Futures literacy in the loop.

This article proposes a functional historicist explanation to explicate the core ideas and underlying logic embedded in the futures literacy concept. Futures literacy assumes a capacity to reflect on the past, sense and make sense of the present and use this reflective body of knowledge when anticipating the future. Arguably, futures literacy must be learned, sustained, and regained; it requires a continuous, anticipative, and recursive loop. Recursivity, where an effect in an initial period acts as a cause in the next period, retroacts between the future and present, regaining anticipation. Anticipation has causal effects in the way it structures our images of the future and the avenue we follow when striving to achieve this image. Such a causal structure implies both feedforward and feedback control and is contained in the logic of functional explanations used in sociology.publishedVersio

Organizational Renewal: The Management of Large-Scale Organizational Change in Norwegian Firms

A study of large organizational change projects was done in 228 private and public sector firms across Norway to examine the causes and consequences of renewal efforts and the strategies used by firm level management and union leaders to involve the workforce in the planning, design and execution of change. The research focus was on management\u27s choice of different forms of worker participation and their effects on the project outcomes. Data came from structured interviews with the top manager and an elected employee representative in each firm. The results showed that most major changes occurred in organizational structures and administration, undertaken primarily to increase efficiency and as a response to financial difficulties. In the private sector, the planning and design phases of change projects were dominated by top management, with very little involvement by non-managerial employees. Public sector employees played a larger role in the early phases of the projects, mostly through their elected representatives in legally prescribed forums. In both the private and public sector, there was more worker participation in the execution of change, both through elected representatives and more direct worker involvement of an ad hoc, firm-specific, nature. Neither the extent nor form of participation contributed to the success of the change projects. Instead, the project outcomes were primarily a function of external pressures experienced by the organization, the importance of renewal for organizational survival, and the flexibility of management and labor to accommodate to change. Resistance to change did not decrease as a function of worker participation, but it was influenced by the degree of labor-management agreement in the firm

Ethical endgames: Broad consent for narrow interests; Open consent for closed minds

The ongoing legal and bioethics debates on consent requirements for collecting, storing, and utilizing human biological material for purposes of basic and applied research—that is, genomic research biobanking—have already managed to pass through three ostensibly dissimilar stages</jats:p

Playing it Safe : An inquiry into the beta anomaly in the Nordic markets

Extensive research indicates the existence of a beta anomaly across international markets and various asset classes. However, the mechanisms driving the anomaly and the feasibility of profitably exploiting it have been heavily debated. This thesis provides compelling evidence of the existence of a beta anomaly in the Nordic markets, with the results being robust to controlling for the size, value and momentum factors. Furthermore, our findings from implementing Frazzini and Pedersen’s (2014) Betting against beta strategy among larger companies indicate that the anomaly can be profitably exploited. By analyzing the relation between correlation and return, we investigate whether systematic risk can be identified as a driver of the anomaly. However, we do not find any conclusive evidence supporting this. While a strategy that bets against correlation yields positive Fama-French three-factor alpha, these results are not robust to controlling for momentum. This pattern persists across all versions of the strategies we implement in our study. In summary, despite indications of an exploitable beta anomaly, conclusive evidence of a systematic component behind it remains elusive.nhhma

Comparison of PCA and ICA based clutter reduction in GPR systems for anti-personal landmine detection

This paper presents statistical signal processing approaches for clutter reduction in Stepped-Frequency Ground Penetrating Radar (SF-GPR) data. In particular, we suggest clutter/signal separation techniques based on principal and independent component analysis (PCA/ICA). The approaches are successfully evaluated and compared on real SF-GPR time-series. Field-test data are acquired using a monostatic S-band rectangular waveguide antenna. 1

A comparative and combined study of EMIS and GPR detectors by the use of Independent Component Analysis

Independent Component Analysis (ICA) is applied to classify unexploded ordnance (UXO) on laboratory UXO test-field data, acquired by stand-off detection. The data are acquired by an Electromagnetic Induction Spectroscopy (EMIS) metal detector and a ground penetrating radar (GPR) detector. The metal detector is a GEM-3, which is a monostatic sensor measuring the response of the environment on a multi-frequency constant wave excitation field (300 Hz to 25 kHz), and the GPR detector is a stepped-frequency GPR with a monostatic bow-tie antenna (500MHz to 2.5GHz). For both sensors the in-phase and the quadrature responses are measured at each frequency. The test field is a box of soil where a wide range of UXOs are placed at selected positions. The position and movement of both of the detectors are controlled by a 2D-scanner. Thus the data are acquired at well-defined measurement points. The data are processed by the use of statistical signal processing based on ICA. An unsupervised method based on ICA to detect, discriminate, and classify the UXOs from clutter is suggested. The approach is studied on GPR and EMIS data, separately and compared. The potential is an improved ability: to detect the UXOs, to evaluate the related characteristics, and to reduce the number of false alarms from harmless objects and clutter