Compensation Term Research Articles

Burnout among working mothers: The role of work-life balance and perceived organizational support

The pandemic of COVID-19 has influenced business in general. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, most companies or organizations have been implementing work from home (WFH). For working mothers who have children, this WFH policy creates a more stressful situation since they simultaneously have to deal with work and family in the same place. This study investigated the role of work-life balance and perceived organizational support in the level of burnout tendency among working mothers. Two hundred thirty-seven working mothers who work from home participated in this study. Questionnaires were distributed to the working mothers to measure work-life balance, perceived organizational support, and burnout tendency. Multiple linear regression was used to test the hypothesis. The results show work-life balance and perceived organizational support simultaneously predict burnout tendency. However, perceived organization support, especially a concern for employee welfare, contributes more to reducing burnout. Therefore, human resource management may develop a policy to reduce burnout among women employees by concerning employee welfare in terms of compensation and benefit and creating a conducive working environment

Gender equality in the workplace: a global perspective

PurposeThe benefits of gender diversity in the workplace are well-established. Consequently, many organizations have policies or programs in place to encourage hiring women. Despite this, the gender gap remains, particularly in terms of compensation and promotion and progress appears slow. This paper aims to examine the benefits of gender diversity and common approaches to enhance it. It then reviews lessons from global research and suggests applications.Design/methodology/approachThis practitioner study reviews the literature to identify arguments for gender equality in the workplace, progress in gender equality and common organizational approaches to equality. It presents snapshots of two global studies examining gender equality. It draws implications and applications from these studies.FindingsGender equality remains elusive and difficult to achieve despite efforts on the part of leaders to encourage it. Insights from research provide compelling reasons in terms of organizational outcomes for female hiring, development and promotion. Additionally, insights into organizational culture help leaders identify barriers to gender equality.Originality/valueThis paper presents insights into the need for and benefits of gender equality in organizations. A review of two global studies provides compelling reasons for leaders to recommit themselves to their gender equality and address needed changes in organizational culture.

Decentralized adaptive neuro-fuzzy dynamic surface control for maximum power point tracking of a photovoltaic system

The current work proposes a decentralized adaptive dynamic surface control approach for extracting the maximum power from a photovoltaic (PV) system and then regulating the required voltage for charging the battery. In this regard, two cascaded direct current-direct current (DC-DC) converters are utilized. The boost converter is interposed between the PV system and the load to help extract the maximum power. The buck-boost converter is then exploited to maintain the output voltage at a specified level which must meet the battery demand. Therefore, to handle the interactions between the cascaded converters, a decentralized control approach is developed. In the suggested approach, by introducing a nonlinear filter, an effective dynamic surface control (DSC) scheme is proposed with guaranteeing asymptotic tracking convergence. Further, by incorporating a nonlinear compensation term into the proposed control approach, the robustness of the resulting controller is improved. In addition, since the model of the converters is nonlinear with unknown uncertainties, the neuro-fuzzy system is used to estimate lumped uncertainties. The proposed control method has good attributes in terms of having a low tracking error, an excellent transition response, and a quick response to changes in atmospheric conditions. The stability of the whole control system is proved by the Lyapunov stability theorem. Finally, comprehensive simulation results are performed to validate the effectiveness of the suggested control approach.

Integrated State/Fault Estimation and Fault-Tolerant Control Design for Switched T–S Fuzzy Systems With Sensor and Actuator Faults

This article proposes an integrated design approach addressing the state/fault estimation (SFE) and fault-tolerant control (FTC) issues for switched T–S fuzzy systems with sensor and actuator faults and external disturbances. A switched fuzzy observer is developed to simultaneously estimate the system states and the sensor and actuator faults from measurement outputs affected by sensor faults. Based on this observer, a switched fuzzy FTC is designed to stabilize the closed-loop system and compensate for the effects of different considered faults, taking into account the presence of external disturbances. The mutual coupling between the estimation unit (SFE) and the control unit (FTC) supports the integrated design of these two units instead of the separated one. However, the separated design is the most adopted in the literature because the integrated design leads to complex stability conditions in the form of bilinear matrix inequalities. This work focuses on the integrated design considering the different interactions between the observer and the controller and thus ensuring good performance in terms of estimation, control, robustness, and fault compensation. For this purpose, a two-step integrated design strategy and a single-step integrated design strategy are proposed to formalize the integrated SFE and FTC design as linear matrix inequalities instead of bilinear ones. These strategies are based on the mode-dependent average dwell time concept, the piecewise Lyapunov function technique, and the robust <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$H_{\infty }$</tex-math></inline-formula> approach. The applicability and efficiency of the developed results are illustrated by studying a numerical example and a single-link robotic manipulator.

능동댐핑 영-극점 상쇄 BLDC모터 속도 제어기를 위한 경사 하강법 기반 자동 동조 알고리즘 설계

This paper presents an auto-tuning mechanism for major design factors adopted for the active damping pole-zero cancellation Brushless DC Motor (BLDCM) speed controller. The proposed auto-tuner is designed to seek the minimum point of the steepest gradient method-based controlled error’s cost function. Moreover, the proposed solution employs the compensation term (σ-modification) to assign the stable pole to the auto-tuner dynamics. The prototype dynamo system, which includes the 500W BLDCM as the test motor, verifies the effectiveness of the closed-loop system driven by the proposed auto-tuner.

Distributed optimal event‐triggered cooperative control for nonlinear multi‐missile guidance systems with partially unknown dynamics

AbstractThis article is concerned with the design of a novel distributed optimal event‐triggered (ET) cooperative control strategy for nonlinear multi‐missile guidance systems under the condition of partially unknown dynamics via adaptive dynamics programming. First, an improved online‐identifier is proposed to reconstruct the unknown dynamics based on the data‐driven mechanism in which an adaptive compensation term is introduced. The identification residual error is counteracted and the priori identification information is not required. In order to solve the Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman equation, a single critic neural network (CNN) is utilized to approximate the online solutions and helps calculate the control policy. Then, the uniformly ultimately bounded for the ET closed‐loop system and the CNN weight error are proved by utilizing Lyapunov theory. Finally, the application to the multi‐missile guidance systems with simultaneous impact consideration validates all missiles can hit the target simultaneously and indicates the effectiveness of the designed approach.

Improved Active Disturbance Rejection Control Strategy for LCL-Type Grid-Connected Inverters Based on the Backstepping Method

In the process of grid connection of an LCL inverter, sudden changes in load, high harmonics of the grid voltage, sudden changes in power, and other disturbances often occur. These will cause sharp degradation of the grid-connected power quality, so this paper proposes a new solution to the problem of how to reduce and eliminate disturbances in power quality by using a first-order linear active disturbance rejection control (LADRC) strategy with precise compensation via splitting the total disturbance term. An improved overall direct compensation method for total disturbance was proposed. The use of a subdivision compensation term could avoid the misjudgment arising from the estimation of the overall perturbation by the linear expanded state observer (LESO) within the first few weeks of the feedback when the overall compensation was applied. It aimed to reduce the overshooting caused by the overcompensation of the estimated disturbance term and to shorten the system convergence speed. Backstepping control was introduced to optimize the intermediate quantities of LADRC to estimate the error design outer-loop control law. The controlled quantity tracking the input quantity had excellent characteristics, and could set the desired error range quantity as the purpose of approximation. Therefore, backstepping control was suitable as a feedforward control of the system to preprocess the error in the estimated total disturbance of LESO and feed it into the inner loop improvement LADRC. Secondly, an improved control cascade PWM modulation with a PLL phase-locked loop to regulate the inverter output resulted in the elimination of the effects of internal and external disturbances on the grid-connected current and voltage. Finally, the amplitude–frequency characteristics were analyzed and compared for the trackability and antidisturbance of the improved linear active disturbance rejection controller, showing a good performance of the improved active disturbance rejection. At the same time, comparative simulations were conducted to confirm that the grid-connected current of the LCL inverter could obtain a better stability and grid entry quality in the first-order improved linear active disturbance rejection control.

Performance analysis of PPM FSOC system with APD detector considering atmospheric turbulence channel and fiber coupling

In a free-space optical communication system with an avalanche photodiode (APD) detector, the average bit error rate (ABER) is studied based on pulse position modulation (PPM) considering Gamma–Gamma atmospheric turbulence and fiber coupling efficiency (FCE). By analyzing the shot noise and thermal noise, the approximate analytical expression of the ABER of binary PPM is theoretically derived. Then, the approximate analytical expression of ABER union bound is derived for L-ary PPM. The FCE has a greater impact on the ABER of the APD detection system than it does on the PIN detection system. By adopting the adaptive optics technology, compared with the PIN detection system, the communication performance of the APD detection is greatly improved. Moreover, the optimal average APD gain of the APD detection system is strongly correlated to the detector temperature but weakly dependent on the atmospheric turbulence intensity, FCE, number of wavefront compensation terms, average received photon number, and receiving aperture size. By optimizing the receiving aperture and designing an accurate temperature control system, the communication performance of the APD detection system can be further improved.

A macroscopic model for immiscible two-phase flow in porous media

This work provides the derivation of a closed macroscopic model for immiscible two-phase, incompressible, Newtonian and isothermal creeping steady flow in a rigid and homogeneous porous medium without considering three-phase contact. The mass and momentum upscaled equations are obtained from the pore-scale Stokes equations, adopting a two-domain approach where the two fluid phases are separated by an interface. The average mass equations result from using the classical volume averaging method. A Green's formula and the adjoint Green's function velocity pair problems are used to obtain the pore-scale velocity solutions that are averaged to obtain the upscaled momentum balance equations. The macroscopic model is based on the assumptions of scale separation and the existence of a periodic representative elementary volume allowing a local description as usually postulated for upscaling. The macroscopic momentum equation in each phase includes the generalized Darcy-like dominant and viscous coupling terms and, importantly, an additional compensation term that accounts for surface tension effects to momentum transfer that is, otherwise, incompletely captured by the Darcy terms. This interfacial term, as well as the dominant and viscous coupling permeability tensors, can be predicted from the solutions of two associated closure problems that coincide with those reported in the literature. The relevance of the compensation term and the upscaled model validity are assessed by comparisons with direct numerical simulations in a model two-dimensional periodic structure. Upscaled model predictions are found to be in excellent agreement with direct numerical simulations.

Real-Time Iterative Compensation Framework for Precision Mechatronic Motion Control Systems

With regard to precision/ultra-precision motion systems, it is important to achieve excellent tracking performance for various trajectory tracking tasks even under uncertain external disturbances. In this paper, to overcome the limitation of robustness to trajectory variations and external disturbances in offline feedforward compensation strategies such as iterative learning control (ILC), a novel real-time iterative compensation (RIC) control framework is proposed for precision motion systems without changing the inner closed-loop controller. Specifically, the RIC method can be divided into two parts, i.e., accurate model prediction and real-time iterative compensation. An accurate prediction model considering lumped disturbances is firstly established to predict tracking errors at future sampling times. In light of predicted errors, a feedforward compensation term is developed to modify the following reference trajectory by real-time iterative calculation. Both the prediction and compensation processes are finished in a real-time motion control sampling period. The stability and convergence of the entire control system after real-time iterative compensation is analyzed for different conditions. Various simulation results consistently demonstrate that the proposed RIC framework possesses satisfactory dynamic regulation capability, which contributes to high tracking accuracy comparable to ILC or even better and strong robustness.

Hybrid Position Estimation Strategy With a Smooth Transition for IPMSM Sensorless Drives in the Wide Speed Range

In this article, an innovative hybrid position estimation strategy along with the minimum voltage vector injection (MVVI) method and the back electromotive force (back EMF) based method is proposed for interior permanent magnet synchronous motors (IPMSMs) in full-speed regions. At zero- and low-speed, the MVVI method based on rotor saliency is used for position estimation; the inverter voltage error is counteracted in estimating the rotor position, minimizing the inverter nonlinearity effect without introducing external errors. For IPMSMs at the initial state, this article proposes to utilize the high frequency <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">d</i> -axis current excited by injection voltage itself directly for the polarity detection. The position estimation at low-speed based on the MVVI method has such advantages as no requirement for filters, fast convergence, and reliability of magnetic polarity detection. In addition, a smooth transition blends the MVVI method and the back EMF based method is proposed, and a compensation term based on <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">q</i> -axis feedback current is added on the error of both the reference and feedback speed to reject the load-disturbance within the low speed and transition region. Experimental results show that the proposed hybrid sensorless control strategy exhibits excellent performance in the full speed range for both steady-state and dynamic operations.

Analysis of Electromagnetic Processes in a Traction Network in Connecting a Reactive Power Compensation and Harmonic Filtering System at a Sectioning Station

To increase the railway capacity, a controlled static reactive power generator is connected at a sectioning station. To reduce the cost indicators of the controlled installation and decrease the power losses, a combined reactive power compensation and harmonic filtering system is proposed, in which the following components are connected in parallel: an uncontrolled bank of shunt capacitive compensation with reduced cost indicators and a static reactive power generator. The total reactive power of the combined system is equal to the specified one. At low traction loads, the static generator operates in the mode of inductive power generation, due to which reactive power is smoothly regulated over the entire load range. Since the existing generator power is reduced by 2-3 times (at the same set power), the total increased power losses are also reduced. For analyzing the electromagnetic processes in the traction network, an electric rolling stock nonlinear model is developed. The article shows how the traction current higher harmonic components are filtered and demonstrates the combined system operability in terms of reactive power compensation under various traction loads by analyzing the waveforms of electromagnetic processes.

INFLUENCE ON CAREER PREFERENCES OF THE SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATING STUDENTS

This study focused on the assessment of the relationship between the internal and external influences and the career preferences of the students. It aimed to find out the level of influence on the career preference of the one hundred sixty-five Grade 12 students of Don Bosco College and Mary Help of Christians College in choosing their college program. Based on the statement of the problem, the gathered data of the results were the following: The level of internal factors on the student?s career preference for individual perspective for family perspective was interpreted as High respectively, while peer perspective was interpreted as moderately high. The level of influence of external factors on the student?s career preference for compensation, for technical requirements, and for educational requirements interpreted as High. Also, in terms of Career Pathway, the dominant pathway is Social, Enterprising and Conventional (SEC). The internal factors in terms of individual career perspectives as to realistic, investigative, enterprising, and conventional career preference were revealed a ?strong and significant analysis? for realistic career preference, ?moderate and significant analysis? for investigative and conventional career preference, and weak but significant analysis? for enterprising career preference. Likewise, for the external factors in terms of compensation as to enterprising career preference indicated a ?moderate and significant analysis It is therefore concluded for the internal factors that individual perspective, family, and peer influence students' career choices significantly. While for the External Factors it is concluded that students continue to think about future benefits that they can use to help their families in the future. It is concluded that many of the student-respondents were into the Social, Enterprise, and Conventional (SEC) career pathway. Results showed a not significant relationship between the internal and external factors and career preferences; therefore, the hypothesis states that no significant relationship was sustained. This means that the students? career preferences are not dependent on the abovementioned factors. The school administrators may adopt the career test (The Holland Career Test, RIASEC) for graduating students as a career development program.

Harmonic Noise-Tolerant ZNN for Dynamic Matrix Pseudoinversion and Its Application to Robot Manipulator.

As we know, harmonic noises widely exist in industrial fields and have a crucial impact on the computational accuracy of the zeroing neural network (ZNN) model. For tackling this issue, by combining the dynamics of harmonic signals, two harmonic noise-tolerant ZNN (HNTZNN) models are designed for the dynamic matrix pseudoinversion. In the design of HNTZNN models, an adaptive compensation term is adopted to eliminate the influence of harmonic noises, and a Li activation function is introduced to further improve the convergence rate. The convergence and robustness to harmonic noises of the proposed HNTZNN models are proved through theoretical analyses. Besides, compared with the ZNN model without adaptive compensation term, the HNTZNN models are more effective for tacking the problem of dynamic matrix pseudoinverse under harmonic noises environments. Moreover, HNTZNN models are further applied to the kinematic control of a four-link planar robot manipulator under harmonic noises. In general, the experimental results verify the effectiveness, superiority, and broad application prospect of the models.

Application of Single-Phase Supply AC-DC-AC VFD for Power Factor Improvement in LED Lighting Devices Loaded Power Distribution Lines

More and more light-emitting diode lighting devices (LED) are being connected to modern power distribution lines. In addition to its many positive features, this poses problems in terms of reactive power compensation. The large number of LEDs interacting with traditional reactive power compensators leads to a harmful phenomenon—overcompensation. This was experimentally determined in the investigated power distribution lines. Along with LEDs, a large number of devices with variable frequency drives (VFD) are connected to the same power distribution lines. This study presents an innovative approach to conventional diode rectifier supply side AC-DC-AC VFDs. It is proposed to use these VFDs as a reactive power compensation device while maintaining their main functions—motor powering and motor speed control. Minor improvements have been proposed to enable these VFDs to provide and draw out reactive power, thereby keeping power factors close to the unit in LED-loaded power distribution lines. The proposed improvements are based on the interaction between the power distribution lines inductivity and the DC circuit capacitance of the VFD. It has been shown that the power factor can be controlled by varying the capacity of the DC circuit. The ability of the AC-DC-AC VFD to compensate for the reactive power provided by the light-emitting diode lighting devices was confirmed by mathematical calculations and experimentally with a laboratory prototype.

Оut-of-court settlement of disputes in accordance with European copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market

Keywords: copyright, providers, rightsholders, users, content, downloads, interactiveaccess, out-of-court settlement of disputes.&#x0D; The article is devoted to the study of the norms of Directive 2019/790 of the European Parliament and of the Council on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market, and Guidance on Article 17 of Directive 2019/790 on Copyright in the Digital Single Market.The purpose of this article is to conduct a legal analysis of the EU Directive and Guidance, and determine the features of protection of copyright and related rights through out-of-court settlement of disputes, in the new realities of digital market development, and the feasibility of considering the relevant norms in the legislation of Ukraine.Article 17 of this EU Directive and the provisions of the reference are analysed in details.&#x0D; Rights and obligations of all participants in legal relations arising in the digital environment are considered: rightholders, users, online content-sharing service providers (hereinafter — providers).The definition of the new term «online content-sharing service providers», proposed in the EU Directive, has been explored. It is stated that providers have the right to provide access to legal content, uploaded by users. At the same time, they are obliged to act based on the permission received from the rightholders, do not affect on users who are using the online content-sharing services in order to legal upload and access to information, to prevent the availability of unauthorized content, uploaded by users.In the article explores the norms about out-of-court mechanisms of compensation for damage and the settlement of disputes. Its advantages are defined. The disadvantages that may arise in the practical application of the norms are indicated.&#x0D; In particular, in the Article 17 of the EU Directive and the Guidance do not provide a clear answer to certain questions, such as the status of the person who will have the authority to resolve the relevant disputes; what will be the decisions made by such a person; the procedure, amount and terms of compensation for damages; cross-border application of decisions.A comparison is made between the norms of the legislation of Ukraine on copyright and related rights and the relevant norms of European legislation. It is noted that in the Law of Ukraine «On Copyright and Related Rights» there is a procedure for termination of infringements of copyright and related rights on the Internet by providers. Out-ofcourtsettlement of disputes is not provided for, but it is not prohibited. The provider restores access to the object if the right holder has not provided him with confirmation of the opening of legal proceedings to protect his rights to the object of copyright and (or) related rights, in respect of which the application for termination of the violation was filed.Unlike the provisions of the Law, according to Art. 17 (9) of the EU Directive and the Guidance, the user can appeal the decision of the provider to block, delete content. Access to content can be restored based on out-of-court settlement of the dispute, i.e., without going to court.It is concluded that these European standards are noteworthy and need further study in the context of the application of out-of-court mechanisms of the settlement of disputes that arise between rightsholders, users and providers in the digital environment.

Low-Power Compressor-Based Approximate Multipliers With Error Correcting Module

This letter proposes an unsigned approximate multiplier architecture segmented into three portions: the least significant portion that contributes least to the partial product (PP) is replaced with a new constant compensation term to improve hardware savings without sacrificing accuracy. The PPs in the middle portion are simplified using a new 4:2 approximate compressor, and the error due to approximation is compensated using a simple yet efficient error correction module. The most significant portion of the multiplier is implemented using exact logic as approximating it will results in a large error. Experimental results of 8-bit multiplier show that the power and power-delay products are reduced up to 47.7% and 55.2%, respectively, in comparison with the exact design and 36.9% and 39.5%, respectively, in comparison with the existing designs without significant compromise on accuracy.

Comparison of WLAN Probe and Light Sensor-Based Estimators of Bus Occupancy Using Live Deployment Data.

Bus company operators are interested in obtaining knowledge about the number of passengers on their buses—preferably doing so at low deployment costs and in an automated manner, while keeping accuracy high. One solution, widely used in practice, involves deploying a light sensor-based system, counting the people entering and leaving the bus. The light sensor system is simple, but errors accumulate over time, because it is not capable of error correcting. For this reason, the light sensor-based system is compared to a WLAN probe-based system, which has entirely different characteristics. Inaccuracy with the WLAN estimator comes from a need to filter out mobile devices outside the bus and to map the number of detected devices to a number of people. The comparison is performed based on data collected from a real-life deployment in a medium sized German city. The comparison shows the trade-off in selecting either of the two methods. Furthermore, a novel approach for fusion of the light sensor and WLAN estimators is proposed which has a big potential in improving accuracy of both estimators. A fusion approach is proposed that utilizes the different error characteristics for error compensation by calculating compensation terms. The knowledge of Ground Truth is not required as part of this fusion approach for calibration; results show that the approach can find the optimal parameter settings and that it makes this occupancy estimation approach scalable and automated.

Clinical Training during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Experiences of Nursing Students and Implications for Education.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused difficulties in the organization of clinical classes for nursing students. It is therefore important to explore students’ experiences related to participation in clinical classes during the pandemic and to draw conclusions that will allow for the introduction of innovations enabling the development of the required professional competencies as part of training during current and future pandemic restrictions. In this study, we aimed to explore the experiences of nursing students related to clinical education during the COVID-19 pandemic and to identify practical implications for this education in the future. A qualitative study was performed based on individual interviews among Polish nursing students (n = 20). The study is reported using the COREQ checklist. Content analysis was applied, and five main categories were identified, including ‘the key role of clinical mentor’, ‘theory-practice gap’, ‘ambivalent emotions and ethical challenges’, ‘to be part of the team’, and ‘strengthened professional identity’. The results of our research indicate that higher education institutions should implement clear strategies to support students, both in terms of psychological support and compensation of professional skills, the development of which might be limited during the pandemic. Modern technologies, including medical simulations, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and telemedicine should be used in the practical teaching of nursing students to educate them on how to cope with difficult, new situations, build decision-making skills, and solve problems.

Reinforcement learning-based close formation control for underactuated surface vehicle with prescribed performance and time-varying state constraints

This paper studies close formation control problem with prescribed performance and time-varying state constraints for a group of 4-degrees-of-freedom (DOF) underactuated surface vehicles (USVs) subject to actuator faults, input saturation and input delay. A finite-time sliding mode control (SMC) scheme based on reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm is introduced to guarantee prescribed formation performance without violating velocity error constraints. By using actor-critic neural network (NN)-based RL algorithm, the actuator faults and system uncertainties are accurately estimated. Afterwards, an exponential decreasing boundary function is developed to suppress overshoot more reasonably, and a novel mechanism of switching gain is given to alleviate chattering inherent in SMC while the RL-based compensation term is constructed to handle the formation accuracy problem caused by the reduced switching gain. Besides, auxiliary nonlinear continuous function and Pade approximation have been successfully applied to process actuator saturation and input delay, respectively. Numerical simulations and experimental results are exhibited to verify the effectiveness and superior formation performance of the proposed control method.