Effects of Personality on Pair Programming

Personality tests in various guises are commonly used in recruitment and career counseling industries. Such tests have also been considered as instruments for predicting the job performance of software professionals both individually and in teams. However, research suggests that other human-related factors such as motivation, general mental ability, expertise, and task complexity also affect the performance in general. This paper reports on a study of the impact of the Big Five personality traits on the performance of pair programmers together with the impact of expertise and task complexity. The study involved 196 software professionals in three countries forming 98 pairs. The analysis consisted of a confirmatory part and an exploratory part. The results show that: 1) Our data do not confirm a meta-analysis-based model of the impact of certain personality traits on performance and 2) personality traits, in general, have modest predictive value on pair programming performance compared with expertise, task complexity, and country. We conclude that more effort should be spent on investigating other performance-related predictors such as expertise, and task complexity, as well as other promising predictors, such as programming skill and learning. We also conclude that effort should be spent on elaborating on the effects of personality on various measures of collaboration, which, in turn, may be used to predict and influence performance. Insights into such malleable, rather than static, factors may then be used to improve pair programming performance.     

Conjointanalyse-basierte Produkt(linien)gestaltung unter Berücksichtigung von Konkurrenzreaktionen Conjoint-based product (line) design considering competitive reactions

Ausgangspunkt unserer Untersuchungen zur Conjointanalyse-basierten wettbewerbsorientierten Produktgestaltung bilden segmentspezifische konditionale MNL-Modelle. Bisher auf diesem Gebiet entwickelte Ans?tze, die sich mit der Bestimmung von Marktgleichgewichten befassen, beschr?nken sich ausschlie?lich auf den Single-Produkt-Fall (z.B. Choi u. DeSarbo, 1993; Green u. Krieger, 1997). Unser Beitrag setzt sich ebenfalls mit dem Single-Produkt-Fall (d.h. ein Produkt je Anbieter) auseinander, behandelt darüber hinaus erstmals aber auch den Wettbewerb mit Produktlinien. Gegenstand der Untersuchungen sind insbesondere die Existenz und Eindeutigkeit simultaner Positions-Preis- Gleichgewichte, die Existenz ineffizienter Marktgleichgewichte sowie der Differenzierungsgrad zwischen Konkurrenzprodukten.     

Highly reflective coatings for interior and exterior steel cladding and the energy efficiency of buildings

The effect of surface heat-radiation properties of coil-coated steel cladding material on the energy efficiency of buildings in Nordic climate is addressed by parallel temperature and energy usage measurements in a series of test cabins with different exterior solar reflectivity and interior thermal reflectivity. During one year, a number of one- or two-week experiments with air conditioner cooling and electrical floor heating were made while logging air-, radiation- and surface temperatures, energy consumption and weather conditions. Measurements show significant energy savings in the test cabins by the use of high thermal reflectivity interior surfaces both during heating and cooling and a strongly reduced cooling demand by the use of high solar reflectivity exterior surfaces. Results are interpreted within the context of a steady-state energy flux model, to illuminate the importance of surface resistance properties (radiation and convective heat dissipation).     

Technology learning for renewable energy: Implications for South Africa's long-term mitigation scenarios

Technology learning can make a significant difference to renewable energy as a mitigation option in South Africa's electricity sector. This article considers scenarios implemented in a Markal energy model used for mitigation analysis. It outlines the empirical evidence that unit costs of renewable energy technologies decline, considers the theoretical background and how this can be implemented in modeling. Two scenarios are modelled, assuming 27% and 50% of renewable electricity by 2050, respectively. The results show a dramatic shift in the mitigation costs. In the less ambitious scenario, instead of imposing a cost of Rand 52/t CO₂-eq (at 10% discount rate), reduced costs due to technology learning turn renewables into negative cost option. Our results show that technology learning flips the costs, saving R143. At higher penetration rate, the incremental costs added beyond the base case decline from R92 per ton to R3. Including assumptions about technology learning turns renewable from a higher-cost mitigation option to one close to zero. We conclude that a future world in which global investment in renewables drives down unit costs makes it a much more cost-effective and sustainable mitigation option in South Africa.     

Model-based control of cathode pressure and oxygen excess ratio of a PEM fuel cell system

For PEM fuel cells supplied with air, pressure and flow control is a key requirement for an efficient and dynamic operation because fuel cells are in risk of starvation when the partial pressure of oxygen at the cathode falls below a critical level. To avoid oxygen starvation and, at the same time, to allow for a dynamic operation of the fuel cell system, both excess ratio of oxygen and cathode pressure need to be adjusted rapidly.     

Detection of pre-defined boundaries between hydrothermal alteration zones using rotation-variant template matching

A new method for the detection of pre-defined boundaries in single-band image data that uses a rotation-variant template matching (RTM) algorithm is presented. This algorithm matches a miniature image of a pre-defined boundary to image data at various orientations. The image pixels that match boundary criteria are reported in output imagery together with the rotation angle of the template. The method is applied to identify boundaries between hydrothermal alteration zones in processed airborne hyperspectral imagery, based on the presence of white mica minerals. Results show that boundaries identified with RTM are relatively free of noise and more coherent than those identified with, for instance, image slicing techniques. Identified boundaries can be used for image segmentation. The output of the RTM algorithm also provides information on the type of boundary, whether it is crisp or gradual. This information can be used to better characterize mineral variation in the alteration halo associated with fossil hydrothermal systems.