Training, Motivation And Leadership In Human Resource Development Practices: The Case Of Construction Firms Of Iran.

Sistem pembangunan sumber manusia yang mantap merupakan satu strategi yang kritis bagi syarikat pembinaan, kerana dalam tahun-tahun yang akan datang, modal insan memainkan peranan yang signifikan untuk sesebuah pertubuhan yang berjaya. A powerful human resource development system is a critical strategy for construction companies, as in the coming years, human capital plays a significant role in order to be a successful organization

A Study of the Renewal Cycle of Hotel Building Elements in Malaysia

Penang is the main tourism island which appeals an increasing number of travellers each year. Therefore, the hotels in Penang play a crucial role in the field of Penang tourism. However, recently some problems with the Penang hotels have been brought to light frequently by travellers including domestic and foreign tourists. The reason for this may be due to irregular maintenance as well as the fact that the renewal of the building elements may not have been duly carried out. In light of that, this research investigated the condition of the maintenance and renewal cycle of the building elements of the hotels in Penang. This study was conducted with a quantitative method, using a questionnaire to collect information regarding the condition of maintenance, evaluation of the condition of the building elements and the frequency of building elements renewal. The results revealed that each building element renewal cycle is differing according to the effects of maintenance and its lifespan. In terms of comparison with the renewals in Singapore hotels, there are shortcomings involved in the schedule of element renewals carried out in Penang

Connectivity Profile of Middle Inferior Parietal Cortex Confirms the Hypothesis About Modulating Cortical Areas

According to the correlated transmitter-receptor based structure of the inferior parietal cortex (IPC), this brain area is divided into three clusters, namely, the caudal, the middle and the rostral. Nevertheless, in associating different cognitive functions to the IPC, previous studies considered this part of the cortex as a whole and thus inconsistent results have been reported. Using multiband echo planar imaging (EPI), we investigated the connectivity profile of the middle IPC while forty-five participants performed a task requiring cognitive control. The middle IPC demonstrated functional associations which do not have similarities to a contributing part in the frontoparietal network, in processing cognitive control. At the same time, this cortical area showed negative functional connectivity with both the precuneus cortex, which is resting- state related, and brain areas related to general cognitive functions. That is, the functions of the middle IPC are not accommodated by the traditional categorization of different brain areas i.e. resting state-related or task-related networks and this advanced our hypothesis about modulating cortical areas. Such brain areas are characterized by their negative functional connectivity with parts of the cortex involved in task performance, proportional to the difficulty of the task; yet, their functional associations are inconsistent with the resting state-related cortical areas

Dual Function of Primary Somatosensory Cortex in Cognitive Control of Language: Evidence from Resting State fMRI

Resting state functional connectivity can be leveraged to investigate bilingual individual differences in cognitive control of language; however, thus far no report is provided on how the connectivity profiles of brain functional networks at rest point to different language control behavior in bilinguals. In order to address this gap in state-of-the-art research we did a functional connectivity analysis on the resting state data acquired via multiband EPI to investigate three resting state networks of interest namely, the frontoparietal network (FPN), the salience network (SN), and the default mode network (DMN), which are related to cognitive control, between two groups of Dutch–English bilinguals based on how they performed in a language switching task. Results demonstrated that there is the increased coupling of the left primary somatosensory cortex with the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in the group with better performance in cognitive control of language and the increased coupling of the right primary somatosensory cortex with the inferior parietal cortex in the group with poorer performance in this executive function. As regards these results, we claim that the primary somatosensory cortex has a dual function in coupling with the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the inferior parietal cortex in the FPN, and in fact, in what characterizes bilingual individual differences in cognitive control of language in healthy participants. The results of this study provide a model for future research in cognitive control of language and may serve as a reference in clinical neuroscience when bilinguals are diagnosed with dysfunction in cognitive control

Cortical contributions to cognitive control of language and beyond: evidence from functional connectivity profiles of the inferior parietal cortex and cognitive control-related resting state networks

The resting state connectivity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex with the left primary somatosensory cortex and the functional association of the inferior parietal cortex (IPC) with the right primary somatosensory cortex indicate better and poorer performance in cognitive control of language, respectively. Besides, the task based connectivity profiles of the clusters of the IPC elucidate that it is not the whole part of this brain area that is involved in cognitive control, in the fronto-parietal network, but only the rostral cluster of the IPC. Moreover, the unique functional associations of the middle and the caudal IPC evidence that the traditional categorization of brain areas does not accommodate the functions of these parts of the cortex; the connectivity patterns of the middle and the caudal IPC have highlighted another brain functional category beyond the classic definitions, as modulating cortical areas, the functional connectivity of which are disparate from parts of the cortex involved in task performance and brain areas related to the resting state functionality of the brain.Theoretical and Experimental Linguistic

A special breed of transformational leadership? Integrating conflict management and ethnicity into team coordination in multicultural temporary environments

Conflict is common during group activities, and how leaders deal with team members and the conflicts that arise in a project team environment can significantly affect team coordination. This study explores how conflict is dealt with by providing empirical evidence of relationships between transformational leadership style, conflict management styles and the ethnicity of leaders in multicultural project environments in the construction industry. The research extends conflict management style into the transformational leadership behaviour of team leaders to identify their effects on team coordination. Moreover, it evaluates how the ethnicity of leaders can moderate the relationships. This contribution is exceptional for bringing three moderating ethnic groups while drawing on data from 126 teams in the construction industry, using PLS path modelling to test our hypotheses. The results demonstrate that cooperative and conflict-avoiding management styles are positively related to team coordination. The judicious and considered use of the conflict-avoiding management style, in particular, should be recognised as an appropriate solution in certain multi-cultural team contexts by transformational leaders. Teams also exhibited stronger coordination when the team leader was nominated from a specific ethnic group. Possible directions in which future research can be structured are also outlined

MSVIPER: Improved Policy Distillation for Reinforcement-Learning-Based Robot Navigation

We present Multiple Scenario Verifiable Reinforcement Learning via Policy Extraction (MSVIPER), a new method for policy distillation to decision trees for improved robot navigation. MSVIPER learns an "expert" policy using any Reinforcement Learning (RL) technique involving learning a state-action mapping and then uses imitation learning to learn a decision-tree policy from it. We demonstrate that MSVIPER results in efficient decision trees and can accurately mimic the behavior of the expert policy. Moreover, we present efficient policy distillation and tree-modification techniques that take advantage of the decision tree structure to allow improvements to a policy without retraining. We use our approach to improve the performance of RL-based robot navigation algorithms for indoor and outdoor scenes. We demonstrate the benefits in terms of reduced freezing and oscillation behaviors (by up to 95\% reduction) for mobile robots navigating among dynamic obstacles and reduced vibrations and oscillation (by up to 17\%) for outdoor robot navigation on complex, uneven terrains.Comment: 6 pages main paper, 2 pages of references, 5 page appendix (13 pages total) 5 tables, 9 algorithms, 4 figure

Mapping caudal inferior parietal cortex supports the hypothesis about a modulating cortical area

The cytoarchitectonically tripartite organization of the inferior parietal cortex (IPC) into the rostral, the middle and the caudal clusters has been generally ignored when associating different functions to this part of the cortex, resulting in inconsistencies about how IPC is understood. In this study, we investigated the patterns of functional connectivity of the caudal IPC in a task requiring cognitive control, using multiband EPI. This part of the cortex demonstrated functional connectivity patterns dissimilar to a cognitive control area and at the same time the caudal IPC showed negative functional associations with both task-related brain areas and the precuneus cortex, which is active during resting state. We found evidence suggesting that the traditional categorization of different brain areas into either task-related or resting state-related networks cannot accommodate the functions of the caudal IPC. This underlies the hypothesis about a new brain functional category as a modulating cortical area proposing that its involvement in task performance, in a modulating manner, is marked by deactivation in the patterns of functional associations with parts of the brain that are recognized to be involved in doing a task, proportionate to task difficulty; however, its patterns of functional connectivity in some other respects do not correspond to the resting state-related parts of the cortex. Theoretical and Experimental Linguistic