Co-creating Change

The open, flexible workplace modeled after best practices from Silicon Valley is hailed for promoting better communication, collaboration, and increased productivity. IT is known as a university change agent, but at IU Bloomington the future move into the new Cyberinfrastructure Building meant change on a radical scale, in every aspect of the workplace: physical space, business practices, and social and cultural environment. Many IT staff anticipated loss of privacy, personal space, and individuality. The challenge facing the executive project lead was to help staff begin to embrace the new culture while still occupying their old offices, a challenge not amenable to executive mandate or the change management process customary in IT. The solution was an experiment. Teams of staff led their co-workers in an organic process of articulating and addressing the issues, believing that socializing the change would encourage buy-in and investment and restore some sense of control. The experiment broke many models: Self-governing teams lead the initiative; teams crossed hierarchies and divisional boundaries. Team leads were sometimes junior staff. The book discusses the experiment and the many small and large decisions and strategies that helped make it a success: The process of creating teams, language and communication, situational leadership, the role of humor, team strategies for engaging staff, and team interactions with architects and planners. Teamwork was challenging — the organic process provided no steps to follow — but the team experience provided another benefit beyond socializing change: that of building leadership in the trenches. This experience involves a building, but the principles of change it confirms can apply to any kind of change, from altering the structure of a business to changing a culture. The discussion may be of interest to those in human resources, industrial psychology, sociology, business, academe, and architectur

Numerical study on diverging probability density function of flat-top solitons in an extended Korteweg-de Vries equation

We consider an extended Korteweg-de Vries (eKdV) equation, the usual Korteweg-de Vries equation with inclusion of an additional cubic nonlinearity. We investigate the statistical behaviour of flat-top solitary waves described by an eKdV equation in the presence of weak dissipative disorder in the linear growth/damping term. With the weak disorder in the system, the amplitude of solitary wave randomly fluctuates during evolution. We demonstrate numerically that the probability density function of a solitary wave parameter $\kappa$ which characterizes the soliton amplitude exhibits loglognormal divergence near the maximum possible $\kappa$ value.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Added mass of whipping modes for ships at high Froude number by a free surface boundary element method coupled with strip theory

Accurate prediction of the whipping response of a ship's structure following a wave impact is fundamental to both the prediction of instantaneous local stresses and global fatigue life assessment. In particular the added mass effect of the surrounding water has a profound effect on the modal frequencies. ``Strip theory'', routinely used for analysis of rigid body motions of ships in waves, is extended in this paper to include ship flexure. Moreover, the theoretical foundation of the method is discussed and it is shown that, although the theory becomes invalid for rigid body motions of high-speed vessels, the ship flexure problem is an ideal application of the theory. The associated two-dimensional free surface gravity wave problem is solved using a boundary element method based on wave functions given by Wehausen and Laitone (1960), which is also described. Results are validated against a fully three-dimensional solution, and incorporation of the added mass into a finite element model is shown to give excellent agreement with full scale measurements

Optical Microreflectometry and Microscopy of Chalcopyrite Specimens: Reflectance Calculation and Comparison to Backscattered Electron Microscopy

A model was developed to calculate the optical reflectance of an absorbing substrate covered by multiple thin layers of absorbing materials. Both multiple homogeneous thin layers and thin surface layers of mixed phases were modeled. Reflectance versus wavelength was measured for polished chalcopyrite (CuFeS2) and compared to calculated data. The identity and thickness of surface compounds used to calculate reflectance curves were partially determined using X-ray photoelectron and Auger electron spectroscopies. Very good agreement between theoretical and experimental reflectance curves were observed as a function of surface composition. The hue (color) and luminosity (brightness) of the polished surface were also calculated from both experimental and theoretical curves and were found to also be valuable for evaluating surface composition. Contrast in optical photomicrographs resulting from both luminosity and hue was illustrated. Secondary and backscattered electron microscopy were also used to image chalcopyrite polished surfaces which were naturally oxidized by an exposure before and after ion etching. For a substrate covered with thin layers, the resulting backscattered coefficient was calculated as a function of the backscattered coefficient for the surface and the substrate, respectively. The variations of the relative difference between the effective backscattered coefficients vs the primary beam energy exhibited a maximum for a critical thickness difference of the surface layer. The dependence of the variations in thickness of the oxidized layer with the crystallographic orientation changes of the substrate as well as the resulting contrasts of the optical and electron images were discussed

Fleas, Caterpillars and Cockroaches: A Summer School in Bio-inspired Robotics

There is no doubt that the coming decades will see a continued increase in the application of robotics in our daily lives. It is vital that we encourage more young people to pursue careers in STEM fields and in particular, robotics. Universities can play their part by running events that allow participants to explore the field of robotics through hands-on projects. In this paper our experiences in designing and running a bio-inspired robotics summer school for young women is described. The summer school was successful and we have made the teaching and learning materials available for others to use

Quantifying pollution inflow and outflow over East Asia in spring with regional and global models

Understanding the exchange processes between the atmospheric boundary layer and the free troposphere is crucial for estimating hemispheric transport of air pollution. Most studies of hemispheric air pollution transport have taken a large-scale perspective using global chemical transport models with fairly coarse spatial and temporal resolutions. In support of United Nations Task Force on Hemispheric Transport of Air Pollution (TF HTAP; www.htap.org), this study employs two high-resolution atmospheric chemistry models (WRF-Chem and CMAQ; 36×36 km) driven with chemical boundary conditions from a global model (MOZART; 1.9×1.9°) to examine the role of fine-scale transport and chemistry processes in controlling pollution export and import over the Asian continent in spring (March 2001). Our analysis indicates the importance of rapid venting through deep convection that develops along the leading edge of frontal system convergence bands, which are not adequately resolved in either of two global models compared with TRACE-P aircraft observations during a frontal event. Both regional model simulations and observations show that frontal outflows of CO, O3 and PAN can extend to the upper troposphere (6–9 km). Pollution plumes in the global MOZART model are typically diluted and insufficiently lofted to higher altitudes where they can undergo more efficient transport in stronger winds. We use sensitivity simulations that perturb chemical boundary conditions in the CMAQ regional model to estimate that the O3 production over East Asia (EA) driven by PAN decomposition contributes 20% of the spatial averaged total O3 response to European (EU) emission perturbations in March, and occasionally contributes approximately 50% of the total O3 response in subsiding plumes at mountain observatories (at approximately 2 km altitude). The response to decomposing PAN of EU origin is strongly affected by the O3 formation chemical regimes, which vary with the model chemical mechanism and NOx/VOC emissions. Our high-resolution models demonstrate a large spatial variability (by up to a factor of 6) in the response of local O3 to 20% reductions in EU anthropogenic O3 precursor emissions. The response in the highly populated Asian megacities is 40–50% lower in our high-resolution models than the global model, suggesting that the source-receptor relationships inferred from the global coarse-resolution models likely overestimate health impacts associated with intercontinental O3 transport. Our results highlight the important roles of rapid convective transport, orographic forcing, urban photochemistry and heterogeneous boundary layer processes in controlling intercontinental transport; these processes may not be well resolved in the large-scale models

Utilizing Forages to Program Steer Growth Patterns to Achieve Consistent Quality Beef

Many options are available for programming stocker cattle growth patterns through forage selection. In semi-arid south Texas rapid growth rates can be achieved by grazing irrigated small grains (oats, wheat and ryegrass) and slow growth rates are possible grazing native range pastures. Ryegrass (RG) nutrient quality indicates potential gains greater than 1.0 kg/d for steers, while typical winter native range (NR) pasture indicates gains of 0.45 kg/d or less. The purpose of this experiment was to quantify the impact of different programmed growth patterns on beef retail product especially size, marbling and tenderness

Ground‐based measurements of NOx and total reactive oxidized nitrogen (NOy) at Sable Island, Nova Scotia, during the NARE 1993 summer intensive

Measurements of NO, NO2, and total reactive oxidized nitrogen (NOy) were added to ongoing measurements of aerosols, CO, and O3 at Sable Island (43°55′N, 60°01′W), Nova Scotia, during the North Atlantic Regional Experiment (NARE) 1993 summer intensive. Ambient levels of NOx and NOy were found to be highly variable, and elevated levels can be attributed to the transport of polluted continental air or presumably to relatively fresh emissions from sources upwind (e.g., ship traffic). The median values for NOx and NOy are 98 and 266 parts per trillion by volume (pptv), respectively. A multiday pollution episode occurred during which elevated NOx and NOy were observed with enhanced levels of O3, CO, and condensation nuclei. Air masses of recent tropical marine origin characterized by low and constant levels of O3 and CO were sampled after Hurricane Emily. The correlation between ozone and CO is reasonably good, although the relation is driven by the single pollution episode observed during the study. The correlation of O3 with NOy and with NOy‐NOx is complicated by the presumed NOy removal processes in the marine boundary layer. Examination of the radiosonde data and comparisons of the surface data with those obtained on the overflying aircraft provide clear indications of vertical stratification above the site