618 research outputs found
Agility Within Higher Education It Organizations: a Loosely Coupled Systems Perspective
This dissertation examines how leadership focus on innovation and organizational centralization relate with organizational agility, speed of technology adoption, and defined governance processes and technology standards. The study used data from the 2015 Educause survey of higher education IT organizations (N = 822). A five-component framework of organizational agility was identified via factor analysis and subsequently used to evaluate relationships between study variables. Findings reveal that leadership focus on innovation was statistically significant in predicting all five identified components of organizational agility, the speed of technology adoption, and the adoption of defined governance standards, reinforcing the perspective that communication is critically important in supporting the organizational agility concepts of sensing and responding. Additionally, despite existing theoretical perspectives, the study provided no supporting evidence that organizational centralization was related to organizational agility, the speed of technology adoption, nor the adoption of defined governance processes and technology standards. Lastly, the findings reveal that leadership focus on innovation is not negatively related to organizational centralization as initially theorized, but the relationship is actually positive. This positive finding between leadership focus on innovation and organizational centralization provides partial support for the perceived IT paradox
An HI absorption distance to the black hole candidate X-ray binary MAXI J1535-571
With the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) we monitored
the black hole candidate X-ray binary MAXI J1535--571 over seven epochs from 21
September to 2 October 2017. Using ASKAP observations, we studied the HI
absorption spectrum from gas clouds along the line-of-sight and thereby
constrained the distance to the source. The maximum negative radial velocities
measured from the HI absorption spectra for MAXI J1535--571 and an
extragalactic source in the same field of view are km s and
km s, respectively. This rules out the far kinematic distance
( kpc), giving a most likely distance of
kpc, with a strong upper limit of the tangent point at kpc.
At our preferred distance, the peak unabsorbed luminosity of MAXI J1535--571
was per cent of the Eddington luminosity, and shows that the soft-to-hard
spectral state transition occurred at the very low luminosity of 1.2 -- 3.4
10 times the Eddington luminosity. Finally, this study
highlights the capabilities of new wide-field radio telescopes to probe
Galactic transient outbursts, by allowing us to observe both a target source
and a background comparison source in a single telescope pointing.Comment: Revised after favorable referee report from MNRAS Letter
Photoinduced Electron Paramagnetic Resonance Study Of Electron Traps In Tio2 Crystals: Oxygen Vacancies And Ti3+ Ions
The UTMOST: A hybrid digital signal processor transforms the MOST
The Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope (MOST) is an 18,000 square meter
radio telescope situated some 40 km from the city of Canberra, Australia. Its
operating band (820-850 MHz) is now partly allocated to mobile phone
communications, making radio astronomy challenging. We describe how the
deployment of new digital receivers (RX boxes), Field Programmable Gate Array
(FPGA) based filterbanks and server-class computers equipped with 43 GPUs
(Graphics Processing Units) has transformed MOST into a versatile new
instrument (the UTMOST) for studying the dynamic radio sky on millisecond
timescales, ideal for work on pulsars and Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs). The
filterbanks, servers and their high-speed, low-latency network form part of a
hybrid solution to the observatory's signal processing requirements. The
emphasis on software and commodity off-the-shelf hardware has enabled rapid
deployment through the re-use of proven 'software backends' for its signal
processing. The new receivers have ten times the bandwidth of the original MOST
and double the sampling of the line feed, which doubles the field of view. The
UTMOST can simultaneously excise interference, make maps, coherently dedisperse
pulsars, and perform real-time searches of coherent fan beams for dispersed
single pulses. Although system performance is still sub-optimal, a pulsar
timing and FRB search programme has commenced and the first UTMOST maps have
been made. The telescope operates as a robotic facility, deciding how to
efficiently target pulsars and how long to stay on source, via feedback from
real-time pulsar folding. The regular timing of over 300 pulsars has resulted
in the discovery of 7 pulsar glitches and 3 FRBs. The UTMOST demonstrates that
if sufficient signal processing can be applied to the voltage streams it is
possible to perform innovative radio science in hostile radio frequency
environments.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure
Molecular profiling of multiplexed gene markers to assess viability of ex vivo human colon explant cultures
© Janice E. Drew et al. 2015; Published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. This Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank the patients who kindly donated tissue samples, Sally Chalmers of the Tayside Tissue Bank for her help with collecting of the tissue donor samples, Emma Moss for advice on human colon dissection and explant culture, and Claus Dieter Mayer, Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland, for advice on statistical analysis. This work was supported by the Scottish Government (GT403), Scottish Universities Life Science Alliance, and TENOVUS Scotland.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
A kinetic and theoretical study of the borate catalysed reactions of hydrogen peroxide: the role of dioxaborirane as the catalytic intermediate for a wide range of substrates
Our recent work has provided new insights into the equilibria and species that exist in aqueous solution at different pHs for the boric acid – hydrogen peroxide system, and the role of these species in oxidation reactions. Most recently, (M. C. Durrant, D. M. Davies and M. E. Deary, Org. Biomol. Chem., 2011, 9,7249–7254), we have produced strong theoretical and experimental evidence for the existence of a previously unreported monocyclic three membered peroxide species, dioxaborirane, that is the likely catalytic species in borate mediated electrophilic reactions of hydrogen peroxide in alkaline solution. In the present paper, we extend our study of the borate–peroxide system to look at a wide range of substrates that include substituted dimethyl anilines, methyl-p-tolyl sulfoxide, halides, hydrogen sulfide anion, thiosulfate ,thiocyanate, and hydrazine. The unusual selectivity–reactivity pattern of borate catalysed reactions compared with hydrogen peroxide and inorganic or organic peracids previously observed for theorganic sulfides (D. M. Davies, M. E. Deary, K. Quill and R. A. Smith, Chem.–Eur. J., 2005, 11, 3552–3558) is also seen with substituted dimethyl aniline nucleophiles. This provides evidence that the pattern is not due to any latent electrophilic tendency of the organic sulfides and further supports dioxaborirane being the likely reactive intermediate, thus broadening the applicability of this catalytic system. Moreover, density functional theory calculations on our proposed mechanism involving dioxaborirane are consistent with the experimental results for these substrates. Results obtained at high concentrations of both borate and hydrogen peroxide require the inclusion the diperoxodiborate dianion in the kinetic analysis .A scheme detailing our current understanding of the borate–peroxide system is presented
A new layout optimization technique for interferometric arrays, applied to the MWA
Antenna layout is an important design consideration for radio interferometers
because it determines the quality of the snapshot point spread function (PSF,
or array beam). This is particularly true for experiments targeting the 21 cm
Epoch of Reionization signal as the quality of the foreground subtraction
depends directly on the spatial dynamic range and thus the smoothness of the
baseline distribution. Nearly all sites have constraints on where antennas can
be placed---even at the remote Australian location of the MWA (Murchison
Widefield Array) there are rock outcrops, flood zones, heritages areas,
emergency runways and trees. These exclusion areas can introduce spatial
structure into the baseline distribution that enhance the PSF sidelobes and
reduce the angular dynamic range. In this paper we present a new method of
constrained antenna placement that reduces the spatial structure in the
baseline distribution. This method not only outperforms random placement
algorithms that avoid exclusion zones, but surprisingly outperforms random
placement algorithms without constraints to provide what we believe are the
smoothest constrained baseline distributions developed to date. We use our new
algorithm to determine antenna placements for the originally planned MWA, and
present the antenna locations, baseline distribution, and snapshot PSF for this
array choice.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in MNRA
Interferometric imaging with the 32 element Murchison Wide-field Array
The Murchison Wide-field Array (MWA) is a low frequency radio telescope,
currently under construction, intended to search for the spectral signature of
the epoch of re-ionisation (EOR) and to probe the structure of the solar
corona. Sited in Western Australia, the full MWA will comprise 8192 dipoles
grouped into 512 tiles, and be capable of imaging the sky south of 40 degree
declination, from 80 MHz to 300 MHz with an instantaneous field of view that is
tens of degrees wide and a resolution of a few arcminutes. A 32-station
prototype of the MWA has been recently commissioned and a set of observations
taken that exercise the whole acquisition and processing pipeline. We present
Stokes I, Q, and U images from two ~4 hour integrations of a field 20 degrees
wide centered on Pictoris A. These images demonstrate the capacity and
stability of a real-time calibration and imaging technique employing the
weighted addition of warped snapshots to counter extreme wide field imaging
distortions.Comment: Accepted for publication in PASP. This is the draft before journal
typesetting corrections and proofs so does contain formatting and journal
style errors, also has with lower quality figures for space requirement
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