Rural electrification: The institutional dimension

The institutional aspects of rural electrification programmes are often given much less attention than their importance warrants. In a number of important ways, rural electrification is in conflia with the primary concerns of the utilities mandated to implement it. Resolving this dilemma requires a separation of functions, with the agency responsible for rural electrification being given substantial autonomy. The range of institutional options for achieving this is wide and the choice should be tailored to the local context ana programme objectives.     

Pragmatism, Adaptation, and Total Quality Management: Philosophy and Science in the Service of Managing Continuous Improvement

Today’s engineering managers who use total quality management (TQM) face the challenge of moving it from adoption to seamless incorporation into their organizations. Both the application and the theory of TQM can be advanced through an examination of the philosophy of pragmatism and the sciences of adaptation. Pragmatism provides a philosophy that establishes a theory for incorporating TQM into engineers’ management practice; it derives its epistemology from actual experience. In essence, pragmatism suggests that practical experience, such as that gained from the continuous improvement of and experimentation with TQM, provides the basis for successful organizational performance. The sciences of adaptation identify the characteristics of organizations that promote successful adaptation. They suggest that incremental adjustments to ongoing change are the keys to effective and successful growth. This paper explores both philosophy and science to identify actions and attitudes that can enable the success of TQM in an organization.     

Predictors of individual differences in mail-coding skills and their variation with ability level.

Personality and cognitive predictors of mail coding were investigated in 2 samples, 1 of high coding ability (N?=?56) and 1 of mixed ability (N?=?158). Two approaches to predicting correlates of skill within groups of differing ability were compared: P. L. Ackerman's (1988) ability theory and D. A. Norman and T. Shallice's (1985) account of levels of action control. The predictors of mail-coding skill varied with ability: Personality variables were more predictive among higher ability Ss, and cognitive measures were more predictive among lower ability Ss. Implications of the findings for theories of individual differences in skill are discussed. There were 2 main practical conclusions. First, the measures used were more predictive than a standard psychometric selection test. Second, correlates of skill may be different among unselected job applicants and among the subset of applicants hired for subsequent operational training. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individuation, peers, and adolescent alcohol use: A latent growth analysis.

The study used latent growth modeling to investigate longitudinal relationships between individuation, peer alcohol use, and adolescent alcohol use among African American, Mexican American, and non-Hispanic White adolescents (N=6,048) from 7th, 8th, and 9th grades over a 3-year period. Initial levels of peer alcohol use were significantly related to changes in adolescents' alcohol use, whereas initial adolescent alcohol use also significantly related to changes in peers' alcohol use, suggesting a bidirectional relationship. Higher levels of intergenerational individuation were related to smaller increases in adolescent alcohol use and higher levels of separation were related to larger increases in youth drinking. The findings were similar across ethnic groups. Implications for development of prevention and intervention programs are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Antisickness conditioning using a nausea-producing nondrug cue.

Most drugs induce conditioned taste aversions and are therefore commonly supposed to produce nausea and sickness. Paradoxically, some drugs appear to lose induction capability when made to serve as a cue for a 2nd drug that produces more severe sickness, perhaps through selective association with a hypothetical homeostatic or antisickness aftereffect of sickness. Using drug–drug pairings has made antisickness conditioning theory difficult to validate. Rotation serves in lieu of a drug cue in rats. Rotation–drug pairings eliminate drug interactions and enable the sorts of parametric manipulations required to validate the theory. By postulating a common sickness mechanism to explain both taste aversion and aversion failure, the theory places the phenomenon within an adaptive evolutionary framework. Successful application could yield a direct countermeasure to severe nausea in clinical settings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interpersonal communication in parent-adolescent dyads: A brief report on the effects of a social skills training program.

Hypothesized that social skills training could improve communications between adolescents and parents while enhancing improvement in perceived communication and problem-solving behaviors. 25 parent–adolescent dyads (all members of the Church of the Latter Day Saints) participated in a pre- and posttest experimental and control group design. The 18 experimental dyads completed a social skills program. Analyses revealed significant training effects on all social skills in the program, but perceived improvement was slightly higher for parents than for adolescents. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A protocol for distributed simulation on a microcomputer network

The computer industry has evolved very rapidly from single-user computers to computer networks where users are able to share both local and remote files. Networks of microcomputers facilitate the integration of all information processing for distributed applications such as database processing and electronic mail. One management application of promising potential for computer networks is distributed simulation. Simulation analysis can be useful to essentially all problem-solving and decision-making on the job.

To implement a particular distributed application, computer communication between processors must be considered. Unlike expensive multiprocessor computers, networks of less-expensive microcomputers do not have pre-established communication paths between processors. This paper addresses how this obstacle may be overcome by using communication protocols based on the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) reference model. Protocol services needed to support a distributed simulation environment will be identified, and their implementation through a prototype will then be investigated and evaluated.     

A numerical flow simulation based on the rate form of the equation of state

A finite-difference numerical method of solution for the unsteady, incompressible Navier-Stokes equations using primitive variables is presented. The rate form of the equation of state is used for the calculation of pressure. This form of the equation of state is well-suited for use with the unsteady form of the conservation equations (mass, momentum and energy). An implicit algorithm is used for the time integration for greater numerical stability. This method is used to solve a known benchmark problem in steady-state natural convection as a test of steady-state accuracy. The results of the simulation are compared to the benchmark.     

The Aleutian Enterprise sinking and posttraumatic stress disorder: Misdiagnosis in clinical and forensic settings.

This study examines the vulnerability of clinicians to overdiagnose posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) when survivors of a traumatic event are involved in litigation. 19 of 22 survivors of a marine disaster were seen by mental health professionals while pursuing personal injury claims and received a PTSD diagnosis that was maintained for more than 6 mo. This yielded an incidence rate for chronic PTSD of no less than 86%, a rate in excess of any previously reported in the literature for any type of trauma. The extraordinary incidence rate appeared to be explained, in part, by crew members' reports of attorney advice and symptom sharing. Clinicians are cautioned not to rely on client's self-reports and to consider postincident factors that may influence these reports when clients are involved in litigation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Practical Issues in Temporal Difference Learning

This paper examines whether temporal difference methods for training connectionist networks, such as Sutton's TD() algorithm, can be successfully applied to complex real-world problems. A number of important practical issues are identified and discussed from a general theoretical perspective. These practical issues are then examined in the context of a case study in which TD() is applied to learning the game of backgammon from the outcome of self-play. This is apparently the first application of this algorithm to a complex non-trivial task. It is found that, with zero knowledge built in, the network is able to learn from scratch to play the entire game at a fairly strong intermediate level of performance, which is clearly better than conventional commercial programs, and which in fact surpasses comparable networks trained on a massive human expert data set. This indicates that TD learning may work better in practice than one would expect based on current theory, and it suggests that further analysis of TD methods, as well as applications in other complex domains, may be worth investigating.