Core curricular elements of effective undergraduate technology management academic programs

Technology management skills have become increasingly important to employers in today’s rapidly changing technological environment; yet a scarcity of research exists regarding desired core competencies of undergraduate technology management majors. The purpose of this study was to determine the core curricular elements of an effective undergraduate technology management academic program. A quantitative mixed-mode (Internet-based and paper-based) survey design using a 5-point Likert rating (strongly agree, somewhat agree, neither agree nor disagree, somewhat disagree, and strongly disagree) was used to solicit opinions from members of the sample population regarding core curricular elements of effective undergraduate technology management programs. Implementation of this research project included the following 5 phases: (a) identification of the sample population, (b) selection of survey software, (c) survey instrument design and pilot testing, (d) data gathering, and (e) data analysis. This exploratory descriptive study employed purposive expert sampling of 180 people with technology management expertise in four industry sectors (i.e., business services, education, government, and manufacturing); in addition, 18 executive board members of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and 30 members of the Southern Wayne County Chamber of Commerce were queried. Information regarding the relative perceived importance of each of the following eight core technology management competency areas was sought: (a) strategic management of technology, (b) management of innovation and product development, (c) management of technological change, (d) management of organizational change, (e) project management, (f) assessment and evaluation of technology, (g) quality management of technology, and (h) information and knowledge management. Significance was determined at the .05 level

Offshore wind cost optimisation: developing market strategies for the next generation of offshore wind farms

Offshore Wind has a vast potential to reduce carbon emissions and create economic prosperity, as well as increasing energy security of supply. For these potential resources to be exploited, and to build an offshore wind market fit for the future, the sector has to remain competitive, increase energy yield and reduce financing and technology uncertainties. The main focus of the industry is to create a market that drives innovation and competition, supporting growth and keeping costs down for consumers [1]. This research will assess the current market strategies of the offshore wind by organising the work into five parts: The first section will discuss the main drivers of the electricity market globally. The UK offshore wind market will be assessed to understand the main strategic drivers of the market. The third section will explore the innovative approaches used in advanced sectors, such as the automotive and aerospace industries. The review of the innovative approaches, identified the Quality Function Deployment, the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving and the Failure Mode and Effect Analysis methods as the most appropriate integrated methods that can assist the designer to consider all the interactions between technical solutions to a problem, and the necessary compromises that are required to meet the design requirements. The structured innovation approach is presented and tested in Section four, followed by the demonstration of the application of the method on a direct drive generator and floating subsystem. The results of the two case studies are discussed in the final section followed by a conclusion of the report

ICSEA 2021: the sixteenth international conference on software engineering advances

The Sixteenth International Conference on Software Engineering Advances (ICSEA 2021), held on October 3 - 7, 2021 in Barcelona, Spain, continued a series of events covering a broad spectrum of software-related topics. The conference covered fundamentals on designing, implementing, testing, validating and maintaining various kinds of software. The tracks treated the topics from theory to practice, in terms of methodologies, design, implementation, testing, use cases, tools, and lessons learnt. The conference topics covered classical and advanced methodologies, open source, agile software, as well as software deployment and software economics and education. The conference had the following tracks: Advances in fundamentals for software development Advanced mechanisms for software development Advanced design tools for developing software Software engineering for service computing (SOA and Cloud) Advanced facilities for accessing software Software performance Software security, privacy, safeness Advances in software testing Specialized software advanced applications Web Accessibility Open source software Agile and Lean approaches in software engineering Software deployment and maintenance Software engineering techniques, metrics, and formalisms Software economics, adoption, and education Business technology Improving productivity in research on software engineering Trends and achievements Similar to the previous edition, this event continued to be very competitive in its selection process and very well perceived by the international software engineering community. As such, it is attracting excellent contributions and active participation from all over the world. We were very pleased to receive a large amount of top quality contributions. We take here the opportunity to warmly thank all the members of the ICSEA 2021 technical program committee as well as the numerous reviewers. The creation of such a broad and high quality conference program would not have been possible without their involvement. We also kindly thank all the authors that dedicated much of their time and efforts to contribute to the ICSEA 2021. We truly believe that thanks to all these efforts, the final conference program consists of top quality contributions. This event could also not have been a reality without the support of many individuals, organizations and sponsors. We also gratefully thank the members of the ICSEA 2021 organizing committee for their help in handling the logistics and for their work that is making this professional meeting a success. We hope the ICSEA 2021 was a successful international forum for the exchange of ideas and results between academia and industry and to promote further progress in software engineering research

Accelerating inference in cosmology and seismology with generative models

Statistical analyses in many physical sciences require running simulations of the system that is being examined. Such simulations provide complementary information to the theoretical analytic models, and represent an invaluable tool to investigate the dynamics of complex systems. However, running simulations is often computationally expensive, and the high number of required mocks to obtain sufficient statistical precision often makes the problem intractable. In recent years, machine learning has emerged as a possible solution to speed up the generation of scientific simulations. Machine learning generative models usually rely on iteratively feeding some true simulations to the algorithm, until it learns the important common features and is capable of producing accurate simulations in a fraction of the time. In this thesis, advanced machine learning algorithms are explored and applied to the challenge of accelerating physical simulations. Various techniques are applied to problems in cosmology and seismology, showing benefits and limitations of such an approach through a critical analysis. The algorithms are applied to compelling problems in the fields, including surrogate models for the seismic wave equation, the emulation of cosmological summary statistics, and the fast generation of large simulations of the Universe. These problems are formulated within a relevant statistical framework, and tied to real data analysis pipelines. In the conclusions, a critical overview of the results is provided, together with an outlook over possible future expansions of the work presented in the thesis

The town of Meredith, New Hampshire 2006 annual report for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2006.

This is an annual report containing vital statistics for a town/city in the state of New Hampshire

WATER SAFETY MANAGEMENT, LEGIONELLA PREVENTION AND RISK MANAGEMENT IN HOSPITALS: A FRAMEWORK FOR ESTATES AND FACILITIES MANAGEMENT IN ENGLAND

This study is the first to evaluate water safety and Legionella prevention from a management level perspective. It is an organisation’s duty to prevent any harm or risks potentially threatening the health of people. For that, certain processes are essential to be applied. They should be known by the people responsible and those, who are involved in any process serving to maintain health and safety, and to reduce known hazards. This thesis’s purpose is to create a significant contribution to knowledge by creating the first ever suggested framework for England. It makes a distinct and original contribution to knowledge as it is easy to understand and provides schemes and docu-ment templates for reference and for application. The specific aim of this research is to systematically identify the present situation of water safety and Legionella prevention in water systems in healthcare organisations, i.e. hospitals and hospital trusts in England. It seeks to create a framework guiding management processes to people re-sponsible to identify and better understand roles and processes to properly take action for the prevention of water system related infections caused by Legionella. The focus of the research lies in organisational structures from the point of view of Estates and Facilities Management. It anal-yses the current state of the process of Legionella prevention with a focus in England and with a different way of looking at the problem. In research papers the topic is neither very prevalent nor easily accessible at management levels. Methodology is built on a mixed methods research de-sign and a multilevel triangulation approach. An embedded design applies cases for analysis, that have been empirically collected during an exploratory first phase with cases in the UK, Germany and Switzerland. A consecutive country-specific phase fosuing the research more specific was applied for England. Data from interviews and documents was collected and analysed during the exploratory phase, which had a focus on taxonomy and to explore job descriptions and factors in hospitals that have a thematic connection to Legionella, risk management and water systems for the purpose of water safety management. This phase was also necessary to test the fluency of the procedures selected for data collection and verify and confirm the case strategy chosen. Re-search of the following phase collected and analysed data from interviews, a survey and docu-ments. The specific focus of this phase was to find patterns, define coding structures, build cate-gories, analyse and compare content by applying cycles of content analysis to find levels of ab-straction to create a draft version of a framework, which underwent a validation step in a final fo-cus group by experts in the field of risk management and water safety. Throughout the research process, the findings present a systematically reviewed and analysed picture of procedures of water safety management. It applies stakeholder analysis as well as pro-cess analysis, demonstrating levels of collaboration, risk management procedures, process man-agement, quality management, environmental management and knowledge management. The dissemination of the research’s output is a framework titled “Water safety management, Le-gionella prevention and risk management in hospitals: a framework for Estates and Facilities Man-agement in England”. It aims at closing the gap between theory and practice and complies with best practice. It translates given obligations into the professional field of Estates and Facilities Management and should be made available for transferring knowledge

A Micromechanics-based Multiscale Approach toward Continental Deformation, with Application to Ductile High-Strain Zones and Quartz Flow Laws

Earth’s lithosphere may be regarded as a composite material made of rheologically heterogeneous elements. The presence of these heterogeneous elements causes flow partitioning, making the deformation of Earth’s lithosphere heterogeneous on all observation scales. Understanding the multiscale heterogeneous deformation and the overall rheology of the lithosphere is very important in structural geology and tectonics. The overall rheology of Earth’s lithosphere on a given observation scale must be obtained from the properties of all constituents and may evolve during the deformation due to the fabric development. Both the problem of flow partitioning and characterization of the overall rheology are closely related and require a fully mechanical multiscale approach. This thesis refines a micromechanics-based multiscale modeling approach called the self-consistent MultiOrder Power Law Approach (MOPLA). MOPLA treats the heterogeneous rock mass as a continuum of rheologically distinct elements. The rheological properties and the mechanical fields of the constituent elements and those of the composite material are computed by solving partitioning and homogenization equations self-consistently. The algorithm of MOPLA has been refined and implemented in MATLAB for high-performance computing. The micromechanical approach is used to investigate the deformation of ductile high-strain zones, advancing previous work on this subject to a full mechanical level. This thesis considers a ductile high-strain zone as a flat heterogeneous inclusion embedded in the ductile lithosphere subjected to a tectonic deformation due to remote plate motion. The kinematic and the mechanical fields inside and outside the high-strain zone, including the finite strain accumulation in there, are solved by partitioning equations. The overall rheology of the high-strain zone is obtained by means of a self-consistent homogenization scheme. Understanding the continental rheology requires an accurate quartz dislocation creep flow law. Despite decades of experimental studies, there are considerable discrepancies in quartz flow law parameters. This thesis proposes that the discrepancies could be explained by considering both the pressure effect on the activation enthalpy and the slip system dependence of the stress exponent. Two distinct dislocation creep flow laws corresponding to two dominant slip systems are determined based on the current dataset of the creep experiments on quartz samples