Does remote working really work?

Over the past 20 years, the internet and wireless communications have made it progressively easier for people to work outside the office. Census data from the USA and the European Union show that respectively 23 and 15 per cent of employees telework at least “some of the time”. But does teleworking actually improve performance

The Distance Dilemma : the effect of flexible working practices on performance in the digital workplace

For the past couple of decades, technological developments have caused the way in which we work to continuously evolve, particularly by changing the ease with which we can bridge physical and temporal distances. Combined with rising competitive pressures and changing employee expectations, this has led to a substantial uptake of flexible working practices. Most notable among these is telework. Whether telework actually works, however, still remains to be seen: existing studies on its relation with performance are limited, typically lacking both an indication of how frequently employees telework as well as a solid theoretical foundation that could help elucidate its underlying causal structure. These shortcomings are an important motivation behind the research presented in this dissertation, which focuses on creating a better understanding of how the extent of telework (through enacted temporal and spatial flexibility) affects employee and organizational performance. This was done by applying multiple theoretical perspectives, levels of analysis, and analytical methods in four empirical studies, each of which addresses specific distance dilemmas inherent in telework. Overall, the findings, perspectives, and frameworks presented in this dissertation offer important insights into how to maximize employee and organizational performance in a telework context, and contribute a springboard for additional investigations in this area

Please, do not disturb. telework, distractions, and the productivity of the knowledge worker

An unanswered question regarding telework is how differences in workplace distraction levels influence the effect of the extent of telework on productivity. Drawing from research and theory on cognitive overload and distraction conflict, we developed a quasi-field experiment to test the influence of so-called 'distraction gains' (indicating lower distraction levels at home compared to the office work environment) on the telework-productivity relationship. The results of our study (N=141) show that distraction gains will increase the positive effect of telework on productivity for knowledge workers (i.e. those with high levels of task complexity, novelty and nonroutineness). A subgroup characterized by low knowledge work did not show any relationship between telework and productivity. This study provides much needed longitudinal research findings on the relationship between telework and productivity, and may serve as a basis for future studies on the importance of situational factors regarding telework

Cosmological diagrammatic rules

A simple set of diagrammatic rules is formulated for perturbative evaluation of ``in-in" correlators, as is needed in cosmology and other nonequilibrium problems. These rules are both intuitive, and efficient for calculational purposes.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure

Identifying patients at risk of emergency admission for colorectal cancer.

BACKGROUND: Patients whose colorectal cancer is treated after an emergency admission tend to have late-stage cancer and a poor prognosis. We identified risk factors for an emergency admission by linking data from the National Bowel Cancer Audit (NBCA) and the English Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), an administrative database of all admissions to English National Health Service hospitals, which includes data on mode of admission. METHODS: We identified all adults included in the NBCA with a primary diagnosis of bowel cancer, excluding cancer of the appendix, between August 2007 and July 2011 whose record could be linked to HES. Multivariable logistic regression was used to estimate adjusted odds ratios (OR) for an emergency admission for colorectal cancer. All risk factors were adjusted for cancer site and calendar year. RESULTS: 97,909 adults were identified with a primary diagnosis of bowel cancer and 82,777 patients could be linked to HES. Patients who were older, female, of a non-white ethnic background, and more socioeconomically deprived, and those with dementia or cardiac, neurologic and liver disease had an increased risk of presenting as an emergency admission. The strongest risk factors were age (90 compared with 70 years: OR 2.99, 95% CI 2.84 to 3.15), dementia (OR 2.46, 2.18 to 2.79), and liver disease (OR 1.87, 1.69 to 2.08). CONCLUSIONS: Our study identifies risk factors that may impair health-seeking behaviour and access to healthcare. An earlier recognition of symptoms in patients with these risk factors may contribute to better outcomes

Carrier and Light Trapping in Graded Quantum Well Laser Structures

We investigated the carrier and light trapping in GaInAs/AlGaAs single quantum well laser structures by means of time resolved photoluminescence and Raman spectroscopy. The influence of the shape and depth of the confinement potential and of the cavity geometry was studied by using different AlGaAs/GaAs short-period superlattices as barriers. Our results show that grading the optical cavity improves considerably both carrier and light trapping in the quantum well, and that the trapping efficiency is enhanced by increasing the graded confining potential.Comment: PDF-format, 15 pages (including 4 figures), Applied Physics Letters (June 2000

Magneto-photoluminescence spectroscopy of single InAs/AlAs quantum dots

We present non-resonant, polarization-resolved magneto-photoluminescence measurements up to 12 T on single InAs/AlAs quantum dots. We observe typical g-factors between 1 and 2, very low diamagnetic shifts due to strong exciton localization and low-energy sidebands, which are attributed to the piezoelectric exciton-acoustic phonon interaction.Spanish Ministry of Education/MAT2008- 01555/NANSpanish Ministry of Education/Consolider CSD 2006-19Community of Madrid CAMS-0505-ESP-0200Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation/Nanoinpho-QD TEC2008-06756-C03-0

Quantification of cobimetinib, cabozantinib, dabrafenib, niraparib, olaparib, vemurafenib, regorafenib and its metabolite regorafenib M2 in human plasma by UPLC-MS/MS

Contains fulltext : 218233.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)A sensitive and selective ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) method for the simultaneous determination of seven oral oncolytics (two PARP inhibitors, i.e. olaparib and niraparib, and five tyrosine kinase inhibitors, i.e. cobimetinib, cabozantinib, dabrafenib, vemurafenib and regorafenib, plus its active metabolite regorafenib M2) in EDTA plasma was developed and validated. Stable isotope-labelled internal standards were used for each analyte. A simple protein precipitation method was performed with acetonitrile. The LC-MS/MS system consisted of an Acquity H-Class UPLC system, coupled to a Xevo TQ-S micro tandem mass spectrometer. The compounds were separated on a Waters CORTECS UPLC C18 column (2.1 x 50 mm, 1.6 mum particle size) and eluted with a gradient elution system. The ions were detected in the multiple reaction monitoring mode. The method was validated for cobimetinib, cabozantinib, dabrafenib, niraparib, olaparib, vemurafenib, regorafenib and regorafenib M2 over the ranges 6-1000, 100-5000, 10-4000, 200-2000, 200-20,000, 5000-100,000, 500-10,000 and 500-10,000 mug/L, respectively. Within-day accuracy values for all analytes ranged from 86.8 to 115.0% with a precision of <10.4%. Between-day accuracy values ranged between 89.7 and 111.9% with a between-day precision of <7.4%. The developed method was successfully used for guiding therapy with therapeutic drug monitoring in cancer patients and clinical research programs in our laboratory