How Economic Situation Effect on Career Anchors of IT Personnel?

The paper examines how ITP (IT personnel) turnover intention is influenced by career satisfaction, and perceived job alternatives. What considerations lead an IT professional to switch jobs when they are currently satisfied; i.e. when their career anchors are satisfied

Team Quotients, Resilience, and Performance of Software Development Projects

Past studies have examined actions and strategies that software project teams can take to reduce the negative impact of uncertainties, such as changing requirements. Software development project teams often have to be flexible to follow the pre-defined plans and strive to meet project goals. Sometimes uncertainty may go extreme to temporarily slow projects down and set project teams into reduced productivity. Project teams should be resilient to recover from the reduce productivity condition and move forward toward predefined goals. This study focuses on understanding the importance of team resilience for software project teams and exploring the antecedents of team resilience. Specifically, we investigate the impacts of intelligence and emotional quotient on team resilience capability, the extent to which project team can recover from the impediment and move forward. This is a research-in-progress work. A future empirical test plan has been discussed at the end

Understanding the Role of Knowledge Co-Production between Users and Developers in ISD Project: An Intellectual Capital Perspective

Information system development (ISD) has long been treated as that process that system developers craft an artifact to support business operation based on their special expertise. However, a significant portion of projects still have failed because the developed outcome cannot fit users’ needs. An emerging internal service concept indicates that, by treating ISD as one type of service, the requirement definition can be viewed as a co-production process in which users and developers integrate their own knowledge. By incorporating this concept into research design and taking intellectual capital perspective into account, this study proposed a model to examine the antecedents and consequences of knowledge co-production between users and developers. Data collected from 267 developers confirmed our hypotheses that knowledge co-production can benefit ISD outcomes, and common knowledge, relational capital and participative decision-making between these two parties increase the effectiveness of knowledge co-production effectively. Lastly, the implications toward academic and practitioner are also provided

A quantitative analysis of monochromaticity in genetic interaction networks

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>A genetic interaction refers to the deviation of phenotypes from the expected when perturbing two genes simultaneously. Studying genetic interactions help clarify relationships between genes, such as compensation and masking, and identify gene groups of functional modules. Recently, several genome-scale experiments for measuring quantitative (positive and negative) genetic interactions have been conducted. The results revealed that genes in the same module usually interact with each other in a consistent way (pure positive or negative); this phenomenon was designated as monochromaticity. Monochromaticity might be the underlying principle that can be utilized to unveil the modularity of cellular networks. However, no appropriate quantitative measurement for this phenomenon has been proposed.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In this study, we propose the monochromatic index (MCI), which is able to quantitatively evaluate the monochromaticity of potential functional modules of genes, and the MCI was used to study genetic landscapes in different cellular subsystems. We demonstrated that MCI not only amend the deficiencies of MP-score but also properly incorporate the background effect. The results showed that not only within-complex but also between-complex connections present significant monochromatic tendency. Furthermore, we also found that significantly higher proportion of protein complexes are connected by negative genetic interactions in metabolic network, while transcription and translation system adopts relatively even number of positive and negative genetic interactions to link protein complexes.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>In summary, we demonstrate that MCI improves deficiencies suffered by MP-score, and can be used to evaluate monochromaticity in a quantitative manner. In addition, it also helps to unveil features of genetic landscapes in different cellular subsystems. Moreover, MCI can be easily applied to data produced by different types of genetic interaction methodologies such as Synthetic Genetic Array (SGA), and epistatic miniarray profile (E-MAP).</p

Prevalence of latent tuberculosis infection in BCG-vaccinated healthcare workers by using an interferon-gamma release assay and the tuberculin skin test in an intermediate tuberculosis burden country

BackgroundThe risk of healthcare workers (HCWs) acquiring tuberculosis (TB) infection is high. We determined the prevalence of latent TB infection (LTBI) in HCWs with a high Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine coverage in an intermediate TB burden country by using an interferon-gamma release assay [QuantiFERON-TB Gold (QFT-G)] and by using the tuberculin skin test (TST). Risk factors associated with a positive test were determined.MethodsThis prospective cross-sectional study enrolled HCWs from a medical center in Taiwan. Participants were grouped into workers without exposure (Group 1) and workers who self-reported a history of TB exposure (Group 2). All participants completed a questionnaire to collect demographic information and risk factors for acquiring TB. The QFT-G test and the TST were administered and risk factors for a positive test were analyzed.ResultsWe recruited 193 HCWs [149 (77.2%) female workers] with a mean age of 35.6 years. All were BCG-vaccinated. The prevalence of LTBI was 88.8% (based on the TST) and 14.5% (based on the QFT-G test). There was no difference between HCWs with and without known exposure to TB. Agreement between the tests was poor (i.e., the kappa value was less than 0.05). Multivariable logistic regression showed that only the QFT-G test was associated with age (35 years or greater) (adjusted OR, 2.53; p = 0.03).ConclusionBy using the QFT-G test or TST, this study found a similar prevalence of LTBI in HCWs with and without known exposure to TB. This suggests that in intermediate TB burden countries exposure to TB may occur within the hospital and within the community. Compared to the TST, the QFT-G test was correlated better with age, which is a known risk factor for latent TB infection

Millisecond dips in the 2007-2009 RXTE/PCA lightcurve of Sco X-1 and one possible occultation event

Serendipitous stellar occultation search is so far the only way to detect the existence of very small, very dim, remote objects in the solar system. To date, however, there are only very few reported detections for trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) in optical bands. In the X-ray band, with the RXTE/PCA data of Sco X-1 taken from June 2007 to October 2009, we found one possible X-ray occultation event. We discuss the veracity and properties of this event, and suggest upper limits to the size distribution of TNOs at hectometer size and of Main-Belt Asteroids (MBAs) at decameter size.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, to appear in MNRAS (accepted on Sep. 10, 2010

Energy-effective Predictive Temperature Control for Soy Mash Fermentation Based on Compartmental Pharmacokinetic Modelling

Compartment modelling has been successfully used in pharmacokinetics to describe the kinetics of drug distribution in body tissues. In this study, the technique is adopted to describe the dynamics of temperature response and energy exchange in a soy mash fermentation system. The objective is to provide a precise temperature-controlled atmosphere for effective fermentation with the premise of energy saving. In analogy to pharmacokinetics, water and mash tanks are treated as compartments, energy flow as drug delivery, and the temperature as the drug concentration in a specific compartment. The model allows us to estimate the time of injecting a certain amount of energy to a specific tank (compartment) in a cost-effective way. Thus, model-based temperature control and energy management can be possible