Look at the Future: Canada and the United States in the Future World Economic Context--Can We Be Competitive, A

Canada and United States and worldwide economic competitio

Practitioners, observers and the community of received wisdom: The actor-based approach to technological investment decisions

This paper addresses the problem of technology valuation in UK financial institutions, specifically concerning the introduction of Internet Banking. The research looked into the prescribed processes and the respective established practices for Technological Investment Decision-Making (TIDM) in banks. Significant disparity between process and practice was found, on the grounds that the actual decisions are determined by experts’ perceptions and are less about the normative assessment of economic value, as defined in academic literature and corporate handbooks. The research suggests that the TIDM problem is socially constructed (rather than externally addressed) by experts who either participate directly in decision-making or, alternatively, contribute to developing relevant methodologies. The TIDM problem is ultimately defined by the disparate perceptions of the problem that these different interested parties, or “actors”, assume. Three classes of actors were identified: (1) Practitioners, namely expert professionals in Financial Institutions, (2) Observers, primarily academic researchers, consultants and government bodies, and (3) the Community of Received Wisdom, reflecting commonly understood views on what TIDM is and how it should be made. According to the Actor-based approach, the shape of the TIDM problem results from continuous negotiations between actors’ viewpoints, in light of expert power positions, political advocacy and fitness to the prevailing TIDM paradigms. These viewpoints are by default informed by experts’ academic and professional backgrounds, which strongly influence both the received understanding of the TIDM problem, and the perceptions of practitioner and research experts. The paper recommends that the Actor-based approach may contribute to improving TIDM: instead of seeking measurement precision as the solution to valuation ambiguities, notoriously characterising technological investment, it is suggested that we take explicit account of the differently-informed perceptions of expert groups, as these are encoded into existing formal methodologies. By mobilising these disparities, newer approaches can combine the socio-political together with the economic factors for technological valuation

AI and data in engineering and innovation:Towards a sustainable future?

29th International Conference on Engineering, Technology, and Innovation (ICE 2023) touched upon the critical issues in engineering of the generative AI era. By looking at the key challenges in data-driven project management and sustainable development, the overarching theme emerging from the event was one of adaptation to AI and data tools as essential part of the work process and supporting new approaches in engineering, technology development and innovation and entrepreneurship. This points to a promising future ahead, where digital transformation reaches the extended engineering disciplines, which is the theme of the following ICE conference. Having said that, the use of digital tools also presents a number of problems, from data-driven biases to challenges of interdisciplinary, inter-organisational and inter-entity collaborations.</p

Avaliacao de fatores prognosticos do carcinoma bronquico indiferenciado de pequenas celulas

O presente estudo partiu da percepção clínica do autor de que o número de fatores capazes de avaliar o prognóstico de pacientes com carcinoma brônquico indiferenciado de pequenas células deveria ser provavelmente maior do que o correntemente referido na literatura médica

Demonstration of an Aerocapture GN and C System Through Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulations

Aerocapture is an orbit insertion maneuver in which a spacecraft flies through a planetary atmosphere one time using drag force to decelerate and effect a hyperbolic to elliptical orbit change. Aerocapture employs a feedback Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GN&C) system to deliver the spacecraft into a precise postatmospheric orbit despite the uncertainties inherent in planetary atmosphere knowledge, entry targeting and aerodynamic predictions. Only small amounts of propellant are required for attitude control and orbit adjustments, thereby providing mass savings of hundreds to thousands of kilograms over conventional all-propulsive techniques. The Analytic Predictor Corrector (APC) guidance algorithm has been developed to steer the vehicle through the aerocapture maneuver using bank angle control. Through funding provided by NASA's In-Space Propulsion Technology Program, the operation of an aerocapture GN&C system has been demonstrated in high-fidelity simulations that include real-time hardware in the loop, thus increasing the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of aerocapture GN&C. First, a non-real-time (NRT), 6-DOF trajectory simulation was developed for the aerocapture trajectory. The simulation included vehicle dynamics, gravity model, atmosphere model, aerodynamics model, inertial measurement unit (IMU) model, attitude control thruster torque models, and GN&C algorithms (including the APC aerocapture guidance). The simulation used the vehicle and mission parameters from the ST-9 mission. A 2000 case Monte Carlo simulation was performed and results show an aerocapture success rate of greater than 99.7%, greater than 95% of total delta-V required for orbit insertion is provided by aerodynamic drag, and post-aerocapture orbit plane wedge angle error is less than 0.5 deg (3-sigma). Then a real-time (RT), 6-DOF simulation for the aerocapture trajectory was developed which demonstrated the guidance software executing on a flight-like computer, interfacing with a simulated IMU and simulated thrusters, with vehicle dynamics provided by an external simulator. Five cases from the NRT simulations were run in the RT simulation environment. The results compare well to those of the NRT simulation thus verifying the RT simulation configuration. The results of the above described simulations show the aerocapture maneuver using the APC algorithm can be accomplished reliably and the algorithm is now at TRL-6. Flight validation is the next step for aerocapture technology development

Beyond prototypes: Enabling innovation in technology-enhanced learning

The TEL research programme, which ran from 2007 to 2013, has generated some substantial gains in our understanding of how to design and deploy technologies for learning. These findings, together with the growing field of technology-enhanced learning internationally, are witnessing the growth of TEL research into a vibrant academic field, extending throughout the UK and beyond. Yet there is a surprising failure to translate the findings, prototypes and outputs of projects into commercial products and services that individually and collectively achieve radical change in the quality of teaching and learning. This difficulty seems part of a general problem of translating innovation in the laboratory (or classroom or school) into commercial gain: A key recurring issue that has been raised in the Science and Technology Committee’s previous inquiries is the difficulty of translating research into commercial application, particularly the lack of funding—the so-called “valley of death”. (Commons Select Committee, 2011 ). The field of Technology Enhanced Learning, despite some notable exceptions, is rife with results that never made it across the valley of death. In the TEL research programme, there were some exciting and innovative examples of working prototypes that solved significant research problems. Yet few of these projects have successfully taken their prototypes to market. Three of the eight funded TEL projects achieved success in gaining follow-on funding from the ESRC specifically earmarked for the achievement of “impact”, although it is too soon to know if and how such impact will be achieved, and more generally, the relationship between impact and the commercial exploitation of projects’ outputs. In general, despite the fact that all projects successfully designed and built effective prototypes of systems: the question is how to move from prototype to product. This report addresses this issue head-on from an interdisciplinary perspective that brings together experts in diverse relevant fields including educational technology, organizational behavior, innovation dynamics

Magnetoacoustic Portals and the Basal Heating of the Solar Chromosphere

We show that inclined magnetic field lines at the boundaries of large-scale convective cells (supergranules) provide "portals" through which low-frequency ( 5 mHz) acoustic waves, which are believed to provide the dominant source of wave heating of the chromosphere. This result opens up the possibility that low-frequency magnetoacoustic waves provide a significant source of energy for balancing the radiative losses of the ambient solar chromosphere

Characterising the chemical and physical properties of phase-change nanodroplets

Phase-change nanodroplets have attracted increasing interest in recent years as ultrasound theranostic nanoparticles. They are smaller compared to microbubbles and they may distribute better in tissues (e.g. in tumours). They are composed of a stabilising shell and a perfluorocarbon core. Nanodroplets can vaporise into echogenic microbubbles forming cavitation nuclei when exposed to ultrasound. Their perfluorocarbon core phase-change is responsible for the acoustic droplet vaporisation. However, methods to quantify the perfluorocarbon core in nanodroplets are lacking. This is an important feature that can help explain nanodroplet phase change characteristics. In this study, we fabricated nanodroplets using lipids shell and perfluorocarbons. To assess the amount of perfluorocarbon in the core we used two methods, 19F-NMR and FTIR. To assess the cavitation after vaporisation we used an ultrasound transducer (1.1MHz) and a high-speed camera. The 19F-NMR based method showed that the fluorine signal correlated accurately with the perfluorocarbon concentration. Using this correlation, we were able to quantify the perfluorocarbon core of nanodroplets. This method was used to assess the content of the perfluorocarbon of the nanodroplets in solutions over time. It was found that perfluoropentane nanodroplets lost their content faster and at higher ratio compared to perfluorohexane nanodroplets. The high-speed camera showed that these nanodroplets have similar cavitation with commercial microbubbles. Nanodroplet characterisation should include perfluorocarbon concentration assessment as critical information for their development