Project alliances in Australasia - differences with other forms of relationship based procurement

Project alliancing for the delivery of Australasian infrastructure and construction projects is a growing form of project procurement. Project alliancing differs from other forms of alliancing in the business sector between entities that form real or quasi joint ventures in an alliance to jointly deliver products such as aircraft, military assets, or information technology products. The purpose of this paper is to highlight how project alliancing as it currently exists in the Australasian context significantly varies from other relationship-based project procurement forms. The paper extends our knowledge and understanding of this particular alliancing form. The value of this paper lies in its currency in capturing of the lived experience of alliance team members through the rich insights gathered from those intimately involved in them. The implications of reported results on project management practice is that it highlights key defining cultural ambience differences between these alliances and other types relationship-based project procurement forms that need to be understood by all participants to facilitate project success

Analysis of Small Water Management Structures in Irrigation Distribution Systems

The Irrigation and Drainage Research Conference conducted at Utah State University (ASCE, 1964) delineated many of the research needs regarding “Small Low- Cost Hydraulic Structures for Conveyance and Distribution Systems,” which was one of the six topics considered at the conference. In discussing possibilities for accomplishing the recommended research, it was suggested by some panel members that a considerable portion of the work could be undertaken by graduate students, particularly at the Master of Science level. The intent of this report has been to sort through the large volume of literature in an attempt to define the specific research needs regarding small water management structure used in irrigation distribution systems. In particular, the emphasis has been to develop specific research topics which could be accomplished as a thesis by a graduate student at the Master of Science level

Overprinting orogenic events, ductile extrusion and strain partitioning during Caledonian transpression, NW Mainland Shetland

A 3.6 km thick stack of mid-crustal deformed Precambrian rocks is associated with the North Roe Nappe (NRN) and Walls Boundary Fault in the northernmost Scottish Caledonides on NW Mainland Shetland. The greenschist- to amphibolite-facies rocks display unusually complex and heterogeneous combinations of coaxial and non-coaxial transpressional deformation. Previously published isotopic dating, together with new detailed field mapping and microstructural characterisation show that the NRN preserves a record of Neoarchaean, Neoproterozoic (Knoydartian) and Ordovician-Silurian (Caledonian) overprinting deformation and metamorphism. Neoarchaean events in the Uyea Gneiss Complex located in its footwall are reworked by younger events in the overlying nappe pile. The main ductile fabrics were formed during Caledonian top-to-the W/NW thrusting and top-to-the N sinistral shearing, with subordinate regions of top- to-the E extensional and NNE-SSW dextral shearing. In lower parts of the NRN, these different kinematic domains are texturally indistinguishable and overprinting relationships are absent. At higher levels, top-to-the-W/NW thrust-related fabrics are consistently overprinted by top-to-the-N/NE sinistral shearing. The highly partitioned transpressional deformation shows similarities with equivalent rocks of the Moine Nappe in NW Scotland

Recent Applications of RNA Sequencing in Food and Agriculture

RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) is the leading, routine, high-throughput, and cost-effective next-generation sequencing (NGS) approach for mapping and quantifying transcriptomes, and determining the transcriptional structure. The transcriptome is a complete collection of transcripts found in a cell or tissue or organism at a given time point or specific developmental or environmental or physiological condition. The emergence and evolution of RNA-Seq chemistries have changed the landscape and the pace of transcriptome research in life sciences over a decade. This chapter introduces RNA-Seq and surveys its recent food and agriculture applications, ranging from differential gene expression, variants calling and detection, allele-specific expression, alternative splicing, alternative polyadenylation site usage, microRNA profiling, circular RNAs, single-cell RNA-Seq, metatranscriptomics, and systems biology. A few popular RNA-Seq databases and analysis tools are also presented for each application. We began to witness the broader impacts of RNA-Seq in addressing complex biological questions in food and agriculture

WESTT (Workload, Error, Situational Awareness, Time and Teamwork): An analytical prototyping system for command and control

Modern developments in the use of information technology within command and control allow unprecedented scope for flexibility in the way teams deal with tasks. These developments, together with the increased recognition of the importance of knowledge management within teams present difficulties for the analyst in terms of evaluating the impacts of changes to task composition or team membership. In this paper an approach to this problem is presented that represents team behaviour in terms of three linked networks (representing task, social network structure and knowledge) within the integrative WESTT software tool. In addition, by automating analyses of workload and error based on the same data that generate the networks, WESTT allows the user to engage in the process of rapid and iterative “analytical prototyping”. For purposes of illustration an example of the use of this technique with regard to a simple tactical vignette is presented

Pulmonary environmental cues drive group 2 innate lymphoid cell dynamics in mice and humans

Group 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2s) are enriched in mucosal tissues (e.g., lung) and respond to epithelial cell–derived cytokines initiating type 2 inflammation. During inflammation, ILC2 numbers are increased in the lung. However, the mechanisms controlling ILC2 trafficking and motility within inflamed lungs remain unclear and are crucial for understanding ILC2 function in pulmonary immunity. Using several approaches, including lung intravital microscopy, we demonstrate that pulmonary ILC2s are highly dynamic, exhibit amoeboid-like movement, and aggregate in the lung peribronchial and perivascular spaces. They express distinct chemokine receptors, including CCR8, and actively home to CCL8 deposits located around the airway epithelium. Within lung tissue, ILC2s were particularly motile in extracellular matrix–enriched regions. We show that collagen-I drives ILC2 to markedly change their morphology by remodeling their actin cytoskeleton to promote environmental exploration critical for regulating eosinophilic inflammation. Our study provides previously unappreciated insights into ILC2 migratory patterns during inflammation and highlights the importance of environmental guidance cues in the lung in controlling ILC2 dynamics

Flux-Line Lattice Structures in Untwinned YBa2Cu3O

A small angle neutron scattering study of the flux-line lattice in a large single crystal of untwinned YBa2Cu3O is presented. In fields parallel to the c-axis, diffraction spots are observed corresponding to four orientations of a hexagonal lattice, distorted by the a-b anisotropy. A value for the anisotropy, the penetration depth ratio, of 1.18(2) was obtained. The high quality of the data is such that second order diffraction is observed, indicating a well ordered FLL. With the field at 33 degrees to c a field dependent re-orientation of the lattice is observed around 3T.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Direct measurement of optical quasidistribution functions: multimode theory and homodyne tests of Bell's inequalities

We develop a multimode theory of direct homodyne measurements of quantum optical quasidistribution functions. We demonstrate that unbalanced homodyning with appropriately shaped auxiliary coherent fields allows one to sample point-by-point different phase space representations of the electromagnetic field. Our analysis includes practical factors that are likely to affect the outcome of a realistic experiment, such as non-unit detection efficiency, imperfect mode matching, and dark counts. We apply the developed theory to discuss feasibility of observing a loophole-free violation of Bell's inequalities by measuring joint two-mode quasidistribution functions under locality conditions by photon counting. We determine the range of parameters of the experimental setup that enable violation of Bell's inequalities for two states exhibiting entanglement in the Fock basis: a one-photon Fock state divided by a 50:50 beam splitter, and a two-mode squeezed vacuum state produced in the process of non-degenerate parametric down-conversion.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figure

The evolution of ultraviolet emission lines from the circumstellar material surrounding SN 1987A

The presence of narrow high-temperature emission lines from nitrogen-rich gas close to SN 1987A has been the principal observational constraint on the evolu- tionary status of the supernova's progenitor. A new analysis of the complete five-year set of low and high resolution IUE ultraviolet spectra of SN 1987A (1987.2--1992.3) provide fluxes for the N V 1240, N IV] 1486, He II 1640, OIII] 1665, NIII] 1751, and CIII] 1908 lines with significantly reduced random and systematic errors and reveals significant short-term fluctuations in the light curves. The N V, N IV] and N III] lines turn on sequentially over 15 to 20 days and show a progression from high to low ionization potential, implying an ioni- zation gradient in the emitting region. The line emission turns on suddenly at 83+/-4 days after the explosion, as defined by N IV]. The N III] line reaches peak luminosity at 399+/-15 days. A ring radius of (6.24+/-0.20)E{17} cm and inclination of 41.0+/-3.9 is derived from these times, assuming a circular ring. The probable role of resonant scattering in the N V light curve introduces systematic errors that leads us to exclude this line from the timing analysis. A new nebular analysis yields improved CNO abundance ratios N/C=6.1+/-1.1 and N/O=1.7+/-0.5, confirming the nitrogen enrichment found in our previous paper. From the late-time behavior of the light curves we find that the emission origi- nates from progressively lower density gas. We estimate the emitting mass near maximum (roughly 400 days) to be roughly 4.7E{-2} solar masses, assuming a filling factor of unity and an electron density of 2.6E4 cm^{-3}. These results are discussed in the context of current models for the emission and hydrodynamics of the ring.Comment: 38 pages, AASTeX v.4.0, 13 Postscript figures; ApJ, in pres