The Role, Status and Style of Workplace Email: a Study of Two New Zealand Workplaces

This thesis discusses ethnographic research carried out in two very different workplaces, one a manufacturing plant, the other an educational organisation, to explore the relationship between the organisational or workplace culture and the role, status and style of email. The research was concerned with looking at the specific functions of email alongside other means of communicating at work and how it was perceived by its users and receivers compared to these other means of communication. It also investigated when and why email was the preferred medium of workplace communication and some of its distinctive stylistic features. In addition to relating these latter to the workplace culture, the effect on email style of sociolinguistic variables was also explored. Pragmatic theories provided the framework for analysing the data which was interpreted from a social interactionist, social constructionist perspective. A combined corpora of 515 email messages provided the primary linguistic data. This was supplemented by quantitative survey data and qualitative data from observations, two diaries of reflective practice, interviews, and recordings of four people's communicative interactions over one workday. The messages were coded initially for communicative function and then, in order to explore the affective aspect of email communication, for mitigational and boosting elements. In addition to the above, a qualitative analysis of a thread of email messages was undertaken to demonstrate how email communication is used in knowledge creation. The study found that there was little difference between the two organisations in the communicative functions for which email is used. In both, the transmission and seeking of information is its predominant use followed by the making of requests. However, the two workplaces differed considerably in the use made of email which is shown to be essentially a whitecollar mode of communication. But even in the educational organisation where email is used extensively, face-to-face remains the preferred form of communication and dominates communication time. The type of organisation also seems to affect the way in which email messages are written. Email messages from the manufacturing plant displayed more features of solidarity than those from the educational organisation. There was a much higher use of greetings in these messages and more direct language forms. The messages were also longer. There was also a difference between the two workplaces in male and female style. Women in the educational organisation wrote longer messages and used more affective features in their emails than their male counterparts. The converse was true in the manufacturing plant. Stylistically, email directives were seen, in general, to lie midway between the mainly direct forms of spoken communication and the mainly indirect forms of other types of written communication. The study also found that as part of its communicative functions, email plays an important role in organisational knowledge creation, and that in addition to being a useful communication tool assisting in the functional work of an organisation, it does considerable relational work. This has implications for the way in which email messages are written

Comparison of Itraconazole and Fluconazole Treatments in a Murine Model of Coccidioidal Meningitis

Coccidioidal meningitis (CM) is a devastating disease that requires long-term therapy and for which there is little hope of a cure. A model was used to compare the efficacies of itraconazole and fluconazole. CD-1 mice were infected intrathecally with 30 to 36 viable arthroconidia of Coccidioides. Oral therapy with cyclodextrin (control) or itraconazole or fluconazole at 10, 25, or 50 mg/kg of body weight twice daily (BID) was given for 12 days, from day 3 of infection. Treatment with both antifungals at all doses prolonged survival compared with that of the control treatment (P < 0.01 to 0.0001). At 50 mg/kg, itraconazole and fluconazole were equivalent, whereas itraconazole at 10 or 25 mg/kg prolonged survival compared to that achieved with fluconazole at these dosages (P < 0.05 and 0.01, respectively). Early histologic analysis (10 days of treatment) with 50 mg/kg BID itraconazole or fluconazole showed suppression of CM in all five animals per group; in quantitative cultures, three of three animals from each group had no detectable infection in the brain, spinal cord, or a site of secondary infection, the lungs. In contrast, four of seven controls showed mild to severe meningitis, with arteritis detected in three animals. In a short-term organ clearance study, 5 days of treatment with 10 or 50 mg/kg BID itraconazole or fluconazole reduced the tissue burdens in the brain and spinal cord compared to the tissue burdens in the controls (P < 0.02 to 0.0003). Fluconazole at 10 mg/kg did not reduce the fungal burden in secondary sites, the lungs and kidneys, whereas this itraconazole dose was more effective in clearing the fungi from both organs (P < 0.05 and P < 0.001, respectively). At 50 mg/kg, itraconazole and fluconazole were equivalent in clearing the fungi from the brain and kidney, but itraconazole was superior to fluconazole in clearing the fungi from the spinal cord and lungs (P < 0.05). Thus, both itraconazole and fluconazole were effective at controlling CM, but neither eliminated Coccidioides from tissues. Overall, itraconazole was more efficacious on an mg/kg basis; at high doses they were similarly effective

Enhancement of the sub-band-gap photoconductivity in ZnO nanowires through surface functionalization with carbon nanodots

We report on the surface functionalization of ZnO nanowire (NW) arrays by attachment of carbon nanodots (C-dots) stabilized by polyethylenimine. The photoconductive properties of the ZnO NWs/C-dots devices were investigated under photoexcitation with photon energies below and above the ZnO band gap. The results indicate an increased photoresponse of the functionalized devices in the visible spectral range, as well as enhanced UV photoconductivity. This is attributed to the fast injection of photoexcited electrons from the C-dots into the conduction band of the ZnO NWs, and the subsequent slower desorption of molecular species from the NW surface, which reduces the surface depletion region in the NWs. The surface functionalization of the ZnO NWs with carbon nanodots also impacts the dynamics of the photocurrent decay, inducing a slower relaxation of the photogenerated charge carriers