3,514 research outputs found
Is agile project management applicable to construction?
This paper briefly summarises the evolution of Agile Project Management (APM) and differentiates it from lean and agile production and âleagileâ construction. The significant benefits being realized through employment of APM within the information systems industry are stated. The characteristics of APM are explored, including: philosophy, organizational attitudes and practices, planning, execution and control and learning. Finally, APM is subjectively assessed as to its potential contribution to the pre-design, design and construction phases.
In conclusion, it is assessed that APM offers considerable potential for application in predesign and design but that there are significant hurdles to its adoption in the actual construction phase. Should these be overcome, APM offers benefits well beyond any individual project
The Role of Expectation in Job Search and Firm Size Effect on Wages
One of the most puzzling facts in economics is the firm size-wage effect. After controlling for the observable characteristics of workers (age, gender, education, residence etc.), firms (industry, occupation, work conditions etc.) and negotiation effect (unionization), one still finds that the sheer size of a firm increases the wage, contrary to the one-good one-price doctrine. We provide a simple dynamic game model of wage determination to give a new rationale to the firm size-wage effect. We think that the wages are not market clearing prices but strategies by firms. Firms choose wages to control workers' search behavior. The essential feature of the model is that a large firm's history of wages is observable to all the current and future workers, while a small firm is not visible and only its current offer is observable. Therefore a small firm is expected to be a myopic low-wage payer, and its workers search and quit often. A large firm can prevent search if it maintained a high wage throughout the past, thus making workers expect high future wages. In this way, the firm size determines the worker expectations of its future wages, which changes the quit rate and equilibrium wages. To give additional support to our theoretical result, we test a new aspect of firm size-wage effect. Since the effect on wage levels are extensively studied, we derive two main hypotheses on wage gains after job changes. (H1) The proportion of firms that are larger than the previous employer increases the wage gain. (H2) The size of the previous employer decreases the wage gain. The firm size distribution effect (H1) is a new test. We obtain supports for both. Thus we conclude that the wages are strategies and affected by how workers utilize the firm size information in changing jobs. (297 words.)
Yoko Ono: Emotions to Art
By most of mainstream culture, Yoko Ono is perceived as the wild and weird artist who ultimately broke-up the Beatles. To the contrary, it was Onoâs very eclectic and creative mind that engendered conceptually innovative works of art. These pieces showed society how to love and join together to create a world without loneliness, and how to live as one harmonious global culture. How does an individual influenced by so many art movements merge with the state-of-mind Ono found herself in in order to create such powerful works of art? Such an individual could only be constructed by deep pain, lived experience, and the desire to turn that pain and experience into art that could change the world. By synthesizing many documents written about the artist, interviews between Ono and journalists, and the historical context of WWII, this paper explores and interprets the many inspirations behind Onoâs work. From her lavish but tragic family life, travel between Japan and the United States, and the terror of WWII, Ono emerged as an artist who longed to spread peace and love to everyone despite the scrutiny she often received. Though many artists become shaped by the world that currently surrounds them, in this particular case, Ono experienced these events first-hand and used them to help others rather than dwell in sorrow
Local effective dynamics of quantum systems: A generalized approach to work and heat
By computing the local energy expectation values with respect to some local
measurement basis we show that for any quantum system there are two
fundamentally different contributions: changes in energy that do not alter the
local von Neumann entropy and changes that do. We identify the former as work
and the latter as heat. Since our derivation makes no assumptions on the system
Hamiltonian or its state, the result is valid even for states arbitrarily far
from equilibrium. Examples are discussed ranging from the classical limit to
purely quantum mechanical scenarios, i.e. where the Hamiltonian and the density
operator do not commute.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, published versio
An attempt to interpret the relative abundances of the elements and their isotopes
In tbis paper an attempt is made to derive some information concerning the prestellar stage at wbich the elements are supposed to have been formed. By using first the relative abundances of the isotopes of a single element (e.g., 0, Ne, Mg, Si, and S), it is shown that a temperature of the order of a few billion degrees is indicated. The equilibrium between the fundamental nuclear particles (protons, neutrons, α-particles, electrons, and positrons) at temperatures ranging from 5 to 10 billion degrees is then studied to establish the relative concentrations of protons and neutrons as a function of the temperature. Tbis relation is then used to compute theoretical mass-abundance-curves under different physical conditions. From such calculations it is concluded that under the physical conditions specified by T=8×109 degrees and ρ= 107 gm/cm3 the theoretical mass-abundance-curve from oxygen to sulphur agrees fairly satisfactorily with the known abundance-curve according to V. M. Goldschmidt (Fig. 2). An important feature of the nuclear mixture considered is that hydrogen and helium are the two most abundant constituents, wbich is in agreement with known facts. However, the conditions indicated are seen to be quite insufficient to account for the existence of the heavy nuclei to any appreciable extent. It is, therefore, suggested that we should distinguish at least two epochs in the development of the prestellar stage. We imagine that at the earliest stages conditions of extreme temperatures and densities prevailed at wbich the heavier nuclei could have been formed. As the matter cooled to lower temperatures and densities, appreciable amounts (I part in 106) of the heavy elements must have been "frozen" into the mixture. At temperatures of the order of from 5×109 to 8×109 degrees and densities of the order of from 104 to 107 gm/cm3 the present known relative abundances of the elements from oxygen to sulphur may have been established
Chinese managers used to state control have a hard time acting as capitalists
Decision-makers act on their experience, write Henrich R. Greve and Cyndi Man Zhan
How Chinese firms reacted when told to change their share ownership structures
The slowest to comply had few public shares and had ties to the state through their board members, write Henrich R. Greve and Cyndi Man Zhan
Activated O2 dissociation and formation of oxide islands on the Be(0001) surface: Another atomistic model for metal oxidation
By simulating the dissociation of O2 molecules on the Be(0001) surface using
the first-principles molecular dynamics approach, we propose a new atomistic
model for the surface oxidation of sp metals. In our model, only the
dissociation of the first oxygen molecule needs to overcome an energy barrier,
while the subsequent oxygen molecules dissociate barrierlessly around the
adsorption area. Consequently, oxide islands form on the metal surface, and
grow up in a lateral way. We also discover that the firstly dissociated oxygen
atoms are not so mobile on the Be(0001) surface, as on the Al(111) surface. Our
atomistic model enlarges the knowledge on metal surface oxidations by perfectly
explaining the initial stage during the surface oxidation of Be, and might be
applicable to some other sp metal surfaces.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Critical behavior in an evolutionary Ultimatum Game
Experimental studies have shown the ubiquity of altruistic behavior in human
societies. The social structure is a fundamental ingredient to understand the
degree of altruism displayed by the members of a society, in contrast to
individual-based features, like for example age or gender, which have been
shown not to be relevant to determine the level of altruistic behavior. We
explore an evolutionary model aiming to delve how altruistic behavior is
affected by social structure. We investigate the dynamics of interacting
individuals playing the Ultimatum Game with their neighbors given by a social
network of interaction. We show that a population self-organizes in a critical
state where the degree of altruism depends on the topology characterizing the
social structure. In general, individuals offering large shares but in turn
accepting large shares, are removed from the population. In heterogeneous
social networks, individuals offering intermediate shares are strongly selected
in contrast to random homogeneous networks where a broad range of offers, below
a critical one, is similarly present in the population.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figure
Quantum oscillations in adsorption energetics of atomic oxygen on Pb(111) ultrathin films: A density-functional theory study
Using first-principles calculations, we have systematically studied the
quantum size effects of ultrathin Pb(111) films on the adsorption energies and
diffusion energy barriers of oxygen atoms. For the on-surface adsorption of
oxygen atoms at different coverages, all the adsorption energies are found to
show bilayer oscillation behaviors. It is also found that the work function of
Pb(111) films still keeps the bilayer-oscillation behavior after the adsorption
of oxygen atoms, with the values being enlarged by 2.10 to 2.62 eV. For the
diffusion and penetration of the adsorbed oxygen atoms, it is found that the
most energetically favored paths are the same on different Pb(111) films. And
because of the modulation of quantum size effects, the corresponding energy
barriers are all oscillating with a bilayer period on different Pb(111) films.
Our studies indicate that the quantum size effect in ultrathin metal films can
modulate a lot of processes during surface oxidation
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