Priority dispatching rules in job shops with assembly operations and random delays

The article reports the results of an experimental investigation into priority dispatching rules for a job shop with assembly operations. A job is made up of several parts, where parts are individual entities requiring several operations in different machine centres. The study was directed towards rules which attempt to co-ordinate the completion time of parts required in the same job. This mainly involves rules that utilise job status information such as operation float, number of parts completed, and number of operations remaining on each part. Results indicate that job status information improves most of the measures of performance used.     

A Psychometric Evaluation of the Facial Action Coding System for Assessing Spontaneous Expression

The Facial Action Coding System (FACS) (Ekman & Friesen, 1978) is a comprehensive and widely used method of objectively describing facial activity. Little is known, however, about inter-observer reliability in coding the occurrence, intensity, and timing of individual FACS action units. The present study evaluated the reliability of these measures. Observational data came from three independent laboratory studies designed to elicit a wide range of spontaneous expressions of emotion. Emotion challenges included olfactory stimulation, social stress, and cues related to nicotine craving. Facial behavior was video-recorded and independently scored by two FACS-certified coders. Overall, we found good to excellent reliability for the occurrence, intensity, and timing of individual action units and for corresponding measures of more global emotion-specified combinations.     

Felt tip pens and school councils: children's participation rights in four English schools

The United Nation Convention on the Rights of the Child has created practical challenges for nation states and institutions particularly in relation to children's rights to participation. The limited research that is available has tended to use survey methodology; qualitative accounts of children's daily lives are rare. The present study investigated the nature of children's participation in their education in two primary and two secondary schools; in particular the right to express views freely in all matters affecting the child. The study found that children's opportunities to express their views were extremely limited even when school councils were in place. It is concluded that the goal of active citizenship espoused by recent national curriculum developments will remain illusive unless educational practice changes to a focus on school processes rather than products. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg? Examining the Relationship between Child Neglect and Poverty

Correspondence to Dr Dominic McSherry, Institute of Child Care Research, 5a Lennoxvale, Belfast BT9 5BY, UK. E-mail: dominic.mcsherry{at}qub.ac.uk Summary The chicken and the egg conundrum neatly reflects the way inwhich the debate over the relationship between child neglectand poverty/social deprivation has developed over the last fewdecades. Some would argue that child neglect is the manifestationof a neglecting society that permits child poverty to exist,that is poverty leads to child neglect. Others contend thatit is the way that neglecting parents think, behave and interactwith other people that ultimately leads them to live a lifeof social deprivation and to neglect their children, that isparental characteristics lead to poverty and child neglect.However, these seemingly opposing perspectives can be resolvedif we consider that this relationship, like the ultimate resolutionto the chicken and egg conundrum, is circular and interdependent.     

Placing the Horse in Front of the Wagon: Toward a Conceptual Understanding of the Development of Self-Esteem in Children and Adolescents

Existing research on self-esteem among children and adolescents has focused on defining self-esteem, measuring self-esteem, and indicating variables that influence self-esteem. However, limited research and thought has been given to explain conceptually how self-esteem is developed and maintained. This paper suggests that the existing literature lacks a theoretical conceptualization of how self-esteem is developed and provides a three-pronged conceptualization indicating that associations, activities, and aural support develop and maintain self-esteem. The conceptualization provided has research, policy, and programmatic implications.     

The dark arts of good people: How popular culture negotiates ‘spin’in NBC's The West Wing1

This paper argues that the popular American TV series The West Wing provides, within popular culture, a sympathetic and realistic view of the work of the political ‘spin doctor’. This enterprise is sociolinguistically interesting because of the extensive range of metalinguistic and metacommunicative reflection which it involves. The West Wing centres its storytelling within the world of the spin doctor, thus making such characters central to the narrative: further, it constructs them as likeable, virtuous characters who are also clever. Their cleverness is a matter of sociolinguistic performance expressed in dialogue which displays their professional writing craft skills and their spontaneous witty badinage.     

The dilemma of essentiality in homosexual theory

A close examination of the literature on homosexuality reveals a long history of definitional crises in which the central consideration has been the maintenance of a belief in homosexuality as a state of being. This paper asks what, if anything, can be considered essential to the homosexual category. To answer this question, various approaches to homosexuality in the literature have been examined: as a general state of being (the person), as a state of desire (sexual orientation), as a form of behavior (sexual acts), and, more recently, as a personal identification (sexual identity). In addition, the interrelationships of these categorizations are explored.