Reduction of impurity sources in Si crystal growth system with electron gun beam heating

A new series of experiments was conducted to determine the source of impurities in the process of silicon crystal growth with electron beam heating. A gas-dynamic window was placed between the electron gun and growth chamber. Also positively-charged traps were placed along the crucible to reduce the number of electrons hitting the chamber and the crucible. Five experiments were conducted: two with the window, two with charge traps, and one with both the window and charge traps. The analysis of obtained samples showed that the gas-dynamic window decreases the content of Al, Cu, Fe, Cr and O2, and the trap, used in the experiments, decreases the content of Fe, Cr and Cu in residues of the melt. The content of all impurities, except Al, is close to the goal level. Al impurities come only from the gun, but the gas-dynamic window cannot eliminate them completely. It seems that Al impurities come either as neutral atoms carried by the gas or as positively charged ions. To reduce these impurities, a separation of the Al flow from the beam by the magnetic field is proposed.

The Effects of Goal Publicity and Incentives on Self-Set Performance Goals

Many companies encourage employees to set their own performance goals and do not attach formal incentives to the achievement of these goals. In this environment, some organizations make employees' self-set performance goals public while other organizations do not. We predict that, due to strategic concerns induced by goal publicity and competition, making goals public will be more likely to lead employees to lowball their goals when they work under tournament incentives than under piece-rate incentives. Consistent with this prediction, our experimental results reveal that making self-set performance goals public decreases goal level under tournament incentives, but has no significant effect on goal level under piece-rate incentives. Results of our study suggest that the practice of making self-set goals public is potentially more compatible with organizations with a collaborative culture than those with a competitive culture.

On the connection between language control and executive control - An ERP study

Models vary in the extent to which language control processes are domain general. Those that posit that language control is at least partially domain general insist on an overlap between language control and executive control at the goal level. To further probe whether or not language control is domain general, we conducted the first event-related potential (ERP) study that directly compares language-switch costs, as an index of language control, and task-switch costs, as an index of executive control. The language switching and task switching methodology were identical, except that the former required switching between languages (English or Spanish) whereas the latter required switching between tasks (color naming or category naming). This design allowed us to directly compare control processes at the goal level (cue-locked ERPs) and at the task performance level (picture-locked ERPs). We found no significant differences in the switch-related cue-locked and picture-locked ERP patterns across the language and task switching paradigms. These results support models of domain-general language control.

Regulação do arrependimento por meio da redução do nível da meta: comparando Maximizadores e Satisficientes

Regret is an important emotion in the context of decision-making and has many implications for consumer behavior. Although regret can be an inevitable outcome, it is possible to deal with it through various regulatory strategies. This research investigates one of these strategies: the strategy of decreasing the goal level, with which regret is regulated from the reassessment of the negativity of a result. Three experimental studies find that the DGL strategy effectively works in regulating individuals' post-decisional regret. In addition, the observed effect is moderated by the maximizing tendency. When maximizers engaged in the strategy of decreasing the goal level, reevaluating their decision and recognizing positive alternative goals, they more successfully regulated their regrets. For satisficers, in contrast, who are by default more likely to adopt the “good enough” protective choice, engaging in such a strategy did not affect their regrets. In addition, the perception of valid effort was observed as na important mediator useful to explain such effects. These results contribute to the literature on regret by empirically testing DGL as an effective regret regulation strategy, showing mechanisms that can help individuals to effectively cope with regret

AN ANALYSIS OF THE GOAL LEVEL SELECTION AMONG INDONESIAN CUSTOMS OFFICERS

Goal-setting is an essential tool to improve individual and organizational performance. The study about goal-setting has been done immensely in the past century. However, research on goal-setting is rarely conducted in Indonesia's Public sector, especially in Customs and Excise work environment. A survey of Indonesian Customs is carried out to examine the correlation between individual variables that are self-esteem, work locus of control, self-efficacy, supervisor's support, anticipated reward, and other organizational support with employee goal level selection. 45 merchandise goods-related document analysts and goods inspectors are included in the survey, where a small experiment is administered by asking the respondent to set their target independently. Using the Spearman correlation analysis, the result indicated that only work locus of control has a significant negative association with goal-level selection, particularly promotion and job acquisition subscales. Self-esteem and self-efficacy are found not significantly correlated with goal-level selection, and so are support from supervisors, office environment, and monetary reward.

A Model of the Continual Adaptive Online Knowledge Assessment System

This chapter presents a model of a novel adaptive online knowledge assessment system and tests the efficiency of its implementation. System enables continual and cumulative knowledge assessment, comprised of sequence of at least two interconnected assessments, carried-out throughout a reasonably long period of time. Important characteristics of the system are: (a) introduction of new course topics in every subsequent assessment, (b) re-assessment of earlier course topics in every subsequent assessment iteration, (c) in an adaptive manner, based on student’s achievements during previous assessments. Personalized post-assessment feedback guides each student in preparations for upcoming assessments. The efficiency has been tested on a sample of 78 students. Results indicate that the proposed adaptive system is efficient on an individual learning goal level.

A statistical approach for assessing progress towards the SDG targets

The global SDG indicator framework establishes a set of measurement tools to assess country performances in a comparable way, and helps governments to identify appropriate policy interventions to achieve the SDG targets. Five years into the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, however, still different methods are being used by leading international organizations for assessing whether the SDG targets will be achieved or not. This may lead to different results, sometimes contradictory, generating confusion among users and policy-makers, who therefore cannot base their policy decisions on solid and coherent assessments. This article describes some of the solutions proposed by leading international organizations to address two distinct measurement objectives: (i) monitor the “current” status of achievement of a SDG target, i.e. the situation as pictured by the latest available data, and (ii) assess whether the SDG targets can be achieved by 2030. These distinct objectives are then translated in various methodological approaches, that often include also a way for identifying the targets when not explicitly set, and the procedure to obtain regional and global aggregates (as well as, aggregates by target and goal). This article provides a critical overview of the different approaches and proposes a unified coherent statistical approach for progress and status assessments, highlighting its advantages over the alternative approaches, and demonstrate its application to a specific FAO indicator. The article focuses mainly on the assessment of (i) and (ii), while is not intended to investigate the issues related the aggregation of results at target/goal level, a topic that is beyond the scope of this work.

Do versus Don’t: The Impact of Framing on Goal-Level Setting

The consumer behavior literature extensively studied the impact of goal setting on behavior and performance. However, much less is known about the antecedents of goal-level setting—consumers’ decision of whether to work out twice or three times per week. Consumers can decide how many goal-consistent activities to undertake (“goal-consistent decision frame”; such as exercising two days per week) or to forego (“goal-inconsistent decision frame”; such as not exercising five days per week). While objectively the same decision, we argue that these different frames impact consumers’ ambition. Making a decision to forego goal-consistent activities triggers negative, self-evaluative emotions and to compensate for these unfavorable self-evaluations, consumers set more ambitious goal levels. Across a variety of contexts, consumers are more ambitious when their focal decision is inconsistent with goal achievement. For instance, they decide to work out more often when they decide how many work-out sessions they would skip (vs. attend). The impact of goal-inconsistent decision framing is mitigated when the activity is less instrumental toward goal achievement, and when negative self-evaluative emotions are alleviated through self-affirmation.

THE BASIC ACTIVITY MODES OF THE DOMINANT COGNITIVE-PRAGMATIC PROGRAMME AND THE INDIVIDUAL POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS (A CASE STUDY OF “THE COLD SUMMER OF 1953” FILM CONSTRUCT)

The purpose of the article is to study the conceptual-semantic core of the film construct “The Cold Summer of 1953” carried out as part of the author's metadisciplinary methodology – the theory of modeling cognitive-pragmatic programs (CPP). CPP is a supporting system of cognitive-pragmatic sets that can have both a personal and a superpersonal character. The article solves the problems of deciphering the multidimensional impact of the dominant “superpersonal” CPP on the consciousness and behavior of its carriers, since the basic party-ideological CPP is deeply rooted in the minds of both government officials and political prisoners; moreover, the power system also turns the representatives of criminal environment into the carriers of a specific criminal projection of the basic CPP. The main results of the study: film construct unfolds before us a panorama of the mythological recoding of the consciousness of CPP carriers, while the ethical category of duty, which is fundamental for self-identification of a person, suffers the most profound recoding. “The Duty” here is a destructive and manipulative instrument for controlling the CPP over the consciousness of its carriers. Confident that he decides by himself who he is (level of self-identification), what is his goal (level of goal-setting) and what is the path to it (level of modeling of an instrumental-operational strategy), the CPP carrier does not / fully does not recognize the substitution. In fact, the CPP controls it: a) the goal of the program is identified with the goal of the CPP carrier; b) the CPP carrier does not think of itself separately from the program; c) the destructive strategy of the CPP is perceived by the subject as its own. Studying the three basic regimes of the destructive activity of the ideological CPP, we come to the following conclusions: 1) In the “conditional passivity” mode of the CPP, its carrier retains a significant degree of internal freedom, not allowing the program to exercise full control. 2) The “Active-passive” mode of the CPP makes a substitution: the program carrier, being in the full sense of his personal freedom, becomes a “machine of generation” of senseless pseudo-ideologized conflict situations and a “machine of reproduction” of “alien” automated, reflex-impulse reactions. 3) Under the conditions of the “active-destructive” CPP regime, the “pseudodialogue” is no longer entered by “living” people, but by different options (“tools”, “mechanisms”) of the dominant program. That is why the “dialogue” of programs turns into an endless, automated, one-sided, impersonal process of “exchanging” orders.