Beyond works councils? Employee participation in a regional high-tech cluster

"Welche Mitbestimmungsmöglichkeiten und -formen gibt es in dem hochtechnologischen Feld der Mikrosystemtechnik? Dieser Frage wird anhand empirischer Untersuchungen im Raum Dortmund nachgegangen. Die hier lokalisierten Unternehmen und die von ihnen verfolgten Strategien lassen sich mit Hilfe einer Typologie voneinander unterscheiden. Auf der Basis dieser Typologie werden anschließend die Partizipationsmöglichkeiten der Beschäftigten erörtert. Abschließend erfolgt eine Einschätzung der vorhandenen Mitbestimmungsformen und -möglichkeiten, wobei auch auf den Aspekt einer regionalen Informationsaustauschs der Beschäftigten eingegangen wird." (Autorenreferat)"German policy makers promote investments into high technology fields to increase employment and to further innovation. In North Rhine-Westphalia, regional and local governments are spending vast amounts of money to foster the set up of a microsystems technology cluster in the old industrial region of Dortmund. There have been important public activities to build an infrastructure in this field since the late 1980s and more than twenty small and medium sized enterprises have successfully established themselves in the Dortmund region in the last ten years. This gives rise to questions about the relevance of employee participation in a field where the age of companies is low, the proportion of academic employees is high, and where the influence of trade unions on company level tends to be zero. Based on empirical studies, it is argued that there indeed is no 'zone without participation'. Although only few workers' representations exit, we can observe the emergence of a wide range of direct participation forms and practices. The paper deals with common practices of participation in three types of microsystems firms in the Dortmund region with the aim to analyse the emerging participation culture and to discuss the possibilities and limits to direct participation." (author's abstract

Using Cost-Benefit Analysis for Fraternity and Sorority Affairs Assessment: Creating a Business Case for Student Success in Fraternal Organizations

Cost-benefit analysis can be an effective method for programmatic assessment, evaluation, and validation in fraternity/sorority affairs. This article provides an overview of a model cost-effectiveness assessment strategy outlined by Kennedy, Moran, and Upcraft (2001) and a cost-benefit study of the Rochester Institute of Technology fraternity/sorority program. Special attention is given to providing credible methods for fraternity/sorority professionals to measure programs using data related to organizational efficacy and student retention and applying that data to guide public perception. Recommendations for application on other campuses are provided in an effort to improve assessment practices and aid institutions in assessing the value of fraternal organizations

Slippage Features

In this report, we present a novel feature detection technique for unstructured point clouds. We introduce a generalized concept of geometric features that detects locally uniquely identifiable keypoints as centroids of area with locally minimal slippage. We extend the concept to multiple scales and extract features using multi-scale mean shift clustering. In order to validate matches between feature points, we employ a two stage technique that first sorts out unlikely matches, followed by an approximate alignment between remaining features by a rotational cross-correlation analysis and a local iterative closest point (ICP) registration. The resulting residuals are then used as final similarity measure. The proposed combination of techniques results in a robust and reliable correspondence detection technique that yields registration results in situations where previous techniques are not able to detect usable feature correspondences. We provide a detailed empirical analysis of the method, and apply the technique to global registration, symmetry detection and deformable matching problems

Unternehmensstrategien und Partizipation der Beschäftigten in einem Clusterbildungsprozess: die Entwicklung der Mikrosystemtechnik im Raum Dortmund als Fallbeispiel

'Clusterbildungsprozessen in hochtechnologischen Feldern werden von der Politik, den Arbeitgeber- und den Arbeitnehmervertretungen verstärkt Aufmerksamkeit entgegengebracht. Für die Gewerkschaften sind diese Prozesse von besonderem Interesse, weil die Entwicklung hochtechnologischer Felder wie der Mikrosystemtechnologie mit der Schaffung einer Vielzahl neuer Arbeitsplätze verbunden wird. Zum großen Teil werden diese Entwicklungsprozesse auf privatwirtschaftlicher Seite von kleinen und mittelständischen Unternehmen getragen, in denen zumeist keine formellen Organe der Arbeitnehmervertretung vorhanden sind. Unter anderem aus diesem Grund verwundert es nicht, dass über die Partizipationschancen der Beschäftigten, die Wichtigkeit von Personalentwicklung und Erfahrungswissen, die Unterschiedlichkeit von Unternehmensstrategien sowie über die Relevanz eines regionalen Wissens- und Technologietransfers sowohl in der Wissenschaft als auch bei den Gewerkschaften kaum Erkenntnisse vorliegen. In der vorliegenden Studie wird auf der Grundlage einer Reihe von Expertengesprächen diesen Aspekten beispielhaft an der Entwicklung der Mikrosystemtechnologie (vor allem) im Raum Dortmund nachgegangen.' (Autorenreferat)'European governments, associations of employers and trade unions have been paying attention to cluster building processes in high-technology fields for several years. In North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) regional and local governments spend a lot of money to foster the set up of a microsystem cluster in the old industrial region of Dortmund. Here, approximately twenty small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) employed about 1.600 people in 2003. Basic questions to be answered are which role management strategies play, how important the knowledge and participation of employees is in this process and how relevant regional interactions between the academic and the private sector are. On the basis of an empirical investigation it is possible to answer these questions. A common aspect of all companies in the Dortmund region is the pressure to reorganise, which is based on a mix of continuous factors such as expansion processes, market changes and changes of organisational structure. Apart from these common aspects, central aspects of work processes and firm strategies differ substantially between three types of companies, the 'newcomer', the 'invention centre' and the 'all-round company'. The description of the three types allows a deeper insight into business strategies and the situation of employees. Although there are differences between these types, it seems to be clear that the employees' knowledge and their possibilities of direct and indirect participation are important factors - despite of the lack of elected work councils or other types of formal representation in most cases.' (author's abstract)

Climate change and health effects in Northwest Alaska

This article provides examples of adverse health effects, including weather-related injury, food insecurity, mental health issues, and water infrastructure damage, and the responses to these effects that are currently being applied in two Northwest Alaska communities

First Operation of a Resistive Shell Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber -- A new Approach to Electric-Field Shaping

We present a new technology for the shaping of the electric field in Time Projection Chambers (TPCs) using a carbon-loaded polyimide foil. This technology allows for the minimisation of passive material near the active volume of the TPC and thus is capable to reduce background events originating from radioactive decays or scattering on the material itself. Furthermore, the high and continuous electric resistivity of the foil limits the power dissipation per unit area and minimizes the risks of damages in the case of an electric field breakdown. Replacing the conventional field cage with a resistive plastic film structure called 'shell' decreases the number of components within the TPC and therefore reduces the potential points of failure when operating the detector. A prototype liquid argon (LAr) TPC with such a resistive shell and with a cathode made of the same material was successfully tested for long term operation with electric field values up to about 1.5 kV/cm. The experiment shows that it is feasible to successfully produce and shape the electric field in liquefied noble-gas detectors with this new technology.Comment: 13 page

The Hilti SLAM Challenge Dataset

Research in Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) has made outstanding progress over the past years. SLAM systems are nowadays transitioning from academic to real world applications. However, this transition has posed new demanding challenges in terms of accuracy and robustness. To develop new SLAM systems that can address these challenges, new datasets containing cutting-edge hardware and realistic scenarios are required. We propose the Hilti SLAM Challenge Dataset . Our dataset contains indoor sequences of offices, labs, and construction environments and outdoor sequences of construction sites and parking areas. All these sequences are characterized by featureless areas and varying illumination conditions that are typical in real-world scenarios and pose great challenges to SLAM algorithms that have been developed in confined lab environments. Accurate sparse ground truth, at millimeter level, is provided for each sequence. The sensor platform used to record the data includes a number of visual, lidar, and inertial sensors, which are spatially and temporally calibrated. The purpose of this dataset is to foster the research in sensor fusion to develop SLAM algorithms that can be deployed in tasks where high accuracy and robustness are required, e.g. , in construction environments. Many academic and industrial groups tested their SLAM systems on the proposed dataset in the Hilti SLAM Challenge . The results of the challenge, which are summarized in this paper, show that the proposed dataset is an important asset in the development of new SLAM algorithms that are ready to be deployed in the real-world

An exploratory study of co-location as a factor in synchronous, collaborative medical informatics distance education

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>This study determined differences in learning, judgments of teaching and technology, and interaction when videoconferencing was used to deliver instruction on telemedicine to medical students in conditions where they were co-located and dispersed. A lecture on telemedicine was given by videoconference to medical students at a distant site. After a question and answer period, students were then given search problems on the topic and encouraged to collaborate. Half the students were randomly assigned to a co-located condition where they received the presentation and collaborated in a computer lab, and half were assigned to a dispersed condition where they were located in different rooms to receive the presentation and collaborate online using the videoconferencing technology. Students were observed in both conditions and they individually completed a test on presentation content and a rating scale about the quality of the teaching and the technology.</p> <p>Findings</p> <p>There were no differences between the two groups in the learning outcomes or judgments about the teaching and technology, with the exception that more students in the dispersed condition felt more interaction was fostered. The level and patterns of interaction were very different in the two conditions and higher for dispersed students.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Synchronous communication at a distance via videoconference may give sufficient sense of presence that the learning experience may be similar to that in actual classrooms, even when students are far apart. The technology may channel interaction in desirable ways.</p

Dietary Lipid Saturation Influences Environmental Temperature Preference But Not Resting Metabolic Rate In The Djungarian Hamster (Phodopus Sungorus)

Heterothermic rodents increase self-selection of diets rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) when exposed to cold, short days, or short-day melatonin profiles, and Djungarian hamsters (Phodopus sungorus) do so in long days in response to cold exposure alone. To determine whether Djungarian hamsters are also capable of selecting a thermal environment in response to dietary lipid composition, continuously normothermic hamsters were fed either a PUF-rich diet or a diet rich in saturated fatty acids (SFAs) for 6-10 wk and given a choice of thermal environments. As predicted, SF-fed hamsters were more likely than PUFA-fed hamsters to occupy the single heated corner of their cage (P = 0.0005) and were most likely to show this diet-related difference in behavior when T a fell within the thermal neutral zone. Respirometry revealed no effect of diet on whole-animal or mass-specific resting metabolic rate or on lower critical temperature. The results are more consistent with the homeoviscous adaptation hypothesis, which predicts that organisms should make physiological and/or behavioral adjustments that preserve membrane fluidity within a relatively small range, than with the membrane pacemaker hypothesis, which predicts that high PUFA content in membrane phospholipids should increase basal metabolic rate