Organisational Change in Europe: National Models or the Diffusion of a New "One Best Way"?

Drawing on the results of the third European Survey on Working Conditions undertaken in the 15 member nations of the European Union in 2000, this paper offers one of the first systematic comparisons of the adoption of new organisation forms across Europe. The paper is divided into five sections. The first describe the variables used to characterise work organisation in the 15 countries of the European Union and presents the results of the factor analysis and hierarchical clustering used to construct a 4-way typology of organisational forms, labelled the 'learning , 'lean , 'taylorist and 'traditional forms. The second section examines how the relative importance of the different organisational forms varies according to sector, firm size, occupational category, and certain demographic characteristics of the survey population. The third section makes use of multinomial logit analysis to assess the importance of national effects in the adoption of the different organisational forms. The results demonstrate significant international differences in the adoption of organisational forms characterised by strong learning dynamics and high problem-solving activity. The fourth section takes up the issue of HRM complementarities by examining the relation between organisation forms and the use of particular pay and training policies. The concluding section explores the relation between national differences in the use of the four organisational forms and differences in the way labour markets are regulated and in such research and technology measures as patenting and R&D expenditures. The results show that the relative importance of the learning form of organisation is both positively correlated with the extent of labour market regulation, as measured by the OECD's overall employment protection legislation index, and with innovative performance, as measured by the number of EPO patent application per million inhabitants.Firm organisation; learning; Europe

The Hubble Legacy Archive ACS Grism Data

A public release of slitless spectra, obtained with ACS/WFC and the G800L grism, is presented. Spectra were automatically extracted in a uniform way from 153 archival fields (or "associations") distributed across the two Galactic caps, covering all observations to 2008. The ACS G800L grism provides a wavelength range of 0.55-1.00 \mu$m, with a dispersion of$40 \ \AA / pixel$and a resolution of$\sim 80\ \AA$for point-like sources. The ACS G800L images and matched direct images were reduced with an automatic pipeline that handles all steps from archive retrieval, alignment and astrometric calibration, direct image combination, catalogue generation, spectral extraction and collection of metadata. The large number of extracted spectra (73,581) demanded automatic methods for quality control and an automated classification algorithm was trained on the visual inspection of several thousand spectra. The final sample of quality controlled spectra includes 47,919 datasets (65of extracted spectra) for$32,149$unique objects, with a median$i_{\rm AB}$-band magnitude of 23.7, reaching 26.5 AB for the faintest objects. Each released dataset contains science-ready 1D and 2D spectra, as well as multi-band image cutouts of corresponding sources and a useful preview page summarising the direct and slitless data, astrometric and photometric parameters. In order to characterize the slitless spectra, emission-line flux and equivalent width sensitivity of the ACS data were compared with public ground-based spectra in the GOODS-South field. An example list of emission line galaxies with two or more identified lines is also included, covering the redshift range$0.2-4.6$.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics; 29 pages, 16 Figures, 4 Tables in text and 3Tables in Appendi

k-Same-Siamese-GAN: k-Same Algorithm with Generative Adversarial Network for Facial Image De-identification with Hyperparameter Tuning and Mixed Precision Training

For a data holder, such as a hospital or a government entity, who has a privately held collection of personal data, in which the revealing and/or processing of the personal identifiable data is restricted and prohibited by law. Then, "how can we ensure the data holder does conceal the identity of each individual in the imagery of personal data while still preserving certain useful aspects of the data after de-identification?" becomes a challenge issue. In this work, we propose an approach towards high-resolution facial image de-identification, called k-Same-Siamese-GAN, which leverages the k-Same-Anonymity mechanism, the Generative Adversarial Network, and the hyperparameter tuning methods. Moreover, to speed up model training and reduce memory consumption, the mixed precision training technique is also applied to make kSS-GAN provide guarantees regarding privacy protection on close-form identities and be trained much more efficiently as well. Finally, to validate its applicability, the proposed work has been applied to actual datasets - RafD and CelebA for performance testing. Besides protecting privacy of high-resolution facial images, the proposed system is also justified for its ability in automating parameter tuning and breaking through the limitation of the number of adjustable parameters

Technology transfer: Transportation

The application of NASA derived technology in solving problems related to highways, railroads, and other rapid systems is described. Additional areas/are identified where space technology may be utilized to meet requirements related to waterways, law enforcement agencies, and the trucking and recreational vehicle industries

Raduga experiment: Multizonal photographing the Earth from the Soyuz-22 spacecraft

The main results of the scientific research and 'Raduga' experiment are reported. Technical parameters are presented for the MKF-6 camera and the MSP-4 projector. Characteristics of the obtained materials and certain results of their processing are reported

Fiber optic TV direct

The objective of the operational television (OTV) technology was to develop a multiple camera system (up to 256 cameras) for NASA Kennedy installations where camera video, synchronization, control, and status data are transmitted bidirectionally via a single fiber cable at distances in excess of five miles. It is shown that the benefits (such as improved video performance, immunity from electromagnetic interference and radio frequency interference, elimination of repeater stations, and more system configuration flexibility) can be realized if application of the proven fiber optic transmission concept is used. The control system will marry the lens, pan and tilt, and camera control functions into a modular based Local Area Network (LAN) control network. Such a system does not exist commercially at present since the Television Broadcast Industry's current practice is to divorce the positional controls from the camera control system. The application software developed for this system will have direct applicability to similar systems in industry using LAN based control systems

The Organization of Work and Innovative Performance A comparison of the EU-15

It is widely recognised that while expenditures on research and development are important inputs to successful innovation, these are not the only inputs. Further, rather than viewing innovation as a linear process, recent work on innovation in business and economics literatures characterises it as a complex and interactive process involving multiple feedbacks. These considerations imply that relevant indicators for innovation need to do more than capture material inputs such as R&D expenditures and human capital inputs. The main contribution of this paper is to develop EU-wide aggregate measures that are used to explore at the level of national innovation systems the relation between innovation and the organisation of work. In order to construct these aggregate measures we make use of micro data from two European surveys: the third European survey of Working Conditions and the third Community Innovation Survey (CIS-3). Although our data can only show correlations rather than causality they support the view that how firms innovate is linked to the way work is organised to promote learning and problem-solving.National innovation systems, measuring, methodology

AES-EPO study program, volume I Final study report

Conceptual study of possible solutions to long- term and time-critical reliability problems affecting Apollo command module guidance and control compute

Accessibility Analysis of Websites of Provincial Governments in Indonesia

Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can use, navigate, and interact with the website. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has provided important guidelines on web accessibility known as the Web Content Accessible Guidelines (WCAG). The Indonesian government encourages the use of new media, namely website, via Presidential Instruction number 3 of 2003 concerning the National Policy and Strategy for e-government development, which mandates every government agency to build a website. In the previous study, the tools used had limitations and were unable to complete the websites evaluation. Therefore, in this study, WCAG 2.0 standard was applied to analyze the websites of provincial governments in Indonesia. Two accessibility evaluation tools were employed, namely TAW and aXe. In addition, for data analysis and interpretation, descriptive statistics and normality tests were applied. The results showed that the most common violation was found in perceivable principle. It was expected that the findings of this study could provide insight and recommendation for web developers working on provincial government website in Indonesia

‘Ways of death: accounts of terror from Angolan refugees in Namibia’

In their accounts of the war in Angola, refugees from south-eastern Angola who now live in Rundu (Namibia) draw a distinction between warfare in the past and the events that happened in their region of origin after Angolan independence in 1975. Although they process their experiences through recounting history, these refugees maintain that the incidence of torture, mutilation and massive killing after 1975 has no precedent in the area's history and forms an entirely new development. This article investigates the reasons for this posited modernity of killing, torture and mutilation. The placement of the recent events outside local history is shown to represent: an expression of outrage, anger and indignation at the army's treatment of the civilian population during the recent phase of the war. The outrage not only concerns the scale of the killing, torture and mutilation but is also linked with the issue of agency. The informants accuse UNITA army leaders in particular of wanton disregard for the lives and livelihood of their followers. They furthermore maintain that UNITA ordered ordinary soldiers to take part in killings which released powers the soldiers were unable to handle