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Few studies have quantitatively evaluated the effectiveness of cross-disciplinary team learning. This study conducted project-based learning (PBL) training for teams with the same curriculum and specialties (single-disciplinary teams) and teams with different curriculum and specialties (crossdisciplinary teams) over the past four years. Based on the results of a Progress Report on Generic Skills (PROG) test conducted before and after the PBL exercise, the difference in competency between the single-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary teams was examined and analyzed, showing that the students who participated in the cross-disciplinary teams tended to improve their personal skills in the PROG test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Progress reports are one of the documents beginner Romanian teachers of English need to have included in their portfolios. Unfortunately, measuring progress is not as easy as it looks at first glance, as teachers need a testing tool that can be used longitudinally. Standard tests are easy to use and they have proved quite reliable with older students. Things become more complicated with young learners as the EFL standard tests targeting this age group are less complete and complex. Furthermore, they have hardly been scientifically tested. Under these circumstances, the aim of the present study was to make use of The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDIs), a standardized and widely researched first language testing tool, in order to assess children’s lexical progress in English as a FL. Accordingly, the receptive and productive vocabularies of a group of 51 young learners acquiring English as a FL in a formal immersion setting were measured across time by means of this tool. Afterwards and by means of the same test, the results were compared against those obtained by a control group made of 15 young learners of similar ages but who were learning English in a regular school setting with less hours of exposure per week. These outcomes were contrasted against those of other studies conducted with the same test, leading us to conclude that indeed the MB-CDIs could yield reliable longitudinal results with young EFL learners and hence could be used when writing the class or students’ progress reports.

Manufacturing scheduling improvement heuristics iterate over trial schedules to determine a satisfactory schedule. During each iteration, a performance measure (e.g. makespan) is calculated. The paper presents an efficient algorithm, Structural Perturbation Algorithm (SPA), that accelerates the calculation of the makespan. This means all scheduling improvement heuristics using SPA to calculate makespan for each trial schedule will run faster. To achieve this goal, the manufacturing system is modelled by a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG). Schedule trials can be described as a perturbed DAG where multiple edges are added and deleted. The major contribution of this research is that SPA can handle multiple edge deletions/additions with a single pass which makes it more efficient in terms of time complexity than current approaches. SPA accomplishes this by partitioning the nodes into three regions based on the locations of the added and deleted edges. Then, SPA updates the length of the affected nodes in each region. The application of SPA is not limited to the scheduling problem. The SPA can be applied in other fields as long as the problem can be described as a Perturbed DAG. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the optimal incentive scheme for a multistage project in which the agent privately observes intermediate progress. The optimal contract involves a soft deadline wherein the principal guarantees funding up to a certain date-if the agent reports progress at that date, then the principal gives him a relatively short hard deadline to complete the project-if progress is not reported at that date, then a probationary phase begins in which the project is randomly terminated at a constant rate until progress is reported. We explore several variants of the model with implications for optimal project design. In particular, we show that the principal benefits by imposing a small cost on the agent for submitting a progress report or by making the first stage of the project somewhat "harder" than the second.

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The important changes occurring at the fiscal management understanding in the world also reverberated to the public sector in Turkey and make accepting a new fiscal management law needed. Thus, in 2003, 5018 numbered Public Finance Management and Control Law is enacted. One of the most important innovations that the mentioned law brought is the start of internal audit activities in public enterprises.The European Commission has been publishing annual reports evaluating the progress achieved by the candidate countries with respect to the Copenhagen criteria since 1998. These reports were called "Progress Report" until 2015, and have been called "Country Report" afterwards. The aim of this article is to evaluate the 5018 numbered Public Finance Management and Control Law, development of internal audit activities in public enterprises in terms of adaptation of EU standards. Thus, Europe Union progress reports are investigated and evaluations are done from time that 5018 numbered law started to be performed to the time passed until today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the problem of planning and scheduling a complex make-to-order product with multiple levels of product structure. The work assumes finite capacity constraints and uncertain processing times. For planning such systems we define a schedule as a set of planned operation start times together with a set of priority rules (for individual resources) that are followed in implementing the schedule. An optimal schedule is determined by minimizing the expected total cost (the sum of work in progress holding costs, product earliness costs and product tardiness costs). A Stochastic Discrete-Event Based Evolution Strategy (SDEES) is first introduced to tackle the scheduling problem. However, SDEES is computationally demanding due to the multiplicative effect of the number of search iterations and the size of the evaluation samples required at each stage in the search. To reduce computation and improve search speed, an Ordinal Optimization Based Evolution Strategy (OOES) is developed. Quantitative examples covering a range of uncertainty levels are used to illustrate the effectiveness of the methods. Further, a case study using data from a collaborating company demonstrates the practical effectiveness. The Ordinal Optimization Evolutionary Strategy achieves a performance similar to the SDEES whilst reducing the computational time by around 60%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An experimental approach is used to examine the performance of three different multiunit auction designs: discriminatory, uniform-price with fixed supply, and uniform-price with endogenous supply. We find the actual strategies to be inconsistent with theoretically identified equilibrium strategies. The discriminatory auction is found to be more susceptible to collusion than either uniform-price auction and so, contrary to theoretical predictions and previous experimental results, it generates the lowest average revenue. Consistent with theoretical predictions, the actual bid schedules are more elastic with reducible supply or discriminatory pricing than in the uniform-price auction with fixed supply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Extracting relations between important clinical entities is critical but very challenging for natural language processing (NLP) in the medical domain. Researchers have applied deep learning-based approaches to clinical relation extraction; but most of them consider sentence sequence only, without modeling syntactic structures. The aim of this study was to utilize a deep neural network to capture the syntactic features and further improve the performances of relation extraction in clinical notes.Methods: We propose a novel neural approach to model shortest dependency path (SDP) between target entities together with the sentence sequence for clinical relation extraction. Our neural network architecture consists of three modules: (1) sentence sequence representation module using bidirectional long short-term memory network (Bi-LSTM) to capture the features in the sentence sequence; (2) SDP representation module implementing the convolutional neural network (CNN) and Bi-LSTM network to capture the syntactic context for target entities using SDP information; and (3) classification module utilizing a fully-connected layer with Softmax function to classify the relation type between target entities.Results: Using the 2010 i2b2/VA relation extraction dataset, we compared our approach with other baseline methods. Our experimental results show that the proposed approach achieved significant improvements over comparable existing methods, demonstrating the effectiveness of utilizing syntactic structures in deep learning-based relation extraction. The F-measure of our method reaches 74.34% which is 2.5% higher than the method without using syntactic features.Conclusions: We propose a new neural network architecture by modeling SDP along with sentence sequence to extract multi-relations from clinical text. Our experimental results show that the proposed approach significantly improve the performances on clinical notes, demonstrating the effectiveness of syntactic structures in deep learning-based relation extraction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The part-period balancing lot-sizing algorithm is modified to use fuzzy data for the single-stage lot-sizing problem. Triangular fuzzy numbers are used to represent uncertainty in the master production schedule. This paper shows that uncertain demand can he easily incorporated into the pan-period balancing lot-sizing algorithm and that a fuzzy master production schedule can be used to determine production lot sizes. A detailed example is presented to illustrate the techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Excessive changes in MRP system schedules, commonly referred to as 'nervousness', is frequently an obstacle in implementing an effective MRP based manufacturing planning and control system. This paper is concerned with the design of methods for freezing the master production schedule (MPS) as a way of controlling MPS stability under rolling planning conditions for make-to-stock products. It presents a framework for the design of MPS freezing methods and compares their performance when the design parameters of these methods are varied. Simulation experiments are reported that demonstrate important differences in performance considering criteria involving both the cost of lot-sizing the MPS and the stability of the master production schedule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a learning curve model adjusted to a Group Technology environment which explicitly accounts for shared learning that occurs when multiple products utilise some of the same process steps. The estimates provided by the group technology learning curve model are then compared with those generated by employing the traditional model. A series of experiments was conducted to examine the impact of important parameters on the differences in resource estimates generated by the two models. The results indicate that when the process commonality among products is perfect, the basic learning curve model overstates the estimated resources needed by over one hundred per cent. As the learning rate increases,the per cent difference in models increases also. In addition, when the scheduled production quantity increases, the basic learning curve model overstates resource requirements by two- thirds. These results indicate the critical importance of employing the adjusted group technology learning curve model when a process spans multiple products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the results of a comprehensive review and analysis of the assembly line balancing literature. Quantitative developments and qualitative issues are addressed at both the strategic and tactical levels. The numerous quantitative and qualitative factors which the literature mentions could impact the design, balancing and scheduling of assembly systems are organized into an eight-level hierarchical, factor/decision taxonomy. This comprehensive taxonomy is used to assess our progress in assembly system design and operation. Finally, from the results of the literature review and progress assessment, suggestions for future research on socio-technical assembly systems are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Continuous monitoring of heart rate, respiration rate and galvanic skin resistance was done for 5 days on five subjects while they assembled drum brake cylinders. Cycle time and number of errors committed (unsuccessful hand movements) were also recorded. The subjects were required to perform the paced, repetitive task over an 8-hour period. Scheduled breaks, similar to local factories, were adhered to. A simple reaction test was given to measure attention. ANOVA on data showed that well rested subjects had higher physiological readings and committed more errors than subjects who had less sleep. All increase in CT and variability seems to be an indication of decrement in work performance and a rest period is needed. An increase in an four parameters is another indicator of poor performance (increase in errors). The simple repetitive task seems to be not motivating enough to keep the worker's attention and keep him aroused enough to work at his peak performance level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scheduling of jobs on machines in a job-shop is considered using a multilevel decision-making structure. The levels are coordinated by considering as constraints on one level the decision made on the preceding level. For job-shop scheduling a tool is proposed to enable one to find and to analyse the set of feasible schedules in the light of the decision taken on the previous level. The information obtained as to the earliest starting and latest finishing times for performing the operations, as well as the logical sequence constraints acts as decision aids for the scheduling of the operations. The decision is made by choosing, from amongst the actions which are possible in the light of the overall objective, an action which takes into account secondary elements and considerations particular to the job-shop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on a study related to the correlation between budget-induced pressure and supervisory behavior. The authors state that one important approach to the study of leadership behavior has been to separate the activities of supervisors into those relating to work performance and those relating to the interrelationships between superiors and subordinates. They explain that the analysis of instruments containing responses describing leader behavior has resulted in the identification of two independent dimensions of leader behavior.

This paper is a progress report on a study of an actual decision-making system. It scrutinizes the demands made on a manufacturing organization and the responses of the organization to these demands.
The study focuses on the ways the organization got a particular job done, namely the job of production scheduling and work-flow smoothing in the box-making plants of a manufacturer of shipping containers. The complete system can be factored into two parts. One sub-system places orders in sequence and prepares an advance production schedule. The second sub-system controls the flow of work through the actual manufacturing operations, making final adjustments in the sequence and speed of the work-flow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a second progress report on a long-term research project on precision grinding. The relationship between specific energy and rate of metal removal--reported previously--is confirmed, and the study is extended lo examine the effect of wheel hardness. As a result there is some modification to the interpretation of this relationship. The pattern of wheel wear is related to the corresponding pattern of grinding forces. Surface finish throughout the run is shown to be dependent upon wheel truing and depth of cut, and to deteriorate as the run progresses following wheel truing to spark out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The operation of Soviet enterprises has long been characterized by a tendency to lag behind production schedules at the beginning of the month, and then to speed up the rate of production at the end of the month in order to fulfill the monthly quota. This uneconomic practice of "storming" has often been censured by Soviet leaders, but they have not found a way to eliminate it. On the basis of discussions of management in Soviet newspapers and periodicals, the author ascribes the causes of "storming" to certain features of enterprise administration, each of which is fairly effective for its particular purpose, but which together generate this tendency to work in spurts. The author speculates about changes which might succeed in eliminating "storming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the results of an eight month study on the changes occurring in the field of marketing. Noting the growth of the American economy and the amount of attention paid to production, the article argues that there is a lack of appreciation of the dynamic changes happening within marketing functions. The article acts as a progress report to provide a frame of reference for managers as they engage in business planning, and for marketing personnel as a road map for their futures. The article defines "marketing," presents new functions and new positions, defines organizational problems, and provides a look ahead.

The article presents a progress report focusing on the market for corporate securities. The article examines how the economic forces, legal factors, and managerial decision-making of corporate securities and loans employees and institutions affect the quantity, form, and terms on which funds are made available to enterprises. An important part of the study is concerned with how monetary actions, resulting from central banking decisions, were distributed to the economy through their effects on the capital market.

This article reviews how the presence of a bespoke assessment system can enable the measurement of what was previously 'unmeasurable' in a constructive and positive way. It highlights how tracking the small‐step progress of pupils with a diagnosis of special educational needs can support the identification of targets which not only support pupil progress but also increase understanding by professionals of how effective assessments can enable them to develop skills in planning and setting individual targets. This article shows how one school community has responded to the reforms implemented by central government by using them as an opportunity to draw on the strengths of the school, the experience they have in supporting SEND pupils and a deep commitment to providing all the pupils with the best possible education. The article reflects on the development of this system and its impact on teaching and learning across the whole school, using an illustrative case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Engineering programs must equip students to solve open-ended workplace problems. However, the literature points to actual or potential difficulties faced by students in solving open-ended or complex problems. During Fall 2014, the authors’ students experienced difficulties in solving open-ended bio-signals laboratory problems of designing input signals to analyze unknown systems via MATLAB programming. These difficulties resulted in low performance. Intended Outcomes: To support, or scaffold, problem-solving in subsequent semesters, a strategy of frequent and timely monitoring and feedback was used. The hypotheses were that these scaffolding strategies would be associated with enhanced performance on open-ended projects, and would support students in similar future work once removed. Application Design: Based upon strategies from the scaffolding literature, assignments that guided problem decomposition were used. Flipped instruction challenged students to prepare for the laboratory by reviewing worked programming examples and completing online assessments. The laboratory sessions were reserved for collaborative, hands-on programming, with instructor oversight, as in a problem-based learning environment. Students submitted frequent progress reports for self-monitoring and feedback throughout each project. Findings: A statistical comparison of project scores across semesters revealed performance improvements with scaffolding. Post-scaffolding assessment in a follow-up course determined scaffolding to be helpful and applicable by these students for similar projects. These preliminary results are important for STEM students and instructors encountering challenges with open-ended problem-solving of this nature, and they provide quantitative evidence recently called for by the STEM scaffolding literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK National Vegetation Classification (hereafter UK NVC) was a state-funded survey of the vegetation types of all natural, semi-natural and major artificial habitats in England, Scotland and Wales. Floristic data (vascular plants, bryophytes and macrolichens) were available from over 33,000 georeferenced plots in 80% of the 10 km x 10 km National Grid from the 1960s-1980 and were analyzed using multivariate techniques, the resulting groups being interpreted in relation to climatic regions, soil types and biotic influences. Five published volumes of British Plant Communities comprise modular accounts of 293 plant communities with details of floristics and structure, habitat relations, zonation and succession and distribution, together with constancy tables and maps. Text and software keys help identify the vegetation types, a manual for using the classification is available as hard copy and online and an extensive training programme disseminated survey skills and guidance for applying the classification. The UK NVC quickly became the standard framework for vegetation description among all statutory agencies, NGOs, industry, consultancies and academics and, though it was commissioned as just a tool for inventory and mapping of vegetation resources and a framework for ecological research, it has found multifarious applications for environmental impact assessment, monitoring, landscape design, interpretation and education. Subsequent survey has identified gaps in geographic and ecological coverage and yielded many compatible new data. The UK NVC provides the interpretive frame for implementing European nature protection policies in the UK and it is compatible with wider phytosociological frames for European vegetation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider a semi-online version of the problem of scheduling a sequence of jobs of different lengths on two uniform machines with given speeds 1 and s. Jobs are revealed one by one (the assignment of a job has to be done before the next job is revealed), and the objective is to minimize the makespan. In the considered variant the optimal offline makespan is known in advance. The most studied question for this online-type problem is to determine the optimal competitive ratio, that is, the worst-case ratio of the solution given by an algorithm in comparison to the optimal offline solution. In this paper, we make a further step towards completing the answer to this question by determining the optimal competitive ratio for s between $$\frac{5 + \sqrt{241}}{12} \approx 1.7103$$ and $$\sqrt{3} \approx 1.7321$$ , one of the intervals that were still open. Namely, we present and analyze a compound algorithm achieving the previously known lower bounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study dynamic tournaments in which time is modeled explicitly, as opposed to with the abstract notion of "periods." By doing so, we characterize the effects of the ex ante designated timing of an interim progress report. Whether or not a policy of reporting increases total expected effort does not depend on the release time of the report; however, the magnitude of the effect does. We demonstrate that total expected effort is single peaked or single troughed in the report's release time depending on parameters, with the peak/tough located at a time strictly more than halfway through the tournament. However, a policy of releasing information always harms the expected utility of the tournament's participants. Implications for tournament design are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research analyzes the concept of risk management in project environments by reflecting on the best practices that make up the standard risk management process in project environments. A meta-analysis approach was used to evaluate standard tools and approaches to risk management in project management environments. The study found that regardless of the project complexity or type of risk, there is a standard risk management process that should be folowed when examining risk in project environments. In any project scenario, risk management has risk probability and impact assessment to investigate the likelihood that each risk occurs. It also focuses on the potential effects that a risk wil have on a project's objectives, including schedule, cost, quality, and performance. The study concludes that al project managers and organizational leaderships should know the standard risk management process in project management; it is only with a standard process that risks can be effectively identified, assessed, and mitigated [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Involving a variety of stakeholders, heritage tourism management requires a collaborative multi-actor approach. Due to the current grid management system, shared management among multiple agencies is not rare in heritage sites in China; however limited research has addressed this situation. A multi-agency management model is thus proposed to highlight the roles of a coordination agency and a collaboration mechanism. Taking Wulingyuan Scenic and Historic Interest Area as an example, this paper compares the management status and assesses management collaboration between its two main management bodies. Semi-structured interviews with management staff are used as the primary research method. It is revealed that shared management has resulted in the inefficient use of human and financial resources, and inconsistency in the application of management measures and standards due to the lack of an efficient coordination agency and collaboration mechanism. Suggestions are made to facilitate collaboration and enhance management efficiency in this multi-agency management context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have seen major innovations in cooperative wireless networks. Despite the fact that throughput gains have been achieved in packet recovery, hardly any of these technologies could effectively decode signals when the number of signal sources is greater than available antennas in each AP. Thus, conventional cooperative methods rely on adaptive scheduling for interference-free data packets. Deploying scheduling-free cooperative signal recovery requires prompt processing with low overheads. Yet potentially, the concurrent client transmissions could overwhelm any single AP, i.e., the number of concurrent transmissions are more than that of antennas. This paper presents the first step towards breaking this stalemate, by enabling symbol alignment and constellation reinforcement instead of relying on scheduling. We present POLYPHONY, a scheduling-free cooperative design, where decoding process could be coordinated without over-the-air scheduling, and coupled signals are decoded promptly after deep cooperations. We implement POLYPHONY prototype with GNURadio/USRP platform, and deploy it with a 16-node enterprise network. Particularly, we demonstrate how it manages the complex interactions with scheduling-free signal enforcement, and enables a beyond node-DoF (Degree of Freedom) decoding with AP coordinations. Furthermore, we show how the cooperative decoding process improves radio access among clients. Our results demonstrate a gain of nearly 200 percent for network throughput, which is a significant improvement for heavy contending networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]