Disaffection or expected outcomes: Understanding personal Internet use during work

Many contemporary analyses of personal Internet use during work explain the behavior in terms of workplace disaffection. However, evidence for this interpretation is mixed. This article posits that an approach emphasizing the expected outcomes of Internet use more effectively explains the behavior. The 2 approaches are tested using survey data collected from more than 1,000 U.S.‐based computer‐using workers. About 4/5 of those workers do engage in personal Internet use during work. Regression analyses show that workplace disaffection factors, such as stress and dissatisfaction, have no significant influence on the extent of web surfing or personal e‐mail use during work. In contrast, factors which shape the expected outcomes of personal Internet use during work, such as a generalized positive perception of the utility of the Internet, routinized use of computers, job commitment, and organizational restrictions on computer use, are very significant predictors of such behavior. These results suggest that employees use the Internet for personal purposes at work for many of the same reasons that they use it elsewhere. Implications of these findings are explored.     

Stimulated Brillouin scattering in high-order mode fibers employed in dispersion management modules

Dispersion management modules based on large effective area, relatively short high-order mode fibers are experimentally shown to have high input power threshold to stimulated Brillouin scattering. Theoretically, they behave similarly to the LP/sub 01/ mode of dispersion compensation fibers but with a larger effective area and shorter effective length. The resulting /spl sim/5-dB higher threshold further strengthens the viability of full dispersion and slope compensation without significant input power limitation.     

The origins of the psychological experiment as a social institution.

Discusses the origins of the psychological experiment as an institution, noting that the psychological experiment involves a set of institutionalized role patterns that have evolved historically. This evolution can be studied by analyzing published experimental reports. From the beginning, there were 2 models for the social structure of the psychological experiment: the Leipzig and the Paris models. The Paris model emerged in the context of work on experimental hypnosis and involved a rigid social differentiation between experimenter and S, while the Leipzig model involved the interchangeability of experimenter and S roles. US investigators adopted both these models but also introduced more impersonal and less intensive relations between experimenters and Ss. Implications of the multimodal origins of experimental situations are discussed. (65 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Simulation of temperature peak attenuation by catalyst dilution in a tubular packed-bed reactor

Temperature peak attenuation is an important problem for safe process control. Simulations of the axial temperature and product progression in stationary ammonia synthesis with different axial catalyst dilutions have been carried out. It is demonstrated that the requirement of temperature peak attenuation together with a maximum product yield can be met by an optimal catalyst dilution profile at the entrance of the bed.     

Review of Cognition as intuitive statistics.

Reviews the book, Cognition as intuitive statistics by Gerd Gigerenzer and David J. Murray (see record 1987-97295-000). Psychologists tend to think of their statistical methods simply as neutral tools. The use of a particular statistical technique is not supposed to influence one's psychological theorizing. Methods and theories are entirely different things, just like facts and theories are quite different. These sharp distinctions are generally accepted as articles of faith. They are not empirically based but are part of the philosophical legacy of positivism which continues to have a strong hold on our discipline. According to this philosophy methods and facts are both supposed to be theory-neutral, so that they can be used to test the claims of rival theories. Now, the post-positivist phase in the philosophy of science has been going on for long enough to have had some effect on the rhetoric, if not on the practice, of psychological investigation. In particular, the distinction between theories and facts is not likely to be insisted upon as dogmatically as it was in the heyday of logical positivism. But the parallel distinction between theories and methods has seldom been explicitly questioned in psychology. Gigerenzer and Murray's book goes a long way towards filling this gap. Their thesis is that after psychologists came to take a specific statistical methodology for granted in their research they began to base their theoretical models of human cognition on the psychologists' own statistical practice. Gigerenzer and Murray illustrate their general thesis by drawing on examples from four areas of psychological research: signal detection theory, perception, memory and thinking. In each case they combine a broad historical account with a detailed critical assessment of some contemporary work. The value of such an approach is that it opens up a refreshing new perspective on the research literature in these fields, making visible fundamental assumptions which normally remain hidden. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Gewinnung wasserfreier Lösungsmittel durch Pervaporation

Removal of Traces of Water from Solvents by Pervaporation Pervaporation is a membrane process suitable for the water removal from a solvent mixture, when a distillative separation fails due to the azeotrope or when the energy demand is a problem. The energy requirement for a separation using membrane technology is lower than for the distillative process performed in 2 columns using an entrainer. The pervaporation became possible due to the development of composite membranes consisting of a coating on a relatively porous support material. This coating consists of a thin, highly selective, hydrophilic dense film.     

Covering arrays avoiding forbidden edges

Covering arrays (CAs) can be used to detect the existence of faulty pairwise interactions between parameters or components in a software system. The generalization considered here applies to the situation in which some input combinations are invalid, a requirement quite common in software testing. In this paper, we study covering arrays avoiding forbidden edges (CAFEs), where certain pairwise interactions are forbidden while all others must be covered, and we aim to minimize the number of tests. We establish a theoretical framework for this problem, by providing connections to the edge clique covering problem, lower and upper bounds, complexity results and a recursive construction. We also give an algorithm for the case of binary alphabets.