High Tech Professionals Are Hard to Organize Too

[Excerpt] It is unlikely that any technical and professional employees will be organized in non-union high tech firms until more blue-collar production workers become union members. There are, however, some high technology companies which already have heavily unionized blue-collar workforces. Two industrial unions have recently tried to recruit new members among the engineering and computer personnel at such firms. The experiences of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) at AT&T Technologies and the International Union of Electronic, Electrical, Technical, Salaried, & Machine Workers (IUE) at Raytheon indicate that the obstacles facing unions in this type of high tech organizing are formidable

Organizing High Tech: Unions & Their Future

[Excerpt] Statistics compiled by the American Electronics Association—a leading defender of high tech\u27s union-free environment\u27—indicate the difficulty unions have had organizing electronics workers. The AEA surveyed almost 1,200 firms about union activity in their plants between 1971 and 1982. They reported fewer than 100 NLRB representation elections during that period, with unions winning only 21. These figures understate labor\u27s problem. Through a sophisticated mixture of paternalism and repression, the high tech industry has prevented the vast majority of employee organizing efforts from reaching the stage of a Labor Board election. As a result, the AEA\u27s 1900 member companies have only 90 union contracts. In this article, we will examine the job problems facing high tech workers, the factors inhibiting union organizing in their industry, the experiences of some recent high tech campaigns, and strategies for overcoming the obstacles to worker self-organization in this crucial sector of the U.S. economy

Change blindness: eradication of gestalt strategies

Arrays of eight, texture-defined rectangles were used as stimuli in a one-shot change blindness (CB) task where there was a 50% chance that one rectangle would change orientation between two successive presentations separated by an interval. CB was eliminated by cueing the target rectangle in the first stimulus, reduced by cueing in the interval and unaffected by cueing in the second presentation. This supports the idea that a representation was formed that persisted through the interval before being 'overwritten' by the second presentation (Landman et al, 2003 Vision Research 43149–164]. Another possibility is that participants used some kind of grouping or Gestalt strategy. To test this we changed the spatial position of the rectangles in the second presentation by shifting them along imaginary spokes (by ±1 degree) emanating from the central fixation point. There was no significant difference seen in performance between this and the standard task [F(1,4)=2.565, p=0.185]. This may suggest two things: (i) Gestalt grouping is not used as a strategy in these tasks, and (ii) it gives further weight to the argument that objects may be stored and retrieved from a pre-attentional store during this task

Space charge accumulation under the effects of temperature gradient on solid dielectric DC cable

It is well known that existence and accumulation of space charge within the insulating material poses threat to the reliability in the operation of dc power cables. When the cables are loaded under high voltage direct current (HVDC), temperature gradient is developed across the insulation material. In this paper, commercial ac XLPE power cables were used under an application voltage of 80 kV dc with different temperature gradients loaded between the insulating material. Space charge distributions were then measured across the insulation of the cable by means of a modified pulsed electroacoustic (PEA) system with a current transformer attached. Therefore, a replica of a power cable under load conditions could be obtained, which allows us to investigate the formation, migration and accumulation of space charges in a power cable both without and with different temperature gradients consideration across the bulk of the insulating material. Discussion will be made thoroughly in order to understand the space charge phenomenon of power cable under its service temperature

Water-Column Variability Assessment for Underway Profilers to Improve Efficiency and Accuracy of Multibeam Surveys

With the advent of underway profilers, sampling the water-column to obtain sound speed corrections is no longer a detriment to hydrographic survey efficiency. Instead, the challenge has become deciding how many casts are necessary to maintain a desired level of multibeam sounding accuracy, while not needlessly overworking the profiler. Ray tracing uncertainty analysis can determine in hindsight whether a particular sampling interval is adequate or not. Based on this methodology, an algorithm was developed to generate recommended sampling intervals based on successively acquired sound speed profiles, allowing the MVP to run in a “cruise-control” mode where the sampling interval is altered in response to changing oceanographic conditions. In collaboration with Rolls Royce, the algorithm was implemented in Python and loosely couples with the MVP controller software such that the recommended sampling interval can be adjusted without operator intervention. Integration of the software with the MVP controller was successfully tested aboard the NOAA Ship Ferdinand R. Hassler in September of 2012. Initial results from field trials and from analysis of existing data sets are presented

Space Charge Accumulation under Effects of Temperature Gradient and Applied Voltage Reversal on Solid Dielectric DC Cable

A well-known fact of the existence and accumulation of space charge within the insulating material poses threat to the reliability in the operation of dc power cables. When power cables are loaded under high voltage direct current (HVDC), temperature gradient is developed across the insulation. Results of space charge evolution in commercial ac XLPE power cables under an application of 80 kV dc supply at different temperature gradients and during external voltage reversal are discussed in this paper. The space charge distributions were measured across the insulation of the cable by means of a modified pulsed electroacoustic (PEA) system with a current transformer attached. Therefore, a replica of a power cable under load conditions could be obtained, which allows us to investigate the formation, migration and accumulation of space charges in a power cable both without and with different temperature gradients consideration across the bulk of the insulating material during voltage reversal. Discussion will be made thoroughly in order to understand the space charge phenomenon of power cable under its service temperature as space charge accumulation during polarity reversal plays an important factor on the electric field distribution within the insulation material

Change blindness: size matters

It is easy to detect a small change between two sequential presentations of a visual stimulus, but, if they are separated by a blank interval, performance is around chance. This change blindness (CB) can be rectified, or improved, by cueing the spatial location of the change either in the first stimulus or the interval; however, no advantage is conferred when the cue appears during the second presentation of the stimulus. This supports the idea that a representation of the first stimulus is formed and persists through the course of the interval before being 'overwritten' by the second presentation of the stimulus (Landman et al, 2003 Vision Research 43 149 - 164). We were interested in the time course of the cueing effect during the interval. Following Landman et al, our first stimulus was an array of eight rectangles defined by texture and there was a 50% chance that one of the rectangles would change orientation in the second stimulus. Five cues were used, one within the first stimulus, three across the interval, and one in the second stimulus. Only one of these cues appeared in each trial. The cued rectangle was the one that would change between the first and second stimulus when a change occurred. The cue was a yellow line. Eighty-five observers showed the characteristic cueing performance supporting 'overwriting', but performance decreased over the duration of the interval suggesting that the initial representation of the first stimulus fades over time. However, when the size of the rectangles was increased, performance across the interval improved significantly. We consider two possible explanations: one is that simply by increasing rectangle size we raise the storage capacity for the number of rectangles in our representation, the other is that storage is related to task difficulty

A model for large-scale volcanic plumes on Io: Implications for eruption rates and interactions between magmas and near-surface volatiles.

Volcanic plumes deposit magmatic pyroclasts and SO2 frost on the surface of Io. We model the plume activity detected by Galileo at the Pillan and Pele sites from 1996 to 1997 assuming that magmatic eruptions incorporate liquid SO2 from near-surface aquifers intersecting the conduit system and that the SO2 eventually forms a solid condensate on the ground. The temperature and pressure at which deposition of solid SO2 commences in the Ionian environment and the radial distance from the volcanic vent at which this process appears to occur on the surface are used together with observed vertical heights of plumes to constrain eruption conditions. The temperature, pressure, and density of the gas–magma mixtures are related to distance from the vent using continuity and conservation of energy. Similar eruption mass fluxes of order 5x10^7 kg s^1 are found for both the Pillan and the Pele plumes. The Pele plume requires a larger amount of incorporated SO2 (29–34 mass %) than the Pillan plume (up to 6 mass%). Implied vent diameters range from c. 90m at Pillan to c. 500 m at Pele. The radial extents of the optically dense, isothermal, incandescent parts of the eruption plumes immediately above the vents are 100 m at Pillan and 1300 m at Pele. Gas pressures in the vents are 20 kPa at Pillan and 2 kPa at Pele and the eruption conditions appear to be supersonic in both cases, though only just so at Pele