Material Behavior and Fatigue Assessment of Old Steel Bridges of the Spanish Conventional Rail Network

This work presented salient features of the steel behavior of seven metallic bridges close to, or over, 100 years old, among the Spanish conventional rail network as well as the results of a fatigue life expectancy study. A preliminary study of the properties of the constituent materials obtained from the bridges samples was carried out followed by dynamic fatigue tests under service representative loads. Due to the steelmaking techniques in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, disperse fatigue behavior results were obtained. However, the wide safety margins with which these bridges were designed, as well as the mechanical properties of the steel (relatively good mechanical resistance but with low ductility), seem to guarantee a long fatigue life. This estimate decreases sharply with increasing loads.

Low-Wage Women’s Experiences of Workplace Incivilities

Workplace incivility, also called bullying, mobbing, and harassment, is pervasive and takes a high toll on employees. This study draws on 18 in-depth interviews with women in the precarious, low-wage, service sector in jobs such as customer service representative, retail sales, food service, pharmacy technician, and bank teller. Women service workers are a particularly vulnerable group, and yet most research on workplace problems of this type focus on professional women’s experience. We find that in this sample, most incivilities came from supervisors, followed by customers and then coworkers. Among supervisors, women were the most common perpetrators, while customer and coworker perpetrators were largely men. The type of incivility varied depending on role: Disparagement was common on the part of supervisors and customers, while coworkers were far more likely to engage in sexual harassment, which was virtually nonexistent among supervisors. Consequences for targets of these incivilities included anxiety, which most had experienced, and income loss. We offer suggestions for future research and policy.

The Freedom Machine

If you could have a tool always whispering in your ear the best choices, would you use it? Is being the best version of yourself the point of life? In this work of philosophical short story fiction, Kiki has a problem, the computer program that continually whispers the best choices, the Infinity System, is broken. She has been using it for years and simply doing what it says. Following its advice has become second nature to her. She heads into the shop to get it looked at, and finds out it must be sent off for repairs. She will be making choices on her own for a few days. The friendly “Mastermind” service representative at the shop asks her out on a date. Without her Infinity System giving her advice, she decides to take a chance and say yes. She ends up getting drunk and sleeping with him. When she heads into the store to check to see if her Infinity System is repaired, she sees the same “Mastermind” using the same pickup lines on a new woman. She storms out. Finally, after several lost days, her repaired Infinity System is repaired and sent to her house. Now she is stuck with the final decision, will she start using it again?

Pengembangan Learning Object pada Training Basic di PT.Circleka Indonesia Utama

Pengembangan ini bertujuan untuk menghasilkan produk berupa Learning Object pada Training Basic di PT.Circleka Indonesia Utama. Produk Learning Object ini difokuskan pada pengembangan video pembelajaran mengacu pada model Rapid Prototyping yang memiliki lima tahap antara lain Assess Needs and Analyze Content, Set Objectives, Construct Prototype (design), Utilization Prototype (research), dan Installing the Final System. Produk Learning Object ini telah melalui tahap evaluasi yang melibatkan para ahli dan pengguna (Customer Service Representative Circle K). Hasil uji coba expert review yang diperoleh dari ahli materi sebesar 3,56 (sangat baik), ahli desain pembelajaran, ahli media pembelajaran 3,49 (sangat baik). Kemudian pada tahap uji coba pengguna (one-to-one evaluation) memperoleh nilai 3,20 (baik) dan (small group evaluation) dengan nilai 3,49 (sangat baik). Hasil evaluasi formatif menunjukan bahwa produk Learning Object ini dapat digunakan pada Training Basic Circle K sebagai bagian dari Store Development Program (SDP) PT. Circleka Indonesia Utama.

CONSUMER COMPLAINT BEHAVIOR (CCB) PELANGGAN MINIMARKET DI JOMBANG

The business development are getting very competitive especially in retail…….; the businessman must be responsive to the customers complaint and handle the unsatisfied service given. In this research, the categorized of cause of complaint are: the price labeling, the miscalculated by cashier, the services and products problems. Alternative of Cunsomer Complaint Behavior which is taken by the customers influenced by simple complaints and asking compensation to fix demographic factors or some situation of CCB is also influence by choosing complaints alternatives. Some alternatives action of CCB done by the customers with dissatisfactions are : complaining by phone, meeting cashiers directly (the most popular alternative), meeting the retail employees, meeting the customer service representative, calling the retail company to obtain the procedure on how to complain, meeting the supervisor, complaining by mass media (radio, newspapers), using the mediation service by the consumers complaint service. Customers have many CCB hierarchies, however, the procedures and actions intensity are varies. The action intensity is the next step of hierarchy and the situational to the customers. The economics and psychological factor is the most basic consideration to differentiating steps of CCB which need for the customers doing complaint.

Construing negotiation

The call centre conversation is a telephonic exchange of voices between the customer and the customer service representative (CSR). Both lexicogrammatical and prosodic features are used to construe emotional and attitudinal recognition. Studying these features can investigate how the call centre discourse is construed, and how the interpersonal meaning takes shape through the text. The spoken data are constructed by Filipino CSRs and American English-speaking customers. The findings show that participants tend to make specific paralinguistic voice quality choices to express their emotions in dialogue. This article first discusses the voice quality framework for its semiotic features in relation to interpersonal meaning, reviews previous voice quality studies and later delineates how voice quality relates to interpersonal meaning in the calls.