Does project governance lead to successful projects?

Project governance can potentially provide the top management support needed for projects to succeed. However, the awareness and adoption of project governance guidelines has been sporadic. This research seeks to overcome any credibility gaps that may exist by developing a theoretical model to explain why project governance should work and testing the model against industry data. The research found five of six theoretical constructs for project governance correlated significantly with project success and different constructs were more important at different at different stages in the project lifecycle. The contribution of the research is firstly to show project governance can be explained by agency theory and theories of planned change. The second major contribution is to provide evidence that project governance leads to project success

Top Management Support Fuzzy Set Analysis Finding TMS the Most Important

This paper builds on the work of Young and Jordan (2008) and Poon et al. (2011) to provide stronger empirical evidence that TMS is the most important factor for project success. It adds to the evidence that current practice emphasizing project methodologies may be misdirecting effort. The contribution of this research may be to provide enough evidence to influence top managers and practitioners to re-evaluate the conventional wisdom of the past 40-50 years. Researchers and practitioners, using the fuzzy-set analytical approach are introduced to a method to compare all their project experiences and determine conclusively the most important critical success factors for project success. There are significant implications for board, senior management and project management practice and academia

Issues around firm level classification of IT investment

This paper describes two stages of research-in-progress studying the classification of IT investment from the accounting perspective. It addresses the overlooked input side of IT business value research and explores how firms report and classify IT asset and expenses. In the part of the study, we found only 8% of firms report their IT expenditure separately from other forms of expenditure, a finding inconsistent with the increased reliance on IT in modern business practice. In the second part, we further explore the accounting and financial reporting standards that lead to the first finding. The research highlights issues related to inconsistency in reporting of IT at the firm level

RE-ASSESSING THE IMPORTANCE OF NECESSARY OR SUFFICIENT CONDITIONS OF CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS IN IT PROJECT SUCCESS: A FUZZY SETTHEORETIC APPROACH

Despite more than fifty years of intensive effort, the issue of IT project failure remains unresolved. It has been suggested that conventional approaches may be misdirecting project management effort and moreover research shows top management support to be of critical importance (e.g. Young and Jordan 2008; Tichy and Bascom 2008). However, existing empirical evidence may have a strong reliance on selective exemplary cases of top management support and they do not account for counterexamples and counterfactuals. This paper lays the foundation for further research to resolve this issue by reassessing the original research using a more systematic approach: fuzzy-set analysis. The main contribution of the paper is methodological. In overcoming the numerical limitation of multiple case study research it provides a standard approach to compare large numbers of case studies. Researchers and practitioners are provided with an approach to compare and reconcile diverse project experiences and unambiguously determine the critical success factors that are the most important for project success

Matteo Ricci: Friendship and Chinese Christianity

In the late sixteenth century CE, Macau was a fishing village located on China's south. Ruled by the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), a fleet of ships had anchored in the village’s docks. China had limited foreign visitors. However, the Portuguese had arrived. The Portuguese wanted to export the European Catholic knowledge and culture to this unfamiliar land. The Portuguese colonial structure was hoping to assimilate the orient to Christianity. The Portuguese Missionary priests arrived. Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), a Jesuit priest, arrived in Macau in 1582 CE to introduce Christianity to Chinese society. At that time, Ming China followed Confucian ideology for their social guidance. Ricci realized that in order to communicate with the Chinese government officials, who held influential positions, he must learn the Chinese language and culture. Ricci gained essential communication skills from reading and translating the Four Books, which were Chinese Classics. Ricci developed friendships with some government officials by sharing his knowledge of science and technology. As his last strategy, Ricci combined European Christianity theology and Cicero’s De Amicitia. He analyzed and synthesized Confucian terminologies to write Discussion of Friendship, his foundational book. Ricci’s book contains the sole purpose of his journey: to create a movement fermented in China’s influential groups leading to the spread of Christianity. Even though Ricci did not build a physical church in China, Ricci successfully introduced Christianity to China, and laid the foundation for the European and American missionary work. He did this through friendship—gaining friends in China, earning their support, and writing Discussion of Friendship.Master of Arts in Theolog

β-catenin and transforming growth factor β have distinct roles regulating fibroblast cell motility and the induction of collagen lattice contraction

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>β-catenin and transforming growth factor β signaling are activated in fibroblasts during wound healing. Both signaling pathways positively regulate fibroblast proliferation during this reparative process, and the effect of transforming growth factor β is partially mediated by β-catenin. Other cellular processes, such as cell motility and the induction of extracellular matrix contraction, also play important roles during wound repair. We examined the function of β-catenin and its interaction with transforming growth factor β in cell motility and the induction of collagen lattice contraction.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Floating three dimensional collagen lattices seeded with cells expressing conditional null and stabilized β-catenin alleles, showed a modest negative relationship between β-catenin level and the degree of lattice contraction. Transforming growth factor β had a more dramatic effect, positively regulating lattice contraction. In contrast to the situation in the regulation of cell proliferation, this effect of transforming growth factor β was not mediated by β-catenin. Treating wild-type cells or primary human fibroblasts with dickkopf-1, which inhibits β-catenin, or lithium, which stimulates β-catenin produced similar results. Scratch wound assays and Boyden chamber motility studies using these same cells found that β-catenin positively regulated cell motility, while transforming growth factor β had little effect.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This data demonstrates the complexity of the interaction of various signaling pathways in the regulation of cell behavior during wound repair. Cell motility and the induction of collagen lattice contraction are not always coupled, and are likely regulated by different intracellular mechanisms. There is unlikely to be a single signaling pathway that acts as master regulator of fibroblast behavior in wound repair. β-catenin plays dominant role regulating cell motility, while transforming growth factor β plays a dominant role regulating the induction of collagen lattice contraction.</p

Acute Effects of Air Pollution on Pulmonary Function, Airway Inflammation, and Oxidative Stress in Asthmatic Children

BACKGROUND: Air pollution is associated with respiratory symptoms, lung function decrements, and hospitalizations. However, there is little information about the influence of air pollution on lung injury. OBJECTIVE: In this study we investigated acute effects of air pollution on pulmonary function and airway oxidative stress and inflammation in asthmatic children. METHODS: We studied 182 children with asthma, 9-14 years of age, for 4 weeks. Daily ambient concentrations of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, and particulate matter < or = 2.5 microm in aerodynamic diameter (PM(2.5)) were monitored from two stations. Once a week we measured spirometry and fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO), and determined thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) and 8-isoprostane--two oxidative stress markers--and interleukin-6 (IL-6) in breath condensate. We tested associations using mixed-effects regression models, adjusting for confounding variables. RESULTS: Interquartile-range increases in 3-day average SO2 (5.4 ppb), NO2 (6.8 ppb), and PM(2.5) (5.4 microg/m3) were associated with decreases in forced expiratory flow between 25% and 75% of forced vital capacity, with changes being -3.1% [95% confidence interval (CI), -5.8 to -0.3], -2.8% (95% CI, -4.8 to -0.8), and -3.0% (95% CI, -4.7 to -1.2), respectively. SO2, NO2, and PM(2.5) were associated with increases in TBARS, with changes being 36.2% (95% CI, 15.7 to 57.2), 21.8% (95% CI, 8.2 to 36.0), and 24.8% (95% CI, 10.8 to 39.4), respectively. Risk estimates appear to be larger in children not taking corticosteroids than in children taking corticosteroids. O3 (5.3 ppb) was not associated with health end points. FeNO, 8-isoprostane, and IL-6 were not associated with air pollutants. CONCLUSION: Air pollution may increase airway oxidative stress and decrease small airway function of asthmatic children. Inhaled corticosteroids may reduce oxidative stress and improve airway function

PKR deficiency alters E. coli-induced sickness behaviors but does not exacerbate neuroimmune responses or bacterial load

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Factors related with the university degree selection in Spanish public university system. An structural equation model analysis

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11135-014-0008-9Students take into account different factors in their choice of university studies and college. Some are global, as the quality of the degree (ratio available places/firstchoice places in, cut-off grade, etc.), and others are subjective factors (e.g.: my friends are also taking this degree). In this work we present a partial multivariate model that takes into account the weight of the different variables shown by different works linked to this decision. We have studied three samples (n = 372 from the Universidad Pablo de Olavide; n = 2,244 from the Universitat Politécnica de Valencia, and n = 543 from the Universitat de Barcelona) from several degrees in the 2010 2011 and 2011 2012 academic years, all of them new students, coming from high school, and who had choosen these universities as first choice. The global effect shows that the structural model fits reasonably well in the three universities studied. Similarly, university and specialty models show different intensity effects, and we found that, in the case of Universitat Politécnica de Valencia (UPV) and Universitat de Barcelona (UB), they show higher intensity than in Universidad Pablo de Olavide (UPO). This makes us think that in most urban universities with a clear and regular offer of degrees (engineering in the case of UPV, and Health and Social Sciences in the case of UB), personal and social factors are more important than in the case of universities, as is the case of UPO, with an offer and dimension not yet completely defined.Guàrdia Olmos, J.; Peró Cebollero, M.; Hervás Jorge, A.; Capilla Lladró, R.; Soriano Jiménez, PP.; Porras Yañez, M. (2014). Factors related with the university degree selection in Spanish public university system. An structural equation model analysis. Quality and Quantity. 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Teechain: a secure payment network with asynchronous blockchain access

Blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum execute payment transactions securely, but their performance is limited by the need for global consensus. Payment networks overcome this limitation through off-chain transactions. Instead of writing to the blockchain for each transaction, they only settle the final payment balances with the underlying blockchain. When executing off-chain transactions in current payment networks, parties must access the blockchain within bounded time to detect misbehaving parties that deviate from the protocol. This opens a window for attacks in which a malicious party can steal funds by deliberately delaying other parties' blockchain access and prevents parties from using payment networks when disconnected from the blockchain. We present Teechain, the first layer-two payment network that executes off-chain transactions asynchronously with respect to the underlying blockchain. To prevent parties from misbehaving, Teechain uses treasuries, protected by hardware trusted execution environments (TEEs), to establish off-chain payment channels between parties. Treasuries maintain collateral funds and can exchange transactions efficiently and securely, without interacting with the underlying blockchain. To mitigate against treasury failures and to avoid having to trust all TEEs, Teechain replicates the state of treasuries using committee chains, a new variant of chain replication with threshold secret sharing. Teechain achieves at least a 33X higher transaction throughput than the state-of-the-art Lightning payment network. A 30-machine Teechain deployment can handle over 1 million Bitcoin transactions per second