LSST: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products

(Abridged) We describe here the most ambitious survey currently planned in the optical, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). A vast array of science will be enabled by a single wide-deep-fast sky survey, and LSST will have unique survey capability in the faint time domain. The LSST design is driven by four main science themes: probing dark energy and dark matter, taking an inventory of the Solar System, exploring the transient optical sky, and mapping the Milky Way. LSST will be a wide-field ground-based system sited at Cerro Pach\'{o}n in northern Chile. The telescope will have an 8.4 m (6.5 m effective) primary mirror, a 9.6 deg$^2$ field of view, and a 3.2 Gigapixel camera. The standard observing sequence will consist of pairs of 15-second exposures in a given field, with two such visits in each pointing in a given night. With these repeats, the LSST system is capable of imaging about 10,000 square degrees of sky in a single filter in three nights. The typical 5$\sigma$ point-source depth in a single visit in $r$ will be $\sim 24.5$ (AB). The project is in the construction phase and will begin regular survey operations by 2022. The survey area will be contained within 30,000 deg$^2$ with $\delta<+34.5^\circ$, and will be imaged multiple times in six bands, $ugrizy$, covering the wavelength range 320--1050 nm. About 90\% of the observing time will be devoted to a deep-wide-fast survey mode which will uniformly observe a 18,000 deg$^2$ region about 800 times (summed over all six bands) during the anticipated 10 years of operations, and yield a coadded map to $r\sim27.5$. The remaining 10\% of the observing time will be allocated to projects such as a Very Deep and Fast time domain survey. The goal is to make LSST data products, including a relational database of about 32 trillion observations of 40 billion objects, available to the public and scientists around the world.Comment: 57 pages, 32 color figures, version with high-resolution figures available from https://www.lsst.org/overvie

Portraying the nature of corruption: Using an explorative case-study design

What is the nature of corruption in Western democracies? To answer this research question, the authors study 10 Dutch corruption cases in depth, looking at confidential criminal files. The cases allow them to sketch a general profile of a corruption case. The authors offer nine propositions to portray the nature of corruption. They conclude that corruption usually takes place within enduring relationships, that the process of becoming corrupt can be characterized as a slippery slope, and that important motives for corruption, aside from material gain, include friendship or love, status, and the desire to impress others. The explorative multiple case study methodology helps to expand our understanding of the way in which officials become corrupt. © 2008 The American Society for Public Administration

The Challenge of Managing Safety in Africa

The authors provided an empirical overview of the African regional and national socioeconomic influences on safety management and the leading causes of non-natural fatalities and injuries: Motor vehicle accidents and work accidents in both the formal and informal sectors. The authors point to three different theoretical approaches to African safety management that address the fact that the rate of motor vehicle deaths, for instance, was about 18 times higher than in the U.S. Recommendations for improving African safety management were also provided

Sustaining Governance Integrity Capacity: A Strategic Opportunity for China-US Public Administration

The main purpose of this theoretical paper is to delineate the nature, value and accountability of sustaining governance integrity capacity as an intangible strategic asset by public administrators in China and the United States. This study frames professional accountability of cross-cultural public administration in terms of strategic competencies in sustaining four dimensions of governance integrity capacity (process, judgment, development and system). The study provides interlinked management and ethics theories and a six-step implementation process to operationalize and improve judgment integrity capacity in China-US public administration decision-making. Finally, the study recommends two action steps that can be taken to enhance China-US public administration educational preparation

Theoretical Issues in Management Ethics and Moral Performance

Theoretical issues in management ethics provide the conceptual grounds upon which practical managerial moral performance occurs. Three selected theoretical issues in management ethics today are impacting managerial moral performance and are treated: (1) the moral monism versus limited moral pluralism theories; (2) the moral cognitivism versus moral non-cognitivism theories; and (3) the moral foundations versus moral rationality theories. The explicit and implicit theoretical choices embedded in managerial moral performance are critical to understanding and improving that performance. Increased awareness of and engagement with these three theoretical issues in management ethics can lead to more responsible managerial decisions and improved moral performance

Global Human Resource Management Competence and Judgment Integrity Capacity: Towards a Human Centered Organization

Human resource management (HRM) in today\u27s high-velocity, global marketplace is complex and challenging, and practitioners of strategic international human resource management (SIHRM) constantly look for new conceptual frameworks to improve organisational decision making and performance (Taylor, et al 1996: 22; Butler, et al 1991: 13). There is a growing consensus that a key differentiator between the organisational winners and losers in the 21st century will be the extent to which their human resource competence is developed to handle multiple levels of strategic complexity (Bartlett and Ghoshal, 1995: 38; Pfeffer, 1994: 56; Pucik, 1992: 44). In an effort to leverage human resource competence, researchers and practitioners are exploring linkages between HRM and organisational strategy at both the domestic (Sch?ler and Jackson, 1999: 112; Wright andMcMahan, 1992: 296) and international levels (Briscoe, 1995: 34; Kanungo, 1995: 70). Balancing both decentralized flexibility with centralized control and endogenous (internal) factors with exogenous (external) factors appears to promote the best strategic fit of SIHRM with organisational strategy (Baron and Kreps, 1999: 15; Green, 1999: 57