Search

Identification and retention of talented workforce is of utmost importance in the current career scenario. This research studied mediating role of individual career self-management and tested a theoretical model examining direct and indirect relationships among perceived organizational support (POS), psychological empowerment (PE), individual career self-management (ICM) and affective commitment (AC). Data was collected from a sample of 270 IT employees designated as 'talent' in their respective organizations from the southern part of India. We employed structural equation modeling technique to test proposed research hypotheses. The result supported the idea that perceived organizational support and psychological empowerment positively affects individual career self-management. Individual career self-management was the significant antecedent of affective commitment. Regarding mediation hypothesis, individual career self-management was found to fully mediate the relationship between psychological empowerment and affective commitment. Further, it acted as partial mediator between perceived organizational support and affective commitment. Implication for future research and practices are discussed., Author(s): J. A. Yogalakshmi [sup.1], L. Suganthi [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.252262.3, 0000 0001 0613 6919, Department of Management Studies, Anna University, , 600025, Chennai, India In recent decades, career [...]

Despite broad evidence in the past demonstrating the relationships between personality traits and organizational citizenship behavior, research on organizational citizenship behavior from the perspective of emotional contagion has not received deserving attention to date. Drawing on the trait theory and affective event theory as an overarching reference, this study theorizes emotional contagion as a moderator by arguing that it improves the above relationship incrementally. This study conducted hierarchical multiple regression analysis to test the hypotheses and adopted the Johnson–Neyman method using SPSS PROCESS Macro to probe the pattern of the significant interactions. A total of 320 bank employees took part in the survey. The findings revealed, agreeableness and conscientiousness as significant predictors of organizational citizenship behavior. Furthermore, the above association was enhanced for employees at the conditional level of high emotional contagion. The study provides insight into recognizing the significance of employees' emotional levels and their contribution to organizational growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human Activity Recognition (HAR) system is analysing human behaviour using mobile health technology. Mobile Health data (MHEALTH) uses electronic devices to collect data and identify the activity of the patient in real-time. Recordings of 10 patients' vital signs from various circumstances are included in the dataset. With a sensor attached to their bodies, they were required to carry out a number of physical tasks. Due to the lack of accuracy in the other state-of-the-art algorithms, we proposed Human Activity Recognition Neural Network (HARNet) architecture for automatic recognition of human activity using CNN and LSTM with the transfer learning of SVM. Here, the human health behaviour was analysed and classified using different ML and DL algorithms. The hybrid techniques of CNN and LSTM are selected across the different DL algorithms and it is used to extract independent and discriminating features, which aids the SVM classifier to attain good classification. When compared to other DL methods, HARNet performed better, achieving 99.8% accuracy. Overall, HAR systems have many potential applications in various fields, including healthcare, wellness, sports and surveillance. They have relationships to many different academic disciplines, including sociology, human–computer interaction, medical and may offer individualized help for different domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: Health care environment relies to a great extent on positive nursing behaviors. So in this study, individual difference factors were taken into account in explaining organizational citizenship behavior by integrating trait theory, conservation of resource theory, and affective event theory. OBJECTIVE: The present study examines whether work burnout mediates the relationship between the extraversion trait and organizational citizenship behavior, then investigating whether the mediating effect is moderated by emotional contagion. METHOD: The study employs cross-sectional design and questionnaire-based survey was used to collect the data from 311 nurses working in private hospitals. RESULTS: The findings reveals that extraversion trait is positively related to organizational citizenship behavior. Then, work burnout partially mediates the relationship between extraversion and organizational citizenship behavior. Further, moderated mediation analysis discloses the indirect effect of extraversion on organizational citizenship behavior through work burnout is a decreasing function of emotional contagion. CONCLUSION: The study reports extravert nurses are likely to exhibit more organizational citizenship behavior through reduced work burnout. However, nurses should maintain low level of emotional contagion to have stronger mediating effects. Training should be provided to nursing staff to understand and handle the level of emotional contagion exist among them unconsciously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A critical analysis on wind farms has been carried out to improve the performance and reliability of wind energy system. The effect of its improvement has been studied with the Optimal Renewable Energy Mathematical (OREM) model which is developed for sustainable generation in India. The performance and reliability of the wind turbine generators have been evaluated in a demonstration windfarm (6 MW) in India. The windfarm is situated in Kayathar, a village in the south of Tamil Nadu State. The average technical availability, real availability and capacity factor have been analysed from 1991 to 1995 and they are found to be 92%, 54% and 19% respectively. Fault analysis for grid failures has been done using pareto analysis. The analysis indicates that when grid drop failures are reduced by 50%, the overall reduction in the frequency of faults would be 35.2%, which is significant. The reliability analysis has also been done for the wind turbine generator. The failure rate is high to an extent of 6.7 x [10.sup.-5] [h.sup.-1] in the case of a yaw control defect and the factor of reliability is found to be 0.5 at 10 000 h. The OREM model developed reveals that when the reliability factor of wind energy system is improved from 0.5 to 0.9 then the utilisation of wind energy would be increased by 82%.

Byline: D. Santhosh Rajan, S. Jose, L. Suganthi, Anand A. Samuel India has accepted liberalisation as an instrument of its economic policy. It follows that Indian markets are now open and that domestic products have to compete in the global economy with those from other countries for a share even in our own neighbourhood market. In the globalised economy, the competence and the quality of our products have to meet the world standards. In preparing India for the task, no other system of the society has a crucial role to play as that of higher education and especially technical education. This paper provides a strategy to predict the effectiveness of a technological institution using conjoint techniques. A model has been developed to achieve Six Sigma in technological institutions. Achievable highest percentage of efficiency for an institution is found to be 93%, with optimal controllable factors. Governance of technological institutions is ranked first, followed by knowledge assimilation in importance ranking.

Byline: S.P. Joy Vasantha Rani, P. Kanagasabapathy, L. Suganthi In this paper, the hardware design of Radial Basis Function Neural Network (RBFNN), which is capable of dealing with floating point arithmetic operations and hardware architecture to calculate the centres of hidden layer using the k-means algorithm are proposed. The RBFNN are very much useful in adaptive control applications. Hardware implementation of neural network will give much faster training than traditional processors and also relatively inexpensive. The architecture of RBFNN is based on a computational model whose main features are: the capability to exploit the inherent parallelism of neural networks and to increase or decrease the number of neurons, aiming flexibility of the network. The design has been done with Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Hardware Description Language (VHDL). The results are verified and analysed in the MATLAB environment. In this work, the floating point hardware gives best precision and also very much useful for wide dynamic range requirements. The design was tested and synthesised with the help of Virtex-II pro device. The simulation and synthesis results show the effectiveness and speed of training.

Byline: Jolly Abraham, L. Suganthi, Anand A. Samuel Use of thermal engineering appliances, especially refrigerators and air conditioners has increased enormously in both industrial and in domestic sectors. They cause considerable environmental pollution due to the release of a large quantity of refrigerant (chlorofluorocarbons) and the use of a large quantity of power, generated mainly from low quality domestic coal. Also available energy or exergy is lost due to the use of badly maintained and inefficient equipment. The introduction of Exergy Analysis (EA) based Entropy Added Tax (EAT) proportional to the entropy added or exergy lost in a component will force the manufacturers to improve the efficiency of the component. Analytical calculation of EA based environmental tax using exergy loss, weightage factor and degree of difficulty for reducing exergy loss and also calculation of the tax using nomogram are presented in this paper.

Food, water, and energy are essential for life on earth. Among these, water plays a vital role. Although it occupies a major portion (70 %) of the earth, good drinking water is always in short supply. Of this quantity, 98 % of water is salty and only around 2 % is fresh water. Desalination using a solar still is one economic method used to purify salt water. This article studies a single-slope solar still with three modifications: (i) sensible heat storage medium (SHM), (ii) heat recovery system (HRS), and (iii) reflective material on the interior surface. Modification by SHM and HRS enabled heat input and water output to be maintained during the night. Theoretical models were developed for the modified still. The productivity of the conventional still and modified still was measured experimentally in Tamil Nadu, India. The daily productivity increased by 21 %, from 3.4 kg m-2 in the conventional still to 4.1 kg m-2 in the modified still. The experimental results validated the theoretical results. Economic analysis of the solar still revealed that the approximate cost of distilled water per liter from a modified still was 4.7 % less than that from a conventional still. Hence, the modified still with SHM, HRS, and reflective material is technically and economically viable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy is found to be a vital input for the economic growth of any nation. In India, which is a developing country, energy is found to be one of the major drivers of economic development. Review indicates energy consumption is linked to socioeconomic variables like GNP, price of energy, and population. In this article, econometric models are developed to study the influence of the socioeconomic variables on energy consumption. The best fit is determined usingR2, SE, and Durbin Watson (DW) statistic. ‘t’ test is conducted to find the significant variables influencing energy demand. It is found that coal price and population influence the demand for coal, whereas GNP per capita influences the demand for oil. Electricity demand is dependent on the GNP and electricity price. The coal, oil, natural gas, and electricity requirement for India during 2030–2031 is forecasted and the total energy requirement is found to be 22.944 × 1015kJ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A hybrid solar linear concentrator (HSLC) based on photovoltaic linear concentrator technology is capable of delivering both electricity and hot water for satisfying urban energy needs. The net output of such a system plays a major role in determining the benefit to cost ratio of such a system. Different approaches were tried in this article to consider the thermal energy in equivalent electrical energy terms to determine the net output of the system under select meteorological conditions. A sensitivity-based study is conducted based on these approaches considering the maintenance cost, payback, net present values and benefit to cost ratios. The capital cost of the system at Rs 200,000 to Rs 300,000 yielded a benefit to cost ratio of 1.79 to 3, respectively whereas the same cost structures had an internal rate of return of 10.4% and 5.2%, respectively. When compared to the actual market price of the HSLC system, carbon credits earned during the lifetime operation of the HSLC system were useful for the mitigation of the high investment costs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study performs a systematic content analysis of Indian English green print advertisements for the years 2010 and 2011 to verify if greenwashing is prevalent. Green advertisements were analysed based on four dimensions – (1) claim specificity, (2) greenwashing category, (3) incidence of associative claims and (4) presence of certifications. The results indicate that 51.7% of the claims were greenwashed and most of them were vague or ambiguous (37.7%). Most claims lacked specificity (67.0%) and image claims (60.0%) were widely used. Very few advertisements (3.3%) employed certifications to substantiate their claims. Interestingly, we also found that more than half of the image-related claims (55.8%) were categorized as misleading and highly specific claims were considered acceptable. We suggest that either the self-regulatory body – the Advertising Standards Council of India – or the legal regulatory framework accommodate well-defined provisions for regulating green claims in advertisements to curb greenwashing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]