Dual-scale roughness produces unusually water-repellent surfaces

Super-hydrophobicity can be achieved on relatively smooth surfaces. Short, wide pillars on slightly rough surfaces are shown to produce super-hydrophobic surfaces (see Figure) where neither the pillars nor the slight roughness suffice alone. This use of two length scales to create super-hydrophobic surfaces directly mimics the mechanism used by some plants including the lotus

Book Reviews

Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

The uptake and application of workflow management systems in the UK financial services sector

Workflow management systems (WFMSs) are an important new technology, which are likely to have a significant impact on the way in which clerical and administrative operations are organised and executed. This paper seeks to investigate how WFMSs are being exploited and utilised commercially by UK-based organisations operating in the financial services sector. In-depth interviews were conducted with fourteen project managers to explore the development, application and commercial implications of this powerful, yet flexible, technology. The results indicate that workflow technology has the potential to facilitate significant changes to the way in which an organisation conducts its business, through the automation of a wide range of document-intensive operations. Furthermore, when applied in a well-focussed manner it has the potential to realise significant increases in an organisation’s flexibility, and productivity, as well as delivering major improvements to the quality, speed and consistency of customer service

The cultural impact of workflow management systems in the financial services sector

The implementation of information systems is increasingly resulting in significant changes to the host organisation’s culture. In particular, the workflow management system (WFMS) is one new technology that, because of its tendency to have a direct impact on the organisation and execution of work, has the potential to significantly modify an organisation’s culture. This qualitative research investigates the nature of the relationship between WFMS and organisational culture, in the UK financial services sector The research concludes that WFMS have the potential to modify culture in a positive way by improving the organisations customer orientation, flexibility and quality focus

Coming of the Asian Giants: Skyscrapers as Tourist Attractions and as Environmental Issues

No Abstract Available

On the Energy Momentum Tensor of the M-Theory Fivebrane

We construct the energy momentum tensor for the bosonic fields of the covariant formulation of the M-theory fivebrane within that formalism. We then obtain the energy for various solitonic solutions of the fivebrane equations of motion.Comment: 12 pages, LaTeX2e, uses vmargin.sty and amstex.st

Do Users Write More Insecure Code with AI Assistants?

We conduct the first large-scale user study examining how users interact with an AI Code assistant to solve a variety of security related tasks across different programming languages. Overall, we find that participants who had access to an AI assistant based on OpenAI's codex-davinci-002 model wrote significantly less secure code than those without access. Additionally, participants with access to an AI assistant were more likely to believe they wrote secure code than those without access to the AI assistant. Furthermore, we find that participants who trusted the AI less and engaged more with the language and format of their prompts (e.g. re-phrasing, adjusting temperature) provided code with fewer security vulnerabilities. Finally, in order to better inform the design of future AI-based Code assistants, we provide an in-depth analysis of participants' language and interaction behavior, as well as release our user interface as an instrument to conduct similar studies in the future.Comment: 18 pages, 16 figure

Benefits of Early Adopter Feedback in Innovation Commercialisation

In this report we analyse how successful innovative firms select early adopter users, collect feedback from them and create benefits in the innovation commercialisation stage. Adopting the multiple case study method, we investigated 14 successful innovative firms operating in Australia, conducted in-depth interviews with managers holding high-level responsibilities in the case firms and analysed the data using a thematic analysis method. We find that innovator firms’ access to end users depends on the type of user (corporate or individual), downstream supply chain structure, congruence between the innovation and the core business products as well as built relationships with users. Case firms use an array of strategies to select early adopters and generate specific benefits of user feedback for product innovation. Successful case firms institutionalise the learning from user feedback to create sustained benefits. To institutionalise learning, firms need to interact with users across the innovation process and learn efficiently. Subsequently, governments can promote interactive learning relationships among actors in the national innovation system by diffusing the knowledge created in innovative firms to nudge the behaviour of laggard firms towards best practices