A Cross-national Comparison of Public Project Benefits Management Practices – The Effectiveness of Benefits Management Frameworks in Application

© 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Benefits are the principal reason why an organization may seek to enact change through programmes and projects. The discipline of identification, definition, planning, tracking and realization of benefits is recognized to be instrumental in achieving organizational strategy. In this study, we describe the results of a cross-national comparison of public sector benefits management (BM) practices in Australia, Canada, the UK and the USA. It explores ‘BM practices in action’, considering to what extent ‘espoused’ or ‘mandated’ frameworks are actually practised and perceived by their users. Employing qualitative analysis, semi-structured interview data were analysed from 46 participants with experience in sponsoring, managing and/or reviewing government projects. The results expose considerable variation in the adoption and standardization of BM frameworks from inter and intragovernmental perspectives. We evidence a strong focus on benefits identification across the data set, specifically at the outset (the business case stage seeking project approval) and observe deterioration in focus as the project or programme progresses through the authorization (or assurance) approval gates towards close-out and operations. The results further emphasize the prominence of political interest, leadership buy-in, a benefits-driven culture and a transparent benefits reporting mechanism in the implementation of ‘effective’ BM frameworks

SCIRIA Openmind seminar series, autonomatic

SCIRIA ‘OpenMind’ was a regular seminar series for University of the Arts London staff, MA and PhD students and the public. The seminars were hosted at Camberwell College of Arts and Chelsea College of Art and Design. The footage, audio and flyers offer an insight into the research processes and activities of SCIRIA members, associates and external speakers

Mechanisms bywhich dietary fatty acids regulate mitochondrial structure-function in health and disease

Mitochondria are the energy-producing organelles within a cell. Furthermore, mitochondria have a role in maintaining cellular homeostasis and proper calcium concentrations, building critical components of hormones and other signaling molecules, and controlling apoptosis. Structurally, mitochondria are unique because they have 2 membranes that allow for compartmentalization. The composition and molecular organization of thesemembranes are crucial to the maintenance and function of mitochondria. In this review, we first present a general overview of mitochondrial membrane biochemistry and biophysics followed by the role of different dietary saturated and unsaturated fatty acids in modulatingmitochondrial membrane structure-function.We focus extensively on long-chain n-3 (ω-3) polyunsaturated fatty acids and their underlyingmechanisms of action. Finally,we discuss implications of understanding molecular mechanisms by which dietary n-3 fatty acids targetmitochondrial structure-function in metabolic diseases such as obesity, cardiac-ischemia reperfusion injury, obesity, type 2 diabetes, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, and select cancers

Understanding the abnormal brain activity in epilepsy as a potential predictor of the onset of an epileptic seizure

The Brain Research Institute (BRI) uses various types of indirect measurements, including EEG and fMRI, to understand and assess brain activity and function. As well as the recovery of generic information about brain function, research also focuses on the utilisation of such data and understanding to study the initiation, dynamics, spread and suppression of epileptic seizures. To assist with the future focussing of this aspect of their research, the BRI asked the MISG 2010 participants to examine how the available EEG and fMRI data and current knowledge about epilepsy should be analysed and interpreted to yield an enhanced understanding about brain activity occurring before, at commencement of, during, and after a seizure. Though the deliberations of the study group were wide ranging in terms of the related matters considered and discussed, considerable progress was made with the following three aspects. (1) The science behind brain activity investigations depends crucially on the quality of the analysis and interpretation of, as well as the recovery of information from, EEG and fMRI measurements. A number of specific methodologies were discussed and formalised, including independent component analysis, principal component analysis, profile monitoring and change point analysis (hidden Markov modelling, time series analysis, discontinuity identification). (2) Even though EEG measurements accurately and very sensitively record the onset of an epileptic event or seizure, they are, from the perspective of understanding the internal initiation and localisation, of limited utility. They only record neuronal activity in the cortical (surface layer) neurons of the brain, which is a direct reflection of the type of electrical activity they have been designed to record. Because fMRI records, through the monitoring of blood flow activity, the location of localised brain activity within the brain, the possibility of combining fMRI measurements with EEG, as a joint inversion activity, was discussed and examined in detail. (3) A major goal for the BRI is to improve understanding about ``when'' (at what time) an epileptic seizure actually commenced before it is identified on an eeg recording, ``where'' the source of this initiation is located in the brain, and ``what'' is the initiator. Because of the general agreement in the literature that, in one way or another, epileptic events and seizures represent abnormal synchronisations of localised and/or global brain activity the modelling of synchronisations was examined in some detail. References C. M. Michel, G. Thut, S. Morand, A. Khateb, A. J. Pegna, R. Grave de Peralta, S. Gonzalez, M. Seeck and T. Landis, Electric source imaging of human brain functions, Brain Res. 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A k-space sharing 3D GRASE pseudocontinuous ASL method for whole-brain resting-state functional connectivity

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) investigations of resting‐state functional connectivity (RSFC) typically use blood oxygen level‐dependent (BOLD)‐weighted imaging because of its ability to provide whole‐brain coverage and high temporal resolution. Single‐shot 3D gradient‐ and spin‐echo (GRASE) arterial spin labeling (ASL) offers a number of potential advantages for RSFC measurements, such as a more direct quantitative correlate of neural activity and lower variability across subjects; however, current sequences are usually not suitable for whole‐brain acquisitions because of T2 decay during the long echo train. In this study, we proposed a k‐space sharing 3D GRASE ASL sequence to achieve whole‐brain coverage, applied it to measure RSFC on a group of healthy subjects, and compared it with BOLD data. Similar RSFC networks were estimated using both techniques, providing corroboration of the capability of our method for RSFC analysis. Furthermore, ASL data enable calculation of mean cerebral blood flow (CBF) values within the RSFC networks, thus assigning them biologically meaningful values. The inherently quantitative nature of CBF measurements should provide a more stable and interpretable biomarker in comparison to BOLD and may, therefore, be particularly useful for applications such as longitudinal studies of RSFC. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 22, 37–43, 201

Benefits realisation: case studies in public major project delivery with recommendations for practice

Public projects are enablers of policy and are often framed within a political context characterised by the unpredictable, emergent, ambiguous and contextual; this creates tensions around conceptualisations of project performance and project success. Public projects are generally authorised based on a favourable benefit-to-cost ratio, so ex-post scrutiny of realised benefits is crucial to effective evaluation. Nevertheless, evidence suggests that sometimes, the focus on project delivery may come at the expense of benefits realisation. This paper describes part of a wider programme of research into benefits realisation in public projects. We present “deep dives” into 3 UK projects and draw on a formal theoretical base to consider questions such as ‘what is a benefit?’, ‘how good are we at defining benefits/beneficiaries?’, ’how can we manage and capture evolving benefits in complex environments?’; ‘how do we recognise and accept complexity while the environment changes?’ and ‘what effects does this have on our understanding of benefits realisation?’. This paper presents an analysis of the case studies and provides a synthesis of the main findings. We make eight recommendations for professional practice in the field of benefits management and set out some conclusions relevant to the wider discourse on evaluation of investment in public projects

Identifying the sources of the pulse artefact in EEG recordings made inside an MR scanner

EEG recordings made during concurrent fMRI are confounded by the pulse artefact (PA), which although smaller than the gradient artefact is often more problematic because of its variability over multiple cardiac cycles. A better understanding of the PA is needed in order to generate improved methods for reducing its effect in EEG-fMRI experiments. Here we performed a study aimed at identifying the relative contributions of three putative sources of the PA (cardiac-pulse-driven head rotation, the Hall effect due to pulsatile blood flow and pulse-driven expansion of the scalp) to its amplitude and variability. EEG recordings were made from 6 subjects lying in a 3T scanner. Accelerometers were fixed on the forehead and temple to monitor head motion. A bite-bar and vacuum cushion were used to restrain the head, thus greatly attenuating the contribution of cardiac-driven head rotation to the PA, while an insulating layer placed between the head and the EEG electrodes was used to eliminate the Hall voltage contribution. Using the root mean square (RMS) amplitude of the PA averaged over leads and time as a measure of the PA amplitude, we found that head restraint and insulating layer reduced the PA by 61% and 42%, respectively, when compared with the PA induced with the subject relaxed, indicating that cardiac-pulse-driven head rotation is the dominant source of the PA. With both the insulating layer and head restraint in place, the PA was reduced in RMS amplitude by 78% compared with the relaxed condition, the remaining PA contribution resulting from scalp expansion or residual head motion. The variance of the PA across cardiac cycles was more strongly reduced by the insulating layer than the head restraint, indicating that the flow-induced Hall voltage makes a larger contribution than pulse-driven head rotation to the variability of the PA