This paper describes a robot manipulator system currently under development which learns assembling technique from observation of skilled worker’s demonstrations. The system is an application of EBL (Explanation-Based Learning) to the robot manufacturing domain. The system improves the operating capability of the robot manipulator through observing, analyzing the skilled worker’s assembling ope...

In a laboratory study, the presence of individual- or work-group-level electronic performance monitoring (EPM) was manipulated as participants worked on a data-entry task alone, as a member of a noninteracting aggregate, or as a member of a cohesive group. The pattern of results suggested the operation of a social facilitation effect, as highly skilled monitored participants keyed more entries ...

Increased attention has recently been paid to the phenomenon of the brain drain of skilled (and often unskilled) Africans from their home countries to countries in the West. In part this is because of the relatively large percentages of skilled Africans going abroad. It is also due to the increased focus on the economic development of Africa in general, and the concern that many countries in Af...

Dependency on migrant workers is a growing situation in Malaysia particularly the ones from Indonesia, world's largest non-skilled and semi-skilled worker importer. Despite their decision to migrate order obtain better livelihood, there are various risks faced by Indonesian workers, including exploitation. To this day, problems women mostly dominated documents forgery, fraud, overstay, unpaid w...

The global movement towards free trade and market integration has enabled greater mobility for skilled professionals, including nurses. As of 2015, newly graduated Canadian nurses will enter the register with an exam prepared by the US-based National Council of State Boards of Nursing, making Canadian nurses possibly the most mobile skilled workers in North America. But given the fragmentation ...

A central organizing framework of the voluminous recent literature studying changes in the returns to skills and the evolution of earnings inequality iswhatwe refer to as the canonicalmodel, which elegantly and powerfully operationalizes the supply and demand for skills by assuming two distinct skill groups that perform twodifferent and imperfectly substitutable tasks or produce two imperfectly...

The large influx of immigrants in recent decades has led to an equally long, still unresolved debate over its effect on the economic well-being of native-born workers. Specifically, does immigration impose costs on U.S. workers by diminishing their labor market prospects? Economic theory posits that an increase in the supply of labor, such as through immigration, will reduce the wages and emplo...