From Project Management to Program Management: An Invitation to Investigate Programs Where IT Plays a Significant Role

Information technology is an inherent component of major change initiatives that organizations undertake. However, the increasing technological complexity involved in achieving the benefits of these change initiatives means that organizations must substantially revise management policies and procedures to create and deploy information technology across multiple functional areas and longer time horizons. Industries, governments, professional societies, and early researchers consider prior management practices inadequate and are moving toward practices that promote the integration of multiple functions, projects, environments, and stakeholders to best achieve the benefits of the chosen change. In this editorial, we discuss previous research, highlight key findings, and raise questions about the process of managing multiple projects in change initiatives that contain significant information technology—also known as program management

New Doppler echocardiographic applications for the study of diastolic function

AbstractDoppler echocardiography is one of the most useful clinical tools for the assessment of left ventricular (LV) diastolic function. Doppler indices of LV filling and pulmonary venous (PV) flow are used not only for diagnostic purposes but also for establishing prognosis and evaluating the effect of therapeutic interventions. The utility of these indices is limited, however, by the confounding effects of different physiologic variables such as LV relaxation, compliance and filling pressure. Since alterations in these variables result in changes in Doppler indices of opposite direction, it is often difficult to determine the status of a given variable when a specific Doppler filling pattern is observed. Recently, color M-mode and tissue Doppler have provided useful insights in the study of diastolic function. These new Doppler applications have been shown to provide an accurate estimate of LV relaxation and appear to be relatively insensitive to the effects of preload compensation. This review will focus on the complementary role of color M-mode and tissue Doppler echocardiography and traditional Doppler indices of LV filling and PV flow in the assessment of diastolic function

LRH-1 mitigates intestinal inflammatory disease by maintaining epithelial homeostasis and cell survival.

Epithelial dysfunction and crypt destruction are defining features of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). However, current IBD therapies targeting epithelial dysfunction are lacking. The nuclear receptor LRH-1 (NR5A2) is expressed in intestinal epithelium and thought to contribute to epithelial renewal. Here we show that LRH-1 maintains intestinal epithelial health and protects against inflammatory damage. Knocking out LRH-1 in murine intestinal organoids reduces Notch signaling, increases crypt cell death, distorts the cellular composition of the epithelium, and weakens the epithelial barrier. Human LRH-1 (hLRH-1) rescues epithelial integrity and when overexpressed, mitigates inflammatory damage in murine and human intestinal organoids, including those derived from IBD patients. Finally, hLRH-1 greatly reduces disease severity in T-cell-mediated murine colitis. Together with the failure of a ligand-incompetent hLRH-1 mutant to protect against TNFα-damage, these findings provide compelling evidence that hLRH-1 mediates epithelial homeostasis and is an attractive target for intestinal disease

The shifting sand of program coordination effort: lessons from IT-enabled transformation programs

Set in the context of an Australian software vendor for a global enterprise product, this paper explores the roles and practices that have evolved as the company scales from its already well established agile software teams, to agility at the enterprise level. With a focus on roles and practices at the program level within a Disciplined Agile Delivery framework, this study adds to the limited body of research into the process and impact of scaled agile approaches in software vendor environments

Angular dependence of domain wall resistivity in SrRuO3_{{\bf 3}} films

${\rm SrRuO_3}$ is a 4d itinerant ferromagnet (T$_{c}$ $\sim$150 K) with stripe domain structure. Using high-quality thin films of SrRuO$_{3}$ we study the resistivity induced by its very narrow ($\sim 3$ nm) Bloch domain walls, $\rho_{DW}$ (DWR), at temperatures between 2 K and T$_{c}$ as a function of the angle, $\theta$, between the electric current and the ferromagnetic domains walls. We find that $\rho_{DW}(T,\theta)=\sin^2\theta \rho_{DW}(T,90)+B(\theta)\rho_{DW}(T,0)$ which provides the first experimental indication that the angular dependence of spin accumulation contribution to DWR is $\sin^2\theta$. We expect magnetic multilayers to exhibit a similar behavior.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

A practical guide to assessment of ventricular diastolic function using doppler echocardiography

AbstractDoppler assessment of diastolic function has become a standard part of routine echocardiographic examination and imparts information relevant to a patient's functional class, management and prognosis. This review describes the Doppler patterns of diastolic function relative to physical signs and physiology. A continuum of Doppler patterns of diastolic function exists, including normal diastolic function, impaired relaxation, pseudonormal filling, restriction, constriction and tamponade. These patterns evolve from one to another in a single individual, with changes in disease evolution, treatment and loading conditions. New applications of continuous wave Doppler, color Doppler M-mode and Doppler tissue imaging are refining our understanding of diastolic function

Electric/Magnetic Duality with Gauge Singlets

We demonstrate how gauge singlets can be used to find new examples of Kutasov duality (i.e. where the matching of the dual theories relies on a non-zero superpotential) in N}=1 SU(N) SQCD with F_Q flavours of quark and multiple generations of adjoints, or antisymmetrics, or symmetrics. The role of the singlets is to simplify greatly the truncation of the chiral ring whilst maintaining an R-symmetry, and at the same time allowing an unambiguous identification of the elementary mesons of the magnetic theory. The dual theories satisfy all the usual tests, including the highly non-trivial 't Hooft anomaly matching conditions.Comment: 31 pages, 2 figure

The Collapse of Large Extra Dimensions

In models of spacetime that are the product of a four-dimensional spacetime with an ``extra'' dimension, there is the possibility that the extra dimension will collapse to zero size, forming a singularity. We ask whether this collapse is likely to destroy the spacetime. We argue, by an appeal to the four-dimensional cosmic censorship conjecture, that--at least in the case when the extra dimension is homogeneous--such a collapse will lead to a singularity hidden within a black string. We also construct explicit initial data for a spacetime in which such a collapse is guaranteed to occur and show how the formation of a naked singularity is likely avoided.Comment: Uses revtex