Public ICT Innovations: A Strategic Ambiguity Perspective

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in the Journal of Information Technology . The definitive publisher-authenticated version, RAVISHANKAR, M.N., 2013. Public ICT innovations: a strategic ambiguity perspective. Journal of Information Technology, 28 (4), pp. 316 - 332, is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/jit.2013.18Public Information and Communications Technology (ICT) innovations are seen as having the potential to usher in a new era of technology-enabled models of governance in emerging economies. While it may be desirable for the implementation of such innovations to be underpinned by precise planning, structure and clarity, policy implementers in emerging economies are confronted instead by situations where ambiguous goals and means are standard. This paper considers high levels of ambiguity as a relatively enduring and intrinsic aspect of public ICT innovations in emerging economies. Drawing on an ethnographic study of Bangalore one, an innovative public ICT project implemented in Bangalore, India, the paper examines how strategic ambiguity is deployed by key public actors to chart the course of the implementation process and to steer it towards reasonable outcomes. Theoretically, the paper suggests that although strategic ambiguity is a precarious and unsettling condition in general, it can work effectively in contexts that are reasonably tolerant of ambiguous norms. The findings of the study also present arguments for why evaluation mechanisms need to be fundamentally reframed in order to assess the extent of implementation success of public ICT innovations in emerging economies

The dream-lag effect: Selective processing of personally significant events during Rapid Eye Movement sleep, but not during Slow Wave Sleep

Incorporation of details from waking life events into Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep dreams has been found to be highest on the night after, and then 5–7 nights after events (termed, respectively, the day-residue and dream-lag effects). In experiment 1, 44 participants kept a daily log for 10 days, reporting major daily activities (MDAs), personally significant events (PSEs), and major concerns (MCs). Dream reports were collected from REM and Slow Wave Sleep (SWS) in the laboratory, or from REM sleep at home. The dream-lag effect was found for the incorporation of PSEs into REM dreams collected at home, but not for MDAs or MCs. No dream-lag effect was found for SWS dreams, or for REM dreams collected in the lab after SWS awakenings earlier in the night. In experiment 2, the 44 participants recorded reports of their spontaneously recalled home dreams over the 10 nights following the instrumental awakenings night, which thus acted as a controlled stimulus with two salience levels, high (sleep lab) and low (home awakenings). The dream-lag effect was found for the incorporation into home dreams of references to the experience of being in the sleep laboratory, but only for participants who had reported concerns beforehand about being in the sleep laboratory. The delayed incorporation of events from daily life into dreams has been proposed to reflect REM sleep-dependent memory consolidation. However, an alternative emotion processing or emotional impact of events account, distinct from memory consolidation, is supported by the finding that SWS dreams do not evidence the dream-lag effect

Dreams reflect nocturnal sleep-dependent processes: They are continuous in early-night sleep, and emotional and hyperassociative in late-night sleep

Contributions of specific sleep stages to cognitive processes are increasingly understood. For instance, non-rapid eye movement (non-REM) sleep is particularly implicated in episodic memory consolidation, whilst rapid eye movement (REM) sleep preferentially consolidates and regulates emotional information. Dream content has been shown to transparently reflect these processes: non-REM dreams are more likely to picture episodic memories than REM dreams, and REM dreams are more emotional than non-REM dreams. REM sleep also gives rise to creativity and insight into problem solving, and this is reflected in the heightened levels of bizarreness in REM compared to non-REM dreams. However, across-the-night differences in the memory sources of dream content, as opposed to sleep stage differences, are less well understood. In the present study, 68 participants were awoken from their sleep in the early night and the late night, recorded their dreams and waking-life activities, and answered questions about them. It was found that early-night dreams were more clearly relatable to (or continuous with) waking life than late-night dreams, but late-night dreams were more emotional-important, more time orientation varied, and more hyperassociative, than early-night dreams. These findings have important implications for across-the-night alternating sleep-dependent cognitive processes, and illustrate underlying subjective mental content that accompanies sleep processes such as memory consolidation, emotion-processing, and creativity

Simulation of hierarchical control algorithms using a steady-state mathematical model of a vaporizer plant

This paper examines by simulation a number of hierarchical control techniques using a mathematical, steady-state, model of a laboratory pilot-scale vaporizer system divided into two subsystems. The techniques which have been investigated are the interaction prediction (direct) method, the interaction balance (price) method, and the method of integrated system optimization and parameter estimation (ISOPE). These methods have also been assessed with varius types of feedback information for the process

Field-Based near Infrared Spectroscopy for Analysis of Scandinavian Stone Age Rock Paintings

During the early autumn of 2014 a field-based near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy study was carried out at Swedish and Norwegian Stone Age rock painting sites. This article presents results from one of them, namely Flatruet, Härjedalen, Sweden. Here, field-based NIR measurements were conducted using the 908–1676 nm wavelength range to gather 479 spectra: 427 of rock paintings and 52 of local lithology background. The whole dataset was analysed using principal component analysis (PCA) and four principal components were extracted explaining 98.5% (PC1), 1.4% (PC2), 0.06% (PC3) and 0.04% (PC4). The PCA results showed that there was a large spread in the spectra of both background and red paint objects, but also some evidence of clustering could be seen where background and paintings could be separated. An improvement in separation was achieved with partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) using the background and paint as categorical variables. The most important components of the PLS-DA model showed a better separation in the score plot. A small test set of 10 paint and 10 background samples showed that one of the paint samples and two of the background samples were misclassified. One conclusion is that there is a large spread in background due to varying precipitation of secondary iron oxides. It was also decided to look deeper into local models of painted elks and their pigments alone. This was done using local PCA models and soft independent modelling of class analogies showing that some painted elks could be separated from each other while others were quite similar, which is important for answering questions about origin, age and weathering