Emotions and identity work: Emotions as discursive resources in the constitution of junior professionals’ identities

© The Author(s) 2018. For junior professionals, notions of professional identity established during their education are often called into question in the early stages of their professional careers. The workplace gives rise to identity challenges that manifest in significant emotional struggles. However, although extant literature highlights how emotions trigger and accompany identity work, the constitutive role of emotions in identity work is under-researched. In this article, we analyse how junior professionals mobilize emotions as discursive resources for identity work. Drawing on an empirical study of junior architects employed in professional service firms, we examine how professional identities, imbued with varying forms of discipline and agency, are discursively represented. The study makes two contributions to the literature on emotions and identity work. First, we identify three key identity work strategies (idealizing, reframing and distancing) that are bound up in junior architects’ emotion talk. We suggest that these strategies act simultaneously as a coping mechanism and as a disciplinary force in junior architects’ efforts to constitute themselves as professionals. Second, we argue that identity work may not always lead to the accomplishment of a positive sense of self but can express a sense of disillusionment that leads to the constitution of dejected professional identities

SMT-based Model Checking for Recursive Programs

We present an SMT-based symbolic model checking algorithm for safety verification of recursive programs. The algorithm is modular and analyzes procedures individually. Unlike other SMT-based approaches, it maintains both "over-" and "under-approximations" of procedure summaries. Under-approximations are used to analyze procedure calls without inlining. Over-approximations are used to block infeasible counterexamples and detect convergence to a proof. We show that for programs and properties over a decidable theory, the algorithm is guaranteed to find a counterexample, if one exists. However, efficiency depends on an oracle for quantifier elimination (QE). For Boolean Programs, the algorithm is a polynomial decision procedure, matching the worst-case bounds of the best BDD-based algorithms. For Linear Arithmetic (integers and rationals), we give an efficient instantiation of the algorithm by applying QE "lazily". We use existing interpolation techniques to over-approximate QE and introduce "Model Based Projection" to under-approximate QE. Empirical evaluation on SV-COMP benchmarks shows that our algorithm improves significantly on the state-of-the-art.Comment: originally published as part of the proceedings of CAV 2014; fixed typos, better wording at some place

Tritium beta decay with additional emission of new light bosons

We consider tritium beta decay with additional emission of light pseudoscalar or vector bosons coupling to electrons or neutrinos. The electron energy spectrum for all cases is evaluated and shown to be well estimated by approximated analytical expressions. We give the statistical sensitivity of Katrin to the mass and coupling of the new bosons, both in the standard setup of the experiment as well as for future modifications in which the full energy spectrum of tritium decay is accessible

Ranking Templates for Linear Loops

We present a new method for the constraint-based synthesis of termination arguments for linear loop programs based on linear ranking templates. Linear ranking templates are parametrized, well-founded relations such that an assignment to the parameters gives rise to a ranking function. This approach generalizes existing methods and enables us to use templates for many different ranking functions with affine-linear components. We discuss templates for multiphase, piecewise, and lexicographic ranking functions. Because these ranking templates require both strict and non-strict inequalities, we use Motzkin's Transposition Theorem instead of Farkas Lemma to transform the generated $\exists\forall$-constraint into an $\exists$-constraint.Comment: TACAS 201

Using a runway paradigm to assess the relative strength of rats' motivations for enrichment objects

Laboratory animals should be provided with enrichment objects in their cages; however, it is first necessary to test whether the proposed enrichment objects provide benefits that increase the animals’ welfare. The two main paradigms currently used to assess proposed enrichment objects are the choice test, which is limited to determining relative frequency of choice, and consumer demand studies, which can indicate the strength of a preference but are complex to design. Here, we propose a third methodology: a runway paradigm, which can be used to assess the strength of an animal’s motivation for enrichment objects, is simpler to use than consumer demand studies, and is faster to complete than typical choice tests. Time spent with objects in a standard choice test was used to rank several enrichment objects in order to compare with the ranking found in our runway paradigm. The rats ran significantly more times, ran faster, and interacted longer with objects with which they had previously spent the most time. It was concluded that this simple methodology is suitable for measuring rats’ motivation to reach enrichment objects. This can be used to assess the preference for different types of enrichment objects or to measure reward system processes

Kassiopeia: A Modern, Extensible C++ Particle Tracking Package

The Kassiopeia particle tracking framework is an object-oriented software package using modern C++ techniques, written originally to meet the needs of the KATRIN collaboration. Kassiopeia features a new algorithmic paradigm for particle tracking simulations which targets experiments containing complex geometries and electromagnetic fields, with high priority put on calculation efficiency, customizability, extensibility, and ease of use for novice programmers. To solve Kassiopeia's target physics problem the software is capable of simulating particle trajectories governed by arbitrarily complex differential equations of motion, continuous physics processes that may in part be modeled as terms perturbing that equation of motion, stochastic processes that occur in flight such as bulk scattering and decay, and stochastic surface processes occuring at interfaces, including transmission and reflection effects. This entire set of computations takes place against the backdrop of a rich geometry package which serves a variety of roles, including initialization of electromagnetic field simulations and the support of state-dependent algorithm-swapping and behavioral changes as a particle's state evolves. Thanks to the very general approach taken by Kassiopeia it can be used by other experiments facing similar challenges when calculating particle trajectories in electromagnetic fields. It is publicly available at https://github.com/KATRIN-Experiment/Kassiopei

Efficacy of tigecycline for the treatment of complicated intraabdominal infections in real-life clinical practice from five european observational studies

Objectives: Tigecycline is a broad-spectrum antibiotic approved for the treatment of complicated intra-abdominal infections (cIAIs). The efficacy of tigecycline when administered as monotherapy or in combination with other antibacterials in the treatment of cIAIs in routine clinical practice is described. Patients and methods: Individual patient-level data were pooled from five European observational studies (July 2006 to October 2011). Results: A total of 785 cIAI patients who received tigecycline were included (mean age 63.1+14.0 years). Of these, 56.6% were in intensive care units, 65.6% acquired their infection in hospital, 88.1% had at least one comorbidity and 65.7% had secondary peritonitis. The mean Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE) II and Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) scores at the beginning of treatment were 16.9+7.6 (n=614) and 7.0+4.2 (n=108), respectively, indicating high disease severity. Escherichia coli (41.8%), Enterococcus faecium (40.1%) and Enterococcus faecalis (21.1%) were the most frequently isolated pathogens; 49.1% of infections were polymicrobial and 17.5% were due to resistant pathogens. Overall, 54.8% (n=430) received tigecycline as monotherapy and 45.2% (n=355) as combination therapy for a mean duration of 10.6 days. Clinical response rates at the end of treatment were 77.4% for all patients (567/733), 80.6% for patients who received tigecycline as monotherapy (329/408), 75.2% for patients with a nosocomial infection (354/471), 75.8% for patients with an APACHE II score .15 (250/330) and 54.2% (32/59) for patients with a SOFA score =7. Conclusions: In these real-life studies, tigecycline, alone and in combination, achieved favourable clinical response rates in patients with cIAI with a high severity of illness

Proving termination and memory safety for programs with Pointer Arithmetic

Proving termination automatically for programs with explicit pointer arithmetic is still an open problem. To close this gap, we introduce a novel abstract domain that can track allocated memory in detail. We use it to automatically construct a symbolic execution graph that represents all possible runs of the program and that can be used to prove memory safety. This graph is then transformed into an integer transition system, whose termination can be proved by standard techniques. We implemented this approach in the automated termination prover AProVE and demonstrate its capability of analyzing C programs with pointer arithmetic that existing tools cannot handle