An Empirical Study of Academic and Non-academic Staff’s Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment in an Institute of Higher Learning

Numerical studies have been conducted to determine the employees’ job satisfaction and organiza-tional commitment particularly in the corporates’ settings. There are few studies pertaining to the institutional staff’s job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Therefore, this study seeks to identify the influence of job satisfaction on organizational commitment among the academic and non-academic staff in institute of higher learning. The antecedent selected to identify the organization commitment was staff’s job satisfaction. Questionnaires were constructed and distributed to the aca-demic and non-academic staff of an institute of higher learning. This study identified three important findings namely male staff were more satisfied with their jobs compared to female staff, there was no significant difference between male and female staff on organizational commitment and levels of job satisfaction has significant influence on staff’s organizational commitment. The results showed that staff who were satisfied with their jobs demonstrated higher level of commitment and more unlikely to change their job. Research paper Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Seng, E. L. K.., Choi Wai, C. (2016). “An Empir-ical Study of Academic and Non-academic Staff’s Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment in an Institute of Higher Learning”, Journal of Entrepreneurship, Business and Economics, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 45–7

EXPERIMENTAL QUANTIFICATION OF THE SOLIDS FLUX IN AN INTERNALLY CIRCULATING FLUIDIZED BED

Internally circulating fluidized beds (ICFBs) have been applied to a number of processes and provide a means of exchanging the bed particles from one reaction chamber to the other. Fundamental to this system is a good knowledge of the solids circulation rate (SRR). This paper summarises experimental investigations conducted using a hot tracer technique to measure the solids recirculation flux through an ICFB with a reaction and heat exchange chamber. Possible predictive models which link the bed hydrodynamics to the SRR are also evaluated

The impact of topical mupirocin on peritoneal dialysis infection rates in Singapore general hospital.

Background. Peritonitis and exit-site infections (ESI) are major causes of technique failure and morbidity in peritoneal dialysis (PD) patients. Topical mupirocin on the exit-site has been shown to reduce such complications and prolong life in PD. Since the year 2000, such an approach has been adopted for our new incident PD population. We now report the results of this new protocol. We also studied the effect of co-morbidity on peritonitis occurrence. Methods. A total of 740 incident PD patients were studied. Patients were divided into two groups based on year of entry into PD (Group 1 from January 1998–December 1999 without topical mupirocin and Group 2 from January 2000–March 2004 with topical mupirocin). Variables studied included gender, age, diabetic status, ischaemic heart disease, peripheral vascular disease, cerebrovascular disease and serum albumin. Results. Topical mupirocin at the exit-site has led to a significant reduction in peritonitis rate (0.443 vs 0.339 episodes/patient-year; P<0.0005) and ESI (0.168 vs 0.156 episodes/patient-year; P<0.005) attributed primarily to the significant reduction in Staphylococcus aureus infections. There was an unexpected finding of lower Pseudomonas aeruginosa peritonitis in the mupirocin group (P<0.005). Stepwise multiple logistic regression analysis revealed that only mupirocin application and serum albumin were significant predictors of peritonitis. Conclusions. Our study, although limited by its retrospective nature, demonstrated that topical mupirocin was associated with a significant reduction in ESI and peritonitis with unexpected findings of lower Pseudomonas peritonitis. Serum albumin prior to the initiation of PD was a strong predictor of subsequent peritonitis. Mupirocin, with its low toxicity, ease of application and demonstrable beneficial effect in reducing ESI and peritonitis is now used on all incident PD patients

PRESSURE BALANCE OF A MULTIPLE-LOOP CHEMICAL REACTOR

For a chemical looping (CL) process it is important to determine the optimum reactor configuration that would offer good pressure balance to ensure smooth transfer of the solids between the reactor loops as well as satisfying the oxygen carrier and heat requirements. A variation of the CL process for production of enriched hydrogen stream is investigated which adopts multiple reactor loops. A pressure balance model is developed and a methodology is proposed to find a feasible reactor configuration at an industrial scale production of hydrogen

Crowd Saliency Detection via Global Similarity Structure

It is common for CCTV operators to overlook inter- esting events taking place within the crowd due to large number of people in the crowded scene (i.e. marathon, rally). Thus, there is a dire need to automate the detection of salient crowd regions acquiring immediate attention for a more effective and proactive surveillance. This paper proposes a novel framework to identify and localize salient regions in a crowd scene, by transforming low-level features extracted from crowd motion field into a global similarity structure. The global similarity structure representation allows the discovery of the intrinsic manifold of the motion dynamics, which could not be captured by the low-level representation. Ranking is then performed on the global similarity structure to identify a set of extrema. The proposed approach is unsupervised so learning stage is eliminated. Experimental results on public datasets demonstrates the effectiveness of exploiting such extrema in identifying salient regions in various crowd scenarios that exhibit crowding, local irregular motion, and unique motion areas such as sources and sinks.Comment: Accepted in ICPR 2014 (Oral). Mei Kuan Lim and Ven Jyn Kok share equal contribution

AidP, a novel N-Acyl Homoserine Lactonase gene from Antarctic Planococcus sp.

Planococcus is a Gram-positive halotolerant bacterial genus in the phylum Firmicutes, commonly found in various habitats in Antarctica. Quorum quenching (QQ) is the disruption of bacterial cell-to-cell communication (known as quorum sensing), which has previously been described in mesophilic bacteria. This study demonstrated the QQ activity of a psychrotolerant strain, Planococcus versutus strain L10.15T, isolated from a soil sample obtained near an elephant seal wallow in Antarctica. Whole genome analysis of this bacterial strain revealed the presence of an N-acyl homoserine lactonase, an enzyme that hydrolyzes the ester bond of the homoserine lactone of N-acyl homoserine lactone (AHLs). Heterologous gene expression in E. coli confirmed its functions for hydrolysis of AHLs, and the gene was designated as aidP (autoinducer degrading gene from Planococcus sp.). The low temperature activity of this enzyme suggested that it is a novel and uncharacterized class of AHL lactonase. This study is the first report on QQ activity of bacteria isolated from the polar regions

Complete genome of Planococcus rifietoensis M8T, a halotolerant and potentially plant growth promoting bacterium

Planococcus rifietoensis M8T (=DSM 15069T = ATCC BAA-790T) is a halotolerant bacterium with potential plant growth promoting properties isolated from an algal mat collected from a sulfurous spring in Campania (Italy). This paper presents the first complete genome of P. rifietoensis M8T. Genes coding for various potentially plant growth promoting properties were identified within its genome

Complete genome of Pseudomonas sp. strain L10.10, a psychrotolerant biofertilizer that could promote plant growth

Pseudomonas sp. strain L10.10 (=DSM 101070) is a psychrotolerant bacterium which was isolated from Lagoon Island, Antarctica. Analysis of its complete genome sequence indicates its possible role as a plant-growth promoting bacterium, including nitrogen-fixing ability and indole acetic acid (IAA)-producing trait, with additional suggestion of plant disease prevention attributes via hydrogen cyanide production

Prepregnancy adherence to plant-based diet indices and exploratory dietary patterns in relation to fecundability

Background Modest associations have been reported between specific food groups or nutrients and fecundability [measured by time to pregnancy (TTP)]. Examining overall diets provides a more holistic approach towards understanding their associations with fecundability. It is not known whether plant-based diets indices or exploratory dietary patterns are associated with fecundability. Objectives We examine the associations between adherence to 1) plant-based diet indices; and 2) exploratory dietary patterns and fecundability among women planning pregnancy. Methods Data were analyzed from the Singapore Preconception Study of Long-Term Maternal and Child Outcomes (S-PRESTO) study. Prepregnancy diet was assessed using a semi-quantitative FFQ from which the overall, healthful, and unhealthful plant-based diet indices (oPDI, hPDI, and uPDI, respectively) were calculated. Exploratory dietary patterns were derived using factor analysis based on 44 predefined food groups. Participants were categorized into quintiles based on their dietary pattern scores. TTP (expressed in menstrual cycles) was ascertained within a year from the prepregnancy dietary assessment. Discrete-time proportional hazard models, adjusted for confounders, were used to estimate fecundability ratios (FRs) and 95% CIs, with FR > 1 indicating a shorter TTP. Results Among 805 women, 383 pregnancies were confirmed by ultrasound scans. Compared with women in the lowest quintile, those in the highest quintile of the uPDI had reduced fecundability (FR of Q5 compared with Q1, 0.65; 95% CI, 0.46-0.91; P trend, 0.009). Conversely, greater adherence to the hPDI was associated with increased fecundability (1.46; 95% CI, 1.02-2.07; P trend, 0.036). The oPDI was not associated with fecundability. Among the 3 exploratory dietary patterns, only greater adherence to the Fast Food and Sweetened Beverages (FFSB) pattern was associated with reduced fecundability (0.61; 95% CI, 0.40-0.91; P trend, 0.018). Conclusions Greater adherence to the uPDI or the FFSB dietary pattern was associated with reduced fecundability among Asian women. Greater adherence to the hPDI may be beneficial for fecundability, though this requires confirmation by future studies.Peer reviewe