The present study investigated whether exposure to aromas during recess periods affects work performance. Subjects comprised 36 healthy male students (mean age, 24.2 +/- 2.2 years) who were randomly divided into three groups: (1) control group, not exposed to aroma during recesses; (2) jasmine group, exposed to jasmine aroma during recesses; and (3) lavender group, exposed to lavender aroma dur...

This paper examines incentive-wage effects for production and for managerial/technical workers in both urban and rural Chinese non-agricultural enterprises. We report strong evidence of productivity-enhancing wage behavior among enterprises in all ownership categories. There is also evidence that firms paying higher efficiency wages experience less shirking among their employees. We find that t...

K ES SL ER /R EU TE RS /C O RB IS The power flows freely at West Virginia Alloys. This factory, tucked into the Kanawha River valley about 50 kilometres upstream from Charleston, West Virginia, is the second largest consumer of electricity in the state. It routinely pulls more than 120 megawatts of power from the grid, directing it into five electric arc furnaces that heat quartz to about 1,500...

We propose a novel definition of efficiency, valid for motors in a nonequilibrium stationary state exchanging heat and possibly other resources with an arbitrary number of reservoirs. This definition, based on a rational estimation of all irreversible effects associated with power production, is adapted to the concerns of sustainable development. Under conditions of maximum power production the...