Association between organizational justice and productivity of human resources: a study at the Jundishapur Medical Sciences University of Ahvaz

Objective: From the management perspective, productivity is defined as the successful utilization of resources to achieve the desired goals. training and improvement of human resources are one of the several ways for increasing the productivity of human resources. Organizational justice is another factor affecting the productivity but has received little or no consideration. Organizational justice refers to the perceptions of employees about the fairness and fair behavior of the management on the job. Justice processes play an important role in all organizations. Besides, the manner in which the organizations deal with their employees can greatly influence their beliefs, feelings, attitudes, and behavior This correlational descriptive study aims to determine the association between organizational justice and productivity of human resources in Jundishapur Medical Sciences University of Ahvaz.Methods: 376 employees of the university were randomly sampled. Persian version of Niehoff and Moorman's organizational justice questionnaire and Hersey and Goldsmith's human resources productivity questionnaire were used for data collection.Results: The results of this study based on the dimensions of organizational justice indicated that the perception of total organizational justice among the included employees was relatively inappropriate, and only the dimension of interactional justice was estimated to be in the relatively appropriate condition.The study also showed a positive and significant association between organizational justice and human resources' productivity.Conclusions: As the organizational justice scenario is bad, therforeit is essential that the managers ensure a fair and just environment for the employees. This is essential to maximize the efficiency and productivity of the employees to achieve organizational goals. It was found that that the higher the perception of organizational justice especially procedural justice, the more was the productivity index in the organization. In addition, a medium, positive, and significant association was observed between distributive justice and the productivity of the employees.Keywords: Organizational Justice, Human Resources, Productivity, Administration, Workforc

Microstructural evaluation with type i hot corrosion degradation of gas turbine alloys during burner-rig testing

The hot corrosion resistance of selected gas turbine alloys was evaluated, as a baseline for assessing candidate new hot-section materials. The alloys were tested under burner rig exposures, using ASTM standard seawater for the salt contaminant and combustion conditions that provide representative materials evolution and degradation behavior relative to what is observed with marine gas turbines under service environments. Modern characterization techniques were utilized to evaluate the hot corrosion behavior and resistance of the evaluated material systems, to observe the degradation of the alloys and to study the underlying degradation mechanisms active during hot corrosion attack. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Global Ultrasound Elastography Using Convolutional Neural Network

Displacement estimation is very important in ultrasound elastography and failing to estimate displacement correctly results in failure in generating strain images. As conventional ultrasound elastography techniques suffer from decorrelation noise, they are prone to fail in estimating displacement between echo signals obtained during tissue distortions. This study proposes a novel elastography technique which addresses the decorrelation in estimating displacement field. We call our method GLUENet (GLobal Ultrasound Elastography Network) which uses deep Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to get a coarse time-delay estimation between two ultrasound images. This displacement is later used for formulating a nonlinear cost function which incorporates similarity of RF data intensity and prior information of estimated displacement. By optimizing this cost function, we calculate the finer displacement by exploiting all the information of all the samples of RF data simultaneously. The Contrast to Noise Ratio (CNR) and Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) of the strain images from our technique is very much close to that of strain images from GLUE. While most elastography algorithms are sensitive to parameter tuning, our robust algorithm is substantially less sensitive to parameter tuning.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures; added acknowledgment section, submission type late

Geometric Morphometric Study on Geographic Dimorphism of Codling Moth Cydia pomonella (Lepidoptera, Tortricidae) from North West of Iran

During years 2003—2004, nine geographical populations of codling moth Cydia pomonella (Linnaeus) from 4 north western provinces of Iran were collected.В течение 2003—2004 гг. были собраны экземпляры девяти географических популяций яблонной плодожорки Cydia pomonella (Linnaeus) в 4 северо-западных провинциях Ирана

Reserach Paper: Trans-differentiation of human dental pulp stem cells into cholinergic-like neurons via nerve growth factor

Introduction: Cell therapy has been widely considered as a therapeutic approach for neurodegenerative diseases and nervous system damage. Cholinergic neurons as one of the most important neurons that play a significant role in controlling emotions, mobility, and autonomic systems. In this study, Human Dental Pulp Stem Cells (hDPSCs) were differentiated into the cholinergic neurons by β-mercaptoethanol in the preinduction phase and also by the nerve growth factor (NGF) in the induction phase. Methods: The hDPSCs were evaluated for CD73, CD31, CD34, and Oct-4. Concentration-time relationships for NGF were assessed by evaluating the viability rate of cells and the immune response to nestin, neurofilament 160, microtubule-associated protein-2, and choline acetyltransferase. Results: The hDPSCs had a negative response to CD34 and CD31. The optimal dose for the NGF was 50 ng/mL seven days after the induction when the highest percentage of expressing markers for the Cholinergic neurons (ChAT) was detected. Conclusion: The results of this study provided a method for producing cholinergic neurons by hDPSCs, which can be used in cytotherapy for degenerative diseases of the nervous system and also spinal cord injury

Host specificity and species colouration mediate the regional decline of nocturnal moths in central European forests

The high diversity of insects has limited the volume of long-term community data with a high taxonomic resolution and considerable geographic replications, especially in forests. Therefore, trends and causes of changes are poorly understood. Here we analyse trends in species richness, abundance and biomass of nocturnal macro moths in three quantitative data sets collected over four decades in forests in southern Germany. Two local data sets, one from coppiced oak forests and one from high oak forests included 125K and 48K specimens from 559 and 532 species, respectively. A third regional data set, representing all forest types in the temperate zone of central Europe comprised 735K specimens from 848 species. Generalized additive mixed models revealed temporal declines in species richness (−38%), abundance (−53%) and biomass (−57%) at the regional scale. These were more pronounced in plant host specialists and in dark coloured species. In contrast, the local coppiced oak forests showed an increase, in species richness (+62%), while the high oak forests showed no clear trends. Left and right censoring as well as cross validation confirmed the robustness of the analyses, which led to four conclusions. First, the decline in insects appears in hyper diverse insect groups in forests and affects species richness, abundance and biomass. Second, the pronounced decline in host specialists suggests habitat loss as an important driver of the observed decline. Third, the more severe decline in dark species might be an indication of global warming as a potential driver. Fourth, the trends in coppiced oak forests indicate that maintaining complex and diverse forest ecosystems through active management may be a promising conservation strategy in order to counteract negative trends in biodiversity, alongside rewilding approaches