Employee participation in organizational change: A case of Tesco PLC

Purpose: The research work attempts to identify some of the challenges and difficulties that were associated with the recent technological changes in Tesco PLC (from cashier to customer self-checkout) and its related effect on employee attitude and performance. Research methodology: The research is a case study type; a convenient sampling method was used for selecting the sample for the study. The sample chosen for this research comprises of 3 store managers and 13 checkout staff of Tesco Express Kilburn branch. Results: The findings revealed that management and customer assistants were well educated and well aware of the on-going strategic changes by management. Management was also aware of the vital role effective communication plays in the overall success of the program but communication had not been very impressive during the initial stages. It was also revealed that customer assistants developed a negative attitude, due to the fear of job insecurity, they had the impression the self-checkout was being implemented to replace their roles. Limitations: A generalization of the phenomenon across the organization's portfolio cannot be drawn on grounds of sample size representation. It is also acknowledged that using only one retail store for the research was a significant limitation covering more stores would have added considerable information to the findings. Contribution: This study has contribution for the formulation of policies and programs that should consider the inclusion of employees as major stakeholders in the design and planning of any organizational change. Keywords: Change management, Employee, Participation, Attitude, Performanc

Prototipo de CAD 3D en la nube

La idea es crear un prototipo CAD 3D en la nube. Primero haríamos una comparativa entre grandes proveedores y decidir por una. Con el proveedor escogido vamos a crear un prototipo CAD 3D como las mínimas funcionalidades. Actualmente, la empresa ya tiene un programa CAD 3D pero esa solo funciona en desktop

Dynamic effects of sports and physical activities and public health spending on sustainable environmental performance? New evidence from 50 U.S. states

Environmental-friendly behaviours are increasingly imperative in the current era to diminish the speed of environmental degradation and its damaging impacts. Increased sports and physical activities entail positive health outcomes, as well as having the potential to reduce vehicle-related carbon emissions. Therefore, the present study investigates the impact of sports and physical activities and public health spending on environmental performance in 50 U.S. states for the period 2010–2019. The system of the generalised method of moment (G.M.M.) and feasible generalised least squares (F.G.L.S.) are employed in the present analysis. The results reveal that sports and physical activities are significantly increases environmental performance in U.S. Similarly, health expenditures are negatively and significantly associated with air pollution and encourage overall environmental performance. However, economic growth contributes to higher emissions and therefore impede environmental performance. The interaction term of health expenditures and sports activities indicate that the combination of higher health expenditures with sports activities puts a profound effect on environmental quality. These findings signal the need to retrace health care spending programs and sports activities to accomplish zero-carbon targets and better environmental performance

Online Self-Disclosure Through Social Networking Sites Addiction: A Case Study of Pakistani University Students

Social networking sites provide a virtual platform for socialization, interaction, and entertainment. The overuse of social networking sites has become a global phenomenon, especially among young generations. The purpose of this study is to investigate the addiction elements of social networking sites and the impact of such an addiction on online self-disclosure. Additionally, the moderation effect of openness and extraversion was also analysed. Data from university students in Pakistan was gathered online using the Google survey application. In total 290 samples were gathered and examined. SPSS and AMOS software programmes were used to analyse data. Findings confirmed that young generations tend to have greater online self-disclosure due to social networking sites addiction. Both moderation results also showed a significant relationship between social networking sites addiction and online self-disclosure. The results of the current study are also used as a guideline for making policies related to social networking sites addiction

Development and Testing of A Wearable Vibrotactile Haptic Feedback System For Proprioceptive Rehabilitation

The human sense of touch is an integral part of daily life. For tasks involving grasping and manipulation of objects, force feedback is a key requirement. Most of the systems give contact point or complete grasping force feedback; for precision grasping and other physical interactions, finger awareness and force feedback from independent fingers is essential. In this study a novel, wearable proprioceptive rehabilitation system is designed which restores the ability of identifying and distinguishing between individual fingers of a prosthetic hand or an exoskeleton in a non-invasive manner. Moreover, it provides different levels of force feedback from every finger as well, which enables the user to distinguish and control force in precision grasping activities. For testing the system accuracy, classical psychophysical methods were used on a group of 14 voluntary disabled subjects. The tests were conducted in both, ideal and real-world conditions i.e. without and with distractions and accuracies were calculated accordingly. A p-test was also conducted to observe significance between the samples of with and without distraction datasets. The system performed with an overall accuracy of 82.04% which was well above the min. performance measure of 60%. Vi-HaB is standalone system and can be mounted on any upper limb rehabilitation (prosthesis, exoskeleton) system for finger awareness and force feedback

Self-reported Vocal symptoms among speech language pathologists dealing with children with hearing impairment and cerebral palsy

A cross-sectional study was conducted at the Ripah International University, Lahore, Pakistan from January to April, 2022 to evaluate and compare the Self-Reported Vocal symptoms among Speech Language Pathologists (SLP) practicing with children having Hearing Impairment (HI) and Cerebral Palsy (CP). The sample included 141 participants of both genders, aged 25 to 60 years, practicing with children with hearing impairment and cerebral palsy for at least one year. Vocal Tract Discomfort Scale (VTDS) and Voice Activity Participation Profile (VAPP) were utilised for data collection which was analysed using SPSS Ver-23. The study revealed no significant association of self-perceived vocal symptoms for SLPs catering to CP and HI children with p=0.303 and p=0.412 for VTDS and VAPP scores respectively and with higher mean scores for SLPs catering to CP children. Results revealed a total VTDS score of 40.26±13.10 with highest score for dryness, while highest VAPP mean score was noted for daily communication (53.82±23.20). Hence, there is no significant association of the speciality being catered to, while dryness is the commonest self-perceived symptom. Keywords: Cerebral Palsy, Hearing Impairment, Self-concept, Speech-Language Pathologist

Cohen-Macaulay modifications of the vertex cover ideal of a graph

summary:We study when the modifications of the Cohen-Macaulay vertex cover ideal of a graph are Cohen-Macaulay

Applying D’Arcy Thompson’s Theory of transformations in computer graphics

A Teoria das Transformações de D’Arcy Thompson argumenta que diferenças nas formas do corpo entre organismos podem ser simplesmente explicadas por transformações geométricas, ao invés de complicados esquemas de rearranjo dos componentes físicos. A forma de um peixe baiacu, por exemplo, pode ser transformada para a de um peixe lua por uma modificação do sistema de coordenadas retangular que descreve o peixe baiacu em um sistema curvilíneo para o peixe lua, que alonga a porção posterior do peixe. O objetivo deste projeto é investigar a aplicabilidade desta teoria em tarefas de modelagem geométrica para computação gráfica. Foi desenvolvido um sistema de modelagem geométrica que utiliza os princípios da Teoria de Thompson. Este método permite a síntese de novas formas a partir de modificações nos sistemas de coordenadas de uma forma original. Um teste simples de comparação entre formas foi implementado para prover uma métrica de validação dos resultados. Os resultados obtidos apontam que a Teoria das Transformações pode ser uma poderosa ferramenta em tarefas de Modelagem Geométrica onde uma grande variedade de formas similares mas com variações individuais é necessária.The D’Arcy Thompson’s Theory of Transformations states that differences in the shapes of the bodies among organisms can be simply explained by geometric transformations, instead of by complicated rearrangements schemes of the physical components. The shape of a fugu fish, for instance, can be transformed to a sunfish by modifying the rectangular coordinate system that describes the fugu fish in a curvilinear system to model the sunfish, stretching the back of the fish. The goal of this project is to investigate the applicability of this theory in geometric modeling tasks for computer graphics. It was developed a geometric modeling system that implements the principles of Thompson’s Theory. This method allows the synthesis of new shapes from modifications in the coordinate systems in an original way. A simple comparison test among shapes was implemented as a metric to validate the results. The results show that the Theory of Transformations can be a powerful tool in Geometric Modeling tasks where a wide variety of similar shapes but with individual variations is needed