Big data revisited: a rejoinder

We elaborate on key issues of our paper New games, new rules: big data and the changing context of strategy as a means of addressing some of the concerns raised by the paper’s commentators. We initially deal with the issue of social data and the role it plays in the current data revolution. The massive involvement of lay publics as instrumented by social media breaks with the strong expert cultures that have underlain the production and use of data in modern organizations. It also sets apart the interactive and communicative processes by which social data is produced from sensor data and the technological recording of facts. We further discuss the significance of the very mechanisms by which big data is produced as distinct from the very attributes of big data, often discussed in the literature. In the final section of the paper, we qualify the alleged importance of algorithms and claim that the structures of data capture and the architectures in which data generation is embedded are fundamental to the phenomenon of big data

New games, new rules: big data and the changing context of strategy

Big data and the mechanisms by which it is produced and disseminated introduce important changes in the ways information is generated and made relevant for organizations. Big data often represents miscellaneous records of the whereabouts of large and shifting online crowds. It is frequently agnostic, in the sense of being produced for generic purposes or purposes different from those sought by big data crunching. It is based on varying formats and modes of communication (e.g., texts, image and sound), raising severe problems of semiotic translation and meaning compatibility. Crucially, the usefulness of big data rests on their steady updatability, a condition that reduces the time span within which this data is useful or relevant. Jointly, these attributes challenge established rules of strategy making as these are manifested in the canons of procuring structured information of lasting value that addresses specific and long-term organizational objectives. The developments underlying big data thus seem to carry important implications for strategy making, and the data and information practices with which strategy has been associated. We conclude by placing the understanding of these changes within the wider social and institutional context of longstanding data practices and the significance they carry for management and organizations

A simple, azulene-based colorimetric probe for the detection of nitrite in water

We describe the synthesis and evaluation of an azulene-based chemodosimeter for nitrite. The probe was found to undergo two distinct color changes upon introduction of aqueous nitrite ion. A near-instant formation of a grey color provides a qualitative indication of the presence of nitrite, followed by the formation of a deep-yellow/ orange color, the endpoint from which quantitative data can be derived. The azulene probe exhibits 1:1 stoichiometry of reaction with nitrite in water, and is selective for nitrite over other anions. The azulene probe was applied to determine nitrite content in cured meat, and compared with the British Standard testing procedure (Griess test). The value obtained from the azulene-based probe agreed closely with the standard test. Our procedure only requires the preparation of one standard solution, instead of the three required for the standard Griess test.This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 66599

Azulenesulfonium and azulenebis(sulfonium) salts:Formation by interrupted Pummerer reaction and subsequent derivatisation by nucleophiles

Azulenes undergo either single or dual SEAr reactions depending on the nature of the sulfur(IV) electrophile employed. These electrophiles are generated in situ from either sulfoxides or sulfides. The resultant cationic or dicationic azulene products can undergo further derivatisation by means of nucleophilic attack at the sulfonium α-carbon. In the case of cycloalkyl azulenylsulfonium salts, this leads to ring-opened azulenylsulfide products.This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 665992 </p

A Colorimetric Chemosensor Based on a Nozoe Azulene That Detects Fluoride in Aqueous/Alcoholic Media

Colorimetry is an advantageous method for detecting fluoride in drinking water in a resource-limited context, e. g., in parts of the developing world where excess fluoride intake leads to harmful health effects. Here we report a selective colorimetric chemosensor for fluoride that employs an azulene as the reporter motif and a pinacolborane as the receptor motif. The chemosensor, NAz-6-Bpin, is prepared using the Nozoe azulene synthesis, which allows for its rapid and low-cost synthesis. The chemosensor gives a visually observable response to fluoride both in pure organic solvent and also in water/alcohol binary solvent mixtures

Coupling charge and topological reconstructions at polar oxide interfaces

In oxide heterostructures, different materials are integrated into a single artificial crystal, resulting in a breaking of inversion-symmetry across the heterointerfaces. A notable example is the interface between polar and non-polar materials, where valence discontinuities lead to otherwise inaccessible charge and spin states. This approach paved the way to the discovery of numerous unconventional properties absent in the bulk constituents. However, control of the geometric structure of the electronic wavefunctions in correlated oxides remains an open challenge. Here, we create heterostructures consisting of ultrathin SrRuO$_3$, an itinerant ferromagnet hosting momentum-space sources of Berry curvature, and LaAlO$_3$, a polar wide-bandgap insulator. Transmission electron microscopy reveals an atomically sharp LaO/RuO$_2$/SrO interface configuration, leading to excess charge being pinned near the LaAlO$_3$/SrRuO$_3$ interface. We demonstrate through magneto-optical characterization, theoretical calculations and transport measurements that the real-space charge reconstruction modifies the momentum-space Berry curvature in SrRuO$_3$, driving a reorganization of the topological charges in the band structure. Our results illustrate how the topological and magnetic features of oxides can be manipulated by engineering charge discontinuities at oxide interfaces.Comment: 5 pages main text (4 figures), 29 pages of supplementary informatio

3D-printed micro bubble column reactor with integrated microsensors for biotechnological applications: from design to evaluation

With the technological advances in 3D printing technology, which are associated with ever-increasing printing resolution, additive manufacturing is now increasingly being used for rapid manufacturing of complex devices including microsystems development for laboratory applications. Personalized experimental devices or entire bioreactors of high complexity can be manufactured within few hours from start to finish. This study presents a customized 3D-printed micro bubble column reactor (3D-µBCR), which can be used for the cultivation of microorganisms (e.g., Saccharomyces cerevisiae) and allows online-monitoring of process parameters through integrated microsensor technology. The modular 3D-µBCR achieves rapid homogenization in less than 1 s and high oxygen transfer with kLa values up to 788 h-1 and is able to monitor biomass, pH, and DOT in the fluid phase, as well as CO2 and O2 in the gas phase. By extensive comparison of different reactor designs, the influence of the geometry on the resulting hydrodynamics was investigated. In order to quantify local flow patterns in the fluid, a three-dimensional and transient multiphase Computational Fluid Dynamics model was successfully developed and applied. The presented 3D-µBCR shows enormous potential for experimental parallelization and enables a high level of flexibility in reactor design, which can support versatile process development

3D-printed micro bubble column reactor with integrated microsensors for biotechnological applications: From design to evaluation

With the technological advances in 3D printing technology, which are associated with ever-increasing printing resolution, additive manufacturing is now increasingly being used for rapid manufacturing of complex devices including microsystems development for laboratory applications. Personalized experimental devices or entire bioreactors of high complexity can be manufactured within few hours from start to finish. This study presents a customized 3D-printed micro bubble column reactor (3D-µBCR), which can be used for the cultivation of microorganisms (e.g., Saccharomyces cerevisiae) and allows online-monitoring of process parameters through integrated microsensor technology. The modular 3D-µBCR achieves rapid homogenization in less than 1 s and high oxygen transfer with kLa values up to 788 h−1 and is able to monitor biomass, pH, and DOT in the fluid phase, as well as CO2 and O2 in the gas phase. By extensive comparison of different reactor designs, the influence of the geometry on the resulting hydrodynamics was investigated. In order to quantify local flow patterns in the fluid, a three-dimensional and transient multiphase Computational Fluid Dynamics model was successfully developed and applied. The presented 3D-µBCR shows enormous potential for experimental parallelization and enables a high level of flexibility in reactor design, which can support versatile process development. © 2021, The Author(s)

A few extreme events dominate global interannual variability in gross primary production

Understanding the impacts of climate extremes on the carbon cycle is important for quantifying the carbon-cycle climate feedback and highly relevant to climate change assessments. Climate extremes and fires can have severe regional effects, but a spatially explicit global impact assessment is still lacking. Here, we directly quantify spatiotemporal contiguous extreme anomalies in four global data sets of gross primary production (GPP) over the last 30 years. We find that positive and negative GPP extremes occurring on 7% of the spatiotemporal domain explain 78% of the global interannual variation in GPP and a significant fraction of variation in the net carbon flux. The largest thousand negative GPP extremes during 1982–2011 (4.3% of the data) account for a decrease in photosynthetic carbon uptake of about 3.5 Pg C yr−1, with most events being attributable to water scarcity. The results imply that it is essential to understand the nature and causes of extremes to understand current and future GPP variability