Evolution of the PowerPC architecture

The PowerPC is a new RISC architecture derived from IBM's POWER architecture. The changes made to POWER simplify implementations, increase clock rates, enable a higher degree of superscalar execution, extend the architecture to 64 bits, and add multiprocessor support. For compatibility with existing software, the developers retained POWER's basic instruction set, opcode assignments, and programming model     

Antecedents and consequences of emotional display rule perceptions.

Central to all theories of emotional labor is the idea that individuals follow emotional display rules that specify the appropriate expression of emotions on the job. This investigation examined antecedents and consequences of emotional display rule perceptions. Full-time working adults (N = 152) from a variety of occupations provided self-report data, and supervisors and coworkers completed measures pertaining to the focal employees. Results using structural equation modeling revealed that job-based interpersonal requirements, supervisor display rule perceptions, and employee extraversion and neuroticism were predictive of employee display rule perceptions. Employee display rule perceptions, in turn, were related to self-reported job satisfaction and coworker ratings of employees' emotional displays on the job. Finally, neuroticism had direct negative relationships with job satisfaction and coworker ratings of employees' emotional displays. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How multimedia workloads will change processor design

Workloads drive architecture design and will change in the next two decades. For high-performance, general-purpose processors, there is a consensus that multimedia will continue to grow in importance. The authors predict these processors will incorporate more media processing capabilities, eventually bringing about the demise of specialized media processors, except perhaps, in embedded applications. These enhanced general-purpose processor capabilities will arise from multimedia applications that require real-time response, continuous-media data types and significant fine-grained data parallelism     

The relations of daily task accomplishment satisfaction with changes in affect: A multilevel study in nurses.

Focusing on a sample of nurses, this investigation examined the relationships of daily task accomplishment satisfaction (for direct and indirect care tasks) with changes in positive and negative affect from preshift to postshift. Not accomplishing tasks to one's satisfaction was conceptualized as a daily workplace stressor that should increase daily negative affect and decrease daily positive affect from preshift to postshift. Further, because of the greater centrality of direct care nursing tasks to nursing work role identities (relative to indirect care tasks), we expected that task accomplishment satisfaction (or lack thereof) for these tasks would have stronger effects on changes in affect than would task accomplishment satisfaction for indirect care tasks. We also examined 2 person-level resources, collegial nurse–physician relations and psychological resilience, as moderators of the relationships among these daily variables, with the expectation that these resources would buffer the harmful effects of low task accomplishment satisfaction on nurse affect. Results supported almost all of the proposed effects, though the cross-level interactions were observed only for the effects of indirect care task accomplishment satisfaction on affect and not for direct care task accomplishment satisfaction on affect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotional display rules as work unit norms: A multilevel analysis of emotional labor among nurses.

Emotional labor theory has conceptualized emotional display rules as shared norms governing the expression of emotions at work. Using a sample of registered nurses working in different units of a hospital system, we provided the first empirical evidence that display rules can be represented as shared, unit-level beliefs. Additionally, controlling for the influence of dispositional affectivity, individual-level display rule perceptions, and emotion regulation, we found that unit-level display rules are associated with individual-level job satisfaction. We also showed that unit-level display rules relate to burnout indirectly through individual-level display rule perceptions and emotion regulation strategies. Finally, unit-level display rules also interacted with individual-level dispositional affectivity to predict employee use of emotion regulation strategies. We discuss how future research on emotional labor and display rules, particularly in the health care setting, can build on these findings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotional Display Rules and Emotional Labor: The Moderating Role of Commitment.

The authors examined whether commitment to emotional display rules is a necessary condition for emotional display rules to affect behavior at work. Results using structural equation modeling revealed that display rule commitment moderated the relationships of emotional display rule perceptions with surface acting, deep acting, and positive affective delivery at work, such that the relationships were strong and positive when commitment to display rules was high and weak when commitment to display rules was low. These findings suggest that motivation plays a role in the emotional labor process in that individuals must be committed to display rules for these rules to affect behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Action–state orientation: Construct validity of a revised measure and its relationship to work-related variables.

Data from 6 studies (N ? = ? 945) were combined to examine the factor structure and construct validity of J. Kuhl's (1994a) measure of action–state orientation, the Action Control Scale (ACS). Initial confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of 4 models showed poor fit with the data. Items that did not perform well were dropped, and the 4 CFA models were retested, resulting in support for a 3-factor solution corresponding to the Preoccupation, Hesitation, and Volatility subscales. Regression analyses demonstrated that the revised ACS subscales measure a construct distinct from cognitive ability and personality. The revised subscales showed differential statistically significant relationships with (a) self-regulatory and self-focus variables and (b) job attitudes and ratings of job performance. The authors conclude that action-state orientation is a construct relevant to applied settings and that future research should further examine this construct. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hot Chips 16: Power, Parallelism, and Memory Performance

We are pleased to introduce this special issue of IEEE Micro featuring papers that capture the best presentations from the Hot Chips 16 conference held last summer at Stanford University.     

Four-factor justice and daily job satisfaction: A multilevel investigation.

This study examined the differential effects of 4 types of organizational justice on daily job satisfaction at between- and within-individual levels. Specifically, the authors predicted that interpersonal justice and informational justice would exhibit meaningful daily variations and would have direct impacts on individuals’ job satisfaction on a daily basis. They further theorized that distributive justice and procedural justice at a between-person level would moderate the within-person relationships. The authors used hierarchical linear modeling to test their hypotheses with a sample of 231 full-time employees in Hong Kong over the course of 25 working days. The results showed that both daily interpersonal and informational justice were positively related to daily job satisfaction. As hypothesized, between-individual distributive justice moderated the relationship between daily interpersonal justice and daily job satisfaction, and between-individual procedural justice moderated the relationship between daily informational justice and daily job satisfaction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)