Building creative confidence in idea management processes to improve idea generation in new product development teams

This is a scoping paper that aims to establish effective practices and key players in the domain of Idea Management. The paper defines Idea Management as the generation, evaluation and selection of ideas. The purpose of the paper is to map the current landscape of methodologies and tools in order to identify gaps and support the development of a framework to enhance creative confidence in idea management. The study has two key research questions: (i) what factors are influencing current idea generation practices and (ii) what tools and approaches exist for idea generation. This will help identify how creative confidence can influence the idea generation processes. Creative confidence is the capability to come up with breakthrough ideas, associated with the bravery to perform. If stimulated in the right way with a valuable framework, its impact on employees’ performance is significant in improving team members’ innovation performance and quality of ideas

Environmental Benchmarking of Suppliers in the UK Food Sector

This paper aims to develop an audit toolkit that enables companies in the food sector to benchmark their suppliers in terms of environmental management. The paper reviews environmental practices and performance metrics in the food value chain by developing a custom designed survey to gather results, allow auditing and enable benchmarking of the best practice, common practice and areas for improvement among the suppliers. Some of the key areas in which the suppliers represented best practice include the separation and recycling of their waste streams and efforts to reduce the use of raw materials, energy, water, pesticides, herbicides and fertilisers. Some suppliers were actively engaging with stakeholders in their value chain to collaborate on products and processes that reduced environmental impacts. Notably the supplier with the best environmental performance had both developed an Environmental Management Policy and also implemented it systematically.The areas that the study showed needed improvement included the need for all suppliers to implement an Environmental Management System, the need for more renewable sourcing for materials and energy, the need for systematic measurement of the food miles of products, and the carbon and water footprints of their business processes. Both the approach taken and the results of this study have already proved beneficial for the collaborating partner, Reynolds Catering Supplies Ltd. as they anticipate its use for promoting improved environmental management among their suppliers

Effect of Septoria leaf blotch and its control with commercial fungicides, on arbuscular-mycorrhizal-fungal colonization, spore numbers, and morphotype diversity

Arbuscular-mycorrhizal internal structures (i.e. total root colonization, arbuscules, vesicles) and external structures (i.e. spore density), and Glomeromycota spore morphotypes, were evaluated in wheat severely infected with Mycosphaerella graminicola – the causal agent of Septoria leaf blotch. Plots in which the infection was controlled with a commercial fungicide at recommended field doses, were also examined. The commercial fungicide used was an admixture of trifloxistrobin and tebuconazole. No negative effects of the fungicide application on arbuscular-mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) were found. The M. graminicola fungicidal treatment actually favoured the formation of arbuscules and AMF spores, as there was a selective increase in the density of spores belonging to the glomoid morphotype. Arbuscular-mycorrhizal fungi have an absolute dependence on the carbon provided by the plant. A severe foliar disease leading to a diminished carbon supply to the roots would generate decreases in carbon availability. Such decreases would strongly affect mycorrhizal associations and development. Furthermore, the change in the green-leaf area produced by a severe foliar disease and/or a reversal of that condition through fungicide treatment could result in shifts in the composition of the AMF community so as to favour glomoid morphotypes. Glomoid species have been previously considered as r-strategists.Fil: Schalamuk, Santiago. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias y Forestales; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Centro de Química Inorgánica "Dr. Pedro J. Aymonino". Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Centro de Química Inorgánica "Dr. Pedro J. Aymonino"; ArgentinaFil: Velázquez, María Silvana. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Centro de Química Inorgánica "Dr. Pedro J. Aymonino". Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Centro de Química Inorgánica "Dr. Pedro J. Aymonino"; ArgentinaFil: Simon, Maria Rosa. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias y Forestales; Argentina. Provincia de Buenos Aires. Gobernación. Comisión de Investigaciones Científicas; ArgentinaFil: Cabello, Marta Noemí. Universidad Nacional de la Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo. Instituto de Botánica Spegazzini; Argentin

Enhancing Compressed Sensing 4D Photoacoustic Tomography by Simultaneous Motion Estimation

A crucial limitation of current high-resolution 3D photoacoustic tomography (PAT) devices that employ sequential scanning is their long acquisition time. In previous work, we demonstrated how to use compressed sensing techniques to improve upon this: images with good spatial resolution and contrast can be obtained from suitably sub-sampled PAT data acquired by novel acoustic scanning systems if sparsity-constrained image reconstruction techniques such as total variation regularization are used. Now, we show how a further increase of image quality can be achieved for imaging dynamic processes in living tissue (4D PAT). The key idea is to exploit the additional temporal redundancy of the data by coupling the previously used spatial image reconstruction models with sparsity-constrained motion estimation models. While simulated data from a two-dimensional numerical phantom will be used to illustrate the main properties of this recently developed joint-image-reconstruction-and-motion-estimation framework, measured data from a dynamic experimental phantom will also be used to demonstrate their potential for challenging, large-scale, real-world, three-dimensional scenarios. The latter only becomes feasible if a carefully designed combination of tailored optimization schemes is employed, which we describe and examine in more detail

Approximate k-space models and Deep Learning for fast photoacoustic reconstruction

We present a framework for accelerated iterative reconstructions using a fast and approximate forward model that is based on k-space methods for photoacoustic tomography. The approximate model introduces aliasing artefacts in the gradient information for the iterative reconstruction, but these artefacts are highly structured and we can train a CNN that can use the approximate information to perform an iterative reconstruction. We show feasibility of the method for human in-vivo measurements in a limited-view geometry. The proposed method is able to produce superior results to total variation reconstructions with a speed-up of 32 times

On the Adjoint Operator in Photoacoustic Tomography

Photoacoustic Tomography (PAT) is an emerging biomedical "imaging from coupled physics" technique, in which the image contrast is due to optical absorption, but the information is carried to the surface of the tissue as ultrasound pulses. Many algorithms and formulae for PAT image reconstruction have been proposed for the case when a complete data set is available. In many practical imaging scenarios, however, it is not possible to obtain the full data, or the data may be sub-sampled for faster data acquisition. In such cases, image reconstruction algorithms that can incorporate prior knowledge to ameliorate the loss of data are required. Hence, recently there has been an increased interest in using variational image reconstruction. A crucial ingredient for the application of these techniques is the adjoint of the PAT forward operator, which is described in this article from physical, theoretical and numerical perspectives. First, a simple mathematical derivation of the adjoint of the PAT forward operator in the continuous framework is presented. Then, an efficient numerical implementation of the adjoint using a k-space time domain wave propagation model is described and illustrated in the context of variational PAT image reconstruction, on both 2D and 3D examples including inhomogeneous sound speed. The principal advantage of this analytical adjoint over an algebraic adjoint (obtained by taking the direct adjoint of the particular numerical forward scheme used) is that it can be implemented using currently available fast wave propagation solvers.Comment: submitted to "Inverse Problems

How an improved implementation of H2 self-shielding influences the formation of massive stars and black holes

High redshift quasars at z>6 have masses up to ~$10^9$ M$_\odot$. One of the pathways to their formation includes direct collapse of gas, forming a supermassive star, precursor of the black hole seed. The conditions for direct collapse are more easily achievable in metal-free haloes, where atomic hydrogen cooling operates and molecular hydrogen (H2) formation is inhibited by a strong external UV flux. Above a certain value of UV flux (J_crit), the gas in a halo collapses isothermally at ~$10^4$ K and provides the conditions for supermassive star formation. However, H2 can self-shield, reducing the effect of photodissociation. So far, most numerical studies used the local Jeans length to calculate the column densities for self-shielding. We implement an improved method for the determination of column densities in 3D simulations and analyse its effect on the value of J_crit. This new method captures the gas geometry and velocity field and enables us to properly determine the direction-dependent self-shielding factor of H2 against photodissociating radiation. We find a value of J_crit that is a factor of two smaller than with the Jeans approach (~2000 J_21 vs. ~4000 J_21). The main reason for this difference is the strong directional dependence of the H2 column density. With this lower value of J_crit, the number of haloes exposed to a flux >J_crit is larger by more than an order of magnitude compared to previous studies. This may translate into a similar enhancement in the predicted number density of black hole seeds.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures, published in MNRA

An innovative device for determining the soil water retention curve under high suction at different temperatures

To characterise the water retention behaviour of fine soils, high suction values are applied. In this range of values, the vapour equilibrium technique is usually used. This paper presents an innovative device, a sorption bench that permits the determination of the water retention curve of soil. With this new testing method, the time required for testing is significantly reduced. In addition, this apparatus enables the thermal conditions of a test to be controlled; thus, the applied suction can be better controlled, and the water retention curve for different temperatures can be determined. Another valuable aspect of the device is the adopted technical solution that permits weighing of the samples inside the desiccators at any time. Consequently, the water content kinetics can be defined without disturbing the drying or wetting processe

All clear? Meerkats attend to contextual information in close calls to coordinate vigilance

Socio-demographic factors, such as group size and their effect on predation vulnerability, have, in addition to intrinsic factors, dominated as explanations when attempting to understand animal vigilance behaviour. It is generally assumed that animals evaluate these external factors visually; however, many socially foraging species adopt a foraging technique that directly compromises the visual system. In these instances, such species may instead rely more on the acoustical medium to assess their relative risk and guide their subsequent anti-predator behaviour. We addressed this question in the socially foraging meerkat (Suricata suricatta). Meerkats forage with their head down, but at the same time frequently produce close calls (‘Foraging' close calls). Close calls are also produced just after an individual has briefly scanned the surrounding environment for predators (‘Guarding' close calls). Here, we firstly show that these Guarding and Foraging close call variants are in fact acoustically distinct and secondly subjects are less vigilant (in terms of frequency and time) when exposed to Guarding close call playbacks than when they hear Foraging close calls. We argue that this is the first evidence for socially foraging animals using the information encoded within calls, the main adaptive function of which is unrelated to immediate predator encounters, to coordinate their vigilance behaviour. In addition, these results provide new insights into the potential cognitive mechanisms underlying anti-predator behaviour and suggest meerkats may be capable of signalling to group members the ‘absence' of predatory threat. If we are to fully understand the complexities underlying the coordination of animal anti-predator behaviour, we encourage future studies to take these additional auditory and cognitive dimensions into accoun