Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessing Performance Management Systems from Employees’ Perspectives: An Exploratory Study

This paper focuses on the perceptions and experiences of employees in two different large organisations related to Performance Management Systems (PMS) in their respective organisations. Drawing on individual employee interview data, the research paper presents a comparative assessment of PMS and reports the interpretation of employee data under various themes pertaining to design and implementation considerations. The results suggest that PMS perceptions vary due to design anomalies and an incongruity in the implementation of PMS practices which has a bearing on the effectiveness and strength of the system. In considering PMS theory and practices, organisation intentions and actions, the paper seeks to engage in debates emerging on the organisation’s dependence on PMS process for achieving goals and also developing employees.
Emerging OCDMA communication systems and data networks (Invited)

Feature Issue on Optical Code Division Multiple AccessI present an in-depth review of the trends and the directions taken by researchers worldwide in optical code-division multiple-access (OCDMA) systems. I highlight those trends and features that I believe are essential to the successful introduction of various OCDMA techniques in communication systems and data networks in the near future. In particular I begin by giving a comprehensive review of the construction of optical orthogonal codes (OOCs). Specifically I discuss the recently developed algorithms that are based on matrix algebra, which simplify and enhance the efficiencies of algorithms in OOC generation. In communication systems studies I first focus on and discuss various OCDMA techniques, such as incoherent and coherent OCDMA. A comprehensive discussion takes place on all important aspects of each OCDMA technique. In particular, I elaborate on enabling technologies that are needed prior to full scale consideration of OCDMA in communication systems. For incoherent OCDMA the technique is categorized into two distinguished techniques, namely, 1D and 2D OCDMA. For each technique I discuss the various receiver structures proposed to date. In particular I discuss a recently introduced powerful receiver structure based on optical AND logic gate elements. Based on this receiver structure I conclude that in many practical applications, OOCs with a cross-correlation value λ equal to 2 or 3, which have a much larger cardinality compared to OOCs with λ=1, perform much better. Many fundamental issues, including architectural consideration of multiple amplifiers, various acquisition algorithms, and advanced signaling methods, such as pulse position modulation, are discussed. For coherent OCDMA or spectrally encoded ultrashort light pulse OCDMA, I begin by having an in-depth discussion on the key and enabling technologies that are essential in the successful implementation of this very important and extremely powerful technique. In particular on the encoder-decoder side I present discussions on various key device technologies such as virtually imaged pulsed array, fiber Bragg gratings, and arrayed waveguide gratings. On the receiver side I elaborate on various nonlinear detection schemes used in such OCDMA networks. I will present an analytical framework on the above nonlinear detection schemes and discuss their pros and cons. I extend the discussion to various data networks. In particular I will discuss applications such as wireless OCDMA LAN, free-space OCDMA, fiber-to-the-home, and other code-division-multiple-access-based packet communication networks using label addressing and processing techniques to indicate the directions and the applications for which OCDMA systems are considered. It is believed that in the not so distant future OCDMA, once fully developed and matured, will be an inseparable part of advanced optical communication systems and networks, due to its various desirable features and functionalities.
Process Capability Database Usage In Industry: Myth vs. Reality

Process capability data (PCD) is needed for robust design, optimal tolerance allocation, and variation simulation analysis. Process capability databases (PCDBs) have been developed in many industries and are being used by the manufacturing community to monitor quality; however, they are not being effectively utilized by design. When the PCDBs were developed, the intent was for design to use PCD for optimization and product cost minimization, but this ideal situation has not been realized.
Address-stride assisted approximate load value prediction in GPUs

Value prediction holds the promise of significantly improving the performance and energy efficiency. However, if the values are predicted incorrectly, significant performance overheads are observed due to execution rollbacks. To address these overheads, value approximation is introduced, which leverages the observation that the rollbacks are not necessary as long as the application-level loss in quality due to value misprediction is acceptable to the user. However, in the context of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), our evaluations show that the existing approximate value predictors are not optimal in improving the prediction accuracy as they do not consider memory request order, a key characteristic in determining the accuracy of value prediction. As a result, the overall data movement reduction benefits are capped as it is necessary to limit the percentage of predicted values (i.e., prediction coverage) for an acceptable value of application-level error. To this end, we propose a new Address-Stride Assisted Approximate Value Predictor (ASAP) that explicitly considers the memory addresses and their request order information so as to provide high value prediction accuracy. We take advantage of our new observation that the stride between memory request addresses and the stride between their corresponding data values are highly correlated in several applications. Therefore, ASAP predicts the values only for those requests that have regular strides in their addresses. We evaluate ASAP on a diverse set of GPGPU applications. The results show that ASAP can significantly improve the value prediction accuracy over the previously proposed mechanisms at the same coverage, or can achieve higher coverage (leading to higher performance/energy improvements) under a fixed error threshold.
The Effect of Land-Use Intensity on Surface Temperature in the Dongting Lake Area, China

Land use and its environmental effects can be quantitatively expressed with land-use intensity. In this study, a land-use intensity metric was improved using a geographic mapping method. The relationships between observed rapid changes in land use and temperature in the Dongting Lake area from 2001 to 2010 were examined. The results revealed the following features: (1) The temperature increased when the land-use intensity increased via a hierarchical transition owing to grass and forest land reductions of 26.25% and 11.74%, respectively; built-up land increased by 48.45%. (2) The temperature increase was driven more by the external environment than by land-use intensity changes. Human activities produced larger effects in the western region than in the eastern or central region of the study area, according to the observed variations in the centres of gravity for temperature and land-use intensity. (3) The temperature response to land-use intensity changes was more sensitive in low-altitude areas than in high-altitude areas; the response presented a north-south gradient, possibly due to socioeconomic and urbanisation differences.
An Empirical Analysis of Leverage and Financial Performance of Listed Non-Financial Firms in Ghana

This research examines the nexus between leverage and profitability of non-financial firms listed on the Ghana stock exchange from 2004 to 2010 using panel data methodology. This study is exploratory in nature and uses Generalised Least Square Regression (GLS) with profitability indicators (Return on Asset, Return on Equity and Net Profit Margin) as dependent variables and firm size, sales growth, inflation rate, exchange rate and gross domestic product as independent variables. The data was edited, sorted and entered into Microsoft excel and exported into Eviews 7 and was then processed with GLS bearing in mind the dependent and independent variables. On the average, the study found out that non-financial firms listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange used 55% debt and about 45% equity with 48% short term debt in the debt structure.
Two-Way Causation in Life Satisfaction Research: Structural Equation Models with Granger-Causation

Two-way causation issues are the bete noire of life satisfaction research. As acknowledged in several landmark reviews, many variables routinely reported as causes or determinants of life satisfaction could equally well be consequences, or perhaps both causes and consequences (Diener, 1984; Diener, Suh, Lucas and Smith, 1999; Argyle, 2001; Frey and Stutzer, 2002). These variables include one's state of health, social support and participation, exercise, job satisfaction and satisfaction with one's partner and family life. In previous attempts to disentangle two-way causation issues, a wide variety of statistical models have been deployed. Conflicting empirical results have been reported, together with concerns about model 'goodness of fit' and model stability. In this paper we estimate five-wave structural equation models using data from large, nationally representative panel surveys in Australia, Britain and Germany. The models are based on a modified concept of Granger-causation (Granger, 1969). The main intuition behind Granger-causation is that if lagged versions of time-series variable x have statistically significant effects on time-series variable y in equations in which multiple lagged versions of y are also included, then it can be inferred that x is one cause (or 'Granger-cause') of y. We adapt Granger's approach, extending it to encompass two-way causation and panel survey data. It transpires that our Granger-style models have satisfactory fits to the panel data and are stable. Alternative models fit the data much less well. Substantively, we find that two-way causation is pervasive: all of the x variables mentioned above appear to be both causes and consequences of life satisfaction. With minor exceptions, results replicate across all three datasets, despite non-trivial differences between the measures used in the three countries. One implication is that researchers who have assumed one-way causation have seriously over-estimated the effects of x variables on LS. A second implication is that many people apparently experience multi-year gains or losses of life satisfaction rather than just recording short term fluctuations around their own normal level or 'set-point'.
BOARD COMPOSITION, AUDIT COMMITTEE AND TIMELINESS OF CORPORATE FINANCIAL REPORTS IN MALAYSIA

This study attempts to investigate the roles of the composition of board of directors, audit committee and the separation of the roles of the board chairman and the chief executive officer on the timeliness of reporting. The issue of reporting timeliness is important in corporate governance because it is associated with corporate transparency. It is also an important indicator of the value of the information in the financial reports. Given the fact that the board is the highest internal corporate governance system, it is predicted that the characteristics of the board and its sub-committee, namely the audit committee, are associated with the timeliness of reporting. Using Bursa Malaysia (formerly known as the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange) Main Board companies data in respect of the financial years 1998 and 2000, the findings show that board independence and the separation of the roles of board chairman and CEO significantly are associated with timelier reporting. The results also indicate that the 1997 financial crisis had adversely affected the timeliness of reporting. These findings imply that during difficult periods, companies tend to take a longer time to prepare their audited financial reports. The positive association between timeliness of reporting and leverage found in this study suggests that the agency costs of debts could play an important role in explaining the timeliness of corporate financial reports. Finally, the negative relation between firm’s profitability and timeliness of reporting is supportive of information signaling theory.
Credibility and reputation: an application of the "external circumstances" model for the Real Plan

This paper analyzes credibility and reputation aspects of the Brazilian economic policy between August 1994 and December 1998. It uses an ''external circumstances'' model, which can be applied to countries with fixed or crawling-peg exchange rate policies. The model assumes that no government can conduct its economic policy with the single objective of inflation control, thoroughly ignoring the unemployment and growth paths. Therefore, in the presence of ''external circumstances'' (unexpected exogenous shocks) even a strong anti-inflationary government can be forced to devalue its exchange rate. The results here show that the government followed a consistent policy with inflation control while allowing for a gradual recovery of the competitiveness level.
Power efficient job scheduling by predicting the impact of processor manufacturing variability

Modern CPUs suffer from performance and power consumption variability due to the manufacturing process. As a result, systems that do not consider such variability caused by manufacturing issues lead to performance degradations and wasted power. In order to avoid such negative impact, users and system administrators must actively counteract any manufacturing variability. In this work we show that parallel systems benefit from taking into account the consequences of manufacturing variability when making scheduling decisions at the job scheduler level. We also show that it is possible to predict the impact of this variability on specific applications by using variability-aware power prediction models. Based on these power models, we propose two job scheduling policies that consider the effects of manufacturing variability for each application and that ensure that power consumption stays under a system-wide power budget. We evaluate our policies under different power budgets and traffic scenarios, consisting of both single- and multi-node parallel applications, utilizing up to 4096 cores in total. We demonstrate that they decrease job turnaround time, compared to contemporary scheduling policies used on production clusters, up to 31% while saving up to 5.5% energy.
Photosynthetic and Water Use Efficiency Responses to Diffuse Radiation by an Aspen-Dominated Northern Hardwood Forest

Clouds can exert strong effects on ecosystem CO2 and water vapor fluxes and may be important determinants of terrestrial primary production. We used three years of eddy-covariance and meteorological data from an aspen-dominated northern hardwood forest in Michigan to investigate how canopy photosynthesis (P), evapotranspiration (E), and water use efficiency (WUE) responded to changes in cloud cover, or the proportion of diffuse (If) to total (It) photosynthetically active radiation (PAR). Canopy quantum efficiency (the initial slope of the P versus PAR response curve) increased with increasing cloud cover, but both midday canopy P and canopy photosynthetic potential (the asymptote of the P versus PAR response curve) were greatest under partly cloudy skies (If/It 0.57). Midday canopy E decreased and midday canopy WUE increased with increasing If/It. The relationship between canopy P and cloud cover varied with soil moisture. Canopy P was insensitive to changes in soil moisture under overcast skies (If/It 0.70), whereas under clearer skies, canopy P was lower during periods of low compared to high soil moisture. These results further our understanding of cloud cover effects on canopy physiological processes and will aid in more accurate assessments of forest responses to climatic change. FOR . S CI. 50(6): 793-801.
Narratives and Goals Narrative Structure Increases Goal Priming

Goals are a central feature of narratives, and, thus, narratives may be particularly potent means of goal priming. Two studies examined two features of goal priming (postdelay behavioral assimilation and postfulfillment accessibility) that have been theorized to distinguish goal from semantic construct priming. Across the studies, participants were primed with high achievement, either in a narrative or nonnarrative context and then completed either a behavioral task, followed by a measure of construct accessibility, or a behavioral task after a delay. Indicative of goal priming, narrative-primed participants showed greater postdelay behavioral assimilation and less postfulfillment accessibility than those exposed to the nonnarrative prime. The implications of goal priming from narratives are discussed in relation to both theoretical and methodological issues.
Poverty duration of households of the self-employed

This study is one of the first attempts to discover how long households in Poland remain in poverty (out of poverty) and whether the time spent in poverty (out of poverty) depends on the socio-economic group of household. The analysis is conducted using panel data collected in the project ”Social Diagnosis” in 2000-2013. We analyze the survivor functions of staying in poverty (out of poverty) using the Kaplan-Meier method. The probability of survival for a long time in poverty is less than in the case of survival out of poverty. It should be noted that a small percentage of households remained in poverty for almost the entire period of the study. We compare the survival functions of staying in poverty (out of poverty) according to the socio-economic groups of households. For this purpose we use the log-rank test. In both cases the survivor functions are significantly different. Households of the self-employed survive longer out of poverty and simultaneously survive shorter in poverty than the other groups of households.
CHANGE OF EXERGY MOTION IN THE MARINE STEAM PLANT WITH MAIN SHAFT SPEED VARIATION

Exergy flow motion insight and analysis of plant requirements for a typical conventional LNG carrier with Rankine regenerative feed water heating steam cycle is given in this paper to clarify and distinguish auxiliary flow streams from the useful ones. Auxiliary flow supports the plant operation, but reduces exergy efficiency by certain amounts. Main boilers exergy flow streams are divided into two major groups: superheated and de-superheated flow stream consumers. A plant run test was carried out by varying main shaft revolutions to collect required thermodynamic data at various plant locations. In the presented marine steam plant is explained exergy flow streams for considering components and flow streams ratios of particular plant components. It is detected and explained the points of excessive auxiliary stream flows consumption and recommendations for possible reduction in saving auxiliary power or steam consumption are given.
Efficient hierarchical online-autotuning: a case study on polyhedral accelerator mapping

Identifying the (near) optimal program variants an optimizing and parallelizing compiler should generate is known to be difficult. Autotuning is the best solution to navigate the often high-dimensional space of possible options. However, to be practical an autotuner should (a) have high convergence speed and (b) be robust in face of varying inputs. Current techniques for offline tuning, where convergence speed is less important, provide solutions only for known inputs, whereas online tuning can be input sensitive but currently lacks in convergence speed. In this paper, we present hierarchical online-autotuning, a novel technique to exploit structure in the search space and the underlying tuning problem to increase convergence speed during online tuning. By modeling symmetries and redundancies in configurations and by exploiting domain knowledge to predict performance we reduce the search space size by orders of magnitudes. Combining our tuner with a polyhedral parallelizing compiler for GPUs, we show that the performance of a GEMM GPU kernel generated with default parameters is increased by 6× and that the convergence speed of the tuning process is increased by a factor of up to 1.7 compared to OpenTuner. With hierarchical tuning we make the deployment of always-on online-autotuning practical.
The Repulsive Casimir Force with Metallic Ellipsoid Structure

We propose a new structure, one plate with a hole above the ellipsoid and the other plate with a hole below the ellipsoid, to obtain a repulsive Casimir force. The force was obtained numerically by using the in-house FDTD method, based on Maxwell’s stress tensor and harmonic expansion. The code can be verified by calculating the force of a perfect-metal ellipsoid centered above a perfect-metal plate with a hole. Our numerical method can effectively simulate the Casimir force by reducing the total simulated time. The further numerical results of realistic dielectric material immersing in fluids or adding other plates above the ellipsoid are also presented. It is not surprising to find that the larger differences can be achieved by varying the parameters such as the center-center separation, medium immersed, and the dielectric material of the structure. Thus, it is possible to tune these parameters relatively in the realistic microelectromechanical systems to overcome stiction and friction problems.
FAST COMPUTATION OF DIPOLE RADIATION IN STRATIFIED BACKGROUND USING GRAPHICS PROCESSING UNIT

We present the GPUs computation acceleration for a very recurrent electromagnetic problem which is the calculation of the fleld radiated by electric dipoles in a multilayer structure (Green's tensor in stratifled background), based on the well-known Sommerfeld integrals. Using an optimized parallelization scheme, huge computation acceleration is obtained. Applications of such a work are very broad, especially for the modeling of stratifled light emitting devices, or as a building block for the calculation of optical scattering by complex shape structures, when using methods as discrete dipole approximation (DDA) or method of moments (MoM) for example.
Addressing the Low Returns to Education of African Born Immigrants in the United States

This paper uses 2000 Census 5 percent Public Use Microdata Sample to investigate the relative earning pattern of immigrants from African countries, and explores the relevance of existing explanations of the low returns to education. The study uses the Extreme Bound Analysis to check the robustness of the variables of interests. The empirical findings from the conventional earnings regression conform to the theoretical expectations. However, not all the variables of interests are robust in Extreme Bound Analysis. This suggests that conventional specifications may not encompass all necessary information. Future study may explicitly controls for more detailed country-specific characteristics of the immigrant-sending countries.
Performance Portable High Performance Conjugate Gradients Benchmark

The High Performance Conjugate Gradient Benchmark (HPCG) is an international project to create a more appropriate benchmark test for the world’s most powerful computers. The current LINPACK benchmark, which is the standard for measuring the performance of the top 500 fastest computers in the world, is moving computers in a direction that is no longer beneficial to many important parallel applications. HPCG is designed to exercise computations and data access patterns more commonly found in applications. The reference version of HPCG exploits only some parallelism available on existing supercomputers and the main focus of this work was to create a performance portable version of HPCG that gives reasonable performance on hybrid architectures.