New Workers, Depressed Workers

Major changes in the workplace brought about through economic reforms require workers to be autonomous, flexible and mobile. One effect of these changes has been a major increase in the incidence of worker anxiety and depression (Gabriel & Liimatainen 2000). According to this survey, depression in the workplace had become the second most disabling illness for workers after heart disease

Using data envelopment analysis for supplier evaluation with environmental considerations

With the proliferation of outsourcing in global market place, supplier selection has become a key strategic consideration in forming a competitive supply chain. Supplier selection has been recognized as a multi-criteria decision making problem in which suppliers are evaluated according to multiple criteria such as price, quality, delivery and service simultaneously. Facing with excessive pressures from government and customers, increasing number of companies are beginning to consider environmental issues in the procurement and supplier selection process to practice the sustainable development. It is therefore necessary to measure a supplier’s environmental performance. This paper aims to find out what kind of environmental criteria can be applied to assess suppliers overall performances. The multicriteria decision making approach data envelopment analysis (DEA) is applied to help companies to evaluate suppliers’ various environmental performance and other capabilities simultaneously. © 2013 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

CSR and environmental criteria in supplier selection

Session - Green Manufacturing Technology: paper no. M3C1The APIEMS 2012 Conference proceedings' website is located at http://apiems.net/conf2012/The supplier selection issue in today’s world does not simply depend on price anymore. Other non-price criteria such as quality, delivery and overall capability are gradually gaining equal importance. Because of the globalization of trade, the world is becoming an increasingly open and global marketplace where the intense competition is urging companies to reduce the cost and development time of a new product. Companies are forced to take every possible factor into consideration when making the strategic decision to minimize costs and product development time. That means besides taking price into consideration, companies now also has to assess the overall capability of the suppliers, such as production capability, technological capability, company reputation and other factors that are hard to be quantified, in order to make the most informed decision to strive for a balance between lowering profits and rising costs. Different companies have their own ways in carrying out the supplier selection process that aligns with their corporate strategy. This paper is interested in what criteria are used in supplier evaluation and the ranking of the criteria importance. In particular, the focus is the incorporation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and environmental responsibility (ER) requirements into supplier selection. With the increasing awareness of CSR and ER, large international corporations have been paying more attention in selecting suppliers that are capable of adhering to the practice of sustainability. Hence, this paper aims to find out what criteria or performance indicators are adopted by companies to assess their suppliers, and how much importance CSR and ER contributes to the final decision of the selected supplier. A multi-agent system is implemented with a multi criteria decision making model to incorporate the criteria identified for evaluating supplier performance and selecting the most suitable supplier.published_or_final_versio

An exploratory study examining breastfeeding practices among mothers in a maternity hospital in Hong Kong

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Knot Theory: from Fox 3-colorings of links to Yang-Baxter homology and Khovanov homology

This paper is an extended account of my "Introductory Plenary talk at Knots in Hellas 2016" conference We start from the short introduction to Knot Theory from the historical perspective, starting from Heraclas text (the first century AD), mentioning R.Llull (1232-1315), A.Kircher (1602-1680), Leibniz idea of Geometria Situs (1679), and J.B.Listing (student of Gauss) work of 1847. We spend some space on Ralph H. Fox (1913-1973) elementary introduction to diagram colorings (1956). In the second section we describe how Fox work was generalized to distributive colorings (racks and quandles) and eventually in the work of Jones and Turaev to link invariants via Yang-Baxter operators, here the importance of statistical mechanics to topology will be mentioned. Finally we describe recent developments which started with Mikhail Khovanov work on categorification of the Jones polynomial. By analogy to Khovanov homology we build homology of distributive structures (including homology of Fox colorings) and generalize it to homology of Yang-Baxter operators. We speculate, with supporting evidence, on co-cycle invariants of knots coming from Yang-Baxter homology. Here the work of Fenn-Rourke-Sanderson (geometric realization of pre-cubic sets of link diagrams) and Carter-Kamada-Saito (co-cycle invariants of links) will be discussed and expanded. Dedicated to Lou Kauffman for his 70th birthday.Comment: 35 pages, 31 figures, for Knots in Hellas II Proceedings, Springer, part of the series Proceedings in Mathematics & Statistics (PROMS

Coarse-grained reconfigurable array architectures

Coarse-Grained Reconfigurable Array (CGRA) architectures accelerate the same inner loops that benefit from the high ILP support in VLIW architectures. By executing non-loop code on other cores, however, CGRAs can focus on such loops to execute them more efficiently. This chapter discusses the basic principles of CGRAs, and the wide range of design options available to a CGRA designer, covering a large number of existing CGRA designs. The impact of different options on flexibility, performance, and power-efficiency is discussed, as well as the need for compiler support. The ADRES CGRA design template is studied in more detail as a use case to illustrate the need for design space exploration, for compiler support and for the manual fine-tuning of source code

Prioritized Sweeping Neural DynaQ with Multiple Predecessors, and Hippocampal Replays

During sleep and awake rest, the hippocampus replays sequences of place cells that have been activated during prior experiences. These have been interpreted as a memory consolidation process, but recent results suggest a possible interpretation in terms of reinforcement learning. The Dyna reinforcement learning algorithms use off-line replays to improve learning. Under limited replay budget, a prioritized sweeping approach, which requires a model of the transitions to the predecessors, can be used to improve performance. We investigate whether such algorithms can explain the experimentally observed replays. We propose a neural network version of prioritized sweeping Q-learning, for which we developed a growing multiple expert algorithm, able to cope with multiple predecessors. The resulting architecture is able to improve the learning of simulated agents confronted to a navigation task. We predict that, in animals, learning the world model should occur during rest periods, and that the corresponding replays should be shuffled.Comment: Living Machines 2018 (Paris, France

Lie Detection using functional MRI

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Bioactivity-guided identification and cell signaling technology to delineate the immunomodulatory effects of Panax ginseng on human promonocytic U937 cells

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Ginseng is believed to have beneficial effects against human diseases, and its active components, ginsenosides, may play critical roles in its diverse physiological actions. However, the mechanisms underlying ginseng's effects remain to be investigated. We hypothesize some biological effects of ginseng are due to its anti-inflammatory effects.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Human promonocytic U937 cells were used to investigate the immunomodulatory effects of ginseng following TNF-α treatment. A global gene expression profile was obtained by using genechip analysis, and specific cytokine expression was measured by quantitative RT-PCR and ELISA. HPLC was used to define the composition of ginsenosides in 70% ethanol-water extracts of ginseng. Activation of signalling kinases was examined by Western blot analysis.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Seventy percent ethanol-water extracts of ginseng significantly inhibited the transcription and secretion of CXCL-10 following TNF-α stimulation. Nine ginsenosides including Rb₁, Rb₂, Rc, Rd, Re, Rf, Rg₁, Rg₃and Rh₁were identified in our extract by HPLC. Seven out of nine ginsenosides could significantly inhibit TNF-α-induced CXCL-10 expression in U937 cells and give comparable inhibition of CXCL-10 transcription to those with the extract. However, the CXCL-10 suppressive effect of individual ginsenosides was less than that of the crude extract or the mixture of ginsenosides. The CXCL-10 suppression can be correlated with the inactivation of ERK1/2 pathways by ginseng.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We showed ginseng suppressed part of the TNF-α-inducible cytokines and signalling proteins in promonocytic cells, suggesting that it exerts its anti-inflammatory property targeting at different levels of TNF-α activity. The anti-inflammatory role of ginseng may be due to the combined effects of ginsenosides, contributing in part to the diverse actions of ginseng in humans.</p