On the Subjective Quality of Social Justice: The Role of Affect as Information in the Psychology of Justice Judgments.

This article argues that it is not uncommon for people forming justice judgments to lack information that is most relevant in the particular situation. In information-uncertain conditions, people may therefore construct justice judgments by relying on how they feel about the events they have encountered, and justice judgments may hence be strongly influenced by affect information. Findings show that in information-uncertain conditions, the affective states that people had been in prior and unrelated to the justice event indeed strongly influenced their justice judgments. These findings thus reveal that in situations of information uncertainty, people's judgments of justice can be very subjective, susceptible to affective states that have no logical relationship with the justice judgments they are constructing. Implications for the social psychology of justice and the literature on social cognition and affect are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Testing of a sodium/nickel chloride (ZEBRA) battery for electric propulsion of ships and vehicles

One of the promising future batteries for electric propulsion of vehicles and ships is the sodium/nickel chloride or ZEBRA (Zero Emission Battery Research Activities) battery. Despite some disadvantages with respect to the high temperature, the advantages with respect to specific energy and energy density are such that, especially in applications where the battery is used on a more or less continuous basis (e.g., in delivery vans and taxies) it is an interesting candidate battery. Another interesting application is on board of ships, like submarines or future electrical surface ships with electric propulsion. In 1995 a 2 year feasibility study, including experimental testing of a 10 kW h battery, was completed. This investigated the naval applicability of the sodium/sulphur battery, which is also a high temperature battery. Here the limited, experimentally proven, life-time of the batteries of about 1.5 years and this made naval application almost impossible. A paper about this study was presented at the 19th International Power Sources Symposium held at Brighton, England, in April 1995 [R.A.A. Schillemans, C.E. Kluiters, Sodium/sulphur batteries for naval applications, in: A. Attewell, T. Keily (Eds.), Power Sources 15, International Power Sources Symposium Committee, Crowborough UK, 1995. p. 421.]. Because of the more or less comparable specifications on specific energy and the more promising results of the life-time and field tests with sodium/nickel chloride batteries, a ZEBRA battery from AEG Anglo Batteries has been tested for naval applications. This was done by simulating the charge and discharge as it occurs in practice for the applications investigated. With respect to the electrical ship application (investigated for the Royal Netherlands Navy) the power versus time taken from the battery was simulated as well as the charge procedures. The same can be done for the vehicle application: in this case typical drive cycles for a van or taxi are translated to power versus time taken from the battery. The results of the tests for application of the battery in naval ships are very promising.     

Positioning of goods in a cross-docking environment

Cross docking is one of the options to reduce lead times and inventories and to improve customer response time in supply chains. Cross-docking centres are dynamic environments where products arrive, are regrouped, and leave the same day. In this paper we focus on the process of short-term storage of unit-loads in a cross-docking environment. The goal is to determine temporary storage locations for incoming unit loads such that the travel distances of the forklift trucks with these unit loads are minimised. We model this problem as a novel application of the minimum cost flow problem and show the applicability of the model for different types of layouts and priorities. We demonstrate both the efficiency and effectiveness of the method in the operational and design phase at cross-docking environments by applying it to practice-oriented examples. Furthermore, we show that the approach is superior to a commonly used heuristic method.     

Distance-Enhancing Constrained Codes with Parity-Check Constraints for Data Storage Channels

This paper proposes efficient distance-enhancing constrained codes with parity-check (PC) constraints for data storage channels. We first propose simple and efficient finitestate encoding methods to design various distance-enhancing constrained codes, including a repeated minimum transition runlength (RMTR) code for optical recording channels, as well as a maximum transition run (MTR) code for magnetic recording channels. We further propose a general and systematic code design methodology, which can efficiently combine constrained codes with PC codes. The constrained codes can be any distanceenhancing constrained codes. The PC codes can be any linear binary PC codes. The rates of the designed codes are only a few tenths of a percent below the theoretical maximum. The proposed method enables soft information to be available to the PC decoder and soft decoding of PC codes. Examples of several newly designed distance-enhancing constrained PC codes are illustrated. Simulation results with blu-ray disc (BD) systems show that the proposed new RMTR code and RMTR constrained 4-bit PC code perform 0.2 dB and 0.85 dB better than the standard 17PP code, respectively, at error correction code (ECC) failure rate (EFR) of 10^-12 and high recording density.     

Antimicrobial activity of biodegradable polysaccharide and protein-based films containing active agents

Significant interest has emerged in the introduction of food packaging materials manufactured from biodegradable polymers that have the potential to reduce the environmental impacts associated with conventional packaging materials. Current technologies in active packaging enable effective antimicrobial (AM) packaging films to be prepared from biodegradable materials that have been modified and/or blended with different compatible materials and/or plasticisers. A wide range of AM films prepared from modified biodegradable materials have the potential to be used for packaging of various food products. This review examines biodegradable polymers derived from polysaccharides and protein-based materials for their potential use in packaging systems designed for the protection of food products from microbial contamination. A comprehensive table that systematically analyses and categorizes much of the current literature in this area is included in the review.     

Transforming River Basin Management in South Africa

Abstract

This paper analyzes the transformation of river basin management in South Africa by focusing on the political processes involved in the creation of new water management bodies and irrigation infrastructure in the Lower Komati sub-basin. Institutional reform is described and analyzed in terms of the collaboration theory of Gray (1985). Attention is paid to the absence of mutual collaboration in the water domain through the analysis of three phases that are characteristic of collaborative management: problem setting, direction setting, and structuring. The perceptions and strategies of stakeholders in the change process are informed by the skewed access to land and water, the protracted struggle for redress of historical inequities, the quest for autonomy in water management by commercial farmers, and large political power differentials. This has resulted in differential access to decision making and political influence and in the materialization of these skewed relations in water control technology. The reluctance of stakeholders to explicitly recognize their interdependence and the role of the state as the convener of the change process has hampered the emergence of a shared appreciation of the problems in the water domain. Despite efforts by government to move towards equitable and inclusive water management, little redress of past inequities has taken place, and the majority of small farmers are uninformed and excluded from the change process. This suggests that the proposed Catchment Management Agency will not be representative nor attain equitable water management unless a well-conceived redistribution of water entitlements and land rights is carried out as part of an encompassing program to strengthen political democracy.     

Disintegration of images moving at high velocities

This article investigates the effect of spatial disintegration in moving images at high object velocities: when the visual system interprets the same object in consecutive fields as different entities. For a 50-Hz display this effect is found to roughly occur in the velocity range of 20–45 degrees/s, and to depend marginally on the resolution level of the objects involved. A more important influence is that of the trajectory length of the object: the maximum velocity at which no disintegration occurs is found to depend on it in a linear fashion. A simple model is presented that describes the visual appearance of the disintegration effect as well as explains the data quantitatively. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

IEEE-Compliant IDCT on FPGA-Augmented TriMedia

This paper presents a TriMedia processor extended with an IDCT reconfigurable design, and assesses the performance gain such an extension has when performing MPEG-2 decoding. We first propose the skeleton of an extension of the TriMedia architecture, which consists of a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)-based Reconfigurable Functional Unit (RFU), a Configuration Unit managing the reconfiguration of the RFU, and their associated instructions. Then, we address the computation of the 8 × 8 (2-D) IDCT on such extended TriMedia and propose a scheme to implement the 1-D IDCT operation on the RFU. When mapped on an ACEX EP1K100 FPGA from Altera, the proposed 1-D IDCT exhibits a latency of 16 and a recovery of 2 TriMedia@200 MHz cycles, and occupies 45% of the logic cells of the device. By configuring the 1-D IDCT on the RFU at application launch-time, the IEEE-compliant 2-D IDCT can be computed with the throughput of 1/32 IDCT/cycle. This figure translates to an improvement over the standard TriMedia of more than 40% in terms of computing time when 2-D IDCT is carried out in the framework of MPEG-2 decoding. Finally, the proposed reconfigurable IDCT is compared to a number of existing designs.Mihai Sima was born in Bucharest, Romania. He received the MS degree in Electrical Engineering from Politehnica University of Bucharest, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. He had been with the Microelectronics Company in Bucharest for 3 years, where he was involved in instrumentation electronics for integrated circuit testing. Subsequently, he joined the Telecommunications Department of Politehnica University of Bucharest, where he had been involved in digital signal processing and speech recognition for 6 years. More recently, he had been with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, and Computer Science, Delft University of Technology, where he worked on reconfigurable architectures for mediaprocessing domain. He is currently an assistant professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Victoria, B.C., Canada. His research interests include computer architecture, reconfigurable computing, embedded systems, digital signal processing, and speech recognition.Sorin D. Coofan was born in Mizil, Romania. He received the MS degree in Computer Science from the Politehnica University of Bucharest, Romania, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. He had worked with the Research & Development Institute for Electronic Components (ICCE) in Bucharest for a decade, being involved in structured design of digital systems, design rule checking of ICs layout, logic and mixed-mode simulation of electronic circuits, testability analysis, and image processing. He is currently an associate professor with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, and Computer Science, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. His research interests include computer arithmetic, parallel architectures, embedded systems, reconfigurable computing, nano-electronics, neural networks, computational geometry, and computer aided design.Jos T.J. van Eijndhoven was born in Roosendaal, The Netherlands. He studied Electrical Engineering at the Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands, obtaining the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in 1981 and 1984, respectively, for a work on piecewise linear circuit simulation. Then, he became a senior research member in the design automation group of the Eindhoven University of Technology. In 1986 he spent a sabbatical period at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Laboratory, Yorktown Heights, New York, for research on high level synthesis. In 1998 he joined Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, to work on the architectural design of programmable multimedia hardware and the associated mapping of media processing applications.Stamatis Vassiliadis was born in Manolates, Samos, Greece. He is a professor with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, and Computer Science, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. He has also served in the faculties of Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, and the State University of New York (S.U.N.Y.), Binghamton, NY.He hadworked for a decade with IBM in the AdvancedWorkstations and Systems laboratory in Austin TX, the Mid-Hudson Valley Laboratory in Poughkeepsie, NY, and the Glendale Laboratory in Endicott, NY. In IBM he was involved in a number of projects regarding computer design, organizations, and architectures and the leadership to advanced research projects. A number of his design and implementation proposals have been implemented in commerciallyavailable systems and processors including the IBM 9370 model 60 computer system, the IBM POWER II, the IBM AS/400 Models 400, 500, and 510, Server Models 40S and 50S, the IBM AS/400 Advanced 36, and the IBM S/390 G4 and G5 computer systems. For his work, he received numerous awards including 23 levels of Publication Achievement Awards, 15 levels of Invention Achievement Awards and an Outstanding Innovation Award for Engineering/Scientific Hardware Design in 1989. In 1990 he has been awarded the highest number of USA patents in IBM, six of his 70 USA patents being rated with the highest patent ranking in IBM.Kees A. Vissers graduated the Delft University of Technology, receiving his M.Sc. in 1980. He started directly with Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven where he was involved in highlevel simulation and high-level synthesis. He had been heading the research on hardware/software co-design and system level design for many years, and had a significant contribution to the TriMedia VLIW processor. From 1987 till 1988 he was a visiting researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with the group of Don Thomas. He is currently a Research Fellow with University of California at Berkeley, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. His research interests include video processing, embedded media processing systems, and reconfigurable computing.     

Uncertainty management: The influence of uncertainty salience on reactions to perceived procedural fairness.

On the basis of fairness heuristic theory, it is argued in this article that people especially need fairness when they are reminded about aspects of their lives that make them uncertain. It is therefore proposed that thinking about uncertainty should make fairness a more important issue to people. The findings of 3 experiments support this line of reasoning: Asking (vs. not asking) participants 2 questions that solicited their thoughts and feelings of being uncertain led to stronger effects of perceived procedural fairness on participants' affective reactions toward the way they were treated. It is argued that these findings suggest that fairness matters to people especially when they are trying to deal with things that make them uncertain. An implication of the current findings therefore may be that fairness is important to people because it gives them an opportunity to manage uncertain aspects of their lives. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)