Employee reactions to workspace characteristics.

We investigated the independent and joint effects of four workspace characteristics (social density, room darkness, number of enclosures, and interpersonal distance) on three employee reactions: turnover, satisfaction, and withdrawal from the office during discretionary periods. A total of 109 clerical employees from 19 offices of a large university participated in the research. Results showed that the independent and joint effects of the workspace characteristics accounted for 24% of the variance in employee turnover, 31% of the variance in work satisfaction, and 34% of the variance in discretionary withdrawal. Moreover, the four-way interaction term involving the workspace characteristics contributed significantly to each of the reaction measures, suggesting that employees were most likely to withdraw from offices and to experience dissatisfaction when the following conditions were present: the office was rated as dark, few enclosures surrounded employees' work areas, employees were seated close to one another, and many employees occupied the office. The implications of the findings for future research on workspace design are discussed. (48 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Improved nuisance attribute projection for face recognition

Th e illumination variation is one of the well-known problems in face recognition under uncontrolled environments. Several techniques have been presented in the literature to cope up with this problem. Lately, a technique known as Nuisance Attribute Projection (NAP), originally developed for the speaker recognition field was introduced to image processing in order to compensate for luminance artifacts. This paper extends and improves the earlier work by exploring efficient methodologies for using NAP for face recognition under varied illumination conditions. In particular, we propose a modified NAP formulation and show that NAP training can be simplified for face recognition. Additionally, we suggested a compact framework merging between NAP compensation and eigenface recognition. A series of experiments using the extended YaleB database, and a cross-validation using the PIE CMU and the Oulo databases are performed to validate our proposals.     

Dynamic reconfiguration architectures for multi-context FPGAs

Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are being integrated with processors on the same motherboard or even chip in order to achieve flexible high-performance computing, and this may become main stream in chip multi-core architectures. However, the expensive FPGA area is often used inefficiently, with much of the logic idle at any given time. This work, motivated by the Dynamic-Link Library (DLL) concept in software, explores the possibility of “hardware DLLs” by finding ways for fast dynamic incremental reconfiguration of FPGAs. So doing would, among other things, enable same-function replication at any given time, with functions changing quickly over time, thereby enabling efficient exploitation of data parallelism at no additional hardware cost.We present two new multi-context FPGA architectures based on two different configuration storage architectures: local and centralized. Problems such as configuration storage and reconfiguration (time, power and space) overhead are considered. Well known area and power models are used in evaluating various approaches and in order to provide guidelines for matching architectures to target applications. Lastly, we provide insights into resulting scheduling issues. Our findings provide the foundation and “rules of the game” for subsequent development of reconfiguration schedulers and execution environments.     

Using direction and elapsed-time information to reduce the wireless cost of locating mobile units in cellular networks

This paper proposes the use of easily-obtainable information to reduce the wireless cost of locating mobile units in cellular communication networks. This comprises the direct cost of searching for them in different cells upon arrival of calls, as well as that of occasional position-updates issued by the units to reduce the number of cells that need to be searched. The direction of motion at the time of last update is used to construct an asymmetric distance-based reporting boundary and, in conjunction with the elapsed time since the latest position-update, to optimize the search order. For a Markovian motion model along a straight line and known motion parameters, optimal algorithms are provided. The results suggest that substantial savings may be attained in common demanding situations such as commuter traffic in congested corridors.Work carried out at Technion.     

Effects of image restoration on automatic acquisition of moving objects in thermal video sequences degraded by the atmosphere

We aim to determine the effect of image restoration (deblurring) on the ability to acquire moving objects detected automatically from long-distance thermal video signals. This is done by first restoring the videos using a blind-deconvolution method developed recently, and then examining its effect on the geometrical features of automatically detected moving objects. Results show that for modern (low-noise and high-resolution) thermal imaging devices, the geometrical features obtained from the restored videos better resemble the true properties of the objects. These results correspond to a previous study, which demonstrated that image restoration can significantly improve the ability of human observers to acquire moving objects from long-range thermal videos.     

Differences between African Americans and Whites in reactions to affirmative action programs in hiring, promotion, training, and layoffs.

This study examines the reactions of African Americans and Whites to affirmative action programs (AAPs) applied to 4 human resource activities: hiring, promotion, training, and layoffs. The results of a scenario-based experimental study conducted on a large sample (N > 800) of advanced undergraduate and MBA business school participants generally supported the hypothesis that human resource activity elicited systematic differences in reaction to AAPs between African Americans and Whites. The authors also replicated previous research on the effect of AAP strength and prior discrimination by the organization on reactions to AAPs. Results indicated that AAP strength levels moderated racial differences in reaction to AAPs, while the moderating role of prior discrimination by the organization was not supported. Implications for future research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Spike Formation Is a Turning Point Determining Wheat Root Microbiome Abundance,Structures and Functions

Root selection of their associated microbiome composition and activities is determined by the plant’s developmental stage and distance from the root. Total gene abundance, structure and functions of root-associated and rhizospheric microbiomes were studied throughout wheat growth season under field conditions. On the root surface, abundance of the well-known wheat colonizers Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria decreased and increased, respectively, during spike formation, whereas abundance of Bacteroidetes was independent of spike formation. Metagenomic analysis combined with functional co-occurrence networks revealed a significant impact of plant developmental stage on its microbiome during the transition from vegetative growth to spike formation. For example, gene functions related to biofilm and sensorial movement, antibiotic production and resistance and carbons and amino acids and their transporters. Genes associated with these functions were also in higher abundance in root vs. the rhizosphere microbiome. We propose that abundance of transporter-encoding genes related to carbon and amino acid, may mirror the availability and utilization of root exudates. Genes related to antibiotic resistance mechanisms were abundant during vegetative growth, while after spike formation, genes related to the biosynthesis of various antibiotics were enriched. This observation suggests that during root colonization and biofilm formation, bacteria cope with competitor’s antibiotics, whereas in the mature biofilm stage, they invest in inhibiting new colonizers. Additionally, there is higher abundance of genes related to denitrification in rhizosphere compared to root-associated microbiome during wheat growth, possibly due to competition with the plant over nitrogen in the root vicinity. We demonstrated functional and phylogenetic division in wheat root zone microbiome in both time and space: pre- and post-spike formation, and root-associated vs. rhizospheric niches. These findings shed light on the dynamics of plant–microbe and microbe–microbe interactions in the developing root zone.     

The mediating effects of job satisfaction and propensity to leave on role stress-job performance relationships: Combining meta-analysis and structural equation modeling.

This article combines meta-analysis with structural equation modeling to compare alternative models of the relationships among work stress, psychological mediators, and job performance. Specifically, the authors examined the mediating effects of job satisfaction and propensity to leave and their effect on the relationships between role ambiguity, role conflict, and job performance. The meta-analysis included both published and unpublished studies conducted over a period of 25 years, resulting in 113 independent samples with more than 22,000 individuals. As hypothesized, the structural model that best fit the meta-analytic estimates was the partial mediation model, in which stress is related to job performance both directly and indirectly through job satisfaction and propensity to leave and in which all path coefficients were reliably different from zero. The results are discussed in terms of theoretical contributions and implications for future stress-performance research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)