Adopting more diverse models of organisation in higher education- the implications for institutional strategy.

A universal approach to strategy formulation in higher education implies one that is fit for the many and complex contingencies faced by that institution. Reviews of current form of strategising indicate that the present approach to strategic management falls short of meeting that criterion. The paper suggests that this deficiency might be addressed by adopting a much more fluid perception of the university as an organisation and devising a form of strategic management that that takes greater account of the paradoxical nature of the institution and the environment in which it operates. It argues that deficiencies in the present form may be attributable to a limited systemic theorisation university as an organisation and suggests adopting a more pluralistic approach, one that involves paying greater attention to the local processes that actually bring change about. The result is a much more diffuse and continuous conceptualisation of strategy that fuses intentional and emergent forms and helps to reframe the many conflicting strategic issues which are faced by higher education institutionsi

Book Reviews

The New Alchemists by Charles Handy, This Great Little Nation By Gene Kerrigan and Pat Brennan, As it is in Heaven by Niall William

Understanding what matters to patients – identifying key patients' perceptions of quality

OBJECTIVES: To demonstrate a statistical method to enable the identification of key drivers of quality from a patient perspective that can be used by service providers to help drive improvement. DESIGN: Cross-tabulation, Chi-square analysis and Cramers V calculation using SPSS software of NHS Inpatient Surveys 2006 and 2007. SETTING: The NHS Inpatient Survey is a standardized survey designed by the Picker Institute conducted on a sample of patients across all acute care hospital trusts in England. PARTICIPANTS: The surveys (available from the UK Data Archive) provide anonymized patient data for over 77,000 patients in 2006 and 72,000 patients in 2007. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Cramers V score testing associations between patient ratings on multiple components of care and ratings on the overall quality of care. RESULTS: Of the 58 questions analysed, some questions correlate more strongly with overall satisfaction of care than others and there is strong agreement of results over the two years. Of the top 20 rated components, communication (both between professionals and between professionals and patients) and trust engendered by that communication is a recurring theme. CONCLUSIONS: Hospital trusts are required to develop quality indicators and collate detailed feedback from patients in addition to the annual inpatient survey to measure these. To make best use of resources, additional data collection should focus on those aspects of care of most importance to patients locally. This analysis demonstrates a statistical technique that can help to identify such priority areas by showing those aspects of care most strongly associated with the overall rating of care. The analysis uses national level data to demonstrate how this can be achieved. This shows the importance to patients of being treated with dignity and respect, and good communication between staff and between staff and patients

P1_8 Magcargo, I Don't Choose You!

In this paper we estimate the Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) of Magcargo, the "Lava Pokemon" from the popular Pokemon video game series, and from there estimate the caloric intake necessary to maintain its extremely high internal temperature of 10, 000 C. We then calculate approximately how much heat energy a Magcargo would leak to its surroundings in the Pokemon world. It was found that it would have an impossibly high BMR of 3.94×10^733 W, which would require Magcargo to ingest 1.18×10^733 Calories each second. Additionally, it would emit thermal radiation with a Luminosiy of 1.27×10^9 W

P1_5 The View Of The Sun From Alien Worlds

In this paper, we estimate whether the planets of the Solar System would be detectable by a theoretical extraterrestrial civilisation with a level of technology similar to present day Earth. We found that Jupiter, Earth, and Venus could have been detected already, while Saturn, Uranus and Neptune would be detectable in the future. Mars and Mercury are considered undetectable

P1_4 Starship UK, the Hardest of Brexits?

In this paper we estimated the amount of energy and mass of fuel required to move the landmass of the United Kingdom, including the crust down to a depth of 24 km, into a “stable” circular Low Earth Orbit. We also compared various launch vehicles in terms of how much they can carry to orbit, and thus how many would be required and how much this would cost. It was found that 5.17X 10^26 J of energy would be required, or  7.06X10^14 Falcon 9 launchers, %at a cost of\\ £2.69X 10^22,which would take 1.48 Tera-years to save for.

P1_6 "Let the old gods flow through me one last time!

This paper investigates whether the Bifrost, a magical beam of light that the Asguardians use to travel between realms, can act as a spaceship transporting the Hulk across space by looking at the time and energy required to send him back to Earth in Marvels; Infinity War. We calculated that at 0.999 c the Hulk would take 2.52 ± 0.14 million years with a kinetic energy of 1.01x1021 J and a total energy of 23.5x1021 J

P1_1 That Lucky Old Sun

In this paper we assessed the plausability of the Archimedes II orbital laser, found in the Fallout New Vegas videogame, by assessing the potential destructive output of the laser. We found that the laser would be a lot weaker than presented in game, but if it were connected to a power plant with a typical output, it would easily be able to output the destructive powers seen in the Fallout serie

Explosive events in active region observed by IRIS and SST/CRISP

Transition-region explosive events (EEs) are characterized by non-Gaussian line profiles with enhanced wings at Doppler velocities of 50–150 km s−1. They are believed to be the signature of solar phenomena that are one of the main contributors to coronal heating. The aim of this study is to investigate the link of EEs to dynamic phenomena in the transition region and chromosphere in an active region. We analyse observations simultaneously taken by the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) in the Si iv 1394 Å line and the slit-jaw (SJ) 1400 Å images, and the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope in the Hα line. In total 24 events were found. They are associated with small-scale loop brightenings in SJ 1400 Å images. Only four events show a counterpart in the Hα−35 km s−1 and Hα+35 km s−1 images. Two of them represent brightenings in the conjunction region of several loops that are also related to a bright region (granular lane) in the Hα−35 km s−1 and Hα+35 km s−1 images. 16 are general loop brightenings that do not show any discernible response in the Hα images. Six EEs appear as propagating loop brightenings, from which two are associated with dark jet-like features clearly seen in the Hα−35 km s−1 images. We found that chromospheric events with jet-like appearance seen in the wings of the Hα line can trigger EEs in the transition region and in this case the IRIS Si iv 1394 Å line profiles are seeded with absorption components resulting from Fe ii and Ni ii. Our study indicates that EEs occurring in active regions have mostly upper-chromosphere/transition-region origin. We suggest that magnetic reconnection resulting from the braidings of small-scale transition region loops is one of the possible mechanisms of energy release that are responsible for the EEs reported in this paper