Infants' representations of causation

It is consistent with the evidence in The Origin of Concepts to conjecture that infants' causal representations, like their numerical representations, are not continuous with adults', so that bootstrapping is needed in both cases

"It's all up here": adaptation and improvisation within the modern project

This paper considers organisational improvisation, and in particular, adaptation as a specific component of improvisational work(Miner et al., 2001), and how it may assist in resolving or assisting with some of the challenges surrounding recent shifts in our understanding of project-based management. Examples focus on the use of adaptation to cope with ambiguity and uncertainty, caused by execution in problematic and turbulent organisational environments. The literature on improvisation suggests that adapting previously successful interventions reduces and manages the risk of improvising by engaging with the 'adaptation component of organisational improvisation. This practice assists in ensuring that the additional risk of completely novel activity is avoided. This paper explores adaptation within the project domain, and also unpicks the rhetoric from the reality of adaptation within projects, confirming its benefits, setting out the circumstances where experience informs the practice, and offering readily usable and applicable insights

Emotionally sustainable change: two frameworks to assist with transition

Earlier research (Leybourne, 2007; Robinson and Griffiths, 2005; Stensaker et al., 2002) has identified that assisting employees to cope with change can be beneficial in ensuring that change initiatives are more effective. This paper considers two frameworks from outside the 'traditional' change literature that can assist in coping with change and that have been recognised for many years, but which are arguably under-utilised in assisting employees through the behavioural, and particularly the emotional journey through organisational change. Bridges' (1991) transition framework and the Kubler-Ross (1969) Grief Cycle are examined in turn, and each is critically appraised to identify the benefits, or otherwise, of what they offer to assist employees to cope with change, and managers to manage that coping element of change management. The outcomes suggest that both frameworks are beneficial to change practitioners, and can assist in supporting employees through the transition from one organisational state to another

Vacuum Energy as Spectral Geometry

Quantum vacuum energy (Casimir energy) is reviewed for a mathematical audience as a topic in spectral theory. Then some one-dimensional systems are solved exactly, in terms of closed classical paths and periodic orbits. The relations among local spectral densities, energy densities, global eigenvalue densities, and total energies are demonstrated. This material provides background and motivation for the treatment of higher-dimensional systems (self-adjoint second-order partial differential operators) by semiclassical approximation and other methods.Comment: This is a contribution to the Proceedings of the 2007 Midwest Geometry Conference in honor of Thomas P. Branson, published in SIGMA (Symmetry, Integrability and Geometry: Methods and Applications) at http://www.emis.de/journals/SIGMA

A revision of the Sclerocoelus galapagensis group (Diptera: Sphaeroceridae: Limosininae)

The Sclerocoelus galapagensis group is defined and revised, including the description of S. galapagensis new species from the Galapagos Islands; S. caribensis new species from the Caribbean and adjacent areas; S. brasilensis new species from Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, and Panama; S. hemorrhoidal is new species from Ecuador and Venezuela; and S. andensis new species from Argentina, Bolivia, and Venezuela. The south Atlantic species Sclerocoelus subbrevipennis (Frey), new combination, is redescribed as a member of the S. galapagensis group, and is considered the sister species to the rest of the species group. A key to species, character matrix, and cladogram are provided