Automating manual reward systems

The introduction of Personal Computers has enabled Industrial Engineers to automate many aspects of their responsibilities, thus becoming significantly more productive. One aspect which clearly benefits from automation is the creation, implementation, and periodic maintenance of Pay-for-Performance Reward Systems. However, selecting the correct software package is not easy. Industrial Engineers currently have a variety of fully automated software packages to choose from which can range from $2,000 – $100,000. The initial cost alone may make it difficult to Justify for a small plant. Furthermore, if you have a variety of reward systems (Gainsharing - Small Group - One for One) finding a single program to handle all of them may be impossible.

This was a problem Norton Company faced five years ago. We are a fortune 500 company with manufacturing plants located throughout the world, using a variety of reward systems. To remain cost competitive in all aspects of our business, we had to find a way to reduce the on-going maintenance costs of our incentive systems.

Investigating alternatives uncovered a low cost, flexible solution to our problem. The use of off-the-shelf spreadsheet and data base software enabled us to fully automate all aspects of our reward systems.     

Ratings of Therapist Dynamic Activities and Alliance Early and Late in Psychotherapy.

The present study examines the concurrent and predictive relationships between therapist psychodynamic-interpersonal activity and therapist-rated alliance. Ratings from 45 patient and therapist dyads engaged in short term psychodynamic psychotherapy from a point early (3rd or 4th session) and late (the session at which 90% of the treatment was completed) in treatment were used. The results suggest that therapists who have positive views of the alliance early in treatment also have positive views of the alliance later in treatment. Therapists who used psychodynamic-interpersonal activities early in treatment also made use of psychodynamic-interpersonal activities later in treatment. Moreover, the use of psychodynamic-interpersonal activities early in treatment was positively related to both global and specific aspects of therapist-rated alliance late in treatment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

用功放驱动热电致冷器来调节温度

系统设计师设计光纤通信系统时经常会遇到一个问题，那就是如何确保激光系统可在某一温度范围内保持其特性。若温度改变，激光系统的中心频率也会随着改变。为了确保频率保持稳定，新一代的固态激光模块都内置一个热电致冷器(Thermoelectric Cooler, TEC)，以便将热能泵入模块或将热能释出，以调节温度。热电致冷器按照佩尔蒂埃效应(Peltier effect) 的原理运作。每当直流电流经热电致冷器时，热能便会由热电致冷器的一边传送至另一边，令热电致冷器的一边转“热”，另一边则转“冷”。若直流电被逆转，原先热的一边会转冷，冷的一边则会…     

Correction to Construction of Panoramic Image Mosaics with Global and Local Alignment

International Journal of Computer Vision -     

Completeness for nondeterministic complexity classes

We demonstrate differences between reducibilities and corresponding completeness notions for nondeterministic time and space classes. For time classes the studied completeness notions under polynomial-time bounded (even logarithmic-space bounded) reducibilities turn out to be different for any class containingNE. For space classes the completeness notions under logspace reducibilities can be separated for any class properly containingLOGSPACE. Key observation in obtaining the separations is the honesty property of reductions, which was recently observed to hold for the time classes and can be shown to hold for space classes.The work of S. Homer was supported in part by National Science Foundation Grants MIP-8608137 and CCR-8814339 and a Fulbright-Hays Research Fellowship. Some of this research was done while he was a Guest Professor at the Mathematics Institute of Heidelberg University.     

Performance of a non‐load‐bearing steel stud gypsum board wall assembly: Experiments and modelling

A gypsum wall assembly was exposed to an intense real‐scale compartment fire. For the wall assembly, temperatures were measured at the exposed face, within the stud cavity, and at the unexposed face during the fire exposure. Total heat flux gauges were used to measure the temporal variation of the energy incident on the walls, and cameras, both visual and infrared, were used to image the unexposed face of the wall assembly during the fire exposure. The behaviour of the wall assembly under the fire load is discussed as are current model results for a simulation of the fire test. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Phase Shifter for a 915 MHz Phased Array Hyperthermia System

This paper describes a design for an analog phase shifter operating at 915 MHz and suitable for use in a phased array microwave hyperthermia system. Here, the major operating constraint was minimization of amplitude variation over a 1800 phase shift, whereas previous phase shifters were designed to obtain a linear relationship between phase and control voltage. The result is a simple, inexpensive hybrid coupler phase shifter that operates over a narrow bandwidth and provides 180°of continuous phase shift with input powers up to 1 W.