Application of enhanced discrete differential evolution approach to unit commitment problem

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yuan Xiaohui; Su Anjun; Nie Hao; Yuan Yanbin; Wang Liang

2009-01-01

This paper proposes a discrete binary differential evolution (DBDE) approach to solve the unit commitment problem (UCP). The proposed method is enhanced by priority list based on the unit characteristics and heuristic search strategies to handle constraints effectively. The implementation of the proposed method for UCP consists of three stages. Firstly, the DBDE based on priority list is applied for unit scheduling when neglecting the minimum up/down time constraints. Secondly, repairing strategies are used to handle the minimum up/down time constraints and decommit excess spinning reserve units. Finally, heuristic unit substitution search and gray zone modification algorithm are used to improve optimal solution further. Furthermore, the effects of two crucial parameters on performance of the DBDE for solving UCP are studied as well. To verify the advantages of the method, the proposed method is tested and compared to the other methods on the systems with the number of units in the range of 10-100. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed method is superior to other methods reported in the literature.

Stochastic Unit Commitment via Progressive Hedging - Extensive Analysis of Solution Methods

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ordoudis, Christos; Pinson, Pierre; Zugno, Marco

2015-01-01

Owing to the massive deployment of renewable power production units over the last couple of decades, the use of stochastic optimization methods to solve the unit commitment problem has gained increasing attention. Solving stochastic unit commitment problems in large-scale power systems requires h...

Fuzzy Array Approach to Unit Commitment

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jantzen, Jan; Eliasson, Bo

1996-01-01

The paper investigates the unit commitment problem of Swedish power company Sydkraft as a constraint satisfaction problem. The power system is a simplified system with nuclear, thermal, and hydro generators as well as power interchange. In this paper we focus on soft constraints, for instance...

Solving unit commitment and economic load dispatch problems ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Economic Load Dispatch (ELD) and Unit Commitment (UC) are very important applications to predict the optimized cost of load in a power system. UC determines working states for existing generating units under some operational constraints and then optimizing the operation cost for all running units w.r.t. load demand ...

Restriction techniques for the unit-commitment problem with total procurement costs

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kaleta, Mariusz; Toczylowski, Eugeniusz

2008-01-01

Many discrete optimization problems may be solved much easier, if the solution space can be restricted in a convenient way. For a given specific problem, the restriction techniques can be helpful if an available optimization solver, perceived as a black box, is capable of solving quickly only reduced subproblems of a limited size. For the family of hard unit-commitment problems we investigate a hierarchical search algorithm, which is based on decomposition of the problem into two subproblems. The upper-level subproblem is a relatively small decision 'kernel' of the problem that can be solved approximately by a search algorithm. We define an appropriate restricted decision space for this subproblem. The lower-level subproblem is an appropriate restriction of the original problem that can be solved efficiently by a dedicated solver. Our approach was analyzed on a set of historical data from the Polish electrical balancing market and the best known solutions were improved by the average of about 2-5%

Solving unit commitment and economic load dispatch problems ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

2 Department of Electrical Power and Machines, Faculty of engineering, Ain shams ... intricate basic leadership process and it is hard to build up any thorough ... These pre-committed schedules are optimized by BAT algorithm thus .... and the current best location (solution) is x0 which is situated in the wake of looking at.

Thermal Unit Commitment Scheduling Problem in Utility System by Tabu Search Embedded Genetic Algorithm Method

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

C. Christober Asir Rajan

2008-06-01

Full Text Available The objective of this paper is to find the generation scheduling such that the total operating cost can be minimized, when subjected to a variety of constraints. This also means that it is desirable to find the optimal unit commitment in the power system for the next H hours. A 66-bus utility power system in India demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed approach; extensive studies have also been performed for different IEEE test systems consist of 24, 57 and 175 buses. Numerical results are shown comparing the cost solutions and computation time obtained by different intelligence and conventional methods.

Smart Grid Cost-Emission Unit Commitment via Co-Evolutionary Agents

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Xiaohua Zhang

2016-10-01

Full Text Available In this paper, the uncertainty of wind, solar and load; smart charging and discharging of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs to and from various energy sources; and the coordination of wind, solar power, PHEVs and cost-emission are considered in the smart grid unit commitment (UC. First, a multi-scenario simulation is used in which a set of valid scenarios is considered for the uncertainties of wind and solar energy sources and load. Then the UC problem for the set of scenarios is decomposed into the optimization of interactive agents by multi-agent technology. Agents’ action is represented by a genetic algorithm with adaptive crossover and mutation operators. The adaptive co-evolution of agents is reached by adaptive cooperative multipliers. Finally, simulation is implemented on an example of a power system containing thermal units, a wind farm, solar power plants and PHEVs. The results show the effectiveness of the proposed method. Thermal units, wind, solar power and PHEVs are mutually complementarily by the adaptive cooperative mechanism. The adaptive multipliers’ updating strategy can save more computational time and further improve the efficiency.

EP BASED PSO METHOD FOR SOLVING PROFIT BASED MULTI AREA UNIT COMMITMENT PROBLEM

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

K. VENKATESAN

2015-04-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a new approach to solve the profit based multi area unit commitment problem (PBMAUCP using an evolutionary programming based particle swarm optimization (EPPSO method. The objective of this paper is to maximize the profit of generation companies (GENCOs with considering system social benefit. The proposed method helps GENCOs to make a decision, how much power and reserve should be sold in markets, and how to schedule generators in order to receive the maximum profit. Joint operation of generation resources can result in significant operational cost savings. Power transfer between the areas through the tie lines depends upon the operating cost of generation at each hour and tie line transfer limits. The tie line transfer limits were considered as a set of constraints during optimization process to ensure the system security and reliability. The overall algorithm can be implemented on an IBM PC, which can process a fairly large system in a reasonable period of time. Case study of four areas with different load pattern each containing 7 units (NTPS and 26 units connected via tie lines have been taken for analysis. Numerical results showed comparing the profit of evolutionary programming-based particle swarm optimization method (EPPSO with conventional dynamic programming (DP, evolutionary programming (EP, and particle swarm optimization (PSO method. Experimental results shows that the application of this evolutionary programming based particle swarm optimization method have the potential to solve profit based multi area unit commitment problem with lesser computation time.

[Organizational commitment and job satisfaction: an exploratory study in family health units in Portugal].

Science.gov (United States)

Pereira, Isabel; Veloso, Ana; Silva, Isabel Soares; Costa, Patricio

2017-05-18

This study explored the relationship between organizational commitment and job satisfaction among workers in family health units. Six family health units in the North of Portugal participated, including 105 health professionals (physicians, nurses, and clinical secretaries). The study used the Portuguese adaptations of the Organizational Commitment Scale by Meyer & Allen (1997) and the Job Satisfaction Survey (Spector, 1985). The results suggest a positive association between organizational commitment and job satisfaction. The professionals are moderately satisfied and committed to the family health units; the most satisfactory aspects are the nature of the work, relationship to coworkers, and communication, while pay is the most unsatisfactory. The affective component of the commitment appears, highlighting the professionals' involvement in (and identification with) the family health units project. The linear regression model proved significant, and organizational commitment explains 22.7% of the variance in job satisfaction. For this sample, organizational commitment predicts job satisfaction.

Integrating generation and transmission networks reliability for unit commitment solution

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Jalilzadeh, S.; Shayeghi, H.; Hadadian, H.

2009-01-01

This paper presents a new method with integration of generation and transmission networks reliability for the solution of unit commitment (UC) problem. In fact, in order to have a more accurate assessment of system reserve requirement, in addition to unavailability of generation units, unavailability of transmission lines are also taken into account. In this way, evaluation of the required spinning reserve (SR) capacity is performed by applying reliability constraints based on loss of load probability and expected energy not supplied (EENS) indices. Calculation of the above parameters is accomplished by employing a novel procedure based on the linear programming which it also minimizes them to achieve optimum level of the SR capacity and consequently a cost-benefit reliability constrained UC schedule. In addition, a powerful solution technique called 'integer-coded genetic algorithm (ICGA)' is being used for the solution of the proposed method. Numerical results on the IEEE reliability test system show that the consideration of transmission network unavailability has an important influence on reliability indices of the UC schedules

An evolutionary programming based simulated annealing method for solving the unit commitment problem

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Christober Asir Rajan, C. [Department of EEE, Pondicherry Engineering College, Pondicherry 605014 (India); Mohan, M.R. [Department of EEE, Anna University, Chennai 600 025 (India)

2007-09-15

This paper presents a new approach to solve the short-term unit commitment problem using an evolutionary programming based simulated annealing method. The objective of this paper is to find the generation scheduling such that the total operating cost can be minimized, when subjected to a variety of constraints. This also means that it is desirable to find the optimal generating unit commitment in the power system for the next H hours. Evolutionary programming, which happens to be a global optimisation technique for solving unit commitment Problem, operates on a system, which is designed to encode each unit's operating schedule with regard to its minimum up/down time. In this, the unit commitment schedule is coded as a string of symbols. An initial population of parent solutions is generated at random. Here, each schedule is formed by committing all the units according to their initial status (''flat start''). Here the parents are obtained from a pre-defined set of solution's, i.e. each and every solution is adjusted to meet the requirements. Then, a random recommitment is carried out with respect to the unit's minimum down times. And SA improves the status. The best population is selected by evolutionary strategy. The Neyveli Thermal Power Station (NTPS) Unit-II in India demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed approach; extensive studies have also been performed for different power systems consists of 10, 26, 34 generating units. Numerical results are shown comparing the cost solutions and computation time obtained by using the Evolutionary Programming method and other conventional methods like Dynamic Programming, Lagrangian Relaxation and Simulated Annealing and Tabu Search in reaching proper unit commitment. (author)

Fat Tail Model for Simulating Test Systems in Multiperiod Unit Commitment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

J. A. Marmolejo

2015-01-01

Full Text Available This paper describes the use of Chambers-Mallows-Stuck method for simulating stable random variables in the generation of test systems for economic analysis in power systems. A study that focused on generating test electrical systems through fat tail model for unit commitment problem in electrical power systems is presented. Usually, the instances of test systems in Unit Commitment are generated using normal distribution, but in this work, simulations data are based on a new method. For simulating, we used three original systems to obtain the demand behavior and thermal production costs. The estimation of stable parameters for the simulation of stable random variables was based on three generally accepted methods: (a regression, (b quantiles, and (c maximum likelihood, choosing one that has the best fit of the tails of the distribution. Numerical results illustrate the applicability of the proposed method by solving several unit commitment problems.

Unit Commitment for Systems With Significant Wind Penetration

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Tuohy, Aidan; Meibom, Peter; Denny, E.

2009-01-01

The stochastic nature of wind alters the unit commitment and dispatch problem. By accounting for this uncertainty when scheduling the system, more robust schedules are produced, which should, on average, reduce expected costs. In this paper, the effects of stochastic wind and load on the unit...... commitment and dispatch of power systems with high levels of wind power are examined. By comparing the costs, planned operation and performance of the schedules produced, it is shown that stochastic optimization results in less costly, of the order of 0.25%, and better performing schedules than deterministic...... optimization. The impact of planning the system more frequently to account for updated wind and load forecasts is then examined. More frequent planning means more up to date forecasts are used, which reduces the need for reserve and increases performance of the schedules. It is shown that mid-merit and peaking...

A Three-Stage Birandom Program for Unit Commitment with Wind Power Uncertainty

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Na Zhang

2014-01-01

Full Text Available The integration of large-scale wind power adds a significant uncertainty to power system planning and operating. The wind forecast error is decreased with the forecast horizon, particularly when it is from one day to several hours ahead. Integrating intraday unit commitment (UC adjustment process based on updated ultra-short term wind forecast information is one way to improve the dispatching results. A novel three-stage UC decision method, in which the day-ahead UC decisions are determined in the first stage, the intraday UC adjustment decisions of subfast start units are determined in the second stage, and the UC decisions of fast-start units and dispatching decisions are determined in the third stage is presented. Accordingly, a three-stage birandom UC model is presented, in which the intraday hours-ahead forecasted wind power is formulated as a birandom variable, and the intraday UC adjustment event is formulated as a birandom event. The equilibrium chance constraint is employed to ensure the reliability requirement. A birandom simulation based hybrid genetic algorithm is designed to solve the proposed model. Some computational results indicate that the proposed model provides UC decisions with lower expected total costs.

A Bi-Level Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm for Solving Unit Commitment Problems with Wind-EVs Coordinated Dispatch

Science.gov (United States)

Song, Lei; Zhang, Bo

2017-07-01

Nowadays, the grid faces much more challenges caused by wind power and the accessing of electric vehicles (EVs). Based on the potentiality of coordinated dispatch, a model of wind-EVs coordinated dispatch was developed. Then, A bi-level particle swarm optimization algorithm for solving the model was proposed in this paper. The application of this algorithm to 10-unit test system carried out that coordinated dispatch can benefit the power system from the following aspects: (1) Reducing operating costs; (2) Improving the utilization of wind power; (3) Stabilizing the peak-valley difference.

Robust Unit Commitment Considering the Temporal and Spatial Correlations of Wind Farms Using a Data-Adaptive Approach

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Zhang, Yipu; Ai, Xiaomeng; Wen, Jinyu

2018-01-01

. In this paper, a novel data-adaptive robust optimization method for the unit commitment is proposed for the power system with wind farms integrated. The extreme scenario extraction and the two stage robust optimization are combined in the proposed method. The data-adaptive set consisting of a few extreme...... scenarios is derived to reduce the conservativeness by considering the temporal and spatial correlations of multiple wind farms. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed data-adaptive robust optimization algorithm is less conservative than the current two-stage optimization approaches while maintains...

Incorporating Wind Power Forecast Uncertainties Into Stochastic Unit Commitment Using Neural Network-Based Prediction Intervals.

Science.gov (United States)

Quan, Hao; Srinivasan, Dipti; Khosravi, Abbas

2015-09-01

Penetration of renewable energy resources, such as wind and solar power, into power systems significantly increases the uncertainties on system operation, stability, and reliability in smart grids. In this paper, the nonparametric neural network-based prediction intervals (PIs) are implemented for forecast uncertainty quantification. Instead of a single level PI, wind power forecast uncertainties are represented in a list of PIs. These PIs are then decomposed into quantiles of wind power. A new scenario generation method is proposed to handle wind power forecast uncertainties. For each hour, an empirical cumulative distribution function (ECDF) is fitted to these quantile points. The Monte Carlo simulation method is used to generate scenarios from the ECDF. Then the wind power scenarios are incorporated into a stochastic security-constrained unit commitment (SCUC) model. The heuristic genetic algorithm is utilized to solve the stochastic SCUC problem. Five deterministic and four stochastic case studies incorporated with interval forecasts of wind power are implemented. The results of these cases are presented and discussed together. Generation costs, and the scheduled and real-time economic dispatch reserves of different unit commitment strategies are compared. The experimental results show that the stochastic model is more robust than deterministic ones and, thus, decreases the risk in system operations of smart grids.

Neural Based Tabu Search method for solving unit commitment problem with cooling-banking constraints

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rajan Asir Christober Gnanakkan Charles

2009-01-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a new approach to solve short-term unit commitment problem (UCP using Neural Based Tabu Search (NBTS with cooling and banking constraints. The objective of this paper is to find the generation scheduling such that the total operating cost can be minimized, when subjected to a variety of constraints. This also means that it is desirable to find the optimal generating unit commitment in the power system for next H hours. A 7-unit utility power system in India demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed approach; extensive studies have also been performed for different IEEE test systems consist of 10, 26 and 34 units. Numerical results are shown to compare the superiority of the cost solutions obtained using the Tabu Search (TS method, Dynamic Programming (DP and Lagrangian Relaxation (LR methods in reaching proper unit commitment.

Hidden power system inflexibilities imposed by traditional unit commitment formulations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Morales-España, Germán; Ramírez-Elizondo, Laura; Hobbs, Benjamin F.

2017-01-01

Highlights: • Quality and accuracy of traditional-energy- and power-based UCs are evaluated. • Real-time performance evaluation simulating “perfect” stochastic UCs. • Ideal energy-based stochastic UC formulations impose hidden system inflexibilities. • A deterministic power-based UC may outperform an ideal energy-based stochastic UC. • Power-based UC overcomes flaws of energy-based UC: lower cost and wind curtailment. - Abstract: Approximations made in traditional day-ahead unit commitment model formulations can result in suboptimal or even infeasible schedules for slow-start units and inaccurate predictions of actual costs and wind curtailment. With increasing wind penetration, these errors will become economically more significant. Here, we consider inaccuracies from three approximations: the use of hourly intervals in which energy production from each generator is modeled as being constant; the disregarding of startup and shutdown energy trajectories; and optimization based on expected wind profiles. The results of unit commitment formulations with those assumptions are compared to models that: (1) use a piecewise-linear power profiles of generation, load and wind, instead of the traditional stepwise energy profiles; (2) consider startup/shutdown trajectories; and (3) include many possible wind trajectories in a stochastic framework. The day-ahead hourly schedules of slow-start generators are then evaluated against actual wind and load profiles using a model real-time dispatch and quick-start unit commitment with a 5 min time step. We find that each simplification usually causes expected generation costs to increase by several percentage points, and results in significant understatement of expected wind curtailment and, in some cases, load interruptions. The inclusion of startup and shutdown trajectories often yielded the largest improvements in schedule performance.

Neural networks as a tool for unit commitment

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Rønne-Hansen, Peter; Rønne-Hansen, Jan

1991-01-01

Some of the fundamental problems when solving the power system unit commitment problem by means of neural networks have been attacked. It has been demonstrated for a small example that neural networks might be a viable alternative. Some of the major problems solved in this initiating phase form...... a basis for the analysis of real life sized problems. These will be investigated in the near future...

Practical Robust Optimization Method for Unit Commitment of a System with Integrated Wind Resource

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yuanchao Yang

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Unit commitment, one of the significant tasks in power system operations, faces new challenges as the system uncertainty increases dramatically due to the integration of time-varying resources, such as wind. To address these challenges, we propose the formulation and solution of a generalized unit commitment problem for a system with integrated wind resources. Given the prespecified interval information acquired from real central wind forecasting system for uncertainty representation of nodal wind injections with their correlation information, the proposed unit commitment problem solution is computationally tractable and robust against all uncertain wind power injection realizations. We provide a solution approach to tackle this problem with complex mathematical basics and illustrate the capabilities of the proposed mixed integer solution approach on the large-scale power system of the Northwest China Grid. The numerical results demonstrate that the approach is realistic and not overly conservative in terms of the resulting dispatch cost outcomes.

Relative Importance of Human Resource Practices on Affective Commitment and Turnover Intention in South Korea and United States

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jaeyoon Lee

2018-05-01

Full Text Available The main purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of perceived HR practices on affective commitment and turnover intention. This study explored which HR practices were relatively more important in predicting affective commitment and turnover intention. A total of 302 employees from the United States and 317 from South Korea completed the same questionnaires for assessing the aforementioned relationships. The results illustrated that among perceived HR practices, internal mobility had the most significant association with turnover intention in both the United States and South Korea. While internal mobility was a stronger predictor of affective commitment for the United States sample, training was the most important variable for predicting affective commitment in South Korea. The second purpose of the study was to examine whether individuals’ positive affect influences the relationship between perceived HR practices and affective commitment and turnover intention. In the United States, positive affect moderated the relationship between perceived HR practices and affective commitment and turnover intention such that the relationships were stronger for individuals reporting high positive affect relative to those reporting low positive affect. However, these relationships were not significant in South Korea. We discuss the implications of these results, study limitations, and practical suggestions for future research.

A Comparative Study of Three Different Mathematical Methods for Solving the Unit Commitment Problem

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mehmet Kurban

2009-01-01

Full Text Available The unit commitment (UC problem which is an important subject in power system engineering is solved by using Lagragian relaxation (LR, penalty function (PF, and augmented Lagrangian penalty function (ALPF methods due to their higher solution quality and faster computational time than metaheuristic approaches. This problem is considered to be a nonlinear programming-(NP- hard problem because it is nonlinear, mixed-integer, and nonconvex. These three methods used for solving the problem are based on dual optimization techniques. ALPF method which combines the algorithmic aspects of both LR and PF methods is firstly used for solving the UC problem. These methods are compared to each other based on feasible schedule for each stage, feasible cost, dual cost, duality gap, duration time, and number of iterations. The numerical results show that the ALPF method gives the best duality gap, feasible and dual cost instead of worse duration time and the number of iterations. The four-unit Tuncbilek thermal plant which is located in Kutahya region in Turkey is chosen as a test system in this study. The programs used for all the analyses are coded and implemented using general algebraic modeling system (GAMS.

Day-Ahead Coordination of Vehicle-to-Grid Operation and Wind Power in Security Constraints Unit Commitment (SCUC)

OpenAIRE

Mohammad Javad Abdollahi; Majid Moazzami

2015-01-01

In this paper security constraints unit commitment (SCUC) in the presence of wind power resources and electrical vehicles to grid is presented. SCUC operation prepare an optimal time table for generation unit commitment in order to maximize security, minimize operation cost and satisfy the constraints of networks and units in a period of time, as one of the most important research interest in power systems. Today, the relationship between power network and energy storage systems is interested...

Column Generation for Transmission Switching of Electricity Networks with Unit Commitment

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Villumsen, Jonas Christoffer; Philpott, Andy B.

2011-01-01

This paper presents the problem of finding the minimum cost dispatch and commitment of power generation units in a transmission network with active switching.We use the term active switching to denote the use of switches to optimize network topology in an operational context. We propose a Dantzig...

Unit commitment with wind power generation: integrating wind forecast uncertainty and stochastic programming.

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Constantinescu, E. M.; Zavala, V. M.; Rocklin, M.; Lee, S.; Anitescu, M. (Mathematics and Computer Science); (Univ. of Chicago); (New York Univ.)

2009-10-09

We present a computational framework for integrating the state-of-the-art Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model in stochastic unit commitment/energy dispatch formulations that account for wind power uncertainty. We first enhance the WRF model with adjoint sensitivity analysis capabilities and a sampling technique implemented in a distributed-memory parallel computing architecture. We use these capabilities through an ensemble approach to model the uncertainty of the forecast errors. The wind power realizations are exploited through a closed-loop stochastic unit commitment/energy dispatch formulation. We discuss computational issues arising in the implementation of the framework. In addition, we validate the framework using real wind speed data obtained from a set of meteorological stations. We also build a simulated power system to demonstrate the developments.

An Efficient Robust Solution to the Two-Stage Stochastic Unit Commitment Problem

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Blanco, Ignacio; Morales González, Juan Miguel

2017-01-01

This paper proposes a reformulation of the scenario-based two-stage unitcommitment problem under uncertainty that allows finding unit-commitment plansthat perform reasonably well both in expectation and for the worst caserealization of the uncertainties. The proposed reformulation is based onpart...

Smart house-based optimal operation of thermal unit commitment for a smart grid considering transmission constraints

Science.gov (United States)

Howlader, Harun Or Rashid; Matayoshi, Hidehito; Noorzad, Ahmad Samim; Muarapaz, Cirio Celestino; Senjyu, Tomonobu

2018-05-01

This paper presents a smart house-based power system for thermal unit commitment programme. The proposed power system consists of smart houses, renewable energy plants and conventional thermal units. The transmission constraints are considered for the proposed system. The generated power of the large capacity renewable energy plant leads to the violated transmission constraints in the thermal unit commitment programme, therefore, the transmission constraint should be considered. This paper focuses on the optimal operation of the thermal units incorporated with controllable loads such as Electrical Vehicle and Heat Pump water heater of the smart houses. The proposed method is compared with the power flow in thermal units operation without controllable loads and the optimal operation without the transmission constraints. Simulation results show the validation of the proposed method.

Network-constrained AC unit commitment under uncertainty: A Benders' decomposition approach

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nasri, Amin; Kazempour, Seyyedjalal; Conejo, Antonio J.

2015-01-01

. The proposed model is formulated as a two-stage stochastic programming problem, whose first-stage refers to the day-ahead market, and whose second-stage represents real-time operation. The proposed Benders’ approach allows decomposing the original problem, which is mixed-integer nonlinear and generally...... intractable, into a mixed-integer linear master problem and a set of nonlinear, but continuous subproblems, one per scenario. In addition, to temporally decompose the proposed ac unit commitment problem, a heuristic technique is used to relax the inter-temporal ramping constraints of the generating units...

Generator scheduling under competitive environment using Memory Management Algorithm

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

A. Amudha

2013-09-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a new approach for Real-Time Application of Profit Based Unit Commitment using Memory Management Algorithm. The main objective of the restructured system is to maximize its own profit without the responsibility of satisfying the forecasted demand. The Profit Based Unit Commitment (PBUC is solved by Memory Management Algorithm (MMA in Real-Time Application. MMA approach is introduced in this paper considering power and reserve generation. The proposed method MMA uses Best Fit and Worst Fit allocation for generator scheduling in order to receive the maximum profit by considering the softer demand. Also, this method gives an idea regarding how much power and reserve should be sold in markets. The proposed approach has been tested on a power system with 2, 3, and 10 generating units. Simulation results of the proposed approach have been compared with the existing methods.

Penerapan Batas Ramp-Rate dengan Menggunakan Kombinasi Metode FDP (Forward Dynamic Programming dan QP (Quadratic Programming Pada Unit Commitment-Economic Dispatch

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Riza Fahmi Andriyanto

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Kebutuhan akan energi listrik terus menigkat seiring dengan perkembangan teknologi. meningkatnya beban listrik ini harus diimbangi dengan penambahan daya yang dibangkitkan. Hal ini sangat berpengaruh pada penjadwalan unit pembangkit yang harus ditentukan dengan baik agar didapatkan pembangkitan yang optimal. Pada Tugas Akhir ini mengambil topik mengenai unit commitment dan economic dispatch dengan mempertimbangkan nilai dari batasan generator (ramp-rate. Metode yang digunakan adalah complete enumeration dengan forward dynamic programming pada unit commitment dan quadratic programming pada economic dispatch. Metode - metode tersebut diterapkan dalam pemrograman matlab sehingga dapat dijadikan suatu program perhitungan unit commitment dan economic dispatch dengan mempertimbangkan nilai batasan ramp-rate. Dengan metode tersebut, diharapkan permasalahan penjadwalan unit pembangkit dapat terselesaikan dengan baik dan optimal sehingga memperoleh total biaya pembangkitan yang ekonomis.

Continuous grasp algorithm applied to economic dispatch problem of thermal units

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Vianna Neto, Julio Xavier [Pontifical Catholic University of Parana - PUCPR, Curitiba, PR (Brazil). Undergraduate Program at Mechatronics Engineering; Bernert, Diego Luis de Andrade; Coelho, Leandro dos Santos [Pontifical Catholic University of Parana - PUCPR, Curitiba, PR (Brazil). Industrial and Systems Engineering Graduate Program, LAS/PPGEPS], e-mail: leandro.coelho@pucpr.br

2010-07-01

The economic dispatch problem (EDP) is one of the fundamental issues in power systems to obtain benefits with the stability, reliability and security. Its objective is to allocate the power demand among committed generators in the most economical manner, while all physical and operational constraints are satisfied. The cost of power generation, particularly in fossil fuel plants, is very high and economic dispatch helps in saving a significant amount of revenue. Recently, as an alternative to the conventional mathematical approaches, modern heuristic optimization techniques such as simulated annealing, evolutionary algorithms, neural networks, ant colony, and tabu search have been given much attention by many researchers due to their ability to find an almost global optimal solution in EDPs. On other hand, continuous GRASP (C-GRASP) is a stochastic local search meta-heuristic for finding cost-efficient solutions to continuous global optimization problems subject to box constraints. Like a greedy randomized adaptive search procedure (GRASP), a C-GRASP is a multi-start procedure where a starting solution for local improvement is constructed in a greedy randomized fashion. The C-GRASP algorithm is validated for a test system consisting of fifteen units, test system that takes into account spinning reserve and prohibited operating zones constrains. (author)

Two-Stage Robust Security-Constrained Unit Commitment with Optimizable Interval of Uncertain Wind Power Output

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dayan Sun

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Because wind power spillage is barely considered, the existing robust unit commitment cannot accurately analyze the impacts of wind power accommodation on on/off schedules and spinning reserve requirements of conventional generators and cannot consider the network security limits. In this regard, a novel double-level robust security-constrained unit commitment formulation with optimizable interval of uncertain wind power output is firstly proposed in this paper to obtain allowable interval solutions for wind power generation and provide the optimal schedules for conventional generators to cope with the uncertainty in wind power generation. The proposed double-level model is difficult to be solved because of the invalid dual transform in solution process caused by the coupling relation between the discrete and continuous variables. Therefore, a two-stage iterative solution method based on Benders Decomposition is also presented. The proposed double-level model is transformed into a single-level and two-stage robust interval unit commitment model by eliminating the coupling relation, and then this two-stage model can be solved by Benders Decomposition iteratively. Simulation studies on a modified IEEE 26-generator reliability test system connected to a wind farm are conducted to verify the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed model and solution method.

Theoretical Investigation of Combined Use of PSO, Tabu Search and Lagrangian Relaxation methods to solve the Unit Commitment Problem

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sahbi Marrouchi

2018-02-01

Full Text Available Solving the Unit Commitment problem (UCP optimizes the combination of production units operations and determines the appropriate operational scheduling of each production units to satisfy the expected consumption which varies from one day to one month. Besides, each production unit is conducted to constraints that render this problem complex, combinatorial and nonlinear. In this paper, we proposed a new strategy based on the combination three optimization methods: Tabu search, Particle swarm optimization and Lagrangian relaxation methods in order to develop a proper unit commitment scheduling of the production units while reducing the production cost during a definite period. The proposed strategy has been implemented on a the IEEE 9 bus test system containing 3 production unit and the results were promising compared to strategies based on meta-heuristic and deterministic methods.

The application of civil commitment law and practices to a case of delusional disorder: a cross-national comparison of legal approaches in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Science.gov (United States)

Fennell, Philip; Goldstein, Robert Lloyd

2006-01-01

Legal approaches to civil commitment in the United States and the United Kingdom are compared. A concise overview of the historical evolution of civil commitment in both countries precedes a discussion of the present scheme of commitment standards in each system. These current standards in U.S. and U.K. jurisdictions are then applied to a hypothetical case of delusional disorder. A discussion of the constructive use of civil commitment in patients with delusional disorder who may be dangerous focuses on its value as a preventive measure against potential harm to self or others, as well as the pros and cons of coercive assessment and treatment. Despite the many differences in approach to commitment, the authors concur that in both countries the patient with delusional disorder was committable before the commission of a serious criminal offense.

Optimal unit commitment of the power system in Bulgaria during the transitional period to power wholesale market (cont..)

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Stoilov, D.

2001-01-01

The first part of the parer considers the general problem of optimal yearly unit commitment in the new economical conditions in Bulgaria. The second part deals with non-convex problem , taking into account some costs for starting and stopping of power systems. The transition from yearly commitment to weekly or daily dispatching is commented

Day-Ahead Coordination of Vehicle-to-Grid Operation and Wind Power in Security Constraints Unit Commitment (SCUC

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mohammad Javad Abdollahi

2015-08-01

Full Text Available In this paper security constraints unit commitment (SCUC in the presence of wind power resources and electrical vehicles to grid is presented. SCUC operation prepare an optimal time table for generation unit commitment in order to maximize security, minimize operation cost and satisfy the constraints of networks and units in a period of time, as one of the most important research interest in power systems. Today, the relationship between power network and energy storage systems is interested for many researchers and network operators. Using Electrical Vehicles (PEVs and wind power for energy production is one of the newest proposed methods for replacing fossil fuels.One of the effective strategies for analyzing of the effects of Vehicle 2 Grid (V2G and wind power in optimal operation of generation is running of SCUC for power systems that are equipped with V2G and wind power resources. In this paper, game theory method is employed for deterministic solution of day-ahead unit commitment with considering security constraints in the simultaneous presence of V2G and wind power units. This problem for two scenarios of grid-controlled mode and consumer-controlled mode in three different days with light, medium and heavy load profiles is analyzed. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the presence of V2G and wind power for decreasing of generation cost and improving operation indices of power systems.

Scalable unit commitment by memory-bounded ant colony optimization with A{sup *} local search

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Saber, Ahmed Yousuf; Alshareef, Abdulaziz Mohammed [Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, King Abdulaziz University, P.O. Box 80204, Jeddah 21589 (Saudi Arabia)

2008-07-15

Ant colony optimization (ACO) is successfully applied in optimization problems. Performance of the basic ACO for small problems with moderate dimension and searching space is satisfactory. As the searching space grows exponentially in the large-scale unit commitment problem, the basic ACO is not applicable for the vast size of pheromone matrix of ACO in practical time and physical computer-memory limit. However, memory-bounded methods prune the least-promising nodes to fit the system in computer memory. Therefore, the authors propose memory-bounded ant colony optimization (MACO) in this paper for the scalable (no restriction for system size) unit commitment problem. This MACO intelligently solves the limitation of computer memory, and does not permit the system to grow beyond a bound on memory. In the memory-bounded ACO implementation, A{sup *} heuristic is introduced to increase local searching ability and probabilistic nearest neighbor method is applied to estimate pheromone intensity for the forgotten value. Finally, the benchmark data sets and existing methods are used to show the effectiveness of the proposed method. (author)

48 CFR 750.7106-4 - Informal commitments.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... foreign policy interests of the United States by assuring persons that they will be treated fairly and... CONTRACT MANAGEMENT EXTRAORDINARY CONTRACTUAL ACTIONS Extraordinary Contractual Actions To Protect Foreign Policy Interests of the United States 750.7106-4 Informal commitments. Informal commitments may be...

Security-Constrained Unit Commitment in AC Microgrids Considering Stochastic Price-Based Demand Response and Renewable Generation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Vahedipour-Dahraie, Mostafa; Najafi, Hamid Reza; Anvari-Moghaddam, Amjad

2018-01-01

In this paper, a stochastic model for scheduling of AC security‐constrained unit commitment associated with demand response (DR) actions is developed in an islanded residential microgrid. The proposed model maximizes the expected profit of microgrid operator and minimizes the total customers...

Virtual machine migration in an over-committed cloud

KAUST Repository

Zhang, Xiangliang

2012-04-01

While early emphasis of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) clouds was on providing resource elasticity to end users, providers are increasingly interested in over-committing their resources to maximize the utilization and returns of their capital investments. In principle, over-committing resources hedges that users - on average - only need a small portion of their leased resources. When such hedge fails (i.e., resource demand far exceeds available physical capacity), providers must mitigate this provider-induced overload, typically by migrating virtual machines (VMs) to underutilized physical machines. Recent works on VM placement and migration assume the availability of target physical machines [1], [2]. However, in an over-committed cloud data center, this is not the case. VM migration can even trigger cascading overloads if performed haphazardly. In this paper, we design a new VM migration algorithm (called Scattered) that minimizes VM migrations in over-committed data centers. Compared to a traditional implementation, our algorithm can balance host utilization across all time epochs. Using real-world data traces from an enterprise cloud, we show that our migration algorithm reduces the risk of overload, minimizes the number of needed migrations, and has minimal impact on communication cost between VMs. © 2012 IEEE.

A multi-period, multi-regional generation expansion planning model incorporating unit commitment constraints

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Koltsaklis, Nikolaos E.; Georgiadis, Michael C.

2015-01-01

Highlights: • A short-term structured investment planning model has been developed. • Unit commitment problem is incorporated into the long-term planning horizon. • Inherent intermittency of renewables is modelled in a comprehensive way. • The impact of CO_2 emission pricing in long-term investment decisions is quantified. • The evolution of system’s marginal price is evaluated for all the planning horizon. - Abstract: This work presents a generic mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model that integrates the unit commitment problem (UCP), i.e., daily energy planning with the long-term generation expansion planning (GEP) framework. Typical daily constraints at an hourly level such as start-up and shut-down related decisions (start-up type, minimum up and down time, synchronization, soak and desynchronization time constraints), ramping limits, system reserve requirements are combined with representative yearly constraints such as power capacity additions, power generation bounds of each unit, peak reserve requirements, and energy policy issues (renewables penetration limits, CO_2 emissions cap and pricing). For modelling purposes, a representative day (24 h) of each month over a number of years has been employed in order to determine the optimal capacity additions, electricity market clearing prices, and daily operational planning of the studied power system. The model has been tested on an illustrative case study of the Greek power system. Our approach aims to provide useful insight into strategic and challenging decisions to be determined by investors and/or policy makers at a national and/or regional level by providing the optimal energy roadmap under real operating and design constraints.

A Radix-10 Digit-Recurrence Division Unit: Algorithm and Architecture

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Lang, Tomas; Nannarelli, Alberto

2007-01-01

In this work, we present a radix-10 division unit that is based on the digit-recurrence algorithm. The previous decimal division designs do not include recent developments in the theory and practice of this type of algorithm, which were developed for radix-2^k dividers. In addition to the adaptat...... dynamic range of significant) and it has a shorter latency than a radix-10 unit based on the Newton-Raphson approximation....

Symmetry Breaking in MILP Formulations for Unit Commitment Problems

KAUST Repository

Lima, Ricardo

2015-12-11

This paper addresses the study of symmetry in Unit Commitment (UC) problems solved by Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) formulations, and using Linear Programming based Branch & Bound MILP solvers. We propose three sets of symmetry breaking constraints for UC MILP formulations exhibiting symmetry, and its impact on three UC MILP models are studied. The case studies involve the solution of 24 instances by three widely used models in the literature, with and without symmetry breaking constraints. The results show that problems that could not be solved to optimality within hours can be solved with a relatively small computational burden if the symmetry breaking constraints are assumed. The proposed symmetry breaking constraints are also compared with the symmetry breaking methods included in two MILP solvers, and the symmetry breaking constraints derived in this work have a distinct advantage over the methods in the MILP solvers.

Symmetry Breaking in MILP Formulations for Unit Commitment Problems

KAUST Repository

Lima, Ricardo; Novais, Augusto Q.

2015-01-01

This paper addresses the study of symmetry in Unit Commitment (UC) problems solved by Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) formulations, and using Linear Programming based Branch & Bound MILP solvers. We propose three sets of symmetry breaking constraints for UC MILP formulations exhibiting symmetry, and its impact on three UC MILP models are studied. The case studies involve the solution of 24 instances by three widely used models in the literature, with and without symmetry breaking constraints. The results show that problems that could not be solved to optimality within hours can be solved with a relatively small computational burden if the symmetry breaking constraints are assumed. The proposed symmetry breaking constraints are also compared with the symmetry breaking methods included in two MILP solvers, and the symmetry breaking constraints derived in this work have a distinct advantage over the methods in the MILP solvers.

Novel methods for Solving Economic Dispatch of Security-Constrained Unit Commitment Based on Linear Programming

Science.gov (United States)

Guo, Sangang

2017-09-01

There are two stages in solving security-constrained unit commitment problems (SCUC) within Lagrangian framework: one is to obtain feasible units’ states (UC), the other is power economic dispatch (ED) for each unit. The accurate solution of ED is more important for enhancing the efficiency of the solution to SCUC for the fixed feasible units’ statues. Two novel methods named after Convex Combinatorial Coefficient Method and Power Increment Method respectively based on linear programming problem for solving ED are proposed by the piecewise linear approximation to the nonlinear convex fuel cost functions. Numerical testing results show that the methods are effective and efficient.

Integration of renewable generation uncertainties into stochastic unit commitment considering reserve and risk: A comparative study

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Quan, Hao; Srinivasan, Dipti; Khosravi, Abbas

2016-01-01

The uncertainties of renewable energy have brought great challenges to power system commitment, dispatches and reserve requirement. This paper presents a comparative study on integration of renewable generation uncertainties into SCUC (stochastic security-constrained unit commitment) considering reserve and risk. Renewable forecast uncertainties are captured by a list of PIs (prediction intervals). A new scenario generation method is proposed to generate scenarios from these PIs. Different system uncertainties are considered as scenarios in the stochastic SCUC problem formulation. Two comparative simulations with single (E1: wind only) and multiple sources of uncertainty (E2: load, wind, solar and generation outages) are investigated. Five deterministic and four stochastic case studies are performed. Different generation costs, reserve strategies and associated risks are compared under various scenarios. Demonstrated results indicate the overall costs of E2 is lower than E1 due to penetration of solar power and the associated risk in deterministic cases of E2 is higher than E1. It implies the superimposed effect of uncertainties during uncertainty integration. The results also demonstrate that power systems run a higher level of risk during peak load hours, and that stochastic models are more robust than deterministic ones. - Highlights: • An extensive comparative study for renewable integration is presented. • A novel scenario generation method is proposed. • Wind and solar uncertainties are represented by a list of prediction intervals. • Unit commitment and dispatch costs are discussed considering reserve and risk.

A recursive economic dispatch algorithm for assessing the cost of thermal generator schedules

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wong, K.P.; Doan, K.

1992-01-01

This paper develops an efficient, recursive algorithm for determining the economic power dispatch of thermal generators within the unit commitment environment. A method for incorporating the operation limits of all on-line generators and limits due to ramping generators is developed in the paper. The developed algorithm is amenable for computer implementation using the artificial intelligence programming language, Prolog. The performance of the developed algorithm is demonstrated through its application to evaluate the costs of dispatching 13 thermal generators within a generator schedule in a 24-hour schedule horizon

The ATLAS Trigger Algorithms for General Purpose Graphics Processor Units

CERN Document Server

Tavares Delgado, Ademar; The ATLAS collaboration

2016-01-01

The ATLAS Trigger Algorithms for General Purpose Graphics Processor Units Type: Talk Abstract: We present the ATLAS Trigger algorithms developed to exploit General­ Purpose Graphics Processor Units. ATLAS is a particle physics experiment located on the LHC collider at CERN. The ATLAS Trigger system has two levels, hardware-­based Level 1 and the High Level Trigger implemented in software running on a farm of commodity CPU. Performing the trigger event selection within the available farm resources presents a significant challenge that will increase future LHC upgrades. are being evaluated as a potential solution for trigger algorithms acceleration. Key factors determining the potential benefit of this new technology are the relative execution speedup, the number of GPUs required and the relative financial cost of the selected GPU. We have developed a trigger demonstrator which includes algorithms for reconstructing tracks in the Inner Detector and Muon Spectrometer and clusters of energy deposited in the Cal...

Stochastic Unit Commitment Based on Multi-Scenario Tree Method Considering Uncertainty

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kyu-Hyung Jo

2018-03-01

Full Text Available With the increasing penetration of renewable energy, it is difficult to schedule unit commitment (UC in a power system because of the uncertainty associated with various factors. In this paper, a new solution procedure based on a multi-scenario tree method (MSTM is presented and applied to the proposed stochastic UC problem. In this process, the initial input data of load and wind power are modeled as different levels using the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE. The load and wind scenarios are generated using Monte Carlo simulation (MCS that considers forecasting errors. These multiple scenarios are applied in the MSTM for solving the stochastic UC problem, including not only the load and wind power uncertainties, but also sudden outages of the thermal unit. When the UC problem has been formulated, the simulation is conducted for 24-h period by using the short-term UC model, and the operating costs and additional reserve requirements are thus obtained. The effectiveness of the proposed solution approach is demonstrated through a case study based on a modified IEEE-118 bus test system.

Research on unit commitment with large-scale wind power connected power system

Science.gov (United States)

Jiao, Ran; Zhang, Baoqun; Chi, Zhongjun; Gong, Cheng; Ma, Longfei; Yang, Bing

2017-01-01

Large-scale integration of wind power generators into power grid brings severe challenges to power system economic dispatch due to its stochastic volatility. Unit commitment including wind farm is analyzed from the two parts of modeling and solving methods. The structures and characteristics can be summarized after classification has been done according to different objective function and constraints. Finally, the issues to be solved and possible directions of research and development in the future are discussed, which can adapt to the requirements of the electricity market, energy-saving power generation dispatching and smart grid, even providing reference for research and practice of researchers and workers in this field.

A comprehensive study of economic unit commitment of power systems integrating various renewable generations and plug-in electric vehicles

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yang, Zhile; Li, Kang; Niu, Qun; Xue, Yusheng

2017-01-01

Highlights: • A new UCsRP problem with flexible integrations is established. • A novel multi-zone sampling method is proposed for scenarios generation. • A meta-heuristic solving tool is introduced for solving the UCsRP problem. • A comprehensive study is conducted considering multiple weathers and seasons. • The economic effects of various scenarios are evaluated and compared. - Abstract: Significant penetration of renewable generations (RGs) and mass roll-out of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) will pay a vital role in delivering the low carbon energy future and low emissions of greenhouse gas (GHG) that are responsible for the global climate change. However, it is of considerable difficulties to precisely forecast the undispatchable and intermittent wind and solar power generations. The uncoordinated charging of PEVs imposes further challenges on the unit commitment in modern grid operations. In this paper, all these factors are comprehensively investigated for the first time within a novel hybrid unit commitment framework, namely UCsRP, which considers a wide range of scenarios in renewable generations and demand side management of dispatchable PEVs load. UCsRP is however an extremely challenging optimisation problem not only due to the large scale, mixed integer and nonlinearity, but also due to the double uncertainties relating to the renewable generations and PEV charging and discharging. In this paper, a meta-heuristic solving tool is introduced for solving the UCsRP problem. A key to improve the reliability of the unit commitment is to generate a range of scenarios based on multiple distributions of renewable generations under different prediction errors and extreme predicted value conditions. This is achieved by introducing a novel multi-zone sampling method. A comprehensive study considering four different cases of unit commitment problems with various weather and season scenarios using real power system data are conducted and solved, and smart

Feasibility randomized-controlled trial of online Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for patients with complex chronic pain in the United Kingdom.

Science.gov (United States)

Scott, W; Chilcot, J; Guildford, B; Daly-Eichenhardt, A; McCracken, L M

2018-04-28

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) has growing support for chronic pain. However, more accessible treatment delivery is needed. This study evaluated the feasibility of online ACT for patients with complex chronic pain in the United Kingdom to determine whether a larger trial is justified. Participants with chronic pain and clinically meaningful disability and distress were randomly assigned to ACT online plus specialty medical pain management, or specialty medical management alone. Participants completed questionnaires at baseline, and 3- and 9-month post-randomization. Primary feasibility outcomes included recruitment, retention and treatment completion rates. Secondary outcomes were between-groups effects on treatment outcomes and psychological flexibility. Of 139 potential participants, 63 were eligible and randomized (45% recruitment rate). Retention rates were 76-78% for follow-up assessments. Sixty-one per cent of ACT online participants completed treatment. ACT online was less often completed by employed (44%) compared to unemployed (80%) participants. Fifty-six per cent of ACT online participants rated themselves as 'much improved' or better on a global impression of change rating, compared to only 20 per cent of control participants. Three-month effects favouring ACT online were small for functioning, medication and healthcare use, committed action and decentring, medium for mood, and large for acceptance. Small-to-medium effects were maintained for functioning, healthcare use and committed action at 9 months. Online ACT for patients with chronic pain in the United Kingdom appears feasible to study in a larger efficacy trial. Some adjustments to treatment and trial procedures are warranted, particularly to enhance engagement among employed participants. This study supports the feasibility of online Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for chronic pain in the United Kingdom and a larger efficacy trial. Refinements to treatment delivery, particularly to

Factors Contributing to Personal Commitment in Chinese Interethnic Couples

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Xinmiao Zhong

2014-06-01

Full Text Available Interethnic relationships are increasingly common in many societies, yet interethnic couples have a higher divorce rate compared to intraethnic couples. Given these facts and the dearth of research, this study aimed to identify factors that contribute to couples’ commitment in interethnic relationships. This study investigated the personal commitment of Chinese interethnic couples in the United Kingdom and the United States. Specifically, whether love, dyadic adjustment and “couple cultural identity” (i.e. acculturation to the partner and couple’s similarity on individualism/collectivism would predict personal commitment and whether each variable would account for unique variance in personal commitment of the participants. Thirty-seven Chinese/non-Chinese heterosexual couples participated in the study and significant relationships between love and personal commitment, dyadic adjustment and personal commitment were found. Also, couple cultural identity was important for women’s personal commitment. Multiple regression and structural equation modelling showed that partners in interethnic relationships defined personal commitment in different ways with men emphasizing love and dyadic adjustment, and women emphasizing love and acculturation to their partner. The discovery of the importance of couple cultural identity in contributing to personal commitment, besides love and dyadic adjustment, helps researchers to gain a greater understanding of such relationships and to extend the research on interethnic relationships.

Unit commitment and investment valuation of flexible biogas plants in German power markets

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Hochloff, Patrick

2017-07-01

Biogas plants contribute a significant share of renewable energy sources (RES) to the electricity system. Most of them are designed to supply constant power generation. In the future biogas plants will most likely become more flexible, scheduling their power generation with respect to market prices. For this purpose power units need extended electrical capacity to convert the continuously produced gas as well as the gas held in storage. When constructing extended capacity at biogas plants, the flexibility premium is the main focus for about 8000 plants which were constructed before August 2014. Additional incomes as a result of selling at higher market prices have been considered, too. However, their relationship to the electrical capacity and storage size of biogas plants was unknown as was the impact on investment valuation. This work has shown how biogas plants with extended capacity can be analyzed when they are operated in power markets, in particular the power spot market and the control reserve markets. Models on the basis of unit commitment have been developed in order to obtain optimized schedules and financial parameters, such as gross income and net present value (NPV), when biogas plants with extended capacity capitalize on prices in each market. The models developed consider several use cases that describe possible ways of participating in German power markets, switching between static and variable gas supply, providing secondary and tertiary control reserve, and claiming the market and flexibility premium. Mixed integer linear programs (MILP) have been developed for the unit commitment of each use case. The model for the unit commitment of providing control reserve with biogas plants made significant progress compared to the state of the art and has been published in (Hochloff, Braun 2014). There are two ways to make use of this model. First of all, the model could be applied to plan daily schedules for the operation of gas plants located at a gas

Unit commitment and investment valuation of flexible biogas plants in German power markets

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hochloff, Patrick

2017-01-01

Biogas plants contribute a significant share of renewable energy sources (RES) to the electricity system. Most of them are designed to supply constant power generation. In the future biogas plants will most likely become more flexible, scheduling their power generation with respect to market prices. For this purpose power units need extended electrical capacity to convert the continuously produced gas as well as the gas held in storage. When constructing extended capacity at biogas plants, the flexibility premium is the main focus for about 8000 plants which were constructed before August 2014. Additional incomes as a result of selling at higher market prices have been considered, too. However, their relationship to the electrical capacity and storage size of biogas plants was unknown as was the impact on investment valuation. This work has shown how biogas plants with extended capacity can be analyzed when they are operated in power markets, in particular the power spot market and the control reserve markets. Models on the basis of unit commitment have been developed in order to obtain optimized schedules and financial parameters, such as gross income and net present value (NPV), when biogas plants with extended capacity capitalize on prices in each market. The models developed consider several use cases that describe possible ways of participating in German power markets, switching between static and variable gas supply, providing secondary and tertiary control reserve, and claiming the market and flexibility premium. Mixed integer linear programs (MILP) have been developed for the unit commitment of each use case. The model for the unit commitment of providing control reserve with biogas plants made significant progress compared to the state of the art and has been published in (Hochloff, Braun 2014). There are two ways to make use of this model. First of all, the model could be applied to plan daily schedules for the operation of gas plants located at a gas

Training and Organizational Commitment among Nurses in New Zealand and United States Public Hospitals Experiencing Industry and Organizational Change

Science.gov (United States)

Bartlett, Kenneth; Kang, Dae-seok

2004-01-01

This study examines the relationship between employee attitudes towards training and organizational commitment among a sample of nurses in New Zealand and the United States. Results show that perceived access to training, training frequency, motivation to learn from training, benefits of training, and supervisory support for training were…

Modelling high level system design and unit commitment for a microgrid

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Hawkes, A.D. [Centre for Energy Policy and Technology, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ (United Kingdom); Leach, M.A. [Centre for Environmental Strategy, Faculty of Engineering, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH (United Kingdom)

2009-07-15

This article develops a linear programming cost minimisation model for the high level system design and corresponding unit commitment of generators and storage within a microgrid; a set of energy resources working co-operatively to create a cost effective, reliable and environmentally friendly energy provision system. Previous work in this area is used as a basis for formulation of a new approach to this problem, with particular emphasis on why a microgrid is different to centralised generation or other grid-connected decentralised energy resources. Specifically, the model explicitly defines the amount of time that the microgrid would be expected to operate autonomously, and restricts flow of heat between microgrid participants to defined cases. The model developed is applied to a set of United Kingdom commercial load profiles, under best current estimates of energy prices and technology capital costs, to determine investment attractiveness of the microgrid. Sensitivity analysis of results to variations in energy prices is performed. The results broadly indicate that a microgrid can offer an economic proposition, although it is necessarily slightly more expensive than regular grid-connected decentralised generation. The analysis results have raised important questions regarding a fair method for settlement between microgrid participants, and game theory has been identified as a suitable tool to analyse aspects of this situation. (author)

Modelling high level system design and unit commitment for a microgrid

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hawkes, A.D.; Leach, M.A.

2009-01-01

This article develops a linear programming cost minimisation model for the high level system design and corresponding unit commitment of generators and storage within a microgrid; a set of energy resources working co-operatively to create a cost effective, reliable and environmentally friendly energy provision system. Previous work in this area is used as a basis for formulation of a new approach to this problem, with particular emphasis on why a microgrid is different to centralised generation or other grid-connected decentralised energy resources. Specifically, the model explicitly defines the amount of time that the microgrid would be expected to operate autonomously, and restricts flow of heat between microgrid participants to defined cases. The model developed is applied to a set of United Kingdom commercial load profiles, under best current estimates of energy prices and technology capital costs, to determine investment attractiveness of the microgrid. Sensitivity analysis of results to variations in energy prices is performed. The results broadly indicate that a microgrid can offer an economic proposition, although it is necessarily slightly more expensive than regular grid-connected decentralised generation. The analysis results have raised important questions regarding a fair method for settlement between microgrid participants, and game theory has been identified as a suitable tool to analyse aspects of this situation. (author)

Rhombicuboctahedron unit cell based scaffolds for bone regeneration: geometry optimization with a mechanobiology - driven algorithm.

Science.gov (United States)

Boccaccio, Antonio; Fiorentino, Michele; Uva, Antonio E; Laghetti, Luca N; Monno, Giuseppe

2018-02-01

In a context more and more oriented towards customized medical solutions, we propose a mechanobiology-driven algorithm to determine the optimal geometry of scaffolds for bone regeneration that is the most suited to specific boundary and loading conditions. In spite of the huge number of articles investigating different unit cells for porous biomaterials, no studies are reported in the literature that optimize the geometric parameters of such unit cells based on mechanobiological criteria. Parametric finite element models of scaffolds with rhombicuboctahedron unit cell were developed and incorporated into an optimization algorithm that combines them with a computational mechanobiological model. The algorithm perturbs iteratively the geometry of the unit cell until the best scaffold geometry is identified, i.e. the geometry that allows to maximize the formation of bone. Performances of scaffolds with rhombicuboctahedron unit cell were compared with those of other scaffolds with hexahedron unit cells. We found that scaffolds with rhombicuboctahedron unit cell are particularly suited for supporting medium-low loads, while, for higher loads, scaffolds with hexahedron unit cells are preferable. The proposed algorithm can guide the orthopaedic/surgeon in the choice of the best scaffold to be implanted in a patient-specific anatomic region. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Committed equivalent organ doses and committed effective doses from intakes of radionuclides

CERN Document Server

Phipps, A W; Kendall, G M; Silk, T J; Stather, J W

1991-01-01

This report contains details of committed equivalent doses to individual organs for intakes by ingestion and inhalation of 1 mu m AMAD particles of 359 nuclides by infants aged 3 months, by children aged 1, 5, 10 and 15 years, and by adults. It complements NRPB-R245 which describes the changes which have taken place since the last NRPB compendium of dose per unit intake factors (dose coefficients) and gives summary tables. Information on the way committed doses increase with the integration period is given in NRPB-M289. The information given in these memoranda is also available as a microcomputer package - NRPB-SR245.

The impact of middle manager affective commitment on perceived improvement program implementation success.

Science.gov (United States)

Fryer, Ashley-Kay; Tucker, Anita L; Singer, Sara J

Recent literature suggests that middle manager affective commitment (emotional attachment, identification, and involvement) to an improvement program may influence implementation success. However, less is known about the interplay between middle manager affective commitment and frontline worker commitment, another important driver of implementation success. We contribute to this research by surveying middle managers who directly manage frontline workers on nursing units. We assess how middle manager affective commitment is related to their perceptions of implementation success and whether their perceptions of frontline worker support mediate this relationship. We also test whether a set of organizational support factors foster middle manager affective commitment. We adapt survey measures of manager affective commitment to our research context of hospitals. We surveyed 67 nurse managers from 19 U.S. hospitals. We use hierarchical linear regression to assess relationships among middle manager affective commitment to their units' falls reduction program and their perceptions of three constructs related to the program: frontline worker support, organizational support, and implementation success. Middle manager affective commitment to their unit's falls reduction program is positively associated with their perception of implementation success. This relationship is mediated by their perception of frontline worker support for the falls program. Moreover, middle managers' affective commitment to their unit's falls program mediates the relationship between perceived organizational support for the program and perceived implementation success. We, through this research, offer an important contribution by providing empirical support of factors that may influence successful implementation of an improvement program: middle manager affective commitment, frontline worker support, and organizational support for an improvement program. Increasing levels of middle manager affective

Quantifying privacy and security of biometric fuzzy commitment

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Zhou, Xuebing; Kuijper, Arjan; Veldhuis, Raymond N.J.; Busch, Christoph

2011-01-01

Fuzzy commitment is an efficient template protection algorithm that can improve security and safeguard privacy of biometrics. Existing theoretical security analysis has proved that although privacy leakage is unavoidable, perfect security from information-theoretical points of view is possible when

Asymmetric forecasting and commitment policy in a robust control problem

OpenAIRE

Taro Ikeda

2013-01-01

This paper provides a piece of results regarding asymmetric forecasting and commitment monetary policy with a robust control algorithm. Previous studies provide no clarification of the connection between asymmetric preference and robust commitment policy. Three results emerge from general equilibrium modeling with asymmetric preference: (i) the condition for system stability implies an average inflation bias with respect to asymmetry (ii) the effect of asymmetry can be mitigated if policy mak...

An empirical study on measuring the effect of layoff on job satisfaction and employee commitment: A case study of detergent producer unit

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Abolfazl Tajzadeh-Namin

2012-01-01

Full Text Available One of the necessary actions in many organizations is to reduce the number of workers in an attempt to restructure business activities. However, layoff could have negative consequences since many employees may decide to leave since they lose their tolerance. The layoff must be accompanied with some supportive plans to reduce stress among the remaining workers and increase their commitment for long-term work. The present study of this paper considers the effects of layoff on job satisfaction and commitment among the remaining employees of a detergent producer unit. The results indicate that a good supportive program including wage increase, family support, health care plans, etc. could significantly improve employee long-term commitments and it leads to job satisfaction.

Comparison between dynamic programming and genetic algorithm for hydro unit economic load dispatch

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Bin Xu

2014-10-01

Full Text Available The hydro unit economic load dispatch (ELD is of great importance in energy conservation and emission reduction. Dynamic programming (DP and genetic algorithm (GA are two representative algorithms for solving ELD problems. The goal of this study was to examine the performance of DP and GA while they were applied to ELD. We established numerical experiments to conduct performance comparisons between DP and GA with two given schemes. The schemes included comparing the CPU time of the algorithms when they had the same solution quality, and comparing the solution quality when they had the same CPU time. The numerical experiments were applied to the Three Gorges Reservoir in China, which is equipped with 26 hydro generation units. We found the relation between the performance of algorithms and the number of units through experiments. Results show that GA is adept at searching for optimal solutions in low-dimensional cases. In some cases, such as with a number of units of less than 10, GA's performance is superior to that of a coarse-grid DP. However, GA loses its superiority in high-dimensional cases. DP is powerful in obtaining stable and high-quality solutions. Its performance can be maintained even while searching over a large solution space. Nevertheless, due to its exhaustive enumerating nature, it costs excess time in low-dimensional cases.

What drives political commitment for nutrition? A review and framework synthesis to inform the United Nations Decade of Action on Nutrition.

Science.gov (United States)

Baker, Phillip; Hawkes, Corinna; Wingrove, Kate; Demaio, Alessandro Rhyl; Parkhurst, Justin; Thow, Anne Marie; Walls, Helen

2018-01-01

Generating country-level political commitment will be critical to driving forward action throughout the United Nations Decade of Action on Nutrition (2016-2025). In this review of the empirical nutrition policy literature, we ask: what factors generate, sustain and constrain political commitment for nutrition, how and under what circumstances? Our aim is to inform strategic 'commitment-building' actions. We adopted a framework synthesis method and realist review protocol. An initial framework was derived from relevant theory and then populated with empirical evidence to test and modify it. Five steps were undertaken: initial theoretical framework development; search for relevant empirical literature; study selection and quality appraisal; data extraction, analysis and synthesis and framework modification. 75 studies were included. We identified 18 factors that drive commitment, organised into five categories: actors; institutions; political and societal contexts; knowledge, evidence and framing; and, capacities and resources. Irrespective of country-context, effective nutrition actor networks, strong leadership, civil society mobilisation, supportive political administrations, societal change and focusing events, cohesive and resonant framing, and robust data systems and available evidence were commitment drivers. Low-income and middle-income country studies also frequently reported international actors, empowered institutions, vertical coordination and capacities and resources. In upper-middle-income and high-income country studies, private sector interference frequently undermined commitment. Political commitment is not something that simply exists or emerges accidentally; it can be created and strengthened over time through strategic action. Successfully generating commitment will likely require a core set of actions with some context-dependent adaptations. Ultimately, it will necessitate strategic actions by cohesive, resourced and strongly led nutrition actor

75 FR 57159 - Continuation of the National Emergency With Respect to Persons Who Commit, Threaten to Commit, or...

Science.gov (United States)

2010-09-20

... economy of the United States constituted by the grave acts of terrorism and threats of terrorism committed by foreign terrorists, including the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, in New York and... security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States, the national emergency declared on September 23...

76 FR 58999 - Continuation of the National Emergency With Respect to Persons Who Commit, Threaten To Commit, Or...

Science.gov (United States)

2011-09-22

... economy of the United States constituted by the grave acts of terrorism and threats of terrorism committed by foreign terrorists, including the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, in New York and... security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States, the national emergency declared on September 23...

Management Commitment to Safety, Teamwork, and Hospital Worker Injuries.

Science.gov (United States)

McGonagle, Alyssa K; Essenmacher, Lynnette; Hamblin, Lydia; Luborsky, Mark; Upfal, Mark; Arnetz, Judith

2016-01-01

Although many studies link teamwork in health care settings to patient safety, evidence linking teamwork to hospital worker safety is lacking. This study addresses this gap by providing evidence linking teamwork perceptions in hospital workers to worker injuries, and further, finds a linkage between manager commitment to safety and teamwork. Organizational records of worker injuries and survey responses regarding management commitment to safety and teamwork from 446 hospital workers within 42 work units in a multi-site hospital system were examined. Results underscored the particular importance of teamwork on worker injuries as well as the importance of management commitment to safety as relating to teamwork. To improve worker safety, organizational leaders and unit managers should work to maintain environments wherein teamwork can thrive.

A Multi-Objective Unit Commitment Model for Setting Carbon Tax to Reduce CO2 Emission: Thailand's Electricity Generation Case

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nuchjarin Intalar

2015-07-01

Full Text Available Carbon tax policy is a cost-effective instrument for emission reduction. However, setting the carbon tax is one of the challenging task for policy makers as it will lead to higher price of emission-intensive sources especially the utility price. In a large-scale power generation system, minimizing the operational cost and the environmental impact are conflicting objectives and it is difficult to find the compromise solution. This paper proposes a methodology of finding a feasible carbon tax rate on strategic level using the operational unit commitment model. We present a multi-objective mixed integer linear programming model to solve the unit commitment problem and consider the environmental impacts. The methodology of analyzing of the effect of carbon tax rates on the power generation, operating cost, and CO2 emission is also provided. The trade-off relationship between total operating cost and total CO2 emission is presented in the Pareto-optimal curve to analyze the feasible carbon tax rate that is influencing on electricity operating cost. The significant outcome of this paper is a modeling framework for the policy makers to determine the possible carbon tax that can be imposed on the electricity generation.

INPO and the industry: a commitment to excellence

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Colvin, J.F.

1985-01-01

Utilities in the United States have undergone major changes in their attitudes and methods of operating nuclear stations in the 6 yr since the accident at Three Mile Island. These changes reflect a strong commitment by the US utility industry to excellence in nuclear plant operations. Fundamental in this commitment was the formation of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO), an organization created by the industry in the United States to serve as a focus and catalyst for these changes. With membership in INPO, nuclear utilities make a commitment to strive for excellence in the construction and operation of their nuclear plants. INPO has programs to help utilities in their efforts to achieve excellence. The most visible are the INPO evaluation programs. By the end of 1985, INPO will have evaluated most operating plants at least four times. Construction project evaluations are also being conducted. Twenty-one construction evaluations will have been conducted by the end of the year. Through each of its programs, INPO seeks to promote excellence and to help those operating and building nuclear plants in their commitment to excellence

Generation risk assessment in volatile conditions with wind, hydro, and natural gas units

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sahin, Cem; Shahidehpour, Mohammad; Erkmen, Ismet

2012-01-01

Highlights: ► Stochastic price-based unit commitment (PBUC) for a generation company (GENCO). ► Water inflow, wind, and NG interruption uncertainties are considered. ► Diversification of assets and bilateral contracts enhance payoff and decrease financial risk. ► The utilization of NG in the risk-neutral GENCO case increases as the wind uncertainty increases. ► NG utilization is lowered by the algorithm to decrease in risk-considered case. -- Abstract: This paper studies a generating company (GENCO)’s midterm (a few months to a year) scheduling payoffs and risks in volatile operating conditions. The proposed algorithm considers the integration of intermittent wind units into a GENCO’s generation assets and coordinates the GENCO’s hourly wind generation schedule with that of natural gas (NG) units (with volatile gas prices) and hydro units (with water inflow forecast) for maximizing the GENCO’s payoff. The proposed midterm GENCO model applies market price forecasts to the risk-constrained stochastic price-based unit commitment (PBUC) for calculating the GENCO’s risk in energy and ancillary services markets. The proposed PBUC minimizes the cost of (a) NG contracts, storage, startup and shutdown, (b) startup and shutdown of cascaded hydro units, and (c) penalty for defaulting on the scheduled power delivery. Simulation results show that the diversification of generating assets including bilateral contracts (BCs) could enhance the GENCO’s midterm planning by increasing the expected payoff and decreasing the financial risk.

What drives political commitment for nutrition? A review and framework synthesis to inform the United Nations Decade of Action on Nutrition

Science.gov (United States)

Baker, Phillip; Hawkes, Corinna; Wingrove, Kate; Parkhurst, Justin; Thow, Anne Marie; Walls, Helen

2018-01-01

Introduction Generating country-level political commitment will be critical to driving forward action throughout the United Nations Decade of Action on Nutrition (2016–2025). In this review of the empirical nutrition policy literature, we ask: what factors generate, sustain and constrain political commitment for nutrition, how and under what circumstances? Our aim is to inform strategic ‘commitment-building’ actions. Method We adopted a framework synthesis method and realist review protocol. An initial framework was derived from relevant theory and then populated with empirical evidence to test and modify it. Five steps were undertaken: initial theoretical framework development; search for relevant empirical literature; study selection and quality appraisal; data extraction, analysis and synthesis and framework modification. Results 75 studies were included. We identified 18 factors that drive commitment, organised into five categories: actors; institutions; political and societal contexts; knowledge, evidence and framing; and, capacities and resources. Irrespective of country-context, effective nutrition actor networks, strong leadership, civil society mobilisation, supportive political administrations, societal change and focusing events, cohesive and resonant framing, and robust data systems and available evidence were commitment drivers. Low-income and middle-income country studies also frequently reported international actors, empowered institutions, vertical coordination and capacities and resources. In upper-middle-income and high-income country studies, private sector interference frequently undermined commitment. Conclusion Political commitment is not something that simply exists or emerges accidentally; it can be created and strengthened over time through strategic action. Successfully generating commitment will likely require a core set of actions with some context-dependent adaptations. Ultimately, it will necessitate strategic actions by cohesive

Effects of Sexual Harassment on Job Satisfaction, Retention, Cohesion, Commitment and Unit Effectiveness: The Case of the Air Force

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

quid pro quo ). Examples of questions that were used in previous studies to measure crude/offensive behavior, as well as, other forms of sexual ...includes, but is not limited to, harassment in which submission is made a condition of employment (or quid pro quo ). Global or organizational...Effects of Sexual Harassment on Job Satisfaction, Retention, Cohesion, Commitment and Unit Effectiveness: The Case of the Air Force Dr. Brenda

Implementation of sepsis algorithm by nurses in the intensive care unit

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Paula Pedroso Peninck

2012-04-01

Full Text Available Sepsis is defined as a clinical syndrome consisting of a systemic inflammatory response associated to an infection, which may determine malfunction or failure of multiple organs. This research aims to verify the application of implementation of sepsis algorithm by nurses in the Intensive Care Unit and create an operational nursing assistance guide. This is an exploratory, descriptive study with quantitative approach. A data collection instrument based on relevant literature was elaborated, assessed, corrected and validated. The sample consisted of 20 intensive care unit nurses. We obtained satisfactory evaluations on nurses’ performance, but some issues did not reach 50% accuracy. We emphasize the importance of greater numbers of nurses getting acquainted and correctly applying the sepsis algorithm. Based on the above, an operational septic patient nursing assistance guide was created, based on the difficulties that arose vis-à-vis the variables applied in research and relevant literature.

Third age university, social and institucional commitment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Flora Moritz da Silva

2017-12-01

Full Text Available This article brings reflections on the social commitment of permanent education programs for the elderly, at the universities, in the face of their institutional commitment to the plans. It was possible to rescue the responsibility concepts, social commitment and identify the elderly in the university, within the federal legislation, through bibliographical and documentary research. There was a survey of permanent education programs with at least 20 years, in 2016. It was carried out for the elderly in the 63 Brazilian Federal, and Public Universities and 17 cases were found. Thus, nine Pro-Rectors of Extension and a Unit Director accepted to participate in interviews by Skype or telephone, in the second semester of 2016, fulfilling the objective of describing the university authorities’ vision on the type of institutional support for such programs’ operation. Although it is possible to realize their relevance to the environment and the university, the institutional commitment is still far short of what is necessary.

Affective Commitment among Student Affairs Professionals

Science.gov (United States)

Boehman, Joseph

2007-01-01

Student affairs professionals in the United States were surveyed to determine the predictive value of overall job satisfaction, organizational support, organizational politics, and work/nonwork interaction on affective organizational commitment. Results indicate that a supportive work environment leads to increased affective attachment to the…

Effect of the accuracy of price forecasting on profit in a Price Based Unit Commitment

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Delarue, Erik; Van Den Bosch, Pieterjan; D'haeseleer, William

2010-01-01

This paper discusses and quantifies the so-called loss of profit (i.e., the sub-optimality of profit) that can be expected in a Price Based Unit Commitment (PBUC), when incorrect price forecasts are used. For this purpose, a PBUC model has been developed and utilized, using Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP). Simulations are used to determine the relationship between the Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) of a certain price forecast and the loss of profit, for four different types of power plants. A Combined Cycle (CC) power plant and a pumped storage unit show highest sensitivity to incorrect forecasts. A price forecast with a MAPE of 15%, on average, yields 13.8% and 12.1% profit loss, respectively. A classic thermal power plant (coal fired) and cascade hydro unit are less affected by incorrect forecasts, with only 2.4% and 2.0% profit loss, respectively, at the same price forecast MAPE. This paper further demonstrates that if price forecasts show an average bias (upward or downward), using the MAPE as measure of the price forecast might not be sufficient to quantify profit loss properly. Profit loss in this case has been determined as a function of both shift and MAPE of the price forecast. (author)

Methods and Algorithms for Economic MPC in Power Production Planning

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sokoler, Leo Emil

in real-time. A generator can represent a producer of electricity, a consumer of electricity, or possibly both. Examples of generators are heat pumps, electric vehicles, wind turbines, virtual power plants, solar cells, and conventional fuel-fired thermal power plants. Although this thesis is mainly...... concerned with EMPC for minutes-ahead production planning, we show that the proposed EMPC scheme can be extended to days-ahead planning (including unit commitment) as well. The power generation from renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power is inherently uncertain and variable. A portfolio...... design an algorithm based on the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) to solve input-constrained OCPs with convex objective functions. The OCPs that occur in EMPC of dynamically decoupled subsystems, e.g. power generators, have a block-angular structure. Subsystem decomposition algorithms...

Factors associated with the goal commitment of radiography departments' staff in organizational change

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Groenroos, Eija; Pajukari, Arja; Matinheikki-Kokko, Kaija

2009-01-01

Purpose: The aim of the study is to examine factors associated with the goal commitment of radiography departments' staff. The associations studied are (1) organizational change, (2) work-related factors, (3) psychosocial work environment, and (4) intention to leave. Method: The follow-up study was performed between 2005 and 2007 in co-operation with 10 radiography departments of two Finnish municipalities. In 2005 the response rate was 60% (n = 97/163) and in 2007 it was 49% (n = 73/150). Results: The goal commitment had dropped during the organizational change from 3.96 in 2005 to 3.60 in 2007 (scale 1-5) (p = 0.001). Best predictors for the goal commitment of radiography departments' staff were having children (OR 4.4) and perceiving functional environment clearly (OR 2.6). Correlation between the goal commitment and intention to leave of the staff was -0.32 (p = 0.01). Conclusion: From the viewpoint of the commitment of the radiography departments' staff, the trend of uniting quite independent health care units into larger entities seems not to be beneficial. This study reveals that commitment to one's work unit is most of all a question of stability and job security. This is a fact the leadership of the radiography departments should take into account, appreciate and support to assure the tenure and productivity of their workforce.

An integrated DEA-COLS-SFA algorithm for optimization and policy making of electricity distribution units

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Azadeh, A.; Ghaderi, S.F.; Omrani, H.; Eivazy, H.

2009-01-01

This paper presents an integrated data envelopment analysis (DEA)-corrected ordinary least squares (COLS)-stochastic frontier analysis (SFA)-principal component analysis (PCA)-numerical taxonomy (NT) algorithm for performance assessment, optimization and policy making of electricity distribution units. Previous studies have generally used input-output DEA models for benchmarking and evaluation of electricity distribution units. However, this study proposes an integrated flexible approach to measure the rank and choose the best version of the DEA method for optimization and policy making purposes. It covers both static and dynamic aspects of information environment due to involvement of SFA which is finally compared with the best DEA model through the Spearman correlation technique. The integrated approach would yield in improved ranking and optimization of electricity distribution systems. To illustrate the usability and reliability of the proposed algorithm, 38 electricity distribution units in Iran have been considered, ranked and optimized by the proposed algorithm of this study.

Optimization Solutions for Improving the Performance of the Parallel Reduction Algorithm Using Graphics Processing Units

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ion LUNGU

2012-01-01

Full Text Available In this paper, we research, analyze and develop optimization solutions for the parallel reduction function using graphics processing units (GPUs that implement the Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA, a modern and novel approach for improving the software performance of data processing applications and algorithms. Many of these applications and algorithms make use of the reduction function in their computational steps. After having designed the function and its algorithmic steps in CUDA, we have progressively developed and implemented optimization solutions for the reduction function. In order to confirm, test and evaluate the solutions' efficiency, we have developed a custom tailored benchmark suite. We have analyzed the obtained experimental results regarding: the comparison of the execution time and bandwidth when using graphic processing units covering the main CUDA architectures (Tesla GT200, Fermi GF100, Kepler GK104 and a central processing unit; the data type influence; the binary operator's influence.

Model-based investigation of the electricity market. Unit commitment and power plant investments

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sun, Ninghong

2013-01-01

The German Federal Government published its energy concept in September 2010 with a description of the road into the era of renewable energies. Therefore, the future renewable energy installed in Germany is expected to consist mostly of wind and solar, which are subject to intermittency of supply and significant fluctuations. The growing portion of energy generation by fluctuating sources is turning to a big challenge for the power plant unit commitment and the investment decisions as well. In this thesis, a fundamental electricity market model with combined modeling of these two aspects is developed. This model is subsequently applied to the German electricity market to investigate what kind of power plant investments are indispensable, considering the steadily increasing portion of energy generation from fluctuating sources, to ensure a reliable energy supply in a cost-effective way in the future. In addition, current energy policy in Germany regarding the use of renewable energy and nuclear energy is analyzed.

TITRATION: A Randomized Study to Assess 2 Treatment Algorithms with New Insulin Glargine 300 units/mL.

Science.gov (United States)

Yale, Jean-François; Berard, Lori; Groleau, Mélanie; Javadi, Pasha; Stewart, John; Harris, Stewart B

2017-10-01

It was uncertain whether an algorithm that involves increasing insulin dosages by 1 unit/day may cause more hypoglycemia with the longer-acting insulin glargine 300 units/mL (GLA-300). The objective of this study was to compare safety and efficacy of 2 titration algorithms, INSIGHT and EDITION, for GLA-300 in people with uncontrolled type 2 diabetes mellitus, mainly in a primary care setting. This was a 12-week, open-label, randomized, multicentre pilot study. Participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 algorithms: they either increased their dosage by 1 unit/day (INSIGHT, n=108) or the dose was adjusted by the investigator at least once weekly, but no more often than every 3 days (EDITION, n=104). The target fasting self-monitored blood glucose was in the range of 4.4 to 5.6 mmol/L. The percentages of participants reaching the primary endpoint of fasting self-monitored blood glucose ≤5.6 mmol/L without nocturnal hypoglycemia were 19.4% (INSIGHT) and 18.3% (EDITION). At week 12, 26.9% (INSIGHT) and 28.8% (EDITION) of participants achieved a glycated hemoglobin value of ≤7%. No differences in the incidence of hypoglycemia of any category were noted between algorithms. Participants in both arms of the study were much more satisfied with their new treatment as assessed by the Diabetes Treatment Satisfaction Questionnaire. Most health-care professionals (86%) preferred the INSIGHT over the EDITION algorithm. The frequency of adverse events was similar between algorithms. A patient-driven titration algorithm of 1 unit/day with GLA-300 is effective and comparable to the previously tested EDITION algorithm and is preferred by health-care professionals. Copyright © 2017 Diabetes Canada. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

An empirical investigation on relationship between social capital and organizational commitment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ali Alikhani

2014-02-01

Full Text Available This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the relationship between social capital and organizational commitment. The study considers the relationship between social capital with three components of organizational commitment; namely, affective commitment, continuous and normative commitment. The study has been applied among a sample of 292 regular employees who worked for an Iranian bank located in city of Tehran, Iran. The implementation of Pearson correlation has indicated that there were positive and meaningful relationships between social capital and affective commitment (r = 0.197, Sig. = 0.01, continuous (r = 0.308, Sig. = 0.01 and normative commitment (r = 0.423, Sig. = 0.01. In addition, the study has detected that women had more commitment on their organization than men did. The proposed study of this paper has also considered a regression model where organizational commitment is dependent variable and trust and communication are considered as independent variables. According to the results of regression analysis, an increase of one unit in trust and social capital communication will increase organizational commitment by 0.189 and 0.204, respectively.

Considerations in civil commitment of individuals with substance use disorders.

Science.gov (United States)

Cavaiola, Alan A; Dolan, David

2016-01-01

Several states currently have enacted laws that allow for civil commitment for individuals diagnosed with severe substance use disorders. Civil commitment or involuntary commitment refers to the legal process by which individuals with mental illness are court-ordered into inpatient and/or outpatient treatment programs. Although initially civil commitment laws were intended for individuals with severe mental illness, these statutes have been extended to cover individuals with severe substance use disorders. Much of the recent legislation allowing for civil commitment of individuals with substance use disorders has come about in response to the heroin epidemic and is designed to provide an alternative to the unrelenting progression of opioid use disorders. Civil commitment also provides an opportunity for individuals with opioid use disorders to make informed decisions regarding ongoing or continued treatment. However, civil commitment also raises concerns regarding the potential violation of 14th Amendment rights, specifically pertaining to abuses of deprivation of liberty or freedom, which are guaranteed under the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. This commentary examines these issues while supporting the need for effective brief civil commitment legislation in all states.

Improving Deterministic Reserve Requirements for Security Constrained Unit Commitment and Scheduling Problems in Power Systems

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Fengyu

Traditional deterministic reserve requirements rely on ad-hoc, rule of thumb methods to determine adequate reserve in order to ensure a reliable unit commitment. Since congestion and uncertainties exist in the system, both the quantity and the location of reserves are essential to ensure system reliability and market efficiency. The modeling of operating reserves in the existing deterministic reserve requirements acquire the operating reserves on a zonal basis and do not fully capture the impact of congestion. The purpose of a reserve zone is to ensure that operating reserves are spread across the network. Operating reserves are shared inside each reserve zone, but intra-zonal congestion may block the deliverability of operating reserves within a zone. Thus, improving reserve policies such as reserve zones may improve the location and deliverability of reserve. As more non-dispatchable renewable resources are integrated into the grid, it will become increasingly difficult to predict the transfer capabilities and the network congestion. At the same time, renewable resources require operators to acquire more operating reserves. With existing deterministic reserve requirements unable to ensure optimal reserve locations, the importance of reserve location and reserve deliverability will increase. While stochastic programming can be used to determine reserve by explicitly modelling uncertainties, there are still scalability as well as pricing issues. Therefore, new methods to improve existing deterministic reserve requirements are desired. One key barrier of improving existing deterministic reserve requirements is its potential market impacts. A metric, quality of service, is proposed in this thesis to evaluate the price signal and market impacts of proposed hourly reserve zones. Three main goals of this thesis are: 1) to develop a theoretical and mathematical model to better locate reserve while maintaining the deterministic unit commitment and economic dispatch

Study of the correlation between administered activity and radiation committed dose to the thyroid in 131I Therapy of Graves' Disease

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Traino, A.C.; Di Martino, F.; Lazzeri, M.; Stabin, M.G.

2001-01-01

Substantial reduction in the thyroid volume (up to 70-80%) after 131 I therapy of Graves' disease has been demonstrated and reported in the literature. Recently a mathematical model of thyroid mass reduction during the first month after therapy has been developed and a new algorithm for the radiation committed dose calculation has been proposed. Reduction of the thyroid mass and the radiation committed dose to the gland depend on a parameter k, defined for each subject. The calculation of k allows the prediction of the activity to administer, depending on the radiation committed dose chosen by the physician. In this paper a method for calculating k is proposed. The calculated values of k are compared to values derived from measurements of the changes in thyroid mass in twenty-six patients treated by 131 I for Graves' disease. The radiation committed dose to the thyroid can be predicted within 21%, and the radioiodine activity to administer to the patient can be predicted within 22% using the calculated values of k. The thyroid volume reduction during the first month after therapy administration can be also predicted with good accuracy using the calculated values of k. The radiation committed dose and the radioiodine activity to administer were calculated using a new, very simple algorithm. A comparison between the values calculated by this new algorithm and the old, classical Marinelli-Quimby algorithm shows that the new method is more accurate. (author)

Factors associated with the goal commitment of radiography departments' staff in organizational change

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Groenroos, Eija [Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, Degree Programme in Radiography and Radiotherapy, Mannerheimintie 172, 00300 Helsinki (Finland)], E-mail: eija.gronroos@metropolia.fi; Pajukari, Arja [MHS, Hus-Roentgen, PL 809, 00029 Hus (Finland)], E-mail: arja.pajukari@hus.fi; Matinheikki-Kokko, Kaija [Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, Mannerheimintie 172, 00300 Helsinki (Finland)

2009-11-15

Purpose: The aim of the study is to examine factors associated with the goal commitment of radiography departments' staff. The associations studied are (1) organizational change, (2) work-related factors, (3) psychosocial work environment, and (4) intention to leave. Method: The follow-up study was performed between 2005 and 2007 in co-operation with 10 radiography departments of two Finnish municipalities. In 2005 the response rate was 60% (n = 97/163) and in 2007 it was 49% (n = 73/150). Results: The goal commitment had dropped during the organizational change from 3.96 in 2005 to 3.60 in 2007 (scale 1-5) (p = 0.001). Best predictors for the goal commitment of radiography departments' staff were having children (OR 4.4) and perceiving functional environment clearly (OR 2.6). Correlation between the goal commitment and intention to leave of the staff was -0.32 (p = 0.01). Conclusion: From the viewpoint of the commitment of the radiography departments' staff, the trend of uniting quite independent health care units into larger entities seems not to be beneficial. This study reveals that commitment to one's work unit is most of all a question of stability and job security. This is a fact the leadership of the radiography departments should take into account, appreciate and support to assure the tenure and productivity of their workforce.

Dimensionality of Organizational Commitment in Volunteer Workers: Chamber of Commerce Board Members and Role Fulfillment

Science.gov (United States)

Dawley, David D.; Stephens, Robert D.; Stephens, David B.

2005-01-01

This study explores the multi-dimensionality of organizational commitment of volunteer chamber of commerce board members using the Meyer and Allen (1997) scale. The effect of organizational commitment on desirable board member roles is also tested. Theory is developed by uniting past research in both organizational commitment and employee…

Relationship between organizational culture and commitment of employees in health care centers in west of Iran.

Science.gov (United States)

Hamidi, Yadollah; Mohammadibakhsh, Roghayeh; Soltanian, Alireza; Behzadifar, Masoud

2017-01-01

Presence of committed personnel in each organization not only reduces their absenteeism, delays, and displacements but also leads to a dramatic increase in performance and efficiency of an organization, mental freshness of employees, better manifestation of noble objectives, and organizational mission as well as fulfillment of personal goals. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between organizational culture and organizational commitment of employees in administrative units of health care centers in the cities of Hamedan Province based on the Denison model in 2015. In this cross-sectional study, 177 employees in administrative units of health care centers in the cities of Hamedan Province were selected by a multistage stratified sampling method. The data collection instruments included the standardized Denison organizational culture survey and organizational commitment questionnaire by Meyer and Allen. Data were analyzed by IBM-SPSS version 21 using descriptive statistics and Pearson product-moment coefficient. Among the 12 indicators of organizational culture, the highest mean scores were assigned to empowerment (16.74), organizational learning (16.41), vision (16.4), and strategic direction (16.35); respectively. Furthermore, the indicators of capability development (14.2), core values (15.31), team orientation (15.45), and goals (15.46) received the lowest mean scores in this respect. Among the four dimensions of organizational culture, the highest mean score was related to "mission" in organizational culture and the lowest score was associated with "involvement." Meyer and Allen's organizational commitment model also had three components in which affective commitment in this study obtained the highest score (26.63) and continuance commitment received the lowest score (24.73). In this study, there was a significant correlation between all the components of organizational culture and organizational commitment of employees in

Mixed Inter Second Order Cone Programming Taking Appropriate Approximation for the Unit Commitment in Hybrid AC-DC Grid

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Zhou, Bo; Ai, Xiaomeng; Fang, Jiakun

2017-01-01

With the rapid development and deployment of voltage source converter (VSC) based HVDC, the traditional power system is evolving to the hybrid AC-DC grid. New optimization methods are urgently needed for these hybrid AC-DC power systems. In this paper, mixed-integer second order cone programming...... (MISOCP) for the hybrid AC-DC power systems is proposed. The second order cone (SOC) relaxation is adopted to transform the AC and DC power flow constraints to MISOCP. Several IEEE test systems are used to validate the proposed MISCOP formulation of the optimal power flow (OPF) and unit commitment (UC...

General purpose graphic processing unit implementation of adaptive pulse compression algorithms

Science.gov (United States)

Cai, Jingxiao; Zhang, Yan

2017-07-01

This study introduces a practical approach to implement real-time signal processing algorithms for general surveillance radar based on NVIDIA graphical processing units (GPUs). The pulse compression algorithms are implemented using compute unified device architecture (CUDA) libraries such as CUDA basic linear algebra subroutines and CUDA fast Fourier transform library, which are adopted from open source libraries and optimized for the NVIDIA GPUs. For more advanced, adaptive processing algorithms such as adaptive pulse compression, customized kernel optimization is needed and investigated. A statistical optimization approach is developed for this purpose without needing much knowledge of the physical configurations of the kernels. It was found that the kernel optimization approach can significantly improve the performance. Benchmark performance is compared with the CPU performance in terms of processing accelerations. The proposed implementation framework can be used in various radar systems including ground-based phased array radar, airborne sense and avoid radar, and aerospace surveillance radar.

UNIT COMMITMENT: A NEW TRUNCATED METHOD OF UNIT ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

NIJOTECH

Data obtained from the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) has been used to test the efficacy of this approach. ... every unit in the system must be respected. Some of these ..... Analysis of Power System Reliability. 2.Edwin K. W, Machat, ...

A Convex Model of Risk-Based Unit Commitment for Day-Ahead Market Clearing Considering Wind Power Uncertainty

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Zhang, Ning; Kang, Chongqing; Xia, Qing

2015-01-01

The integration of wind power requires the power system to be sufficiently flexible to accommodate its forecast errors. In the market clearing process, the scheduling of flexibility relies on the manner in which the wind power uncertainty is addressed in the unit commitment (UC) model. This paper...... and are considered in both the objective functions and the constraints. The RUC model is shown to be convex and is transformed into a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) problem using relaxation and piecewise linearization. The proposed RUC model is tested using a three-bus system and an IEEE RTS79 system...... that the risk modeling facilitates a strategic market clearing procedure with a reasonable computational expense....

A study on the relationship between emotional intelligence, organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior

OpenAIRE

Saman Chehrazi; Mehrdad Hoseini Shakib; Mohammad Hosein Askari Azad

2014-01-01

This paper presents a casual structure model between emotional intelligence and organizational citizenship behavior by using organizational commitment as mediator variable. The study is accomplished among 324 employees of united bus company in city of Tehran, Iran. Using structural equation modeling, the study has confirmed that emotional intelligence influenced on organizational citizenship behavior and commitment. The study also confirms that organizational commitment influenced on organiza...

Factors influencing job satisfaction and organizational commitment.

Science.gov (United States)

Watson, Liana M

2008-01-01

To assess the relationship between intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors influencing job satisfaction and the perspective of frontline medical imaging staff in acute care health care facilities in the United States. The sample consisted of 359 registered radiologic technologists who were working as staff technologists in acute care health care facilities in the United States. The results of the study suggest that satisfaction with intrinsic and extrinsic motivators influences overall satisfaction with the work environment and job and commitment to the employer.

A decomposition method for network-constrained unit commitment with AC power flow constraints

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bai, Yang; Zhong, Haiwang; Xia, Qing; Kang, Chongqing; Xie, Le

2015-01-01

To meet the increasingly high requirement of smart grid operations, considering AC power flow constraints in the NCUC (network-constrained unit commitment) is of great significance in terms of both security and economy. This paper proposes a decomposition method to solve NCUC with AC power flow constraints. With conic approximations of the AC power flow equations, the master problem is formulated as a MISOCP (mixed integer second-order cone programming) model. The key advantage of this model is that the active power and reactive power are co-optimised, and the transmission losses are considered. With the AC optimal power flow model, the AC feasibility of the UC result of the master problem is checked in subproblems. If infeasibility is detected, feedback constraints are generated based on the sensitivity of bus voltages to a change in the unit reactive power generation. They are then introduced into the master problem in the next iteration until all AC violations are eliminated. A 6-bus system, a modified IEEE 30-bus system and the IEEE 118-bus system are used to validate the performance of the proposed method, which provides a satisfactory solution with approximately 44-fold greater computational efficiency. - Highlights: • A decomposition method is proposed to solve the NCUC with AC power flow constraints • The master problem considers active power, reactive power and transmission losses. • OPF-based subproblems check the AC feasibility using parallel computing techniques. • An effective feedback constraint interacts between the master problem and subproblem. • Computational efficiency is significantly improved with satisfactory accuracy

Committed Vulnerability to Extreme Weather Events in the United States (Invited)

Science.gov (United States)

Preston, B. L.

2013-12-01

Despite improvements in disaster risk management in the United States, a trend toward increasing economic losses from extreme weather events has been observed. This trend has been attributed to growth in socioeconomic exposure to extremes driven by the concentration of population and wealth on hazardous landscapes. As geographic patterns of demography and economic development are associated with strong path dependence, the United States is ';locked-in' to future increases in exposure and associated economic losses in the decades ahead, irrespective of the influence of climate change. To understand the influence of path dependence on past and future losses, an index of potential socioeconomic exposure was developed at the U.S. county level based upon population size and inflation-adjusted wealth proxies. Since 1960, exposure has increased preferentially in the U.S. Southeast, particularly coastal and urban counties and Southwest relative to the Great Plains and Northeast. Projected changes in exposure from 2009 to 2054 based upon scenarios of future demographic and economic change suggest a long-term commitment to increasing, but spatially heterogeneous, exposure to extremes, independent of climate change. The implications of this path dependence are examined in the context of several natural hazards. Annualized county-level losses from 1960-2008 for five climate-related natural hazards were normalized to 2009 values and then scaled based upon projected changes in exposure and two different estimates of the exposure elasticity of losses. Results indicate that losses from extreme events will grow by a factor of 1.3-1.7 and 1.8-3.9 by 2025 and 2050, respectively, with the exposure elasticity representing a major source of uncertainty. At more local scales, however, such as rapidly growing metropolitan areas, losses are anticipated to grow more rapidly. As such, improving understanding of the societal implications of the extreme weather events of the future

A study on the relationship between emotional intelligence, organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Saman Chehrazi

2014-06-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a casual structure model between emotional intelligence and organizational citizenship behavior by using organizational commitment as mediator variable. The study is accomplished among 324 employees of united bus company in city of Tehran, Iran. Using structural equation modeling, the study has confirmed that emotional intelligence influenced on organizational citizenship behavior and commitment. The study also confirms that organizational commitment influenced on organizational citizenship behavior. Finally, the study has confirmed that there were significant relationships between emotional intelligence and its dimensions with organizational citizenship behavior and organizational commitment of employees.

Commitment Without Marriage

Science.gov (United States)

Reczek, Corinne; Elliott, Sinikka; Umberson, Debra

2011-01-01

The majority of Americans will marry in their lifetimes, and for many, marriage symbolizes the transition into long-term commitment. However, many Americans cannot legally marry. This article analyzes in-depth interviews with gays and lesbians in long-term partnerships to examine union formation and commitment-making histories. Using a life course perspective that emphasizes historical and biographical contexts, the authors examine how couples conceptualize and form committed relationships despite being denied the right to marry. Although previous studies suggest that commitment ceremonies are a way to form same-sex unions, this study finds that because of their unique social, historical, and biographical relationship to marriage and ceremonies, long-term same-sex couples do not follow normative commitment-making trajectories. Instead, relationships can transition more ambiguously to committed formations without marriage, public ceremony, clear-cut act, or decision. Such an understanding of commitment making outside of marriage has implications for theorizing alternative forms of union making. PMID:21814298

Outcomes of patients who commit suicide by burning.

Science.gov (United States)

Castana, O; Kourakos, P; Moutafidis, M; Stampolidis, N; Triantafyllou, V; Pallantzas, Ath; Filippa, E; Alexandropoulos, C

2013-03-31

Cases in which people use fire when attempting or committing suicide are not common but nevertheless constitute a cause of admission to burns units worldwide. Usually these people are suffering from stress and have been diagnosed as mentally ill. Schizophrenia, depression, and personality disorders are the most frequently diagnosed conditions. The psychological problems appear to have been overlooked by the family or not to have been presented to them. The aim of this study is to present the clinical features, characteristics, and outcomes of patients burned during a suicide attempt. The role of the psychiatrist is important, starting in the emergency room. The incidence of patients committing self-injury by burning appears to be higher in women burn patients. Deceased patients usually have a larger extent of burns and a higher incidence of other injuries and require more surgical procedures and longer hospitalization times. The problems for burn unit staff and qualified psychiatric care are discussed.

Outcomes of patients who commit suicide by burning

Science.gov (United States)

Castana, O.; Kourakos, P.; Moutafidis, M.; Stampolidis, N.; Triantafyllou, V.; Pallantzas, Ath.; Filippa, E.; Alexandropoulos, C.

2013-01-01

Summary Cases in which people use fire when attempting or committing suicide are not common but nevertheless constitute a cause of admission to burns units worldwide. Usually these people are suffering from stress and have been diagnosed as mentally ill. Schizophrenia, depression, and personality disorders are the most frequently diagnosed conditions. The psychological problems appear to have been overlooked by the family or not to have been presented to them. The aim of this study is to present the clinical features, characteristics, and outcomes of patients burned during a suicide attempt. The role of the psychiatrist is important, starting in the emergency room. The incidence of patients committing self-injury by burning appears to be higher in women burn patients. Deceased patients usually have a larger extent of burns and a higher incidence of other injuries and require more surgical procedures and longer hospitalization times. The problems for burn unit staff and qualified psychiatric care are discussed. PMID:23966897

The Factors of Strategic Leadership on Commitment: An Empirical Banking in Indonesia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Juliansyah Noor

2013-12-01

Full Text Available This research is aimed at obtaining information related to possibility whether organizational commitment is affected by training, organization culture, and ethical practice. The data which had been analyzed by multi regression analysis after all variables had been put into principal factor analysis. In this research employees were chosen as a unit analysis and 120 samples selected randomly.The result of this study shows that organization commitment is positively affected by training, organization culture and ethical practice. Implications of organization commitment might have been effected by training, organization culture and ethical practice as a strategic leadership.

Organizational commitment of a health profession faculty: dimensions, correlates and conditions.

Science.gov (United States)

Marchiori, Dennis M; Henkin, Alan B

2004-06-01

Health professions depend on their faculties to prepare new practitioners, conduct research and provide essential services. Organizational commitment is an important aspect of faculty effectiveness and job performance, and may impact on turnover, absenteeism and interpersonal trust. A survey of organizational commitment, including faculty demographics and workplace variables, was conducted. Respondents were full- and part-time chiropractic faculty working in the United States and Canada. More than 54% of the study population (n = 609) completed and returned the instrument. A large majority of the respondents were male (68.4%) and employed full-time (81.6%). Almost half (47.5%) of the respondents were assigned to the area of patient care at their institutions. This study provides an initial assessment of organizational commitment among chiropractic faculty. Tenure in higher education, gender and age were found to be the most important predictors of organizational commitment.

24 CFR 232.510 - Commitment and commitment fee.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT MORTGAGE AND LOAN INSURANCE PROGRAMS UNDER NATIONAL HOUSING ACT AND OTHER AUTHORITIES MORTGAGE INSURANCE FOR NURSING HOMES, INTERMEDIATE CARE FACILITIES, BOARD AND CARE HOMES, AND... of Fire Safety Equipment Fees and Charges § 232.510 Commitment and commitment fee. (a) Issuance of...

Probability-Weighted LMP and RCP for Day-Ahead Energy Markets using Stochastic Security-Constrained Unit Commitment: Preprint

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Ela, E.; O' Malley, M.

2012-06-01

Variable renewable generation resources are increasing their penetration on electric power grids. These resources have weather-driven fuel sources that vary on different time scales and are difficult to predict in advance. These characteristics create challenges for system operators managing the load balance on different timescales. Research is looking into new operational techniques and strategies that show great promise on facilitating greater integration of variable resources. Stochastic Security-Constrained Unit Commitment models are one strategy that has been discussed in literature and shows great benefit. However, it is rarely used outside the research community due to its computational limits and difficulties integrating with electricity markets. This paper discusses how it can be integrated into day-ahead energy markets and especially on what pricing schemes should be used to ensure an efficient and fair market.

Host-country policy – commitment or no-commitment: a theoretical analysis

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Mukherjee, A.

2000-01-01

This paper develops a model of foreign entry strategy and examines welfare of the host-country under two situations - (i) where host-country government commits to the tax policy, (ii) where host-country government does not commit to the tax policy. It turns out that under the non-committed

Improving Roadside Unit Deployment in Vehicular Networks by Exploiting Genetic Algorithms

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Manuel Fogue

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Vehicular networks make use of the Roadside Units (RSUs to enhance the communication capabilities of the vehicles in order to forward control messages and/or to provide Internet access to vehicles, drivers and passengers. Unfortunately, within vehicular networks, the wireless signal propagation is mostly affected by buildings and other obstacles (e.g., urban fixtures, in particular when considering the IEEE 802.11p standard. Therefore, a crowded RSU deployment may be required to ensure vehicular communications within urban environments. Furthermore, some applications, notably those applications related to safety, require a fast and reliable warning data transmission to the emergency services and traffic authorities. However, communication is not always possible in vehicular environments due to the lack of connectivity even employing multiple hops. To overcome the signal propagation problem and delayed warning notification time issues, an effective, smart, cost-effective and all-purpose RSU deployment policy should be put into place. In this paper, we propose the genetic algorithm for roadside unit deployment (GARSUD system, which uses a genetic algorithm that is capable of automatically providing an RSU deployment suitable for any given road map layout. Our simulation results show that GARSUD is able to reduce the warning notification time (the time required to inform emergency authorities in traffic danger situations and to improve vehicular communication capabilities within different density scenarios and complexity layouts.

[Influence of organizational commitment and professional nurses in conflict resolution strategies].

Science.gov (United States)

Pinho, Paula; Albuquerque, Carlos

2013-01-01

INTRODUCE: The changes in the health area and the set of structural changes in the nursing profession and career interfere in the dynamics and stability of the future of the nurses. To study the influence of organizational and professional commitment of the nurses in the strategies of conflict resolution. This is a quantitative, transversal and non-experimental research, following a descriptive-correlational way. Non-probabilistic sample of 102 nurses to perform duties in Health Units, mostly female (82.4%) with a mean age of 39.33 years and standard deviation 9.226. The measuring instrument consists of three scales calibrated and validated for the portuguese population: Organizational Commitment Questionnaire, Professional Commitment Scale and Inventory Strategies for Conflict Resolution, which assesses how individuals deal with conflict situations before higher (Form A), subordinate (Form B) and colleagues (Form C). Nurses demonstrate a moderate organizational commitment and higher affective commitment and normative commitment to the instrumental. Nurses demonstrate a moderate professional commitment and the results show that nurses have higher values on the dimensions of that interest and challenge the relevance dimension of nursing as a profession. The organizational commitment influences the adoption of strategies of conflict resolution as a conflict situation arises with the boss, subordinates or colleagues. The higher the level of organizational commitment higher the level of professional commitment. Nurses more engaged professionally demonstrate strategies that use more integrative and compromise in conflict resolution whether against the boss, subordinates or colleagues. The results ensure the need to promote and stimulate the affective commitment by the positive consequences it entails the organization and the profession. The organizational performance benefits from the stimulation of the conflict under certain conditions and that the constructive

Human resource management and unit performance in knowledge-intensive work.

Science.gov (United States)

Kehoe, Rebecca R; Collins, Christopher J

2017-08-01

To clarify the potential value of a targeted system of human resource (HR) practices, we explore the unique effects of a relationship-oriented HR system and the more commonly studied high commitment HR system on unit performance in the context of knowledge-intensive work. We develop theoretical arguments suggesting that the high commitment HR system contributes to unit performance through its positive effects on employees' collective organizational commitment, general and firm-specific human capital, and access to knowledge. We argue that the relationship-oriented HR system contributes to unit performance through its positive effects on employees' collective access to knowledge by fostering a social context and interpersonal exchange conditions which support employees' ongoing access to knowledge flows within and outside their unit and broader organization. Based on unit-level data collected from a matched sample of employees and managers in 128 units in the science and engineering division of a large hydroelectric power organization, our results suggest that the targeted, relationship-oriented HR system is related to firm performance and may complement a broader, high commitment approach to managing knowledge workers. Specifically, the positive relationship between the high commitment HR system and unit performance is mediated by employees' collective organizational commitment, firm-specific human capital, and access to knowledge in other organizational units; whereas the positive relationship between the relationship-oriented HR system and unit performance is mediated by units' access to knowledge within the unit, in other units, and outside the organization. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

How do different types of community commitment influence brand commitment? The mediation of brand attachment.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Ning; Zhou, Zhi-min; Su, Chen-ting; Zhou, Nan

2013-11-01

Although previous research indicates that participation in a brand community may foster consumer loyalty to the brand in question, research has seldom examined the mediating effect of community commitment on brand commitment. Drawing from the typologies of organizational commitment, we divide community commitment into three components: continuance community commitment (continuance CC), affective community commitment (affective CC), and normative community commitment (normative CC). We then assess the mediating role of brand attachment in the relationship between these three components and brand commitment. We test the hypotheses using a sample of online mobile phone brand communities in China. The empirical results reveal that brand attachment exerts an indirect (but not mediated) effect on the relationship between continuance CC and brand commitment and on the relationship between normative CC and brand commitment. We also find that it exerts a partial mediating effect on the relationship between affective CC and brand commitment. The findings contribute to the branding literature and have important implications for brand community management.

A novel algorithm for demand-control of a single-room ventilation unit with a rotary heat exchanger

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Smith, Kevin Michael; Jansen, Anders Lund; Svendsen, Svend

in the indoor environment. Based on these values, a demand-control algorithm varies fan speeds to change airflow rates and varies the rotational speed of the heat exchanger to modulate heat and moisture recovery. The algorithm varies airflow rates to provide free cooling and limit CO2 concentrations and varies...... moisture recovery by varying the rotational speed and then safely unbalances airflows in a worst-case scenario. In the algorithm, frost protection and minimum supply temperature take the highest priority and override other controls. This paper documents the proposed demand control algorithm and analyses...... its impacts on compliance of building regulations in Denmark. The paper presents an algorithm that manufacturers can program into their controls. The commercially available single-room ventilation unit with a rotary heat exchanger uses this algorithm coded in the C language. Future work will document...

78 FR 49787 - Request for Comments and Notice of Public Hearing Concerning China's Compliance With WTO Commitments

Science.gov (United States)

2013-08-15

..., standards and technical regulations, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, government procurement, trade... Concerning China's Compliance With WTO Commitments AGENCY: Office of the United States Trade Representative... with its WTO commitments. SUMMARY: The interagency Trade Policy Staff Committee (TPSC) will convene a...

Optimal day-ahead wind-thermal unit commitment considering statistical and predicted features of wind speeds

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sun, Yanan; Dong, Jizhe; Ding, Lijuan

2017-01-01

Highlights: • A day–ahead wind–thermal unit commitment model is presented. • Wind speed transfer matrix is formed to depict the sequential wind features. • Spinning reserve setting considering wind power accuracy and variation is proposed. • Verified study is performed to check the correctness of the program. - Abstract: The increasing penetration of intermittent wind power affects the secure operation of power systems and leads to a requirement of robust and economic generation scheduling. This paper presents an optimal day–ahead wind–thermal generation scheduling method that considers the statistical and predicted features of wind speeds. In this method, the statistical analysis of historical wind data, which represents the local wind regime, is first implemented. Then, according to the statistical results and the predicted wind power, the spinning reserve requirements for the scheduling period are calculated. Based on the calculated spinning reserve requirements, the wind–thermal generation scheduling is finally conducted. To validate the program, a verified study is performed on a test system. Then, numerical studies to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method are conducted.

Dual or dueling culture and commitment: The impact of a tri-hospital merger.

Science.gov (United States)

Jones, Janice M

2003-04-01

This article addresses differences in RNs' commitment to their employing hospital versus the umbrella corporate organization, and the role of organizational culture during a tri-hospital merger. This study is the first to investigate the construct of dual commitment in healthcare organizations. Fiscal restraints, decreasing reimbursement, and increasing competition have made organizational mergers and acquisitions prevalent. As corporate culture changes, organizational variables previously related to organizational commitment may no longer apply. RNs employed on general nursing units at 3 hospitals involved in a merger process completed 2 versions of Mowday's Organizational Commitment Questionnaire. Commitment to hospital and corporate system were examined. Semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and analysis of company documents assessed the organizational culture changes that have occurred. Thirty-one percent of the nurses returned completed questionnaires; 9 were interviewed. RNs from the acquiring hospital demonstrated a significantly stronger commitment to the corporate system than the nurses from the acquired hospitals. The RNs at all 3 hospitals showed significantly greater commitment to their own particular hospital than to the umbrella corporate system. Moderate level of commitment reflected uncertainty of job status, work overload, and feelings of unappreciation. These attitudes prevent nurses from exerting efforts on behalf of the organization.

Short-term bulk energy storage system scheduling for load leveling in unit commitment: modeling, optimization, and sensitivity analysis

Science.gov (United States)

Hemmati, Reza; Saboori, Hedayat

2016-01-01

Energy storage systems (ESSs) have experienced a very rapid growth in recent years and are expected to be a promising tool in order to improving power system reliability and being economically efficient. The ESSs possess many potential benefits in various areas in the electric power systems. One of the main benefits of an ESS, especially a bulk unit, relies on smoothing the load pattern by decreasing on-peak and increasing off-peak loads, known as load leveling. These devices require new methods and tools in order to model and optimize their effects in the power system studies. In this respect, this paper will model bulk ESSs based on the several technical characteristics, introduce the proposed model in the thermal unit commitment (UC) problem, and analyze it with respect to the various sensitive parameters. The technical limitations of the thermal units and transmission network constraints are also considered in the model. The proposed model is a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) which can be easily solved by strong commercial solvers (for instance CPLEX) and it is appropriate to be used in the practical large scale networks. The results of implementing the proposed model on a test system reveal that proper load leveling through optimum storage scheduling leads to considerable operation cost reduction with respect to the storage system characteristics. PMID:27222741

Short-term bulk energy storage system scheduling for load leveling in unit commitment: modeling, optimization, and sensitivity analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Hemmati, Reza; Saboori, Hedayat

2016-05-01

Energy storage systems (ESSs) have experienced a very rapid growth in recent years and are expected to be a promising tool in order to improving power system reliability and being economically efficient. The ESSs possess many potential benefits in various areas in the electric power systems. One of the main benefits of an ESS, especially a bulk unit, relies on smoothing the load pattern by decreasing on-peak and increasing off-peak loads, known as load leveling. These devices require new methods and tools in order to model and optimize their effects in the power system studies. In this respect, this paper will model bulk ESSs based on the several technical characteristics, introduce the proposed model in the thermal unit commitment (UC) problem, and analyze it with respect to the various sensitive parameters. The technical limitations of the thermal units and transmission network constraints are also considered in the model. The proposed model is a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) which can be easily solved by strong commercial solvers (for instance CPLEX) and it is appropriate to be used in the practical large scale networks. The results of implementing the proposed model on a test system reveal that proper load leveling through optimum storage scheduling leads to considerable operation cost reduction with respect to the storage system characteristics.

World Tourism Organization - 30 years of commitment to environmental protection

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Shackleford, P.

1985-01-01

The paper traces 30 years of commitment to environmental values of tourism by the intergovernmental World Tourism Organization. Such commitment was almost unfashionable in the 1950s but gradually what began as an article of faith was vindicated by results of market research showing that the protection, enhancement and improvement of man's physical and human environment were among the fundamental requirements for the harmonious development of tourism. The establishment of the United Nations Environmental Program at last gave WTO a partner with the necessary authority with which the world body could walk towards mutually agreed goals.

World Tourism Organization - 30 years of commitment to environmental protection

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Shackleford, P

1985-01-01

The paper traces 30 years of commitment to environmental values of tourism by the intergovernmental World Tourism Organization. Such commitment was almost unfashionable in the 1950s but gradually what began as an article of faith was vindicated by results of market research showing that the protection, enhancement and improvement of man's physical and human environment were among the fundamental requirements for the harmonious development of tourism. The establishment of the United Nations Environmental Program at last gave WTO a partner with the necessary authority with which the world body could walk towards mutually agreed goals.

Committed effective doses at various times after intakes of radionuclides

CERN Document Server

Phipps, A W; Kendall, G M; Silk, T J; Stather, J W

1991-01-01

This report contains details of committed effective doses at nine times after intake from intakes by ingestion and inhalation of 1 mu 1 AMAD particles by adults. Data are given for various chemical forms of 359 nuclides. It complements NRPB-R245 which describes the changes which have taken place since the last NRPB compendium of dose per unit intake factors (dose coefficients) and gives summary tables. Information on committed equivalent doses to organs is given in NRPB-M288. The information given in these memoranda is also available as a microcomputer package - NRPB-SR245.

Development and convergence : a bottom-up analysis for the differentiation of future commitments under the Climate Convention

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Groenenberg, Heleen

2002-01-01

A key issue in climate negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is how future commitments can be differentiated amongst countries. This thesis focuses on a more systematic differentiation of such commitments to support international decision making in

Treating Inpatients with Comorbid Depression and Alcohol Use Disorders: A Comparison of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Science.gov (United States)

Petersen, Connie L.; Zettle, Robert D.

2009-01-01

Inpatients involuntarily committed to a chemical dependency unit and exhibiting a co-occurring depressive disorder received either individual sessions of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) or treatment as usual (TAU) within the context of an ongoing 12-step program. Results indicated significant, but equivalent, reductions in levels of…

Canada's national report on climate change: Actions to meet commitments under the United Nations framework convention on climate change

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

1994-01-01

Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, countries must adopt measures to mitigate climate change, adapt to its possible effects, increase public awareness and scientific understanding of climate change and possible responses, and work together in all of these areas. A review is provided of action being currently taken by Canadian governments, non-governmental organizations, communities, and the private sector to meet domestic and international climate change commitments. Projections indicate that climate change could result in significant changes to many of Canada's natural ecosystems, with equally significant economic and social consequences. Canadian demand for energy is the chief cause of Canada's man-made emissions of greenhouse gases. As a first step in meeting its commitment, Canada is developing and implementing measures to limit greenhouse gas emissions, mainly in the area of energy efficiency, energy conservation, and switching to energy sources that are less carbon-intensive. Progress in limiting such emissions will be assessed via emissions inventories, examination of climatic change indicators, forecasting future energy-related emissions of the three primary greenhouse gases, and use of case studies to assess the effectiveness of emissions control measures. Other components of Canadian activities include increasing public awareness of climate change, sponsoring research on the subject, reviewing environmental policies, and international cooperation. 59 refs., 36 figs., 23 tabs

Safety climate and safety behaviors in the construction industry: The importance of co-workers commitment to safety.

Science.gov (United States)

Schwatka, Natalie V; Rosecrance, John C

2016-06-16

There is growing empirical evidence that as safety climate improves work site safety practice improve. Safety climate is often measured by asking workers about their perceptions of management commitment to safety. However, it is less common to include perceptions of their co-workers commitment to safety. While the involvement of management in safety is essential, working with co-workers who value and prioritize safety may be just as important. To evaluate a concept of safety climate that focuses on top management, supervisors and co-workers commitment to safety, which is relatively new and untested in the United States construction industry. Survey data was collected from a cohort of 300 unionized construction workers in the United States. The significance of direct and indirect (mediation) effects among safety climate and safety behavior factors were evaluated via structural equation modeling. Results indicated that safety climate was associated with safety behaviors on the job. More specifically, perceptions of co-workers commitment to safety was a mediator between both management commitment to safety climate factors and safety behaviors. These results support workplace health and safety interventions that build and sustain safety climate and a commitment to safety amongst work teams.

The Effect of Nurse-Physician Collaboration on Job Satisfaction, Team Commitment, and Turnover Intention in Nurses.

Science.gov (United States)

Galletta, Maura; Portoghese, Igor; Carta, Mauro Giovanni; D'Aloja, Ernesto; Campagna, Marcello

2016-10-01

Voluntary turnover in nursing can lead to nursing shortages that affect both individuals and the entire hospital unit. We investigated the relationship between group- and individual-level variables by examining the association of nurses' job satisfaction and team commitment at the individual level, and nurse-physician collaboration at the group level, with individuals' intention to leave the unit at the individual level. A self-report questionnaire was administered to 1,024 nurses on 72 units in 3 Italian hospitals. At the individual level, affective commitment partially mediated the relationship between job satisfaction and nursing turnover intention. Moreover, a cross-level interaction was found. Nurses with high levels of job satisfaction showed high levels of identification with their team, and this relationship was stronger when the group perception of nurse-physician collaboration was high. Results suggested that managerial strategies to promote nurse-physician collaboration may be important to increase nurses' affective commitment to the team. At the individual level, job satisfaction and team affective commitment are important factors for retaining staff, and at the group level, good work collaboration with physicians is instrumental in developing nurses' affective identification with the team. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Small Business Commitment | NREL

Science.gov (United States)

Small Business Commitment Small Business Commitment Central to NREL's mission is our commitment to small business through a comprehensive and mature outreach program that combines proven techniques with the latest technology and best business practices. For More Information Contact Us Please email Rexann

Competition with Variety Seeking and Habitual Consumption: Price Commitment or Quality Commitment?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Liyang Xiong

2017-01-01

Full Text Available This paper investigates price and quality competition in a market where consumers seek variety and habit formation. Variety seeking is modeled as a decrease in the willingness to pay for product purchased on the previous occasion while habitual consumption may increase future marginal utility. We compare two competing strategies: price commitment and quality commitment. With a three-stage Hotelling-type model, we show that variety seeking intensifies while habitual consumption softens the competition. With price commitment, firms supply lower quality levels in period 1 and higher quality levels in period 2, while, with quality commitment, firms charge higher prices in period 1 and lower prices in period 2. However, the habitual consumption brings the opposite effect. In addition, with quality commitment variety seeking leads to a lower profit and a higher consumer surplus, while habitual consumption leads to the opposite results. On the other side, with price commitment these behaviors have no effect on the consumer surplus, although they still lower down the firm profits. Finally, we also identify conditions under which one strategy outperforms the other.

Practical Relativistic Bit Commitment

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Lunghi, T.; Kaniewski, J.; Bussières, F.; Houlmann, R.; Tomamichel, M.; Wehner, S.D.C.; Zbinden, H

2015-01-01

Bit commitment is a fundamental cryptographic primitive in which Alice wishes to commit a secret bit to Bob. Perfectly secure bit commitment between two mistrustful parties is impossible through an asynchronous exchange of quantum information. Perfect security is, however, possible when Alice and

Exploring the differential impact of individual and organizational factors on organizational commitment of physicians and nurses.

Science.gov (United States)

Miedaner, Felix; Kuntz, Ludwig; Enke, Christian; Roth, Bernhard; Nitzsche, Anika

2018-03-15

Physician and nursing shortages in acute and critical care settings require research on factors which might drive their commitment, an important predictor of absenteeism and turnover. However, the degree to which the commitment of a physician or a nurse is driven by individual or organizational characteristics in hospitals remains unclear. In addition, there is a need for a greater understanding of how antecedent-commitment relationships differ between both occupational groups. Based on recent findings in the literature and the results of a pilot study, we investigate the degree to which selected individual and organizational characteristics might enhance an employee's affective commitment working in the field of neonatal intensive care. Moreover, our aim is to examine the different antecedent-commitment relationships across the occupational groups of nurses and physicians. Information about individual factors affecting organizational commitment was derived from self-administered staff questionnaires, while additional information about organizational structures was taken from hospital quality reports and a self-administered survey completed by hospital department heads. Overall, 1486 nurses and 540 physicians from 66 Neonatal Intensive Care Units participated in the study. We used multilevel modeling to account for different levels of analysis. Although organizational characteristics can explain differences in an employee's commitment, the differences can be largely explained by his or her individual characteristics and work experiences. Regarding occupational differences, individual support by leaders and colleagues was shown to influence organizational commitment more strongly in the physicians' group. In contrast, the degree of autonomy in the units and perceived quality of care had a larger impact on the nurses' organizational commitment. With the growing number of hospitals facing an acute shortage of highly-skilled labor, effective strategies on the

Fuzzy Commitment

Science.gov (United States)

Juels, Ari

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce fuzzy commitment, one of the earliest and simplest constructions geared toward cryptography over noisy data. The chapter also explores applications of fuzzy commitment to two problems in data security: (1) secure management of biometrics, with a focus on iriscodes, and (2) use of knowledge-based authentication (i.e., personal questions) for password recovery.

Improved quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithm with diversity information applied to economic dispatch problem with prohibited operating zones

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Vianna Neto, Julio Xavier; Andrade Bernert, Diego Luis de; Santos Coelho, Leandro dos

2011-01-01

The objective of the economic dispatch problem (EDP) of electric power generation, whose characteristics are complex and highly nonlinear, is to schedule the committed generating unit outputs so as to meet the required load demand at minimum operating cost while satisfying all unit and system equality and inequality constraints. Recently, as an alternative to the conventional mathematical approaches, modern meta-heuristic optimization techniques have been given much attention by many researchers due to their ability to find an almost global optimal solution in EDPs. Research on merging evolutionary computation and quantum computation has been started since late 1990. Inspired on the quantum computation, this paper presented an improved quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithm (IQEA) based on diversity information of population. A classical quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithm (QEA) and the IQEA were implemented and validated for a benchmark of EDP with 15 thermal generators with prohibited operating zones. From the results for the benchmark problem, it is observed that the proposed IQEA approach provides promising results when compared to various methods available in the literature.

Improved quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithm with diversity information applied to economic dispatch problem with prohibited operating zones

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Vianna Neto, Julio Xavier, E-mail: julio.neto@onda.com.b [Pontifical Catholic University of Parana, PUCPR, Undergraduate Program at Mechatronics Engineering, Imaculada Conceicao, 1155, Zip code 80215-901, Curitiba, Parana (Brazil); Andrade Bernert, Diego Luis de, E-mail: dbernert@gmail.co [Pontifical Catholic University of Parana, PUCPR, Industrial and Systems Engineering Graduate Program, LAS/PPGEPS, Imaculada Conceicao, 1155, Zip code 80215-901, Curitiba, Parana (Brazil); Santos Coelho, Leandro dos, E-mail: leandro.coelho@pucpr.b [Pontifical Catholic University of Parana, PUCPR, Industrial and Systems Engineering Graduate Program, LAS/PPGEPS, Imaculada Conceicao, 1155, Zip code 80215-901, Curitiba, Parana (Brazil)

2011-01-15

The objective of the economic dispatch problem (EDP) of electric power generation, whose characteristics are complex and highly nonlinear, is to schedule the committed generating unit outputs so as to meet the required load demand at minimum operating cost while satisfying all unit and system equality and inequality constraints. Recently, as an alternative to the conventional mathematical approaches, modern meta-heuristic optimization techniques have been given much attention by many researchers due to their ability to find an almost global optimal solution in EDPs. Research on merging evolutionary computation and quantum computation has been started since late 1990. Inspired on the quantum computation, this paper presented an improved quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithm (IQEA) based on diversity information of population. A classical quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithm (QEA) and the IQEA were implemented and validated for a benchmark of EDP with 15 thermal generators with prohibited operating zones. From the results for the benchmark problem, it is observed that the proposed IQEA approach provides promising results when compared to various methods available in the literature.

Improved quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithm with diversity information applied to economic dispatch problem with prohibited operating zones

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Neto, Julio Xavier Vianna [Pontifical Catholic University of Parana, PUCPR, Undergraduate Program at Mechatronics Engineering, Imaculada Conceicao, 1155, Zip code 80215-901, Curitiba, Parana (Brazil); Bernert, Diego Luis de Andrade; Coelho, Leandro dos Santos [Pontifical Catholic University of Parana, PUCPR, Industrial and Systems Engineering Graduate Program, LAS/PPGEPS, Imaculada Conceicao, 1155, Zip code 80215-901, Curitiba, Parana (Brazil)

2011-01-15

The objective of the economic dispatch problem (EDP) of electric power generation, whose characteristics are complex and highly nonlinear, is to schedule the committed generating unit outputs so as to meet the required load demand at minimum operating cost while satisfying all unit and system equality and inequality constraints. Recently, as an alternative to the conventional mathematical approaches, modern meta-heuristic optimization techniques have been given much attention by many researchers due to their ability to find an almost global optimal solution in EDPs. Research on merging evolutionary computation and quantum computation has been started since late 1990. Inspired on the quantum computation, this paper presented an improved quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithm (IQEA) based on diversity information of population. A classical quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithm (QEA) and the IQEA were implemented and validated for a benchmark of EDP with 15 thermal generators with prohibited operating zones. From the results for the benchmark problem, it is observed that the proposed IQEA approach provides promising results when compared to various methods available in the literature. (author)

Optimizing the Shunting Schedule of Electric Multiple Units Depot Using an Enhanced Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm

Science.gov (United States)

Jin, Junchen

2016-01-01

The shunting schedule of electric multiple units depot (SSED) is one of the essential plans for high-speed train maintenance activities. This paper presents a 0-1 programming model to address the problem of determining an optimal SSED through automatic computing. The objective of the model is to minimize the number of shunting movements and the constraints include track occupation conflicts, shunting routes conflicts, time durations of maintenance processes, and shunting running time. An enhanced particle swarm optimization (EPSO) algorithm is proposed to solve the optimization problem. Finally, an empirical study from Shanghai South EMU Depot is carried out to illustrate the model and EPSO algorithm. The optimization results indicate that the proposed method is valid for the SSED problem and that the EPSO algorithm outperforms the traditional PSO algorithm on the aspect of optimality. PMID:27436998

Optimizing the Shunting Schedule of Electric Multiple Units Depot Using an Enhanced Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jiaxi Wang

2016-01-01

Full Text Available The shunting schedule of electric multiple units depot (SSED is one of the essential plans for high-speed train maintenance activities. This paper presents a 0-1 programming model to address the problem of determining an optimal SSED through automatic computing. The objective of the model is to minimize the number of shunting movements and the constraints include track occupation conflicts, shunting routes conflicts, time durations of maintenance processes, and shunting running time. An enhanced particle swarm optimization (EPSO algorithm is proposed to solve the optimization problem. Finally, an empirical study from Shanghai South EMU Depot is carried out to illustrate the model and EPSO algorithm. The optimization results indicate that the proposed method is valid for the SSED problem and that the EPSO algorithm outperforms the traditional PSO algorithm on the aspect of optimality.

Effect of a culture-based screening algorithm on tuberculosis incidence in immigrants and refugees bound for the United States: a population-based cross-sectional study.

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Yecai; Posey, Drew L; Cetron, Martin S; Painter, John A

2015-03-17

Before 2007, immigrants and refugees bound for the United States were screened for tuberculosis (TB) by a smear-based algorithm that could not diagnose smear-negative/culture-positive TB. In 2007, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention implemented a culture-based algorithm. To evaluate the effect of the culture-based algorithm on preventing the importation of TB to the United States by immigrants and refugees from foreign countries. Population-based, cross-sectional study. Panel physician sites for overseas medical examination. Immigrants and refugees with TB. Comparison of the increase of smear-negative/culture-positive TB cases diagnosed overseas among immigrants and refugees by the culture-based algorithm with the decline of reported cases among foreign-born persons within 1 year after arrival in the United States from 2007 to 2012. Of the 3 212 421 arrivals of immigrants and refugees from 2007 to 2012, a total of 1 650 961 (51.4%) were screened by the smear-based algorithm and 1 561 460 (48.6%) were screened by the culture-based algorithm. Among the 4032 TB cases diagnosed by the culture-based algorithm, 2195 (54.4%) were smear-negative/culture-positive. Before implementation (2002 to 2006), the annual number of reported cases among foreign-born persons within 1 year after arrival was relatively constant (range, 1424 to 1626 cases; mean, 1504 cases) but decreased from 1511 to 940 cases during implementation (2007 to 2012). During the same period, the annual number of smear-negative/culture-positive TB cases diagnosed overseas among immigrants and refugees bound for the United States by the culture-based algorithm increased from 4 to 629. This analysis did not control for the decline in new arrivals of nonimmigrant visitors to the United States and the decrease of incidence of TB in their countries of origin. Implementation of the culture-based algorithm may have substantially reduced the incidence of TB among newly arrived, foreign-born persons in

Canada's commitment to nuclear technology

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Stewart, Murray J.

1998-01-01

This paper gives a broad update on all facets of the Canadian nuclear industry and demonstrates Canada's continuing commitment to nuclear technology. Canada has developed a global leadership position in nuclear technology for power generation, uranium production and isotope supply. This commitment is being further enhanced by successes in international markets with Candu technology, new uranium mine developments in our province of Saskatchewan, and expanding isotope capabilities including the construction of two new production reactors. Korea's economy is benefiting through collaboration with Canada's leading nuclear companies, both in Korea and Canada. These collaborations have the potential to expand considerably with the implementation of the Kyoto Framework Convention on Climate Change and the anticipated increased demand for new nuclear power generation installations in all major global markets. Much has been publicized about the situation surrounding Ontario Hydro Nuclear and its nuclear recovery program. This paper gives the background and highlights the actions within Ontario and Ontario Hydro designed to ensure the long term recovery of all twenty nuclear units in Ontario. The presentation at the conference will bring the audience completely up-to-date on recent events. (author)

The impact of selected organizational variables and managerial leadership on radiation therapists' organizational commitment

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Akroyd, Duane; Legg, Jeff; Jackowski, Melissa B.; Adams, Robert D.

2009-01-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of selected organizational factors and the leadership behavior of supervisors on radiation therapists' commitment to their organizations. The population for this study consists of all full time clinical radiation therapists registered by the American Registry of Radiologic Technologists (ARRT) in the United States. A random sample of 800 radiation therapists was obtained from the ARRT for this study. Questionnaires were mailed to all participants and measured organizational variables; managerial leadership variable and three components of organizational commitment (affective, continuance and normative). It was determined that organizational support, and leadership behavior of supervisors each had a significant and positive affect on normative and affective commitment of radiation therapists and each of the models predicted over 40% of the variance in radiation therapists organizational commitment. This study examined radiation therapists' commitment to their organizations and found that affective (emotional attachment to the organization) and normative (feelings of obligation to the organization) commitments were more important than continuance commitment (awareness of the costs of leaving the organization). This study can help radiation oncology administrators and physicians to understand the values their radiation therapy employees hold that are predictive of their commitment to the organization. A crucial result of the study is the importance of the perceived support of the organization and the leadership skills of managers/supervisors on radiation therapists' commitment to the organization.

Career Commitment in Nursing.

Science.gov (United States)

Gardner, Diane L.

1992-01-01

A longitudinal, repeated-measures descriptive survey used to measure career commitment and its relationship to turnover and work performance in 320 newly employed registered nurses at one hospital found that career commitment is not a stable phenomenon. The direct association between career commitment and turnover and with job performance is weak.…

Organizational identification and commitment: correlates of sense of belonging and affective commitment.

Science.gov (United States)

Dávila, Ma Celeste; Jiménez García, Gemma

2012-03-01

The general purpose of this work is to analyze the overlap between organizational identification and commitment. Specifically, our study focuses on the analysis of the differences and similarities between sense of belonging (a dimension of organizational identification) and affective commitment (a dimension of organizational commitment). In order to do this, we analyzed their discriminant validity and raised their relationship with variables that previous research had showed like precedent and subsequent variables of them: value congruence, perceived support, organizational citizenship behavior, and intention to continue in the organization. A total of 292 people at one organization completed surveys measuring the variables previously described. The results showed that sense of belonging and affective commitment are different concepts and they have different relationships with relation to precedent and subsequent variables. Affective commitment seems to be more useful than sense of belonging to predict organizational citizenship behavior aimed at the organization and intention to continue. Some practical implications are described.

Interpersonal Conflict and Organizational Commitment Among Licensed Practical Nurses.

Science.gov (United States)

Loes, Chad N; Tobin, Mary B

The shortage of nursing professionals in the United States is unquestionable. This shortage, which is predicted to continue into the foreseeable future, is a particularly salient problem within the nursing profession. This is especially true for long-term care facility administrators who not only are faced with the challenge of increasing numbers of aging residents but also regularly struggle with turnover among more cost-effective nursing staff, such as licensed practical nurses (LPNs). The primary purpose of this study was to examine whether perceived interpersonal conflict influences organizational commitment among LPNs. To accomplish this, we analyzed responses from 1165 LPNs throughout a Midwestern state who were queried on their perceptions of interpersonal conflict and organizational commitment in their work settings. Considering a wide range of potential confounding influences such as age and years working as an LPN, for example, we found that higher perceived interpersonal conflict was associated with significantly lower levels of organizational commitment. The implications of these findings, along with recommendations for nurse administrators to reduce LPN turnover, are discussed in the article.

Is organizational justice climate at the workplace associated with individual-level quality of care and organizational affective commitment? A multi-level, cross-sectional study on dentistry in Sweden.

Science.gov (United States)

Berthelsen, Hanne; Conway, Paul Maurice; Clausen, Thomas

2018-02-01

The aim of this study is to investigate whether organizational justice climate at the workplace level is associated with individual staff members' perceptions of care quality and affective commitment to the workplace. The study adopts a cross-sectional multi-level design. Data were collected using an electronic survey and a response rate of 75% was obtained. Organizational justice climate and affective commitment to the workplace were measured by items from Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire and quality of care by three self-developed items. Non-managerial staff working at dental clinics with at least five respondents (n = 900 from 68 units) was included in analyses. A set of Level-2 random intercept models were built to predict individual-level organizational affective commitment and perceived quality of care from unit-level organizational justice climate, controlling for potential confounding by group size, gender, age, and occupation. The results of the empty model showed substantial between-unit variation for both affective commitment (ICC-1 = 0.17) and quality of care (ICC-1 = 0.12). The overall results showed that the shared perception of organizational justice climate at the clinical unit level was significantly associated with perceived quality of care and affective commitment to the organization (p Organizational justice climate at work unit level explained all variation in affective commitment among dental clinics and was associated with both the individual staff members' affective commitment and perceived quality of care. These findings suggest a potential for that addressing organizational justice climate may be a way to promote quality of care and enhancing affective commitment. However, longitudinal studies are needed to support causality in the examined relationships. Intervention research is also recommended to probe the effectiveness of actions increasing unit-level organizational justice climate and test their impact on quality of care

Algorithm for Fast and Efficient Detection and Reaction to Angle Instability Conditions Using Phasor Measurement Unit Data

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Igor Ivanković

2018-03-01

Full Text Available In wide area monitoring, protection, and control (WAMPAC systems, angle stability of transmission network is monitored using data from phasor measurement units (PMU placed on transmission lines. Based on this PMU data stream advanced algorithm for out-of-step condition detection and early warning issuing is developed. The algorithm based on theoretical background described in this paper is backed up by the data and results from corresponding simulations done in Matlab environment. Presented results aim to provide the insights of the potential benefits, such as fast and efficient detection and reaction to angle instability, this algorithm can have on the improvement of the power system protection. Accordingly, suggestion is given how the developed algorithm can be implemented in protection segments of the WAMPAC systems in the transmission system operator control centers.

The distribution of committed dose equivalents to workers exposed to tritium in the luminising industry in the United Kingdom

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hipkin, J.

1977-01-01

In the United Kingdom tritium has become almost the only radionuclide that is used in luminising. Two distinct methods of luminising are used, one involving the use of tritium gas and the other involving the use of tritium activated luminous paint. All major luminisers have voluntarily taken part in urine monitoring programmes. The analyses have been carried out by the National Radiological Protection Board and estimates of committed dose equivalent have been made from the results. The work presented is an analysis of the committed dose equivalents received by all the individuals monitored in the years 1974, 1975 and 1976. It is shown that doses follow, in general, a lognormal distribution modified only at the high dose end by what must be described as dose management. Further evidence for dose management is seen when the pattern of dose versus time are analysed for selected individuals. It is shown that the maximum permissible dose as recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection, is only rarely exceeded. It is also shown that there is a substantial difference in the degree of exposure between workers involved in gaseous tritium luminising and workers using paint luminising. A comparison is made between exposure in gaseous tritium luminising and exposure in another common use of gaseous tritium, ie. the filling of electronic devices with tritium gas. It is shown that exposure is very much less in the electronic device work

Organizational commitment of military physicians.

Science.gov (United States)

Demir, Cesim; Sahin, Bayram; Teke, Kadir; Ucar, Muharrem; Kursun, Olcay

2009-09-01

An individual's loyalty or bond to his or her employing organization, referred to as organizational commitment, influences various organizational outcomes such as employee motivation, job satisfaction, performance, accomplishment of organizational goals, employee turnover, and absenteeism. Therefore, as in other sectors, employee commitment is crucial also in the healthcare market. This study investigates the effects of organizational factors and personal characteristics on organizational commitment of military physicians using structural equation modeling (SEM) on a self-report, cross-sectional survey that consisted of 635 physicians working in the 2 biggest military hospitals in Turkey. The results of this study indicate that professional commitment and organizational incentives contribute positively to organizational commitment, whereas conflict with organizational goals makes a significantly negative contribution to it. These results might help develop strategies to increase employee commitment, especially in healthcare organizations, because job-related factors have been found to possess greater impact on organizational commitment than personal characteristics.

Unit Commitment With Dynamic Cycling Costs

OpenAIRE

Troy, Niamh; Flynn, Damian; Milligan, Michael R.; et al.

2012-01-01

Increased competition in the electricity sector and the integration of variable renewable energy sources is resulting in more frequent cycling of thermal plant. Thus, the wear-and-tear to generator components and the related costs are a growing concern for plant owners and system operators alike. This paper presents a formulation that can be implemented in a MIP dispatch model to dynamically model cycling costs based on unit operation. When implemented for a test system, the results show that...

An examination of the role of perceived support and employee commitment in employee-customer encounters.

Science.gov (United States)

Vandenberghe, Christian; Bentein, Kathleen; Michon, Richard; Chebat, Jean-Charles; Tremblay, Michel; Fils, Jean-François

2007-07-01

The authors examined the relationships between perceived organizational support, organizational commitment, commitment to customers, and service quality in a fast-food firm. The research design matched customer responses with individual employees' attitudes, making this study a true test of the service provider-customer encounter. On the basis of a sample of matched employee-customer data (N = 133), hierarchical linear modeling analyses revealed that perceived organizational support had both a unit-level and an employee-level effect on 1 dimension of service quality: helping behavior. Contrary to affective organizational commitment, affective commitment to customers enhanced service quality. The 2 sub-dimensions of continuance commitment to the organization--perceived high sacrifice and perceived lack of alternatives--exerted effects opposite in sign: The former fostered service quality, whereas the latter reduced it. The implications of these findings are discussed within the context of research on employee-customer encounters.

Employee organizational commitment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Radosavljević Života

2017-01-01

Full Text Available This paper shows the results of research on organizational commitment as a type of attitudes that show the identification level of employees with their organizations and their willingness to leave them. The research has been conducted with intention to determine the level of organizational commitment on the territory of Novi Sad, as well as to question whether there is a difference between certain categories of examinees for each commitment base. The research comprised 237 examinees employed in organizations on the territory of Novi Sad. Status of independent variables have gained: gender, years of working experience, educational level, working experience in one or more organizations and estimation of level of personal potentials utility. The questionnaire used is taken from the Greenberg and Baron's 'Behaviour in Organizations', p. 170, done according to set of questions by Meyer and Allen, in 1991. The data have been worked on by calculating arithmetic mean, and by application of Pearson Chi-square test. The results have shown that there is a below average level of organizational (AS=2.88, with the most intensive continual (AS=3.23, and the least intensive normative organizational dedication (AS=2.41. The gender of examinees does not represent relevant source of differences in the levels of each type of three mentioned commitment. Years of working experience and level of educational attainment represent a significant source of differences for continual (YWE: Pearson Chi-square = 30,38; df = 8; p = .000 (LEA: Pearson Chi-square = 7,381; df = 2; p = .05 and normative (YWE: Pearson Chi- square = 20,67; df = 8; p = .000 (LEA: Pearson Chi-square = 10,79; df = 2; p = .00 base of commitment. Work in one or more organizations has shown as a significant source of differences in the level of continual commitment (Pearson Chi-square = 7, 59; df = 2; p = .05. The level of affective commitment is statistically significantly related only to the estimation

Efficient Acceleration of the Pair-HMMs Forward Algorithm for GATK HaplotypeCaller on Graphics Processing Units.

Science.gov (United States)

Ren, Shanshan; Bertels, Koen; Al-Ars, Zaid

2018-01-01

GATK HaplotypeCaller (HC) is a popular variant caller, which is widely used to identify variants in complex genomes. However, due to its high variants detection accuracy, it suffers from long execution time. In GATK HC, the pair-HMMs forward algorithm accounts for a large percentage of the total execution time. This article proposes to accelerate the pair-HMMs forward algorithm on graphics processing units (GPUs) to improve the performance of GATK HC. This article presents several GPU-based implementations of the pair-HMMs forward algorithm. It also analyzes the performance bottlenecks of the implementations on an NVIDIA Tesla K40 card with various data sets. Based on these results and the characteristics of GATK HC, we are able to identify the GPU-based implementations with the highest performance for the various analyzed data sets. Experimental results show that the GPU-based implementations of the pair-HMMs forward algorithm achieve a speedup of up to 5.47× over existing GPU-based implementations.

Alzheimer's: From Caring to Commitment

Science.gov (United States)

... Current Issue Past Issues Home Current issue contents Alzheimer's: From Caring to Commitment From Caring to Commitment ... Caring to Commitment During her sister’s battle with Alzheimer’s, Anne Murphy stayed by her side and continues ...

A solution to energy and environmental problems of electric power system using hybrid harmony search-random search optimization algorithm

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Vikram Kumar Kamboj

2016-04-01

Full Text Available In recent years, global warming and carbon dioxide (CO2 emission reduction have become important issues in India, as CO2 emission levels are continuing to rise in accordance with the increased volume of Indian national energy consumption under the pressure of global warming, it is crucial for Indian government to impose the effective policy to promote CO2 emission reduction. Challenge of supplying the nation with high quality and reliable electrical energy at a reasonable cost, converted government policy into deregulation and restructuring environment. This research paper presents aims to presents an effective solution for energy and environmental problems of electric power using an efficient and powerful hybrid optimization algorithm: Hybrid Harmony search-random search algorithm. The proposed algorithm is tested for standard IEEE-14 bus, -30 bus and -56 bus system. The effectiveness of proposed hybrid algorithm is compared with others well known evolutionary, heuristics and meta-heuristics search algorithms. For multi-objective unit commitment, it is found that as there are conflicting relationship between cost and emission, if the performance in cost criterion is improved, performance in the emission is seen to deteriorate.

Effects of Ethical Climate on Organizational Commitment, Professional Commitment, and Job Satisfaction of Auditor in Malaysia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Suhaiza Ismail

2015-08-01

Full Text Available The objective of this paper is to investigate the effect of the ethical climate on the organizational commitment, professional commitment and job satisfaction of Malaysian auditors. Using a survey questionnaire comprising instruments about the ethical climate, organizational commitment, professional commitment and job satisfaction, 263 usable responses were received. To achieve the objectives, mean scores, standard deviations, correlations and multiple regressions were performed. The study revealed that a significant positive influence of a caring ethical climate on professional and organizational commitment as well as job satisfaction existed. There was also a positive significant association between the law and code ethical climate and professional commitment. On the other hand, the study discovered that the instrumental ethical climate type had a significant negative relationship with organizational commitment and job satisfaction. A significant negative relationship was also revealed between the independent ethical climate type and organizational and professional commitment. A significant negative relationship between the rules ethical climate and job satisfaction was also discovered.

How the negotiators tackled the 'hot air' issue for the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

2013-02-01

In 1997, when the Kyoto Protocol was approved, developed countries set their greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction commitments in relation to a 'base year' level. For the Kyoto Protocol, the year 1990 was chosen in most cases. However, irrespective of GHG mitigation action, the countries of the former Soviet Union have seen their emissions of greenhouse gases significantly decreasing after the collapse of the USSR. Given that their emissions were and still are today far below the commitments they established in 1997, these countries have a significant surplus of allowances referred to as 'hot air'. Before the COP 18 that took place in Doha (Qatar) late 2012, many countries and observers raised concern about this 'hot air'. Typically, there were two separate questions: What should we do with the accumulated surplus from the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol (CP1)? And will a new 'hot air' be created during the second commitment period (CP2)? This analysis explores the implications of the decisions made in Doha, using the case of Ukraine to illustrate responses to the questions raised. Indeed, as the European Union regulation forbids European countries to use CP1 units to achieve CP2 targets, Ukraine is the principal country committing to CP2 with a substantial reserve of CP1 units

The Influence of Transformational Leadership on Job Satisfaction, Organizational Commitment,and Employee Performance

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marnis Atmojo

2012-04-01

Full Text Available This research has four main objectives; first, to prove and analyze the influence of transformational leadership towards employee job satis faction; Second, to prove and analyze the influence of transformational leadership towards organizational commitment; Third, to prove and analyze the influence of transformationalleadership towards employee performance; Fourth, to prove and analyze the influence of organization commitment towards the employee performance. This research involved 146 members of middle management as our research sample namely Head of Department, Plantation Manager, Plant Manager, Head of Bureau/Division, Head Assistant, Head of Strategic Business Unit (SBU, Chief Engineer and Head of Hospital Service. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM was used to test and analyze relationship among the research variables. Research findings are transformational leadership significantly influences job satisfaction, transformational leadership significantly influences the organization commitment. The job satisfaction is shown to have significant influence on employee performance, and organization commitment significantly influences the employee performance.

Measuring Asian nurses' organizational commitment: a critical analysis of the psychometric properties of two organizational commitment instruments.

Science.gov (United States)

Liou, Shwu-Ru; Tsai, Hsiu-Min; Cheng, Ching-Yu

2013-01-01

To analyze and compare the psychometric properties and cultural attributes of the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire and the Organizational Commitment Scale to determine their appropriateness for measuring commitment of Asian nurses, the biggest portion of international nurses. The Organizational Commitment Questionnaire was cross-culturally cross-validated when compared with the Organizational Commitment Scale. Both instruments were not tested on Asian nurses. More studies are needed to validate the cultural properties of the Organizational Commitment Scale. Healthcare administrators can use culturally validated instruments, which concern cultural context, including languages and cultural values, to understand Asian nurses' organizational commitment and further lower turnover behavior among them. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Postmarket Requirements and Commitments

Data.gov (United States)

U.S. Department of Health & Human Services — Provides information to the public on postmarket requirements and commitments. The phrase postmarket requirements and commitments refers to studies and clinical...

An improved algorithm for small and cool fire detection using MODIS data: A preliminary study in the southeastern United States

Science.gov (United States)

Wanting Wang; John J. Qu; Xianjun Hao; Yongqiang Liu; William T. Sommers

2006-01-01

Traditional fire detection algorithms mainly rely on hot spot detection using thermal infrared (TIR) channels with fixed or contextual thresholds. Three solar reflectance channels (0.65 μm, 0.86 μm, and 2.1 μm) were recently adopted into the MODIS version 4 contextual algorithm to improve the active fire detection. In the southeastern United...

Optimal power system generation scheduling by multi-objective genetic algorithms with preferences

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zio, E.; Baraldi, P.; Pedroni, N.

2009-01-01

Power system generation scheduling is an important issue both from the economical and environmental safety viewpoints. The scheduling involves decisions with regards to the units start-up and shut-down times and to the assignment of the load demands to the committed generating units for minimizing the system operation costs and the emission of atmospheric pollutants. As many other real-world engineering problems, power system generation scheduling involves multiple, conflicting optimization criteria for which there exists no single best solution with respect to all criteria considered. Multi-objective optimization algorithms, based on the principle of Pareto optimality, can then be designed to search for the set of nondominated scheduling solutions from which the decision-maker (DM) must a posteriori choose the preferred alternative. On the other hand, often, information is available a priori regarding the preference values of the DM with respect to the objectives. When possible, it is important to exploit this information during the search so as to focus it on the region of preference of the Pareto-optimal set. In this paper, ways are explored to use this preference information for driving a multi-objective genetic algorithm towards the preferential region of the Pareto-optimal front. Two methods are considered: the first one extends the concept of Pareto dominance by biasing the chromosome replacement step of the algorithm by means of numerical weights that express the DM' s preferences; the second one drives the search algorithm by changing the shape of the dominance region according to linear trade-off functions specified by the DM. The effectiveness of the proposed approaches is first compared on a case study of literature. Then, a nonlinear, constrained, two-objective power generation scheduling problem is effectively tackled

The trust-commitment challenge in service quality-loyalty relationships.

Science.gov (United States)

Moreira, Antonio Carrizo; Silva, Pedro Miguel

2015-01-01

The purpose of this paper is to develop and empirically test a model to examine service quality, satisfaction, trust and commitment as loyalty antecedents in a private healthcare service. The approach was tested using structural equation modelling, involving 175 patients from a private Portuguese healthcare unit, using a revised Service Quality Assessment Scale (SQAS) scale for service quality evaluation. The scale used to evaluate service quality is valid and meaningful. Service quality proved to be a multidimensional construct and relevant to build satisfaction. The path satisfaction→trust→loyalty was validated, whereas the path satisfaction→commitment→loyalty was not statistically supported. The revised SQAS scale showed good internal consistency in healthcare context. Further trust-commitment antecedents must be examined in a private healthcare landscape to generalise the findings. Healthcare quality managers must explore the service quality dimensions to generate satisfaction among their patients. Developing trust generates positive patient attitudes and loyalty. This study explores using the SQAS scale in a private healthcare context. The authors provide further evidence that service quality is an antecedent and different from satisfaction. All the measures used proved to be valid and reliable. Trust and commitment play different roles in their relationship with loyalty.

Android Malware Classification Using K-Means Clustering Algorithm

Science.gov (United States)

Hamid, Isredza Rahmi A.; Syafiqah Khalid, Nur; Azma Abdullah, Nurul; Rahman, Nurul Hidayah Ab; Chai Wen, Chuah

2017-08-01

Malware was designed to gain access or damage a computer system without user notice. Besides, attacker exploits malware to commit crime or fraud. This paper proposed Android malware classification approach based on K-Means clustering algorithm. We evaluate the proposed model in terms of accuracy using machine learning algorithms. Two datasets were selected to demonstrate the practicing of K-Means clustering algorithms that are Virus Total and Malgenome dataset. We classify the Android malware into three clusters which are ransomware, scareware and goodware. Nine features were considered for each types of dataset such as Lock Detected, Text Detected, Text Score, Encryption Detected, Threat, Porn, Law, Copyright and Moneypak. We used IBM SPSS Statistic software for data classification and WEKA tools to evaluate the built cluster. The proposed K-Means clustering algorithm shows promising result with high accuracy when tested using Random Forest algorithm.

Research on optimization of combustion efficiency of thermal power unit based on genetic algorithm

Science.gov (United States)

Zhou, Qiongyang

2018-04-01

In order to improve the economic performance and reduce pollutant emissions of thermal power units, the characteristics of neural network in establishing boiler combustion model are analyzed based on the analysis of the main factors affecting boiler efficiency by using orthogonal method. In addition, on the basis of this model, the genetic algorithm is used to find the best control amount of the furnace combustion in a certain working condition. Through the genetic algorithm based on real number encoding and roulette selection is concluded: the best control quantity at a condition of furnace combustion can be combined with the boiler combustion system model for neural network training. The precision of the neural network model is further improved, and the basic work is laid for the research of the whole boiler combustion optimization system.

Cross Selling Implementation From Outpatient Unit to Radiology Unit in Semen Gresik Hospital

OpenAIRE

Rochmah, Thinni Nurul; Faradisa, Mutiara Ayu

2013-01-01

Thelow visitingnumberinhospital€™sunitarecloselyrelatedtomarketingactivities,includinginternal marketing which consistsof cross sellingfromother units.Thisstudy aims toanalyze crossselling implementation from Outpatient Unit to Radiology Unit in Semen Gresik Hospital. This study was a cross sectional analytic design. Samplewastakenbysimple random samplingwithsamplesize25respondents.Independentvariableswere marketing policy,employee commitment,perception, motivation,andreadiness ofcross sellin...

Committed dose equivalent in the practice of radiological protection

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Nenot, J.C.; Piechowski, J.

1985-01-01

In the case of internal exposure, the dose is not received at the moment of exposure, as happens with external exposure, since the incorporated radionuclide irradiates the various organs and tissues during the time it is present in the body. By definition, the committed dose equivalent corresponds to the received dose integrated over 50 years from the date of intake. In order to calculate it, one has to know the intake activity and the value of the committed dose equivalent per unit of intake activity. The uncertainties of the first parameter are such that the committed dose equivalent can only be regarded as an order of magnitude and not as a very accurate quantity. The use of it is justified, however, for, like the dose equivalent for external exposure, it expresses the risk of stochastic effects for the individual concerned since these effects, should they appear, would do so only after a latent period which is generally longer than the dose integration time. Moreover, the use of the committed dose equivalent offers certain advantages for dosimetric management, especially when it is simplified. A practical problem which may arise is that the annual dose limit is apparently exceeded by virtue of the fact that one is taking account, in the first year, of doses which will actually be received only in the following years. These problems are rare enough in practice to be dealt with individually in each case. (author)

Committed CO2 Emissions of China's Coal-fired Power Plants

Science.gov (United States)

Suqin, J.

2016-12-01

The extent of global warming is determined by the cumulative effects of CO2 in the atmosphere. Coal-fired power plants, the largest anthropogenic source of CO2 emissions, produce large amount of CO2 emissions during their lifetimes of operation (committed emissions), which thus influence the future carbon emission space under specific targets on mitigating climate change (e.g., the 2 degree warming limit relative to pre-industrial levels). Comprehensive understanding of committed CO2 emissions for coal-fired power generators is urgently needed in mitigating global climate change, especially in China, the largest global CO2emitter. We calculated China's committed CO2 emissions from coal-fired power generators installed during 1993-2013 and evaluated their impact on future emission spaces at the provincial level, by using local specific data on the newly installed capacities. The committed CO2 emissions are calculated as the product of the annual coal consumption from newly installed capacities, emission factors (CO2emissions per unit crude coal consumption) and expected lifetimes. The sensitivities about generators lifetimes and the drivers on provincial committed emissions are also analyzed. Our results show that these relatively recently installed coal-fired power generators will lead to 106 Gt of CO2 emissions over the course of their lifetimes, which is more than three times the global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels in 2010. More than 80% (85 Gt) of their total committed CO2 will be emitted after 2013, which are referred to as the remaining emissions. Due to the uncertainties of generators lifetime, these remaining emissions would increase by 45 Gt if the lifetimes of China's coal-fired power generators were prolonged by 15 years. Furthermore, the remaining emissions are very different among various provinces owing to local developments and policy disparities. Provinces with large amounts of secondary industry and abundant coal reserves have higher committed

The impact of selected organizational variables and managerial leadership on radiation therapists' organizational commitment

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Akroyd, Duane [Department of Adult and Community College Education, College of Education, Campus Box 7801, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695 (United States)], E-mail: duane_akroyd@ncsu.edu; Legg, Jeff [Department of Radiologic Sciences, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23284 (United States); Jackowski, Melissa B. [Division of Radiologic Sciences, University of North Carolina School of Medicine 27599 (United States); Adams, Robert D. [Department of Radiation Oncology, University of North Carolina School of Medicine 27599 (United States)

2009-05-15

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of selected organizational factors and the leadership behavior of supervisors on radiation therapists' commitment to their organizations. The population for this study consists of all full time clinical radiation therapists registered by the American Registry of Radiologic Technologists (ARRT) in the United States. A random sample of 800 radiation therapists was obtained from the ARRT for this study. Questionnaires were mailed to all participants and measured organizational variables; managerial leadership variable and three components of organizational commitment (affective, continuance and normative). It was determined that organizational support, and leadership behavior of supervisors each had a significant and positive affect on normative and affective commitment of radiation therapists and each of the models predicted over 40% of the variance in radiation therapists organizational commitment. This study examined radiation therapists' commitment to their organizations and found that affective (emotional attachment to the organization) and normative (feelings of obligation to the organization) commitments were more important than continuance commitment (awareness of the costs of leaving the organization). This study can help radiation oncology administrators and physicians to understand the values their radiation therapy employees hold that are predictive of their commitment to the organization. A crucial result of the study is the importance of the perceived support of the organization and the leadership skills of managers/supervisors on radiation therapists' commitment to the organization.

Effects of Ethical Climate on Organizational Commitment, Professional Commitment, and Job Satisfaction of Auditor in Malaysia

OpenAIRE

Ismail, Suhaiza

2015-01-01

The objective of this paper is to investigate the effect of the ethical climate on the organizational commitment, professional commitment and job satisfaction of Malaysian auditors. Using a survey questionnaire comprising instruments about the ethical climate, organizational commitment, professional commitment and job satisfaction, 263 usable responses were received. To achieve the objectives, mean scores, standard deviations, correlations and multiple regressions were performed. The study re...

Statistical secrecy and multibit commitments

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Damgård, Ivan Bjerre; Pedersen, Torben P.; Pfitzmann, Birgit

1998-01-01

nothing about it. One definition is based on the L1-norm distance between probability distributions, the other on information theory. We prove that the two definitions are essentially equivalent. We also show that statistical counterparts of definitions of computational secrecy are essentially equivalent......We present and compare definitions of "statistically hiding" protocols, and we propose a novel statistically hiding commitment scheme. Informally, a protocol statistically hides a secret if a computationally unlimited adversary who conducts the protocol with the owner of the secret learns almost...... to our main definitions. Commitment schemes are an important cryptologic primitive. Their purpose is to commit one party to a certain value, while hiding this value from the other party until some later time. We present a statistically hiding commitment scheme allowing commitment to many bits...

Effects of Gender on Engineering Career Commitment

Science.gov (United States)

Barker, Anne M.

Engineering has been one of the most difficult fields for 'women to enter and in which to succeed. Although the percentage of female engineers has Increased, women are still seriously underrcpresented in the workforce. This study examined the effect offender on career commitment, success, satisfaction, and involvement in engineering, and the effect of personality and work environment on these variables. Alumni from an engineering school in the northeastern United States were surveyed. The questionnaire was analyzed using statistical and descriptive methods to determine relationships among these variables. Women's commitment scores were lower than men's when controlled for other variables, including satisfaction and involvement. Men had longer tenure as engineers than women, even when controlled for year of graduation, professional engineering status, and number of children. Women did not leave engineering in different proportions than men, but they did earn significantly less despite controlling for year of graduation and number of hours worked weekly. Some gender differences in workplace experience were also found, including having colleagues act protectively, being mistaken for secretaries, and seeing men progress faster in their careers than equally qualified women.

Alcohol myopia and goal commitment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

A. Timur Sevincer

2014-03-01

Full Text Available According to alcohol-myopia theory, acute alcohol consumption leads people to disproportionally focus on the salient rather than the peripheral aspects of a situation. We summarize various studies exploring how myopic processes resulting from acute alcohol intake affect goal commitment. After consuming alcohol student participants felt strongly committed to an important personal goal even though they had low expectations of successfully attaining the goal. However, once intoxicated participants were sober again (i.e., not myopic anymore they failed to act on their goal commitment. In line with alcohol-myopia theory, strong goal commitment as a result of alcohol intake was mediated by intoxicated (vs. sober participants disproportionally focusing on the desirability rather than the feasibility of their goal. Further supporting alcohol-myopia theory, when the low feasibility of attaining a particular goal was experimentally made salient (either explicitly or implicitly by subliminal priming, intoxicated participants felt less committed than those who consumed a placebo. We discuss these effects of acute alcohol intake in the context of research on the effects of chronic alcohol consumption on goal commitment.

Commitment and dispatch of heat and power units via affinely adjustable robust optimization

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Zugno, Marco; Morales González, Juan Miguel; Madsen, Henrik

2016-01-01

compromising computational tractability. We perform an extensive numerical study based on data from the Copenhagen area in Denmark, which highlights important features of the proposed model. Firstly, we illustrate commitment and dispatch choices that increase conservativeness in the robust optimization...... and conservativeness of the solution. Finally, we perform a thorough comparison with competing models based on deterministic optimization and stochastic programming. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved....

Accelerating adaptive inverse distance weighting interpolation algorithm on a graphics processing unit.

Science.gov (United States)

Mei, Gang; Xu, Liangliang; Xu, Nengxiong

2017-09-01

This paper focuses on designing and implementing parallel adaptive inverse distance weighting (AIDW) interpolation algorithms by using the graphics processing unit (GPU). The AIDW is an improved version of the standard IDW, which can adaptively determine the power parameter according to the data points' spatial distribution pattern and achieve more accurate predictions than those predicted by IDW. In this paper, we first present two versions of the GPU-accelerated AIDW, i.e. the naive version without profiting from the shared memory and the tiled version taking advantage of the shared memory. We also implement the naive version and the tiled version using two data layouts, structure of arrays and array of aligned structures, on both single and double precision. We then evaluate the performance of parallel AIDW by comparing it with its corresponding serial algorithm on three different machines equipped with the GPUs GT730M, M5000 and K40c. The experimental results indicate that: (i) there is no significant difference in the computational efficiency when different data layouts are employed; (ii) the tiled version is always slightly faster than the naive version; and (iii) on single precision the achieved speed-up can be up to 763 (on the GPU M5000), while on double precision the obtained highest speed-up is 197 (on the GPU K40c). To benefit the community, all source code and testing data related to the presented parallel AIDW algorithm are publicly available.

Optimized Laplacian image sharpening algorithm based on graphic processing unit

Science.gov (United States)

Ma, Tinghuai; Li, Lu; Ji, Sai; Wang, Xin; Tian, Yuan; Al-Dhelaan, Abdullah; Al-Rodhaan, Mznah

2014-12-01

In classical Laplacian image sharpening, all pixels are processed one by one, which leads to large amount of computation. Traditional Laplacian sharpening processed on CPU is considerably time-consuming especially for those large pictures. In this paper, we propose a parallel implementation of Laplacian sharpening based on Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA), which is a computing platform of Graphic Processing Units (GPU), and analyze the impact of picture size on performance and the relationship between the processing time of between data transfer time and parallel computing time. Further, according to different features of different memory, an improved scheme of our method is developed, which exploits shared memory in GPU instead of global memory and further increases the efficiency. Experimental results prove that two novel algorithms outperform traditional consequentially method based on OpenCV in the aspect of computing speed.

Pledges of Commitment and Cooperation in Partnerships

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lachlan Deer

2016-01-01

Full Text Available We use experimental methods to investigate whether pledges of commitment can improve cooperation in endogenously-formed partnerships facing a social dilemma. Treatments vary in terms of the individual’s: (1 opportunity to commit to their partner; (2 the cost of dissolving committed partnerships; and (3 the distribution of these dissolution costs between partners. Our findings show that pledges of commitment alone can increase cooperation and welfare in committed partnerships. The introduction of relatively large and equally split costs yields similar gains. In contrast, when costs to dissolve committed partnerships fall solely on the individual choosing to break up, pledges of commitment fail to improve cooperation and welfare.

The viability of neural network for modeling the impact of individual job satisfiers on work commitment in Indian manufacturing unit

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Therasa Chandrasekar

2015-10-01

Full Text Available This paper provides an exposition about application of neural networks in the context of research to find out the contribution of individual job satisfiers towards work commitment. The purpose of the current study is to build a predictive model to estimate the normalized importance of individual job satisfiers towards work commitment of employees working in TVS Group, an Indian automobile company. The study is based on the tool developed by Spector (1985 and Sue Hayday (2003.The input variable of the study consists of nine independent individual job satisfiers which includes Pay, Promotion, Supervision, Benefits, Rewards, Operating procedures, Co-workers, Work-itself and Communication of Spector (1985 and dependent variable as work commitment of Sue Hayday (2003.The primary data has been collected using a closed-ended questionnaire based on simple random sampling approach. This study employed the multilayer Perceptron neural network model to envisage the level of job satisfiers towards work commitment. The result from the multilayer Perceptron neural network model displayed with four hidden layer with correct classification rate of 70% and 30% for training and testing data set. The normalized importance shows high value for coworkers, superior satisfaction and communication and which acts as most significant attributes of job satisfiers that predicts the overall work commitment of employees.

Short-term hydro generation scheduling of Xiluodu and Xiangjiaba cascade hydropower stations using improved binary-real coded bee colony optimization algorithm

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Lu, Peng; Zhou, Jianzhong; Wang, Chao; Qiao, Qi; Mo, Li

2015-01-01

Highlights: • STHGS problem is decomposed into two parallel sub-problems of UC and ELD. • Binary coded BCO is used to solve UC sub-problem with 0–1 discrete variables. • Real coded BCO is used to solve ELD sub-problem with continuous variables. • Some heuristic repairing strategies are designed to handle various constraints. • The STHGS of Xiluodu and Xiangjiaba cascade stations is solved by IB-RBCO. - Abstract: Short-term hydro generation scheduling (STHGS) of cascade hydropower stations is a typical nonlinear mixed integer optimization problem to minimize the total water consumption while simultaneously meeting the grid requirements and other hydraulic and electrical constraints. In this paper, STHGS problem is decomposed into two parallel sub-problems of unit commitment (UC) and economic load dispatch (ELD), and the methodology of improved binary-real coded bee colony optimization (IB-RBCO) algorithm is proposed to solve them. Firstly, the improved binary coded BCO is used to solve the UC sub-problem with 0–1 discrete variables, and the heuristic repairing strategy for unit state constrains is applied to generate the feasible unit commitment schedule. Then, the improved real coded BCO is used to solve the ELD sub-problem with continuous variables, and an effective method is introduced to handle various unit operation constraints. Especially, the new updating strategy of DE/best/2/bin method with dynamic parameter control mechanism is applied to real coded BCO to improve the search ability of IB-RBCO. Finally, to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed IB-RBCO method, it is applied to solve the STHGS problem of Xiluodu and Xiangjiaba cascaded hydropower stations, and the simulating results are compared with other intelligence algorithms. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed IB-RBCO method can get higher-quality solutions with less water consumption and shorter calculating time when facing the complex STHGS problem

Work values and organizational commitment.

Science.gov (United States)

Kidron, A

1978-06-01

Dubin, Champoux and Porter (1975) found a strong relationship between central life interests of workers and their commitment to the organization. This paper extends their findings by investigating the relationship between work values, defined as the Protestant Ethic of the worker, and commitment to the organization. A distinction is made between moral and calculative commitment, and it is shown that work values are related more to moral than calculative involvement.

Pledges of commitment and cooperation in partnerships

OpenAIRE

Lachlan Deer; Ralph-C. Bayer

2015-01-01

We use experimental methods to investigate whether pledges of commitment can improve cooperation in endogenously-formed partnerships facing a social dilemma. Treatments vary in terms of the individual's: (1) opportunity to commit to their partner; (2) the cost of dissolving committed partnerships; and (3) the distribution of these dissolution costs between partners. Our findings show that pledges of commitment alone can increase cooperation and welfare in committed partnerships. The introduct...

The Relationship of Parenting Styles to Commitment to the Church among Young Adults.

Science.gov (United States)

Dudley, Roger L.; Wisbey, Randall L.

2000-01-01

Investigates the effects of parenting style experiences during childhood has on the religious commitment of young adults. Surveyed Seventh-day Adventist young adults (n=653) in United States and Canada. Reveals that the affectionate constraint parenting style produced the largest percentage of members. Includes references. (CMK)

Building commitment in a sports class

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Olesen, Jesper; Nielsen, Jens Christian

The literature has traditionally considered commitment as an individual characteristic or condition of the individual. This means that one is inclined to think that it is those who have commitment who have the opportunity to become excellent performers within their sport. But what if commitment...

Perceived Sacrifice and Few Alternatives Commitments: The Motivational Underpinnings of Continuance Commitment's Subdimensions

Science.gov (United States)

Vandenberghe, Christian; Panaccio, Alexandra

2012-01-01

Using work on self-concepts and Conservation of Resources theory, the present research examined the motivational underpinnings of continuance commitment's subcomponents of perceived sacrifice and few alternatives. Study 1 (N=208) found job scope to be positively related to perceived sacrifice commitment, and negatively related to few alternatives…

Marketing service relationships: the role of commitment

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Wetzels, M.G.M.; Ruyter, de J.C.; Birgelen, van M.

1998-01-01

As with all relationships, it is commonly agreed on that partners in business must have a high degree of commitment towards their relationship. If commitment is lacking, the relationship will soon come to an end. Affective commitment, that is commitment based on attraction between partners, is to be

24 CFR 200.47 - Firm commitments.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... 24 Housing and Urban Development 2 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Firm commitments. 200.47 Section 200.47 Housing and Urban Development Regulations Relating to Housing and Urban Development (Continued... Eligibility Requirements for Existing Projects Commitment Applications § 200.47 Firm commitments. A valid firm...

Commitment among Arab Adolescents in Israel.

Science.gov (United States)

Ben-Ari, Adital Tirosh; Azaiza, Faisal

1998-01-01

Examines 662 Arab adolescents' commitments to their own self-development, family, Arab people, and village along with the order in which these commitments are structured. Reveals that the two prevalent patterns of adolescent commitment, individualistic and collectivistic, demonstrate the adolescents' struggle with these value systems and the…

Investing in commitment: Persistence in a joint action is enhanced by the perception of a partner's effort.

Science.gov (United States)

Székely, Marcell; Michael, John

2018-05-01

Can the perception that one's partner is investing effort generate a sense of commitment to a joint action? To test this, we developed a 2-player version of the classic snake game which became increasingly boring over the course of each round. This enabled us to operationalize commitment in terms of how long participants persisted before pressing a 'finish' button to conclude each round. Our results from three experiments reveal that participants persisted longer when they perceived what they believed to be cues of their partner's effortful contribution (Experiment 1). Crucially, this effect was not observed when they knew their partner to be an algorithm (Experiment 2), nor when it was their own effort that had been invested (Experiment 3). These results support the hypothesis that the perception of a partner's effort elicits a sense of commitment, leading to increased persistence in the face of a temptation to disengage. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

78 FR 1211 - Application for Final Commitment for a Long-Term Loan or Financial Guarantee in Excess of $100...

Science.gov (United States)

2013-01-08

... EXPORT-IMPORT BANK OF THE UNITED STATES [Public Notice 2012-0558] Application for Final Commitment...-Import Bank of the United States. ACTION: Notice. SUMMARY: This Notice is to inform the public, in accordance with Section 3(c)(10) of the Charter of the Export-Import Bank of the United States (``Ex-Im Bank...

28 CFR 522.11 - Civil contempt commitments.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... 28 Judicial Administration 2 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Civil contempt commitments. 522.11..., CLASSIFICATION, AND TRANSFER ADMISSION TO INSTITUTION Civil Contempt of Court Commitments § 522.11 Civil contempt commitments. Inmates can come into Bureau custody for civil contempt commitments in two ways: (a) The U.S...

24 CFR 203.7 - Commitment process.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... 24 Housing and Urban Development 2 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Commitment process. 203.7 Section 203.7 Housing and Urban Development Regulations Relating to Housing and Urban Development (Continued... Insurance, and Commitments § 203.7 Commitment process. For single family mortgage programs that are not...

ACTION OF UNIFORM SEARCH ALGORITHM WHEN SELECTING LANGUAGE UNITS IN THE PROCESS OF SPEECH

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ирина Михайловна Некипелова

2013-05-01

Full Text Available The article is devoted to research of action of uniform search algorithm when selecting by human of language units for speech produce. The process is connected with a speech optimization phenomenon. This makes it possible to shorten the time of cogitation something that human want to say, and to achieve the maximum precision in thoughts expression. The algorithm of uniform search works at consciousness  and subconsciousness levels. It favours the forming of automatism produce and perception of speech. Realization of human's cognitive potential in the process of communication starts up complicated mechanism of self-organization and self-regulation of language. In turn, it results in optimization of language system, servicing needs not only human's self-actualization but realization of communication in society. The method of problem-oriented search is used for researching of optimization mechanisms, which are distinctive to speech producing and stabilization of language.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12731/2218-7405-2013-4-50

Factors Affecting Organizational Commitment in Navy Corpsmen.

Science.gov (United States)

Booth-Kewley, Stephanie; Dell'Acqua, Renée G; Thomsen, Cynthia J

2017-07-01

Organizational commitment is a psychological state that has a strong impact on the likelihood that employees will remain with an organization. Among military personnel, organizational commitment is predictive of a number of important outcomes, including reenlistment intentions, job performance, morale, and perceived readiness. Because of the unique challenges and experiences associated with military service, it may be that organizational commitment is even more critical in the military than in civilian populations. Despite the essential role that they play in protecting the health of other service members, little is known about the factors that influence Navy Corpsmen's organizational commitment. This study investigated demographic and psychosocial factors that may be associated with organizational commitment among Corpsmen. Surveys of organizational commitment and possible demographic and psychosocial correlates of organizational commitment were completed by 1,597 male, active duty Navy Corpsmen attending Field Medical Training Battalion-West, Camp Pendleton, California. Bivariate correlations and hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used to determine significant predictors of organizational commitment. Of the 12 demographic and psychosocial factors examined, 6 factors emerged as significant predictors of organizational commitment in the final model: preservice motivation to be a Corpsman, positive perceptions of Corpsman training, confidence regarding promotions, occupational self-efficacy, social support for a Corpsman career, and lower depression. Importantly, a number of the factors that emerged as significant correlates of organizational commitment in this study are potentially modifiable. These factors include confidence regarding promotions, positive perceptions of Corpsman training, and occupational self-efficacy. It is recommended that military leaders and policy-makers take concrete steps to address these factors, thereby strengthening

Family Commitment and Work Characteristics among Pharmacists.

Science.gov (United States)

Gubbins, Paul O; Ragland, Denise; Castleberry, Ashley N; Payakachat, Nalin

2015-12-17

Factors associated with family commitment among pharmacists in the south central U.S. are explored. In 2010, a cross-sectional mailed self-administered 70 item survey of 363 active licensed pharmacists was conducted. This analysis includes only 269 (74%) participants who reported being married. Outcome measures were family commitment (need for family commitment, spouse's family commitment), work-related characteristics (work challenge, stress, workload, flexibility of work schedule), and job and career satisfaction. Married participants' mean age was 48 (SD = 18) years; the male to female ratio was 1:1; 73% worked in retail settings and 199 (74%) completed the family commitment questions. Females reported a higher need for family commitment than males ( p = 0.02) but there was no significant difference in satisfaction with the commitment. Work challenge and work load were significantly associated with higher need for family commitment ( p work status, and practice setting. Higher work challenge was associated with higher career satisfaction. Higher job related stress was associated with lower job satisfaction. High work challenge and work load may negatively impact family function since married pharmacists would need higher family commitment from their counterparts. The impact of work-family interactions on pharmacy career satisfaction should be further investigated.

Functional Flexibility in Women's Commitment-Skepticism Bias

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Christina M. Brown

2015-04-01

Full Text Available If a woman overestimates her romantic partner's commitment, the cost to her fitness—reproduction without an investing partner—can be considerable. Error Management Theory predicts that women have an evolved bias to be skeptical of men's commitment in a relationship, which reduces the likelihood of making a costly false positive error. However, because error probabilities are inversely related, this commitment-skepticism bias simultaneously increases the likelihood of missed opportunities, or false negatives. False positives when gauging a partner's commitment are the more costly error for women, but missing an opportunity to secure a genuinely high-quality mate can also be quite costly. We predicted and found that women's mating cognitions are functionally flexible, such that women do not exhibit the commitment-skepticism bias when faced with behavioral evidence that a male partner is willing to commit (Study 1. This suggests that relationship-enhancing behaviors are one contextual cue that may lessen the bias. However, not all relationship-enhancing behaviors are equally diagnostic of a person's true commitment intent. When comparing men and women's commitment thresholds, we found that women require more behavioral evidence than men do to feel certain of their partner's commitment to them (Study 2.

Family Commitment and Work Characteristics among Pharmacists

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Paul O. Gubbins

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Factors associated with family commitment among pharmacists in the south central U.S. are explored. In 2010, a cross-sectional mailed self-administered 70 item survey of 363 active licensed pharmacists was conducted. This analysis includes only 269 (74% participants who reported being married. Outcome measures were family commitment (need for family commitment, spouse’s family commitment, work-related characteristics (work challenge, stress, workload, flexibility of work schedule, and job and career satisfaction. Married participants’ mean age was 48 (SD = 18 years; the male to female ratio was 1:1; 73% worked in retail settings and 199 (74% completed the family commitment questions. Females reported a higher need for family commitment than males (p = 0.02 but there was no significant difference in satisfaction with the commitment. Work challenge and work load were significantly associated with higher need for family commitment (p < 0.01, when controlled for age, gender, number of dependents, work status, and practice setting. Higher work challenge was associated with higher career satisfaction. Higher job related stress was associated with lower job satisfaction. High work challenge and work load may negatively impact family function since married pharmacists would need higher family commitment from their counterparts. The impact of work-family interactions on pharmacy career satisfaction should be further investigated.

THE ASSOCIATION OF ISLAMIC BASED CARING MODEL AND COMMITMENT TO ORGANIZATION IN STAFF NURSES

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yuda Ayu Timorita

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Background: Strong organizational commitment is needed by hospitals to attract and retain nursing staffs in order to consistently deliver good quality of nursing services. The decrease in organizational commitment among nurses can cause many losses to the organization, including increased organizational spending, breakdown in patient care, and cause performance trends that appear not for the benefit of the organization or unit, but more for personal self-interest. Objective: To analyze the relationship of the application of Islamic Based Caring (IBC model with organizational commitment among nurses. Methods: This was a correlation analytic research with cross sectional design. There were 108 nurses selected using a propotionate stratified random sampling. Islamic Based Caring was measured using a questionnaire developed based on the theory of Suhartini Ismail (2016, and organizational commitment was measured using a questionnaire developed based on the concept of Caldwell, O’Reilly & Chatmann (1990 and Mowday, Porter dan Steers (1982 in Asmaningrum (2009. Logistic regression and forward stepwise (conditional method were used for data analysis. Results: There was a statistically significant correlation of a healing presence (p=0.000, caring relationship (p=0.010, caring environment (p=0.045 and belief in God (p=0.000. Belief in God (Allah SWT has the highest correlation (OR=6.660 with organizational commitment among nurses. Conclusion: There is a positive and significant relationship between the implementation of Islamic Based Caring with the organization's commitment among nurses.

A survey on critical factors influencing organizational commitment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hamidreza Kheirkhah

2014-04-01

Full Text Available Organizational commitment is an important issue and organization attitude has become an area of study among many researchers in the fields of organizational behavior. In fact, there are many studies on human resource management where the effects of organizational commitment on other issues have been investigated and the purpose of this research is to find critical factors influencing on organizational commitment. Based on an exploration of the literature review and interviews, the proposed study of this paper extracts 24 variables and using factor analysis, we select the most important factors, which are grouped in four categories. The implementation of our factor analysis has revealed Affective commitment, Continuous commitment, Moral commitment and Enduring commitment are the most important factors influencing organizational commitment.

Validating Teacher Commitment Scale Using a Malaysian Sample

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lei Mee Thien

2014-05-01

Full Text Available This study attempts to validate an integrative Teacher Commitment scale using rigorous scale validation procedures. An adapted questionnaire with 17 items was administered to 600 primary school teachers in Penang, Malaysia. Data were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis (EFA and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA with SPSS 19.0 and AMOS 19.0, respectively. The results support Teacher Commitment as a multidimensional construct with its four underlying dimensions: Commitment to Student, Commitment to Teaching, Commitment to School, and Commitment to Profession. A validated Teacher Commitment scale with 13 items measured can be proposed to be used as an evaluative tool to assess the level to which teachers are committed to their students’ learning, teaching, school, and profession. The Teacher Commitment scale would also facilitate the identifications of factors that influence teachers’ quality of work life and school effectiveness. The practical implications, school cultural influence, and methodological limitations are discussed.

Exploring the Relationship between Task Conflict,Relationship Conflict, Organizational Commitment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Heather Mills

2009-01-01

Full Text Available In the Australia, Canada, parts of Europe, and the United Kingdom, the provision of sport has had a long tradition of reliance on volunteers. However, there has been increasing pressure for voluntary sport organizations (VSOs to adopt more “professional” practices and operational procedures. Consequently, there is a tendency for volunteer organizations to adopt approaches to management developed in other industry contexts without giving proper thought to the differences in character of the public, private, and volunteer sector. It is in situations such as this that inappropriate practices are adopted and conflict emerges. Despite this,there has been limited research into conflict in volunteer sport organizations in the UK. The results of the study demonstrated that relationship conflict was related to both organizational commitment and satisfaction; however, task conflict was only related to job satisfaction. Perhaps the more important finding is the absence of a relationship between task conflict and organizational commitment. It is possible that individuals in VSOs saw their commitment to something greater than the club or association (i.e. the sport or some idealist notion of sport and were therefore likely to ‘put up’ with high levels of dissatisfaction associated with poor management

Theory and algorithms for solving large-scale numerical problems. Application to the management of electricity production

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Chiche, A.

2012-01-01

This manuscript deals with large-scale optimization problems, and more specifically with solving the electricity unit commitment problem arising at EDF. First, we focused on the augmented Lagrangian algorithm. The behavior of that algorithm on an infeasible convex quadratic optimization problem is analyzed. It is shown that the algorithm finds a point that satisfies the shifted constraints with the smallest possible shift in the sense of the Euclidean norm and that it minimizes the objective on the corresponding shifted constrained set. The convergence to such a point is realized at a global linear rate, which depends explicitly on the augmentation parameter. This suggests us a rule for determining the augmentation parameter to control the speed of convergence of the shifted constraint norm to zero. This rule has the advantage of generating bounded augmentation parameters even when the problem is infeasible. As a by-product, the algorithm computes the smallest translation in the Euclidean norm that makes the constraints feasible. Furthermore, this work provides solution methods for stochastic optimization industrial problems decomposed on a scenario tree, based on the progressive hedging algorithm introduced by [Rockafellar et Wets, 1991]. We also focus on the convergence of that algorithm. On the one hand, we offer a counter-example showing that the algorithm could diverge if its augmentation parameter is iteratively updated. On the other hand, we show how to recover the multipliers associated with the non-dualized constraints defined on the scenario tree from those associated with the corresponding constraints of the scenario subproblems. Their convergence is also analyzed for convex problems. The practical interest of theses solutions techniques is corroborated by numerical experiments performed on the electric production management problem. We apply the progressive hedging algorithm to a realistic industrial problem. More precisely, we solve the French medium

Model-based investigation of the electricity market. Unit commitment and power plant investments; Modellgestuetzte Untersuchung des Elektrizitaetsmarktes. Kraftwerkseinsatzplanung und -investitionen

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Sun, Ninghong

2013-08-08

The German Federal Government published its energy concept in September 2010 with a description of the road into the era of renewable energies. Therefore, the future renewable energy installed in Germany is expected to consist mostly of wind and solar, which are subject to intermittency of supply and significant fluctuations. The growing portion of energy generation by fluctuating sources is turning to a big challenge for the power plant unit commitment and the investment decisions as well. In this thesis, a fundamental electricity market model with combined modeling of these two aspects is developed. This model is subsequently applied to the German electricity market to investigate what kind of power plant investments are indispensable, considering the steadily increasing portion of energy generation from fluctuating sources, to ensure a reliable energy supply in a cost-effective way in the future. In addition, current energy policy in Germany regarding the use of renewable energy and nuclear energy is analyzed.

From controlled to committed.

Science.gov (United States)

Hess, J C

1996-02-01

Most of us agree that people are our most important resource. Yet we spend a minimal amount of time learning more about human behavior, communication, and how our attitudes and behavior impact employee performance. Instead we rely on traditional methods of negative reinforcement in an attempt to control our areas of responsibility. While these methods can render some short-term success, managers and organizations that succeed during these times of change and fierce competition will be those that take the time to understand and capture the power of a committed workforce. The committed workforce is energized, not simply compliant, as a result of having basic human needs for achievement satisfied, belonging to a group, and receiving recognition for its contributions. Committed workers typically describe the manager as one who has the ability to give them a great degree of control over their area of influence. We all know that we don't change our leadership style like we change clothes. Old habits die hard. it takes a personal commitment and lots of practice to rid outselves of habits and behavior that no longer serve our departments and facilities. This commitment, however, is crucial to survival. As managers, we must cope with increasing ambiguity and uncertainty in the workplace. To survive these challenges, we must improve our interpersonal skills and ability to successfully bring out the best in others. I believe that success will continue for managers who not only increase their knowledge and technical ability, but who also inspire their workers to move forward with a collective sense of enthusiasm and purpose.

A tunable algorithm for collective decision-making.

Science.gov (United States)

Pratt, Stephen C; Sumpter, David J T

2006-10-24

Complex biological systems are increasingly understood in terms of the algorithms that guide the behavior of system components and the information pathways that link them. Much attention has been given to robust algorithms, or those that allow a system to maintain its functions in the face of internal or external perturbations. At the same time, environmental variation imposes a complementary need for algorithm versatility, or the ability to alter system function adaptively as external circumstances change. An important goal of systems biology is thus the identification of biological algorithms that can meet multiple challenges rather than being narrowly specified to particular problems. Here we show that emigrating colonies of the ant Temnothorax curvispinosus tune the parameters of a single decision algorithm to respond adaptively to two distinct problems: rapid abandonment of their old nest in a crisis and deliberative selection of the best available new home when their old nest is still intact. The algorithm uses a stepwise commitment scheme and a quorum rule to integrate information gathered by numerous individual ants visiting several candidate homes. By varying the rates at which they search for and accept these candidates, the ants yield a colony-level response that adaptively emphasizes either speed or accuracy. We propose such general but tunable algorithms as a design feature of complex systems, each algorithm providing elegant solutions to a wide range of problems.

A new backpropagation learning algorithm for layered neural networks with nondifferentiable units.

Science.gov (United States)

Oohori, Takahumi; Naganuma, Hidenori; Watanabe, Kazuhisa

2007-05-01

We propose a digital version of the backpropagation algorithm (DBP) for three-layered neural networks with nondifferentiable binary units. This approach feeds teacher signals to both the middle and output layers, whereas with a simple perceptron, they are given only to the output layer. The additional teacher signals enable the DBP to update the coupling weights not only between the middle and output layers but also between the input and middle layers. A neural network based on DBP learning is fast and easy to implement in hardware. Simulation results for several linearly nonseparable problems such as XOR demonstrate that the DBP performs favorably when compared to the conventional approaches. Furthermore, in large-scale networks, simulation results indicate that the DBP provides high performance.

An industry-wide commitment to the environment

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Salo, L.

1992-01-01

As part of its ongoing effort to further enhance its environmental, health, and safety effort. Neste committed itself to the international chemical industry's Responsible Care programme last year. Neste's involvement with the programme will supplement the Corporation's internal environmental and safety operating principles Neste's Responsible Care work is based around a set of 10 guiding principles set out by the European Chemical Industry Federation (CEFIC). In addition to corporate-level targets, divisions and units have drawn up more detailed and specific coals for their own operations. Neste Chemicals' production plants, for example have developed action plans covering the next 3-5 years. A network of divisional RC coordinators and unit or site-specific RC contact personnel has also been established Progress will be measured by indicators covering areas such as emission levels, energy use, amount of recycled waste, noise, and training Concrete benefits have already been achieved thanks simply to the start of the systematic measurement and collation of RC-related information

Romantic Relationship Commitment and Its Linkages with Commitment to Parents and Friends during Adolescence

Science.gov (United States)

De Goede, Irene H. A.; Branje, Susan; van Duin, Jet; VanderValk, Inge E.; Meeus, Wim

2012-01-01

This five-wave longitudinal study examines linkages between adolescents' perceptions of romantic relationship commitment and the development of adolescents' perceptions of commitment to parents and friends. A total of 218 early-to-middle adolescents (39.0 percent boys) and 185 middle-to-late adolescents (30.8 percent boys) participated.…

An Integrated Start-Up Method for Pumped Storage Units Based on a Novel Artificial Sheep Algorithm

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Zanbin Wang

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Pumped storage units (PSUs are an important storage tool for power systems containing large-scale renewable energy, and the merit of rapid start-up enable PSUs to modulate and stabilize the power system. In this paper, PSU start-up strategies have been studied and a new integrated start-up method has been proposed for the purpose of achieving swift and smooth start-up. A two-phase closed-loop startup strategy, composed of switching Proportion Integration (PI and Proportion Integration Differentiation (PID controller is designed, and an integrated optimization scheme is proposed for a synchronous optimization of the parameters in the strategy. To enhance the optimization performance, a novel meta-heuristic called Artificial Sheep Algorithm (ASA is proposed and applied to solve the optimization task after a sufficient verification with seven popular meta-heuristic algorithms and 13 typical benchmark functions. Simulation model has been built for a China’s PSU and comparative experiments are conducted to evaluate the proposed integrated method. Results show that the start-up performance could be significantly improved on both indices on overshoot and start-up, and up to 34%-time consumption has been reduced under different working condition. The significant improvements on start-up of PSU is interesting and meaning for further application on real unit.

A Foot-Mounted Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) Positioning Algorithm Based on Magnetic Constraint.

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Yan; Li, Xin; Zou, Jiaheng

2018-03-01

With the development of related applications, indoor positioning techniques have been more and more widely developed. Based on Wi-Fi, Bluetooth low energy (BLE) and geomagnetism, indoor positioning techniques often rely on the physical location of fingerprint information. The focus and difficulty of establishing the fingerprint database are in obtaining a relatively accurate physical location with as little given information as possible. This paper presents a foot-mounted inertial measurement unit (IMU) positioning algorithm under the loop closure constraint based on magnetic information. It can provide relatively reliable position information without maps and geomagnetic information and provides a relatively accurate coordinate for the collection of a fingerprint database. In the experiment, the features extracted by the multi-level Fourier transform method proposed in this paper are validated and the validity of loop closure matching is tested with a RANSAC-based method. Moreover, the loop closure detection results show that the cumulative error of the trajectory processed by the graph optimization algorithm is significantly suppressed, presenting a good accuracy. The average error of the trajectory under loop closure constraint is controlled below 2.15 m.

A Foot-Mounted Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU Positioning Algorithm Based on Magnetic Constraint

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yan Wang

2018-03-01

Full Text Available With the development of related applications, indoor positioning techniques have been more and more widely developed. Based on Wi-Fi, Bluetooth low energy (BLE and geomagnetism, indoor positioning techniques often rely on the physical location of fingerprint information. The focus and difficulty of establishing the fingerprint database are in obtaining a relatively accurate physical location with as little given information as possible. This paper presents a foot-mounted inertial measurement unit (IMU positioning algorithm under the loop closure constraint based on magnetic information. It can provide relatively reliable position information without maps and geomagnetic information and provides a relatively accurate coordinate for the collection of a fingerprint database. In the experiment, the features extracted by the multi-level Fourier transform method proposed in this paper are validated and the validity of loop closure matching is tested with a RANSAC-based method. Moreover, the loop closure detection results show that the cumulative error of the trajectory processed by the graph optimization algorithm is significantly suppressed, presenting a good accuracy. The average error of the trajectory under loop closure constraint is controlled below 2.15 m.

Fuzzy Stochastic Unit Commitment Model with Wind Power and Demand Response under Conditional Value-At-Risk Assessment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jiafu Yin

2018-02-01

Full Text Available With the increasing penetration of wind power and demand response integrated into the grid, the combined uncertainties from wind power and demand response have been a challenging concern for system operators. It is necessary to develop an approach to accommodate the combined uncertainties in the source side and load side. In this paper, the fuzzy stochastic conditional value-at-risk criterions are proposed as the risk measure of the combination of both wind power uncertainty and demand response uncertainty. To improve the computational tractability without sacrificing the accuracy, the fuzzy stochastic chance-constrained goal programming is proposed to transfer the fuzzy stochastic conditional value-at-risk to a deterministic equivalent. The operational risk of forecast error under fuzzy stochastic conditional value-at-risk assessment is represented by the shortage of reserve resource, which can be further divided into the load-shedding risk and the wind curtailment risk. To identify different priority levels for the different objective functions, the three-stage day-ahead unit commitment model is proposed through preemptive goal programming, in which the reliability requirement has the priority over the economic operation. Finally, a case simulation is performed on the IEEE 39-bus system to verify the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed model.

Escalation of Commitment in the Surgical ICU.

Science.gov (United States)

Braxton, Carla C; Robinson, Celia N; Awad, Samir S

2017-04-01

Escalation of commitment is a business term that describes the continued investment of resources into a project even after there is objective evidence of the project's impending failure. Escalation of commitment may be a contributor to high healthcare costs associated with critically ill patients as it has been shown that, despite almost certain futility, most ICU costs are incurred in the last week of life. Our objective was to determine if escalation of commitment occurs in healthcare settings, specifically in the surgical ICU. We hypothesize that factors previously identified in business and organizational psychology literature including self-justification, accountability, sunk costs, and cognitive dissonance result in escalation of commitment behavior in the surgical ICU setting resulting in increased utilization of resources and cost. A descriptive case study that illustrates common ICU narratives in which escalation of commitment can occur. In addition, we describe factors that are thought to contribute to escalation of commitment behaviors. Escalation of commitment behavior was observed with self-justification, accountability, and cognitive dissonance accounting for the majority of the behavior. Unlike in business decisions, sunk costs was not as evident. In addition, modulating factors such as personality, individual experience, culture, and gender were identified as contributors to escalation of commitment. Escalation of commitment occurs in the surgical ICU, resulting in significant expenditure of resources despite a predicted and often known poor outcome. Recognition of this phenomenon may lead to actions aimed at more rational decision making and may contribute to lowering healthcare costs. Investigation of objective measures that can help aid decision making in the surgical ICU is warranted.

Organizational and Client Commitment among Contracted Employees

Science.gov (United States)

Coyle-Shapiro, Jacqueline A-M.; Morrow, Paula C.

2006-01-01

This study examines affective commitment to employing and client organizations among long-term contracted employees, a new and growing employment classification. Drawing on organizational commitment and social exchange literatures, we propose two categories of antecedents of employee commitment to client organizations. We tested our hypotheses…

Peak load demand forecasting using two-level discrete wavelet decomposition and neural network algorithm

Science.gov (United States)

Bunnoon, Pituk; Chalermyanont, Kusumal; Limsakul, Chusak

2010-02-01

This paper proposed the discrete transform and neural network algorithms to obtain the monthly peak load demand in mid term load forecasting. The mother wavelet daubechies2 (db2) is employed to decomposed, high pass filter and low pass filter signals from the original signal before using feed forward back propagation neural network to determine the forecasting results. The historical data records in 1997-2007 of Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) is used as reference. In this study, historical information of peak load demand(MW), mean temperature(Tmean), consumer price index (CPI), and industrial index (economic:IDI) are used as feature inputs of the network. The experimental results show that the Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) is approximately 4.32%. This forecasting results can be used for fuel planning and unit commitment of the power system in the future.

Unprecedented climate events: Historical changes, aspirational targets, and national commitments

Science.gov (United States)

Diffenbaugh, Noah S.; Singh, Deepti; Mankin, Justin S.

2018-01-01

The United Nations Paris Agreement creates a specific need to compare consequences of cumulative emissions for pledged national commitments and aspirational targets of 1.5° to 2°C global warming. We find that humans have already increased the probability of historically unprecedented hot, warm, wet, and dry extremes, including over 50 to 90% of North America, Europe, and East Asia. Emissions consistent with national commitments are likely to cause substantial and widespread additional increases, including more than fivefold for warmest night over ~50% of Europe and >25% of East Asia and more than threefold for wettest days over >35% of North America, Europe, and East Asia. In contrast, meeting aspirational targets to keep global warming below 2°C reduces the area experiencing more than threefold increases to 90% of North America, Europe, East Asia, and much of the tropics—still exhibit sizable increases in the probability of record-setting hot, wet, and/or dry events. PMID:29457133

Commitment tracking in the licensing renewal process: A perspective

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Gurican, Gregory M.; Breslauer, Stephen K.

1991-01-01

The NRC's proposed 10 CFR 54 defines 'Current licensing basis' as inclusive of all licensee commitments. During the last five years, the regulatory commitment tracking group (RCTG) has been developing guidance for member utilities to track such commitments. The RCTG guidance for commitment tracking assists utilities in developing a system to store and maintain commitments related to the CLB. But a majority believe it unlikely that any one commitment tracking system will capture all commitments contained in the proposed definition of a 'Current Licencing Basis'. For future renewal applications the NRC proposes that utilities must identify and compile all licensing basis commitments. In addition, utilities 'shall maintain...(them) in an auditable and retrievable form'. Some utilities are already compiling and tracking licensing basis commitments; others are not. (author)

Career commitment and job performance of Jordanian nurses.

Science.gov (United States)

Mrayyan, Majd T; Al-Faouri, Ibrahim

2008-01-01

Career commitment and job performance are complex phenomena that have received little attention in nursing research. A survey was used to assess nurses' career commitment and job performance, and the relationship between the two concepts. Predictors of nurses' career commitment and job performance were also studied. A convenience sample of 640 Jordanian registered nurses was recruited from 24 teaching, governmental, and private hospitals. Nurses "agreed" on the majority of statements about career commitment, and they reported performing "well" their jobs. Using total scores, nurses were equal in their career commitment but they were different in their job performance; the highest mean was scored for nurses in private hospitals. Using the individual items of subscales, nurses were willing to be involved, on their own time, in projects that would benefit patient care. The correlation of the total scores of nurses' career commitment and job performance revealed the presence of a significant and positive relationship (r = .457). Nurses' job performance, gender, and marital status were the best predictors of nurses' career commitment: they explained 21.8% of variance of nurses' career commitment. Nurses' career commitment, time commitment, marital status, and years of experience in nursing were the best predictors of nurses' job performance: they explained 25.6% of variance of nurses' job performance. The lowest reported means of nurses' job performance require managerial interventions.

Commitment and Switching Intentions: Customers and Brands

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Juliana Werneck Rodrigues

2012-12-01

Full Text Available This study aims to evaluate the relationship between a customer’s brand switching intentions and his commitment to a brand. Based on a literature review, constructs related to customer brand commitment were identified (affective and continuance commitment, trust, satisfaction, switching costs and alternative attractiveness and their roles in the formation of brand switching intentions hypothesized. Through a cross-sectional survey, a sample of 201 smartphone users was collected to test the proposed relationships. Data analysis was carried out via structural equations modeling, with direct effects of trust, satisfaction, switching costs and alternative attractiveness upon the different kinds of commitment being verified. Furthermore, both types of brand commitment (affective and continuance were found to negatively impact a customer’s intention to switch brands. Regarding enterprise customer strategies, the research findings suggest that, if firms are able to track customer brand commitment, they could use such knowledge to develop better relationship strategies, minimizing customer defection and further developing customer value to the company.

Commitment Elements Reframed (Antecedents & Consequences) for Organizational Effectiveness

Science.gov (United States)

Fornes, Sandra L.; Rocco, Tonette S.

2004-01-01

The purpose of this paper is to identify theories of commitment in the workplace to develop a framework that helps the field create higher levels of commitment, productivity, and satisfaction. The paper is organized into five main sections: the method, commitment in the workplace, mapping workplace commitment, and the implications for HRD and…

Organizational Climate and Teacher Commitment

Science.gov (United States)

Douglas, Stephen Michael

2010-01-01

This study examined the relationship of school climate and teacher commitment in elementary schools in Alabama. A total of 67 elementary schools were surveyed and 1353 teachers voluntarily participated in the study. The instruments used in this study were the Organizational Climate Index (OCI) and the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ).…

Unconditionally secure commitment in position-based quantum cryptography.

Science.gov (United States)

Nadeem, Muhammad

2014-10-27

A new commitment scheme based on position-verification and non-local quantum correlations is presented here for the first time in literature. The only credential for unconditional security is the position of committer and non-local correlations generated; neither receiver has any pre-shared data with the committer nor does receiver require trusted and authenticated quantum/classical channels between him and the committer. In the proposed scheme, receiver trusts the commitment only if the scheme itself verifies position of the committer and validates her commitment through non-local quantum correlations in a single round. The position-based commitment scheme bounds committer to reveal valid commitment within allocated time and guarantees that the receiver will not be able to get information about commitment unless committer reveals. The scheme works for the commitment of both bits and qubits and is equally secure against committer/receiver as well as against any third party who may have interests in destroying the commitment. Our proposed scheme is unconditionally secure in general and evades Mayers and Lo-Chau attacks in particular.

Sociosexual orientation, commitment, and infidelity: a mediation analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Mattingly, Brent A; Clark, Eddie M; Weidler, Daniel J; Bullock, Melinda; Hackathorn, Jana; Blankmeyer, Katheryn

2011-01-01

Individuals with an unrestricted sociosexual orientation (SO) are less committed to their romantic relationships and more likely to engage in infidelity. Furthermore, commitment is negatively associated with tendencies to cheat. However, no previous research has examined the possible mediating role of commitment in the relationship between SO and infidelity. The current study examined whether commitment mediated the relationship between SO and willingness to engage in three types of cheating behaviors (Ambiguous, Deceptive, and Explicit). Results suggested that commitment partially mediated the relationship between SO and infidelity, such that unrestricted individuals had lower commitment, which in turn led to a greater likelihood of cheating. Implications of this association and directions for future research are discussed.

Age-specific radiation dose commitment factors for a one-year chronic intake

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hoenes, G.R.; Soldat, J.K.

1977-11-01

During the licensing process for nuclear facilities, radiation doses and dose commitments must be calculated for people in the environs of a nuclear facility. These radiation doses are determined by examining characteristics of population groups, pathways to people, and radionuclides found in those pathways. The pertinent characteristics, which are important in the sense of contributing a significant portion of the total dose, must then be analyzed in depth. Dose factors are generally available for adults, see Reference 1 for example, however numerous improvements in data on decay schemes and half-lives have been made in recent years. In addition, it is advisable to define parameters for calculation of the radiation dose for ages other than adults since the population surrounding nuclear facilities will be composed of various age groups. Further, since infants, children, and teens may have higher rates of intake per unit body mass, it is conceivable that the maximally exposed individual may not be an adult. Thus, it was necessary to develop new radiation-dose commitment factors for various age groups. Dose commitment factors presented in this report have been calculated for a 50-year time period for four age groups

75 FR 16824 - Notice of Modifications to U.S. Commitments Under the World Trade Organization Government...

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-02

....S. Commitments Under the World Trade Organization Government Procurement Agreement To Implement... of the United States of America and the Government of Canada on Government Procurement (Canada-U.S..., steel, and manufactured products in procurement above $7,804,000 for construction services through...

75 FR 65615 - Conditional Commitment for a Federal Loan Guarantee for Project Financing for Southwest Intertie...

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-26

... DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY Conditional Commitment for a Federal Loan Guarantee for Project Financing for... based on the analysis in the Final Environmental Impact Statement for Project Financing for Southwest... support of debt financing for transmission infrastructure investment projects located in the United States...

Commit* to change? A call to end the publication of the phrase 'commit* suicide'.

Science.gov (United States)

Nielsen, Emma; Padmanathan, Prianka; Knipe, Duleeka

2016-12-06

Background. Countering stigma is a fundamental facet of suicide prevention efforts.  Integral to this is the promotion of accurate and sensitive language.  The phrase 'commit* suicide' has prompted marked opposition primarily due to the connotations of immorality and illegality.  Methods. The study investigated the frequency of the use of the wordstem 'commit', in relation to self-harm and suicidal behaviours, in the three leading suicide-specific academic journals between 2000 and 2015.  Results. One third (34%) of articles published since the year 2000 used the word 'commit*' when describing an act of self-harm or suicide. Over half of these articles (57%) used the phrase on more than one occasion, with 6% using it more than 10 times in the same manuscript. The percentage of papers utilising the word 'commit*' has fluctuated over time, but there is a promising downward trend in the use of this phrase from 33% in 2000 to 13% in 2015 ( p suicide. Whilst we call for collective responsibility amongst academics and clinicians, editors hold a unique position in ensuring that outdated, inaccurate and stigma-laden terms are expunged from the scientific literature.

Heterogeneous architecture to process swarm optimization algorithms

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Maria A. Dávila-Guzmán

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Since few years ago, the parallel processing has been embedded in personal computers by including co-processing units as the graphics processing units resulting in a heterogeneous platform. This paper presents the implementation of swarm algorithms on this platform to solve several functions from optimization problems, where they highlight their inherent parallel processing and distributed control features. In the swarm algorithms, each individual and dimension problem are parallelized by the granularity of the processing system which also offer low communication latency between individuals through the embedded processing. To evaluate the potential of swarm algorithms on graphics processing units we have implemented two of them: the particle swarm optimization algorithm and the bacterial foraging optimization algorithm. The algorithms’ performance is measured using the acceleration where they are contrasted between a typical sequential processing platform and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX480 heterogeneous platform; the results show that the particle swarm algorithm obtained up to 36.82x and the bacterial foraging swarm algorithm obtained up to 9.26x. Finally, the effect to increase the size of the population is evaluated where we show both the dispersion and the quality of the solutions are decreased despite of high acceleration performance since the initial distribution of the individuals can converge to local optimal solution.

Organizational culture and organizational commitment: Serbian case

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mitić Siniša

2016-01-01

Full Text Available The paper presents the results of the impact of certain dimensions of organizational culture (Future Orientation, Power Distance, Human Orientation and Performance Orientation on organizational commitment in companies in Serbia. Through a survey, responses were obtained from a total of N = 400 middle managers from 129 companies. The results show a statistically significant correlation between the observed dimensions of organizational culture and organizational commitment dimensions. Also, there is a statistically significant predictive effect of certain dimensions of organizational culture on the dimensions of organizational commitment. The biggest influences on the dimensions of organizational commitment have dimensions Future Orientation - FO and Performance Orientation - PO. On the other hand, under the most affected dimension of organizational culture is the dimension of organizational commitment Organizational identification - OCM1.

Link 'soil-plant' as critical in formation committed doses from uptake of long-lived radionuclides

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kravetz, A. P.; Pavlenko, Y. A.; Grodzinsky, D. M.

1994-01-01

General algorithm of calculation dose from intake 137 Cs and 90 Sr depending upon level of pollution and agrochemical type of soil where trophycal chains to begin with, have been proposed. This methods consider link 'soil → plant' as critical in formation of doses from the intake long-lived radionuclides. Calculation of committed dose as function of type of soil and level of radionuclide pollution have been realized for seven main soil types of the White Russian and Ukrainian Wooded district. (author)

Formalizing the Relationship Between Commitment and Basic Cryptographic Primitives

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

S. Sree Vivek

2016-11-01

Full Text Available Signcryption is a cryptographic primitive which offers the functionality of both digital signature and encryption with lower combined computational cost. On the other hand, commitment scheme allows an entity to commit to a value, where the entity reveals the committed value later during a decommit phase. In this paper, we explore the connection between commitment schemes, public key encryption, digital signatures and signcryption. We establish formal relationship between commitment and the other primitives. Our main result is that we show signcryption can be used as a commitment scheme with appropriate security notions. We show that if the underlying signcryption scheme is IND-CCA2 secure, then the hiding property of the commitment scheme is satisfied. Similarly, we show that if the underlying signcryption scheme is unforgeable, then the relaxed biding property of the commitment scheme is satisfied. Moreover, we prove that if the underlying signcryption scheme is NM-CCA2, then the commitment scheme is non-malleable.

77 FR 47382 - Application for Final Commitment for a Long-Term Loan or Financial Guarantee in Excess of $100...

Science.gov (United States)

2012-08-08

... EXPORT-IMPORT BANK OF THE UNITED STATES [Public Notice 2012-0345] Application for Final Commitment...: Export-Import Bank of the U.S. ACTION: Notice. SUMMARY: This Notice is to inform the public, in accordance with Section 3(c)(10) of the Charter of the Export-Import Bank of the United States (``Ex-Im Bank...

78 FR 67144 - Application for Final Commitment for a Long-Term Loan or Financial Guarantee in Excess of $100...

Science.gov (United States)

2013-11-08

... EXPORT-IMPORT BANK [Public Notice 2013-0050] Application for Final Commitment for a Long-Term Loan or Financial Guarantee in Excess of $100 Million: AP086418XX AGENCY: Export-Import Bank of the United...) of the Charter of the Export-Import Bank of the United States (``Ex-Im Bank''), that Ex-Im Bank has...

The Artistic Commitment of Kenyon Cox: An American Neoclassical Artist

OpenAIRE

SMITH, Marc S.

2016-01-01

At the end of the nineteenth century, the United States had undergone deep transformations. The second Industrial Revolution had created huge amounts of new wealth and power. This led to an alteration of the urban social fabric and to a repositioning of the country on the international scene.Since the 1870s, the American Renaissance had been a vehicle for the diffusion of new values and new concepts. As a broad neoclassical movement in the arts, it was committed to a rewriting of the country’...

76 FR 50286 - Request for Comments and Notice of Public Hearing Concerning China's Compliance With WTO Commitments

Science.gov (United States)

2011-08-12

...., subsidies, standards and technical regulations, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, government procurement... Concerning China's Compliance With WTO Commitments AGENCY: Office of the United States Trade Representative. ACTION: Request for comments and notice of public hearing concerning China's compliance with its WTO...

Influence of Teacher Empowerment on Teachers' Organizational Commitment, Professional Commitment and Organizational Citizenship Behavior in Schools

Science.gov (United States)

Bogler, Ronit; Somech, Anit

2004-01-01

The present study focuses on the relationship between teacher empowerment and teachers' organizational commitment, professional commitment (PC) and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). It examines which subscales of teacher empowerment can best predict these outcomes. The data were collected through a questionnaire returned by a sample of…

Solving optimum operation of single pump unit problem with ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yuan, Y; Liu, C

2012-01-01

For pumping stations, the effective scheduling of daily pump operations from solutions to the optimum design operation problem is one of the greatest potential areas for energy cost-savings, there are some difficulties in solving this problem with traditional optimization methods due to the multimodality of the solution region. In this case, an ACO model for optimum operation of pumping unit is proposed and the solution method by ants searching is presented by rationally setting the object function and constrained conditions. A weighted directed graph was constructed and feasible solutions may be found by iteratively searching of artificial ants, and then the optimal solution can be obtained by applying the rule of state transition and the pheromone updating. An example calculation was conducted and the minimum cost was found as 4.9979. The result of ant colony algorithm was compared with the result from dynamic programming or evolutionary solving method in commercial software under the same discrete condition. The result of ACO is better and the computing time is shorter which indicates that ACO algorithm can provide a high application value to the field of optimal operation of pumping stations and related fields.

Nurses organizational commitment: the discriminating power of gender.

Science.gov (United States)

Ferreira, Maria Manuela Frederico

2007-01-01

The study of the organizational commitment has risen interest within the organization's researchers, who have been trying to understand the intensity and stability of the individual's dedication to the organization. The interest that this construct has raised is based on the idea of the existence of an association of the organizational commitment with variables considered important to the increase of the organizational effectiveness and productivity. The aim of this article is to describe organizational commitment, in its affective, normative, and continuance dimensions, from nurse practitioners, and to analyze the differences of that commitment regarding gender. Data were collected by questionnaire. The sample is constituted by nurse practitioners who develop their professional activity in 6 Portuguese hospitals. Data were analyzed using means, standard deviation, and independent samples t test. The sample consists of 1201 nurses. The organizational commitment of the studied nurses is, on average, 2.87+/-0.69 (in 5-point scale). When we make an analysis regarding gender, we verify that the organizational commitment is higher in women, being the difference statistically significant (t = -2.07; P commitment in male and female nurses, and it is higher in all dimensions in female nurses; however, the difference is only significant to the organizational and continuance commitment.

Antecedents and Consequences of Affective Commitment

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Bloemer, J.M.M.; Odekerken-Schröder, G.J.

2003-01-01

The primary objective of this study is to assess the impact of three psychological antecedents (position involvement, volitional choice and informational complexity) on affective commitment in a financial service setting. Furthermore, this study addresses the consequences of affective commitment on

A new modified artificial bee colony algorithm for the economic dispatch problem

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Secui, Dinu Calin

2015-01-01

Highlights: • A new modified ABC algorithm (MABC) is proposed to solve the EcD/EmD problem. • Valve-point effects, ramp-rate limits, POZ, transmission losses were considered. • The algorithm is tested on four systems having 6, 13, 40 and 52 thermal units. • MABC algorithm outperforms several optimization techniques. - Abstract: In this paper a new modified artificial bee colony algorithm (MABC) is proposed to solve the economic dispatch problem by taking into account the valve-point effects, the emission pollutions and various operating constraints of the generating units. The MABC algorithm introduces a new relation to update the solutions within the search space, in order to increase the algorithm ability to avoid premature convergence and to find stable and high quality solutions. Moreover, to strengthen the MABC algorithm performance, it is endowed with a chaotic sequence generated by both a cat map and a logistic map. The MABC algorithm behavior is investigated for several combinations resulting from three generating modalities of the chaotic sequences and two selection schemes of the solutions. The performance of the MABC variants is tested on four systems having six units, thirteen units, forty units and fifty-two thermal generating units. The comparison of the results shows that the MABC variants have a better performance than the classical ABC algorithm and other optimization techniques

A backtracking algorithm for the stream AND-parallel execution of logic programs

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Somogyi, Z.; Ramamohanarao, K.; Vaghani, J. (Univ. of Melbourne, Parkville (Australia))

1988-06-01

The authors present the first backtracking algorithm for stream AND-parallel logic programs. It relies on compile-time knowledge of the data flow graph of each clause to let it figure out efficiently which goals to kill or restart when a goal fails. This crucial information, which they derive from mode declarations, was not available at compile-time in any previous stream AND-parallel system. They show that modes can increase the precision of the backtracking algorithm, though their algorithm allows this precision to be traded off against overhead on a procedure-by-procedure and call-by-call basis. The modes also allow their algorithm to handle efficiently programs that manipulate partially instantiated data structures and an important class of programs with circular dependency graphs. On code that does not need backtracking, the efficiency of their algorithm approaches that of the committed-choice languages; on code that does need backtracking its overhead is comparable to that of the independent AND-parallel backtracking algorithms.

24-Hour Relativistic Bit Commitment.

Science.gov (United States)

Verbanis, Ephanielle; Martin, Anthony; Houlmann, Raphaël; Boso, Gianluca; Bussières, Félix; Zbinden, Hugo

2016-09-30

Bit commitment is a fundamental cryptographic primitive in which a party wishes to commit a secret bit to another party. Perfect security between mistrustful parties is unfortunately impossible to achieve through the asynchronous exchange of classical and quantum messages. Perfect security can nonetheless be achieved if each party splits into two agents exchanging classical information at times and locations satisfying strict relativistic constraints. A relativistic multiround protocol to achieve this was previously proposed and used to implement a 2-millisecond commitment time. Much longer durations were initially thought to be insecure, but recent theoretical progress showed that this is not so. In this Letter, we report on the implementation of a 24-hour bit commitment solely based on timed high-speed optical communication and fast data processing, with all agents located within the city of Geneva. This duration is more than 6 orders of magnitude longer than before, and we argue that it could be extended to one year and allow much more flexibility on the locations of the agents. Our implementation offers a practical and viable solution for use in applications such as digital signatures, secure voting and honesty-preserving auctions.

Link 'soil-plant' as critical in formation committed doses from uptake of long-lived radionuclides

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kravetz, A P; Pavlenko, Y A; Grodzinsky, D M [Institute of Cell Biology and Genetic Engineering AS Vasilcovsky st 31/17, Kiev 252022 (Ukraine)

1994-11-01

General algorithm of calculation dose from intake {sup 137}Cs and {sup 90}Sr depending upon level of pollution and agrochemical type of soil where trophycal chains to begin with, have been proposed. This methods consider link 'soil {yields} plant' as critical in formation of doses from the intake long-lived radionuclides. Calculation of committed dose as function of type of soil and level of radionuclide pollution have been realized for seven main soil types of the White Russian and Ukrainian Wooded district. (author)

Evaluation of Algorithms for Compressing Hyperspectral Data

Science.gov (United States)

Cook, Sid; Harsanyi, Joseph; Faber, Vance

2003-01-01

With EO-1 Hyperion in orbit NASA is showing their continued commitment to hyperspectral imaging (HSI). As HSI sensor technology continues to mature, the ever-increasing amounts of sensor data generated will result in a need for more cost effective communication and data handling systems. Lockheed Martin, with considerable experience in spacecraft design and developing special purpose onboard processors, has teamed with Applied Signal & Image Technology (ASIT), who has an extensive heritage in HSI spectral compression and Mapping Science (MSI) for JPEG 2000 spatial compression expertise, to develop a real-time and intelligent onboard processing (OBP) system to reduce HSI sensor downlink requirements. Our goal is to reduce the downlink requirement by a factor > 100, while retaining the necessary spectral and spatial fidelity of the sensor data needed to satisfy the many science, military, and intelligence goals of these systems. Our compression algorithms leverage commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) spectral and spatial exploitation algorithms. We are currently in the process of evaluating these compression algorithms using statistical analysis and NASA scientists. We are also developing special purpose processors for executing these algorithms onboard a spacecraft.

Improving staff response to seizures on the epilepsy monitoring unit with online EEG seizure detection algorithms.

Science.gov (United States)

Rommens, Nicole; Geertsema, Evelien; Jansen Holleboom, Lisanne; Cox, Fieke; Visser, Gerhard

2018-05-11

User safety and the quality of diagnostics on the epilepsy monitoring unit (EMU) depend on reaction to seizures. Online seizure detection might improve this. While good sensitivity and specificity is reported, the added value above staff response is unclear. We ascertained the added value of two electroencephalograph (EEG) seizure detection algorithms in terms of additional detected seizures or faster detection time. EEG-video seizure recordings of people admitted to an EMU over one year were included, with a maximum of two seizures per subject. All recordings were retrospectively analyzed using Encevis EpiScan and BESA Epilepsy. Detection sensitivity and latency of the algorithms were compared to staff responses. False positive rates were estimated on 30 uninterrupted recordings (roughly 24 h per subject) of consecutive subjects admitted to the EMU. EEG-video recordings used included 188 seizures. The response rate of staff was 67%, of Encevis 67%, and of BESA Epilepsy 65%. Of the 62 seizures missed by staff, 66% were recognized by Encevis and 39% by BESA Epilepsy. The median latency was 31 s (staff), 10 s (Encevis), and 14 s (BESA Epilepsy). After correcting for walking time from the observation room to the subject, both algorithms detected faster than staff in 65% of detected seizures. The full recordings included 617 h of EEG. Encevis had a median false positive rate of 4.9 per 24 h and BESA Epilepsy of 2.1 per 24 h. EEG-video seizure detection algorithms may improve reaction to seizures by improving the total number of seizures detected and the speed of detection. The false positive rate is feasible for use in a clinical situation. Implementation of these algorithms might result in faster diagnostic testing and better observation during seizures. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Sustainability Marketing Commitment

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Tollin, Karin; Bech Christensen, Lars

2017-01-01

sustainability in marketing, processes associated with sustainability marketing commitment, drivers of sustainability marketing at the functional level of marketing, and its organizational context. Using survey data from 269 managers in marketing, covering a broad range of industries in Sweden and Denmark, we...... took a structural modelling approach to examine construct relationships, mediation, and moderation effects. Overall, the findings show that marketing capabilities associated with the innovation of new products, services, and business models constitute a strong driver to leverage sustainability......Corporate sustainability is an important strategy and value orientation for marketing, but scarce research addresses the organizational drivers and barriers to including it in companies’ marketing strategies and processes. The purpose of this study is to determine levels of commitment to corporate...

7 CFR 3550.70 - Conditional commitments.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

..., dealer-contractor, or seller must: (1) Have an adequate ownership interest in the property, as defined in... approval of an affirmative marketing plan. (b) Limitations. Conditional commitments for new or... as bad weather, materials shortages, or marketing difficulties. Conditional commitments may be...

Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment: Affective Commitment Predictors in a Group of Professionals

Science.gov (United States)

Ferretti, Maria Santa

Job satisfaction and organizational commitment have long been identified as relevant factors for the well-being of individuals within an organization and the success of the organization itself. As the well-being can be, in principle, considered as emergent from the influence of a number of factors, the main goal of a theory of organizations is to identify these factors and the role they can play. In this regard job satisfaction and organizational commitment have been often identified with structural factors allowing an organization to be considered as a system, or a wholistic entity, rather than a simple aggregate of individuals. Furthermore, recent studies have shown that job satisfaction has a significant, direct effect on determining individuals' attachment to an organization and a significant but indirect effect on their intention to leave a company. However, a complete assessment of the role of these factors in establishing and keeping the emergence of an organization is still lacking, due to shortage of measuring instruments and to practical difficulties in interviewing organization members. The present study aims to give a further contribution to what is currently known about the relationship between job satisfaction and affective commitment by using a group of professionals, all at management level. A questionnaire to measure these constructs, following a pilot study, was designed and administered to 1042 participants who were all professionals and had the title of industrial manager or director. The factors relating to job satisfaction and the predictive value of these factors (to predict an employee's emotional involvement with their organization) were simultaneously tested by a confirmative factorial model. The results were generalized with a multi-sample procedure by using models of structural equations. This procedure was used to check whether these factors could be considered or not as causes producing the measured affective commitment. The results

75 FR 45693 - Request for Comments and Notice of Public Hearing Concerning China's Compliance With WTO Commitments

Science.gov (United States)

2010-08-03

..., government procurement, trade-related investment measures, taxes and charges levied on imports and exports... Concerning China's Compliance With WTO Commitments AGENCY: Office of the United States Trade Representative. ACTION: Request for comments and notice of public hearing concerning China's compliance with its WTO...

77 FR 50206 - Request for Comments and Notice of Public Hearing Concerning China's Compliance With WTO Commitments

Science.gov (United States)

2012-08-20

..., government procurement, trade-related investment measures, taxes and charges levied on imports and exports... Concerning China's Compliance With WTO Commitments AGENCY: Office of the United States Trade Representative. ACTION: Request for comments and notice of public hearing concerning China's compliance with its WTO...

The Impact of Trust on Organization Commitment

Science.gov (United States)

Robinson, Kimberly; Stinson, Thomas N. (Technical Monitor)

2002-01-01

As the global economy continues to spawn competitive forces, organizations have sought to become more competitive by cutting costs, eliminating non-value added work, and using more automation. Jobs have become broader and more flexible leading to a leaner workforce with higher-level knowledge and skills and more responsibility for day-to-day decisions. More than ever, organizations depend on employees as the innovators and designers of products and processes and as a source of strategic advantage. Therefore employee commitment among knowledge workers is needed to maintain organizational viability. It would seem that stronger relationships due to greater dependency, involvement, and investment would develop between employers and high-technology workers resulting in more committed employees. However, the opposite has been evidenced as key knowledge workers are changing jobs frequently. This may be due to a perceived lack of commitment by management to its employees. The notion of exchange may dominate the development of organizational commitment whereby an individual decides what to give a firm (commitment, extra effort, better performance, etc.) based on what the firm gives them (e.g., trust and security). It is the relationship between an employee's organizational commitment and the responding level of trust in the organization that is examined in this paper. An experiment is described that will seek to identify this relationship. Preliminary results are expected to show a positive relationship whereby employee commitment is positively correlated with organizational trust.

Carbon choices determine US cities committed to futures below sea level.

Science.gov (United States)

Strauss, Benjamin H; Kulp, Scott; Levermann, Anders

2015-11-03

Anthropogenic carbon emissions lock in long-term sea-level rise that greatly exceeds projections for this century, posing profound challenges for coastal development and cultural legacies. Analysis based on previously published relationships linking emissions to warming and warming to rise indicates that unabated carbon emissions up to the year 2100 would commit an eventual global sea-level rise of 4.3-9.9 m. Based on detailed topographic and population data, local high tide lines, and regional long-term sea-level commitment for different carbon emissions and ice sheet stability scenarios, we compute the current population living on endangered land at municipal, state, and national levels within the United States. For unabated climate change, we find that land that is home to more than 20 million people is implicated and is widely distributed among different states and coasts. The total area includes 1,185-1,825 municipalities where land that is home to more than half of the current population would be affected, among them at least 21 cities exceeding 100,000 residents. Under aggressive carbon cuts, more than half of these municipalities would avoid this commitment if the West Antarctic Ice Sheet remains stable. Similarly, more than half of the US population-weighted area under threat could be spared. We provide lists of implicated cities and state populations for different emissions scenarios and with and without a certain collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Although past anthropogenic emissions already have caused sea-level commitment that will force coastal cities to adapt, future emissions will determine which areas we can continue to occupy or may have to abandon.

State commitment to public participation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Baranski, S.C.; Serie, P.J.

1989-01-01

This paper discusses how New York's approach to developing a new low-level radioactive waste disposal facility demonstrates a commitment to responsibility for waste generated within its borders. There is a strong, legislated commitment to meeting federal milestones and starting from scratch to select a suitable site and disposal method. Equally strong is the state's commitment to meaningful public participation. A statewide program is underway, including public information and education and interactive techniques. The public participation program is fully integrated with the technical and policy activities of the New York State Low-Level Radioactive Waste Siting Commission at all levels. The program is designed to progressively tailor techniques and coverage to the steps in site and method selection, and will focus most intensively on the communities where four sites are selected for full characterization

The Influence of Organizational Commitment, Job Commitment and Job Satisfaction on Professionalism Perceived by Radiotechnologists Working in the Department of Radiation Oncology

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Gim, Yang Soo; Lee, Sun Young; Lee, Joon Seong; Gwak, Geun Tak; Park, Ju Gyeong; Lee, Seung Hoon; Hwang, Ho In; Cha, Seok Yong [Dept. of Radiation Oncology, Chunbuk National University Hospital, Jeonju (Korea, Republic of)

2012-09-15

The study is to check the specialty of radiotherapists working in the department of radiation oncology and find job satisfaction, organizational commitment and job commitment having an effect on professional parts. After making analysis of the mutual relation, it is to provide radiotechnologists with making progress in the future. From March 2 to March 30, we had carried out a survey with email. It is possible to have 272 questionnaires answered in the survey. We make use of SPSS 13.0 for Windows to analyze the data collected for study. Frequency and a percentage are meant to show general characteristics, and t-test and ANOVA to do the difference between general properties and professionalism. Pearson's correlation coefficient also is meant to do the correlation of professionalism, organizational job commitment and job satisfaction, and multiple regression analysis to do the factor for a relevant variable to affect professionalism. There are subdivisions in the professionalism informing us of the self-regulation 17.74{+-}2.32/3.55{+-}46, a sense of calling 17.58{+-}2.63/3.52{+-}53, reference of the professional 17.14{+-}2.39/3.43{+-}48, service to the public 15.97{+-}2.48/3.19{+-}50, and autonomy 15.68{+-}2.28/3.14{+-}46. Grand mean turns out to be 83.89{+-}7.63(Summation of items)/ 3.37{+-}0.49(Numbers of items). When it comes to a statistical relation between general characteristics and professionalism, the statistics have it that these come within age (P<.001), period of employment (P<.001), education status (P<.05), a monthly income (P<.001), radiotherapists who get a special license (P<.001), the position (P<.001), and an opportunity for developing (P<.001). As a result of organizational commitment, job commitment, and job satisfaction, grand mean in organizational commitment proves to be 81.10{+-}8.15/3.34{+-}34. There are subvisions showing affective commitment 28.64{+-}4.61/3.58, continuance commitment 27.54{+-}4.22/3.44{+-}53, and normative commitment

A study on relationship between social entrepreneurship and organizational commitment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yadollah Hemmati

2013-08-01

Full Text Available During the past few years, organizational commitment has been a major concern in different types of business activities including banking industry. In this paper, we present an empirical investigation to study the relationship between social entrepreneurship and organizational commitment. The proposed study of this paper adapts a standard questionnaire developed by Meyer and Allen [Meyer, J. P., & Allen, N. J. (1991. A three-component conceptualization of organizational commitment. Human resource management review, 1(1, 61-89]. Cronbach alpha has been calculated for affective commitment, employee engagement and normative commitment as 0.77, 0.79 and 0.61, respectively. The results of survey indicate that affective commitment, employee engagement and normative commitment have positively influenced organizational commitment, significantly. In addition, Freedman test has indicated that normative commitment is number one priority with mean rank of 2.85 followed by affective commitment with mean rank of 2.47 and employee engagement with the mean rank of 2.26.

Unified treatment algorithm for the management of crotaline snakebite in the United States: results of an evidence-informed consensus workshop

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kerns William P

2011-02-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Envenomation by crotaline snakes (rattlesnake, cottonmouth, copperhead is a complex, potentially lethal condition affecting thousands of people in the United States each year. Treatment of crotaline envenomation is not standardized, and significant variation in practice exists. Methods A geographically diverse panel of experts was convened for the purpose of deriving an evidence-informed unified treatment algorithm. Research staff analyzed the extant medical literature and performed targeted analyses of existing databases to inform specific clinical decisions. A trained external facilitator used modified Delphi and structured consensus methodology to achieve consensus on the final treatment algorithm. Results A unified treatment algorithm was produced and endorsed by all nine expert panel members. This algorithm provides guidance about clinical and laboratory observations, indications for and dosing of antivenom, adjunctive therapies, post-stabilization care, and management of complications from envenomation and therapy. Conclusions Clinical manifestations and ideal treatment of crotaline snakebite differ greatly, and can result in severe complications. Using a modified Delphi method, we provide evidence-informed treatment guidelines in an attempt to reduce variation in care and possibly improve clinical outcomes.

78 FR 64385 - United Nations Day, 2013

Science.gov (United States)

2013-10-28

... A Proclamation In 1945, after two world wars that showed the horrific lethality of modern conflict.... We celebrate the organization's challenging and often unheralded work of forging a world in which... children and grandchildren from the ravages of war, the members of the United Nations committed ``to unite...

The dimensionality of professional commitment

OpenAIRE

Jeffrey J. Bagraim

2003-01-01

This paper examines the dimensionality of professional commitment amongst a sample of 240 South African actuaries. Data were obtained, via a mailed questionnaire, from members of the South African Actuarial Society employed in the financial services industry. Statistical analysis conducted on the data showed that the 3-component model first proposed by Meyer, Allen and Smith (1993) is appropriate for understanding professional commitment amongst South African professionals. The analysis also ...

Alcohol myopia and goal commitment

OpenAIRE

Sevincer, A. Timur; Oettingen, Gabriele

2014-01-01

According to alcohol myopia theory, acute alcohol consumption leads people to disproportionally focus on the salient rather than the peripheral aspects of a situation. We summarize various studies exploring how myopic processes resulting from acute alcohol intake affect goal commitment. After consuming alcohol student participants felt strongly committed to an important personal goal even though they had low expectations of successfully attaining the goal. However, once intoxicated participan...

The Behavioral Expression of Organizational Commitment.

Science.gov (United States)

Randall, Donna M.; And Others

1990-01-01

Explored within empirical study context complexity of organizational commitment construct and respondent-generated behavioral manifestations of job attitude among plant workers (N=156). Found each commitment dimension related differently to work outcomes and that none of the dimensions was able to predict absenteeism or tardiness. (Author/CM)

Meaningful work, work engagement and organisational commitment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Madelyn Geldenhuys

2014-03-01

Research purpose: The aim of the study was to investigate the relationships amongst psychological meaningfulness, work engagement and organisational commitment and to test for a possible mediation effect of work engagement on the relationship between psychological meaningfulness and organisational commitment. Motivation for the study: Managers have to rethink ways of improving productivity and performance at work, due to the diverse, and in some instances escalating, needs of employees (e.g. financial support to uphold their interest in and enjoyment of working. Research approach, design and method: A quantitative approach was employed to gather the data for the study, utilising a cross-sectional survey design. The sample (n = 415 consisted of working employees from various companies and positions in Gauteng, South Africa. Main findings: The results confirmed a positive relationship between psychological meaningfulness, work engagement and organisational commitment. Further, psychological meaningfulness predicts work engagement, whilst psychological meaningfulness and work engagement predict organisational commitment. Practical/managerial implications: Employers identifying their employees’ commitment patterns and mapping out strategies for enhancing those that are relevant to organisational goals will yield positive work outcomes (e.g. employees who are creative, seek growth or challenges for themselves. Contribution/value-add: This study contributes to the literature through highlighting the impact that meaningful work has on sustaining employee commitment to the organisation.

Philanthropic Commitment Traits for Waqf in Higher Education

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Siti Khadijah, A. M.

2017-06-01

Full Text Available Philanthropic commitment in the form of waqf is important particularly among younger working adults in ensuring sustainable flow of funds for charitable purposes. One of the vital usages of such funds is funding for higher education. A question is raised on the commitment of younger adults in such giving. This study examines waqf commitment traits among waqif (waqf contributors for higher education funding. The specific objective of this study is to measure the factors that influence the waqif to contribute their property or income into waqf for higher education fund. For the purpose of this study, 400 questionnaires have been distributed to working young adult respondents in the Klang Valley area. Waqf commitment attributes comprising of Religiosity, Trust, Altruism, Personal Characteristics, SelfImage, Psychological Benefits, Social Norms and Personal Satisfaction are examined. The findings reveal that Religiosity, Altruism, Personal Satisfaction and Commitment are significant attributes in explaining waqf commitment. However, Trust and Social Norm are not significant.

Commitment, enjoyment and motivation in young soccer competitive players.

Science.gov (United States)

Garcia-Mas, Alexandre; Palou, Pere; Gili, Margarita; Ponseti, Xavier; Borras, Pere A; Vidal, Josep; Cruz, Jaume; Torregrosa, Miquel; Villamarín, Francisco; Sousa, Catarina

2010-11-01

Building upon Deci's and Ryan (1985) Self-determination theory as well as the sportive behavioral correlates of the model of Commitment (Scanlan et al., 1976), this study tries to establish the relationship between motivation and commitment in youth sport. For this purpose 454 young competitive soccer players answered the Sport Motivation Scale (SMS) and the Sport Commitment Questionnaire (SCQ) during the regular season. The SMS measures the three dimensions of the Motivational continuum (the Amotivation, the Extrinsic Motivation and the Intrinsic Motivation). The SCQ measures the Sportive Commitment and its composing factors such as the Enjoyment, the Alternatives to the sport, and the Social Pressure. Our findings provided a clear pattern of the influence of motivation in sport enjoyment and commitment, outlining the positive contribution of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to enjoyment and commitment. Amotivation, contributes positively to alternatives to sport and negatively to enjoyment and commitment, It should be noted that extrinsic motivation has a higher contribution to enjoyment whereas intrinsic motivation has a higher contribution to commitment.

Job insecurity, organisational commitment and work engagement ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

understanding the concept of job insecurity as represented by two core ... commitment as a unidimensional construct based on employees' emotional .... outcomes such as increased job satisfaction, organisational commitment, motivation.

The interplay between organizational commitment and personal values

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alicia Omar

2015-09-01

Full Text Available The study of employee’s commitment is capturing the attention of managers and researchers. Besides being one of the most effective alternatives for achieving the organizational goals, the importance of organizational commitment (OC lies in its ability to influence the efficiency and the wellbeing of members of an organization. The article examines the relationships between personal values and components of OC. Participants were selected from twelve Argentinean organizations. Subjects completed a questionnaire of personal data, and two scales to measure individualism- collectivism (vertical and horizontal, and organizational commitment, respectively. All subjects were classified into eight subgroups, after dichotomizing by median each dimensions of values (HI: horizontal individualism; VI: vertical individualism; HC: horizontal collectivism, and HV: vertical collectivism. The four most representative subgroups (N= 162 were selected, that is, who exhibited high scores in one of the four dimensions and lows in the remaining three. In such subgroups were calculated analysis of variance, post-hoc comparison tests, and correlation analysis. The more significant findings can be summarized in the following items: a collectivists (HC or VC show a higher level of affective commitment, while individualists relate to their companies through normative or continuance commitment; b women and senior employees exhibit greater levels of affective and normative commitment; c managers, employees with higher academic degree, and employees of large companies, feel attached to their organizations through normative commitment; d continuance commitment seems to work differently than affective and normative commitment because it has no associations with any of the socio-demographic variables studied. Strengths and limitations of the study are discussed, and suggestions are made for future research. 

Non-interactive and Reusable Non-malleable Commitment Schemes

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Damgård, Ivan Bjerre; Groth, Jens

2003-01-01

version based on the strong RSA assumption. For UC commitments, we show that existence of a UC commitment scheme in the CRS model (interactive or not) implies key exchange and - for a uniform reference string - even implies oblivious transfer. This indicates that UC commitment is a strictly stronger...... primitive than NM. Finally, we show that our strong RSA based construction can be used to improve the most efficient known UC commitment scheme so it can work with a CRS of size independent of the number of players, without loss of efficiency....

Abnormal brain structure in youth who commit homicide

Science.gov (United States)

Cope, L.M.; Ermer, E.; Gaudet, L.M.; Steele, V.R.; Eckhardt, A.L.; Arbabshirani, M.R.; Caldwell, M.F.; Calhoun, V.D.; Kiehl, K.A.

2014-01-01

Background Violence that leads to homicide results in an extreme financial and emotional burden on society. Juveniles who commit homicide are often tried in adult court and typically spend the majority of their lives in prison. Despite the enormous costs associated with homicidal behavior, there have been no serious neuroscientific studies examining youth who commit homicide. Methods Here we use neuroimaging and voxel-based morphometry to examine brain gray matter in incarcerated male adolescents who committed homicide (n = 20) compared with incarcerated offenders who did not commit homicide (n = 135). Two additional control groups were used to understand further the nature of gray matter differences: incarcerated offenders who did not commit homicide matched on important demographic and psychometric variables (n = 20) and healthy participants from the community (n = 21). Results Compared with incarcerated adolescents who did not commit homicide (n = 135), incarcerated homicide offenders had reduced gray matter volumes in the medial and lateral temporal lobes, including the hippocampus and posterior insula. Feature selection and support vector machine learning classified offenders into the homicide and non-homicide groups with 81% overall accuracy. Conclusions Our results indicate that brain structural differences may help identify those at the highest risk for committing serious violent offenses. PMID:24936430

Commitment to personal values and guilt feelings in dementia caregivers.

Science.gov (United States)

Gallego-Alberto, Laura; Losada, Andrés; Márquez-González, María; Romero-Moreno, Rosa; Vara, Carlos

2017-01-01

Caregivers' commitment to personal values is linked to caregivers' well-being, although the effects of personal values on caregivers' guilt have not been explored to date. The goal of this study is to analyze the relationship between caregivers´ commitment to personal values and guilt feelings. Participants were 179 dementia family caregivers. Face-to-face interviews were carried out to describe sociodemographic variables and assess stressors, caregivers' commitment to personal values and guilt feelings. Commitment to values was conceptualized as two factors (commitment to own values and commitment to family values) and 12 specific individual values (e.g. education, family or caregiving role). Hierarchical regressions were performed controlling for sociodemographic variables and stressors, and introducing the two commitment factors (in a first regression) or the commitment to individual/specific values (in a second regression) as predictors of guilt. In terms of the commitment to values factors, the analyzed regression model explained 21% of the variance of guilt feelings. Only the factor commitment to family values contributed significantly to the model, explaining 7% of variance. With regard to the regression analyzing the contribution of specific values to caregivers' guilt, commitment to the caregiving role and with leisure contributed negatively and significantly to the explanation of caregivers' guilt. Commitment to work contributed positively to guilt feelings. The full model explained 30% of guilt feelings variance. The specific values explained 16% of the variance. Our findings suggest that commitment to personal values is a relevant variable to understand guilt feelings in caregivers.

How Providing Mentoring Relates to Career Success and Organizational Commitment: A Study in the General Managerial Population

Science.gov (United States)

Bozionelos, Nikos; Bozionelos, Giorgos; Kostopoulos, Konstantinos; Polychroniou, Panagiotis

2011-01-01

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the relationship of mentoring provided with career success and organizational commitment in the general managerial population. Design/methodology/approach: Participants were 194 native British who were employed in a variety of jobs, professions and industries in the United Kingdom. Findings: Mentoring…

Technical executive’s organizational commitment at Malaysian Oil & Gas Industry

OpenAIRE

Firend, A.R; Binti Sofyan, P.

2016-01-01

This paper investigates the levels of organizational commitment among technical executive, identifies factors that influence organizational commitment in the Malaysian oil and gas industry, and examines the impact of organizational commitment on organizational performance. This research was conducted at Malaysia Marine and Heavy Engineering (MMHE). The framework adopted the three component-conceptualization of organizational commitment. Among the findings is that organizational commitment ten...

Survey of generational aspects of nurse faculty organizational commitment.

Science.gov (United States)

Carver, Lara; Candela, Lori; Gutierrez, Antonio P

2011-01-01

To describe organizational commitment and generational differences in nursing faculty. The study provides new knowledge on generational differences in organizational commitment among nursing faculty with regard to work values, perceived organizational support, perceived person-organization fit, developmental experiences, and global job satisfaction. A cross-sectional, descriptive design was used with random stratified sampling procedures. Surveys measuring organizational commitment and related constructs were sent electronically to 4886 faculty, yielding a 30% response rate. Significant differences were noted between generations of faculty regarding organizational commitment and related measures. Include specific strategies for fostering commitment from each generation. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN AFFECTIVE COMMITMENT ANDORGANIZATIONAL SILENCE: A CONCEPTUAL DISCUSSION

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Fitnat Nazlı Sayğan

2011-07-01

Full Text Available In this study, the affective commitment that is oneof the components oforganizational commitment put forth by Allen and Meyer (Allen, Meyer 1996will be differentiated from the other commitment components. The importance ofcreating an emotional commitment to organizations will be examined and theorganizational factors needed to form organizational commitment will beinvestigated. Also, organizational silence is a situation that the company avoided.In the study, the reasons and the drawbacks of silence are focused on and thefactors that cause employees to remain silent are discussed.The aim of this study is intended to manifest the relationship of ‘organizationalsilence' with affective commitment’ which is one ofthe components of‘organizational commitment’ on the basis of literature. In this study, a negativecorrelation between affective commitment and organizational silence is suggested

Making Commitments to Racial Justice Actionable

Science.gov (United States)

Diab, Rasha; Ferrel, Thomas; Godbee, Beth; Simpkins, Neil

2013-01-01

In this article, we articulate a framework for making our commitments to racial justice actionable, a framework that moves from narrating confessional accounts to articulating our commitments and then acting on them through both self-work and work-with-others, a dialectic possibility we identify and explore. We model a method for moving beyond…

Half-unit weighted bilinear algorithm for image contrast enhancement in capsule endoscopy

Science.gov (United States)

Rukundo, Olivier

2018-04-01

This paper proposes a novel enhancement method based exclusively on the bilinear interpolation algorithm for capsule endoscopy images. The proposed method does not convert the original RBG image components to HSV or any other color space or model; instead, it processes directly RGB components. In each component, a group of four adjacent pixels and half-unit weight in the bilinear weighting function are used to calculate the average pixel value, identical for each pixel in that particular group. After calculations, groups of identical pixels are overlapped successively in horizontal and vertical directions to achieve a preliminary-enhanced image. The final-enhanced image is achieved by halving the sum of the original and preliminary-enhanced image pixels. Quantitative and qualitative experiments were conducted focusing on pairwise comparisons between original and enhanced images. Final-enhanced images have generally the best diagnostic quality and gave more details about the visibility of vessels and structures in capsule endoscopy images.

Randomized Lagrangian Relaxation and their contribution to the development of automated electricity markets for distributed energy resources

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ruthe, Sebastian

2015-01-01

The ongoing shift towards decentralized power systems and the related rapidly growing number of decentralized energy resources (DER) like wind- and PV-units, CHP-units, storage devices and shiftable loads requires new information systems and control algorithms in order to pland and optimize the commitment of DER in line with the conventional generation system. In this context the paradigm of market based control derived from the Lagrangian relaxation of the unit commitment problem represents a promising solution approach to build highly scalable distributed systems able to perform this task within the required time limits. Market based control approaches typically achieve high quality solutions and protect the private data of the controlled units. However in case of DER with discontinuous utility functions market based control approaches suffer under the problem of ''joint commitment'', which may lead to a divergence of the iterative solution algorithm resulting in highly cost inefficient solutions. This thesis introduces a new concept of randomizing the Lagrangian multipliers to spread the individual commitment thresholds of DER thereby mitigating th negative effects of ''joint commitments''. Based on the randomized solution approach different boundaries for the solution quality regarding the overall energy production costs and the equilibrium constraints are established. Furthermore it is shown how the developed approach can be utilized to build new scalable information systems for future energy markets and their interfaces to the existing energy markets.

Does smoking cannabis affect work commitment?

Science.gov (United States)

Hyggen, Christer

2012-07-01

  This study aimed to examine the associations between cannabis use and work commitment.   We used a 25-year panel survey initiated in 1985 with follow-ups in 1987, 1989, 1993, 2003 and 2010. Registered data from a range of public registers were matched with individual responses for the entire period.   The panel survey was a nation-wide study set in Norway.   A total of 1997 respondents born between 1965 and 1968 were included in the panel.   Work involvement scale (WIS) was used to assess work commitment. Involvement with cannabis was based on self-reported smoking of cannabis within the last 12 months and exposure to cannabis through friends. This information was categorized into 'abstaining', 'exposed', 'experimented' and 'involved'. Control measures included socio-economic background, mental health (HSCL-10), education, work satisfaction, unemployment, receipt of social assistance, consumption of alcohol, alcohol-related problems and use of other illicit drugs.   The level of work commitment was associated with involvement with cannabis. In 1993, when the respondents were in their mid-20s, those who were involved or had experimented with cannabis displayed lower levels of work commitment than those who were abstaining or merely exposed to cannabis through friends (P labour market experiences, mental health and family characteristics (P Norway the use of cannabis is associated with a reduction in work commitment among adults. © 2012 The Author, Addiction © 2012 Society for the Study of Addiction.

PARTICULARITIES OF ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT IN THE SPECIFIC CULTURE OF THE ROMANIAN COMPANIES

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Oprea-Valentin BUȘU

2017-08-01

Full Text Available Organizational culture and organizational commitment represent two of the most important concepts to be considered în an well-functioning organization, having a direct influence over employees` lives in that company. Organizational culture, a scientific concept appeared in the field literature at the end of 1980`, in an increasingly unstable business environment, could be defined as a defined series of collective attitudes, ideas, beliefs, symbols and meanings, values and ideologies, rules and norms, feelings or behaviors, as a model and structure of stable practices shared by all the members of that organization and which, by being implemented, come to merge with the structure of organization and its control systems, with the purpose of producing behavioral norms, this way keeping  the unit of organization. In the same time, organizational commitment represents the feeling of membership, of belonging felt by the employee toward the company he/she works in, reflecting the degree to which those characteristics and organizational perspectives are internalized and adopted in his behavior by the subject. Commitment could be also seen as a model of thinking of an employee taking into consideration the level to which personal values and goals are congruent with those of the company. On the other hand, behavioral commitment refers to the process of one employee becoming committed or even stacked into the organization and the way he manage the situation. Our motivation for choosing the theme of this research lays on one hand in the desire to understand the construct of organizational culture and the organizational development, field which I`m interested in,  and on the other hand because the lack of similar research regarding the Romanian companies. The research We have made revealed that there are many studies linking the two concepts with the organizational development in companies from other countries, but only two studies realized in our country

On Commitments and Other Uncertainty Reduction Tools in Joint Action

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Michael John

2015-01-01

Full Text Available In this paper, we evaluate the proposal that a central function of commitments within joint action is to reduce various kinds of uncertainty, and that this accounts for the prevalence of commitments in joint action. While this idea is prima facie attractive, we argue that it faces two serious problems. First, commitments can only reduce uncertainty if they are credible, and accounting for the credibility of commitments proves not to be straightforward. Second, there are many other ways in which uncertainty is commonly reduced within joint actions, which raises the possibility that commitments may be superfluous. Nevertheless, we argue that the existence of these alternative uncertainty reduction processes does not make commitments superfluous after all but, rather, helps to explain how commitments may contribute in various ways to uncertainty reduction.

Employee commitment and performance of manufacturing firms ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

445) between job satisfaction and employee organizational commitment. Multiple regression revealed that pay and job promotion are the important elements that influence employee commitment. It is recommended that manufacturing organizations should emphasize pay and job promotion to enhance higher employee ...

28 CFR 522.14 - Inmates serving civil contempt commitments.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... 28 Judicial Administration 2 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Inmates serving civil contempt... ADMISSION, CLASSIFICATION, AND TRANSFER ADMISSION TO INSTITUTION Civil Contempt of Court Commitments § 522.14 Inmates serving civil contempt commitments. We treat inmates serving civil contempt commitments in...

Power Efficient Division and Square Root Unit

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Liu, Wei; Nannarelli, Alberto

2012-01-01

Although division and square root are not frequent operations, most processors implement them in hardware to not compromise the overall performance. Two classes of algorithms implement division or square root: digit-recurrence and multiplicative (e.g., Newton-Raphson) algorithms. Previous work....... The proposed unit is compared to similar solutions based on the digit-recurrence algorithm and it is compared to a unit based on the multiplicative Newton-Raphson algorithm....

The chaotic global best artificial bee colony algorithm for the multi-area economic/emission dispatch

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Secui, Dinu Calin

2015-01-01

This paper suggests a chaotic optimizing method, based on the GBABC (global best artificial bee colony algorithm), where the random sequences used in updating the solutions of this algorithm are replaced with chaotic sequences generated by chaotic maps. The new algorithm, called chaotic CGBABC (global best artificial bee colony algorithm), is used to solving the multi-area economic/emission dispatch problem taking into consideration the valve-point effects, the transmission line losses, multi-fuel sources, prohibited operating zones, tie line capacity and power transfer cost between different areas of the system. The behaviour of the CGBABC algorithm is studied considering ten chaotic maps both one-dimensional and bi-dimensional, with various probability density functions. The CGBABC algorithm's performance including a variety of chaotic maps is tested on five systems (6-unit, 10-unit, 16-unit, 40-unit and 120-unit) with different characteristics, constraints and sizes. The results comparison highlights a hierarchy in the chaotic maps included in the CGBABC algorithm and shows that it performs better than the classical ABC algorithm, the GBABC algorithm and other optimization techniques. - Highlights: • A chaotic global best ABC algorithm (CGBABC) is presented. • CGBABC is applied for solving the multi-area economic/emission dispatch problem. • Valve-point effects, multi-fuel sources, POZ, transmission losses were considered. • The algorithm is tested on five systems having 6, 10, 16, 40 and 120 thermal units. • CGBABC algorithm outperforms several optimization techniques.

Concept analysis of professional commitment in Iranian nurses

Science.gov (United States)

Jafaragaee, Fateme; Parvizy, Soroor; Mehrdad, Neda; Rafii, Forough

2012-01-01

Aim: Professional commitment has been widely discussed during the last decade. There is no comprehensive definition about “professional commitment in Iranian nurses.” Hence, this study was conducted with the aim of analyzing the concept of professional commitment in Iranian nurses. Materials and Methods: Hybrid model was used in three phases. Firstly, in the theoretical phase, data were retrieved from the CINHAl, MEDLINE, PubMed, OVID, Google scholar, and SID databases. The literature search used the keywords “professional commitment” and “nursing.” The final sample included 27 papers published in English between 2001 and 2011.Secondly, in the fieldwork phase, deep interviews with five clinical nurses were carried out, and thirdly, in the final analytical phase, the obtained data from theoretical and fieldwork phases were combined and a comprehensive analysis was conducted. Results: Loyalty and tendency to remain in the profession and responsibility to the professional issues were extracted in theoretical phase. Commitment to promote caring abilities, satisfying of being a nurse, and belonging to the nursing profession were obtained in fieldwork phase. Finally, two main themes including “commitment to offering the best nursing care” and “commitment to promotion of the nursing profession” were extracted. Conclusion: Nursing is a humanistic profession; it has some particular characteristics due to the profession’s nature. In this paper, a definition composed of two main dimensions of professional commitment in nursing has been introduced. PMID:23922592

The organizational commitment of emergency physicians in Spanish public hospitals

Science.gov (United States)

Noval de la Torre, A; Bulchand Gidumal, J; Melián González, S

2016-12-30

Background. There are not too many studies that deal with the organizational commitment of emergency physicians. This commitment has been shown to impact organizational performance. The aim of this paper is to analyse the degree of commitment of the emergency physicians in Spanish public hospitals and the factors that may influence it. Method. Online survey using SurveyMonkey to emergency physicians in Spanish public hospitals. Results. Two hundred and five questionnaires were received, 162 from physicians and 43 from heads of the emergency service. Results show an intermediate level of commitment, with affective commitment showing the lowest level and continuance commitment showing the highest level. The capabilities of the physician have an influence on their affective commitment; specific training in emergency procedures and seniority has an influence on their continuance commitment; and the opinion they hold about the organization of their service influences affective commitment. Conclusions. Emergency physicians show an average involvement in the hospital in which they work (average 3.8 on a range of 1 to 5), feel an average affection for it (3.4), and have a high intention to keep working there (4.0). The resources the hospital has due to its level do not have an influence on this commitment, while the training and perceptions of the service do have an influence.

Sport commitment in adolescent soccer players

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Noelia Belando Pedreño

2016-03-01

Full Text Available The aim of this study was to contribute to the postulates of the self-determination theory, the hierarchical model of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation by Vallerand, and social goals. A structural regression model was estimated to analyze the relations between social goals (responsibility and relationships, praise for autonomous behavior, satisfaction of the basic psychological needs and intrinsic motivation in commitment to sport. A sample of 264 young Spanish soccer players aged between 14 and 16 (M =14.74, SD =.77 participated in the study. Structural Equation Modeling results showed that the social responsibility goal, the social relationship goal and praise for autonomous behavior predicted perceived competence. Furthermore, the relationship goal also predicted the need for relatedness. Satisfaction of the basic psychological needs for competence and relatedness predicted intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation positively predicted future commitment to sport. These results highlighted the importance of social goals, praise for autonomous behavior and psychological mediators in encouraging greater commitment in young soccer players. Future research should focus on the coach’s role in generating greater commitment to sport through the development of intervention methodologies based on social goals.

Commitment to Cooperation and Peer Punishment: Its Evolution

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tatsuya Sasaki

2015-11-01

Full Text Available Theoretical and empirical studies have generally weighed the effect of peer punishment and pool punishment for sanctioning free riders separately. However, these sanctioning mechanisms often pose a puzzling tradeoff between efficiency and stability in detecting and punishing free riders. Here, we combine the key aspects of these qualitatively different mechanisms in terms of evolutionary game theory. Based on the dilemmatic donation game, we introduce a strategy of commitment to both cooperation and peer punishment. To make the commitment credible, we assume that those willing to commit have to make a certain deposit. The deposit will be refunded as long as the committers faithfully cooperate in the donation game and punish free riders and non-committers. It turns out that the deposit-based commitment offers both the efficiency of peer punishment and the stability of pool punishment and that the replicator dynamics lead to transitions of different systems: pool punishment to commitment to peer punishment.

Nurses' perception of ethical climate and organizational commitment.

Science.gov (United States)

Borhani, Fariba; Jalali, Tayebe; Abbaszadeh, Abbas; Haghdoost, Aliakbar

2014-05-01

The high turnover of nurses has become a universal issue. The manner in which nurses view their organization's ethical climate has direct bearing on their organizational commitment. The aim of this study was to determine the correlation between nurses' perception of ethical climate and organizational commitment in teaching hospitals in the southeastern region of Iran. A descriptive analytical design was used in this study. The sample consisted of 275 nurses working in four teaching hospitals in the southeastern region of Iran. The instruments used in this study included a demographic questionnaire, Ethical Climate Questionnaire, and Organizational Commitment Questionnaire. Data analysis was carried out using Pearson's correlation, t-test, and descriptive statistic through Statistical Package for Social Science, version 16. The result of this research indicated a positive correlation among professionalism, caring, rules, independence climate, and organizational commitment. Therefore, findings of this study are a guideline for researchers and managers alike who endeavor to improve organizational commitment.

[Psychological commitment: adaptive functions, paradoxes, modalities and components].

Science.gov (United States)

Brault-Labbé, Anne

2017-12-01

The process of psychological commitment, its adaptive functions and some of the difficulties that go along with it are specific. A description of the multimodal model of commitment provides an illustration of how motivational, affective, cognitive and behavioural mechanisms can be combined. These lead to different ways of entering into the commitment, with differing consequences on how the individual functions. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

Concatenated coding systems employing a unit-memory convolutional code and a byte-oriented decoding algorithm

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, L.-N.

1977-01-01

Concatenated coding systems utilizing a convolutional code as the inner code and a Reed-Solomon code as the outer code are considered. In order to obtain very reliable communications over a very noisy channel with relatively modest coding complexity, it is proposed to concatenate a byte-oriented unit-memory convolutional code with an RS outer code whose symbol size is one byte. It is further proposed to utilize a real-time minimal-byte-error probability decoding algorithm, together with feedback from the outer decoder, in the decoder for the inner convolutional code. The performance of the proposed concatenated coding system is studied, and the improvement over conventional concatenated systems due to each additional feature is isolated.

EMPLOYEE COMMITMENT ACROSS COUNTRIES AND TIMES - MEASUREMENT INVARIANCE

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dana Mesner Andolšek

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Employee organisational commitment has been long and extensively studied until now (Meyer & Allen, 1997; Jaussi, 2007.An emphasis of current analysis was to verify its measurement characteristics, for the purpose of comparisons of levels of commitment across time and countries. A limited set of countries was chosen among those available in a sample from the data on Work Orientations II, ISSP 1997, purpose fully selected to reflect cultural and structural differences that was expected to affect change in levels of organisational commitment. With the use of structural equations models we first confirmed that a model for configural invariance for two factors measuring conceptually distinct components of Affective commitment (AC and Continuance commitment (CC respectively has better support than of one factor model. Metric and error term invariance was subsequently confirmed. Scalar equivalence, needed for valid comparison of mean levels of both components of commitment, was confirmed as well, with the exception of two country specific Tau coefficient. Finally, a model thus established was applied additionally on data from2005 ISSP. Acceptable fit was achieved for a common model containing both points in time and all countries, which allowed making more firm conclusions about the changes in AC and CC in different countries.

[Culture and cultural gaps in work teams: implications for organisational commitment].

Science.gov (United States)

Sánchez, José C; Lanero, Ana; Yurrebaso, Amaia; Tejero, Blanca

2007-05-01

Some theoreticians of organisational commitment have proposed that culture is an important determinant of organisational commitment. Nevertheless, very few studies have examined the role that work teams culture (subculture) and their cultural gaps play in commitment. This study is an attempt to overcome this lack. Using a sample of 375 work teams from various public and private organisations, it was found that the results confirmed our proposals. Cultural gaps were negatively related to commitment; the teams subculture was positively related to commitment, and more highly to commitment to values than to commitment to continuing. Contrary to the results of other studies, the demographic variables (age, time on the team, time in the company) were not significant, except that educational level was related to the commitment to continue. The implications of these results are analysed.

Which serial killers commit suicide? An exploratory study.

Science.gov (United States)

Lester, David; White, John

2012-11-30

In a sample of 483 serial killers, 6.2% were documented to have committed suicide. Those who committed suicide were found to come from more dysfunctional homes characterized by more psychiatric disturbance in the parents. The sexual acts involved in the murders by the suicides seemed to be more deviant in some aspects, such as committing more bizarre sexual acts or more often taping the murder. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

24 CFR 891.818 - Firm commitment application.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... 24 Housing and Urban Development 4 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Firm commitment application. 891.818 Section 891.818 Housing and Urban Development Regulations Relating to Housing and Urban... Persons with Disabilities § 891.818 Firm commitment application. The sponsor will submit the firm...

Effects of Team and Organizational Commitment--A Longitudinal Study

Science.gov (United States)

Neininger, Alexandra; Lehmann-Willenbrock, Nale; Kauffeld, Simone; Henschel, Angela

2010-01-01

Retention management, i.e., keeping qualified employees, is a top priority for contemporary organizations. Commitment, and especially team commitment, can be the key to mastering this challenge. There is a lack of longitudinal research concerning the development and the direction of the effects of team commitment over time. In a longitudinal…

Subcubic Control Flow Analysis Algorithms

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Midtgaard, Jan; Van Horn, David

We give the first direct subcubic algorithm for performing control flow analysis of higher-order functional programs. Despite the long held belief that inclusion-based flow analysis could not surpass the ``cubic bottleneck, '' we apply known set compression techniques to obtain an algorithm...... that runs in time O(n^3/log n) on a unit cost random-access memory model machine. Moreover, we refine the initial flow analysis into two more precise analyses incorporating notions of reachability. We give subcubic algorithms for these more precise analyses and relate them to an existing analysis from...

The optimal scheduling of decentralised co-generation plants in microgrids; Optimale Einsatzplanung von Kraft-Waerme-Kopplungsanlagen in Microgrids

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Gunkel, David [TU Dresden (Germany). Lehrstuhl fuer Energiewirtschaft; Hess, Tobias; Schegner, Peter [TU Dresden (Germany). Inst. fuer Elektrische Energieversorgung und Hochspannungstechnik

2011-07-01

The daily operational scheduling of decentralised unit is an important optimization task of power systems. This proceeding deals with planning of small scaled co-generation power units for district heating in a microgrid. This power system can be mathematically formulated and solved by an optimization algorithm. The solution process consists of a unit commitment and dispatch. The starting unit commitment is characterised by a mixed integer nonlinear problem defining the on-off-state of all units. Subsequently, the dispatch distributes the generation requirements to every committed unit considering thermal demand. The dispatching is based on a mixed integer linear problem. Additionally, it presents a way for flexible reducing the outage reserve related to the operational condition. The given microgrid operates in an islanding mode. The method can also be applied in a grid connected model considering the possible requirements of a grid operator. (orig.)

The dimensionality of professional commitment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jeffrey J. Bagraim

2003-10-01

Full Text Available This paper examines the dimensionality of professional commitment amongst a sample of 240 South African actuaries. Data were obtained, via a mailed questionnaire, from members of the South African Actuarial Society employed in the financial services industry. Statistical analysis conducted on the data showed that the 3-component model first proposed by Meyer, Allen and Smith (1993 is appropriate for understanding professional commitment amongst South African professionals. The analysis also showed that South African actuaries are highly committed to their profession. Opsomming Hierdie artikel ondersoek die dimensionaliteit van professionele toewyding by ‘n steekproef van 240 Suid-Afrikaanse aktuarisse. Die data is verkry deur ‘n posvraelys aan lede van die Suid-Afrikaanse Aktuariële Vereniging wat in die finansiële dienstesektor werksaam was. Statistiese ontledings wat uitgevoer is op die data dui aan dat die driekomponentmodel, aanvanklik voorgestel deur Meyer, Allen en Smith (1993, geskik is om professionele toewyding by Suid-Afrikaanse beroepslui te verstaan. Die ontleding dui verder aan dat Suid-Afrikaanse aktuarisse hoogs toegewyd is aan hulle professie.

Understanding the Links between Work Commitment Constructs.

Science.gov (United States)

Hackett, Rick D.; Lapierre, Laurent M.; Hausdorf, Peter A.

2001-01-01

In a study of 852 nurses, work involvement (value of work in their lives) affected organizational and occupational commitment through its effect on job involvement. Job involvement indirectly affected intention to leave the organization or occupation. Work and job involvement and orgnanizational and occupational commitment were determined to be…

On Entry Deterrence and Imperfectly Observable Commitment

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Poulsen, Anders

2001-01-01

We analyse a simple entry-deterrence game, where a `Potential Intruder' only imperfectly observes the decision of an `Incumbent' to commit or to not commit to fight any entry by the Potential Intruder. Our game generalises the one studied in Bonanno (1992) by allowing for a richer information tec...

Education on the Internet: Anonymity vs. Commitment.

Science.gov (United States)

Dreyfus, Hubert L.

1998-01-01

Argues that learning a skill requires the kind of commitment which is undermined by the Press (the Public) and the Internet, citing Soren Kierkegaard's "The Present Age", and states that learning by apprenticeship is impossible in cyberspace. Includes: aesthetic sphere--commitment to the enjoyment of sheer information; ethical…

Motivated reconstruction: The effect of brand commitment on false memories.

Science.gov (United States)

Montgomery, Nicole Votolato; Rajagopal, Priyali

2018-06-01

Across 5 studies, we examine the effect of prior brand commitment on the creation of false memories about product experience after reading online product reviews. We find that brand commitment and the valence of reviews to which consumers are exposed, interact to affect the incidence of false memories. Thus, highly committed consumers are more susceptible to the creation of false experience memories on exposure to positive versus negative reviews, whereas low commitment consumers exhibit similar levels of false memories in response to both positive and negative reviews. Further, these differences across brand commitment are attenuated when respondents are primed with an accuracy motivation, suggesting that the biasing effects of commitment are likely because of the motivation to defend the committed brand. Finally, we find that differences in false memories subsequently lead to differences in intentions to spread word-of-mouth (e.g., recommend the product to friends), suggesting that the consequences of false product experience memories can be significant for marketers and consumers. Our findings contribute to the literatures in false memory and marketing by documenting a motivated bias in false memories because of brand commitment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Radon and daughters in cigarette smoke measured with SSNTD and corresponding committed equivalent dose to respiratory tract

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Misdaq, M.A.; Flata, K.

2003-01-01

Uranium ( 238 U) and Thorium ( 232 Th) contents were measured inside various tobacco samples by using a method based on determining detection efficiencies of the CR-39 and LR-115 II solid state nuclear track detector (SSNTD) for the emitted alpha particles. Alpha and beta activities per unit volume, due to radon ( 222 Rn), thoron ( 220 Rn) and their decay products, were evaluated inside cigarette smokes of tobacco samples studied. Annual committed equivalent doses due to short-lived radon decay products from the inhalation of various cigarette smokes were determined in the thoracic and extrathoracic regions of the respiratory tract. Three types of cigarettes made in Morocco of black tobacco show higher annual committed equivalent doses in the extrathoracic and thoracic regions of the respiratory tract than the other studied cigarettes (except one type of cigarettes made in France of yellow tobacco); their corresponding annual committed equivalent dose ratios are larger than 1.8. Measured annual committed equivalent doses ranged from 1.8x10 -9 to 1.10x10 -3 Sv yr -1 in the extrathoracic region and from 1.3x10 -10 to 7.6x10 -6 Sv yr -1 in the thoracic region of the respiratory tract for a smoker consuming 20 cigarettes a day

A modified Symbiotic Organisms Search algorithm for large scale economic dispatch problem with valve-point effects

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Secui, Dinu Calin

2016-01-01

This paper proposes a new metaheuristic algorithm, called Modified Symbiotic Organisms Search (MSOS) algorithm, to solve the economic dispatch problem considering the valve-point effects, the prohibited operating zones (POZ), the transmission line losses, multi-fuel sources, as well as other operating constraints of the generating units and power system. The MSOS algorithm introduces, in all of its phases, new relations to update the solutions to improve its capacity of identifying stable and of high-quality solutions in a reasonable time. Furthermore, to increase the capacity of exploring the MSOS algorithm in finding the most promising zones, it is endowed with a chaotic component generated by the Logistic map. The performance of the modified algorithm and of the original algorithm Symbiotic Organisms Search (SOS) is tested on five systems of different characteristics, constraints and dimensions (13-unit, 40-unit, 80-unit, 160-unit and 320-unit). The results obtained by applying the proposed algorithm (MSOS) show that this has a better performance than other techniques of optimization recently used in solving the economic dispatch problem with valve-point effects. - Highlights: • A new modified SOS algorithm (MSOS) is proposed to solve the EcD problem. • Valve-point effects, ramp-rate limits, POZ, multi-fuel sources, transmission losses were considered. • The algorithm is tested on five systems having 13, 40, 80, 160 and 320 thermal units. • MSOS algorithm outperforms many other optimization techniques.

Collective dose commitments from nuclear power programmes

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Beninson, D.

1977-01-01

The concepts of collective dose and collective dose commitment are discussed, particularly regarding their use to compare the relative importance of the exposure from several radiation sources and to predict future annual doses from a continuing practice. The collective dose commitment contributions from occupational exposure and population exposure due to the different components of the nuclear power fuel cycle are evaluated. A special discussion is devoted to exposures delivered over a very long time by released radionuclides of long half-lives and to the use of the incomplete collective dose commitment. The maximum future annual ''per caput'' doses from present and projected nuclear power programmes are estimated

Quantum bit commitment with cheat sensitive binding and approximate sealing

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Yan-Bing; Xu, Sheng-Wei; Huang, Wei; Wan, Zong-Jie

2015-04-01

This paper proposes a cheat-sensitive quantum bit commitment scheme based on single photons, in which Alice commits a bit to Bob. Here, Bob’s probability of success at cheating as obtains the committed bit before the opening phase becomes close to \\frac{1}{2} (just like performing a guess) as the number of single photons used is increased. And if Alice alters her committed bit after the commitment phase, her cheating will be detected with a probability that becomes close to 1 as the number of single photons used is increased. The scheme is easy to realize with present day technology.

Doctoral Students in Music Education: Occupational Identity, Career Intent and Commitment, and Confidence for Teaching in Higher Education

Science.gov (United States)

Martin, Lisa D.

2016-01-01

The purpose of this study was to examine music education doctoral students' shifting occupational identity beliefs, career intent and commitment, and overall confidence for teaching in higher education. A total of 124 music education doctoral students, enrolled at 29 institutions of higher education in the United States, completed a onetime,…

The Influence of Culture on Teacher Commitment

Science.gov (United States)

Abd Razak, Nordin; Darmawan, I. Gusti Ngurah; Keeves, John P.

2010-01-01

Culture is believed to be an important factor that influences various aspects of human life, such as behaviour, thinking, perceptions and attitudes. This article examines the similarities and differences in the influence of culture on teacher commitment in three types of Malaysian primary schools. Since commitment to teaching has rarely been…

Policy Uncertainty, Investment and Commitment Periods

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

NONE

2007-07-01

Today's investment decisions in key sectors such as energy, forestry or transport have significant impacts on the levels of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions over the coming decades. Given the economic and environmental long-term implications of capital investment and retirement, a climate mitigation regime should aim to encourage capital investment in climate-friendly technologies. Many factors affect technology choice and the timing of investment, including investor expectations about future prices and policies. Recent international discussions have focused on the importance of providing more certainty about future climate policy stringency. The design of commitment periods can play a role in creating this environment. This paper assesses how the length of commitment periods influences policy uncertainty and investment decisions. In particular, the paper analyses the relationship between commitment period length and near term investment decisions in climate friendly technology.

Attachment to God, religious tradition, and firm attributes in workplace commitment.

Science.gov (United States)

Kent, Blake Victor

2017-01-01

Research on organizational commitment suggests there is an association between American theists' emotional attachment to God and their emotional commitment to the workplace. A sense of divine calling has been shown to partially mediate this association but, beyond that, little is known. The purpose of this study is to shed further light on the relationship between secure attachment to God and affective organizational commitment. I do so by testing whether the employee's religious tradition is associated with affective organizational commitment and whether the employee's firm attributes moderate the relationship between attachment to God and organizational commitment. Results suggest that: 1) Catholics evince higher levels of organizational commitment than Evangelicals, and 2) firm size significantly moderates the relationship between attachment to God and organizational commitment across religious affiliations.

Sexually Violent Predators and Civil Commitment Laws

Science.gov (United States)

Beyer Kendall, Wanda D.; Cheung, Monit

2004-01-01

This article analyzes the civil commitment models for treating sexually violent predators (SVPs) and analyzes recent civil commitment laws. SVPs are commonly defined as sex offenders who are particularly predatory and repetitive in their sexually violent behavior. Data from policy literature, a survey to all states, and a review of law review…

Juvenile Court Commitment Rates: The National Picture.

Science.gov (United States)

Sosin, Michael

There is less geographic variation in the commitment rate of juvenile offenders than is commonly assumed. Apparently, judges across the country develop a similar standard of what percentage of youths they face should be committed. This standard may be similar across the country because it represents broadly shared ideals. However, there is much…

Commitment and the New Employment Relationship : Exploring a Forgotten Perspective: Employers Commitment

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Torka, Nicole; Looise, Jan Kees; van Riemsdijk, Maarten

2005-01-01

In this article, we have endeavoured to integrate the concept 'employers’ commitment' into the understanding of the new employment relationship. HRM scholars and practitioners assume that changes in (international) market and employee characteristics lead to a transformation of the employer-employee

Trust, Commitment and Competitive Advantage in SMEs Export Performance

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Md Daud Ismail

2017-04-01

Full Text Available The entry of small businesses into international markets has intensified. However, despite the growing presence of small businesses in international markets, studies into their international behavior, particularly regarding the effect of international relationships on international outcomes, remain limited. This study investigates the cross-border relationships of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs by examining the effects of the dimensions of the key relationship on the competitive advantage and performance of SMEs in export markets. These dimensions include trust and commitment. Results indicate that trust is significantly related to commitment and export performance. Commitment is positively related to competitive advantage but not to export performance. Trust affects competitive advantage through commitment. The effect of commitment on export performance is mediated by competitive advantage. The methodology and results are presented. The conclusion, implications, and limitations of this study are also discussed.

The relationship between organizational commitment and nursing care behavior.

Science.gov (United States)

Naghneh, Mohammad Hossein Khalilzadeh; Tafreshi, Mansoureh Zagheri; Naderi, Manijeh; Shakeri, Nehzat; Bolourchifard, Fariba; Goyaghaj, Naser Sedghi

2017-07-01

Nursing care encompasses physical, emotional, mental and social needs, in order to improve a patient's health and wellbeing. Caring is the central core and the essence of nursing. The important issue of care is access to proper care and increasing patients' satisfaction. Job performance of nurses is affected by many factors including organizational commitment. This study aimed to determine the relationship between organizational commitment and nurses caring behavior. In this cross-sectional study, 322 nurses from selected Hospitals of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in Tehran were randomly selected and enrolled in the study in 2015. The self-reported data by nurses were collected through demographic characteristics questionnaire, Meyer & Allen organizational commitment model and Caring Behavior Inventory (CBI). Data were analyzed with SPSS statistical software version 20, using t-test and ANOVA. The majority of nurses (63%) were female. The mean score and standard deviation of organizational commitment and caring behavior of nurses were 74.12±9.61 and 203.1±22.46, respectively. The results showed a significantly positive correlation between organizational commitment and caring behavior (p=0.001). In this study the caring behavior of nurses with higher organizational commitment were significantly better than the others. Managers and nurse leaders should pay more attention to improve organizational commitment of nurses, in order to improve nurses' performance.

How does burnout impact the three components of nursing professional commitment?

Science.gov (United States)

Chang, Hao-Yuan; Shyu, Yea-Ing Lotus; Wong, May-Kuen; Chu, Tsung-Lan; Lo, Yuan-Yu; Teng, Ching-I

2017-12-01

While the impact of burnout on organisational commitment has been widely observed, its impact on nursing professional commitment has not previously been investigated. The literature has clarified that professional commitment has three distinct components: affective, continuance and normative. This study aims to investigate the relationships between burnout and the three components of nursing professional commitment. This was a cross-sectional study using questionnaires to collect data in one large medical centre. Responses from 571 nurses were used for regression analysis. Among the sampled nurses, 90.9% had professional commitment came from Meyer et al. (J Appl Psychol, 78, 1993 and 538) a formally validated instrument. Analytical results indicated that burnout is negatively related to affective and normative professional commitment (B ≤ -0.09, p professional commitment (B = 0.05, p > 0.05). Nurse managers aiming to improve nurses' professional commitment should consider reducing nurses' burnout, for example improving nursing optimism and reducing administrative tasks, as suggested by the literature. © 2017 Nordic College of Caring Science.

Experimental bit commitment based on quantum communication and special relativity.

Science.gov (United States)

Lunghi, T; Kaniewski, J; Bussières, F; Houlmann, R; Tomamichel, M; Kent, A; Gisin, N; Wehner, S; Zbinden, H

2013-11-01

Bit commitment is a fundamental cryptographic primitive in which Bob wishes to commit a secret bit to Alice. Perfectly secure bit commitment between two mistrustful parties is impossible through asynchronous exchange of quantum information. Perfect security is however possible when Alice and Bob split into several agents exchanging classical and quantum information at times and locations suitably chosen to satisfy specific relativistic constraints. Here we report on an implementation of a bit commitment protocol using quantum communication and special relativity. Our protocol is based on [A. Kent, Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 130501 (2012)] and has the advantage that it is practically feasible with arbitrary large separations between the agents in order to maximize the commitment time. By positioning agents in Geneva and Singapore, we obtain a commitment time of 15 ms. A security analysis considering experimental imperfections and finite statistics is presented.

Changes in commitment to change among leaders in home help services.

Science.gov (United States)

Westerberg, Kristina; Tafvelin, Susanne

2015-07-06

The purpose of the this study was to explore the development of commitment to change among leaders in the home help services during organizational change and to study this development in relation to workload and stress. During organizational change initiatives, commitment to change among leaders is important to ensure the implementation of the change. However, little is known of development of commitment of change over time. The study used a qualitative design with semi-structured interviews with ten leaders by the time an organizational change initiative was launched and follow-up one year later. Thematic content analysis was used to analyze the interviews. Commitment to change is not static, but seems to develop over time and during organizational change. At the first interview, leaders had a varied pattern reflecting different dimensions of commitment to change. One year later, the differences between leaders' commitment to change was less obvious. Differences in commitment to change had no apparent relationship with workload or stress. The data were collected from one organization, and the number of participants were small which could affect the results on workload and stress in relation to commitment to change. It is important to support leaders during organizational change initiatives to maintain their commitment. One way to accomplish this is to use management team meetings to monitor how leaders perceive their situation. Qualitative, longitudinal and leader studies on commitment to change are all unusual, and taken together, this study shows new aspects of commitment.

Three components of organizational commitment and job satisfaction of hospital nurses in Iran.

Science.gov (United States)

Jahangir, Fridoon; Shokrpour, Nasrin

2009-01-01

To measure the relationship between job satisfaction and the 3 components of organizational commitment. Most of the research conducted in the West has shown a positive relationship between organizational commitment and job satisfaction of nurses; however, the relationship between the components of organizational commitment and job satisfaction is not well established in Iranian samples. This study aimed to investigate the level of organizational commitment and job satisfaction of the hospital nurses in Iran and the interrelationship between the 3 components of commitment and job satisfaction among them. Using the organizational commitment questionnaire developed by Meyer et al (J Appl Psychol. 1993;78:538-551), the 3 components of commitment were measured through a descriptive correlational design. Seven hundred eighty-six licensed nurses working in 12 hospitals participated in the study. One hundred ninety-eight of 220 returned questionnaires were identified as appropriate for the analysis. Affective commitment was positively related to job satisfaction, normative commitment, and experience in nursing, but it was negatively related to continuance commitment. Continuance commitment was negatively related to job satisfaction and affective commitment. Normative commitment was positively related to job satisfaction and affective commitment. The 3 components of commitment are variously related to job satisfaction. Nursing managers should pay attention to different components of commitment variously to promote the appropriate type of commitment needed for specific situation in which they work.

Lack of Commitment? Work Orientations of Finnish Employees in a European Comparison

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Teemu Turunen

2014-05-01

Full Text Available It has been argued that individuals’ employment commitment, that is, their commitment to work in general is crucial in today’s labor markets where life-long employment relationships are less frequently offered by organizations. In addition, employees’ organizational commitment, that is, their commitment to their own organization is also vital for organizations and firms, affecting many areas of importance to them. This article asks how Finnish employees rank in both employment commitment and affective organizational commitment compared with employees in 15 other European countries. The data were collected in 2005–2007 through the International Social Survey Program (ISSP, Work Orientation Module III. The results show Finnish employees scoring below European averages in both types of commitment when employee-level and organizationlevel factors are taken into account. Employment commitment was highest in Norway and affective organizational commitment highest in Portugal. The perceived intrinsic rewards of the job were the strongest predictor of employment and affective organizational commitment in most of the countries researched, increasing both these types of commitment. However, the perceived social relations between management and employees were found to be the most powerful determinant of affective organizational commitment in Finland, with perceived good relations adding to the affective organizational commitment of employees. The data were analyzed mainly by means of a general linear model procedure.

Commentary: civil commitment statutes--40 years of circumvention.

Science.gov (United States)

Fisher, William H; Grisso, Thomas

2010-01-01

There is a longstanding body of literature that describes how states' civil commitment statutes have been stretched or circumvented to accommodate institutional and systemic needs. The paper by Levitt and colleagues provides yet another example of this phenomenon: Arizona's use of its civil commitment statutes to detain unrestorable, incompetent criminal defendants for whom other provisions have not been developed. This commentary provides a brief overview of other examples of the stretching of commitment laws, providing a broader context for viewing the findings of Levitt and colleagues.

A graphics processing unit accelerated motion correction algorithm and modular system for real-time fMRI.

Science.gov (United States)

Scheinost, Dustin; Hampson, Michelle; Qiu, Maolin; Bhawnani, Jitendra; Constable, R Todd; Papademetris, Xenophon

2013-07-01

Real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging (rt-fMRI) has recently gained interest as a possible means to facilitate the learning of certain behaviors. However, rt-fMRI is limited by processing speed and available software, and continued development is needed for rt-fMRI to progress further and become feasible for clinical use. In this work, we present an open-source rt-fMRI system for biofeedback powered by a novel Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) accelerated motion correction strategy as part of the BioImage Suite project ( www.bioimagesuite.org ). Our system contributes to the development of rt-fMRI by presenting a motion correction algorithm that provides an estimate of motion with essentially no processing delay as well as a modular rt-fMRI system design. Using empirical data from rt-fMRI scans, we assessed the quality of motion correction in this new system. The present algorithm performed comparably to standard (non real-time) offline methods and outperformed other real-time methods based on zero order interpolation of motion parameters. The modular approach to the rt-fMRI system allows the system to be flexible to the experiment and feedback design, a valuable feature for many applications. We illustrate the flexibility of the system by describing several of our ongoing studies. Our hope is that continuing development of open-source rt-fMRI algorithms and software will make this new technology more accessible and adaptable, and will thereby accelerate its application in the clinical and cognitive neurosciences.

Clara Harrison Town and the origins of the first institutional commitment law for the "feebleminded": psychologists as expert diagnosticians.

Science.gov (United States)

Farreras, Ingrid G

2014-11-01

The first law providing for the commitment of "feeble-minded" individuals in the United States was passed in 1915, in the state of Illinois. House Bill 655 not only allowed for the permanent, involuntary institutionalization of feeble-minded individuals, but it shifted the commitment and discharge authority from the institution superintendents to the courts. Clara Harrison Town, a student of Lightner Witmer, and the state psychologist at the second largest institution for feeble-minded individuals in the country, was instrumental in this law passing and in ensuring that psychologists, for the first time, be viewed as court "experts" when testifying as to the feeble mindedness of individuals.

Commitment bias : mistaken partner selection or ancient wisdom?

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Back, Istvan H.

Evidence across the social and behavioral sciences points to psychological mechanisms that facilitate the formation and maintenance of interpersonal commitment. In addition, evolutionary simulation studies suggest that a tendency for increased, seemingly irrational commitment is an important trait

The effect of occupational meaningfulness on occupational commitment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Itai Ivtzan

2014-11-01

Full Text Available Existing research lacks a scholarly consensus on how to define and validly measure ‘meaningful work’ (e.g., Rosso, Dekas & Wrzesniewski, 2010. The following correlational study highlights the value of investigating meaningfulness in the context of occupational commitment. The study hypothesizes that occupational commitment is positively correlated with occupational meaningfulness, where meaningfulness is defined as the extent to which people’s occupations contribute to personal meaning in life. One-hundred and fifty-six full-time office based UK workers completed an online questionnaire including 18 questions measuring levels of occupational commitment (Meyer, Allen & Smith, 1993, in addition to six novel items measuring occupational meaningfulness. The results supported the hypothesis and also showed that the affective sub-type of occupational commitment had the highest correlation with occupational meaningfulness. Such results exhibit the importance of finding meaning at work, as well as the relevance of this to one’s level of commitment to his or her job. This paper argues that individuals should consider OM before choosing to take a specific role, whereas organizations ought to consider the OM of their potential candidates before recruiting them into a role. Possible directions for future research directions are also discussed.

Is There any Relationship between Narcissistic Personality and Organizational Commitment?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Necmettin Cihangiroglu

2012-04-01

Full Text Available ABSTRACT OBJECTIVE: This study aimed at investigating whether there is a correlation between organizational commitment and narcissistic personalty traits. METHOD: In order to measure the GATA Occupation High School of Health Subordinate Officiers’ narcissistic personality traits Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI scala was used. In order to measure students’ organizational commitment Organizational Commitment Questionnaire was used. 229 questionnaire forms were distributed to the Occupation High School of Health Subordinate Officiers’ students, and 220 (%96 of them were returned. Totally 220 students were evaluated. FINDINGS: When students’ narcissistic scores were evaluated out of 16, it was found out that the highest narcissistic personality score (8,98 was taken by second year students, the highest score for organizational commitment (3,70 was taken by first year students, “exploitativeness” which is one of the sub-levels of narcissisim was observed at the highest level with an average of 0,73 out 1 full score, “entitlement” sub level was observed at the lowest level (0,29, “affective commitment” one of the sub-levels of commitment, had the highest average (3,84, “normative commitment” had the second highest average (3,71 and finally “continuance commitment” was observed at the lowest level (3,55. Statistically, there is no significant relationship found between narcissistic personality and organizational commitment. However, there is a significant relationship found between narcissistic personality and continuity commitment. There is a significant and opposite relationship found between organizational commitment and continuity commitment with superiority. There is similar relationship found between exploitation and continuity commitment. CONCLUSION: With respect to these findings, it is suggested that “Health Technicians” candidates’, who will be one of the indispensable constituents of health services

Regulatory commitment management and the managing of licensing documents

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Roxey, T.E.

1993-01-01

The Regulatory Commitment Management (RCM) Project was designed to strengthen Baltimore Gas ampersand Electric's (BG ampersand E's) ability to identify, implement, and maintain regulatory commitments. The first part of this project involved the development of a clear commitment management process. The second part was the development of a tool that enhances the ability to retrieve information from documents, and the third part of the project dealt with the actual identification of historical commitments. This paper represents the first opportunity for BG ampersand E to discuss some of the success of the second part and the preliminary findings of the third part of the project

BENEFICIAL COALITIONS: KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND DEVELOPMENT OF EMPLOYEE COMMITMENT

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Renata Winkler

2015-06-01

Full Text Available Presently, knowledge is considered as the most strategic resource of organizations. The literature on the subject often raises the issues of commitment. The purpose of the article was to discuss the associations between knowledge management and employee commitment. The article presents the stages of knowledge management and describes the category of commitment, taking account of several criteria. In the opinion of the authors, from the point of view of knowledge management particular importance can be attained to the way qualifications, skills, predispositions and knowledge of employees will be used, which, in turn, depends on "quality" of their commitment (its type, intensity, dimension and direction in achieving organizational goals.

The configural approach to organisational commitment: An application in Ghana

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Edward O. Akoto

2014-12-01

Research purpose: To test the theory on profiles of commitment in an African context (Ghana. Motivation for the study: Although the three-component model of organisational commitment has been extended to several regions of Africa, there is a paucity of research on profiles of commitment on the continent. Research approach, design and method: Cross-sectional data from two studies, with samples of 187 and 218, were analysed using k-means clusters. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA was then used to test the differences amongst profiles in their association with contextual variables, such as pay satisfaction, job security, strike propensity and two demographic factors. Main findings: In the k-means cluster analysis, a six-cluster solution emerged in both studies;the profiles include the highly committed and the uncommitted groups, as well as the profiles based on normative commitment and continuance commitment. Overall, the MANOVA post hoc outcome shows that the highly committed group reports higher mean scores on the positive outcome variables (e.g. job security than the uncommitted group. Conversely, the uncommitted group scored relatively higher on the negative organisational outcome (propensity to strike. Other mean differences were found in the respective studies on pay satisfaction, collectivism and the demographic factors. Practical/managerial implications: Employing the configural approach to the study of commitment in this region should increase our understanding of the patterns of attachment and their influence on behaviour. Different patterns of attachment exist within the organisation that may be beneficial or detrimental to behaviour on the job. It is, therefore, important for managers to identify these patterns and target organisational policy and resources appropriately. Contribution/value-add: This study applies the concept of commitment profiles to an untested region: an African context. It, therefore, adds to the literature on the

Reviving the United States' Commitment to Pakistan and Afghanistan

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dr. Steve Young

2009-01-01

Full Text Available As President Obama is in the midst of deciding whether additional U.S.combat forces are needed in Afghanistan in addition to the 21,000 troops recently committed, he must realize that additional armed forces are only a stopgap measure in Afghanistan's downward spiral into an 'undergoverned' failed state. Similarly, as Pakistan's fragile and fractured civilian government continues to appease the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP, an umbrella organization of Pakistani Pashtun tribesmen with Taliban cultural values led by Baitullah Mehsud and others, it comes closer to the concept of a "misgoverned" failed state, possessing a small arsenal of nuclear arms. The problem for the U.S. administration is that neither of these countries can be allowed to fall further into disrepair. At the same time each requires a different and unique approach to the threat of "Talibanization" that faces each country—the control of territory within each country by Islamic radicals seeking to impose their ultraconservative interpretation of shar'ia law onto the general populace. Generally acknowledged is the belief that what has tentatively worked in Iraq, that is, the additional U.S. troops and employment of former Sunni insurgents to help fight foreign fighters associated with al-Qaida, will not work in either Afghanistan or Pakistan. While a regional approach to the conflict in these two countries is warranted, Afghanistan and Pakistan are on two different economic, social, and political playing fields. Hence, there cannot be a one-size-fits-all solution for the two countries, especially one that draws on the Iraq playbook. In addition to its internal political problems, Pakistan also faces the issue of al-Qaida and Taliban training camps positioned in its literal back yard, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA or Tribal Areas. Resolution of the War on Terror cannot come to fruition without addressing the problems that exist in the Tribal Areas. This largely

Relationship between ethical work climate and nurses' perception of organizational support, commitment, job satisfaction and turnover intent.

Science.gov (United States)

Abou Hashish, Ebtsam Aly

2017-03-01

Healthcare organizations are now challenged to retain nurses' generation and understand why they are leaving their nursing career prematurely. Acquiring knowledge about the effect of ethical work climate and level of perceived organizational support can help organizational leaders to deal effectively with dysfunctional behaviors and make a difference in enhancing nurses' dedication, commitment, satisfaction, and loyalty to their organization. This study aims to determine the relationship between ethical work climate, and perceived organizational support and nurses' organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and turnover intention. A descriptive correlational research design was conducted in all inpatient care units at three major hospitals affiliated to different health sectors at Alexandria governorate. All nurses working in these previous hospitals were included in the study (N = 500). Ethical Climate Questionnaire, Survey of Perceived Organizational Support, Organizational Commitment Questionnaire, Index of Job Satisfaction, and Intention to Turnover scale were used to measure study variables. Ethical considerations: Approval was obtained from Ethics Committee at Faculty of Nursing, Alexandria University. Privacy and confidentiality of data were maintained and assured by obtaining subjects' informed consent to participate in the research before data collection. The result revealed positive significant correlations between nurses' perception of overall ethical work climate and each of perceived organizational support, commitment, as well as their job satisfaction. However, negative significant correlations were found between nurses' turnover intention and each of these variables. Also, approximately 33% of the explained variance of turnover intention is accounted by ethical work climate, organizational support, organizational commitment, and job satisfaction, and these variables independently contributed significantly in the prediction of turnover intention

Predicting Organizational Commitment from Organizational Culture in Turkish Primary Schools

Science.gov (United States)

Ipek, Cemalettin

2010-01-01

This study aims to describe organizational culture and commitment and to predict organizational commitment from organizational culture in Turkish primary schools. Organizational Culture Scale (Ipek "1999") and Organizational Commitment Scale (Balay "2000") were used in the data gathering process. The data were collected from…

Studying the impact of the organizational commitment on the job performance

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mojtaba Rafiei

2014-08-01

Full Text Available Success of any organization depends on the performance of its employees. Enhancing organizational commitment among employees is an important aspect to perform better. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of three components of organizational commitment; namely Affective, Continuance and Normative commitment, on employee’s performance. The study is applied among 244 employees of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare department of Markazi Province using a single-stage cluster sampling. The study uses a standard questionnaire for organizational commitment developed by Allen and Meyer and job performance questionnaire developed by Patterson were used to gather data. Structural equations modeling (SEM technique has been used for data analysis. The result of this analysis indicates that the organizational commitment had a positive significant effect on the job performance. In addition, the study also showed that all three dimensions of organizational commitment, Affective, continuance, and normative commitment, had a positive significant effect on the job performance. From the findings, it has been proved that job performance was strongly associated with employee's commitment.

78 FR 20317 - Application for Final Commitment for a Long-Term Loan or Financial Guarantee in Excess of $100...

Science.gov (United States)

2013-04-04

... supplying information that competitors could use to compete with companies in the United States. DATES... or Financial Guarantee in Excess of $100 Million: AP087223XX and AP087223XA AGENCY: Export-Import...''), that Ex-Im Bank has received an application for final commitment for a long-term loan or financial...

78 FR 20913 - Application for Final Commitment for a Long-Term Loan or Financial Guarantee in Excess of $100...

Science.gov (United States)

2013-04-08

... the transaction: To support the export of U.S. manufactured commercial aircraft to China. Brief non... EXPORT-IMPORT BANK [Public Notice 2013-0024] Application for Final Commitment for a Long-Term Loan or Financial Guarantee in Excess of $100 million: AP087801XX AGENCY: Export-Import Bank of the United...

77 FR 61750 - Application for Final Commitment for a Long-term Loan or Financial Guarantee in Excess of $100...

Science.gov (United States)

2012-10-11

... export of a U.S.-manufactured satellite and associated services to China (Hong Kong). Brief non-proprietary description of the anticipated use of the items being exported: The U.S. exports will be used to... EXPORT-IMPORT BANK OF THE UNITED STATES [Public Notice 2012-0528] Application for Final Commitment...

78 FR 33090 - Application for Final Commitment for a Long-Term Loan or Financial Guarantee in Excess of $100...

Science.gov (United States)

2013-06-03

...-haul passenger service from Australia to other countries. To the extent that Ex-Im Bank is reasonably... EXPORT-IMPORT BANK [Public Notice 2013-0030] Application for Final Commitment for a Long-Term Loan or Financial Guarantee in Excess of $100 Million: AP087980XX AGENCY: Export-Import Bank of the United...

Commit* to change? A call to end the publication of the phrase ‘commit* suicide’

Science.gov (United States)

Nielsen, Emma; Padmanathan, Prianka; Knipe, Duleeka

2016-01-01

Background. Countering stigma is a fundamental facet of suicide prevention efforts.  Integral to this is the promotion of accurate and sensitive language.  The phrase ‘commit* suicide’ has prompted marked opposition primarily due to the connotations of immorality and illegality.  Methods. The study investigated the frequency of the use of the wordstem ‘commit’, in relation to self-harm and suicidal behaviours, in the three leading suicide-specific academic journals between 2000 and 2015.  Results. One third (34%) of articles published since the year 2000 used the word ‘commit*’ when describing an act of self-harm or suicide. Over half of these articles (57%) used the phrase on more than one occasion, with 6% using it more than 10 times in the same manuscript. The percentage of papers utilising the word ‘commit*’ has fluctuated over time, but there is a promising downward trend in the use of this phrase from 33% in 2000 to 13% in 2015 ( p suicide. Whilst we call for collective responsibility amongst academics and clinicians, editors hold a unique position in ensuring that outdated, inaccurate and stigma-laden terms are expunged from the scientific literature. PMID:28286872

ANTECEDENTS OF ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT OF BANKING SECTOR EMPLOYEES IN PAKISTAN

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Abdullah

2012-02-01

Full Text Available The aim of this study was to check the association of factors like work environment, job security,pay satisfaction and participation in decision making; with organizational commitment of theemployees, working in the banking sector of Pakistan. Two hundred and fifteen (215 responses toquestionnaire-based survey were collected from managerial and non-managerial employees, andanalyzed. The analysis showed positive correlations between the dependent and independentvariables. The relation between job security and organizational commitment was the most significant,indicating that a secure job can yield higher level of commitment. Work environment also had asignificant relation with organizational commitment, showing that a healthy and friendly workenvironment may enhance an employee’s commitment towards his work and organization. Paysatisfaction and participation in decision-making had low correlations with organizationalcommitment. Age and tenure seemed to affect the commitment of employees, with highercommitment shown for higher age and tenure; whereas gender did not show significant change incommitment level of employees.

[Volunteering in psychiatry: determining factors of attitude and actual commitment].

Science.gov (United States)

Lauber, C; Nordt, C; Falcato, L; Rössler, W

2000-10-01

To assess public attitude, actual working commitment and the respective influence of demographic, psychological and sociological variables on voluntary help in psychiatry. Multiple logistic regression analysis of the results of a representative population survey in Switzerland. Public attitude is mostly positive, but the respective working commitment is small. Attitude depends on gender, psychological factors (social distance, stereotypes), and on attitude to community psychiatry. For the working commitment, clearly distinct predictors are found: age, emotions, participation, and perceived discrimination to the mentally ill. For both attitude and commitment, having a social profession and interest in mass media are predictors. Internationally compared, Switzerland has a positive attitude and a big commitment in lay helping in psychiatry. But attitude is different from actual commitment. Lay helpers' work must be limited to realizable tasks and they need professional recruitment, instruction, and supervision otherwise they tend to be over-burden. The unused potential of voluntary helpers has to be opened specifically, e.g. by involving mass media and opinion-makers.

Differences between Homicides Committed by Lone and Multiple Offenders in Korea.

Science.gov (United States)

Park, Jisun; Cho, Joon Tag

2018-05-16

The aim of this study was to differentiate between homicides committed by multiple offenders and homicides committed by lone offenders. Using data on homicide incidents that occurred in South Korea between 1985 and 2008, we compared 134 homicides committed by multiple offenders, with 369 homicides committed by lone offenders. A greater proportion of homicides committed by multiple offenders involved injuries to the victim's head compared to homicides by lone offenders. Homicides committed by multiple offenders were more likely to involve blunt instruments and ligatures, whereas homicides by lone offenders were more likely to involve sharp instruments. In addition, a majority of the homicides committed by multiple offenders were planned. The results of this study have practical implications for homicide investigations, as well as theoretical implications for homicide research on the difference in offense behaviors based on the number of offenders. © 2018 American Academy of Forensic Sciences.

Graphics Processing Unit-Enhanced Genetic Algorithms for Solving the Temporal Dynamics of Gene Regulatory Networks.

Science.gov (United States)

García-Calvo, Raúl; Guisado, J L; Diaz-Del-Rio, Fernando; Córdoba, Antonio; Jiménez-Morales, Francisco

2018-01-01

Understanding the regulation of gene expression is one of the key problems in current biology. A promising method for that purpose is the determination of the temporal dynamics between known initial and ending network states, by using simple acting rules. The huge amount of rule combinations and the nonlinear inherent nature of the problem make genetic algorithms an excellent candidate for finding optimal solutions. As this is a computationally intensive problem that needs long runtimes in conventional architectures for realistic network sizes, it is fundamental to accelerate this task. In this article, we study how to develop efficient parallel implementations of this method for the fine-grained parallel architecture of graphics processing units (GPUs) using the compute unified device architecture (CUDA) platform. An exhaustive and methodical study of various parallel genetic algorithm schemes-master-slave, island, cellular, and hybrid models, and various individual selection methods (roulette, elitist)-is carried out for this problem. Several procedures that optimize the use of the GPU's resources are presented. We conclude that the implementation that produces better results (both from the performance and the genetic algorithm fitness perspectives) is simulating a few thousands of individuals grouped in a few islands using elitist selection. This model comprises 2 mighty factors for discovering the best solutions: finding good individuals in a short number of generations, and introducing genetic diversity via a relatively frequent and numerous migration. As a result, we have even found the optimal solution for the analyzed gene regulatory network (GRN). In addition, a comparative study of the performance obtained by the different parallel implementations on GPU versus a sequential application on CPU is carried out. In our tests, a multifold speedup was obtained for our optimized parallel implementation of the method on medium class GPU over an equivalent

The Relationship between Career Growth and Organizational Commitment

Science.gov (United States)

Weng, Qingxiong; McElroy, James C.; Morrow, Paula C.; Liu, Rongzhi

2010-01-01

This research examines the relationship between employees' career growth and organizational commitment. Career growth was conceptualized by four factors: career goal progress, professional ability development, promotion speed and remuneration growth, while organizational commitment was conceptualized using Meyer and Allen's (1997) three component…

On the Complexity of Additively Homomorphic UC Commitments

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Trifiletti, Roberto; Nielsen, Jesper Buus; Frederiksen, Tore Kasper

2016-01-01

as the commitment protocol by Garay \\emph{et al.} from Eurocrypt 2014. A main technical improvement over the scheme mentioned above, and other schemes based on using error correcting codes for UC commitment, we develop a new technique which allows to based the extraction property on erasure decoding as opposed...... to error correction. This allows to use a code with significantly smaller minimal distance and allows to use codes without efficient decoding. Our scheme only relies on standard assumptions. Specifically we require a pseudorandom number generator, a linear error correcting code and an ideal oblivious......, we manage to add the additive homo- morphic property, while at the same time reducing the constants. In fact, when opening a large enough batch of commitments we achieve an amor- tized communication complexity converging to the length of the message committed to, i.e., we achieve close to rate 1...

Sport commitment and participation in masters swimmers: the influence of coach and teammates.

Science.gov (United States)

Santi, Giampaolo; Bruton, Adam; Pietrantoni, Luca; Mellalieu, Stephen

2014-01-01

This study investigated how coach and teammates influence masters athletes' sport commitment, and the effect of functional and obligatory commitments on participation in masters swimming. The sample consisted of 523 masters swimmers (330 males and 193 females) aged between 22 and 83 years (M = 39.00, SD = 10.42). A bi-dimensional commitment scale was used to measure commitment dimensions and perceived influence from social agents. Structural equation modelling analysis was conducted to evaluate the influence of social agents on functional and obligatory commitments, and the predictive capabilities of the two types of commitment towards sport participation. Support provided by coach and teammates increased functional commitment, constraints from these social agents determined higher obligatory commitment, and coach constraints negatively impacted functional commitment. In addition, both commitment types predicted training participation, with functional commitment increasing participation in team training sessions, and obligatory commitment increasing the hours of individual training. The findings suggest that in order to increase participation in masters swimming teams and reduce non-supervised training, coach and teammates should exhibit a supportive attitude and avoid over expectation.

Factor analysis and Mokken scaling of the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire in nurses.

Science.gov (United States)

Al-Yami, M; Galdas, P; Watson, R

2018-03-22

To generate an Arabic version of the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire that would be easily understood by Arabic speakers and would be sensitive to Arabic culture. The nursing workforce in Saudi Arabia is undergoing a process of Saudization but there is a need to understand the factors that will help to retain this workforce. No organizational commitment tools exist in Arabic that are specifically designed for health organizations. An Arabic version of the organizational commitment tool could aid Arabic speaking employers to understand their employees' perceptions of their organizations. Translation and back-translation followed by factor analysis (principal components analysis and confirmatory factor analysis) to test the factorial validity and item response theory (Mokken scaling). A two-factor structure was obtained for the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire comprising Factor 1: Value commitment; and Factor 2: Commitment to stay with acceptable reliability measured by internal consistency. A Mokken scale was obtained including items from both factors showing a hierarchy of items running from commitment to the organization and commitment to self. This study shows that the Arabic version of the OCQ retained the established two-factor structure of the original English-language version. Although the two factors - 'value commitment' and 'commitment to stay' - repudiate the original developers' single factor claim. A useful insight into the structure of the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire has been obtained with the novel addition of a hierarchical scale. The Organizational Commitment Questionnaire is now ready to be used with nurses in the Arab speaking world and could be used a tool to measure the contemporary commitment of nursing employees and in future interventions aimed at increasing commitment and retention of valuable nursing staff. © 2018 International Council of Nurses.

Exercisers' identities and exercise dependence: the mediating effect of exercise commitment.

Science.gov (United States)

Lu, Frank Jing-Horng; Hsu, Eva Ya-Wen; Wang, Junn-Ming; Huang, Mei-Yao; Chang, Jo-Ning; Wang, Chien-Hsin

2012-10-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the associations of exercise identity, exercise commitment, exercise dependence, and, particularly, the mediating effects of exercise commitment on the relationship between exercise identity and exercise dependence. 253 Taiwanese regular exercisers completed measures, including the Exercise Dependence Scale-Revised, the Exercise Identity Scale, the Exercise Commitment Scale, and the Godin Leisure Time Exercise Questionnaire. Results showed that exercise identity, exercise dependence, and two types of exercise commitment were moderately to highly correlated. Furthermore, structural equation modelling indicated that a "have to" commitment partially mediated the relationship between exercise identity and exercise dependence. Based on the mediating role of a "have to" commitment, the findings are particularly informative to exercise instructors and for exercise program managers.

Economic dispatch using chaotic bat algorithm

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Adarsh, B.R.; Raghunathan, T.; Jayabarathi, T.; Yang, Xin-She

2016-01-01

This paper presents the application of a new metaheuristic optimization algorithm, the chaotic bat algorithm for solving the economic dispatch problem involving a number of equality and inequality constraints such as power balance, prohibited operating zones and ramp rate limits. Transmission losses and multiple fuel options are also considered for some problems. The chaotic bat algorithm, a variant of the basic bat algorithm, is obtained by incorporating chaotic sequences to enhance its performance. Five different example problems comprising 6, 13, 20, 40 and 160 generating units are solved to demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm. The algorithm requires little tuning by the user, and the results obtained show that it either outperforms or compares favorably with several existing techniques reported in literature. - Highlights: • The chaotic bat algorithm, a new metaheuristic optimization algorithm has been used. • The problem solved – the economic dispatch problem – is nonlinear, discontinuous. • It has number of equality and inequality constraints. • The algorithm has been demonstrated to be applicable on high dimensional problems.

Symbiotic organisms search algorithm for dynamic economic dispatch with valve-point effects

Science.gov (United States)

Sonmez, Yusuf; Kahraman, H. Tolga; Dosoglu, M. Kenan; Guvenc, Ugur; Duman, Serhat

2017-05-01

In this study, symbiotic organisms search (SOS) algorithm is proposed to solve the dynamic economic dispatch with valve-point effects problem, which is one of the most important problems of the modern power system. Some practical constraints like valve-point effects, ramp rate limits and prohibited operating zones have been considered as solutions. Proposed algorithm was tested on five different test cases in 5 units, 10 units and 13 units systems. The obtained results have been compared with other well-known metaheuristic methods reported before. Results show that proposed algorithm has a good convergence and produces better results than other methods.

Possibility, impossibility, and cheat sensitivity of quantum-bit string commitment

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Buhrman, H.; Christandl, M.; Hayden, P.; Lo, H.-K.; Wehner, S.

2008-01-01

Unconditionally secure nonrelativistic bit commitment is known to be impossible in both the classical and the quantum worlds. But when committing to a string of n bits at once, how far can we stretch the quantum limits? In this paper, we introduce a framework for quantum schemes where Alice commits

Predictors of career commitment and job performance of Jordanian nurses.

Science.gov (United States)

Mrayyan, Majd T; Al-Faouri, Ibrahim

2008-04-01

Few studies focused on nurses' career commitment and nurses' job performance. This research aimed at studying variables of nurses' career commitment and job performance, and assessing the relationship between the two concepts as well as their predictors. A survey was used to collect data from a convenient sample of 640 Registered Nurses employed in 24 hospitals. Nurses 'agreed' to be committed to their careers and they were performing their jobs 'well'. As a part of career commitment, nurses were willing to be involved, in their own time, in projects that would benefit patient care. The highest and lowest means of nurses' job performance were reported for the following aspects: leadership, critical care, teaching/collaboration, planning/evaluation, interpersonal relations/communications and professional development. Correlating of total scores of nurses' career commitment and job performance revealed the presence of a significant and positive relationship between the two concepts. Stepwise regression models revealed that the explained variance in nurses' career commitment was 23.9% and that in nurses' job performance was 29.9%. Nurse managers should promote nursing as a career and they should develop and implement various strategies to increase nurses' career commitment and nurses' job performance. These strategies should focus on nurse retention, staff development and quality of care. Nurses' career commitment and job performance are inter-related complex concepts that require further studies to understand, promote and maintain these positive factors in work environments.

The measurement artifact in the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire.

Science.gov (United States)

Caught, K; Shadur, M A; Rodwell, J J

2000-12-01

This study empirically examined the debate in the literature regarding the dimensionality of the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire. The sample comprised 803 employees from organizations in the information technology and hospitality industries. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire appears to have a two-factor structure, with one factor consisting of positively worded items and the other factor, negatively worded items. Scores on both factors correlated significantly with job satisfaction, suggesting that both factors appear to be measuring a similar aspect of organizational commitment and that they present as two factors given as measurement artifacts of the item wording.

New Graduate Nurses' Professional Commitment: Antecedents and Outcomes.

Science.gov (United States)

Guerrero, Sylvie; Chênevert, Denis; Kilroy, Steven

2017-09-01

This study examines the factors that increase new graduate nurses' professional commitment and how this professional commitment in turn affects professional turnover intentions, anxiety, and physical health symptoms. The study was carried out in association with the nursing undergraduate's affiliation of Quebec, Canada. A three-wave longitudinal design was employed among nursing students. Nurses were surveyed before they entered the labor market, and then twice after they started working. Participants were contacted by post at their home address. The hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling. Professional commitment explains why good work characteristics and the provision of organizational resources related to patient care reduce nurses' anxiety and physical symptoms, and increase their professional turnover intentions. Pre-entry professional perceptions moderate the effects of work characteristics on professional commitment such that when participants hold positive pre-entry perceptions about the profession, the propensity to develop professional commitment is higher. There is a worldwide shortage of nurses. From a nurse training perspective, it is important to create realistic perceptions of the nursing role. In hospitals, providing a good work environment and resources conducive to their professional ethos is critical for ensuring nurses do not leave the profession early on in their careers. © 2017 Sigma Theta Tau International.

A method exploiting direct communication between phasor measurement units for power system wide-area protection and control algorithms.

Science.gov (United States)

Almas, Muhammad Shoaib; Vanfretti, Luigi

2017-01-01

Synchrophasor measurements from Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) are the primary sensors used to deploy Wide-Area Monitoring, Protection and Control (WAMPAC) systems. PMUs stream out synchrophasor measurements through the IEEE C37.118.2 protocol using TCP/IP or UDP/IP. The proposed method establishes a direct communication between two PMUs, thus eliminating the requirement of an intermediate phasor data concentrator, data mediator and/or protocol parser and thereby ensuring minimum communication latency without considering communication link delays. This method allows utilizing synchrophasor measurements internally in a PMU to deploy custom protection and control algorithms. These algorithms are deployed using protection logic equations which are supported by all the PMU vendors. Moreover, this method reduces overall equipment cost as the algorithms execute internally in a PMU and therefore does not require any additional controller for their deployment. The proposed method can be utilized for fast prototyping of wide-area measurements based protection and control applications. The proposed method is tested by coupling commercial PMUs as Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) with Opal-RT's eMEGAsim Real-Time Simulator (RTS). As illustrative example, anti-islanding protection application is deployed using proposed method and its performance is assessed. The essential points in the method are: •Bypassing intermediate phasor data concentrator or protocol parsers as the synchrophasors are communicated directly between the PMUs (minimizes communication delays).•Wide Area Protection and Control Algorithm is deployed using logic equations in the client PMU, therefore eliminating the requirement for an external hardware controller (cost curtailment)•Effortless means to exploit PMU measurements in an environment familiar to protection engineers.

The Relationship between Transformational Leadership and Organizational Commitment in Nonprofit Long Term Care Organizations: The Direct Care Worker Perspective

Science.gov (United States)

Porter, Jeanette A.

2015-01-01

The United States population is rapidly aging, and retaining direct care workers (DCWs) will continue to be a workforce concern for the industry in addressing the demand for long term care services. To date, scant literature exists that addresses the DCW perspective of leadership behaviors and their influence on organizational commitment. To…

Organisational values and organisational commitment: do nurses' ethno-cultural differences matter?

Science.gov (United States)

Hendel, Tova; Kagan, Ilya

2014-05-01

To examine the association between perceived organisational values and organisational commitment among Israeli nurses in relation to their ethno-cultural background. Differences and the discrepancy between individuals' organisational values and those of their organisational culture are a potential source of adjustment difficulties. Organisational values are considered to be the bond of the individual to their organisation. In multicultural societies, such as Israel, the differences in perception of organisational values and organisational commitment may be reflected within workgroups. Data were collected using a questionnaire among 106 hospital nurses. About 59.8% of the sample were Israeli-born. A positive correlation was found between organisational values and organisational commitment. Significant differences were found in organisational values and organisational commitment between Israeli-born-, USSR-born- and Ethiopian-born nurses. The socio-demographic profile modified the effect of organisational values on organisational commitment: when the nurse was male, Muslim, religiously orthodox and without academic education, the effect of organisational values on organisational commitment was higher. Findings confirm the role of culture and ethnicity in the perception of organisational values and the level of organisational commitment among nurses. Assessing ethno-cultural differences in organisational values and organisational commitment provides a fuller understanding of nurses' ability to adjust to their work environment and helps nurse managers devise means to increase nurses' commitment. © 2012 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Petitioning for Involuntary Commitment for Chemical Dependency by Medical Services.

Science.gov (United States)

Lamoureux, Ian C; Schutt, Paul E; Rasmussen, Keith G

2017-09-01

Patients who have chemical dependency (CD) are commonly encountered on medical and surgical wards, often for illnesses and injuries sustained as a direct result of their substance abuse. When these patients are repeatedly admitted to the hospital in certain states that provide a legal framework to commit chemically dependent persons to a treatment facility, clinicians often wonder whether they should initiate that process. Should consulting psychiatrists choose to initiate the commitment process, they put into motion a resource-intensive, time-consuming mechanism, with uncertain outcomes, both in the courtroom and at the bedside. Petitioning for involuntary commitment to chemical dependency treatment of a patient from medical and surgical services is poorly understood. In this study, we examined a series of patients for whom petitions for judicial commitment in the state of Minnesota were entered over a 12-month period, and evaluated the likelihood of commitment to treatment, the demographics of patients involved, and the outcomes for this series of patients. Three vignettes are presented to illustrate the severity of these patients' illnesses and potential outcomes of the process. We further describe potential limitations of the commitment system and alternatives to CD commitment that could be explored further. © 2017 American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.

48 CFR 852.215-71 - Evaluation factor commitments.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... 48 Federal Acquisition Regulations System 5 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Evaluation factor....215-71 Evaluation factor commitments. As prescribed in 815.304-71(b), insert the following clause: Evaluation Factor Commitments (DEC 2009) The offeror agrees, if awarded a contract, to use the service...

The Impact Of Demographic Factors On Organisational Commitment ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

The Study Investigated the Impact of demographic factors on organization commitment among workers in selected work organizations in Lagos State of Nigeria. This was for the purpose of ascertaining the relevance of demographic factors on workers' commitment to organizations goal achievement in Nigeria. The ex-post ...

48 CFR 1501.602-3 - Ratification of unauthorized commitments.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... to present its claim to the General Accounting Office in accordance with the instructions contained... commitments, whether oral or written and without regard to dollar value. Examples of unauthorized commitments...

Relationship between organisational commitment and burnout syndrome: a canonical correlation approach.

Science.gov (United States)

Enginyurt, Ozgur; Cankaya, Soner; Aksay, Kadir; Tunc, Taner; Koc, Bozkurt; Bas, Orhan; Ozer, Erdal

2016-04-01

Objective Burnout syndrome can significantly reduce the performance of health workers. Although many factors have been identified as antecedents of burnout, few studies have investigated the role of organisational commitment in its development. The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationships between subdimensions of burnout syndrome (emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and personal accomplishment) and subdimensions of organisational commitment (affective commitment, continuance commitment and normative commitment). Methods The present study was a cross-sectional survey of physicians and other healthcare employees working in the Ministry of Health Ordu University Education and Research Hospital. The sample consisted of 486 healthcare workers. Data were collected using the Maslach Burnout Inventory and the Organisation Commitment Scale, and were analysed using the canonical correlation approach. Results The first of three canonical correlation coefficients between pairs of canonical variables (Ui , burnout syndrome and Vi, organisational commitment) was found to be statistically significant. Emotional exhaustion was found to contribute most towards the explanatory capacity of canonical variables estimated from the subdimensions of burnout syndrome, whereas affective commitment provided the largest contribution towards the explanatory capacity of canonical variables estimated from the subdimensions of organisational commitment. Conclusions The results of the present study indicate that affective commitment is the primary determinant of burnout syndrome in healthcare professionals. What is known about the topic? Organisational commitment and burnout syndrome are the most important criteria in predicting health workforce performance. An increasing number of studies in recent years have clearly indicated the field's continued relevance and importance. Conversely, canonical correlation analysis (CCA) is a technique for describing the relationship

Employee commitment and motivation: a conceptual analysis and integrative model.

Science.gov (United States)

Myer, John P; Becker, Thomas E; Vandenberghe, Christian

2004-12-01

Theorists and researchers interested in employee commitment and motivation have not made optimal use of each other's work. Commitment researchers seldom address the motivational processes through which commitment affects behavior, and motivation researchers have not recognized important distinctions in the forms, foci, and bases of commitment. To encourage greater cross-fertilization, the authors present an integrative framework in which commitment is presented as one of several energizing forces for motivated behavior. E. A. Locke's (1997) model of the work motivation process and J. P. Meyer and L. Herscovitch's (2001) model of workplace commitments serve as the foundation for the development of this new framework. To facilitate the merger, a new concept, goal regulation, is derived from self-determination theory (E. L. Deci & R. M. Ryan, 1985) and regulatory focus theory (E. I. Higgins, 1997). By including goal regulation, it is acknowledged that motivated behavior can be accompanied by different mindsets that have particularly important implications for the explanation and prediction of discretionary work behavior. 2004 APA, all rights reserved

Teacher Commitment and Its Effects on Student Achievement in American High Schools

Science.gov (United States)

Park, Insim

2005-01-01

This study explored the effects of teacher commitment on student achievement. Three teacher commitment dimensions of organizational, professional, and student commitment were derived. The three-dimensional teacher commitment measurement model was tested by a confirmatory factor analysis. Then, the relationships among individual and organizational…

Great Lakes waters: radiation dose commitments, potential health effects, and cost-benefit considerations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ainsworth, E.J.

1977-07-01

In 1972, a Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement was signed by the United States and Canadian Governments. It was stipulated that the operation and effectiveness of the agreement were to be reviewed comprehensively in 1977. Aspects of the agreement concern nondegradation of Great Lakes waters and maintenance of levels of radioactivity or other potential pollutants at levels considered as low as practicable. A refined radioactivity objective of one millirem is proposed in the Water Quality Agreement. The implications of adoption of this objective are not known fully. The Division of Environmental Impact Studies was commissioned by ERDA's Division of Technology Overview to summarize the information available on the current levels of radioactivity in Great Lakes waters, compute radiation-dose commitment (integrated dose over 50 years after consumption of 2.2 liters of water of one year), and to comment on the feasibility and cost-benefit considerations associated with the refined one-millirem objective. Current levels of radioactivity in the waters of Lakes Michigan, Ontario, Erie, and Huron result in dose commitments in excess of 1 mrem for whole body and 6 mrem for bone. Future projections of isotope concentrations in Great lakes water indicate similar dose commitments for drinking water in the year 2050. Reduction of the levels of radioactivity in Great Lakes waters is not feasible, but cost-benefit considerations support removal of 226 Ra and 90 Sr through interceptive technology before water consumption. Adoption of the one-millirem objective is not propitious

An examination of organizational and team commitment in a self-directed team environment.

Science.gov (United States)

Bishop, James W; Scott, K Dow

2000-06-01

A model hypothesizing differential relationships among predictor variables and individual commitment to the organization and work team was tested. Data from 485 members of sewing teams supported the existence of differential relationships between predictors and organizational and team commitment. In particular, intersender conflict and satisfaction with coworkers were more strongly related to team commitment than to organizational commitment. Resource-related conflict and satisfaction with supervision were more strongly related to organizational commitment than to team commitment. Perceived task interdependence was strongly related to both commitment foci. Contrary to prediction, the relationships between perceived task interdependence and the 2 commitment foci were not significantly different. Relationships with antecedent variables help explain how differential levels of commitment to the 2 foci may be formed. Indirect effects of exogenous variables are reported.

Organizational Commitment DEOCS 4.1 Construct Validity Summary

Science.gov (United States)

2017-08-01

Porter, L. W. (1979). The measurement of organizational commitment. Journal of vocational behavior, 14(2), 224-247. Norusis, M.J., 1993. SPSS for...Windows Base System User’s Guide Release 6.0, SPSS Inc. Porter, L. W., Crampon, W. J., & Smith, F. J. (1976). Organizational commitment and managerial

Job anxiety, organizational commitment and job satisfaction: An ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Job anxiety, organizational commitment and job satisfaction: An empirical assessment of supervisors in the state of Eritrea. ... The findings of the present research revealed that (i) recognition and self-esteem facets of job anxiety were found to be significantly related to job satisfaction, (ii) facets of organizational commitment ...

Teachers: Emotional Intelligence, Job Satisfaction, and Organizational Commitment

Science.gov (United States)

Anari, Nahid Naderi

2012-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between emotional intelligence and job satisfaction, between emotional intelligence and organizational commitment, and between job satisfaction and organizational commitment among high-school English teachers. Furthermore, the study aims to examine the role of gender and age in…

Organizational commitment and its impact on employees’ individual interactions

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

A.R. Dabir

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Organizational commitment is one of the most widely researched topics in the field of organizational behavior. The main objective of this study was to investigate the impact of organizational commitment on individual interactions which was conducted in Municipality of Karaj. To achieve this objective, the data was collected using the Standard questionnaires applying descriptive statistics and inferential statistical methods within the population consisted of 400 employees of Karaj municipality. The present research is a descriptive and co relational study and is of applied type. The results indicated that there is a significant relationship between the dimensions of employees’ individual interaction and organizational commitment in Karaj Municipality. Besides, correlation with other variables of individual engagement and commitment were not verified. At the end, it is suggested to Karaj Municipality that regarding human force as human capital and before recruiting and employment and maintenance, make attempt to identify internal and personality features of them to design required plans in the promotion of organization commitment and drive tomore exploitation.

Transcriptional regulation of lineage commitment--a stochastic model of cell fate decisions.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jose Teles

Full Text Available Molecular mechanisms employed by individual multipotent cells at the point of lineage commitment remain largely uncharacterized. Current paradigms span from instructive to noise-driven mechanisms. Of considerable interest is also whether commitment involves a limited set of genes or the entire transcriptional program, and to what extent gene expression configures multiple trajectories into commitment. Importantly, the transient nature of the commitment transition confounds the experimental capture of committing cells. We develop a computational framework that simulates stochastic commitment events, and affords mechanistic exploration of the fate transition. We use a combined modeling approach guided by gene expression classifier methods that infers a time-series of stochastic commitment events from experimental growth characteristics and gene expression profiling of individual hematopoietic cells captured immediately before and after commitment. We define putative regulators of commitment and probabilistic rules of transition through machine learning methods, and employ clustering and correlation analyses to interrogate gene regulatory interactions in multipotent cells. Against this background, we develop a Monte Carlo time-series stochastic model of transcription where the parameters governing promoter status, mRNA production and mRNA decay in multipotent cells are fitted to experimental static gene expression distributions. Monte Carlo time is converted to physical time using cell culture kinetic data. Probability of commitment in time is a function of gene expression as defined by a logistic regression model obtained from experimental single-cell expression data. Our approach should be applicable to similar differentiating systems where single cell data is available. Within our system, we identify robust model solutions for the multipotent population within physiologically reasonable values and explore model predictions with regard to

Policy implications of considering pre-commitments in U.S. aggregate energy demand system

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Rowland, Christopher S.; Mjelde, James W.; Dharmasena, Senarath

2017-01-01

Linear approximations of the Generalized Almost Ideal Demand System and Almost Ideal Demand System for U.S. energy are compared to contrast the explicit inclusion and exclusion of pre-committed consumption levels. Results indicate that pre-commitment levels, the quantity of a good that is consumed in the short run with little regard for price, helps to better explain energy demand in the U.S. compared to the system that does not explicitly consider pre-commitments. Policy implications are if pre-commitments are a legitimate assumption, larger price changes are necessary to achieve a given policy objective than if there are no pre-commitments. - Highlights: • Pre-commitments are the quantity that is consumed with little regard for price. • Demand systems with pre-commitment levels better explain energy demand. • Elasticities from assuming pre-commitments are more elastic. • Estimated elasticities apply to discretionary and not pre-commitment consumption. • Pre-commitments require larger price changes to achieve a given policy objective.

Using internal marketing to improve organizational commitment and service quality.

Science.gov (United States)

Tsai, Yafang; Wu, Shih-Wang

2011-12-01

The purpose of this article was to explore the structural relationships among internal marketing, organizational commitment and service quality and to practically apply the findings. Internal marketing is a way to assist hospitals in improving the quality of the services that they provide while executing highly labour-intensive tasks. Through internal marketing, a hospital can enhance the organizational commitment of its employees to attain higher service quality. This research uses a cross-sectional study to survey nursing staff perceptions about internal marketing, organizational commitment and service quality. The results of the survey are evaluated using equation models. The sample includes three regional hospitals in Taiwan. Three hundred and fifty questionnaires were distributed and 288 valid questionnaires were returned, yielding a response rate of 82.3%. The survey process lasted from 1 February to 9 March 2007. The data were analysed with SPSS 12.0, including descriptive statistics based on demographics. In addition, the influence of demographics on internal marketing, organizational commitment and service quality is examined using one-way anova. The findings reveal that internal marketing plays a critical role in explaining employee perceptions of organizational commitment and service quality. Organizational commitment is the mediator between internal marketing and service quality. The results indicate that internal marketing has an impact on both organizational commitment and service quality. Internal marketing should be emphasized to influence frontline nursing staff, thereby helping to create better organizational commitment and service quality. © 2011 The Authors. Journal of Advanced Nursing © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

An improved unit decommitment algorithm for combined heat and power systems

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Rong, Aiying; Lahdelma, R.; Grunow, Martin

2009-01-01

can decommit (switch off) the least cost-efficient plants properly. The improved initial solution for the committed plants is generated by a heuristic procedure. The heuristic procedure utilizes both the Lagrangian relaxation principle that relaxes the system-wide (heat and power) demand constraints...... cases. The maximum improvement is 11.3% and the maximum degradation is only 0.04% (only two sub-cases out of 216 sub-cases) with an average improvement of 0.3-0.5%, for different planning horizons. Moreover, IUD is more efficient (1.1-3 times faster on average) than UD. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights...

Competency management: Balancing between commitment and control

OpenAIRE

Heinsman, Hanneke; de Hoogh, Annebel H. B.; Koopman, Paul L.; van Muijen, Jaap J.

2006-01-01

This study investigated the relationships between commitment and control approaches and the use of competency management by adopting the theory of planned behavior. Questionnaires were filled out by 43 human resource experts working in different organizations. We expected components of the theory of planned behavior to mediate the relationship between commitment and control approaches and the use of competency management (behavior). Regression analysis showed that perceived behavioral control...

Voluntary "involuntary" commitment--the briar-patch syndrome.

Science.gov (United States)

Miller, R D

1980-01-01

Szasz and others have pointed out that many so-called voluntary admissions to mental hospitals have various elements of coercion involved, and are thus not truly voluntary. The author contends that the converse situation is also true, that many patients admitted under involuntary commitment papers arrange for their own commitments. Reasons for such choices are discussed in the context of a review of the literature and several case histories.

A Flexible Reservation Algorithm for Advance Network Provisioning

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Balman, Mehmet; Chaniotakis, Evangelos; Shoshani, Arie; Sim, Alex

2010-04-12

Many scientific applications need support from a communication infrastructure that provides predictable performance, which requires effective algorithms for bandwidth reservations. Network reservation systems such as ESnet's OSCARS, establish guaranteed bandwidth of secure virtual circuits for a certain bandwidth and length of time. However, users currently cannot inquire about bandwidth availability, nor have alternative suggestions when reservation requests fail. In general, the number of reservation options is exponential with the number of nodes n, and current reservation commitments. We present a novel approach for path finding in time-dependent networks taking advantage of user-provided parameters of total volume and time constraints, which produces options for earliest completion and shortest duration. The theoretical complexity is only O(n2r2) in the worst-case, where r is the number of reservations in the desired time interval. We have implemented our algorithm and developed efficient methodologies for incorporation into network reservation frameworks. Performance measurements confirm the theoretical predictions.

Relationship between sport commitment and sport consumer behavior

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Norberta Elisa Fernandes

2013-12-01

Full Text Available The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between sport commitment and three types of sport consumer behaviors: participation frequency, sporting goods and media consumption. A survey was conducted among sport participants of both individual and team sports, fitness and outdoor activities (n= 900. The survey included questions related to demographic information, measures of sport commitment and sport consumption behavior. The results analyzed trough structural equation modeling showed that the sport commitment influences positively the participation frequency, sporting goods consumption and media consumption. Implications of these results are discussed and suggestions for future research on sport consumers are provided.

The Effect of Organizatonal Learning on Organizational Commitment in Accommodation Sector

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Özlem Yenidoğan

2017-05-01

Full Text Available The research was done with the purpose of identifying the relationship between two conceptual structures which were organizational learning and organizational commitment. Main hypothesis was identified as “There is a positive correlation between employees’ organizational learning inclination and organizational commitment.” In order to identify the relation between two conceptual structures, Likert type scale was used by using the literature. Stated likert type scales were applied for 279 people including managers’ and employees’ and statistical analysis on gathered datas from 260 questionnaires was done. In the research, both the correlation between organizational learning and sub-dimensions of organizational commitment which classified as emotional, normative, continuance commitment and the correlation between employees’ age, level of education, position and working period variables and organizational commitment were examined. Regression analysis was used in order to identify the correlation between organizational learning and organizational commitment which was the main hypothesis. Other hypotheses were tested by one way analysis of variance. It was found that that there was a positive correlation between organizational learning and organizational commitment. Result of the analysis indicates that in order to increase organizational learning inclination of managers and employees for developing their organizational commitment, applications for organizational learning should be given importance in companies.

Balancing organizational and professional commitments in Professional Service Firm

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jørgensen, Frances; Becker, Karen

2015-01-01

Due to their potential to positively influence sales quality and performance and reduce employee turnover in service organizations, HR practices targeting employee commitment have received considerable attention in the HRM literature in recent years. Parallel to this, there has been increasing...... financial investment firms. Our findings suggest that in professional service firms, HR practices encourage high levels of organizational commitment primarily and most often through their influence on professional commitment and that HR practices related to flexible work design are essential in creating...

Unconditionally Secure and Universally Composable Commitments from Physical Assumptions

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Damgård, Ivan Bjerre; Scafuro, Alessandra

2013-01-01

We present a constant-round unconditional black-box compiler that transforms any ideal (i.e., statistically-hiding and statistically-binding) straight-line extractable commitment scheme, into an extractable and equivocal commitment scheme, therefore yielding to UC-security [9]. We exemplify the u...... of unconditional UC-security with (malicious) PUFs and stateless tokens, our compiler can be instantiated with any ideal straight-line extractable commitment scheme, thus allowing the use of various setup assumptions which may better fit the application or the technology available....

Emotional display rules and emotional labor: the moderating role of commitment.

Science.gov (United States)

Gosserand, Robin H; Diefendorff, James M

2005-11-01

The authors examined whether commitment to emotional display rules is a necessary condition for emotional display rules to affect behavior at work. Results using structural equation modeling revealed that display rule commitment moderated the relationships of emotional display rule perceptions with surface acting, deep acting, and positive affective delivery at work, such that the relationships were strong and positive when commitment to display rules was high and weak when commitment to display rules was low. These findings suggest that motivation plays a role in the emotional labor process in that individuals must be committed to display rules for these rules to affect behavior. ((c) 2005 APA, all rights reserved).

Internet Pornography Consumption and Relationship Commitment of Filipino Married Individuals

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Racidon P. Bernarte

2016-08-01

Full Text Available Internet pornography has many adverse effects, especially to the relationship commitment. The use of pornography directly correlates to a decrease in sexual intimacy. Hence, this might lead to weakening of the relationship of their partner. To find out the relevance of the claim, the researchers aimed to explore the relationship of Internet pornography consumption to the relationship commitment of married individuals in the Philippines. Different factors such as level of satisfaction, investment, quality of alternatives, relationship stability and viewing habits were also considered in determining the relationship of watching online pornography and the relationship commitment of Filipino married individuals. The study used the descriptive-correlational design. A self-administered survey was distributed to 400.It is revealed that Internet pornography consumption has an adverse effect on the relationship commitment of married Filipino couples. Furthermore, watching porn online weakened the relationship commitment that leads to an unstable relationship. This investigation found out that internet pornography consumption has a nominal negative effect on the relationship commitment of Filipino married individuals. It is proven on this study that internet pornography consumption can weaken the relationship commitment of married individuals thus, it promotes knowledge about numerous effect of it, negatively and even positively. This paper also contributes to pornography related researches on the country which can give further awareness about the said area.

Parenting--Challenge and Commitment

Science.gov (United States)

Luckey, Eleanore Braun

1973-01-01

This is a revised version of the National Council on Family Relations Presidential address delivered November 3, 1972, Portland Oregon. This address concerned the new constitution and reorganization of N.C.F.R. and a plea for reexamination of the membership's commitment to family issues. (JC)

The Fold of Commitment

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Raastrup Kristensen, Anders; Pedersen, Michael

2016-01-01

This paper serves two purposes. First, a rereading of Douglas McGregor’s An uneasy look at performance appraisal serves to show how McGregor’s conceptualization of commitment as a question of integrating personal goals with organizational purpose has helped shape founding the modern understanding...

Islamic Counselling Model to Increase Religious Commitment (Study of Students at the University UIN Bandung

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Fenti Hikmawati

2014-06-01

Full Text Available The study aims to test the effectiveness of Islamic counseling model for helping the students to tight their religious commitment. The religious commitment is covered in three major Islamic teachings: Iman (faith, Islam (surrender to Allah, and lhsan (state of being observed by Allah. The model of Islamic counseling aims to tight students' religious commitment must to be applied immediately because the preface study reveals some students' religious commitment were not strong enough, their behavior and thinking symptoms tend to not appropriate yet with Islam norm among their association and conception toward the truth of God. To achieve the aim, the study was carried out with three steps: (1 designing a model of counseling; (2 trying out field study, using pretest-post test control group experimental design with 140 students of Islamic Religion Education, the Faculty of Tarbiyah and Teaching, State Islamic University, Sunan Gunung Djati, Bandung. Of 140 students, 70 students are from the classes: A (32 people, B (38 people, involved in control group and the test; 37 people from class C, and 33 students from class D involved in the experiment group, and; (3 designing a final model by revising the model tried-out. The variable involved three major Islamic dimensions: the iman, Islam, and ihsan of the students. The model was designed based on the theory put forward by Musfir bin Said Az-Zalmmi, that is, an integrated counseling model. The model combines and employs the ideas from other concepts into a tightly united concept, called Islamic concept. Upon completing analysis, it was found that the new concept is significantly effective to enhance students' religious commitment. A Model of Islamic Counseling (MIC is an alternative-counseling model that can be employed for teenagers/ students to enhance their religious commitment. The study recommends that: (1 MIC can be applied to fifth semester students in the Faculty of Tarbiyah State Islamic

Organisational commitment levels of faculty members in sport ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

This study aimed to reveal the organisational commitment levels of faculty members to teaching at higher education institutions in Turkey. To be able to obtain participants' views, the organisational commitment scale developed by Allen and Meyer in 1990 was used and data was analysed by means of the SPSS 17.0 ...

Quantum bit commitment with misaligned reference frames

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Harrow, Aram; Oliveira, Roberto; Terhal, Barbara M.

2006-01-01

Suppose that Alice and Bob define their coordinate axes differently, and the change of reference frame between them is given by a probability distribution μ over SO(3). We show that this uncertainty of reference frame is of no use for bit commitment when μ is uniformly distributed over a (sub)group of SO(3), but other choices of μ can give rise to a partially or even arbitrarily secure bit commitment

Study on the Influence of Leadership Style on Employee’s Organizational Commitment

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Lin

2018-03-01

Talent is the core competitiveness of an enterprise, how to retain talent, inspire their creative, exert its advantages for the enterprise to bring profit maximization and value appreciation. It has always been the focus of enterprises and scholars. A great number of studies have shown that organizational commitment has an important impact on employees’ attitudes, thoughts and behaviors, and leadership style is also an important variable which affects the organizational commitment of employees. Through the questionnaire survey, the statistical software SPSS24.0 empirical analysis of the collected data shows that there is a positive correlation between the style of leadership and the commitment of the employee and the correlation with the employee’s normative commitment is not significant; The established leadership is negatively correlated with the employee’s emotional commitment and normative commitment, but it is not significant with the continuous commitment.

SU-E-T-605: Performance Evaluation of MLC Leaf-Sequencing Algorithms in Head-And-Neck IMRT

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Jing, J; Lin, H [Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, Anhui (China); Chow, J [Princess Margaret Hospital, Toronto, ON (Canada)

2015-06-15

Purpose: To investigate the efficiency of three multileaf collimator (MLC) leaf-sequencing algorithms proposed by Galvin et al, Chen et al and Siochi et al using external beam treatment plans for head-and-neck intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT). Methods: IMRT plans for head-and-neck were created using the CORVUS treatment planning system. The plans were optimized and the fluence maps for all photon beams determined. Three different MLC leaf-sequencing algorithms based on Galvin et al, Chen et al and Siochi et al were used to calculate the final photon segmental fields and their monitor units in delivery. For comparison purpose, the maximum intensity of fluence map was kept constant in different plans. The number of beam segments and total number of monitor units were calculated for the three algorithms. Results: From results of number of beam segments and total number of monitor units, we found that algorithm of Galvin et al had the largest number of monitor unit which was about 70% larger than the other two algorithms. Moreover, both algorithms of Galvin et al and Siochi et al have relatively lower number of beam segment compared to Chen et al. Although values of number of beam segment and total number of monitor unit calculated by different algorithms varied with the head-and-neck plans, it can be seen that algorithms of Galvin et al and Siochi et al performed well with a lower number of beam segment, though algorithm of Galvin et al had a larger total number of monitor units than Siochi et al. Conclusion: Although performance of the leaf-sequencing algorithm varied with different IMRT plans having different fluence maps, an evaluation is possible based on the calculated number of beam segment and monitor unit. In this study, algorithm by Siochi et al was found to be more efficient in the head-and-neck IMRT. The Project Sponsored by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (J2014HGXJ0094) and the Scientific Research Foundation for the

SU-E-T-605: Performance Evaluation of MLC Leaf-Sequencing Algorithms in Head-And-Neck IMRT

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Jing, J; Lin, H; Chow, J

2015-01-01

Purpose: To investigate the efficiency of three multileaf collimator (MLC) leaf-sequencing algorithms proposed by Galvin et al, Chen et al and Siochi et al using external beam treatment plans for head-and-neck intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT). Methods: IMRT plans for head-and-neck were created using the CORVUS treatment planning system. The plans were optimized and the fluence maps for all photon beams determined. Three different MLC leaf-sequencing algorithms based on Galvin et al, Chen et al and Siochi et al were used to calculate the final photon segmental fields and their monitor units in delivery. For comparison purpose, the maximum intensity of fluence map was kept constant in different plans. The number of beam segments and total number of monitor units were calculated for the three algorithms. Results: From results of number of beam segments and total number of monitor units, we found that algorithm of Galvin et al had the largest number of monitor unit which was about 70% larger than the other two algorithms. Moreover, both algorithms of Galvin et al and Siochi et al have relatively lower number of beam segment compared to Chen et al. Although values of number of beam segment and total number of monitor unit calculated by different algorithms varied with the head-and-neck plans, it can be seen that algorithms of Galvin et al and Siochi et al performed well with a lower number of beam segment, though algorithm of Galvin et al had a larger total number of monitor units than Siochi et al. Conclusion: Although performance of the leaf-sequencing algorithm varied with different IMRT plans having different fluence maps, an evaluation is possible based on the calculated number of beam segment and monitor unit. In this study, algorithm by Siochi et al was found to be more efficient in the head-and-neck IMRT. The Project Sponsored by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (J2014HGXJ0094) and the Scientific Research Foundation for the

Organisational commitment and turnover intentions: evidence from Nigerian paramilitary organisation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dotun Olaleye Faloye

2014-09-01

Full Text Available This study explores the empirical link between different dimensions of organizational commitment and turnover intentions on Nigeria paramilitary organisation. A literature review of organizational commitment and employee turnover provides the basis for the research hypotheses. Four research hypotheses were formulated and tested at 95% and 99% confidence level. The study adopted a survey research design. A self-administered questionnaire was used, involving 144 respondents from selected paramilitary organisation in Akure, Nigeria to collect data and testing the existing theory. Data collected were analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistical techniques. In contrary to theory, the study revealed a weak positive relationship between organizational commitment dimensions (affective, continuance and normative and turnover intentions. The relationships are statistically significant expect the one between turnover intention and normative commitment which is statistically insignificant. The study concluded that the commitment of an employee to organisational goals, missions, and values is not enough to predict his/her stay in the organisation. There are other variables apart from organisational commitment that are predictor of employees’ intentions to quit. Thus, organisations should look beyond forces in their internal environment, when considering reduction in employee’s turnover intentions and the actual employee’s turnover.

A New DG Multiobjective Optimization Method Based on an Improved Evolutionary Algorithm

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Wanxing Sheng

2013-01-01

Full Text Available A distribution generation (DG multiobjective optimization method based on an improved Pareto evolutionary algorithm is investigated in this paper. The improved Pareto evolutionary algorithm, which introduces a penalty factor in the objective function constraints, uses an adaptive crossover and a mutation operator in the evolutionary process and combines a simulated annealing iterative process. The proposed algorithm is utilized to the optimize DG injection models to maximize DG utilization while minimizing system loss and environmental pollution. A revised IEEE 33-bus system with multiple DG units was used to test the multiobjective optimization algorithm in a distribution power system. The proposed algorithm was implemented and compared with the strength Pareto evolutionary algorithm 2 (SPEA2, a particle swarm optimization (PSO algorithm, and nondominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NGSA-II. The comparison of the results demonstrates the validity and practicality of utilizing DG units in terms of economic dispatch and optimal operation in a distribution power system.

Internal marketing, customer orientation, and organizational commitment: moderating effects of work status.

Science.gov (United States)

Huang, Meiju; Chen, Mei-Yen

2013-08-01

Associations among internal marketing, customer orientation, and organizational commitment were examined, particularly with regard to the moderating effects of work status on the relationships between internal marketing and customer orientation or organizational commitment, in a cross-sectional design with structural equation modeling. Two studies (Ns = 119 and 251) were conducted among full- and part-time service employees at Taipei Sports Centers. Internal marketing was associated with organizational commitment and customer orientation. Customer orientation was associated with organizational commitment and partially mediated the relation between internal marketing and organizational commitment. Furthermore, work status significantly moderated the relationships between internal marketing and customer orientation but not between internal marketing and organizational commitment. Implications and directions for future research were discussed.

The Relationship between Organizational Citizenship Behavior and Organizational Commitment in Welfare Staff (Tehran 2013

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Asghar Makarem

2015-04-01

Full Text Available Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between organizational citizenship behavior, organizational commitment and its dimensions on the Welfare staff in Tehran 2013. Materials & Methods: In this cross - sectional study, one hundred eight staff of Tehran Welfare were selected by random sample, and the sample size of the previous studies. Data were collected using two standard questionnaires OCB, and Organizational Commitment, which includes the three dimensions, affective commitment, normative commitment and continuance commitment and analyzed by statistical methods such as: Pearson correlation coefficient and ANOVA. Results: The finding showed Between OCB and organizational commitment there was significant and positive correlation (P&le0.01, r=0.325. Also the dimensions of organizational commitment: affective commitment and normative commitment have a significant positive relationship with OCB, but not significant relationship OCB with a continuous commitment. ANOVA results showed that the average OCB in age, type of employment and employee experience is different. And Continuous commitment in hiring employees is different and emotional commitment in Background employees is different. Conclusion: Based on the findings we conclude that the enhancement of organizational citizenship behavior, organizational commitment and staff of Tehran can be increased.

Agricultural Trade Restrictiveness in the European Union and the United States

OpenAIRE

Jean-Christophe Bureau; Luca Salvatici

2001-01-01

The paper provides a summary measure of the Uruguay Round tariff reduction commitments in the European Union and the United States, using the Mercantilistic Trade Restrictiveness Index (MTRI) as the tariff aggregator. We compute the index for agricultural commodity aggregates assuming a specific (Constant Elasticity of Substitution) functional form for import demand. The levels of the MTRI under the actual commitments of the Uruguay Round are computed and compared with two hypothetical cases,...

A Framework For Efficient Homomorphic Universally Composable Commitments

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

David, Bernardo Machado

primitives and protocols while retaining security guarantees. Moreover, commitments with homomorphic properties enable significantly more efficient constructions of protocols for applications such as zero knowledge proofs, two-party computation through garbled circuits and multiparty computation. However......, achieving universal composability for commitment schemes often sacrifices both concrete and asymptotic efficiency, specially if homomorphic properties are required. In this thesis we bridge the gap between stand alone and universally composable commitment schemes, for which we achieve optimal efficiency...... related to a statistical security parameter as a setup. The rest of our constructions leverage secret sharing and coding theory techniques, including a novel method for verifying that a large number of strings are codewords of a given linear code with linear complexity....

Practice patterns and organizational commitment of inpatient nurse practitioners.

Science.gov (United States)

Johnson, Janet; Brennan, Mary; Musil, Carol M; Fitzpatrick, Joyce J

2016-07-01

Nurse practitioners (NPs) deliver a wide array of healthcare services in a variety of settings. The purpose of this study was to examine the practice patterns and organizational commitment of inpatient NPs. A quantitative design was used with a convenience sample (n = 183) of NPs who attended the American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP) national conference. The NPs were asked to complete a demographic questionnaire, the Practice Patterns of Acute Nurse Practitioners tool and the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire. Over 85% of inpatient practice time consists of direct and indirect patient care activities. The remaining nonclinical activities of education, research, and administration were less evident in the NP's workweek. This indicates that the major role of inpatient NPs continues to be management of acutely ill patients. Moderate commitment was noted in the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire. Supportive hospital/nursing leadership should acknowledge the value of the clinical and nonclinical roles of inpatient NPs as they can contribute to the operational effectiveness of their organization. By fostering the organizational commitment behaviors of identification, loyalty, and involvement, management can reap the benefits of these professionally dedicated providers. ©2015 American Association of Nurse Practitioners.

Locked on course: Hydro-Quebec's commitment to mega-projects

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Maxwell, J.; Briscoe, F.; Suzuki, Tatsujiro; Lee, J.; Stewart, A.

1997-01-01

Large organizations often escalate their commitments to mega-project development, even after evidence becomes available of adverse environmental consequences or lack of economic feasibility. This escalation of commitment transcends both sectorial and national boundaries. Preeminent examples include controversial nuclear projects in the US, hydroelectric projects like the Three Gorges Dam in China, and transport projects like the Chunnel and the Concorde. In this article, the authors examine the experience of Hydro-Quebec with the Great Whale Project. They argue that Hydro-Quebec escalated its commitment even after serious questions emerged about its environmental impacts and economic feasibility, because of (1) its earlier success with large projects, (2) its engineering culture''s norms for consistency, and (3) its role in the government''s desire for economic and cultural autonomy. Finally, they discuss the changes that are necessary to break commitments to such projects

Antecedents of Corporate Environmental Commitments: The Role of Customers.

Science.gov (United States)

Afshar Jahanshahi, Asghar; Brem, Alexander

2018-06-06

The management of natural environments has become a fundamental issue for companies in recent years. A firm’s environmental commitment affects all levels of its operation. In this study, we investigated whether having an effective and constant relationship with customers over time (customer capital) makes a difference to firms with a high environmental commitment compared with less environmentally committed firms. We found support for our idea by using original survey data from 149 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Iran (2016⁻2017). Furthermore, we found that customer capital enhances environmental collaboration with customers which, in turn, has a positive impact on the firm’s environmental commitments. These findings provide empirical evidence for the important role of “getting closer to customers” as a way of enhancing corporate environmental responsibility in developing countries with weak institutional environments.

THE EFFECT OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE ON ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT AND A RESEARCH

OpenAIRE

CENGİZ DEMİR; UMUT CAN ÖZTÜRK

2013-01-01

Organizational culture is the all values that shared by the whole of the organization. Organizational commitment is employees’ strength of bond for the organization which they work for. There should be shared values for mentioned about commitment. If those values are adopted by a large number of people and if they are strong, the level of commitment will increase. The main purpose of this study is to determine  the impact of organizational culture on commitment and the relationship. This stud...

Compute-unified device architecture implementation of a block-matching algorithm for multiple graphical processing unit cards.

Science.gov (United States)

Massanes, Francesc; Cadennes, Marie; Brankov, Jovan G

2011-07-01

In this paper we describe and evaluate a fast implementation of a classical block matching motion estimation algorithm for multiple Graphical Processing Units (GPUs) using the Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) computing engine. The implemented block matching algorithm (BMA) uses summed absolute difference (SAD) error criterion and full grid search (FS) for finding optimal block displacement. In this evaluation we compared the execution time of a GPU and CPU implementation for images of various sizes, using integer and non-integer search grids.The results show that use of a GPU card can shorten computation time by a factor of 200 times for integer and 1000 times for a non-integer search grid. The additional speedup for non-integer search grid comes from the fact that GPU has built-in hardware for image interpolation. Further, when using multiple GPU cards, the presented evaluation shows the importance of the data splitting method across multiple cards, but an almost linear speedup with a number of cards is achievable.In addition we compared execution time of the proposed FS GPU implementation with two existing, highly optimized non-full grid search CPU based motion estimations methods, namely implementation of the Pyramidal Lucas Kanade Optical flow algorithm in OpenCV and Simplified Unsymmetrical multi-Hexagon search in H.264/AVC standard. In these comparisons, FS GPU implementation still showed modest improvement even though the computational complexity of FS GPU implementation is substantially higher than non-FS CPU implementation.We also demonstrated that for an image sequence of 720×480 pixels in resolution, commonly used in video surveillance, the proposed GPU implementation is sufficiently fast for real-time motion estimation at 30 frames-per-second using two NVIDIA C1060 Tesla GPU cards.

Relationship emotional intelligence and personality traits with organizational commitment among Iranian nurses

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Zahra Taherinejad

2017-06-01

Full Text Available In the past three decades, organizational commitment has been of interest to researchers as one of the organizational attitudes. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship of emotional intelligence and personality traits with organizational commitment among Iranian nurses. A total of 280 nurses were selected by multistage random sampling. Study tools included emotional intelligence inventory, Neo personality inventory and organizational commitment inventory. Results showed the positive and significant relationship of emotional intelligence and its dimensions (self-expression, self-regard, independence, social responsibility, problem solving, stress tolerance, impulse control, and optimism with organizational commitment. Also, organizational commitment showed a positive and significant relationship with extroversion and conscientiousness. Moreover, components of self-expression, problem solving and stress tolerance in emotional intelligence are able to predict organizational commitment. Thus, these results indicate the importance of emotional intelligence and personality traits in organizational commitment.

IMPACT OF COMMITMENT TO BUSINESS ETHICS TO NONFINANCIAL BUSINESS PERFORMANCE

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Silvija Vig

2016-03-01

Full Text Available The article investigates the relationship between commitment to business ethics and nonfinancial business performance. Data of commitment to business ethics and nonfinancial business performance were collected from 100 participants through a questionnaire survey. The survey was conducted in 2015 in Croatian large and medium sized companies. The questionnaire for assessing commitment to business ethics contained nine different dimensions while the nonfinancial business performance contained three dimensions: client satisfaction, human resource management plus innovativeness and efficiency of business processes. Multiple regression methods were applied in the analysis. The empirical results of three multiple linear regression models show that certain dimension of commitment to business ethics had a positive influence on the nonfinancial performance of the companies. Motivation and rewarding policy for ethical behavior and responding to unethical behavior, as a dimension of commitment to business ethics, has distinctive effects on all three nonfinancial performance dimensions. It was also found that selecting suppliers based on the standards of ethics and compliance has a positive and strong influence on client satisfaction while using ethical criteria in the performance and efficiency evaluation of employees has a positive and significant influence on innovativeness and efficiency of business processes. This research leads to the conclusion that some dimensions of commitment to business ethics can be important predictors of nonfinancial business performance. Therefore, results of the research could be considered as valid motivation for further improvement of commitment to ethics in the business environment.

Data Sorting Using Graphics Processing Units

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

M. J. Mišić

2012-06-01

Full Text Available Graphics processing units (GPUs have been increasingly used for general-purpose computation in recent years. The GPU accelerated applications are found in both scientific and commercial domains. Sorting is considered as one of the very important operations in many applications, so its efficient implementation is essential for the overall application performance. This paper represents an effort to analyze and evaluate the implementations of the representative sorting algorithms on the graphics processing units. Three sorting algorithms (Quicksort, Merge sort, and Radix sort were evaluated on the Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA platform that is used to execute applications on NVIDIA graphics processing units. Algorithms were tested and evaluated using an automated test environment with input datasets of different characteristics. Finally, the results of this analysis are briefly discussed.

The association of leadership styles and empowerment with nurses' organizational commitment in an acute health care setting: a cross-sectional study.

Science.gov (United States)

Asiri, Samirah A; Rohrer, Wesley W; Al-Surimi, Khaled; Da'ar, Omar O; Ahmed, Anwar

2016-01-01

The current challenges facing healthcare systems, in relation to the shortage of health professionals, necessitates mangers and leaders to learn from different leadership styles and staff empowerment strategies, so as to create a work environment that encourages nursing staff commitment to patients and their organization. This study intends to measure the effects of nurses' overall perception of the leadership style of their managers, and psychological empowerment on their organizational commitment in acute care units, in National Guard Health Affairs, Riyadh City, Saudi Arabia. This was a cross-sectional survey, where the data was obtained from nurses at King Abdulaziz Medical City. Hard copy questionnaires were distributed to 350 randomly selected nurses. Three hundred and thirty two (332) were completed, representing a response rate of 95 %. Three validated survey instruments were used to obtain the data: (1) The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ), formulated by Bass and Avolio (1997), (2) The Psychological Empowerment Scale developed by Spreitzer (1995) and (3) The Three-Component Model of Employee Commitment developed by Meyer and Allen (1997). A theoretical model that conceptually links leadership, empowerment, and organizational commitment was used. The SPSS program version 19 was employed to perform descriptive and inferential statistics including correlation and stepwise multiple regression analysis. Overall most nurses perceived their immediate nursing managers as not displaying the ideal level of transformational leadership (TFL) behaviors. Nurses' commitment appeared to be negatively correlated with TFL style and perceived psychological empowerment. However, commitment was positively correlated with the Transactional Leadership (TAL) style. Analysis, also, showed that commitment is significantly associated with the nurse's nationality by region: North American (P = 0.001) and Arab (p = 0.027). The other important predictors of

COMMITMENT A Psychological Tie and Moral Value

Science.gov (United States)

2017-04-01

Research When I think of commitment, it is a feeling and an action with a strong moral component. However, as I began researching commitment it became...characteristics of “being committed” must be independent of behavior. One mechanism of doing this is through the analysis of bargaining and side bets .27...Becker uses Schelling’s example of bargaining to buy a house to explain side bets . In this scenario, you offer $16,000, but the seller counters with

Organizational commitment, work environment conditions, and life satisfaction among Iranian nurses.

Science.gov (United States)

Vanaki, Zohreh; Vagharseyyedin, Seyyed Abolfazl

2009-12-01

Employee commitment to the organization is a crucial issue in today's health-care market. In Iran, few studies have sought to evaluate the factors that contribute to forms of commitment. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between nurses' organizational commitment, work environment conditions, and life satisfaction. A cross-sectional design was utilized. Questionnaires were distributed to all the staff nurses who had permanent employment (with at least 2 years of experience in nursing) in the five hospitals affiliated to Birjand Medical Sciences University. Two hundred and fifty participants returned completed questionnaires. Most were female and married. The correlation of the total scores of nurses' affective organizational commitment and work environment conditions indicated a significant and positive relationship. Also, a statistically significant relationship was found between affective organizational commitment and life satisfaction. The implementation of a comprehensive program to improve the work conditions and life satisfaction of nurses could enhance their organizational commitment.

Relationship Between Job Characteristics and Organizational Commitment: A Descriptive Analytical Study.

Science.gov (United States)

Faraji, Obeidollah; Ramazani, Abbas Ali; Hedaiati, Pouria; Aliabadi, Ali; Elhamirad, Samira; Valiee, Sina

2015-11-01

Many factors influence the organizational commitment of employees. One of these factors is job designing since it affects the attitude, beliefs, and feelings of the organization employees. We aimed to determine the relationship between job characteristics and organizational commitment among the employees of hospitals. In this descriptive and correlational study, 152 Iranian employees of the hospitals (physicians, nurses, and administrative staff) were selected through stratified random sampling. Data gathered using 3-part questionnaire of "demographic information", "job characteristics model," and "organizational commitment," in 2011. Study data were analyzed using SPSS v. 16. There was significant statistical correlation between organizational commitment and variables of educational level (P = 0.001) and job category (P = 0.001). Also, a direct and significant correlation existed between motivating potential score and job feedback on one hand and organizational commitment on the other hand (P = 0.014). According to the results, managers of the hospitals should increase staff's commitment through paying attention to proper job designing.

Work-family conflict, perceived organizational support, and organizational commitment among employed mothers.

Science.gov (United States)

Casper, Wendy J; Martin, Jennifer A; Buffardi, Louis C; Erdwins, Carol J

2002-04-01

This study investigated the impact of work interfering with family (WIF) and family interfering with work (FIW) on women's organizational commitment and examined both the direct and moderating effects of their perceived organizational support. Participants were 143 professional employed mothers with at least 1 preschool-age child. The study found that WIF was positively related to continuance organizational commitment but unrelated to affective commitment, and FIW was not related to either form of organizational commitment. Results also indicated that perceived organizational support exhibited a main effect on both types of commitment.

The effects of psychological contract violation on employees' commitment to organizational change

OpenAIRE

Ran, Yuhong

2007-01-01

This research examines the relationship between the perceived psychological contract violation and employee’s commitment to organizational change in business merger situation. Through the research, it shows that perceived psychological contract violation will significantly reduce the employees’ affective commitment to organizational change; increase continuance commitment to organizational change, but will not significantly affect the normative commitment to organizational change. Also, the e...

A study on relationship between organizational culture and organizational commitment

OpenAIRE

Maryam Khalili

2014-01-01

This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the relationship between organizational culture and organization commitment. The study uses two questionnaires, one for measuring organizational commitment originally developed by Meyer and Allen (1991) [Meyer, J. P., & Allen, N. J. (1991). A three-component conceptualization of organizational commitment. Human resource management review, 1(1), 61-89.] and the other one for organizational culture developed by Denison and Spreitzer (1991)...

A Temporal Analysis of the Relation between Organisational Commitment and Work Motivation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marylène Gagné

2008-06-01

Full Text Available Meyer, Becker, and Vandenberghe (2004 recently proposed a model linking work motivation to organisational commitment. Two studies tested these links prospectively with employees from a Canadian telecommunications company and from an Italian autoparts company. Self-determination theory provided the framework to measure work motivation, such that measures of external, introjected and identified regulation, and intrinsic motivation were linked to Allen and Meyer's (1990 and to O'Reilly and Chatman's (1986 tripartite models of organisational commitment. We hypothesised that Time 1 motivation would be related to changes in commitment over time, but that Time 1 commitment would not be related to motivational changes over time. Results supported hypotheses for affective and normative commitment, but not for continuance commitment.

Company, country, connections: counterfactual origins increase organizational commitment, patriotism, and social investment.

Science.gov (United States)

Ersner-Hershfield, Hal; Galinsky, Adam D; Kray, Laura J; King, Brayden G

2010-10-01

Four studies examined the relationship between counterfactual origins--thoughts about how the beginning of organizations, countries, and social connections might have turned out differently--and increased feelings of commitment to those institutions and connections. Study 1 found that counterfactually reflecting on the origins of one's country increases patriotism. Study 2 extended this finding to organizational commitment and examined the mediating role of poignancy. Study 3 found that counterfactual reflection boosts organizational commitment even beyond the effects of other commitment-enhancing appeals and that perceptions of fate mediate the positive effect of counterfactual origins on commitment. Finally, Study 4 temporally separated the counterfactual manipulation from a behavioral measure of commitment and found that counterfactual reflection predicted whether participants e-mailed social contacts 2 weeks later. The robust relationship between counterfactual origins and commitment was found across a wide range of companies and countries, with undergraduates and M.B.A. students, and for attitudes and behaviors.

Director ownership, outside directors and commitment to corporate social responsibility

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Chen Ying

2011-01-01

Full Text Available This paper examines the effects of director ownership and the proportion of outside directors on firms’ commitment to corporate social responsibility (CSR. Using a sample of 453 Hong Kong listed companies for 2005, we find that there is a non-linear relationship between the level of director ownership and firms’ engagement in CSR behavior. Commitment to CSR first increases as the proportion of director ownership increases up to 50% and then decreases as that proportion of ownership grows higher. Further, the proportion of outside directors on the board exhibits a positive relationship with the level of CSR commitment. These results provide explanations for firms’ commitment to CSR from the corporate governance perspective.

Therapeutic commitment for general nurses in dealing with mental ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

therapeutic commitment in dealing with mental health problems of PL-. WHA. However, therapeutic .... commitment, knowledge and skills in relation to age, gender, work experience, workplace or whether mental health lectures had been ... coefficients that a medium positive linear correlation exists between therapeutic ...

Factors that impact clinical laboratory scientists' commitment to their work organizations.

Science.gov (United States)

Bamberg, Richard; Akroyd, Duane; Moore, Ti'eshia M

2008-01-01

To assess the predictive ability of various aspects of the work environment for organizational commitment. A questionnaire measuring three dimensions of organizational commitment along with five aspects of work environment and 10 demographic and work setting characteristics was sent to a national, convenience sample of clinical laboratory professionals. All persons obtaining the CLS certification by NCA from January 1, 1997 to December 31, 2006. Only respondents who worked full-time in a clinical laboratory setting were included in the database. Levels of affective, normative, and continuance organizational commitment, organizational support, role clarity, role conflict, transformational leadership behavior of supervisor, and organizational type, total years work experience in clinical laboratories, and educational level of respondents. Questionnaire items used either a 7-point or 5-point Likert response scale. Based on multiple regression analysis for the 427 respondents, organizational support and transformational leadership behavior were found to be significant positive predictors of affective and normative organizational commitment. Work setting (non-hospital laboratory) and total years of work experience in clinical laboratories were found to be significant positive predictors of continuance organizational commitment. Overall the organizational commitment levels for all three dimensions were at the neutral rating or below in the slightly disagree range. The results indicate a less than optimal level of organizational commitment to employers, which were predominantly hospitals, by CLS practitioners. This may result in continuing retention problems for hospital laboratories. The results offer strategies for improving organizational commitment via the significant predictors.

Committed warming inferred from observations and an energy balance model

Science.gov (United States)

Pincus, R.; Mauritsen, T.

2017-12-01

Due to the lifetime of CO2 and thermal inertia of the ocean, the Earth's climate is not equilibrated with anthropogenic forcing. As a result, even if fossil fuel emissions were to suddenly cease, some level of committed warming is expected due to past emissions. Here, we provide an observational-based quantification of this committed warming using the instrument record of global-mean warming, recently-improved estimates of Earth's energy imbalance, and estimates of radiative forcing from the fifth IPCC assessment report. Compared to pre-industrial levels, we find a committed warming of 1.5K [0.9-3.6, 5-95 percentile] at equilibrium, and of 1.3K [0.9-2.3] within this century. However, when assuming that ocean carbon uptake cancels remnant greenhouse gas-induced warming on centennial timescales, committed warming is reduced to 1.1K [0.7-1.8]. Conservatively, there is a 32% risk that committed warming already exceeds the 1.5K target set in Paris, and that this will likely be crossed prior to 2053. Regular updates of these observationally-constrained committed warming estimates, though simplistic, can provide transparent guidance as uncertainty regarding transient climate sensitivity inevitably narrows and understanding the limitations of the framework is advanced.

Evaluation of employee commitment as an imperative for business success / Esti Olivier

OpenAIRE

Olivier, Esti

2011-01-01

Employee commitment is a concept that seeks to capture the nature of the attachments formed by individuals to their employing organisations. Researchers such as Porter have attempted to identify what factors influence the formation of employee commitment in individuals and how employee commitment (once formed) influences important organisational consequences, particularly employee turnover and business success. In a highly committed workplace, employees understand and agree with the company's...

Handbook of Memetic Algorithms

CERN Document Server

Cotta, Carlos; Moscato, Pablo

2012-01-01

Memetic Algorithms (MAs) are computational intelligence structures combining multiple and various operators in order to address optimization problems.  The combination and interaction amongst operators evolves and promotes the diffusion of the most successful units and generates an algorithmic behavior which can handle complex objective functions and hard fitness landscapes.   “Handbook of Memetic Algorithms” organizes, in a structured way, all the the most important results in the field of MAs since their earliest definition until now.  A broad review including various algorithmic solutions as well as successful applications is included in this book. Each class of optimization problems, such as constrained optimization, multi-objective optimization, continuous vs combinatorial problems, uncertainties, are analysed separately and, for each problem,  memetic recipes for tackling the difficulties are given with some successful examples. Although this book contains chapters written by multiple authors, ...

Environmental Policy and Capital Movements: The Role of Government Commitment

OpenAIRE

Marsiliani, Laura; Renström, Thomas I

2003-01-01

This paper explores the relationship between environmental protection and international capital movements, when tax policy is endogenous (through voting). A two-period general equilibrium model of a small open economy is specified to compare the effects of two different constitutions (commitment or no commitment in tax policy), as well as income inequality. Under the commitment regime, the equilibrium is characterised by a lower labour tax, higher environmental tax and less capital moving abr...

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GOAL-ORIENTATIONS AND SPORT COMMITMENT AMONG ATHLETES

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Noshin Benar.

2012-06-01

Full Text Available The purpose of present study was exploring of relationship between goal-orientations and sport commitment among athletes and comparison of goal-orientations and sport commitment and their constructs based on gender and type of sports. Participants were 108 Iranian athlete (40 female and 68 male, who responded to Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire (T.E.O.S.Q and Sport Commitment Model (SCM questionnaire. Data were analyzed by Pearson's correlation coefficient, Independent-Samples t-test, and One-way ANOVA at P=0.05. The findings indicated that there were positively and significantly association between constructs, including sport enjoyment, personal investment, social constraints, involvement opportunities, and social support, whereas, involvement alternatives and task-orientation had negatively and significantly association with sport commitment. Also, team and open-skilled sport athletes had sport commitment and ego-orientation more than individual and closed-skilled sport athletes. As well as, female's athletes had sport enjoyment and social support more than male's athletes. It is possible that task-oriented players are elite and expert athletes, because extend and develop their fundamental skills in one's sport by their task-orientate characteristic, and probably these players with these characteristics tendency to turnover until experience more situations. Thus, these players had a less sport commitment than amateur athletes. Also, gender and type of sport differences can be results of individual differences and nature of sports skills. Implications for goal-orientations and sport commitment and their impacts on athletes as well as future research directions are further discussed.

Impact of committed individuals on vaccination behavior

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Xiao-Tao; Wu, Zhi-Xi; Zhang, Lianzhong

2012-11-01

We study how the presence of committed vaccinators, a small fraction of individuals who consistently hold the vaccinating strategy and are immune to influence, impact the vaccination dynamics in well-mixed and spatially structured populations. For this purpose, we develop an epidemiological game-theoretic model of a flu-like vaccination by integrating an epidemiological process into a simple agent-based model of adaptive learning, where individuals (except for those committed ones) use anecdotal evidence to estimate costs and benefits of vaccination. We show that the committed vaccinators, acting as “steadfast role models” in the populations, can efficiently avoid the clustering of susceptible individuals and stimulate other imitators to take vaccination, hence contributing to the promotion of vaccine uptake. We substantiate our findings by making comparative studies of our model on a full lattice and on a randomly diluted one. Our work is expected to provide valuable information for decision-making and design more effective disease-control strategy.

Computional algorithm for lifetime exposure to antimicrobials in pigs using register data-The LEA algorithm.

Science.gov (United States)

Birkegård, Anna Camilla; Andersen, Vibe Dalhoff; Halasa, Tariq; Jensen, Vibeke Frøkjær; Toft, Nils; Vigre, Håkan

2017-10-01

Accurate and detailed data on antimicrobial exposure in pig production are essential when studying the association between antimicrobial exposure and antimicrobial resistance. Due to difficulties in obtaining primary data on antimicrobial exposure in a large number of farms, there is a need for a robust and valid method to estimate the exposure using register data. An approach that estimates the antimicrobial exposure in every rearing period during the lifetime of a pig using register data was developed into a computational algorithm. In this approach data from national registers on antimicrobial purchases, movements of pigs and farm demographics registered at farm level are used. The algorithm traces batches of pigs retrospectively from slaughter to the farm(s) that housed the pigs during their finisher, weaner, and piglet period. Subsequently, the algorithm estimates the antimicrobial exposure as the number of Animal Defined Daily Doses for treatment of one kg pig in each of the rearing periods. Thus, the antimicrobial purchase data at farm level are translated into antimicrobial exposure estimates at batch level. A batch of pigs is defined here as pigs sent to slaughter at the same day from the same farm. In this study we present, validate, and optimise a computational algorithm that calculate the lifetime exposure of antimicrobials for slaughter pigs. The algorithm was evaluated by comparing the computed estimates to data on antimicrobial usage from farm records in 15 farm units. We found a good positive correlation between the two estimates. The algorithm was run for Danish slaughter pigs sent to slaughter in January to March 2015 from farms with more than 200 finishers to estimate the proportion of farms that it was applicable for. In the final process, the algorithm was successfully run for batches of pigs originating from 3026 farms with finisher units (77% of the initial population). This number can be increased if more accurate register data can be

Organizational commitment among intercollegiate head athletic trainers: examining our work environment.

Science.gov (United States)

Winterstein, A P

1998-01-01

To 1) examine the commitment of head athletic trainers to their intercollegiate work environments, 2) develop a model that better reflects the head athletic trainer's daily work setting, and 3) use new techniques to describe the various ways head athletic trainers demonstrate commitment to their organizations. Organizational commitment (OC) surveys were sent to 461 head athletic trainers identified for the sample. A response rate of 71.5% (330/461) was obtained from the mail survey. A proportional random sample of head athletic trainers was taken from a population identified in the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) directory of intercollegiate athletics as Division I, II, and III institutions. Returned OC surveys were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics for all demographic and OC variables. Exploratory cluster analysis was performed to examine naturally clustering groups. Exploratory cluster analysis revealed five naturally clustering groups that represent the head athletic trainers' patterns of commitment across the specific organizational targets. Paired t tests indicated that the continuance commitment scores were significantly lower than the affective and normative scores across the sample. Analysis of variance tests indicated significant differences for specific commitment dimensions based on gender and NCAA division demographics. Beyond that, the five-cluster solution revealed no particular demographic characteristics that predisposed individuals to specific clusters. THE FINDINGS REINFORCE A CENTRAL THEME IN INTERCOLLEGIATE ATHLETIC TRAINING: that student-athletes and student athletic trainers are the primary focus of the head athletic trainers' commitment. Positive attachment and obligation directed toward student-athletes and student athletic trainers link the five clusters. Commitment patterns in areas other than student-athletes and student athletic trainers define the cluster membership or head athletic

Implementation of Tree and Butterfly Barriers with Optimistic Time Management Algorithms for Discrete Event Simulation

Science.gov (United States)

Rizvi, Syed S.; Shah, Dipali; Riasat, Aasia

The Time Wrap algorithm [3] offers a run time recovery mechanism that deals with the causality errors. These run time recovery mechanisms consists of rollback, anti-message, and Global Virtual Time (GVT) techniques. For rollback, there is a need to compute GVT which is used in discrete-event simulation to reclaim the memory, commit the output, detect the termination, and handle the errors. However, the computation of GVT requires dealing with transient message problem and the simultaneous reporting problem. These problems can be dealt in an efficient manner by the Samadi's algorithm [8] which works fine in the presence of causality errors. However, the performance of both Time Wrap and Samadi's algorithms depends on the latency involve in GVT computation. Both algorithms give poor latency for large simulation systems especially in the presence of causality errors. To improve the latency and reduce the processor ideal time, we implement tree and butterflies barriers with the optimistic algorithm. Our analysis shows that the use of synchronous barriers such as tree and butterfly with the optimistic algorithm not only minimizes the GVT latency but also minimizes the processor idle time.

Immediate Supervisors’ Leadership Behaviour and Employees’ Organizational Commitment: Do Pay and Promotion Mediate the Nexus?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Emmanuel Yaw Ampofo

2016-09-01

Full Text Available This study examines the mediating effect of motivational factors of pay and promotion on transformational leadership and organizational commitment relationship in Unilever Ghana using a quantitative, non-experimental, cross-sectional and analytical survey design study. The results of the study revealed significant positive relationship between transformational leadership style and affective commitment, continuance commitment, and normative commitment. However, the results of the study revealed no significant mediation of pay in the relationship between transformational leadership style and affective commitment, continuance commitment, and normative commitment. Additionally, no significant mediation of promotion was found in the relationship between transformational leadership and affective commitment, transformational leadership and continuance commitment, and transformational leadership and normative commitment. Managers’ adoption of transformational leadership behavior as a key strategy to get employees committed to the organizations will be of great significance because motivational factors such as pay and promotion do not mediate the transformational leadership and organizational commitment relationship. This is a maiden empirical research in Ghana where motivational factors are used as mediators in transformational leadership and organizational commitment relationship.

Becoming Selfless: A Grounded Theory of Commitment to Service

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Roland Nino L. Agoncillo

2014-05-01

Full Text Available This study focuses on the substantive area of commitment to service in the community of educational partners in the Philippines. Educational partners are lay people who assist religious organizations in the field of education, and in the Philippines, about 96 percent of educational partners are in Lasallian schools and organizations. Educational partners are young professionals, volunteers between the ages of 24-39 who strive to live the teachings of St. John Baptist De La Salle. The volunteers aim to generate a spirit of service, a sense of mission to the youth. By using a classic Grounded Theory approach, the theory of becoming selfless was generated. The theory explains the stages educational partners undergo when resolving their organizational commitment to service. Organizational commitment is the psychological attachment, involvement and identification of the individual to the organization. Becoming selfless provides a theoretical focal point to better understand the complexity of commitment.

Job Involvement and Organizational Commitment of Employees of Prehospital Emergency Medical System.

Science.gov (United States)

Rahati, Alireza; Sotudeh-Arani, Hossein; Adib-Hajbaghery, Mohsen; Rostami, Majid

2015-12-01

Several studies are available on organizational commitment of employees in different organizations. However, the organizational commitment and job involvement of the employees in the prehospital emergency medical system (PEMS) of Iran have largely been ignored. This study aimed to investigate the organizational commitment and job involvement of the employees of PEMS and the relationship between these two issues. This cross-sectional study was conducted on 160 employees of Kashan PEMS who were selected through a census method in 2014. A 3-part instrument was used in this study, including a demographic questionnaire, the Allen and Miller's organizational commitment inventory, and the Lodahl and Kejner's job involvement inventory. We used descriptive statistics, Spearman correlation coefficient, Kruskal-Wallis, Friedman, analysis of variance, and Tukey post hoc tests to analyze the data. The mean job involvement and organizational commitment scores were 61.78 ± 10.69 and 73.89 ± 13.58, respectively. The mean scores of job involvement and organizational commitment were significantly different in subjects with different work experiences (P = 0.043 and P = 0.012, respectively). However, no significant differences were observed between the mean scores of organizational commitment and job involvement in subjects with different fields of study, different levels of interest in the profession, and various educational levels. A direct significant correlation was found between the total scores of organizational commitment and job involvement of workers in Kashan PEMS (r = 0.910, P organizational commitment and about two-thirds of the job involvement score. Therefore, the higher level managers of the emergency medical system are advised to implement some strategies to increase the employees' job involvement and organizational commitment.

Key organizational commitment antecedents for nurses, paramedical professionals and non-clinical staff.

Science.gov (United States)

Caykoylu, Sinan; Egri, Carolyn P; Havlovic, Stephen; Bradley, Christine

2011-01-01

The purpose of this paper is to develop a causal model that explains the antecedents and mediating factors predicting the organizational commitment of healthcare employees in different work roles. This study tests an integrative causal model that consists of a number of direct and indirect relationships for antecedents of organizational commitment. It is proposed that the relationship between job satisfaction and organizational commitment is best understood by focusing on the three interrelated facets of job satisfaction, i.e. satisfaction with career advancement, satisfaction with supervisor, and satisfaction with co-workers. However, the model also advances that these job satisfaction facets have different mediating effects for other antecedents of organizational commitment. The Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) path analysis showed that the job satisfaction facets of career advancement and satisfaction with supervisor had a direct impact on organizational commitment. Employee empowerment, job-motivating potential, effective leadership, acceptance by co-workers, role ambiguity and role conflict were also important determinants of organizational commitment. Interestingly, post hoc analyses showed that satisfaction with co-workers only had an indirect impact on organizational commitment. While there has been extensive research on organizational commitment and its antecedents in healthcare organizations, most previous studies have been limited either to a single employee group or to a single time frame. This study proposes a practical causal model of antecedents of organizational commitment that tests relationships across time and across different healthcare employee groups.

Organizational commitment and job satisfaction among nurses in Serbia: a factor analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Veličković, Vladica M; Višnjić, Aleksandar; Jović, Slađana; Radulović, Olivera; Šargić, Čedomir; Mihajlović, Jovan; Mladenović, Jelena

2014-01-01

One of the basic prerequisites of efficient organizational management in health institutions is certainly monitoring and measuring satisfaction of employees and their commitment to the health institution in which they work. The aim of this article was to identify and test factors that may have a predictive effect on job satisfaction and organizational commitment. We conducted a cross-sectional study that included 1,337 nurses from Serbia. Data were analyzed by using exploratory factor analysis, multivariate regressions, and descriptive statistics. The study identified three major factors of organizational commitment: affective commitment, disloyalty, and continuance commitment. The most important predictors of these factors were positive professional identification, extrinsic job satisfaction, and intrinsic job satisfaction (p job satisfaction and organizational commitment were identified as well; the most important of which was positive professional identification (p job satisfaction and organizational commitment of nurses, which formed a good basis for the creation of organizational management policy and human resource management policy in health institutions in Serbia. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

IMPACT OF WORK LIFE BALANCE ON INSTITUTIONAL COMMITMENT AMONG MATHEMATICS WOMEN TEACHERS

OpenAIRE

D.Jeslin; G.Ramesh Babu

2016-01-01

Institutional commitment is the degree to which an employee identifies with a particular institution and wishes to maintain membership in the institution. An individual who has high institutional commitment is willing to exert extra effort on behalf of the institution, and has a strong desire to remain within the institution. The high level of institutional commitment reduces absenteeism and turnover. If an employee deeply committed to their institution perform roles beyond their formal job d...

Security bound of cheat sensitive quantum bit commitment.

Science.gov (United States)

He, Guang Ping

2015-03-23

Cheat sensitive quantum bit commitment (CSQBC) loosens the security requirement of quantum bit commitment (QBC), so that the existing impossibility proofs of unconditionally secure QBC can be evaded. But here we analyze the common features in all existing CSQBC protocols, and show that in any CSQBC having these features, the receiver can always learn a non-trivial amount of information on the sender's committed bit before it is unveiled, while his cheating can pass the security check with a probability not less than 50%. The sender's cheating is also studied. The optimal CSQBC protocols that can minimize the sum of the cheating probabilities of both parties are found to be trivial, as they are practically useless. We also discuss the possibility of building a fair protocol in which both parties can cheat with equal probabilities.

Security bound of cheat sensitive quantum bit commitment

Science.gov (United States)

He, Guang Ping

2015-03-01

Cheat sensitive quantum bit commitment (CSQBC) loosens the security requirement of quantum bit commitment (QBC), so that the existing impossibility proofs of unconditionally secure QBC can be evaded. But here we analyze the common features in all existing CSQBC protocols, and show that in any CSQBC having these features, the receiver can always learn a non-trivial amount of information on the sender's committed bit before it is unveiled, while his cheating can pass the security check with a probability not less than 50%. The sender's cheating is also studied. The optimal CSQBC protocols that can minimize the sum of the cheating probabilities of both parties are found to be trivial, as they are practically useless. We also discuss the possibility of building a fair protocol in which both parties can cheat with equal probabilities.

Uncertainty and the Value of Commitment and Flexibility

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Claussen, Jörg; Kretschmer, Tobias; Stieglitz, Nils

We address the contested state of theory and the mixed empirical evidence on the relationship between turbulence and vertical scope by studying how turbulence affects the benefits of commitment from integrated development of components and the benefits of flexibility from sourcing components...... externally. We show that increasing turbulence first increases but then decreases the relative value of vertical integration. Moderate turbulence reduces the value of flexibility by making supplier selection more difficult and increases the value of commitment by mitigating the status quo bias of integrated...... structures. Both effects improve the value of integration. Higher levels of turbulence undermine the adaptive benefits of commitment, while having a less adverse effect on flexibility, making non-integration more attractive. We also show how complexity and uneven rates of turbulence moderate the non...

The effects of ownership, staffing level and organisational justice on nurse commitment, involvement, and satisfaction: a questionnaire study.

Science.gov (United States)

Heponiemi, Tarja; Elovainio, Marko; Kouvonen, Anne; Kuusio, Hannamaria; Noro, Anja; Finne-Soveri, Harriet; Sinervo, Timo

2011-12-01

Elderly care systems have undergone a lot of changes in many European countries, including Finland. Most notably, the number of private for-profit firms has increased. Previous studies suggest that employee well-being and the quality of care might differ according to the ownership type. The present study examined whether the ownership type and the staffing level were associated with organisational commitment, job involvement, and job satisfaction. In addition, we examined the potential moderating effect of organisational justice on these associations. Cross-sectional questionnaire study. 1047 Finnish female staff members aged 18-69 years working in sheltered housing or nursing homes (units n=179). The relationships were studied with analyses of covariance (ANCOVA), adjusting for the effects of age and case-mix. Organisational commitment and job satisfaction levels were low in for-profit sheltered homes when justice levels were low, but when justice levels were high, for-profit sheltered homes did not differ from other ownership types. Similarly, organisational justice acted as a buffer against low commitment resulting from low staffing levels. Staffing levels were lowest in public sheltered homes and highest in not-for-profit sheltered homes. The results show that organisational justice can act as a buffer against low organisational commitment that results from low staffing levels and working in for-profit sheltered homes. Increasing justice in regard to the management, outcomes, and procedures in the organisation would thus be important. 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.