Intrinsic Spirituality as a Context for Motivation

The purpose of this study is to determine how spirituality impacts the lives of people who currently have or have had (now retired) full-time work experience. The first step was to review research on the effects of spirituality on organizations, managers, and the workplace. The study methods employed include the results of interviews after interviewees had completed a one-page modified six-item intrinsic spirituality scale. Possible variances between males and females on the questionnaire were tested, potential differences between people of different races were assessed, and possible distinctions between people of different religions were computed. The findings suggest the prominence of intrinsic spirituality in the workplace does indeed function as a person’s master motive. An interesting level of significance was discovered between males and females (p = .001257). Females exhibited a much higher level of spirituality

Spiritual Roots and Classical Fruits: A Stylistic Analysis and Performance Guide of Selected Spirituals and Art Songs by Jacqueline Hairston

Spiritual Roots and Classical Fruits is the title of Jacqueline Butler Hairston’s first and only CD. Hairston is an American born composer and arranger who has proven herself as a prolific writer of vocal music, most notably in the genre of spirituals and art songs. The Charlotte, North Carolina native brings a wealth of experience to composition through her southern roots in spirituals and her formal classical training at The Juilliard School of Music, Howard University and Columbia University. The goal of this document is to introduce and present solo vocal music of Hairston’s with an emphasis on harmonic structure, text, interpretation, performance practice, musical setting and overall form. Known primarily as a prolific arranger of spirituals, particularly her Christmas spirituals for Kathleen Battle, Jacqueline Hairston has equally established herself as a prominent composer in the art song genre. Her compositional style mimics the essential traits of Black American music coupled with modern and traditional European classical techniques. Her nonarranged music runs the risk of being overshadowed by the popularity of her spirituals. Consequently, this writing will provide detailed insight to her gift for non-sacred music as well. An essential aspect of Hairston’s music ties into performance practice. A detailed exploration of how her pieces should be performed and direct insight into the composer’s intent serves a critical role in the entirety of this study. The totality of this research is gathered from my interactions as a student of Jacqueline Hairston, multiple interviews with her and interviews from her close associates. Moreover, it is my hope that this exposure of her work will engage and excite more discussion and performance of her music in recital, concert and church halls

Connectivity Differences between Human Operators of Swarms and Bandwidth Limitations

Human interaction with robot swarms (HSI) is a young field with very few user studies that explore operator behavior. All these studies assume perfect communication between the operator and the swarm. A key challenge in the use of swarm robotic systems in human supervised tasks is to understand human swarm interaction in the presence of limited communication bandwidth, which is a constraint arising in many practical scenarios. In this paper, we present results of human-subject experiments designed to study the effect of bandwidth limitations in human swarm interaction. We consider three levels of bandwidth availability in a swarm foraging task. The lowest bandwidth condition performs poorly, but the medium and high bandwidth condition both perform well. In the medium bandwidth condition, we display useful aggregated swarm information (like swarm centroid and spread) to compress the swarm state information. We also observe interesting operator behavior and adaptation of operators' swarm reaction

Neglect Benevolence in Human-Swarm Interaction with Communication Latency

In practical applications of robot swarms with bio-inspired behaviors, a human operator will need to exert control over the swarm to fulfill the mission objectives. In many operational settings, human operators are remotely located and the communication environment is harsh. Hence, there exists some latency in information (or control command) transfer between the human and the swarm. In this paper, we conduct experiments of human-swarm interaction to investigate the effects of communication latency on the performance of a human-swarm system in a swarm foraging task. We develop and investigate the concept of neglect benevolence, where a human operator allows the swarm to evolve on its own and stabilize before giving new commands. Our experimental results indicate that operators exploited neglect benevolence in different ways to develop successful strategies in the foraging task. Furthermore, we show experimentally that the use of a predictive display can help mitigate the adverse effects of communication latency