Electrical Design For Moringa Leaf Dryer

The objective of this project is to provide a methodology to the electrical scope of mechanical leaf dryers. This dryer was particularly designed for an off-grid farm in New Longoro, Ghana in which resources and materials are limited. The electrical system must be designed so that it works with motors, variable frequency drives, worm gears, and other materials that could be sourced in Ghana. The system should also draw minimal power so that remaining photovoltaic energy could be utilized on the farm. The system should be simplistic and repeatable for other farmers to utilize. By using both a numerical analysis and methodology, this project is aiming to create usable data to be reciprocated by others in need of a simplistic leaf dryer

An Examination of Employee Coachability and Managerial Coaching in Organizations

Volatile, complex, and ambiguous work environments require organizations to focus on continuous employee development and performance improvement across all organizational levels. As a result, organizational development (OD) practices for employee development rapidly increased throughout the past decade. One such vital individualized training intervention – organizational coaching – facilitates continuous behavioral change, development, and performance improvement across employees (Joo et al., 2012). Researchers, like practitioners, though, often examine coaching in isolation, focusing on the coach without considering the impact those being coached (i.e., coachees) have on the success of the coaching process. Coachees’ ability to seek, thoughtfully consider, act, and change behavior based on feedback provided during coaching interactions (i.e., their coachability) remains a critical, yet understudied factor in the coaching equation. A targeted examination of employee coachability, therefore, offers a more in-depth understanding of the coaching dynamic. Thus, I extensively explored antecedents, behaviors, and outcomes of employee coachability. The goals of this research centered on contributing to the organizational coaching and coachability literatures through a thorough examination of employee coachability, which includes the interplay between managerial (i.e., organizational) coaching and employee coachability. While I initially examined employee coachability as a method through which organizations can maximize coaching interactions, the data indicates employee coachability functions independently of coaching behaviors. In other words, regardless of the quality of the coaching relationship, nature of feedback provided (i.e., quality and properly delivered), and environment (i.e., psychologically safe, feedback seeking supportive), coachable employees still seek, demonstrate receptivity to, and implement feedback to drive individual development and performance improvement. So, while coachability behaviors (i.e., feedback seeking, feedback receptivity, and transfer of coaching/feedback) surely remain important for optimizing coaching interactions (i.e., coaching cannot be effective without the coachee’s willingness to receive and implement coaching), the findings suggest the importance and impact of coachability spans these interactions. Specifically, employee coachability drives individual job performance, adaptability, and promotability. Research finds employee adaptability as a vital driver of organizational effectiveness to generate competitive advantages. As such, organizations may consider employee coachability a competency to which they hire or train employees in order to achieve and sustain competitive advantages

JUSTICE, TRUST, AND TEAM PERFORMANCE A Comparison of Leader Selection Methods on the Development of Team Trust

Throughout the past few decades, organizations have shifted from a management mandated, top down approach to a more collaborative, team based, horizontal structure (Miles & Snow, 1992). As a result, work teams are on the rise, which has led to an increase in leadership roles within organizations. The relationships between procedural justice and trust in leadership, and trust in leadership and performance are well established in current literature. The former relationship, however, has been analyzed only at the individual level. Given the prevalence of teams in academic and applied settings, it is imperative to understand how this relationship exists, if at all, at the team level. Thus, the aim of this study is to examine and establish the procedural justice, trust in leadership, and team performance relationship at the team level. Additionally, this study indirectly examines the impact of the leader selection process on procedural justice perceptions, and its ensuing influence on trust in leadership and team performance. Data was collected from 252 participants encompassing 60 teams with appointed group leaders engaged in a semester long Strategic Management group project. After removing data from teams with two or fewer individuals responding, the final sample used for analyses included 132 participants encompassing 47 teams. Data collection occurred at two time points during the semester. Time 1 data collection occurred during weeks 9 and 10 of the 16-week semester, and time 2 data collection occurred during weeks 15 and 16. Measures targeting participants’ procedural justice perceptions regarding the leader selection method were collected, as well as participants’ trust in their team leader; these measures were aggregated to the team level. Mediated regression was used to analyze the data. This study hypothesized that trust in leadership would mediate the relationship between procedural justice and team performance, and trust in leadership would lead to increased team performance. Contrary to expectations, however, the aforementioned hypotheses did not receive support. Theoretical and practical implications regarding the findings are detailed further in the discussion section

PREPARED FOR The Texas Clean Energy Coalition PREPARED BY

and George Mitchell Foundation. All results and any errors are the responsibility of the authors and do not represent the opinion of the project’s sponsors, The Brattle Group, Inc. or its clients. Acknowledgement: We would like to thank the following individuals for their assistance. Comverge: Colin Meeha

The Fourth Circuit, Suem and Reverse Veil Piercing in Delaware

In Sky Cable v. DIRECTV, Inc., the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit answered two narrow questions of first impression regarding the equitable remedy of reverse veil piercing in Delaware. Sky Cable provides an affirmative answer to a question of whether Delaware would recognize reverse veil piercing and a negative answer to a question of whether Delaware\u27s charging statute for limited liability companies precludes reverse veil piercing for a judgment creditor of an LLC member. In this Article, we suggest that Delaware courts might answer reverse veil piercing questions differently, based on equitable maxims and language in Delaware\u27s charging statute not considered in Sky Cable v. DIRECTV, Inc. [..

Scikit-learn: Machine Learning in Python

International audienceScikit-learn is a Python module integrating a wide range of state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms for medium-scale supervised and unsupervised problems. This package focuses on bringing machine learning to non-specialists using a general-purpose high-level language. Emphasis is put on ease of use, performance, documentation, and API consistency. It has minimal dependencies and is distributed under the simplified BSD license, encouraging its use in both academic and commercial settings. Source code, binaries, and documentation can be downloaded from http://scikit-learn.sourceforge.net