Towards A Systematic Approach To Reviewing The Strategic Alignment Literature

Doctoral dissertations within the IS domain presented at viva voce examinations, lack systematic and structured approaches towards the review of literature. This paper outlines a structured approach to undertaking a systematic qualitative review of the strategic alignment literature within the IS domain. The approach is guided by a six stage process and utilises a Strategy-as-Practice lens to analyse the literature. The analysis is undertaken by employing a framework constructed from a Strategy-as-Practice typology, a classification scheme from the coding method of the constructivist approach to grounded theory, and the identification of practices as bundles of shared routines. This detailed analysis offers a range of unique perspectives that have not to-date been clearly articulated within the strategic alignment literature, thus enabling a highly novel written review as part of a doctoral dissertation

When to Leave the Stones Unturned: Using Proportionality to Navigate Discovery Efficiently, Effectively, and Ethically

Discovery is intended to be an efficient, truth-seeking process with the ultimate goal of achieving just, speedy, and inexpensive dispute resolution. However, the consistent and extensive abuse of discovery has cast a shadow on the intended purpose of the process. For various ill- and well-intentioned reasons, attorneys abuse the process by conducting unnecessarily excessive and expensive discovery. One such reason for excessive and expensive discovery—and the focus of this Article—is the over-zealous advocacy of attorneys who leave no stone unturned out of fear of legal malpractice claims. To combat such excessive and expensive discovery, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure emphasize a proportionality principle to limit the scope of discovery. But, despite the many revisions and amendments, the practicalities of the proportionality principle still remain ambiguous. In an attempt to resolve ambiguity, this Article offers realistic methods attorneys can implement to achieve proportionality in discovery, such as early case assessments, fact-finder assessments, written agreements with clients, and early judicial involvement. Furthermore, this Article proposes an ethical safeharbor to be added to the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct to protect well-intentioned attorneys who utilize the suggested proportionality methods. With these suggested proportionality methods and the proposed safe-harbor, this Article endeavors to curtail discovery abuse, protect attorneys, and allow for greater access to affordable and attainable justice

The bilingual child in the mainstream classroom.

The purpose of the study was to gain a greater understanding of the theoretical and pedagogical issues involved in learning a second language that would be of practical use to the researcher as a teacher at a time of transition in provision for children for whom English was a second language. Through an examination of specific features in the children's spoken English - past tense forms and interrogatives - information was gained about the developmental route children take to the target language. The study focused on a group of 8-9 year old Punjabi-speaking children who had spent some time in a language centre and who were now in a mainstream classroom. The study was conducted over one year in a Sheffield school and data were collected on five occasions. For the purposes of comparison, additional data were gathered on the first and fifth occasions from a group of Punjabi-speaking children born in Britain and educated in mainstream classrooms and from a group of monolingual English-speaking children. It is argued that, although the pedagogical implications are not clear-cut, there may be merits in specific instruction in the features studied in order to accelerate development and to prevent 'fossilization'

Homosexuals are revolting : a history of gay and lesbian activism in the Republic of Ireland, 1973 -1993

Defence date: 14 January 2019Examining Board: Professor Pieter M. Judson, EUI (Supervisor); Professor Laura L. Downs, EUI (Second Reader); Professor Diarmaid Ferriter, University College Dublin; Doctor Sean Brady, Birkbeck, University of London.This project explores the history of gay and lesbian activism in the Republic of Ireland from 1973 to 1993. Using primary archival material and oral interviews it challenges the current historical narrative which presupposes that gay and lesbian activism in Ireland was confined to a legal battle to decriminalise sexual activity between males and confined to the activities of one man, David Norris. The project broadens the campaign for gay rights in Ireland to include other individuals, organisations, concerns, aims, strategies, and activities outside Dublin. In particular, the thesis demonstrates the extent to which there were numerous gay and lesbian organisations throughout Ireland which utilised the media, the trade union movement, student movement and support from international gay/lesbian organisations to mount an effective campaign to improve both the legal and social climate for Ireland’s gay and lesbian citizens. While politicians in recent years have claimed credit for the dramatic changes in attitudes to homosexuality in Ireland, this project demonstrates the extent to which these dramatic changes were pioneered, not my politicians, but rather by gay and lesbian activists throughout Ireland, in both urban and provincial regions, since the 1970s. The project considered the emergence of a visible gay community in Ireland and its impact on changing perceptions of homosexuals; the important role played by lesbian women; the role of provincial gay/lesbian activists; the extent to which HIV/AIDS impacted the gay rights campaign in Ireland; and how efforts to interact with the Roman Catholic Church, political parties, and other important stakeholders shaped the strategies of gay/lesbian organisations. Homosexuals are revolting: A history of gay and lesbian activism in the Republic of Ireland, 1973-1993, reveals the extent to which gay and lesbian activists were important agents of social and political change in Ireland, particularly in terms of Irish sexual mores and gender norms. This project helps to contextualise the dramatic changes in relation to homosexuality that have taken place in recent years in Ireland and encourages scholars to further explore the contribution of Ireland’s queer citizens to the transformation of Ireland in the twentieth- and twentieth-first century.Chapters 1 'Smashing the wall of silence: Irish Gay Rights Movement' and chapter 3 'Decentring the metropolis: gay and lesbian activism in Cork, forging their own path?' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article '“Homosexuals are revolting” : gay & lesbian activism in the Republic of Ireland 1970s -1990s' (2017) in the journal 'Studi Irlandesi: a journal of Irish studies

‘Homosexuals Are Revolting’ – Gay & Lesbian Activism in the Republic of Ireland 1970s – 1990s

The current historiography on the early gay and lesbian liberation movement in Ireland 1970s-1990s has resulted in a narrative which has focused solely on the battle to decriminalise sexual activity between males. In turn, this has presented a picture of a movement comprised of one individual, David Norris, and one goal, decriminalisation. This narrative is predominantly an urban one, which excludes the activities of provincial activists, and most notably lesbian women. In this paper, I move away from viewing David Norris’ legal battle as the only form of resistance to Ireland’s sexual mores. Instead, I explore the other, often forgotten, forms of resistance carried out by Ireland’s gay and lesbian citizens; such as their attempts to create public spaces for gay and lesbian individuals; the appearance of homosexuals in the media to try dispel the negative stereotypes of homosexuality, and finally, their organisation of public demonstrations to declare pride in their identity and demand their place in Irish society. By doing so, these actions facilitated a public dialogue around homosexuality, which ultimately helped change the negative assumptions surrounding homosexuality and renegotiated Ireland’s sexual mores

Predicting melting points of organic molecules : applications to aqueous solubility prediction using the General Solubility Equation

In this work we make predictions of several important molecular properties of academic and industrial importance to seek answers to two questions: 1) Can we apply efficient machine learning techniques, using inexpensive descriptors, to predict melting points to a reasonable level of accuracy? 2) Can values of this level of accuracy be usefully applied to predicting aqueous solubility? We present predictions of melting points made by several novel machine learning models, previously applied to solubility prediction. Additionally, we make predictions of solubility via the General Solubility Equation (GSE) and monitor the impact of varying the logP prediction model (AlogP and XlogP) on the GSE. We note that the machine learning models presented, using a modest number of 2D descriptors, can make melting point predictions in line with the current state of the art prediction methods (RMSE ≥ 40 oC). We also find that predicted melting points, with an RMSE of tens of degrees Celsius, can be usefully applied to the GSE to yield accurate solubility predictions (log10S RMSE < 1) over a small dataset of druglike molecules.PostprintPostprintPeer reviewe

Application of machine-learning algorithms to predict the transport properties of Mie fluids

The ability to predict transport properties of fluids, such as the self-diffusion coefficient and viscosity, has been an ongoing effort in the field of molecular modelling. While there are theoretical approaches to predict the transport properties of simple systems, they are typically applied in the dilute gas regime and are not directly applicable to more complex systems. Other attempts to predict transport properties are done by fitting available experimental or molecular simulation data to empirical or semi-empirical correlations. Recently, there have been attempts to improve the accuracy of these fittings through the use of Machine Learning (ML) methods. In this work, the application of ML algorithms to represent the transport properties of systems comprising spherical particles interacting via the Mie potential is investigated. To this end, the self-diffusion coefficient and shear viscosity of 54 potentials are obtained at different regions of the fluid-phase diagram. This data set is used together with three ML algorithms, namely k-Nearest Neighbours, Artificial Neural Network and Symbolic Regression, to find correlations between the parameters of each potential and the transport properties at different densities and temperatures. It is shown that ANN and KNN perform to a similar extent, followed by SR, which exhibits larger deviations. Finally, the application of the three ML models to predict the self-diffusion coefficient of small molecular systems, such as krypton, methane and carbon dioxide is demonstrated using molecular parameters derived from the so-called SAFT-VR Mie equation of state [J. Chem. Phys. 139, 154504 (2013)] and available experimental vapour-liquid coexistence data.UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP-441SRC) via an Industrial Cooperative Award in Science & Technology (ICASE) co-funded by IBM, project ID 2327699 - EP/T517689/1A.P. is supported by a “Maria Zambrano Senior” fellowship, financed by the European Union within the NextGenerationEU program and the Spanish Ministry of UniversitiesHartree National Centre for Digital Innovatio

Quantifying Electron Correlation of the Chemical Bond

The Interacting Quantum Atoms (IQA) method is used to analyze the correlated part of the Møller–Plesset (MP) perturbation theory two-particle density matrix. Such an analysis determines the effects of electron correlation within atoms and between atoms, which covers both bonds and nonbonded through-space atom–atom interactions within a molecule or molecular complex. Electron correlation lowers the energy of the atoms at either end of a bond, but for the bond itself, it can be stabilizing or destabilizing. Bonds are described in a two-dimensional world of exchange and charge transfer, where covalency is not the opposite of ionicity

Modelling a permanent magnet synchronous motor in FEniCSx for parallel high-performance simulations

© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/There are concerns that the extreme requirements of heavy-duty vehicles and aviation will see them left behind in the electrification of the transport sector, becoming the most significant emitters of greenhouse gases. Engineers extensively use the finite element method to analyse and improve the performance of electric machines, but new highly scalable methods with a linear (or near) time complexity are required to make extreme-scale models viable. This paper introduces a three-dimensional permanent magnet synchronous motor model using FEniCSx, a finite element platform tailored for efficient computing and data handling at scale. The model demonstrates comparable magnetic flux density distributions to a verification model built in Ansys Maxwell with a maximum deviation of 7% in the motor’s static regions. Solving the largest mesh, comprising over eight million cells, displayed a speedup of 198 at 512 processes. A preconditioned Krylov subspace method was used to solve the system, requiring 92% less memory than a direct solution. It is expected that advances built on this approach will allow system-level multiphysics simulations to become feasible within electric machine development. This capability could provide the near real-world accuracy needed to bring electric propulsion systems to large vehicles.Peer reviewe