Construction dispute reduction through an improved contracting process in the Canadian context

This thesis presents a new approach to construction contracting in North America. This new approach is referred to as the New Canadian Contracting Method (NCCM). It has been developed as a result of research into the existing contracting process used in North America generally and in Canada specifically. The NCCM addresses four main issues that were identified in the research, namely: confrontational construction; dispute resolution problems and costs; the project execution team selection process; completion of contracts. The NCCM addresses these issues without being prescriptive or by attempting to address one party's agenda over another. This is because these two approaches have been common to previous and unsuccessful attempts at addressing these issues. The new contracting method proposes the following four elements. First the designer and contractor are selected on a qualification basis. The designer and the contractor may be brought on to the project team at a time when the contractor can add to constructability by having input into production of the working drawings. Second, a commercial risk evaluation process is introduced as a part of the negotiation or tendering stage. This approach is innovative, and allows both the owner and the contractors to have input to the identification and allocation of risk in the contract. Third the administration of the contract involves a Proactive Mediation Process that is designed to reduce the incidence of conflict and lower or eliminate conflict resolution costs. Fourth the close-out of contracts is formalized with a process for realigning the completion of the contract. This is done by reassigning outstanding obligations to the best advantage of all parties. The draft process was tested for validity. The consensus was that, with some modifications (included in the thesis), the NCCM could be useful to the Canadian construction industry

Life history and management of the fox squirrel with particular reference to the western race Sciuru

Master of ScienceForestryUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/115425/2/39015003263160.pd

Beyond IT interoperability assessment: Complexity analysis of the project context

IT people do best what they are trained to do: examine interoperability issues through a technical lens. It may be unfair to ask of them to systematically and comprehensively analyze non-IT concerns of an interoperability project such as business strategy, constraints and governance. Yet to fully understand the feasibility of an interoperability project, IT people need to examine non-IT factors that can make or break these complex, expensive and time consuming projects. This paper is about a model that emerged from a research project about understanding the nature of IT projects. The Complexity-Based Project Classification Framework can be used to assess the feasibility of a business interoperability project. A three-round international Delphi project with a sample of 23 acknowledged experts identified and prioritized the non-technical project attributes that need to be analyzed when assessing IT project feasibility. The Complexity-Based Project Classification Framework emerged. The Complexity-Based Project Classification Framework is composed of three parts: preconditions, contextual complexity attributes and project effort attributes. Once preconditions are in place (e.g. the organization needs to support using this model for assessing the feasibility of business interoperability) then the project team can assess the interoperability project by considering its project effort attributes (e.g. technology) and project contextual attributes (e.g. relative project size). It is suggested that practitioners who use this Framework will have an improved understanding of the IT interoperability project feasibility

The Progression Towards Project Management Competence

The purpose of this research was to investigate the soft competencies by project phase that IT project managers, hybrid and technical team members require for project success. The authors conducted qualitative interviews to collect data from a sample of 22 IT project managers and business leaders located in Calgary, Canada. They identified the key competencies for the three types of job roles. The research participants offered their opinions of what are the most important competencies from the following competence categories: Personal Attributes (e.g. eye for details), Communication (e.g. effective questioning), Leadership (e.g. create an effective project environment), Negotiations (e.g. consensus building), Professionalism (e.g. life long learning), Social Skills (e.g. charisma) and Project Management Competencies (e.g. manage expectations). The authors discuss the progression of competence through these job roles. They identified and discuss the interplay between a change in job role and the required competencies necessary for IT project success from a neuro-science perspective

Quantitative characterization of all single amino acid variants of a viral capsid-based delivery vehicle

Self-assembling protein containers are promising delivery vehicles for cellular and gene therapy applications, but the ability to predict how mutations alter self-assembly and other particle properties remains a significant challenge. Here, we combine comprehensive codon mutagenesis with high-throughput sequencing to characterize the assembly-competency of all single amino acid variants of a virus-like particle. The coat protein (CP) of MS2 bacteriophage was chosen because of its potential in targeted delivery and imaging. An assembly selection revealed a high-resolution fitness landscape that challenged several conventional protein engineering assumptions. Using the same approach with additional comprehensive mutagenesis strategies and selective pressures identified several other previously-uncharacterized variants for enabling efficient chemical and post-translational modifications as well as altered stability features. For example, the wild-type CP is acid tolerant down to pH 2, but we identified a variant with a single point mutation that confers stability at neutral pH but acid-triggered disassembly. Acid sensitivity is highly desirable in targeted delivery to improve the efficiency of endosomal release. In addition to providing a blueprint of how to tune the chemical and physical properties of the MS2 CP and other structurally-related virus-like particles, these techniques can readily be applied to the systematic study of other self-assembling proteins and protein-based delivery vehicles

The spiritual revolution and suicidal ideation: an empirical enquiry among 13- to 15-year-old adolescents in England and Wales

The association between conventional religiosity and suicide inhibition has been well explored and documented since the pioneering work of Durkheim. Commentators like Heelas and Woodhead point to ways in which conventional religiosity is giving way in England and Wales to a range of alternative spiritualities, including renewed interest in paranormal phenomena. Taking a sample of 3095 13- to 15-year-old adolescents, the present study examines the association between suicidal ideation and both conventional religiosity and paranormal beliefs, after controlling for individual differences in sex, age and personality (extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism). The data demonstrate that, while conventional religiosity is slightly associated with lower levels of suicidal ideation, paranormal beliefs are strongly associated with higher levels of suicidal ideation

The Delphi Method for Graduate Research

Introduction It continues to be an exciting time to be a researcher in the information systems discipline; there seems to be a plethora of interesting and pressing research topics suitable for research at the masters or PhD level. Researchers may want to look forward to see what will be the key information systems issues in a wireless world, the ethical dilemmas in social network analysis, and the lessons early adopters learn. Practitioners may be interested in what others think about the strengths and weaknesses of an existing information system, or the effectiveness of a newly implemented information system. The Delphi method can help to uncover data in these research directions. The Delphi method is an iterative process used to collect and distill the judgments of experts using a series of questionnaires interspersed with feedback. The questionnaires are designed to focus on problems, opportunities, solutions, or forecasts. Each subsequent questionnaire is developed based on the results of the previous questionnaire. The process stops when the research question is answered: for example, when consensus is reached, theoretical saturation is achieved, or when sufficient information has been exchanged. The Delphi method has its origins in the American business community, and has since been widely accepted throughout the world in many industry sectors including health care, defense, business, education, information technology, transportation and engineering. The Delphi method\u27s flexibility is evident in how it has been used. It is a method for structuring a group communication process to facilitate group problem solving and to structure models (Linstone & Turloff, 1975). The method can also be used as a judgment, decision-aiding or forecasting tool (Rowe & Wright, 1999), and can be applied to program planning and administration (Delbeq, Van de Ven, & Gustafson, 1975). The Delphi method can be used when there is incomplete knowledge about a problem or phenomena (Adler & Ziglio, 1996; Delbeq et al., 1975). The method can be applied to problems that do not lend themselves to precise analytical techniques but rather could benefit from the subjective judgments of individuals on a collective basis (Adler & Ziglio, 1996) and to focus their collective human intelligence on the problem at hand (Linstone & Turloff, 1975). Also, the Delphi is used to investigate what does not yet exist (Czinkota & Ronkainen, 1997; Halal, Kull, & Leffmann, 1997; Skulmoski & Hartman 2002). The Delphi method is a mature and a very adaptable research method used in many research arenas by researchers across the globe. To better understand its diversity in application, one needs to consider the origins of the Delphi method. The Classical Delphi The original Delphi method was developed by Norman Dalkey of the RAND Corporation in the 1950\u27s for a U.S. sponsored military project. Dalkey states that the goal of the project was to solicit expert opinion to the selection, from the point of view of a Soviet strategic planner, of an optimal U.S. industrial target system and to the estimation of the number of A-bombs required to reduce the munitions output by a prescribed amount, (Dalkey & Helmer, 1963, p. 458). Rowe and Wright (1999) characterize the classical Delphi method by four key features: 1. Anonymity of Delphi participants: allows the participants to freely express their opinions without undue social pressures to conform from others in the group. Decisions are evaluated on their merit, rather than who has proposed the idea. 2. Iteration: allows the participants to refine their views in light of the progress of the group\u27s work from round to round. 3. Controlled feedback: informs the participants of the other participant\u27s perspectives, and provides the opportunity for Delphi participants to clarify or change their views. 4. Statistical aggregation of group response: allows for a quantitative analysis and interpretation of data.

Not fitting in and getting out : psychological type and congregational satisfaction among Anglican churchgoers in England

Listening to the motivations reported by individuals for ceasing church attendance and becoming church leavers, Francis and Richter identified high on the list the sense of "not fitting in". Drawing on psychological type theory, several recent studies have documented the way in which some psychological types are over-represented in church congregations and other psychological types are under-represented. Bringing these two observations together, the present study tested the hypothesis that church congregations have created type-alike communities within which individuals displaying the opposite type preferences are more likely to feel marginalised and to display lower levels of satisfaction with the congregations they attend. Data were provided by 1867 churchgoers who completed a measure of psychological type, together with measures of frequency of attendance and congregational satisfaction. These data confirmed that congregations were weighted towards preferences for introversion, sensing, feeling and judging, and that individuals displaying the opposite preferences (especially intuition, thinking and perceiving) recorded lower levels of congregational satisfaction. The implications of these findings are discussed for promoting congregational retention by enhancing awareness of psychological type preferences among those who attend

Modelling the VHE flare of 3C 279 using one zone leptonic model

We model the simultaneous observations of the flat spectrum radio quasar 3C 279 at radio, optical, X-ray and very high energy (VHE) gamma ray energies during 2006 flare using a simple one zone leptonic model. We consider synchrotron emission due to cooling of a non-thermal electron distribution in an equipartition magnetic field and inverse Compton emission due to the scattering off synchrotron photons (SSC) and external soft photons (EC) by the same distribution of electrons. We show that the VHE gamma ray flux cannot be explained by SSC process thereby suggesting the EC mechanism as a plausible emission process at this energy. The EC scattering of BLR photons to VHE energies will be in Klein-Nishina regime predicting a steep spectrum which is contrary to the observations. However the infrared photons from the dusty torus can be boosted to VHE energies with the scattering process remaining in the Thomson regime. Though EC process can successfully explain the observed VHE flux, it require a magnetic field much lower than the equipartition value to reproduce the observed X-ray flux. Hence we attribute the X-ray emission due to SSC process. We derive the physical parameters of 3C 279 considering the above mentioned emission processes. In addition we assume the size of emission region constrained by a variability timescale of one day. This model can successfully reproduce the broadband spectrum of 3C 279 but predicts substantially large flux at MeV-GeV energies.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRA

Microtubule-severing enzymes: From cellular functions to molecular mechanism.

Microtubule-severing enzymes generate internal breaks in microtubules. They are conserved in eukaryotes from ciliates to mammals, and their function is important in diverse cellular processes ranging from cilia biogenesis to cell division, phototropism, and neurogenesis. Their mutation leads to neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders in humans. All three known microtubule-severing enzymes, katanin, spastin, and fidgetin, are members of the meiotic subfamily of AAA ATPases that also includes VPS4, which disassembles ESCRTIII polymers. Despite their conservation and importance to cell physiology, the cellular and molecular mechanisms of action of microtubule-severing enzymes are not well understood. Here we review a subset of cellular processes that require microtubule-severing enzymes as well as recent advances in understanding their structure, biophysical mechanism, and regulation