Towards the sixth generation of R&D management : an exploratory study

It is apparent that understanding the link between the role of innovation in competitiveness and economic development is essential. This is because innovation ultimately holds the key to addressing the most pressing a nation’s social and human challenges. In the past, some organizations viewed research and development (R&D) as an intangible, difficult to manage and measure process and do their best to stay away from it. On the other hand, organizations that have a clear understanding and mastery of R&D management seem to have great success in exploiting R&D in commercializing new technologies with speed and precision that enabled them to achieve numerous competitive edge, such as first-to-market advantages, greater market shares for their innovations, premium prices and dominant designs relative to their counterparts). However, the upsurge in enabling technologies such as the internet is changing the perceptions on managing R&D processes, moving from technology-oriented model to a more interactive and collaborative model. While it is evident that there is increased focus on fine-tuning R&D management processes the majority of these efforts were confined to the USA, Europe, Asia and other developed economies, with limited focus on R&D management on the African continent. This paper evaluates and discusses relevant aspects of the five generations of R&D management practices using an exploratory research approach and attempts to predict some of the most appropriate practices R&D managers may adopt in the R&D sixth generation. The findings suggest that the sixth generation of R&D management will be characterized by greater multi-disciplinary approach emphasizing cross-functional communication, collaboration, greater inclusion of stakeholders, such as suppliers, customers and partners in the full life cycle of the R&D management process. That is, from conception to market development, evaluation, reporting and re-conceptualization. This research provides further insight into the next generation of R&D

Intraoperative glucose management in children < 1 year or < 10 kg: an observational study

Background: Infants may be at risk of hypoglycaemia in the perioperative period. Current evidence has led to the global use of maintenance fluid with low-concentration dextrose in these patients. This study aimed to analyse the current practice of anaesthetists in the authors’ institution with regard to blood glucose management, and to assess its adequacy.Methods: Ninety-nine patients under one year of age, or less than 10 kilograms, who required anaesthesia were enrolled. The intraoperative management of intravenous dextrose administration and blood glucose monitoring was at the discretion of the attending anaesthetists. Data collected included patient demographics, period of starvation, dose of dextrose administered and blood glucose measurements taken.Results: Nine infants had at least one glucose value lower than 3.7 mmol/l at any time during the procedure, while all received intravenous dextrose intraoperatively. The hypoglycaemic episode occurred on initial measurement (start of surgery) in five infants and later on in the procedure in four infants. This subgroup had an average age of 1.5 months, and average weight of 2.9 kg. Seven of these infants had significant co-morbidities and/or prematurity and low birthweight.Conclusions: The findings indicate that anaesthetists adhere to current recommendations regarding glucose management, and confirmed the safety of intraoperative administration of 0–2.5% dextrose in isotonic solution to healthy infants. The authors’ observations also emphasised that smaller infants and those with significant co-morbidities are at particular risk of developing hypoglycaemia, despite preoperative and intraoperative dextrose administration. It remains important to check glucose levels in patients at risk of hypoglycaemia.Keywords: dextrose, infants, intraoperative, hypoglycaemia, hyperglycaemi

Comparisons of binary black hole merger waveforms

This a particularly exciting time for gravitational wave physics. Ground-based gravitational wave detectors are now operating at a sensitivity such that gravitational radiation may soon be directly detected, and recently several groups have independently made significant breakthroughs that have finally enabled numerical relativists to solve the Einstein field equations for coalescing black-hole binaries, a key source of gravitational radiation. The numerical relativity community is now in the position to begin providing simulated merger waveforms for use by the data analysis community, and it is therefore very important that we provide ways to validate the results produced by various numerical approaches. Here, we present a simple comparison of the waveforms produced by two very different, but equally successful approaches--the generalized harmonic gauge and the moving puncture methods. We compare waveforms of equal-mass black hole mergers with minimal or vanishing spins. The results show exceptional agreement for the final burst of radiation, with some differences attributable to small spins on the black holes in one case.Comment: Revtex 4, 5 pages. Published versio

Event Horizon Deformations in Extreme Mass-Ratio Black Hole Mergers

We study the geometry of the event horizon of a spacetime in which a small compact object plunges into a large Schwarzschild black hole. We first use the Regge-Wheeler and Zerilli formalisms to calculate the metric perturbations induced by this small compact object, then find the new event horizon by propagating null geodesics near the unperturbed horizon. A caustic is shown to exist before the merger. Focusing on the geometry near the caustic, we show that it is determined predominantly by large-l perturbations, which in turn have simple asymptotic forms near the point at which the particle plunges into the horizon. It is therefore possible to obtain an analytic characterization of the geometry that is independent of the details of the plunge. We compute the invariant length of the caustic. We further show that among the leading-order horizon area increase, half arises from generators that enter the horizon through the caustic, and the rest arises from area increase near the caustic, induced by the gravitational field of the compact object.Comment: 23 pages, 14 figure

Accuracy and effectualness of closed-form, frequency-domain waveforms for non-spinning black hole binaries

The coalescences of binary black hole (BBH) systems, here taken to be non-spinning, are among the most promising sources for gravitational wave (GW) ground-based detectors, such as LIGO and Virgo. To detect the GW signals emitted by BBHs, and measure the parameters of the source, one needs to have in hand a bank of GW templates that are both effectual (for detection), and accurate (for measurement). We study the effectualness and the accuracy of the two types of parametrized banks of templates that are directly defined in the frequency-domain by means of closed-form expressions, namely 'post-Newtonian' (PN) and 'phenomenological' models. In absence of knowledge of the exact waveforms, our study assumes as fiducial, target waveforms the ones generated by the most accurate version of the effective one body (EOB) formalism. We find that, for initial GW detectors the use, at each point of parameter space, of the best closed-form template (among PN and phenomenological models) leads to an effectualness >97% over the entire mass range and >99% in an important fraction of parameter space; however, when considering advanced detectors, both of the closed-form frequency-domain models fail to be effectual enough in significant domains of the two-dimensional [total mass and mass ratio] parameter space. Moreover, we find that, both for initial and advanced detectors, the two closed-form frequency-domain models fail to satisfy the minimal required accuracy standard in a very large domain of the two-dimensional parameter space. In addition, a side result of our study is the determination, as a function of the mass ratio, of the maximum frequency at which a frequency-domain PN waveform can be 'joined' onto a NR-calibrated EOB waveform without undue loss of accuracy.Comment: 29 pages, 8 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Cool Companions to White Dwarf Stars from the Two Micron All Sky Survey All Sky Data Release

We present the culmination of our near-infrared survey of the optically spectroscopically identified white dwarf stars from the McCook and Sion catalog, conducted using photometric data from the Two Micron All Sky Survey final All Sky Data Release. The color selection technique, which identifies candidate binaries containing a white dwarf and a low-mass stellar (or substellar) companion via their distinctive locus in the near-infrared color-color diagram, is demonstrated to be simple to apply and to yield candidates with a high rate of subsequent confirmation. We recover 105 confirmed binaries, and identify 27 firm candidates (19 of which are new to this work) and 21 tentative candidates (17 of which are new to this work) from the 2MASS data. Only a small number of candidates from our survey have likely companion spectral types later than M5, none of which is an obvious L-type (i.e., potential brown dwarf) companion. Only one previously known white dwarf + brown dwarf binary is detected. This result is discussed in the context of the 2MASS detection limits, as well as other recent observational surveys that suggest a very low rate of formation (or survival) for binary stars with extreme mass ratios

Solar photovoltaic energy progress in Zambia : a review

Abstract: Regionally, Southern Africa is facing many challenges with regard to the level of access to energy. The situation is most compounded in the rural areas where poverty and lack of development are taking place at a snail pace. In order to achieve and promote sustainable development, the use of solar energy has been regarded by the government of Zambia and the sub-Saharan African region as the best alternative to the current energy deficit that the region is facing. To begin with, the government of Zambia, in the last decade, has supported solar photovoltaic energy research and development. However, the country has had challenges with achieving the set targets of connecting 10,000 new household by 2013 and ended up reducing the target to 2500 households of which 500 household of the proposed target was connected in 2015. This review is a desktop study of the on-going research on the solar energy and policy analysis of Zambia. It reviews the current solar photovoltaic and renewable energy trends in Zambia based on secondary data collected from various literatures, reports, and local contacts. The paper also highlights some of the solar energy achievements and failures in Zambia such as the 50MW solar mini-grid with the lowest tariff of US$0.0602 unit per kilowatt-hour and as well as the efforts, the government of Zambia has made through the help of international donors and the World Bank to scale up initiatives. Finally, it has also discussed the Zambian government policies and initiatives to promote deployment of solar energy technologies in the country. The review of solar photovoltaic energy is vital, as it will help the decision makers and various stakeholders to understand the current renewable status, barriers and challenges in Zambia and find alternative ways to overcome these challenges and barriers

Comparison of post-Newtonian templates for compact binary inspiral signals in gravitational-wave detectors

The two-body dynamics in general relativity has been solved perturbatively using the post-Newtonian (PN) approximation. The evolution of the orbital phase and the emitted gravitational radiation are now known to a rather high order up to O(v^8), v being the characteristic velocity of the binary. The orbital evolution, however, cannot be specified uniquely due to the inherent freedom in the choice of parameter used in the PN expansion as well as the method pursued in solving the relevant differential equations. The goal of this paper is to determine the (dis)agreement between different PN waveform families in the context of initial and advanced gravitational-wave detectors. The waveforms employed in our analysis are those that are currently used by Initial LIGO/Virgo, that is the time-domain PN models TaylorT1, TaylorT2, TaylorT3, TaylorT4 and TaylorEt, the effective one-body (EOB) model, and the Fourier-domain representation TaylorF2. We examine the overlaps of these models with one another and with the prototype effective one-body model (calibrated to numerical relativity simulations, as currently used by initial LIGO) for a number of different binaries at 2PN, 3PN and 3.5PN orders to quantify their differences and to help us decide whether there exist preferred families that are the most appropriate as search templates. We conclude that as long as the total mass remains less than a certain upper limit M_crit, all template families at 3.5PN order (except TaylorT3 and TaylorEt) are equally good for the purpose of detection. The value of M_crit is found to be ~ 12M_Sun for Initial, Enhanced and Advanced LIGO. From a purely computational point of view we recommend that 3.5PN TaylorF2 be used below Mcrit and EOB calibrated to numerical relativity simulations be used for total binary mass M > Mcrit.Comment: 27 pages, 8 figures, 4 tables, submitted to PR

Coping with stressors in late adolescence/young adulthood : a salutogenic perspective

Literature indicates that globally young people are increasingly experiencing life as hopeless and meaningless. It is thus beneficial to investigate factors facilitating well-being in young people, as they are required to cope with multiple stressors whilst simultaneously negotiating the transition from childhood to adulthood. Health practitioners need to establish ways to enhance adequate coping in young people in order to minimise stress and ward off negative consequences such as addiction, depression and other pathologies that compromise health. This study aimed to ascertain whether discovering meaning in life and developing a strong sense of coherence may predict coping with stressors in a group of male and female South Africans in late adolescence/young adulthood (N=258). Three self-report measures were used: the Purpose in Life Questionnaire to measure the extent to which one has found meaning, the Sense of Coherence Scale to assess the extent to which individuals view life as comprehensible, manageable and meaningful, and the Adolescent Coping Scale to determine ability to cope. Logistic regression analysis results indicate that the extent to which one has discovered meaning in life and developed a sense of coherence predict ability to cope in young people. This suggests that intervention strategies that encourage individuals to search for meaning and strengthen sense of coherence may be effective in facilitating coping and may contribute positively to the overall health of young people