New Project Knowledge Management: Lessons Learned from temporary structures of Public Sector R&D Organisations

R&D Organisations are key players in the knowledge economy and make major contributions to Australia’s efforts to achieve and maintain competitive advantage. The explicit purpose of R&D organisations is to develop new knowledge and apply existing knowledge in new ways. Much of the R&D is carried out in temporary structures or project teams. Drawing upon theory and grounded in case based evidence, this paper explores how new forms of project management affect knowledge generating and application processes in R&D organisations. It appears that much of the knowledge generation and application occurs through taking advantage of almost naturally occurring oscillations between open and closed system practices over the course of projects. Theoretical and practical lessons and implications for further research are advanced

Treasures from Near Eastern Looms

The exhibition and catalogue held at Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Me., Sept. 11, 1981 to Nov. 22, 1981 and The Textile Museum, Washington, D.C., Dec. 11, 1981 to Feb. 6, 1982 Photographs by Robert H. Stillwell.https://digitalcommons.bowdoin.edu/art-museum-exhibition-catalogs/1090/thumbnail.jp

One-year costs of bilateral or single internal mammary grafts in the Arterial Revascularisation Trial

Objective: Coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) using bilateral internal mammary arteries (BIMA) may improve survival over CABG using single internal mammary arteries (SIMA), but may be surgically more complex (and therefore costly) and associated with impaired sternal wound healing. We report, for the first time, a detailed comparison of healthcare resource use and costs over 12 months, as part of the Arterial Revascularisation (ART) Trial.  Methods: 3102 patients in 28 hospitals in seven countries were randomised to CABG surgery using BIMA (n=1548) or SIMA (n=1554). Detailed resource use data were collected covering surgery, the initial hospital episode, and for 12 months post randomisation. Using UK unit costs, total costs were calculated and compared between trial arms and for subgroups.  Results: Patients randomised to BIMA spent 20 min longer in theatre (95% CI 15 to 25, p<0.001) and also required more treatment for sternal wound problems. Mean (SD) total costs per patient at 12 months were £13 839 (£10 534) for BIMA and £12 717 (£9719) for SIMA (mean cost difference £1122, 95% CI £407 to £1838, p=0.002). No tests for interaction between subgroups and treatment allocation were significant.  Conclusions: At 12 months from randomisation, mean costs were approximately 9% higher in BIMA than SIMA patients, primarily due to longer time in theatre and in-hospital stay, and slightly higher costs related to sternal wound problems during follow-up. Follow-up to the primary trial endpoint of 10 years will reveal whether longer-term differences emerge in graft patency or in overall survival

Seasonal flight pattern of the western balsam bark beetle, Dryocoetes confusus Swaine (Coleoptera: Curculioniae), in Central British Columbia

Seasonal flight pattern of the western balsam bark beetle, Dryocoetes confusus Swaine, in stands of subalpine fir, Abies lasiocarpa (Hook) Nutt., in north-central British Columbia was monitored for three years using multiple-funnel traps baited with (±)-exo-brevicomin.  There were two major flight periods per year, the first commencing in mid- to late June, and the second occurring in mid- to late August.  The first flight was predominantly males, while the second flight was composed primarily of females, probably reemerged parent adults.  Little flight occurred until within-stand temperatures exceeded 15ºC.  Traps placed 6 m above ground caught 4 times as many beetles as traps placed 2 m above ground.  Our results indicate that semio-chemical-based manipulation of the western balsam bark beetle should be implemented by early May

Incorporation of a high potential quinone reveals that electron transfer in Photosystem I becomes highly asymmetric at low temperature

Photosystem I (PS I) has two nearly identical branches of electron-transfer co-factors. Based on point mutation studies, there is general agreement that both branches are active at ambient temperature but that the majority of electron-transfer events occur in the A-branch. At low temperature, reversible electron transfer between P700 and A1A occurs in the A-branch. However, it has been postulated that irreversible electron transfer from P700 through A1B to the terminal iron-sulfur clusters FA and FB occurs via the B-branch. Thus, to study the directionality of electron transfer at low temperature, electron transfer to the iron-sulfur clusters must be blocked. Because the geometries of the donor–acceptor radical pairs formed by electron transfer in the A- and B-branch differ, they have different spin-polarized EPR spectra and echo- modulation decay curves. Hence, time-resolved, multiple-frequency EPR spectroscopy, both in the direct-detection and pulse mode, can be used to probe the use of the two branches if electron transfer to the iron-sulfur clusters is blocked. Here, we use the PS I variant from the menB deletion mutant strain of Synechocyctis sp. PCC 6803, which is unable to synthesize phylloquinone, to incorporate 2,3-dichloro-1,4-naphthoquinone (Cl2NQ) into the A1A and A1B binding sites. The reduction midpoint potential of Cl2NQ is approximately 400 mV more positive than that of phylloquinone and is unable to transfer electrons to the iron-sulfur clusters. In contrast to previous studies, in which the iron-sulfur clusters were chemically reduced and/or point mutations were used to prevent electron transfer past the quinones, we find no evidence for radical-pair formation in the B-branch. The implications of this result for the directionality of electron transfer in PS I are discussed

The geographies of access to enterprise finance: the case of the West Midlands, UK

The geographies of access to enterprise finance: the case of the West Midlands, UK, Regional Studies. Whilst there is a long history of credit rationing to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK, the financial crisis has seen banks retreat further from lending to viable SMEs due to a reassessment of risk and lack of available capital. In so doing, the credit crunch is thought to be creating new geographies of financial exclusion. This paper explores the financial inclusion of enterprise through community development finance institutions (CDFIs) which provide loan finance to firms at the commercial margins in the West Midlands, UK. The paper concludes that CDFIs could partially address the financial exclusion of enterprise as an additional, alternative source of finance to that of mainstream banks

Cuts and flows of cell complexes

We study the vector spaces and integer lattices of cuts and flows associated with an arbitrary finite CW complex, and their relationships to group invariants including the critical group of a complex. Our results extend to higher dimension the theory of cuts and flows in graphs, most notably the work of Bacher, de la Harpe and Nagnibeda. We construct explicit bases for the cut and flow spaces, interpret their coefficients topologically, and give sufficient conditions for them to be integral bases of the cut and flow lattices. Second, we determine the precise relationships between the discriminant groups of the cut and flow lattices and the higher critical and cocritical groups with error terms corresponding to torsion (co)homology. As an application, we generalize a result of Kotani and Sunada to give bounds for the complexity, girth, and connectivity of a complex in terms of Hermite's constant.Comment: 30 pages. Final version, to appear in Journal of Algebraic Combinatoric

Disk Detective: Discovery of New Circumstellar Disk Candidates through Citizen Science

The Disk Detective citizen science project aims to find new stars with 22 micron excess emission from circumstellar dust using data from NASA's WISE mission. Initial cuts on the AllWISE catalog provide an input catalog of 277,686 sources. Volunteers then view images of each source online in 10 different bands to identify false-positives (galaxies, background stars, interstellar matter, image artifacts, etc.). Sources that survive this online vetting are followed up with spectroscopy on the FLWO Tillinghast telescope. This approach should allow us to unleash the full potential of WISE for finding new debris disks and protoplanetary disks. We announce a first list of 37 new disk candidates discovered by the project, and we describe our vetting and follow-up process. One of these systems appears to contain the first debris disk discovered around a star with a white dwarf companion: HD 74389. We also report four newly discovered classical Be stars (HD 6612, HD 7406, HD 164137, and HD 218546) and a new detection of 22 micron excess around a previously known debris disk host star, HD 22128.Comment: 50 pages, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

The Contribution of Melanoregulin to Microtubule-Associated Protein 1 Light Chain 3 (LC3) Associated Phagocytosis in Retinal Pigment Epithelium

A main requisite in the phagocytosis of ingestedmaterial is a coordinated series of maturation steps which leadto the degradation of ingested cargo. Photoreceptor outersegment (POS) renewal involves phagocytosis of the distaldisk membranes by the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE).Previously, we identified melanoregulin (MREG) as an intra-cellular cargo-sorting protein required for the degradation ofPOS disks. Here, we provide evidence that MREG-dependentprocessing links both autophagic and phagocytic processes inLC3-associated phagocytosis (LAP). Ingested POSphagosomes are associated with endogenous LC3 andMREG. The LC3 association with POSs exhibited propertiesof LAP; it was independent of rapamycin pretreatment, butdependent on Atg5. Loss of MREG resulted in a decrease inthe extent of LC3-POS association. Studies using DQ™-BSAsuggest that loss of MREG does not compromise the associ-ation and fusion of LC3-positive phagosomes with lysosomes.Furthermore, the mechanism of MREG action is likelythrough a protein complex that includes LC3, as determinedby colocalization and immunoprecipitation in both RPE cellsand macrophages. We posit that MREG participates incoordinating the association of phagosomes with LC3 forcontent degradation with the loss of MREG leading tophagosome accumulation