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In this paper we analyze the role of balanced scorecard in strategically aligned work on continuous improvements in production teams. The analysis is based on survey responses from 51 engineering industry companies and data from three case studies. Two continuous improvement strategies are identified with the use of cluster analysis, namely, the expert task force strategy and the wide focus strategy. These strategies were found to be closely related to specific features of the local work organization. The case studies shows that there is a clear connection between local work on continuous improvements in teams and implementation and use of the balanced scorecard. A common role of balanced scorecard is to facilitate focus, resource allocation, prioritization and comprehensive coordination of continuous improvement activities, which implies a potential for exploiting the local and operational knowledge base. The balanced scorecard applications, however, are adapted to each strategy for continuous improvements as well as the features of the work organization by a unique emphasis on control of content, process and goals., QC 20100525

Secular trends of daily precipitation characteristics are considered in the transient climate change experiment with a coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation model ECHAM4/OPYC3 for 1900-2099. The climate forcing is due to increasing concentrations of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Mean daily precipitation, precipitation intensity, probability of wet days and parameters of the gamma distribution are analyzed. Particular attention is paid to the changes of heavy precipitation, Analysis of the annual mean precipitation trends for 1900-1999 revealed general agreement with observations with significant positive trends in mean precipitation over continental areas. In the 2000-2099 period precipitation trend patterns followed the tendency obtained for 1900-1999 but with significantly increased magnitudes. Unlike the annual mean precipitation trends for which negative values were found for some continental areas, the mean precipitation intensity and scale parameter of the fitted gamma distribution increased over all land territories . Negative trends in the number of wet days were found over most of the land areas except high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere. The shape parameter of the gamma distribution in general revealed a slight negative trend in the areas of the precipitation increase. Investigation of daily precipitation revealed an unproportional increase of heavy precipitation events for the land areas including local maxima in Europe and the eastern United States.

An El Niño‐like steady response is found in a greenhouse warming simulation resulting from coupled ocean‐atmosphere dynamical feedbacks similar to those producing the present‐day El Niños. There is a strong negative cloud‐radiation feedback on the sea surface temperature (SST) anomaly associated with this enhanced eastern equatorial Pacific warm pattern. However, this negative feedback is overwhelmed by the positive dynamical feedbacks and cannot diminish the sensitivity of the tropical SST to enhanced greenhouse gas concentrations. The enhanced eastern‐Pacific warming in the coupled ocean‐atmosphere system suggests that coupled dynamics can strengthen this sensitivity.

The problem of the world greatest lake, the Caspian Sea, level changes attracts the increased attention due to its environmental consequences and unique natural characteristics. Despite the huge number of studies aimed to explain the reasons of the sea level variations the underlying mechanism has not yet been clarified. The important question is to what extent the CSL variability is linked to changes in the global climate system and to what extent it can be explained by internal natural variations in the Caspian regional hydrological system. In this study an evidence of a link between the El Nino/Southern Oscillation phenomenon and changes of the Caspian Sea level is presented. This link was also found to be dominating in numerical experiments with the ECHAM4 atmospheric general circulation model on the 20th century climate.

First-principles density-functional calculations of hydrogen adsorption on the Ni (001) surface have been performed in order to get a better understanding of adsorption and diffusion of hydrogen on metal surfaces. We find good agreement with experiments for the adsorption energy, binding distance, and barrier height for diffusion at room temperature, A model potential is fitted to the first-principles data points using the simulated annealing technique and the hydrogen band structure is derived by solving the three-dimensional Schrodinger equation, We find vibrational excitation energies slightly too high, with about 10%, compared with experiments and very narrow hydrogen bands. The experimentally observed absence of a pronounced isotope effect for hydrogen diffusion al low temperatures is discussed in terms of tunneling in a static three-dimensional potential.