Part-time Employment, Gender and Employee Participation in the Workplace: An Illawarra Reconnaissance

The growth in non-standard forms of employment has major implications for the effectiveness of employee participation mechanisms in the workplace, whether direct or indirect (representative). This seems to be especially the case with representative forms, such as consultative committees, because they effectively assume permanent or long-term employment and are not as easily accessible to part-time employees. However, the literature on participation rarely addresses this major contextual aspect. The issue is of further significance since the majority of part-time and casual employees are female. Consequently, to the extent that non-standard employees do not have the same access to participatory mechanisms in the workplace that their full- time permanent colleagues enjoy, then women also are disproportionately excluded from participation. This paper begins to redress the insularity in the literature by analysing survey data from the Illawarra Regional Industrial Relations Survey (IRWIRS). It tests the hypothesis that the growth of non-standard forms of employment diminishes the access to participation in the workplace enjoyed by part-time workers in comparison with their full-time colleagues.Illawarra Regional Workplace Industrial Relations Survey, workplace employee relations, Australia

Gender, Part-time Employment and Employee Participation in the Workplace: Comparing Australia and the European Union

The international trend in the growth and incidence of 'no n-standard employment', and its highly gendered nature, is well documented. For ease of definition, and because of the nature of the available data, we focus upon part-time employment in this paper. Employee participation may be defined as any workplace process which 'allows employees to exert some influence over their work and the conditions under which they work' (Strauss 1998). It may be divided into two main approaches, direct participation and indirect or representative participation. Direct participation involves the employee in job or task-oriented decision-making in the production process at the shop or office floor level. Indirect or representative forms of participation include joint consultative committees, works councils, and employee members of boards of directors or management. In the EU context statutory works councils are the most common expression of representative participation, but in Australia, consultative committees resulting from union/employer agreement or unilateral management initiative are the more common form. All of these forms of employee participation raise important issues concerning part time employees. Effective participation has two further major requirements which also may disadvantage part timers. First, there is a ge neral consensus in the participation literature that training is required for effective direct or representative participation. Secondly, effective communication between management and employees is required for participation, preferably involving a two-way information flow. The issue is of further significance since it has decided gender implications. This paper seeks to redress this relative insularity in the literature by examining some broad trends in this area in Australia and the EU. It analyses survey data at a national level in Australia and compares with some survey data generated in the EU by the EPOC project and analysed by Juliet Webster along the lines which we suggest here. It tests the hypothesis that the growth of one non-standard form of employment, part-time employment, diminishes the access to participation in the workplace enjoyed by female workers in comparison with their male colleagues, and finds that the hypothesis is strongly confirmed. This has major implications for workplace equity, and for organisational efficiency.gender, part-time employment, employee participation, Australia, European Union

Using ALD To Bond CNTs to Substrates and Matrices

Atomic-layer deposition (ALD) has been shown to be effective as a means of coating carbon nanotubes (CNTs) with layers of Al2O3 that form strong bonds between the CNTs and the substrates on which the CNTs are grown. ALD is a previously developed vaporphase thin-film-growth technique. ALD differs from conventional chemical vapor deposition, in which material is deposited continually by thermal decomposition of a precursor gas. In ALD, material is deposited one layer of atoms at a time because the deposition process is self-limiting and driven by chemical reactions between the precursor gas and the surface of the substrate or the previously deposited layer

CO 2 - reinforced nanoporous carbon potential energy field during CO 2 /CH 4 mixture adsorption. A comprehensive volumetric, in-situ IR, and thermodynamic insight

CO2/CH4 mixture adsorption is very important in different fields like, for example, a biogas purification. Using a comprehensive experimental approach based on volumetric and in-situ FTIR measurements the new results of CO2/CH4 mixture separation on a carbon film are reported. The application of this experimental approach makes it possible to elaborate the effect of enhanced CH4 adsorption at low CO2 concentrations in the adsorbed phase. The presence of this effect is proved experimentally for the first time. This effect is responsible for the deviation of Ideal Adsorption Solution model from the experimental data. To discuss separation mechanism the activity coefficients at constant spreading pressure values are calculated. At low spreading pressure, CO2 activity coefficient is strongly disturbed by the presence of CH4 molecules in the surface mixture. In contrast, the CH4 activity coefficients are remarkably influenced by adsorbed CO2 only at higher CO2 surface concentrations. The obtained activity coefficients are successfully described by a new modification of the Redlich-Kister equation. This modification takes into account the interaction between binary mixture components and an adsorbent. Finally we show that the studied carbon possesses very good CO2/CH4 mixture separation properties, comparable to those reported for other adsorbents

A question of balance: The benefits of pattern-recognition when solving problems in a complex domain

This is the accepted manuscript version of the following article: M. Lloyd-Kelly, F. Gobet, and Peter C. R. Lane, “A Question of Balance The Benefits of Pattern-Recognition when Solving Problems in a Complex Domain”, LNCS Transactions on Computational Collective Intelligence, Vol. XX, 2015. The final published version is available at: http://www.springer.com/gb/book/9783319275420 © 2015 Springer International Publishing.The dual-process theory of human cognition proposes the existence of two systems for decision-making: a slower, deliberative,problem-solving system and a quicker, reactive, pattern-recognition system. We alter the balance of these systems in a number of computational simulations using three types of agent equipped with a novel, hybrid, human-like cognitive architecture. These agents are situated in the stochastic, multi-agent Tileworld domain, whose complexity can be precisely controlled and widely varied. We explore how agent performance is affected by different balances of problem-solving and pattern-recognition, and conduct a sensitivity analysis upon key pattern-recognition system variables. Results indicate that pattern-recognition improves agent performance by as much as 36.5 % and, if a balance is struck with particular pattern-recognition components to promote pattern-recognition use, performance can be further improved by up to 3.6 %. This research is of interest for studies of expert behaviour in particular, and AI in general.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Shrinking Point Bifurcations of Resonance Tongues for Piecewise-Smooth, Continuous Maps

Resonance tongues are mode-locking regions of parameter space in which stable periodic solutions occur; they commonly occur, for example, near Neimark-Sacker bifurcations. For piecewise-smooth, continuous maps these tongues typically have a distinctive lens-chain (or sausage) shape in two-parameter bifurcation diagrams. We give a symbolic description of a class of "rotational" periodic solutions that display lens-chain structures for a general $N$-dimensional map. We then unfold the codimension-two, shrinking point bifurcation, where the tongues have zero width. A number of codimension-one bifurcation curves emanate from shrinking points and we determine those that form tongue boundaries.Comment: 27 pages, 6 figure

Tribological properties of diamond-like-carbon coating doped with tungsten

This paper presents the tribological properties of diamond-like-carbon coatings (DLC) doped with tungsten. The hardness of the DLC coating was determined using a micro-hardness tester. Friction tests were carried out on a tribometer in rotational motion in a 100Cr6 steel ball-disk association with a-C-H:W tungsten doped hydrogenated DLC coating. Tests were carried out with loads of 10 N, 25 N and 50 N under technically dry friction conditions. Using a scanning electron microscopy (SEM), the surface morphology was observed, and with a confocal microscope, the geometric structure of the surface was observed before and after the friction tests. The wetting angle of the samples was examined on an optical tensiometer for distilled water and diiodomethane. The results indicated that DLC coatings of the a-C:H:W type obtained by the PVD technique can be used in unlubricated high-load tribological systems

Tribological properties of diamond-like-carbon coating doped with tungsten

This paper presents the tribological properties of diamond-like-carbon coatings (DLC) doped with tungsten. The hardness of the DLC coating was determined using a micro-hardness tester. Friction tests were carried out on a tribometer in rotational motion in a 100Cr6 steel ball-disk association with a-C-H:W tungsten doped hydrogenated DLC coating. Tests were carried out with loads of 10 N, 25 N and 50 N under technically dry friction conditions. Using a scanning electron microscopy (SEM), the surface morphology was observed, and with a confocal microscope, the geometric structure of the surface was observed before and after the friction tests. The wetting angle of the samples was examined on an optical tensiometer for distilled water and diiodomethane. The results indicated that DLC coatings of the a-C:H:W type obtained by the PVD technique can be used in unlubricated high-load tribological systems

Revisiting wetting, freezing, and evaporation mechanisms of water on copper

Wetting of metal surfaces plays an important role in fuel cells, corrosion science, and heat-transfer devices. It has been recently stipulated that Cu surface is hydrophobic. In order to address this issue we use high purity (1 1 1) Cu prepared without oxygen, and resistant to oxidation. Using the modern Fringe Projection Phase-Shifting method of surface roughness determination, together with a new cell allowing the vacuum and thermal desorption of samples, we define the relation between the copper surface roughness and water contact angle (WCA). Next by a simple extrapolation, we determine the WCA for the perfectly smooth copper surface (WCA = 34°). Additionally, the kinetics of airborne hydrocarbons adsorption on copper was measured. It is shown for the first time that the presence of surface hydrocarbons strongly affects not only WCA, but also water droplet evaporation and the temperature of water droplet freezing. The different behavior and features of the surfaces were observed once the atmosphere of the experiment was changed from argon to air. The evaporation results are well described by the theoretical framework proposed by Semenov, and the freezing process by the dynamic growth angle model

Measurement of the electric dipole moments for transitions to rubidium Rydberg states via Autler-Townes splitting

We present the direct measurements of electric-dipole moments for $5P_{3/2}\to nD_{5/2}$ transitions with $20<n<48$ for Rubidium atoms. The measurements were performed in an ultracold sample via observation of the Autler-Townes splitting in a three-level ladder scheme, commonly used for 2-photon excitation of Rydberg states. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first systematic measurement of the electric dipole moments for transitions from low excited states of rubidium to Rydberg states. Due to its simplicity and versatility, this method can be easily extended to other transitions and other atomic species with little constraints. Good agreement of the experimental results with theory proves the reliability of the measurement method.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures; figure 6 replaced with correct versio