Flexible work planning of service agents with load balancing

This work emerged from the need to better plan the daily work of 29 travelling service agents, who provide 1090 services to 412 customers in 283 sites, on daily average. A handy and flexible tool was developed and is presented herein. A major contribution of this study is an explicit consideration of the multi-dimensional nature of the problem by the inclusion of workload balancing, which may stand in conflict to cost minimisation. Further, the geographical distribution of the demand is highly irregular. Therefore, two load measures are required and balanced. This required to fitting a proper planning scheme. The planning tool has been applied successfully by the commercial service provider. Improvements in the order of 20% and more were obtained in key performance measures. Moreover, cost reductions, service improvement and load balance were obtained simultaneously: the standard deviations of the service times and working day’s duration were reduced by 18 and 58%, respectively. This enables to reduce the number of agents with no significant harm in performance. Additional practical advantages of the proposed tool are also discussed and demonstrated, for example, the ability to cope with geographical distributions and the flexibility to respond to daily variations in demand.     

Socio-Economic Characteristics and Life Expectancies in Nineteenth-Century England: A District Analysis

This paper presents an analysis of levels of life expectancy and their patterns of change among six socio-economically differentiated sub-populations of England and Wales for the period 1851–1911. Differences in mortality levels among these sub-groups and their rates of change are analyzed with respect to three groups of explanatory variables, viz., environmental, stratification and demographic variables. Their relative importance for different periods is assessed and discussed. The findings show consistency with two previous studies, which have suggested that medical advances had little effect on the increase in life expectancy during the second half of the nineteenth century. The present paper supports the results of one study in that public health measures affected life expectancies earlier, while subsequently, the increase in standards of living was more important.     

Conspicuous conservatism in risk choice

We analyze the risk levels chosen by agents who have private information regarding their quality, and whose performance will be judged and rewarded by outsiders. Assume that risk choice is observable. Agents will choose risk strategically to enhance their expected reputations. We show that conspicuous conservatism results: agents of different qualities choose levels below those that would be chosen if quality were observable. This happens because bad agents must cloak their identity by choosing the same risk level as good agents, and good agents are more likely to distinguish themselves if they reduce the risk level. Our results contrast starkly with those for the case when risk choice cannot be observed.

Childhood Autism and Proactive Family Coping: Intergenerational Perspectives

This article considers the value of intergenerational and specifically, grandparental support, in the management of adaptive tasks posed by raising a young child with autism. The tasks addressed range from accessing early intervention to enhancing family social functioning. We note unique social, financial, and health-related stressors faced by families of children with autism. We outline an innovative, stress theory-based framework, the Autism Proactive Intergenerational Adaptation (APIA) Model, which delineates the role of grandparents in contributing to family adaptation to the stresses of raising a child with autism. We focus on proactive family coping strategies in building resilience and ameliorating the adverse impact of stressors on quality of life (QOL) for individual family members and for the family unit. We discuss barriers and facilitators of intergenerational alliances involving grandparental participation and support.     

When do older adults become "disabled"? Social and health antecedents of perceived disability in a panel study of the oldest old

Disability carries negative social meaning, and little is known about when (or if), in the process of health decline, persons identify themselves as "disabled." We examine the social and health criteria that older adults use to subjectively rate their own disability status. Using a panel study of older adults (ages 72+), we estimate ordered probit and growth curve models of perceived disability over time. Total prevalent morbidity, functional limitations, and cognitive impairment are predictors of perceived disability. Cessation of driving and receipt of home health care also influence older adults 'perceptions of their own disability. A dense social network slowed the rate of labeling oneself disabled, while health anxiety accelerated the process over time, independent of health status. When considering perceived disability, the oldest old use multidimensional criteria capturing function, recent changes in health status and social networks, and anxiety about their health.     

R&D project evaluation: An integrated DEA and balanced scorecard approach

We present and demonstrate a multi-criteria approach for evaluating R&D projects in different stages of their life cycle. Our approach integrates the balanced scorecard (BSC) and data envelopment analysis (DEA) and develops an extended DEA model. The input and output measures for the integrated DEA–BSC model are grouped in “cards” which are associated with a “BSC for R&D projects”. The BSC is embedded in the DEA model through a hierarchical structure of constraints that reflect the BSC balance considerations. We illustrate the proposed approach with a case study involving an industrial research laboratory that selects and executes dozens of R&D projects every year.     

Assessing the Quality of Knowledge in Social Care: Exploring the Potential of a Set of Generic Standards

Social care policy and practice draw on multiple sources ofknowledge. In order to help practitioners and policymakers identifyand act on the basis of high quality evidence, ways of assessingthe quality of this knowledge are needed. Part of the answermay lie in the use of a set of generic standards. To test thepotentiality of this approach, one document from each of fivecore domains of social care knowledge was selected and assessedindependently by three researchers using a set of generic standardsdeveloped within a study commissioned by the Social Care Institutefor Excellence. Critical reflections on feasibility and addedvalue were recorded. Each reviewer successfully applied theset of standards to each document, but faced problems with interpretationand the identification of source-specific standards. Use ofthe TAPUPAS schema forced consideration of the strengths andweaknesses of each document and broadened the common notionof quality and quality assessment to sources beyond the traditionalresearch domain. This small-scale testing suggests the potentialof the schema to enable assessments of quality to be appliedacross knowledge sources within both social care and other applieddiscipline areas such as health and education. As with any qualityassessment tool, training in its use is required.     

A teacher and his students: child Holocaust testimonies from early postwar Polish Bytom

ABSTRACT

The document presented here was created in 1945 in Bytom, Poland. It contains testimonies by Holocaust survivor children collected and put down in a notebook by their survivor teacher, Shlomo Tsam, in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust. The testimonies shed light on Jewish children's experience in Eastern Europe during the Holocaust, describing oppression, flight, and survival in the words of the weakest segment of Jewish communities – children. The testimonies provide raw data on the encounters between Jews and non-Jews in the territories in which the “Final Solution” was carried out. It is thus an important source contributing to the burgeoning research on the involvement of local populations in the murder of the Jews, on one hand, and in saving Jews, on the other. The creation of this document, one of several collections of Jewish survivor children's testimonies produced in the immediate postwar years, is also indicative of post-Holocaust Jewish sensibilities and concerns regarding surviving children.     

Preservation of Palestinian Arab heritage as a strategy for the enrichment of civil coexistence in Israel

This paper focuses on different heritage centers established by individuals and groups of activists from the Palestinian community in Israel to independently record, preserve and organize their history and cultural heritage through educational and cultural activity. It reviews the historical developments that have occurred in this challenging voluntary work, pointing up a significant awakening that has occurred since the 1990s and proposing new directions and a framework for the expansion and deepening of the preservation of Palestinian Arab heritage in Israel. Consequently, the paper discusses projects of academic researchers that aim to preserve Palestinian Arab heritage in Israel, leading naturally and substantially to a genuine and egalitarian collaboration between Jews and Arabs. This collaborative effort in academic projects creates a firm foundation for the development of mutual respect and recognition concerning the unique historical and cultural roots of each side and could enrich civil coexistence in Israel.