4,477 research outputs found
Which governs - the relationship or the contract?
According to the transaction cost economics literature, a firm’s external contractual relationships must be ‘fit for purpose’. What is a ‘fit for purpose’ contractual relationship should not be a normative decision, but an objective one, to be made with regard to achieving transaction cost efficiency, while defending the core competencies of the firm. Data from a Hong Kong case study is used to examine whether or not the client’s choice of contractual relationship is ‘fit for purpose’ and also to evaluate the impact of such a choice. The findings suggest that maintaining a relationship of high quality as a strategic policy not only reduces recourse to the contract but, also improves the quality and predictability of project performance and, is an antidote to ill-aligned contractual elements. These findings lend support to the growing trend towards relationship or relational contracting in construction
Development of a scalable generic platform for adaptive optics real time control
The main objective of the present project is to explore the viability of an
adaptive optics control system based exclusively on Field Programmable Gate
Arrays (FPGAs), making strong use of their parallel processing capability. In
an Adaptive Optics (AO) system, the generation of the Deformable Mirror (DM)
control voltages from the Wavefront Sensor (WFS) measurements is usually
through the multiplication of the wavefront slopes with a predetermined
reconstructor matrix. The ability to access several hundred hard multipliers
and memories concurrently in an FPGA allows performance far beyond that of a
modern CPU or GPU for tasks with a well defined structure such as Adaptive
Optics control. The target of the current project is to generate a signal for a
real time wavefront correction, from the signals coming from a Wavefront
Sensor, wherein the system would be flexible to accommodate all the current
Wavefront Sensing techniques and also the different methods which are used for
wavefront compensation. The system should also accommodate for different data
transmission protocols (like Ethernet, USB, IEEE 1394 etc.) for transmitting
data to and from the FPGA device, thus providing a more flexible platform for
Adaptive Optics control. Preliminary simulation results for the formulation of
the platform, and a design of a fully scalable slope computer is presented.Comment: Paper presented as part of SPIE ICOP 2015 Conference Proceeding
Quantum information processing using strongly-dipolar coupled nuclear spins
Dipolar coupled homonuclear spins present challenging, yet useful systems for
quantum information processing. In such systems, eigenbasis of the system
Hamiltonian is the appropriate computational basis and coherent control can be
achieved by specially designed strongly modulating pulses. In this letter we
describe the first experimental implementation of the quantum algorithm for
numerical gradient estimation on the eigenbasis of a four spin system.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, Accepted in PR
Interactive flight control system analysis program
A summary of the development, use, and documentation of the interactive software (DIGIKON IV) for flight control system analyses is presented. A list of recommendations for future development is also included
What Drives Foundation Expenses & Compensation? Results of a Three-Year Study, Highlights
This brief presents key findings from the latest report of the Foundation Expenses and Compensation Project—the first large-scale, longterm, systematic study of independent, corporate, and community foundations' expense and compensation patterns and the factors behind them. Documenting the varying characteristics of the 10,000 largest U.S. grantmaking foundations, the study finds these differences—including foundation type, size, and operating activities—essential for understanding foundation finances. Not surprisingly, hiring staff and taking on staff-intensive activities raise charitable administrative expenditures relative to charitable distributions, while relying on unpaid board and family members and engaging in less-staff-intensive activities lower them. Most foundation operations, however, are somewhere between these poles
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