Monday, December 30, 2019

How to Deal with Rejection During Your Job Search

How to Deal with Rejection During Your Job SearchHow to Deal with Rejection During Your Job SearchRejected from my dream job and feeling super depressednow what? asks a disappointed job candidate on Reddit. The candidate goes on to explain how he applied for a position, made it through the phone interview, and then was given a written test, but failed to move through to the in-person interview stage. Now hes trying to deal with rejection.He expresses his confusion about the rejection, pointing to personal reasons that he thought he was well-qualified I cant figure out why I failedI thought I was such a good fit and (almost) everything in the job description pertained to my previous experienceI thought I would be a shoe-in.Clearly, this candidate feels like its his fault that he failed- and perhaps it is, at least in part. But the fact is, while your wertzuwachs during the job search combined with your professional credentials are certainly major factors in landing a new position, the re are outside factors that influence the final results as well.Here are three suggestions on how to deal with rejection during your job search1. Understand the wider context.Theres more to the interviewing process than meets the eye. As an interviewee, youre aware of how well you think you answered the employers questions, as well as other factors that pertain only to you, like how well-qualified you feel you are, and whether you believe that you established good rapport with the interviewers.But what you dont know are details relating to the hiring manager that may affect her decision, or how many other equally well-qualified people applied for the same job.2. Know what you cant control.While you control how well you do in your interview, theres a lot that you cant control about who gets the job. You might have every requested skill set and the perfect work history for a specific position, yet unbeknownst to you, an internal candidate is already favored for the role.You may have g iven the best interview performance of your life, but not realize that seven other strong candidates also knocked it out of the park during their interviews.Or maybe you dont know that the hiring committee has a preference for a particular type of experience or industry background that wasnt specified in the job description. Regardless, its important to know what you can and cant control so that you see that the final decision is not all about you, for better or for worse.3. Recognize the importance of fit.The concept of fit can be a bit nebulous. When it comes to the best person for the job, fit is multifaceted- you might seem like the right fit on paper with a stellar resume, yet when the hiring manager meets you, it becomes clear that you have very different working styles. While these differences may be just what one manager is looking for, another may opt to go with a candidate whose style is more similar to her own.The point is, while you may feel that youre a great fit for a company or job, people on the inside who are evaluating a whole panel of potential hires may find a better fit across the motherboard for their requirements- and fit has as much to do with who gets a job as personality, skills, and other professional credentials.The take-home is while you can control some things about the job search and interview process that may affect the outcome, there are other things you cant control. Thats why its important to avoid taking it too personally if someone else gets the job offer that you wanted. So after allowing yourself to experience the initial letdown, pick yourself back up theres a job out there for which youre the perfect fit.Button Sign Up forFind Your Next Job Opportunity. Sign Up for Today

Thursday, December 26, 2019

Did you fail Are you complaining Good do something else

Did you fail Are you complaining Good do something elseDid you fail Are you complaining Good do something elseDo you have plans, goals, ideals, or outcomes that you want to achieve? And do you get frustrated when things dont go according to plan?

Saturday, December 21, 2019

Checklist for an Employment Termination Meeting

Checklist for an Employment Termination MeetingChecklist for an Employment Termination MeetingEmployees leave your organization for good reasons and bad reasons. On the positive side, they find new opportunities, go back to school, retire or land their dream job. Less positively, they are fired for poor performance or poor attendance or experience a layoff because of a business downturn. In each instance, you need an employment termination checklist to help the employee exit process go smoothly. Heres a sample employment termination checklist. Employment Termination Checklist Employee NameDateNotify Human Resources _____ Notify HR As soon as you are aware of and/or receive a letter from an employee that notifies you of the employees intention to terminate employment, notify your Human Resources office._____ Official Notice If an employee tells you of their intention to leave your employment, ask them to write a resignation letter that states they are leaving and their termina tion date. (Companies request a minimum of two weeks notice, when possible and desirable.) Permissions / Access Termination _____Notify your network administrator As soon as you know that an employee is leaving, notify your network administrator or another appropriate staff part of the date and time on which to terminate the employees access to computer and telephone systems. Make arrangements for how unterstellung accounts will be routed to ascertain that your organization will not lose contact with clients and customers. Additionally, disable the employees building entry alarm code, if applicable._____Disable employee building or property access Effective on the termination date, whether immediate in a firing situation, or at a mutually agreed upon end date, you need to terminate the employees building access. Depending on your access methods, you will need to disable the employees building entry code, disable the entry swipe card, or collect the employees keys. It is in bot h your best interest and the former employees that he or she cannot access any company property.Return of Property _____ Return of company property Exiting employees are required to turn in all company books and materials, keys, ID badges, computers, cell phones and any other company-owned items._____ Passwords Employees should provide their supervisors with passwords and other information pertaining to accessing computer files and telephone messages. (You may want to keep email and phone accounts active for awhile to field customer contacts.) Status of Benefits _____ Vacation pay and unused sick time Terminating employees are paid up to a maximum of 30 days for unused, accrued vacation time. If the employee has used time not yet accrued, payment to the company for this time is subtracted from the last paycheck. (If your company designates a certain number of sick days and they are accrued, you would also need to pay the employee for the time accrued.)_____ Benefits status lette r Following termination, former employees receive a letter from the Human Resources office that outlines the status of their benefits upon termination. This includes life insurance, health coverage, retirement plan and expense account plans. (In the United States, organizations comply with the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1980 (COBRA), and extend to eligible employees and their enrolled dependents the right to continue health care plan coverage for a specified period of time at their own expense and at full cost.)_____ Repayment of advances Any unpaid payroll advances will be subtracted from the employees final check._____ Payment of money owed the employee Any unpaid expenses for company business purposes (turned in on an expense report), unpaid commission and bonuses will be paid in the final paycheck. Confidentiality and Non-compete Agreements _____ Review of theconfidentiality agreement or non-compete agreement Any confidentiality agreement or non-compet e agreement that the exiting employee signed when commencing employment should be reviewed to make certain the employee understands what is expected. Even if the employee never signed such a document, most employee handbooks have a clause or code of conduct paragraph about not sharing company confidential information or trade secrets. Review this and remind the employee that any breach of this confidentiality will be addressed. Exit Interview _____ Confidential exit interview Exiting employees are encouraged to participate in a confidential exit interview with the Human Resources department. (Exit interviews are an important process you can use to gather information regarding the working environment in your organization. When notified that an employee is terminating employment, your HR office will schedule an exit interview. All information gathered is confidential and is reported periodically in summary form._____ Written permission for reference checking Exiting employees, who p lan to seek employment, must sign a form giving the company permission to provide reference information when potential employers call._____ Give the employee an address update form to fill out if they move. Especially for large companies, or those with high turnover, W-2s will come back as non-deliverable if the address has changed. Without new contact information, it is difficult to provide needed information to the former employee. As a backup, verify that the employees emergency contact information is up-to-date and that you can contact that person to locate them if you have trouble getting their W2s to them.

Monday, December 16, 2019

Customize this Impressive Market Research Analyst Resume Sample

Customize this Impressive Market Research Analyst Resume SampleCustomize this Impressive Market Research Analyst Resume SampleMarket Research Analyst ResumeCreate Resume Career GoalObtain a respective position as a Marketing Research Administrator in various fields of manufacturing as well as marketing.Educational BackgroundAchieved Masters of Business Administration Degree from the Dallas Management School, Dallas in the year of 1992 at Marketing as the major with the fundamental knowledge of Economics as well as Marketing and Communications.Achieved Bachelor of Arts Degree from the Boston College, Boston at Psychology as the major in the year of 1987.Achieved Associate Management Degree from the Washington University, Washington at in the year of 1988 with the due knowledge of research management and various features of advanced analyses.Relevant QualificationsExperienced in small community hospital, large metropolitan hospital and also in retail.Skilled in all the aspects of prep aration of medication and pharmacy operation.Gathered fantabulous knowledge of medication / pharmaceuticals.Computer experience and strong communication skills.Obtained Professional AwardsObtained Americas Medal for Management Excellence in the year of 1994.Selected as the Business Board Associates of Warrior Knowledge Guide Publications in the year of 1995.Computer Programming SkillsPracticed Graphics Tools Macromedia Flash, Macromedia Fireworks, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe PageMaker, Adobe Illustrator, 3D Max, Bryce 3DPracticed Office Package Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Outlook ExpressPracticed Operating Systems Windows9X, Windows2000, Windows ME, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Linux, Unix, MS DOSProfessional Background2001- Present date Work as the Market Research Analyst for the Rat Associates, Philadelphia with the following responsibilitiesUse multivariate measures along with degeneration and discriminate analyses to make standard consumers behavior representations.Work out analytical data from national potentiality survey reports for identifying purchase objectives and outlines for trade to client direct marketers.Supply current market information to administrative personnel regarding press releases as well as promotions.1996- 2001 Worked as the Market Researcher for the Judas priest Company, New York with the following responsibilitiesActed as the Survey Research Associate for all marketing research requirements such as concept examining and product awareness and usage.Provided editing, pre-examining and coding of in depth opinion polls.1993- 1996 Worked as the Market Researcher for the Harris Inc., Dallas with following responsibilitiesProvided necessary identifications of constructed opinion polls and objected markets etc.Formulated and presented brief reports to the administration with potential recommendations for further activities.Customize Resume

Wednesday, December 11, 2019

The Spray on Solar Cell

The Spray on Solar Cell The Spray on Solar Cell The Spray-On Solar CellThere are enough roofs, roads, and unused land in the U.S. to meet the electricity demands of the entire population with solar power. But were not likely to properly take advantage of all that surface area if we need to pave or tile it with high-cost, yard-wide, glass photovoltaic panels that are made a handful at a time.Now if we could simply spray our solar cells onto every available surface, our power needs would be met in the time it takes to trigger a spray gun. Researchers at IBM and the University of Toronto have shown that just such a manufacturing method is possible using quantum dots.Since the 1980s, these nanocrystals have been touted as the solution to everything. When you work with materials like these, in the first paragraph of every academic paper you write, or press release you do, you always talk about the promise of solution-processed semiconductors, and how they offer this opportunity to make lo w-cost devices, says Illian Kramer, an IBM researcher at the University of Toronto.You can make them large area, you can make them printable. Anything you can imagine doing with ink you can now do with a semiconductor. But then everyone goes and does research in the least manufacturing-friendly kind of wayusually something thats very human-intensive and batch processed, like spin coating, or dip coating, says Kramer. So we said, lets put our money where our mouth is and actually make a system which is kind of manufacturable. Spray coating seemed like a really logical first thing to try, so we walked over to the nearest art store and picked up an art store airbrush and it sort of evolved form there, he adds.U of T researcher Illan Kramer is working on a new way to spray solar cells onto flexible surfaces. Image University of TorontoDroplet SizeQuantum dots are called artificial atoms because they come in tiny clusters of 100 to 1,000 atoms each and work as single units. To tweak his system to the point where it could deposit a monolayer of dots at a time onto a surface, he and his team needed to get the droplet size down to as small as possible. They tweaked several parameters to do so, including the boiling point of the solvents, the length of spray time, and nozzle size.As the spray travels its 15 to 20 cm from nozzle to surface, the solvent evaporates and the concentration of quantum dots increases. We realized that, as the droplets arrive at the surface of the substrate, they need to be almost dry, just a tiny bit wet, to make them stick, says Kramer. The vapor pressure from the last bit of solvent before it evaporated would push them onto the surface. Pentane, heptane, and hexane left the droplets too drythey would just bounce off. Octane, though, did the trick.The nozzle that had the smallest mean droplet size was one used in the steel industry for cooling milling equipment. With the right solvent and nozzle, the layers of quantum dots make a glossy, glas sy, brown finish.That finish has an efficiency of around eight, a good deal less than the 15 to 20 of photovoltaic cells currently on the market, but a good deal up from the .01 percent of a year and a half ago. Kramer hopes to get that number up to 10 or 12 soon. At that efficiency the spray-on cells become competitive thanks to their potential for mass production.Solar panels are built on the model of the microelectronics industry, which was optimized to make one-square-millimeter microchips, he says. If you want to cover square miles, you need to find a way to make them just as good in a lot larger batches, and a lot more quickly.Residential SolarKramers initial vision was of a couple of Ghostbuster types arriving at a home, and spraying the stuff right onto the roof. That was always the picture I had in my mind that I used as motivation for this project, he says. Whether it ever becomes a reality is an unlikely question mark.A more likely setup would look something like a newspa per printing press, which, as Kramer points out, prints off miles of paper at a time, with a production floor that neednt be excessively clean. Youd have a giant trommel with a roll of flexible substrate feeding another giant rum with a flexible substrate, he says. As the newspaper moves from one drum to the next, you are constantly spraying it to wind up with a finished device. And the chemical processing could be done in a standard lab.From the perspective of installing it in your home, if you can go to your local hardware store and buy a roll of solar cells, the way you would buy a roll of wallpaper, and just spread it across your roofthats a much lower barrier to entry for residential solar.Learn more about the latest energy technologies at ASMEs Power and Energy 2015.Michael Abrams is an independent writer. For Further DiscussionWe said, lets put our money where our mouth is and actually make a system which is kind of manufacturable.Illian Kramer, an IBM researcher at the Unive rsity of Toronto

Friday, December 6, 2019

Introducing Projects on Resume

Introducing Projects on Resume The Most Popular Projects on Resume You dont need to divulge where you believe youre be in five years if you believe it will cost you the job. The candidate utilizes a suitable action verb that allows the hiring manager to be aware of precisely the way the candidate approaches an issue and solve its challenges. Think as a recruiter filling the job that you want next. Inside my opinion, a part-time job only to pay the bills wouldnt fall within that category. In reality, you might develop project summaries for many projects and choose the crucial ones which best match a particular job that you are applying for. Describe the essence of the research you performed in each project in a couple of lines. Create a bullet point for the very first project you wish to highlight. When youre just beginning to explore putting together yur own data science undertaking, you might feel somewhat overwhelmed. Make sure anyone can easily locate all the fruchtwe in essential details in 1 page. Link to the site if it is a web application undertaking. If necessary, you would likewise include your site url. On that page, start looking for Your public profile URL to produce a brief URL that will take folks to your page. The template is not difficult to customize and gives you the ability to insert tasks effectively. Our templates are designed by professionals and are readily available in all potential formats and hence theyre very easily printable also. Project list template enables you to prepare a full list so you know where you want to focus and where youre able to postpone your immediate attention. The One Thing to Do for Projects on Resume Lets look at one such circumstance. You dont have to list everything. There is frequently a whole lot of debate about what should and shouldnt be included in an individuals resume. The best method to prove that an independent work is well worth mentioning is the outstanding benefits, which will define your professional competence. In addition, you can add several classes to a single style. In case you have skills which dont relate to the job, consider if its needed. Take note that you need to not list down EVERY single skill youve got. No matter which adjectives you decide to describe your technical abilities, you should be ready to speak intelligently about them in person. Choosing Good Projects on Resume Employers might want to know the degree of your construction experience. In most cases, they reviewing your qualifications will not know you. Potential employers dont have enough time to read between lines to learn about your abilities. Prospective employers dont only need to understand how proficient youre in programming, but how you apply your expertise and expertise to certain projects. Ideas, Formulas and Shortcuts for Projects on Resume Distinctive Documents provides our clients a complete array of professional writing services to fulfill all work search requirements. Keeping up a checklist whilst creating a project is vital, with the assistance of the checklist youll be able to maintain a check of how much of the project work is completed, and how much is left. Folks are not likely to install the application merely to see it. To find out more on what it requires to be a Project Coordinator, take a look at our complete Project Coordinator Job Description. Youre a technology pioneer accountable for ensuring a provider is making great products for their customers. Just take the opportunity to read the requirements and tailor your resume to reveal you realize how youre able to fit in the businesss plan. If you do work for an assortment of clients, the company name may be your own especially if youre already incorporated. Finding the job in the present market is extremely competitive than you believe. Committed Show that youre devoted to your work, begin to finish. The next section work experience is vital for detailing your work history. Everyone can play and you require no scientific background.

Monday, December 2, 2019

Potty Mouth the Roots and Payoffs of Workplace and Other !#@!-Bombs

Potty Mouth the Roots and Payoffs of Workplace and Other -Bombs Four-letter expletives accidentally overheard or willfully overdone, deleted and undeleted, including F-bombs, once only thinkablenot utterablein most public arenas, are now commonplace where not already the dominant, if not exclusive, idiom. Paralleling the decades-long mass erosion of civility and decorum, this explosion of obscenity makes the single F-bomb dropped in Beat-poet Alan Ginsbergs 1957 lyrisches werk Howl which entanglumineszenzdiode him in a Federal obscenity trial now seem yawningly tame and all TV programming before1960, like the super-popular Mama, Father Knows Best and Leave it to Beaver, painfully lame.So, what happened? Why such a massive shift toward F-bomb freighted and other communicationand why among the pre-employed young and on-the-job adults, irrespective of collar color?Heres a look at some likely causes and payoffs, bearing in mind that what happens in the mainstream culture tends to seep into the workplace1. Androgyny Its fair to speculate that one factor driving the wider use and acceptance of F-bombs is the masculinization of female speech and behavior in various cultures, e.g., the English-speaking world, as a step toward linguistic and other androgynya blurring or blending of male and female traits, including physical appearance, behavior, and domainsin an individual or species. Such masculinization of language has mora than one manifestation One Australian study compared recordings of young Australian women in the 18-25 age group, reciting passages from Shakespeare in 1945, with recordings of the same passages read by women, 18-25, in 1993 and found that, on average, the pitch of young womens voices had dropped significantly over the years, mora closely resembling male voices.To the extent that the drop blurred the vocal boundaries between males and females, it welches, like gender-blind use of obscenities, a kind of androgenization.In cultural or social groups or among individuals that have adopted a masculinized form of equality, old taboos against females dropping F-bombs have been dropped. Not only does this potentially double the number of people who sound like Eddie Murphy Raw it also removes one of the brakes traditionally inhibiting themnamely, the presence of vulgarity-averse females. Note and warning Not only does Murphy drop da Bomb throughout the clip cited above, he also does it in his robust portrayals of masculinized male-bashing American women he favors as a comedic foil.In fact, that brake is replaced by an accelerator, when the confirmation and exercise of female equality appear to be best accomplished by dropping an F-bomb, now a commonplace occurrence in all-female as well as mixed groups.2. Dumbing-down by design It can be argued that, like much of pop culture, the exaltation of expletives at the expense of more precise, accurate an d enlightening communication, serves the dark purpose of dumbing us down, e.g., to make us more malleable, less discerning, less aware and less critical consumers, workers or citizens.As Edward L. Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud and the father of propaganda and PR, explained in Propaganda, a truly critical populace would be both ungovernable and unsellable, paralyzed by endless squabbling deliberation upon and sorting of countless competing ideas, products and policies.As that population expands and comes to resemble an ever-bigger Tower of Babel mob, such critical awareness threatens chaos of discord, dissent and indecision.So, Bernays argued, to streamline political, cultural and economic life, simplification or elimination of thought through the skillful use of propaganda and snappy slogans is a useful, indeed inevitable, step.Examining any four-letter bomb, youll find that, if you were to translate it into the underlying articulated rationalewhen there is one for using it in an y given situation, youd learn a whole lot more and be less uncertain as to what prompted it. But that requires thoughtful thinking, of the kind propagandists and controllers want to discourage.Imagine calmer, more reflective, patient, detailed and polite roadside discourse instead of the unleashed 4-letter fury of road rage. Likewise, being told that your resume or social media networking is crap which barely nudges the vulgarometer is a shabby hot-bullet substitute for a detailed enlightening ray-of-light critique.In other words, F-bombs and their ilk are designed to shed heat, not light and to replace thought with feelingin virtually every instance. So, more feeling than thinking means less engagement of the mind and the moralsof either the speaker or the listener.Obscenities are generally concise except when, like political slogans, endlessly repeated, which is, alas, too much of the time and therefore rarely preciseprecision being the arch-enemy of those who would manipulate us, e.g., through advertising or political propaganda, such as labeling your enemies and scapegoats cockroaches, a product as better than others? than it was before?, or a candidate as a leader for tomorrowCrudity also means a more limited, far less nuanced vocabulary that, in its most extreme instances, perpetuates the unthinking habits it manifests, usually by replacing clear, abstract, empirical and logical thinking with standardized, metaphorical, vulgar, persistent and always-puzzling references to body parts and functions.Through its use of F-bombs and other profanity, the entertainment industry doubles down on dumbing down First, it dumbs us down with dumb content devoid of depth, insight or relevance then, having turned off the light, it has to turn up the heat. So, we end up with endless and mindless car chases, crashes and F-bombs to narrate and embellish them.The office may not be as entertaining or adrenalin-pumped as an action movie, but it can follow a similar dumbing-dow n script and agenda. For example, if a boss, dissatisfied with staff performance, explodes with a tirade of expletives, shes, of course, saving time and energy, and capitalizing on the intimidation effect of expletivesor so imagines.But this can also be a deliberate or unconscious dumbing-down tacticto inhibit reflection, discussion, analysis, negotiation, etc. It also explains why we never say, If you cant take the light, get out of the kitchen. Its the heat that seems to matter to and control us more. The potty-mouth boss or office bully knows that.3. Use of disrespect to win respect At some point after WWII, many Americans seemed to begin to think that winning respect from everyone and anyone is not only necessary but also can be achieved primarily by being blatantly disrespectful and using what was initially taboo language whenever they wanted to.After all, only someone who could get away with it would use itand that person must, of course, be powerful, important, avant-garde, i ndependent, anti-hero, good-looking, rich or cool enough to do that.As objective justifications for the respect sought and believed deservedincluding because one has a fantastic job, career pride and advancement, accumulated wealth, distinctive accomplishments, special qualifications and stand-out identitieshave become harder to achieve and produce, the need for that respect has become more desperate, more intensely felt, driven by mounting frustration, and more relentless.Hence, the bizarre F-bomb-laced demand for respect from thug low-lifes, e.g., hockey rioters, who deserve it least.With anger and frustration in the mix, you get a perfect powder-keg for F-bomb detonation. Its an explosive combination of an unmet need for respect + anger + frustration + empowerment or permission to be disrespectful.Post-WW II generational marketing to teens and tweens, trumpeting their privilege, purchasing power and social entitlement, has done nothing to prevent, damp or reverse this or to sugge st that talking to ones parents that way is somehow not right or anything but cool.By contrast, within the client-professional relationship, respect is still generally won the old school way politely, civilly and decorously, especially when the professional isnt the boss, and while the client in the office is.Thats perhaps why it is a virtual certainty that not a single profanity will make its way into an S.A.T, Myers-Briggs, G.M.A.T., L.S.A.T., bar exam or Miller Analogies testtests designed to assess intellectual and professional competencies and suitability.In instances when the boss, gangsta rapper or stand-up comic F-bombs others, it may reasonably be inferred that the purpose is to win respect by demonstrated privilege, right, immunity, impunity, intimidation, generational solidarity, visceral authenticity or the confident unconcern of a dominantwhich are estimated by the mouth if not the brain to more than offset the appearance of coarseness or unsophistication.Revealingly, i n various professional settings, the risks associated with such power moves are, despite the appearance of uncontrolled spontaneity or impulsiveness, very carefully calculated, with a green light to go for it only when it seems safe.For example, Comedy Centrals otherwise expletive-festooned parody-news hit, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, dramatically tones things down in its bewerbungsgesprch segmentsoften because of the seriousness of the topics and the power and influence of the guests, e.g., Senators, authors and A-list celebrities and, more generally, because of their client-guest status.Interestingly, the Daily Shows on-the-job supporting characters, e.g., Samantha Bee, obscenely savage those they interview, even when they are interviewing powerful, albeit mocked and derided, politicians, organizational spokespersons and bureaucrats.This is quite unlike what happens with host Jon Stewart or the equally brilliant Oxford-grad John Oliver, who recently filled in for Stewart when in interview mode. In those high-profile interview segments, the tone is deferential and polite, more like a staid Edward R. Murrow 50s interview or an ordinary sit-down between a lawyer and client.Obviously, the reason for the difference and lack of deference in those hatchet interviews is that indeed this is what they are expected to be hatchet jobs on intervieweesnot guestsbeing held up to ridicule.Hence, professional potty mouthing is not entirely uncontrollable, despite any appearance to the contrary. In fact, despite whatever appearance of spontaneity or habit fusillades of F-bombs create, they are, in general, and not just in programming, carefully calculated and calibrated with respect to context, audience, degree and impactjust as we all, except the truly unhinged, carefully select to whom and to what level we dare vent our anger.4.Dr. Spock permissiveness Some blame more permissive parenting of the kind advocated by Dr. Benjamin Spock in post-war Americain part as a react ion to the earlier, popularized sterner views of behaviorist J.B. Watson, who urged parents to withhold physical affection Never hug and kiss them, never let them sit on your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say goodnight. Shake hands with them in the morning.Such a stern home environment must have given frustrated kids an understandable incentive to drop F-bombs, while instilling extreme fear of doing so.It may be speculated that, psychoanalytically speaking, the swinging of the parenting pendulum toward permissiveness allowed contemplation of the possibility that parental figures could be challenged, or at least not revered, in an unconscious uptick in the Oedipal battle for supremacy.Indeed, anti-war youth protests of the 60s and 70s, and the audacious outing and displacement of the penultimate American father figure, the POTUS, Richard Nixon, by young Spock-era journalists suggests there may be something to that conjecture. Ditto for the increase in bla sphemy and religious parody.When F-bombs are shocking, what better way to disrespect and challenge the power establishment and parents than to verbally blast them off their pedestals, using language that either they would never use or which you can co-opt? Its hard to imagine an F-laced outburst at a 19th-century Prussian dinner table presided over by a stern mustachioed Watsonian patriarch who looked and acted like the Kaiser.For comparison, I recently watched one YouTube-posted episode of the aforementioned hugely popular 50s U.S. TV showMama, and was stunned by the dinner-table politeness, deference and tie-and-jacket attire of the teenage son, not to mention the absence of any expletive even as strong as goshOf course, both the Prussian and the Norwegian-immigrant Mama TV family were fundamentally patriarchal or duumvirate rule by two in structurethe father being the sole breadwinner and dominant power figure beyond challenge, with Mama being the full-time day-time disciplinaria n.Even when led by parents as generally gentle as Lars the father and Mama in the Mama series, these families were, above all, discipline and decorum focused, with a stronger emphasis on the privileges and limited permissions of children than on their indulgences, entitlements or imagined grievances.In contrast to what happens in many modern households, an unthinkable dinner-time F-bomb dropped by one of their kids in 1911 would have precipitated either a heart attack or wooden-spoon smack based on a venerable, quintessentially American tradition and conviction.That the parental 2nd-amendment right to bear and smack arms trumped a childs 1st-amendment right to free speech.

Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Manuscripts Being Accepted for ASCE-ASME Special Journal Issue...

Manuscripts Being Accepted for ASCE-ASME Special Journal Issue... Manuscripts Being Accepted for ASCE-ASME Special Journal Issue... Manuscripts Sought for ASCE-ASME Special Journal Issue on Human Performance and Decision-MakingThe guest editors of an upcoming special issue of the ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems, Part B Mechanical Engineering are currently accepting papers addressing the theme of philanthropisch performance and decision-making in complex industrialenvironments. Authors who are interested in submitting a paper for the special issue, which is expected to be published in the summerof 2019, should submit their papers electronically by Nov. 30, 2018.Complex industrial ordnungsprinzips are unquestionably subjected to major hazards, which are of great concern to businesses, governments,communities and wider stakeholder groups. For this reason, efforts are increasingly made to control unterstellung hazards and manage risks,supported by improve d computational capabilities and the application of sophisticated safety and reliability models. However, recent events such as the Air France 447 crash that caused 228 deaths and the Deepwater Horizon disaster that killed 11 people and released approximately 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico have shown that apparently rare or seemingly unforeseen scenarios, involving interactions between human factors, technologies and organizations, can trigger major accidents and lead to catastrophic consequences.The understanding of human behavioral characteristics, when combined with current technology aspects and organizational context, is extremely important for the safety and reliability field, in particular the role of non-technical competences, such as communication skills, leadership, decision-making capabilities and risk awareness. In addition to examining these matters, the special issue of the ASCE-ASME journal will explore contemporary regulatory approaches that shoul d go beyond rules of compliance and establish risk-based and goal-setting models in order to challenge academics and industry to develop new methods to assess human performance and anticipate critical issues.Topic areas to be covered in the special journal issue will include factors influencing human decision-making processes and human performance regulatory approaches to human factors, non-technical skills and human reliability analysis qualitative and quantitative models for assessing human reliability in high-hazard environments learning from accidents human factors in design safety culture and leadership risk perception and communication and uncertainty analysis related to human performance.The guest editors for this special issue of the ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems, Part B Mechanical Engineering are Dr. Raphael Moura, ANP, Brazil/University of Liverpool, United Kingdom, rmouraliverpool.ac.uk Dr. Luca Podofillini,Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), Switzerland, luca.podofillinipsi.ch and Prof. Michael Beer, Leibniz University Hannover, Germany, and theUniversity of Liverpool, United Kingdom, and Tongji University, China, beerirz.uni-hannover.de.Papers can be submitted to the online peer review system for Part B. Mechanical Engineering by visiting the Journals Connect web pageat https//journaltool.asme.org/home/JournalDescriptions.cfm?JournalID=27Journal=RISK. When submitting a paper, please select SpecialIssue SI034B, and then assign the paper type as Research Paper.For more information on the ASME Journal Program, visit ASME Journals.

Friday, November 22, 2019

This simple trick will help you plan your retirement

This simple trick will help you plan yur retirementThis simple trick will help you plan your retirementIf you want to save more money, you have to create stakes for why saving money matters. Visualizing what your future will look life is one proven exercise to keep you from overspending.According to a new survey of 1,202 American adults conducted by investment management firm Capital Group, visualizing retirement can help people save up to 31% more per paycheck than those who do not think about this future.Why seeing is believing when it comes to saving moneyThe survey got half of the participants to picture the life they wanted to lead in their 60s, 70s and 80s before asking them to determine what percentage of each paycheck they wanted to save in a retirement plan. Those moments of reflection proved to be a great motivator. The visualizers said they would put down 31% more per paycheck, compared to the group that was only asked how much they wanted to save for retirement. For women and Millennials, the numbers were even higher. They said they were up to 50% more per paycheck when they visualized their retirement.We know that we need to save. The majority of Americans said they were aware they would need to self-fund their retirement. But it is easy to get caught up in the worries and obligations of the present and put off future worries around retirement for another day.Visualizing is not just tapping into the power of positive thinking, it is how our brains are wired to learn.Imagining our future helps us mentally rehearse how we want our bodies to act when it is showtime. Building a vivid picture of your future helps your brain remember to make it a present goal.One you prepare your body for action, you may feel less paralyzed by indecision. One survey found that people who keep vision boards of financial goals are almost twice as confident (59 percent vs. 31 percent) that they will achieve these goals than those who do not visualize.Images connect us more immediately and emotionally to our personal and financialgoals, and to oursetting andachievingthem. And images help us in our thinking and moving toward these goals, psychologist Barbara Nusbaum said about why visualization works. Im not surprised that people who imagine or picture their goals are better at budgeting and saving, and that these activities in themselves provide a sense of well-being.

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Machine Learning Applies to Pipeline Leaks

Machine Learning Applies to Pipeline Leaks Machine Learning Applies to Pipeline Leaks Machine Learning Applies to Pipeline LeaksThe Keystone pipeline that would move crude oil from Canada through the U.S. to a refinery in Texas has been controversial, but it would only be a fraction of the more than two million miles of pipelines moving oil and gas around the country. Many existing and proposed pipelines spark the same concerns from people as Keystone the potential for leaks, especially those that go undetected for long periods of time.Existing detection systems mostly spot large problems, often visually by inspectors walking or flying over a pipeline. Internal systems commonly used in the oil and gas industry rely on computational pipeline modeling, which searches for anomalies in flow and pressure. That works well for large leaks, but falls short in finding smaller ones, of up to one percent of pipeline flow, says Maria Araujo, a manager in the mit niveau Systems Division of the So uthwest Research Institute.Even such a small percentage adds up quickly. She notes that one percent of the flow of the Keystone pipeline is in the neighborhood of 8,000 gallons per day. To improve the efficiency of detection systems, Araujo leads a kollektiv taking the technology to the next level using sensors, artificial intelligence, and deep learning. She came to the problem of leak detection while working with machine learning for autonomously driven vehicles.Sensors, cameras and hardware can be fitted to drones for inspection flyovers. Image Southwest Research InstituteWere not adapting technology, she says. Were using existing technology as building blocks. The problem is very different. With cars, youre looking for objects. Here, you look for liquids. Gasoline and diesel are transparent to the human eye. How do you differentiate between substances?Actually, the system looks for a variety of liquids. To begin tackling the challenge, the SWRI kollektiv tested four optical sens ors thermal, optical, hyperspectral and short wave infrared. They eliminated hyperspectral and short wave infrared, keeping off-the-shelf thermal and optical systems.Theres nothing unusual about using sensors for detecting leaks, but Araujo wanted to improve accuracy. So the SWRI team set out to adapt machine learning techniques, ultimately producing a multiplatform dubbed SLED, Smart Leak Detection System, that uses new algorithms to process images and identify, confirm or reject potential problems. Using feature extraction and classifier training methods, they taught computers to identify unique features across a wide range of environmental conditions.These algorithms thrive on lots of data, says Araujo. The team produced and collected thousands of images of data such as gasoline, diesel fuel, mineral oil, crude oil and water on various surfaces, including grass, gravel, dirt and hard surfaces such as concrete. The images were shot from numerous angles and under varying conditions from full sunlight to clouds and darkness. Its hard to operate under different environmental conditions, she adds. We found if you train the system under certain conditions, it gets tripped up in others, especially shading. Being able to work under shading and different temperatures was a big challenge in modifying algorithms.The ability of the system to provide a reliable fingerprint of small leaks as well as identify non-leak situations greatly increases its accuracy. Thats important because one of the biggest problems in the industry is a false alarm, says Araujo. Pipelines wind their way across long and often remote or underground rights of way. Sending work crews to remote areas and shutting a pipeline down costs a significant amount of money, and operators can dismiss alarms if there were previous false alerts, she says.SWRI further upgraded the system using deep-learning techniques. The team developed a deep convolutional neural network to process the tremendous amount of da ta to identify the hazardous liquids. Such techniques have been impractical in most cases, but advances and improvements in multi-core processing hardware are making it more common, say researchers. The final product is a fully autonomous system that can be used without human oversight, says Araujo.It can be fitted to pumping station platforms along pipeline routes, often a high-risk location because of the number of valves and equipment that can break. The SWRI team also has installed and successfully tested the system on drones that can fly over long reaches of a pipeline.We simulated pipeline leaks with a high degree of replication to the real world, she says. The work was done at SWRIs Forth Worth, TX, campus, using existing piping and systems. The initial goal was to identify the difference between water and hazardous liquids, but it exceeded expectations by differentiating between gasoline, crude oil, mineral oil and diesel, as well as water.Araujo now is working to adapt the technology to detect pipeline methane leaks in a program with the U.S. Department of Energys National Energy Technology Laboratory. The team is using infrared cameras to detect the spectral response of the gas. The deep-learning algorithm also must be reworked, a task she says is much more than an adaptation.This is a very significant tweak, she says. Now you are trying to detect a plume, something that shifts with the wind. It is a different problem.The goal is to produce an automated small-scale gaseous leak-detection system along the entire natural gas supply chain, including extraction, storage, distribution and transportation. For Further DiscussionWere using existing technology as building blocks. Gasoline and diesel are transparent to the human eye. How do you differentiate between substances?Maria Araujo, Southwest Research Institute