Managing Interdisciplinary Human Intellectual Capital for Project and Organizational Development

Due to outdated evaluation systems and their misleading parameters, organizations increasingly struggle to manage Human interdisciplinary intellectual Capital (HIIC) regarding project and general development. The education of current experts is not able to keep up with the speed of nowadays disruptive evolution of modern challenges, making the managing process of HIIC within organizational projects increasingly inefficient. This paper aims to develop a framework which can be used as a tool for organizational and project development to accurately identify and manage Human intellectual capital (HIC) free from inaccurate parameters. Such parameters are values that serve to make judgements about progress and performance and are historically a rather static assessment tool. The framework uses the concept of applied philosophy for organizational culture and the Company Democracy Models for knowledge management. This research identifies and redefines human intellectual capital parameters under a modern perspective in order to better reflect the HIIC challenges

Level-1 Regional Calorimeter Trigger System for CMS

The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) calorimeter regional trigger system is designed to detect signatures of isolated and non-isolated electrons/photons, jets, ?-leptons, and missing and total transverse energy using a deadtimeless pipelined architecture. This system contains 18 crates of custom-built electronics. The pre-production prototype backplane, boards, links and Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) have been built and their performance is characterized.Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 6 pages, PDF. PSN THHT00

Cultivation of Podospora anserina on soybean hulls results in an efficient enzyme cocktail for plant biomass hydrolysis

The coprophilic ascomycete fungus Podospora anserina was cultivated on three different plant biomasses, i.e. cotton seed hulls (CSH), soybean hulls (SBH) and acid-pretreated wheat straw (WS) for four days, and the potential of the produced enzyme mixtures was compared in the enzymatic saccharification of the corresponding lignocellulose feedstocks. The enzyme cocktail P. anserina produced after three days of growth on SBH showed superior capacity to release reducing sugars from all tested plant biomass feedstocks compared to the enzyme mixtures from CSH and WS cultures. Detailed proteomics analysis of the culture supernatants revealed that SBH contained the most diverse set of enzymes targeted on plant cell wall polymers and was particularly abundant in xylan, mannan and pectin acting enzymes. The importance of lytic polysaccharide monooxygenases (LPMOs) in plant biomass deconstruction was supported by identification of 20 out of 33 AA9 LPMOs in the SBH cultures. The results highlight the suitability of P. anserina as a source of plant cell wall degrading enzymes for biotechnological applications and the importance of selecting the most optimal substrate for the production of enzyme mixtures. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Peer reviewe

Calibration and Characterization of the IceCube Photomultiplier Tube

Over 5,000 PMTs are being deployed at the South Pole to compose the IceCube neutrino observatory. Many are placed deep in the ice to detect Cherenkov light emitted by the products of high-energy neutrino interactions, and others are frozen into tanks on the surface to detect particles from atmospheric cosmic ray showers. IceCube is using the 10-inch diameter R7081-02 made by Hamamatsu Photonics. This paper describes the laboratory characterization and calibration of these PMTs before deployment. PMTs were illuminated with pulses ranging from single photons to saturation level. Parameterizations are given for the single photoelectron charge spectrum and the saturation behavior. Time resolution, late pulses and afterpulses are characterized. Because the PMTs are relatively large, the cathode sensitivity uniformity was measured. The absolute photon detection efficiency was calibrated using Rayleigh-scattered photons from a nitrogen laser. Measured characteristics are discussed in the context of their relevance to IceCube event reconstruction and simulation efforts.Comment: 40 pages, 12 figure

Alite calcium sulfoaluminate cement: chemistry and thermodynamics

Calcium sulfoaluminate (C$A) cement is a binder of increasing interest to the cement industry and is undergoing rapid development. Current formulations do not contain alite; however, alite calcium sulfoaluminate (a-C$A) cements can combine the favourable characteristics of Portland cement (PC) with those of C$A cement while also having a lower carbon dioxide footprint than the current generation of PC clinkers. This paper presents two results on the formation of a-C$A clinkers. The first is a thermodynamic study demonstrating that the production of a-C$A clinker is possible without the use of mineralisers, doping with foreign elements, or using multiple stages of heating. It is established that a-C$A clinker can be readily produced in a standard process by controlling the oxygen and sulfur dioxide fugacity in the atmosphere. This allows for the stabilisation of ye’elimite to the higher temperatures required for alite stability. The second result establishes that when using fluorine to mineralise a-C$A clinker production, the iron content in the clinker is also an important variable. Although the exact mechanism of alite stabilisation is not known, it is shown that alite formation increases with the combination of calcium fluoride and iron (III) oxide in the mix

Vitamin D levels and susceptibility to asthma, elevated immunoglobulin E levels, and atopic dermatitis: A Mendelian randomization study.

BACKGROUND: Low circulating vitamin D levels have been associated with risk of asthma, atopic dermatitis, and elevated total immunoglobulin E (IgE). These epidemiological associations, if true, would have public health importance, since vitamin D insufficiency is common and correctable. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We aimed to test whether genetically lowered vitamin D levels were associated with risk of asthma, atopic dermatitis, or elevated serum IgE levels, using Mendelian randomization (MR) methodology to control bias owing to confounding and reverse causation. The study employed data from the UK Biobank resource and from the SUNLIGHT, GABRIEL and EAGLE eczema consortia. Using four single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) strongly associated with 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25OHD) levels in 33,996 individuals, we conducted MR studies to estimate the effect of lowered 25OHD on the risk of asthma (n = 146,761), childhood onset asthma (n = 15,008), atopic dermatitis (n = 40,835), and elevated IgE level (n = 12,853) and tested MR assumptions in sensitivity analyses. None of the four 25OHD-lowering alleles were associated with asthma, atopic dermatitis, or elevated IgE levels (p ≥ 0.2). The MR odds ratio per standard deviation decrease in log-transformed 25OHD was 1.03 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.90-1.19, p = 0.63) for asthma, 0.95 (95% CI 0.69-1.31, p = 0.76) for childhood-onset asthma, and 1.12 (95% CI 0.92-1.37, p = 0.27) for atopic dermatitis, and the effect size on log-transformed IgE levels was -0.40 (95% CI -1.65 to 0.85, p = 0.54). These results persisted in sensitivity analyses assessing population stratification and pleiotropy and vitamin D synthesis and metabolism pathways. The main limitations of this study are that the findings do not exclude an association between the studied outcomes and 1,25-dihydoxyvitamin D, the active form of vitamin D, the study was underpowered to detect effects smaller than an OR of 1.33 for childhood asthma, and the analyses were restricted to white populations of European ancestry. This research has been conducted using the UK Biobank Resource and data from the SUNLIGHT, GABRIEL and EAGLE Eczema consortia. CONCLUSIONS: In this study, we found no evidence that genetically determined reduction in 25OHD levels conferred an increased risk of asthma, atopic dermatitis, or elevated total serum IgE, suggesting that efforts to increase vitamin D are unlikely to reduce risks of atopic disease