Improving the Semantics of Conceptual-Modeling Grammars:A New Perspective on an Old Problem

A core activity in information systems development involves understanding the
conceptual model of the domain that the information system supports. Any conceptual model is ultimately created using a conceptual-modeling (CM) grammar. Accordingly, just as high quality conceptual models facilitate high quality systems development, high quality CM grammars facilitate high quality conceptual modeling. This paper seeks to provide a new perspective on improving the quality of CM grammar semantics. For the past twenty years, the leading approach to this topic has drawn on ontological theory. However, the ontological approach captures just half of the story. It needs to be coupled with a logical approach. We show how ontological quality and logical quality interrelate and we outline three contributions of a logical approach: the ability to see familiar conceptualmodeling problems in simpler ways, the illumination of new problems, and the ability to prove the benefit of modifying CM grammars.

The prospective effects of workplace violence on physicians' job satisfaction and turnover intentions: the buffering effect of job control

Background: Health care professionals, including physicians, are at high risk of encountering workplace violence. At the same time physician turnover is an increasing problem that threatens the functioning of the health care sector worldwide. The present study examined the prospective associations of work-related physical violence and bullying with physicians’ turnover intentions and job satisfaction. In addition, we tested whether job control would modify these associations.

Methods: The present study was a 4-year longitudinal survey study, with data gathered in 2006 and 2010.The present sample included 1515 (61% women) Finnish physicians aged 25–63 years at baseline. Analyses of covariance (ANCOVA) were conducted while adjusting for gender, age, baseline levels, specialisation status, and employment sector.

Results: The results of covariance analyses showed that physical violence led to increased physician turnover intentions and that both bullying and physical violence led to reduced physician job satisfaction even after adjustments. We also found that opportunities for job control were able to alleviate the increase in turnover intentions resulting from bullying.

Conclusions: Our results suggest that workplace violence is an extensive problem in the health care sector and may lead to increased turnover and job dissatisfaction. Thus, health care organisations should approach this problem through different means, for example, by giving health care employees more opportunities to control their own work.

Is Early Warning Effective for the Improvement of Problem Solving and Project Performance?

Since the first launch of the new engineering contract (NEC) in 1993, early warning of problems has been widely recognized as an important approach of proactive management during a construction or engineering project. Is early warning really effective for the improvement of problem solving and project performance? This is a research question that still lacks a good answer. For this reason, an empirical investigation was made in the United Kingdom (U.K.) to answer the question. This study adopts a combination of literature review, expert interview, and questionnaire survey. Nearly 100 questionnaire responses were collected from the U.K. construction industry, based on which the use of early warning under different forms of contract is compared in this paper. Problem solving and project performance are further compared between the projects using early warning and the projects not using early warning. The comparison provides clear evidence for the significant effect of early warning on problem solving and project performance in terms of time, cost, and quality. Subsequently, an input-process-output model is developed in this paper to explore the relationship among early warning, problem solving, and project
performance. All these help construction researchers and practitioners to better understand the role of early warning in ensuring project success.

Is a single item stress measure independently associated with subsequent severe injury: a prospective cohort study of 16,385 forest industry employees

Background: A previous review showed that high stress increases the risk of occupational injury by three- to five-fold. However, most of the prior studies have relied on short follow-ups. In this prospective cohort study we examined the effect of stress on recorded hospitalised injuries in an 8-year follow-up.
Methods: A total of 16,385 employees of a Finnish forest company responded to the questionnaire. Perceived stress was measured with a validated single-item measure, and analysed in relation recorded hospitalised injuries from 1986 to 2008. We used Cox proportional hazard regression models to examine the prospective associations between work stress, injuries and confounding factors.
Results: Highly stressed participants were approximately 40% more likely to be hospitalised due to injury over the follow-up period than participants with low stress. This association remained significant after adjustment for age, gender, marital status, occupational status, educational level, and physical work environment.
Conclusions: High stress is associated with an increased risk of severe injury.

Interventions to build resilience in children of problem drinkers

This is the protocol for a review and there is no abstract. The objectives are as follows:
-To assess the effects of interventions for building resilience in children or young people living with parents/carers who are problem drinkers.

Assessing the effectiveness of a DRA versus DRA with an activity schedule procedure on the reduction of problem behaviour

Differential Reinforcement of Alternative behaviour (DRA) (Athens & Vollmer, 2010; Cooper, Heron, & Heward, 2007) is a procedure that consists in withholding reinforcement for the targeted inappropriate behaviour while reinforcing behaviours, i.e., that have the same function, but socially more acceptable topographies. DRA has repeatedly proven to be effective in reducing problem behaviours in individuals with autism (Campbell, 2003). On the other hand, a number of single-subject research studies have provided evidence for the use of activity schedules as a means to decrease aggressive behaviour (Dooley et al., 2001; Flannery & Hemer, 1994; Lalli, Casey, Goh, & Merlinoet al., 1994). The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effectiveness of DRA in combination with the use of an activity schedule. We compared the impact of the visual activities schedule used in combination with a DRA procedure versus the impact of the DRA procedure used alone on problem behaviour of a boy diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder. An alternating treatments design was used to compare the rate of behaviour problems in each of the two treatment conditions. DRA was delivered as treatment A, while the combination of the activities schedule and DRA was treatment B.

Just a piece of cloth? German courts and employees with headscarves

On 10 October 2002, and on 24 September 2003, the German Federal Labour Court and the German Federal Constitutional Court each delivered a decision on the consequences of wearing a headscarf for employees. Both courts appeared to protect the individual rights of the woman in question. The Federal Labour Court invalidated the dismissal of a salesperson based on the wearing of a headscarf; the Federal Constitutional Court held that a school teacher must not be denied employment on grounds of wearing a headscarf. However, both courts also left some room for manoeuvre in favour of clothing policies or laicism principles which could be used to justify head-scarf bans. This note discussed the potential and drawback of these cases, especially as regards intersectional inequalities along the lines of gender, religion and ethnicity.

Emotional development among early school-age children: Gender differences in the role of problem behaviours

There has been an increasing focus on social and emotional development in educational programmes in early childhood as both variables are believed to influence behavioural outcomes in the classroom. However, relationships between social and emotional development and behaviour in early childhood have rarely been explored. This article sets out to investigate the conceptualisation of these variables and their inter-relationships. Structural equation models were used to assess if differences exist between boys and girls in relation to social and emotional competences, which could affect the relative success of such programmes. This article is based on cross-sectional data collected from 749 four- to six-year-olds and their teachers. The findings generally supported the hypothesised relationships between social and emotional development variables and prosocial behaviour (including internalising behaviour) for boys and girls. However, some gender differences were noted in externalising behaviour, which teachers often consider to be most significant due to its potentially disruptive nature in the classroom.

New Results for the MAP Problem in Bayesian Networks

This paper presents new results for the (partial) maximum a posteriori (MAP) problem in Bayesian networks, which is the problem of querying the most probable state configuration of some of the network variables given evidence. First, it is demonstrated that the problem remains hard even in networks with very simple topology, such as binary polytrees and simple trees (including the Naive Bayes structure). Such proofs extend previous complexity results for the problem. Inapproximability results are also derived in the case of trees if the number of states per variable is not bounded. Although the problem is shown to be hard and inapproximable even in very simple scenarios, a new exact algorithm is described that is empirically fast in networks of bounded treewidth and bounded number of states per variable. The same algorithm is used as basis of a Fully Polynomial Time Approximation Scheme for MAP under such assumptions. Approximation schemes were generally thought to be impossible for this problem, but we show otherwise for classes of networks that are important in practice. The algorithms are extensively tested using some well-known networks as well as random generated cases to show their effectiveness.