Real, virtual, and other personas in an online collaborative environment

This presentation reports on a study of an unusual online course, which incorporates collaboration across campuses in teaching about evaluation of information technologies. Issues raised by new information technologies are major foci within the course, and also entry points for our study of its implementation.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

A Water Accounting System for Strategic Water Management

This paper describes a water accounting system (WAS) that has been developed as an innovative new tool for strategic long-term water management. The WAS incorporates both disaggregated water use and availability, provides a comprehensive and consistent historical database, and can integrate climate and hydrological model outputs for the exploration of scenarios. It has been established and tested for the state of Victoria in Australia, and can be extended to cover other or all regions of Australia. The WAS is implemented using stock-and-flow dynamics, currently employing major river basins as the spatial units and a yearly time step. While this system shares features with system dynamics, learning is enhanced and strategic management of water resources is improved by application of a Design Approach and the structure of the WAS. We compare the WAS with other relevant accounting systems and outline its benefits, particularly the potential for resolving tensions between water supply and demand. Integrated management is facilitated by combination with other stocks and flows frameworks that provide data on key drivers such as demography, land-use and electricity production.water accounts, stocks and flows, water budgets, decision support systems, strategic management

The Discourse of Management and the Management of Discourse

Discourse is a pervasive tool of management; one might even say that discourse is what managers do. A widespread assumption among managers is that discourse is not only a pervasive tool, but an effective one for precise communication of information, for making decisions, and for enlisting action, essentially a transmission tool. This paper maintains that the transmission view is a limited conception of language use, one which leads to a faulty conception of what managers do. It ignores the need for an ethics of communication and misjudges the creative aspects of language use. Management discourse is a far more complex and fluid phenomenon, one requiring not just effective use, but management itself. In other words consideration of the discourse of management leads us to the need for the management of discourse.

Heterozygous mis-sense mutations in Prkcb as a critical determinant of anti-polysaccharide antibody formation

To identify rate-limiting steps in T cell-independent type 2 (TI-2) antibody production against polysaccharide antigens, we performed a genome-wide screen by immunizing several hundred pedigrees of C57BL/6 mice segregating ENU-induced mis-sense mutations. Two independent mutations, Tilcara and Untied, were isolated that semi-dominantly diminished antibody against polysaccharide but not protein antigens. Both mutations resulted from single amino acid substitutions within the kinase domain of Protein Kinase C Beta (PKCβ). In Tilcara, a Ser552>Pro mutation occurred in helix G, in close proximity to a docking site for the inhibitory N-terminal pseudosubstrate domain of the enzyme, resulting in almost complete loss of active, autophosphorylated PKCβI whereas the amount of alternatively spliced PKCβII protein was not markedly reduced. Circulating B cell subsets were normal and acute responses to BCR-stimulation such as CD25 induction and initiation of DNA synthesis were only measurably diminished in Tilcara homozygotes, whereas the fraction of cells that had divided multiple times was decreased to an intermediate degree in heterozygotes. These results, coupled with evidence of numerous mis-sense PRKCB mutations in the human genome, identify Prkcb as a genetically sensitive step likely to contribute substantially to population variability in anti-polysaccharide antibody levels

Comment on "Correlation between Compact Radio Lout Quasars and Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays"

In a recent paper, Farrar and Biermann argue that there is a strong correlation between the direction of the five highest-energy cosmic-ray events and compact, radio-loud quasars. This Comment shows that this analysis contains several inconsistencies and errors so that the significance of any such correlation is certainly greatly overestimated and perhaps nonexistent.Comment: 2 pages, REVTE

Molecular gas in QSO host galaxies

We present the results of a survey for CO line emission from a sample of nearby QSO hosts taken from the Hamburg/ESO survey (HES) and the Veron-Cetty and Veron quasar catalogue. From a total of 39 observed sources we clearly detected 5 objects with >10sigma signals (HE 0108-4743, HE 0224-2834, J035818.7-612407, HE 1029-1831, HE 2211-3903). Further 6 sources show marginal detections on the 2sigma level.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, submitted to "QSO Hosts: Evolution and Environment", P.D. Barthel, D.B. Sanders, eds., August 2005, Leiden University (The Netherlands), New Astr. Re

Jobseekers Regime and Flexible New Deal, the Six Month Offer and Support for the Newly Unemployed evaluations: An early process study

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On the formation of the welding seams with high speed

Целью настоящей работы является определение направлений исследований по установлению возможности повышения качества формирования сварочных швов с повышенной скоростью формирования тела шва. В статье вопрос решается путём отклонения сварочной дуги углом вперед, поперечным магнитным полем. Дополнительное магнитное поле в зоне сварки генерируют, пропуская часть сварочного тока по присадочной проволоке. Проволока подается в сварочную ванну позади дуги параллельно электроду в плоскости свариваемого стыка, в направлении, противоположном току дуги. Проведенный анализ отечественных и зарубежных литературных источников по рассматриваемой теме показал, что современный подход к определению влияния на повышение качества формирования сварочных швов с повышенной скоростью формирования тела шва, за счет дополнительного поперечного магнитного поля является актуальным в настоящее время и недостаточно изучен. Приведены сведения о формировании тела шва при скоростной сварке вольфрамовым электродом с присадочной проволокой, которые могут быть использованы для повышения производительности сварочных работ.The aim of this work is to determine the areas of research to establish the possibility of improving the quality of the formation of welds with an increased rate of formation of the joint body. In the article the problem is solved by the deviation of the arc angle forward transverse magnetic field. Additional magnetic field generated in the welding zone by passing part of the welding current for the filler wire. The wire is fed into the weld puddle behind the arc electrode in the plane parallel to the welded joint, in a direction opposite to the arc current. The analysis of domestic and foreign literature on the topic has shown that the modern approach to determine the effect on the improvement of quality of formation of welds with an increased rate of formation of the joint body, due to the additional transverse magnetic field is relevant in the present and not fully understood. Information is given about the formation of a seam in the tungsten electrode welding with filler wire, which can be used to improve the performance of welding