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In this cross-sectional research design, the authors explore and offer evidence of differential obligations of permanent and contingent workers to their organization. Additionally, they holistically investigate the relationships between different […]

A Method for compensating customer-generators for providing electricity to the grid, is presented.

The reports on changes in greenhouse gas emissions, as reported by different sectors, can sometimes be misleading because apparent reduction in one sector can be lead to an increase in another. Therefore, strategies can be developed, after emissions are applied to the sector responsible for the final energy demand. A study analyzes this aspect by removing the equivalent residential emissions from category A.1.a. (Public Electricity and Heat Production), and applying them to category A.4.b (Residential) in Nova Scotia, Canada.

A generalized strategy is developed to predict the occurrence of a multicategory-multifactorial disease from a set of medical risk factors that are most often used to screen patients for the disease. The prediction problem is formulated as an M-class classification problem. The strategy employs fusion to combine risk factors into a single feature vector, normalization to fuse risk factors which have different formats and ranges, rank-sum ordering for feature selection, discrete Karhunen-Loeve transform-based transformation to facilitate parametric classifier development, and the design of parametric classifiers. Two methods, which differ on how the features are selected, are developed. In the first method, features are selected from a set consisting of linear combinations of all risk factors. In the second method, the features are linear combinations of a preselected subset of the risk factors. The methods are applied to predict the occurrence of Alzheimer's disease (AD) into three classes: Probable-AD, Possible-AD, and Uncertain. It is shown that a classification accuracy of over 71% can be obtained. This result is quite encouraging given that AD is very difficult to clinically diagnose. Higher classification accuracies can be expected for diseases that are not as complex to diagnose as AD. Most importantly, it is concluded that the generalized strategy can not only be applied to the multicategory-multifactorial disease prediction problem but also to other multiclass pattern recognition problems involving diverse information collected from different sources. Index Terms--Alzheimer's disease, feature selection, fusion, multiclass classification, rank ordering.

Describes the operation of assessment centers for determining administrators' strengths and weaknesses, identifies managerial competencies, and discusses the implications of using assessment center technology in university programs for preparing educational administrators. (PGD)

School study councils should explore adopting assessment center technology (ACT) for selection and development of administrators, a process long used by other organizations. A center's assessors identify, measure, and analyze acceptable position performance levels within simulated exercises and managerial skills. (ll endnotes) (CJH)