Does the built-environment industry attract risk-taking individuals?

This exploratory research examines whether or not those attracted to professional-level occupations in the built-environment industry are innately physical risk-takers and hence potentially, thereby, more likely to countenance or contribute to physically risky workplace climates. Using individual-level data, the occupational attractiveness of the built-environment industry subsectors of construction management and architecture are each found positively and significantly to be predicted by physical risk-taking propensity, but not by a comparator risk-taking propensity, gambling. Conversely, the occupational attractiveness of a comparator profession in financial services is found to be significantly predicted by gambling risk-taking propensity, but not by physical risk-taking propensity. Although exploratory, our finding that two key professions in the built-environment industry are each discretely found to be attractive to physical risk-takers suggests not only that constituent occupations within the industry, but that the industry as a whole might perhaps engender a self-reinforcing suboptimal workplace safety climate. Accordingly, constituent subsectors of the industry may need both separately and collectively to consider the phenomenon of physical risk-taking propensity amongst the professionals it attracts in order effectively to set and manage the site work-place safety climate that such professionals are ultimately responsible for creating and delivering in a sector fraught with physical risks for site workers

Do security analysts learn from their colleagues?

FMA conference Refer to program on 14 Oct - Financial Analysts 2: http://fmaconferences.org/Boston/BostonProgram.htm</p

Extracting oil palm crown from worldview-2 satellite image

Oil palm (OP) is the most commercial crop in Malaysia. Estimating the crowns is important for biomass estimation from high resolution satellite (HRS) image. This study examined extraction of individual OP crown from a WorldView-2 image using twofold algorithms, i.e., masking of Non-OP pixels and detection of individual OP crown based on the watershed segmentation of greyscale images. The study site was located in Beluran district, central Sabah, where matured OPs with the age ranging from 15 to 25 years old have been planted. We examined two compound vegetation indices of (NDVI+1)*DVI and NDII for masking non-OP crown areas. Using kappa statistics, an optimal threshold value was set with the highest accuracy at 90.6% for differentiating OP crown areas from Non-OP areas. After the watershed segmentation of OP crown areas with additional post-procedures, about 77% of individual OP crowns were successfully detected in comparison to the manual based delineation. Shape and location of each crown segment was then assessed based on a modified version of the goodness measures of Möller et al which was 0.3, indicating an acceptable CSGM (combined segmentation goodness measures) agreements between the automated and manually delineated crowns (perfect case is '1')

Determinants of PhD student satisfaction::The roles of supervisor, department, and peer qualities

Understanding the determinants of PhD student satisfaction is likely to become increasingly vital for universities as student satisfaction rankings already ubiquitous at undergraduate and master degree levels extend more broadly to the PhD level. Moreover, as PhD student populations and university competition become increasingly transnational, there is a growing need to understand cross-nationally common determinants of satisfaction. Building on prior research into PhD student satisfaction, and drawing upon relevant conceptual and metrical refinements in the measurement of satisfaction from cognate domains of psychology, we use cross-sectional data (N=409) from PhD candidates across the sciences, social sciences, and humanities in 63 universities from 20 countries to examine how overall PhD student satisfaction is determined by, respectively and in combination, supervisor, department, and peer-group, in terms of both their academic qualities and supportiveness. Taken together, we find that supervisor supportiveness is the greatest predictor of PhD student satisfaction, but that supervisor academic qualities have no significant effect. However, both the academic qualities and supportiveness of departments significantly predict PhD student satisfaction, suggesting university departments and PhD supervisors would ideally work jointly, and perhaps more closely than many currently do, to achieve competitive levels of PhD student satisfaction

The occupational attractiveness of the built environment and the roles of individualism and collectivism: a hidden source of conflict and gender imbalance?

The success of built environment projects is closely dependent on strong collective cooperation. Yet abundant anecdotal and academic evidence attests to weak collective cooperation within the industry. To date, no research in the built environment has investigated either the individual-level differences in individualism/collectivism that affect cooperativeness, or how gender may interact with these individual-level traits. In this research we seek to make a positive contribution by using the individual rather than organization as the unit of analysis. We first test the possibility that the built environment may in fact attract uncooperative individuals who are more individualistic than collectivist with respect to two specimen subsectors, i.e. construction management and architecture. At the same time we also employ a nuanced distinction between horizontal and vertical facets of individualism/collectivism, and assess potential interactions with gender. Using individual-level data (N¼548), we find that both the architecture and construction management subsectors are occupationally attractive to individuals from opposing ends of the horizontal and vertical individualism/collectivism spectrums, and that these traits interact with gender. We argue that our findings both expose an individual-level source of poor collective cooperation in the built environment industry, and underscore the need to address persistently low female recruitment and retention rates

Relationships between canopy Size and aboveground biomass of oil palms: an evaluation of allometric models

Oil palms (OP) in Sabah, Malaysia were studied to explore the relationship between canopy size and aboveground biomass (AGB). Four available allometric equations were used to calculate the dry AGB. Pearson’s correlation analysis was performed between crown diameter (CD) and crown area (CA) towards the variables of AGB, height and dbh. In this analysis, the transformation to natural log of variable resulted in better coefficient compared to the original one. The mean of various variables such as height (stem, total and height difference), biomass (crown, trunk and total), dbh (inner and outer) and number of petiole leaf were calculated based on 32 independent sample plots (N = 222 palms) across various age stages from 2 to 24 years. These variables were regressed against CD and age. AGB versus CD was a nonlinear with R2 ranging from 0.950 to 0.975. Random modelling and cross validation between AGB and CD was applied at the ratio of 70:30. Upon checking, the best estimation was achieved by using the allometric equation based on total height due to the lowest relative root mean square error (RMSE) (18.5%) and the least fluctuation between predicted and actual AGB. The other three models had relative RMSE that ranged between 23.9 and 68.8%. This study shows that AGB can be estimated using CD of OP consistently at all age

Are satisfied students simply happy people in the first place? The role of trait affect in student satisfaction

We propose and test the proposition that innate personality differences in trait affect explain significant variance in student satisfaction. Using three standard measures of trait affect and data from a student sample (n = 409) of PhD candidates across science, social science and humanities in 63 universities from 20 countries, we find that 24% of variance in student satisfaction is accounted for by trait affect. We also find that both discipline studied and research orientation of university have moderating effects on the relationship between trait affect and student satisfaction. Our findings suggest student satisfaction scores need to be viewed with caution because, in part, they merely reflect individual-level trait affect that - like all innate personality traits - academics, university administrators and education ministers alike are powerless to alter. Our findings indicate that governments, universities and other organisations gathering student satisfaction data could usefully adopt measures to control for trait affect. Our findings also raise the possibility that universities might strategically incorporate innate affect in their student selection criteria to game satisfaction ratings