THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TEAMWORK EFFECTIVENESS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Even organizations that are better served by a team model find disadvantages. These include an increase in time to communicate, poor communication between members and groups, poor coordination between group members, and competing objectives. Some self�managed teams never reach their full potential or fail to be functional altogether, because they were not set up correctly and the other aforementioned negative results occur. Other teams increase productivity and quality in organization. In this article the authors have investigated how information technology can increase teamwork effectiveness.teamwork, organization, information technology, development

GPs and end of life decisions : views and experiences

The views and experiences of GPs with respect to end of life (EoL) care are seldom addressed. The aim of this article is to better understand this aspect of care. A cross-sectional survey of all doctors in the country was designed and set up. The overall response was 396 (39.7%), 160 of which were GPs. 28.7% of GPs received no formal training in palliative medicine. 89.8% of respondents declared that their religion was important in EoL care. 45.3% agreed with the right of a patient to decide whether or not to hasten the EoL. 70.5% agreed that physicians should aim to preserve life. 15% of GPs withdrew or withheld treatment in the care of these patients. 41.1% had intensified analgesia at EoL. 7.5% had sedated patients at EoL. Lastly, 89.1% GPs would never consider euthanasia. Significant correlation (p< 0.05) was observed between considering euthanasia, using sedation, importance of religion and patients’ rights in EoL. A thematic analysis of comments highlighted the importance of the topic and feeling uncomfortable in EoL care. In conclusion there needs to be more training in palliative care. GPs believe in preserving life, would not consider euthanasia but do not shun intensification of analgesia at the end of life. There might be some misunderstanding with respect to the role of sedation at the EoL. GPs need legal and moral guidance in EoL care, in the absence of which, their religion is used as a guide.peer-reviewe

A Parameterized multi-step Newton method for solving systems of nonlinear equations

We construct a novel multi-step iterative method for solving systems of nonlinear equations by introducing a parameter. to generalize the multi-step Newton method while keeping its order of convergence and computational cost. By an appropriate selection of theta, the new method can both have faster convergence and have larger radius of convergence. The new iterative method only requires one Jacobian inversion per iteration, and therefore, can be efficiently implemented using Krylov subspace methods. The new method can be used to solve nonlinear systems of partial differential equations, such as complex generalized Zakharov systems of partial differential equations, by transforming them into systems of nonlinear equations by discretizing approaches in both spatial and temporal independent variables such as, for instance, the Chebyshev pseudo-spectral discretizing method. Quite extensive tests show that the new method can have significantly faster convergence and significantly larger radius of convergence than the multi-step Newton method.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Human resources management main role in information technology project management

AbstractToday the information technology is indeed a base of development for countries and a benchmark practice for leading and successful organizations. Success in this area depends on the success of micro and macro projects of information technology, and this success is not achievable unless all aspects, especially the most valuable element, e.g. the human resources, are considered. Because the policies related to human resources in the projects are changing, so the roles of managers of IT projects will also change in this regard. In this paper while reviewing some of the challenges in the field of information technology and human resources, factors affecting the success of IT projects such as the need to redesign jobs, more attention to personality characteristics of individuals in the process of recruitment, role of education in development of Information Technology projects and... have been considered. This research has tried to pay attention to three perspectives of individual, job-related, and organizational which from the point of view of these employees, individual perspectives and then job-related perspectives and ultimately organizational perspectives were effective in the success of the IT projects respectively. It is interesting to note that the employees have implicitly noted the major roles of the human resources of the managers of the IT projects in improving performance as one of the effective factors

Experimental and Numerical Modeling of Wildfire Spread via Fire Spotting

Wildfire spread via fire spotting phenomenon has three major stages, namely formation and break-off of firebrands from vegetative structures, lofting and transport of them through the ambient velocity field, and finally deposition of firebrands upon landing and ignition of spot fires. This dissertation develops novel models in different areas related to fire spotting phenomenon and integrates them to improve understanding of the firebrand flight through a multiphysics model. In this regard, a mechanical break-off model for the formation of cylindrical firebrands from coniferous trees is proposed; And by geometric scaling analysis, it is shown that the firebrand surface area scales on the mass raised to the 2/3rds power. By applying a non-linear regression model to the available experimental data on firebrands, a predictive statistical model for estimating mass and shape distribution of firebrands is proposed, that can be used as realistic input into the current fire spotting models. Further, the aerodynamic behavior of the cylindrical firebrands is characterized by conducting free-fall experiments where it is shown that the governing equations of the transport are highly sensitive to the initial conditions of the release. On this matter, near field dynamics of highly buoyant bent-over plumes are thoroughly characterized and, it is shown, analytically, that the steep trajectories of wildfire plumes necessitate for the inclusion of the boundary layer shearing effects in the mathematical models of the velocity field. Moreover, for the first time, the most extensive large scale wind tunnel experiments of the lofting and downwind transport of non-combusting model firebrands is conducted. It is found that the normalized landing location of firebrands with their maximum rise height have similar probability density functions (PDF) regardless of the aspect ratio. This implies that unlike previous studies the lofting and transport cannot be decoupled. Given the wind tunnel experiment results, a highly scalable coupled stochastic parametric model for firebrand flight is developed by synthesizing OpenFOAM and MATLAB solutions. This model couples the fine resolution time-varying Large Eddy Simulation (LES) resolved velocity field of the jets/plumes in non-uniform cross-flow boundary layers with the fully deterministic 3D 6-D.O.F. firebrand transport model. Comparisons between the experiments and corresponding numerical simulations with this model show very good agreement in estimating the average statistics of the flight. Also, it is shown that the transport equations are highly sensitive to the spatial and temporal variations in the ambient velocity field

Evaluation of Surficial Non-Liquefiable Soil Layer Impacts on Liquefaction Surface Manifestation of the West Tennessee Area Based on Finite Difference Methods

An investigation of the impact of shear strength and thickness of non-liquefiable soil layers on the surface manifestation of liquefaction based on finite difference numerical methods and to investigate the liquefaction potential of the West Tennessee area was performed by (1) analyzing liquefaction potential of Lake, Dyer, Lauderdale, and Tipton Counties, which are in West Tennessee and within or near the New Madrid Seismic Zone, based on the liquefaction potential indices of LPI and LPIISH methods; (2) developing a numerical model to perform liquefaction analysis ; (3) validating the developed numerical model in FLAC based on the evaluation of New Zealand data and observations; (4) performing sensitivity analysis of the overall FLAC model to shear strength and thickness of non-liquefiable soil layers; (5) adjusting the LPIISH procedure to incorporate the effects of shear strength and thickness of non-liquifiable soil layers based on the numerical model and sensitivity results; (6) performing liquefaction potential analysis of West Tennessee based on the LPIISH. A comparison of the LPI- and LPIISH-based Liquefaction Probability Curves (LPCs) for the probability of LPI and LPIISH exceeding 5, which provides the probability that liquefaction surface manifestation can occur based on the threshold of 5, revealed that the probability of liquefaction surface manifestation provided by the LPIISH method is significantly lower than the probability of liquefaction surface manifestation provided by the LPC based on the LPI method, mainly at higher ratios of PGA/MSF, i.e., more intense earthquake scenarios for the West Tennessee Area. The results of this study indicate two primary reasons that the LPI-based LPC predicts a higher probability of liquefaction surface manifestation than the LPIISH-based LPC. First, the LPIISH method includes the impact of non-liquefiable layers on liquefaction surface manifestation by incorporating a limiting non-liquefiable layer thickness whereby surficial manifestation is not expected to puncture through the non-liquefiable layer regardless of the thickness of the underlying liquefiable layer while LPI does not consider the impact of non-liquefiable soil layers. Second, LPIISH incorporates a power-law depth weighting function that provides for shallower liquefiable layers to contribute more to surficial manifestation than deeper layers. Therefore, because the weighting function between the two methods is based on different statistical methods, the contribution of soil layers to liquefaction surface manifestation is different between LPI and LPIISH methods. Additionally, the results of the numerical analysis of this study using FLAC software show that liquefaction surface manifestation occurrence is very sensitive to the thickness and shear strength of upper non-liquefiable soil layers. The LPIISH method is adjusted in this study by considering the impact of shear strength and thickness of upper non-liquefiable layers and a new LPC is developed for the West Tennessee area. By comparing the adjusted LPIISH-based LPC with LPIISH and LPI-based LPCs in this study, it is shown that the adjusted LPIISH-based LPC predicts a liquefaction probability significantly different than LPI and LPIISH-based LPCs

Nanotechnology and Drug Delivery: Recent Applications and Future Challenges

Today, nanotechnology has paved the way for developing a new generation of delivery systems for potential drugs, proteins, peptides, and genes of interest. This effort reviews a couple of recent reports on application of gold nanoparticles in protein/peptide delivery, with a glance at toxicological aspects of nanoparticles and potential challenges in the upcoming future.Highlights Advances in nanotechnology have revolutionized fabrication and development of novel materials with diverse theranostic applications.Gold nanoparticles (GNPs) have been nominated as promising candidates in delivery of protein and peptide drugs.A deep understanding of biological responses to bare nanoparticles and their complex form is a prerequisite to produce low risk hybrid nanocarrier systems

Gas hydrate equilibria in the presence of electrolyte solutions

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A collocation method based on the bernoulli operational matrix for solving nonlinear BVPs which arise from the problems in calculus of variation

A new collocation method is developed for solving BVPs which arise from the problems in calculus of variation. These BVPs result from the Euler-Lagrange equations, which are the necessary conditions of the extremums of problems in calculus of variation. The proposed method is based upon the Bernoulli polynomials approximation together with their operational matrix of differentiation. After imposing the collocation nodes to the main BVPs, we reduce the variational problems to the solution of algebraic equations. It should be noted that the robustness of operational matrices of differentiation with respect to the integration ones is shown through illustrative examples. Complete comparisons with other methods and superior results confirm the validity and applicability of the presented method