service environment. In this paper, a Petri-net based framework for supply-chain process integration is proposed. A resource meta-model is constructed to represent the basic information of resources. Then based on resource meta-model, XML schemas and documents are derived, which represent resources and their states in Petri-net. Thereafter, XML-net, a high level Petri-net, is employed for modeling control and data flow of process. From process model in XML-net, RESTful services and choreography descriptions are deduced. Therefore, unified resource representation and RESTful services description are proposed for cross-system integration in a more effective way. A case study is given to illustrate the approach and the desirable features of the approach are discussed.

Connecticut's Value-Based Insurance Plan Increased The Use Of Targeted Services And Medication Adherence.

Science.gov (United States)

Hirth, Richard A; Cliff, Elizabeth Q; Gibson, Teresa B; McKellar, M Richard; Fendrick, A Mark

2016-04-01

In 2011 Connecticut implemented the Health Enhancement Program for state employees. This voluntary program followed the principles of value-based insurance design (VBID) by lowering patient costs for certain high-value primary and chronic disease preventive services, coupled with requirements that enrollees receive these services. Nonparticipants in the program, including those removed for noncompliance with its requirements, were assessed a premium surcharge. The program was intended to curb cost growth and improve health through adherence to evidence-based preventive care. To evaluate its efficacy in doing so, we compared changes in service use and spending after implementation of the program to trends among employees of six other states. Compared to employees of other states, Connecticut employees were similar in age and sex but had a slightly higher percentage of enrollees with chronic conditions and substantially higher spending at baseline. During the program's first two years, the use of targeted services and adherence to medications for chronic conditions increased, while emergency department use decreased, relative to the situation in the comparison states. The program's impact on costs was inconclusive and requires a longer follow-up period. This novel combination of VBID principles and participation requirements may be a tool that can help plan sponsors increase the use of evidence-based preventive services. Project HOPE—The People-to-People Health Foundation, Inc.

Under What Conditions Does Caseworker-Caregiver Racial/Ethnic Similarity Matter for Housing Service Provision? An Application of Representative Bureaucracy Theory.

Science.gov (United States)

McBeath, Bowen; Chuang, Emmeline; Bunger, Alicia; Blakeslee, Jennifer

2014-03-01

In this article, we examine child welfare caseworkers' housing-related service strategies when they serve culturally similar versus culturally dissimilar clients. Testing hypotheses drawn from representative bureaucracy theory and using data from the second cohort of the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being, we find that when non-Caucasian caseworkers share the same racial/ethnic background as caregivers, caseworkers use more active strategies to connect caregivers to needed housing services. The relationship between racial/ethnic matching and frontline workers' repertoire of service strategies is most pronounced when the need for housing has been registered formally via referrals and case plans and thus legitimated institutionally. These results reinforce basic tenets of representative bureaucracy theory and provide evidence of the benefits of racial and ethnic diversity in the human service workforce. Our findings also highlight the need for research identifying institutional and frontline organizational factors that enhance the quality of service provision.

Individual and work-related predictors of work outcomes related to sustainable employment among male shift and day workers.

Science.gov (United States)

van de Ven, Hardy A; Klein Hesselink, John; Bültmann, Ute; de Boer, Michiel R; de Looze, Michiel P; van der Klink, Jac J L; Brouwer, Sandra

2014-05-01

The aim of this study was to examine which individual and work-related characteristics predict work outcomes related to sustainable employment among male shift and day workers. Between 1 September 2005 and 31 December 2009, data on individual and work-related characteristics of N=5640 employees of Tata Steel in the Netherlands were retrieved from the Occupational Health Service and company registers. Work outcomes related to sustainable employment were (i) temporarily being placed in less strenuous work, (ii) sickness absence ≥6 weeks, and (iii) leaving the organization. Cox proportional hazard analyses were performed for all outcome measures. Similar predictors were found for shift and day workers although some differences were observed. For shift workers, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease were important predictors for sickness absence. For day workers, insomnia was an important predictor of sickness absence ≥6 weeks. Similar predictors in magnitude and direction were found for work outcomes related to sustainable employment among shift and day workers. Interventions aimed at enhancing sustainable employability should focus on individual and work-related characteristics.

Tabulations of Responses from the 1999 Survey of Spouses of Active Duty Personnel. Volume 2. Programs and Services, Employment, Family, Economic Issues, and Background

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Deak, Mary

2001-01-01

The 1999 Active Duty Surveys (ADS) gather information on current location, spouse's military assignment, military life, programs and services, spouse employment, family information, economic issues, and background...

The effects of similarity, parasocial identification, and source credibility in obesity public service announcements on diet and exercise self-efficacy.

Science.gov (United States)

Phua, Joe

2016-05-01

This study examined the effect of the audience's similarity to, and parasocial identification with, spokespersons in obesity public service announcements, on perceived source credibility, and diet and exercise self-efficacy. The results (N = 200) indicated that perceived similarity to the spokesperson was significantly associated with three dimensions of source credibility (competence, trustworthiness, and goodwill), each of which in turn influenced parasocial identification with the spokesperson. Parasocial identification also exerted a positive impact on the audiences' diet and exercise self-efficacy. Additionally, significant differences were found between overweight viewers and non-overweight viewers on perceived similarity, parasocial identification with the spokesperson, and source credibility. © The Author(s) 2014.

Employment-based reinforcement of adherence to depot naltrexone in unemployed opioid-dependent adults: a randomized controlled trial.

Science.gov (United States)

Everly, Jeffrey J; DeFulio, Anthony; Koffarnus, Mikhail N; Leoutsakos, Jeannie-Marie S; Donlin, Wendy D; Aklin, Will M; Umbricht, Annie; Fingerhood, Michael; Bigelow, George E; Silverman, Kenneth

2011-07-01

Naltrexone can be used to treat opioid dependence, but patients refuse to take it. Extended-release depot formulations may improve adherence, but long-term adherence rates to depot naltrexone are not known. This study determined long-term rates of adherence to depot naltrexone and whether employment-based reinforcement can improve adherence. Participants who were inducted onto oral naltrexone were assigned randomly to contingency (n = 18) or prescription (n = 17) groups. Participants were offered six depot naltrexone injections and invited to work at the therapeutic workplace on week days for 26 weeks, where they earned stipends for participating in job skills training. Contingency participants were required to accept naltrexone injections to maintain workplace access and to maintain maximum pay. Prescription participants could work independently of whether they accepted injections. The therapeutic workplace, a model employment-based intervention for drug addiction and unemployment. Opioid-dependent unemployed adults. Depot naltrexone injections accepted and opiate-negative urine samples. Contingency participants accepted significantly more naltrexone injections than prescription participants (81% versus 42%), and were more likely to accept all injections (66% versus 35%). At monthly assessments (with missing urine samples imputed as positive), the groups provided similar percentages of samples negative for opiates (74% versus 62%) and for cocaine (56% versus 54%). Opiate-positive samples were more likely when samples were also positive for cocaine. Employment-based reinforcement can maintain adherence to depot naltrexone. Future research should determine whether persistent cocaine use compromises naltrexone's effect on opiate use. Workplaces may be useful for promoting sustained adherence to depot naltrexone. © 2011 The Authors, Addiction © 2011 Society for the Study of Addiction.

Why Public Employment Services Always Fail. Double-sided Asymmetric Information and the Replacement of Low-skill Workers in six European Countries

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Larsen, Christian Albrekt; Vesan, Patrik

2012-01-01

It has been a general finding across Europe that very few job matches are facilitated by public employment services (PES).The article explains this failure by highlighting the existence of a double-sided asymmetric information problem on the labour market. It is argued that although a PES...

Employment growth and regional development

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Eriksson, Rikard; Hansen, Høgni Kalsø; Winther, Lars

2017-01-01

This paper explores the potential drivers behind uneven regional development in the context of employment growth in Denmark and Sweden. In particular, we are interested in the roles of urbanization, industrial change and the rise of the new economy as manifested in the growth of the two economies...... in 2002–2007. The aim of this paper is, therefore, to analyse the impact of a number of key industrial sectors on regional employment growth in the two countries. The empirical analysis is based on longitudinal matched employer–employee data retrieved from official registers in each economy from 2002...... economies, we find that, although in general these economies react relatively similarly to changes, embarking on a narrower analysis of the individual sectors reveals marked national differences. This indicates that context matters in the analysis of regional economic dynamics in terms of structure, system...

7 CFR 51.632 - Similar varietal characteristics.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 2 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Similar varietal characteristics. 51.632 Section 51.632 Agriculture Regulations of the Department of Agriculture AGRICULTURAL MARKETING SERVICE (Standards..., and Arizona) Definitions § 51.632 Similar varietal characteristics. Similar varietal characteristics...

7 CFR 51.694 - Similar varietal characteristics.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 2 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Similar varietal characteristics. 51.694 Section 51.694 Agriculture Regulations of the Department of Agriculture AGRICULTURAL MARKETING SERVICE (Standards..., and Arizona) Definitions § 51.694 Similar varietal characteristics. Similar varietal characteristics...

Functional principles of registry-based service discovery

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Sundramoorthy, V.; Tan, C.; Hartel, P.H.; Hartog, den J.I.; Scholten, J.

2005-01-01

As Service Discovery Protocols (SDP) are becoming increasingly important for ubiquitous computing, they must behave according to predefined principles. We present the functional Principles of Service Discovery for robust, registry-based service discovery. A methodology to guarantee adherence to

Multicriteria Similarity-Based Anomaly Detection Using Pareto Depth Analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Hsiao, Ko-Jen; Xu, Kevin S; Calder, Jeff; Hero, Alfred O

2016-06-01

We consider the problem of identifying patterns in a data set that exhibits anomalous behavior, often referred to as anomaly detection. Similarity-based anomaly detection algorithms detect abnormally large amounts of similarity or dissimilarity, e.g., as measured by the nearest neighbor Euclidean distances between a test sample and the training samples. In many application domains, there may not exist a single dissimilarity measure that captures all possible anomalous patterns. In such cases, multiple dissimilarity measures can be defined, including nonmetric measures, and one can test for anomalies by scalarizing using a nonnegative linear combination of them. If the relative importance of the different dissimilarity measures are not known in advance, as in many anomaly detection applications, the anomaly detection algorithm may need to be executed multiple times with different choices of weights in the linear combination. In this paper, we propose a method for similarity-based anomaly detection using a novel multicriteria dissimilarity measure, the Pareto depth. The proposed Pareto depth analysis (PDA) anomaly detection algorithm uses the concept of Pareto optimality to detect anomalies under multiple criteria without having to run an algorithm multiple times with different choices of weights. The proposed PDA approach is provably better than using linear combinations of the criteria, and shows superior performance on experiments with synthetic and real data sets.

Employment and educational outcomes in early intervention programmes for early psychosis: a systematic review.

Science.gov (United States)

Bond, G R; Drake, R E; Luciano, A

2015-10-01

Young adults with early psychosis want to pursue normal roles - education and employment. This paper summarises the empirical literature on the effectiveness of early intervention programmes for employment and education outcomes. We conducted a systematic review of employment/education outcomes for early intervention programmes, distinguishing three programme types: (1) those providing supported employment, (2) those providing unspecified vocational services and (3) those without vocational services. We summarised findings for 28 studies. Eleven studies evaluated early intervention programmes providing supported employment. In eight studies that reported employment outcomes separately from education outcomes, the employment rate during follow-up for supported employment patients was 49%, compared with 29% for patients receiving usual services. The two groups did not differ on enrolment in education. In four controlled studies, meta-analysis showed that the employment rate for supported employment participants was significantly higher than for control participants, odds ratio = 3.66 [1.93-6.93], p < 0.0001. Five studies (four descriptive and one quasi-experimental) of early intervention programmes evaluating unspecified vocational services were inconclusive. Twelve studies of early intervention programmes without vocational services were methodologically heterogeneous, using diverse methods for evaluating vocational/educational outcomes and precluding a satisfactory meta-analytic synthesis. Among studies with comparison groups, 7 of 11 (64%) reported significant vocational/education outcomes favouring early intervention over usual services. In early intervention programmes, supported employment moderately increases employment rates but not rates of enrolment in education. These improvements are in addition to the modest effects early programmes alone have on vocational/educational outcomes compared with usual services.

Employing continuous quality improvement in community-based substance abuse programs.

Science.gov (United States)

Chinman, Matthew; Hunter, Sarah B; Ebener, Patricia

2012-01-01

This article aims to describe continuous quality improvement (CQI) for substance abuse prevention and treatment programs in a community-based organization setting. CQI (e.g., plan-do-study-act cycles (PDSA)) applied in healthcare and industry was adapted for substance abuse prevention and treatment programs in a community setting. The authors assessed the resources needed, acceptability and CQI feasibility for ten programs by evaluating CQI training workshops with program staff and a series of three qualitative interviews over a nine-month implementation period with program participants. The CQI activities, PDSA cycle progress, effort, enthusiasm, benefits and challenges were examined. Results indicated that CQI was feasible and acceptable for community-based substance abuse prevention and treatment programs; however, some notable resource challenges remain. Future studies should examine CQI impact on service quality and intended program outcomes. The study was conducted on a small number of programs. It did not assess CQI impact on service quality and intended program outcomes. Practical implications- This project shows that it is feasible to adapt CQI techniques and processes for community-based programs substance abuse prevention and treatment programs. These techniques may help community-based program managers to improve service quality and achieve program outcomes. This is one of the first studies to adapt traditional CQI techniques for community-based settings delivering substance abuse prevention and treatment programs.

Architecture Design of Healthcare Software-as-a-Service Platform for Cloud-Based Clinical Decision Support Service.

Science.gov (United States)

Oh, Sungyoung; Cha, Jieun; Ji, Myungkyu; Kang, Hyekyung; Kim, Seok; Heo, Eunyoung; Han, Jong Soo; Kang, Hyunggoo; Chae, Hoseok; Hwang, Hee; Yoo, Sooyoung

2015-04-01

To design a cloud computing-based Healthcare Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Platform (HSP) for delivering healthcare information services with low cost, high clinical value, and high usability. We analyzed the architecture requirements of an HSP, including the interface, business services, cloud SaaS, quality attributes, privacy and security, and multi-lingual capacity. For cloud-based SaaS services, we focused on Clinical Decision Service (CDS) content services, basic functional services, and mobile services. Microsoft's Azure cloud computing for Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) was used. The functional and software views of an HSP were designed in a layered architecture. External systems can be interfaced with the HSP using SOAP and REST/JSON. The multi-tenancy model of the HSP was designed as a shared database, with a separate schema for each tenant through a single application, although healthcare data can be physically located on a cloud or in a hospital, depending on regulations. The CDS services were categorized into rule-based services for medications, alert registration services, and knowledge services. We expect that cloud-based HSPs will allow small and mid-sized hospitals, in addition to large-sized hospitals, to adopt information infrastructures and health information technology with low system operation and maintenance costs.

Predictors of Employment Outcomes for People with Visual Impairment in Taiwan: The Contribution of Disability Employment Services

Science.gov (United States)

Jang, Yuh; Wang, Yun-Tung; Lin, Meng-Hsiu; Shih, Kevin J.

2013-01-01

Introduction: We investigated the employment status and identified factors that may affect the employment outcomes of people with visual impairments in Taiwan. Methods: A retrospective, ex post facto design study was conducted. The sample included 313 visually impaired clients who commenced and "closed" (completed) disability employment…

Similarity-based search of model organism, disease and drug effect phenotypes

KAUST Repository

Hoehndorf, Robert

2015-02-19

Background: Semantic similarity measures over phenotype ontologies have been demonstrated to provide a powerful approach for the analysis of model organism phenotypes, the discovery of animal models of human disease, novel pathways, gene functions, druggable therapeutic targets, and determination of pathogenicity. Results: We have developed PhenomeNET 2, a system that enables similarity-based searches over a large repository of phenotypes in real-time. It can be used to identify strains of model organisms that are phenotypically similar to human patients, diseases that are phenotypically similar to model organism phenotypes, or drug effect profiles that are similar to the phenotypes observed in a patient or model organism. PhenomeNET 2 is available at http://aber-owl.net/phenomenet. Conclusions: Phenotype-similarity searches can provide a powerful tool for the discovery and investigation of molecular mechanisms underlying an observed phenotypic manifestation. PhenomeNET 2 facilitates user-defined similarity searches and allows researchers to analyze their data within a large repository of human, mouse and rat phenotypes.

GIS: a comprehensive source for protein structure similarities.

Science.gov (United States)

Guerler, Aysam; Knapp, Ernst-Walter

2010-07-01

A web service for analysis of protein structures that are sequentially or non-sequentially similar was generated. Recently, the non-sequential structure alignment algorithm GANGSTA+ was introduced. GANGSTA+ can detect non-sequential structural analogs for proteins stated to possess novel folds. Since GANGSTA+ ignores the polypeptide chain connectivity of secondary structure elements (i.e. alpha-helices and beta-strands), it is able to detect structural similarities also between proteins whose sequences were reshuffled during evolution. GANGSTA+ was applied in an all-against-all comparison on the ASTRAL40 database (SCOP version 1.75), which consists of >10,000 protein domains yielding about 55 x 10(6) possible protein structure alignments. Here, we provide the resulting protein structure alignments as a public web-based service, named GANGSTA+ Internet Services (GIS). We also allow to browse the ASTRAL40 database of protein structures with GANGSTA+ relative to an externally given protein structure using different constraints to select specific results. GIS allows us to analyze protein structure families according to the SCOP classification scheme. Additionally, users can upload their own protein structures for pairwise protein structure comparison, alignment against all protein structures of the ASTRAL40 database (SCOP version 1.75) or symmetry analysis. GIS is publicly available at http://agknapp.chemie.fu-berlin.de/gplus.

Algorithm Research of Individualized Travelling Route Recommendation Based on Similarity

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Xue Shan

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Although commercial recommendation system has made certain achievement in travelling route development, the recommendation system is facing a series of challenges because of people’s increasing interest in travelling. It is obvious that the core content of the recommendation system is recommendation algorithm. The advantages of recommendation algorithm can bring great effect to the recommendation system. Based on this, this paper applies traditional collaborative filtering algorithm for analysis. Besides, illustrating the deficiencies of the algorithm, such as the rating unicity and rating matrix sparsity, this paper proposes an improved algorithm combing the multi-similarity algorithm based on user and the element similarity algorithm based on user, so as to compensate for the deficiencies that traditional algorithm has within a controllable range. Experimental results have shown that the improved algorithm has obvious advantages in comparison with the traditional one. The improved algorithm has obvious effect on remedying the rating matrix sparsity and rating unicity.

7 CFR 51.3202 - Similar varietal characteristics.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 2 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Similar varietal characteristics. 51.3202 Section 51.3202 Agriculture Regulations of the Department of Agriculture AGRICULTURAL MARKETING SERVICE (Standards... Similar varietal characteristics. Similar varietal characteristics means that the onions in any container...

Graphical matching rules for cardinality based service feature diagrams

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Faiza Kanwal

2017-03-01

Full Text Available To provide efficient services to end-users, variability and commonality among the features of the product line is a challenge for industrialist and researchers. Feature modeling provides great services to deal with variability and commonality among the features of product line. Cardinality based service feature diagrams changed the basic framework of service feature diagrams by putting constraints to them, which make service specifications more flexible, but apart from their variation in selection third party services may have to be customizable. Although to control variability, cardinality based service feature diagrams provide high level visual notations. For specifying variability, the use of cardinality based service feature diagrams raises the problem of matching a required feature diagram against the set of provided diagrams.

A similarity-based data warehousing environment for medical images.

Science.gov (United States)

Teixeira, Jefferson William; Annibal, Luana Peixoto; Felipe, Joaquim Cezar; Ciferri, Ricardo Rodrigues; Ciferri, Cristina Dutra de Aguiar

2015-11-01

A core issue of the decision-making process in the medical field is to support the execution of analytical (OLAP) similarity queries over images in data warehousing environments. In this paper, we focus on this issue. We propose imageDWE, a non-conventional data warehousing environment that enables the storage of intrinsic features taken from medical images in a data warehouse and supports OLAP similarity queries over them. To comply with this goal, we introduce the concept of perceptual layer, which is an abstraction used to represent an image dataset according to a given feature descriptor in order to enable similarity search. Based on this concept, we propose the imageDW, an extended data warehouse with dimension tables specifically designed to support one or more perceptual layers. We also detail how to build an imageDW and how to load image data into it. Furthermore, we show how to process OLAP similarity queries composed of a conventional predicate and a similarity search predicate that encompasses the specification of one or more perceptual layers. Moreover, we introduce an index technique to improve the OLAP query processing over images. We carried out performance tests over a data warehouse environment that consolidated medical images from exams of several modalities. The results demonstrated the feasibility and efficiency of our proposed imageDWE to manage images and to process OLAP similarity queries. The results also demonstrated that the use of the proposed index technique guaranteed a great improvement in query processing. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

An Energy-Based Similarity Measure for Time Series

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Pierre Brunagel

2007-11-01

Full Text Available A new similarity measure, called SimilB, for time series analysis, based on the cross-ΨB-energy operator (2004, is introduced. ΨB is a nonlinear measure which quantifies the interaction between two time series. Compared to Euclidean distance (ED or the Pearson correlation coefficient (CC, SimilB includes the temporal information and relative changes of the time series using the first and second derivatives of the time series. SimilB is well suited for both nonstationary and stationary time series and particularly those presenting discontinuities. Some new properties of ΨB are presented. Particularly, we show that ΨB as similarity measure is robust to both scale and time shift. SimilB is illustrated with synthetic time series and an artificial dataset and compared to the CC and the ED measures.

Beyond cost: 'responsible purchasing' of managed care by employers.