Project communication variables : a comparative study of US and UK industry perceptions

Research undertaken at the Construction Industry Institute (CII) in the USA has indicated the need for project managers to focus their attention on six ‘Critical Communication Variables’ as a means of ensuring the fulfillment of time cost and quality targets. These variables refer to the accuracy, timeliness and completeness of information presented to participants, as well as the level of understanding, barriers to and procedures for project based communication. The findings and tools generated by the CII study have been used as part of case study based research examining construction projects in the Central Belt region of Scotland. In addition to the CII data collection tools employed, the Scottish study included semi-structured interviews as a means of contextualising the communication and decision-making taking place. This paper presents the results of this benchmarking exercise, and highlights significant issues that project team members need to improve upon in order to achieve the timeliness quality and cost required in today’s construction industr

Polydactylous limbs in Strong's Luxoid mice result from ectopic polarizing activity

Strong's Luxoid (1st^D) is a semidominant mouse mutation in which heterozygotes show preaxial hindlimb polydactyly, and homozygotes show fore- and hindlimb polydactyly. The digit patterns of these polydactylous limbs resemble those caused by polarizing grafts, since additional digits with posterior character are present at the anterior side of the limb. Such observations suggest that 1st^D limb buds might contain a genetically determined ectopic region of polarizing activity. Accordingly, we show that mutant embryos ectopically express the pattern-determining genes fibroblast growth factor 4 (fgf-4), sonic hedgehog (shh), and Hoxd-12 in the anterior region of the limb. Further, we show that anterior mesoderm from mutant limbs exhibits polarizing activity when grafted into host chicken limbs. In contrast to an experimentally derived polydactylous transgenic mouse, forelimbs of homozygotes show a normal pattern of Hoxb-8 expression, indicating that the duplication of polarizing tissue here occurs downstream or independently of Hoxb-8. We suggest that the 1st gene product is involved in anteroposterior axis formation during normal limb development

Rounding Algorithms for a Geometric Embedding of Minimum Multiway Cut

The multiway-cut problem is, given a weighted graph and k >= 2 terminal nodes, to find a minimum-weight set of edges whose removal separates all the terminals. The problem is NP-hard, and even NP-hard to approximate within 1+delta for some small delta > 0. Calinescu, Karloff, and Rabani (1998) gave an algorithm with performance guarantee 3/2-1/k, based on a geometric relaxation of the problem. In this paper, we give improved randomized rounding schemes for their relaxation, yielding a 12/11-approximation algorithm for k=3 and a 1.3438-approximation algorithm in general. Our approach hinges on the observation that the problem of designing a randomized rounding scheme for a geometric relaxation is itself a linear programming problem. The paper explores computational solutions to this problem, and gives a proof that for a general class of geometric relaxations, there are always randomized rounding schemes that match the integrality gap.Comment: Conference version in ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (1999). To appear in Mathematics of Operations Researc

Inter-Domain Integration of Services and Service Management

The evolution of the global telecommunications industry into an open services market presents developers of telecommunication service and management systems with many new challenges. Increased competition, complex service provision chains and integrated service offerings require effective techniques for the rapid integration of service and management systems over multiple organisational domains. These integration issues have been examined in the ACTS project Prospect by developing a working set of integrated, managed telecommunications services for a user trial. This paper presents the initial results of this work detailing the technologies and standards used, the architectural approach taken and the application of this approach to specific services

Experiences in Integrated Multi-Domain Service Management

Increased competition, complex service provision chains and integrated service offerings require effective techniques for the rapid integration of telecommunications services and management systems over multiple organisational domains. This paper presents some of the results of practical development work in this area, detailing the technologies and standards used, the architectural approach taken and the application of this approach to specific services. This work covers the integration of multimedia services, broadband networks, service management and network management, though the detailed examples given focus specifically on the integration of services and service management

Restricted Stirling and Lah Number Matrices and Their Inverses

Given R⊆Nlet {nk}R, [nk]R, and L(n, k)Rcount the number of ways of partitioning the set [n] :={1, 2, ..., n}into knon-empty subsets, cycles and lists, respectively, with each block having cardinality in R. We refer to these as the R-restricted Stirling numbers of the second kind, R-restricted unsigned Stirling numbers of the first kind and the R-restricted Lah numbers, respectively. Note that the classical Stirling numbers of the second kind, unsigned Stirling numbers of the first kind, and Lah numbers are {nk}={nk}N, [nk]=[nk]Nand L(n, k) =L(n, k)N, respectively.It is well-known that the infinite matrices [{nk}]n,k≥1, [[nk]]n,k≥1and [L(n, k)]n,k≥1have inverses [(−1)n−k[nk]]n,k≥1,[(−1)n−k{nk}]n,k≥1and [(−1)n−kL(n, k)]n,k≥1respectively. The inverse matrices [{nk}R]−1n,k≥1, [[nk]R]−1n,k≥1and[L(n, k)R]−1n,k≥1exist and have integer entries if and only if 1 ∈R. We express each entry of each of these matrices as the difference between the cardinalities of two explicitly defined families of labeled forests. In particular the entries of[{nk}[r]]−1n,k≥1have combinatorial interpretations, affirmatively answering a question of Choi, Long, Ng and Smith from 2006.If we have 1, 2 ∈Rand if for all n ∈Rwith nodd and n ≥3, we have n ±1 ∈R, we additionally show that each entry of [{nk}R]−1n,k≥1, [[nk]R]−1n,k≥1and [L(n, k)R]−1n,k≥1is up to an explicit sign the cardinality of a single explicitly defined family of labeled forests. With Ras before we also do the same for restriction sets of the form R(d) ={d(r−1) +1 :r∈R}for all d ≥1. Our results also provide combinatorial interpretations of the kth Whitney numbers of the first and second kinds of Π1,dn, the poset of partitions of [n]that have each part size congruent to 1mod d

A quantitative approach to engineering fire life safety in modern underground coal mines

Emerging from a history of blanket approach prescriptive fire protection design, underground coal mining is rapidly embracing fire life safety analysis techniques that have been successfully used in performance-based fire engineering in the built environment. In Australia, the leading practice fire engineering approach is to apply the International Fire Engineering Guidelines (ABCB 2005) and its methods as a design assessment framework. This approach has recently been used to quantify the performance of mine fire detection and therefore control of fire spread, paving the way for improvements in mine fire intervention and mine worker escape. This paper presents a method of early fire detection using closed circuit television cameras and video analysis software associated with fixed plant fires leading to increased available safe evacuation time compared with contemporary point type fire detectors and gas monitoring sensors. Successful pilot tests of the fire detection technology have been carried out in simulated mine conditions. A quantified and scientifically informed risk-based approach, offering improvements in mine fire rescue intervention and evacuation methodologies was achieved

Incidence of Acute Kidney Injury among Patients Treated with Piperacillin-Tazobactam or Meropenem in Combination with Vancomycin

Acute kidney injury (AKI) increases during empirical antimicrobial therapy with the combination of piperacillin-tazobactam (TZP) and vancomycin (VAN) compared to the number of incidences with monotherapy or the combination of cefepime and VAN. Limited data regarding the impact of meropenem (MEM) combined with VAN exist. This study examined the AKI incidence among patients treated with MEM plus VAN (MEM+VAN) or TZP+VAN. Data were collected from the University of Kentucky Center for Clinical and Translational Science Enterprise Data Trust from September 2007 through October 2015. Adults without previous renal disease who received MEM+VAN or TZP+VAN for at least 2 days were included. AKI was assessed using risk, injury, failure, loss, and end-stage (RIFLE) criteria. Inverse probability of treatment weighting was utilized to control for differences between groups. In total, 10,236 patients met inclusion criteria, with 9,898 receiving TZP+VAN and 338 receiving MEM+VAN. AKI occurred in 15.4% of MEM+VAN patients and in 27.4% of TZP+VAN patients (P \u3c 0.001). TZP+VAN was associated with increased AKI compared to the level with MEM+VAN (odds ratio [OR], 2.53; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.82 to 3.52), after controlling for confounders. Use of MEM+VAN should be considered an appropriate alternative therapy to TZP+VAN if nephrotoxicity is a major concern. The results of this study demonstrate that judicial use of TZP+VAN for empirical coverage of infection is needed

Penerapan Model Pembelajaran Kooperatif Tipe Student Facilitator And Explaining untuk Meningkatkan Hasil Belajar IPS Siswa Kelas IV SD Negeri 56 Pekanbaru

The problem in this research was result of IPS fourth graders of SDN 56 Pekanbaru still low with average value of 67.07 with KKM 75. This research aims to improve student achievement the fourth grade SDN 56 pekanbaru with the implementation of cooperative learning model student facilitator and explaining. This research was conducted during the second semester of the academic year 2015/2016, with 28 students research subjects consisted of 15 male students and 13 female students. This reseach was classroom action research with two cycles, every cycle consisting of two meetings and one daily tests. Data and research instruments consisted of a learning device (syllabus, lesson plan, student worksheets), and data collection instruments such as observation sheets teachers and students as well as achievement test in the form of daily tests. Teachers activities at the first cycle of the first meeting with percentage of 75% (good categories), the second meeting becomes 79.17% (good categories). The first meeting of the second cycle with the percentage of 83.33% (very good category), at second meeting be 91.67% (very good category). Students activities at the first cycle of the first meeting with percentage of 75% (good category), at second meeting be 79.17% (good category). Students activities in the first cycle of the first meeting with percentage of 87.50% (very good category), at second meeting be 91.67% (very good category). Before the implementation of cooperative learning model student facilitator and explaining with KKM 70, average value of base score 67.07, after the implementation of this model average value of the first cycle increased to 76.60, with the increased in 9.53 (14.20%), while the second cycle of average value of students be 82.41 with an increased be 15:34 (22.87%)