Week One in the Galapagos

Postcard from Michael McGrath, during the Linfield College Semester Abroad Program at the Galápagos Academic Institute of the Arts and Sciences in the Galápagos Islands, Ecuado

A Characterization of the Critical Catenoid

We show that an embedded minimal annulus $\Sigma^2 \subset B^3$ which intersects $\partial B^3$ orthogonally and is invariant under reflection through the coordinate planes is the critical catenoid. The proof uses nodal domain arguments and a characterization, due to Fraser and Schoen, of the critical catenoid as the unique free boundary minimal annulus in $B^n$ with lowest Steklov eigenvalue equal to 1. We also give more general criteria which imply that a free boundary minimal surface in $B^3$ invariant under a group of reflections has lowest Steklov eigenvalue 1.Comment: Final version; to appear in Indiana University Mathematics Journa

Organisational culture and information systems implementation: a critical perspective

This research explores how information systems (IS) implementation is accomplished when cultural change of an organisation is attempted and what this accomplishment means for those touched by it. Efforts of this kind are being made in the UK National Health Service (NHS), Where modernisation programmes involving technological rationalisation and change are aiming to make the NHS more responsive to contemporary public demands. This study focuses on the ambulance services and specifically on a history of IS implementation efforts over 20 year at the largest and most appraised of the English services, the London Ambulance Service (LAS). A perceived need for cultural change involving the use of advanced information technologies is pervasive in managerial and ministerial discourses about modernising the health service. Yet the way that ambulance services are regulated and monitored has given rise to a modernisation programme in which cultural change and IS implementation have been conceived largely instrumentally in terms of achieving performance targets. Moreover, goals to which the modernisation efforts aspire are at most partially realised. Organisational change is uneven, and the performance improvements achieved are contradictory, and this is not only true in London but elsewhere in the UK. Drawing from organisational theory and critical social theory, past IS implementation efforts at the LAS are reinterpreted in light of recent developments, with contributions to theory and practice in mind. The theoretical contribution rests in exploring how emotion as well as rationality may be conceptualised to examine historically and culturally constituted working practices. Implications for practice address how IS implementation can give rise to cultural fragmentation, and also how professional identity can constrain IS innovation. Finally, the research contributes to a current debate about the future for ambulance services and the mechanisms used to evaluate their performance

Learning German Culture

While still in the midst of their study abroad experiences, students at Linfield College write reflective essays. Their essays address issues of cultural similarity and difference, compare lifestyles, mores, norms, and habits between their host countries and home, and examine changes in perceptions about their host countries and the United States. In this essay, Courtney McGrath describes her observations during her study abroad program at Nürtingen-Geislingen University in Nürtingen, Germany

"And I was a stockman myself…" Interpreting Aboriginal Women’s Work

Social historians concerned with race relations studies are confronted by enormous gaps in evidence when their research relates to non-literate peoples. Consequently, interviews, oral histories, and most valuably; life histories, are becoming increasingly recognized as essential fonns of historical evidence. C-1.tural and linguistic barrierEr~onfronted in the collection of such personal oral evidence. The most serious obstacles, however, might be overcome by resorting to an interdisciplinary approach involving the collaboration of linguists, anthropologists, and historians . This is already beginning and should greatly enrich the study of race relations in Australia. To my knowledge there has not yet appeared a substantial socio-historical analysis of post-contact Aboriginal history which utilizes oral evidence as a major source. My research into the role of Aborigines in the Northern Territory cattle industry 1911 to 1939 presents an opportunity to do so, as there are numerous o1der people living on northern settlements who worked on stations during the latter half of the period under focus. Several have already been willing to co-operate and share their pre-war reminiscences

Financial Deregulation and Economic Growth in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland

Advocates of financial regulation, Arestis and Demetriades, argue that financial liberalisation does not impact on financial market efficiency and the allocation of investment. Results in this study find that Czech, Hungarian and Polish firms are subject to scrutiny when applying for credit. The firm’s ability to provide collateral, the potential of the proposed investment project and individual financial backgrounds are all factors that are used before loans are offered, and it likely that allocational efficiency is strengthened in these circumstances, and not weakened. Stiglitz has the view that financial repression improves the quality of the pool of loans. Results here indicate that companies in these countries previously had very limited access to credit while government owned companies and government projects received the bulk of credit. After deregulation it became apparent that the quality of the pool of loans was very poor. This study supports Shaw’s assertion that financial deregulation improves financial deepening.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40190/3/wp804.pd

Forward to \u3cem\u3eThe Son of God: Three Views of the Identity of Jesus\u3c/em\u3e

James McGrath\u27s Forward to: The Son of God: Three Views of the Identity of Jesus, by Charles Lee Irons, Danny Andre Dixon, and Dustin R. Smith. Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2015