Management frameworks for the New Zealand sub-Antarctic islands

The five island groups known as the New Zealand sub-Antarctic islands - Antipodes Islands, Auckland Islands, Bounty Islands, Campbell Island and Snares Islands - are perhaps better regarded as cool temperate although they share many features and many management issues with islands south of the Antarctic Convergence. The Snares and Bounty islands have granitic substrates; the Antipodes, Auckland and Campbell islands are of volcanic origin, Marine mammals and seabirds arc important components of the fauna, Terrestrial flora and invertebrate fauna show high levels of endemism. Several species of alien vertebrates have been successfully eradicated, The islands are managed by the New Zealand Department of Conservation as National Nature Reserves, and together are recognised as a World Heritage Site

Levels of abstraction in human supervisory control teams

This paper aims to report a study into the levels of abstraction hierarchy (LOAH) in two energy distribution teams. The original proposition for the LOAH was that it depicted five levels of system representation, working from functional purpose through to physical form to determine causes of a malfunction, or from physical form to functional purpose to determine the purpose of system function. The LOAH has been widely used throughout human supervisory control research to explain individual behaviour. The research seeks to focus on the application the LOAH to human supervisory control teams in semi-automated “intelligent” systems

Recent progress in parton distributions and implications for LHC physics

I outline some of the most recent developments in the global fit to parton distributions performed by the MRST collaboration

Testing Hollnagel's contextual control mod

Please contact publisher for further reprinting or re-useThis article sets out to test the hypothetical COtext and COntrol Model (COCOM) developed by Hollnagel (1993). Essentially, Hollnagel develops the argument that team behavior should be analyzed at a macro, rather than micro, level. He proposes 4 principal models of team activity: strategic, tactical, opportunistic, and scrambled. These modes of team behavior vary in terms of the degree of forward planning (highest in the strategic mode) and reactivity to the environment (highest in the scrambled mode). He further hypothesizes a linear progression through the modes from strategic to tactical to opportunistic to scrambled, depending on context, and vice versa. To test the COCOM model, we placed teams of people in a simulated energy distribution system. Our results confirm Hollnagel's hypothesized model in 2 main ways. First, we show that the team behavior could be categorized reliably into the 4 control modes and this provided a useful way of distinguishing between experimental conditions. Second, the progression between control modes conformed to the linear progression as predicted. This research provided the first independent test of the COCOM model and lends empirical support to the hypotheses

High surface area, emulsion-templated carbon foams by activation of polyHIPEs derived from Pickering emulsions.

Carbon foams displaying hierarchical porosity and excellent surface areas of >1400 m2/g can be produced by the activation of macroporous poly(divinylbenzene). Poly(divinylbenzene) was synthesized from the polymerization of the continuous, but minority, phase of a simple high internal phase Pickering emulsion. By the addition of KOH, chemical activation of the materials is induced during carbonization, producing Pickering-emulsion templated carbon foams, or carboHIPEs, with tailorable macropore diameters and surface areas almost triple that of those previously reported. The retention of the customizable, macroporous open-cell structure of the poly(divinylbenzene) precursor and the production of a large degree of microporosity during activation leads to tailorable carboHIPEs with excellent surface areas

Update of MRST parton distributions.

We discuss the latest update of the MRST parton distributions in response to the most recent data. We discuss the areas where there are hints of difficulties in the global fit, and compare to some other updated sets of parton distributions, particularly CTEQ6. We briefly discuss the issue of uncertainties associated with partons

MRST global fit update.

We discuss the impact of the most recent data on the MRST global analysis - in particular the new high-ET jet data and their implications for the gluon and the new small x structure function data. In the light of these new data we also consider the uncertainty in predictions for physical quantities depending on parton distributions, concentrating on the W cross-section at hadron colliders

Putting research into practice: An exploration of Sheffield iSchool approaches to connecting research with practice

The relationship between research and practice in the work of members of the University of Sheffield's Information School (iSchool) was examined through a mixed-methods study carried out in two stages. Two focus groups with doctoral students and faculty members explored motivations for undertaking research, views about the impact of research, and the role of social media in its dissemination. Personal enjoyment and pursuit of knowledge for its own sake emerged as strong motivators but were also linked with expressing professional identity and contributing something useful to practice in the field. Differing stakeholder definitions of research impact were perceived as problematic, and multiple channels of communication were advocated, including judicious use of professional and social networks. A content analysis of journal articles written by iSchool faculty collected qualitative and quantitative data on the subject matter, methodology, references, and other dimensions of published output, including statements relating the research to practice. Published outputs highlighted diversity in the methods used, demonstrated collaboration with practitioners in conducting and communicating research, and identified five distinct ways of connecting research with practice. The study concludes with ten recommendations for strengthening the research-practice relationship in library and information studies. © 2013 The Board of Trustees, University of Illinois

MRST partons and uncertainties.

We discuss uncertainties in the extraction of parton distributions from global analyses of DIS and related data. We present conservative sets of partons, at both NLO and NNLO, which are stable to x,Q2,W2 cuts on the data. We give the corresponding values of S(M2 Z) and the cross sections for W production at the Tevatron