Combining Magnetic and Electric Sails for Interstellar Deceleration

The main benefit of an interstellar mission is to carry out in-situ measurements within a target star system. To allow for extended in-situ measurements, the spacecraft needs to be decelerated. One of the currently most promising technologies for deceleration is the magnetic sail which uses the deflection of interstellar matter via a magnetic field to decelerate the spacecraft. However, while the magnetic sail is very efficient at high velocities, its performance decreases with lower speeds. This leads to deceleration durations of several decades depending on the spacecraft mass. Within the context of Project Dragonfly, initiated by the Initiative of Interstellar Studies (i4is), this paper proposes a novel concept for decelerating a spacecraft on an interstellar mission by combining a magnetic sail with an electric sail. Combining the sails compensates for each technologys shortcomings: A magnetic sail is more effective at higher velocities than the electric sail and vice versa. It is demonstrated that using both sails sequentially outperforms using only the magnetic or electric sail for various mission scenarios and velocity ranges, at a constant total spacecraft mass. For example, for decelerating from 5% c, to interplanetary velocities, a spacecraft with both sails needs about 29 years, whereas the electric sail alone would take 35 years and the magnetic sail about 40 years with a total spacecraft mass of 8250 kg. Furthermore, it is assessed how the combined deceleration system affects the optimal overall mission architecture for different spacecraft masses and cruising speeds. Future work would investigate how operating both systems in parallel instead of sequentially would affect its performance. Moreover, uncertainties in the density of interstellar matter and sail properties need to be explored

The use of external evaluative information with formative means: the case of chilean educative establisments participants of the SEPA

En el presente trabajo se desarrolla una investigación que indaga sobre las diversas formas en que se puede utilizar información evaluativa acerca del aprendizaje de los alumnos, y los factores que facilitan y dificultan su uso, en un grupo de establecimientos educacionales que participan del Sistema de Evaluación de Progresos del Aprendizaje (SEPA), desarrollado e implementado por el Centro de Medición MIDE UC de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Basada en nuestra experiencia previa y la literatura anticipamos dificultades de comprensión y de uso de la información SEPA por parte de los establecimientos participantes. Se conduce una investigación exploratorio-descriptiva mediante entrevistas semi-estructuradas a 14 directivos y profesores pertenecientes a siete establecimientos educacionales adheridos a SEPA. Tal como esperabamos, se observa una comprensión parcial de los indicadores introducidos, particularmente de aquellos más complejos (valor agregado). Se constata que la relación que los actores establecen con la información evaluativa depende de las características de la organización y de sus protagonistas. Se detectan diversos tipos de uso de la información, los cuales se clasifican como instrumental, legitimante, persuasivo, simbolico y conceptual. Nuestros hallazgos comprueban investigaciones previas que la introducción de información evaluativa es solamente el primer paso en el proceso complejo necesario para influir el mejoramiento escola

Bridging the Gap: How Firms Use Process Mining to Create and Act on a Shared End-to-End Process Understanding

Firms struggle with improving end-to-end (E2E) processes due to difficulties in establishing shared E2E process understanding across firm levels. Creating behavioral visibility into processes might provide a solution, but traditional methods are limited in effectiveness. Thus, process mining (PM), offering data-driven process discovery and measurement, shows promise, but its implications on creating and acting on a shared E2E process understanding remain unclear. Addressing this gap, we conduct a single case study at a manufacturing firm guided by theories of organizational learning and organizational routines. Our preliminary findings reveal how the data-driven behavioral visibility through PM enables four mechanisms within and between the individual, team, and firm levels to create a shared E2E process understanding and change. We contribute to business process management and PM research by showing how firms use PM to overcome challenges in the multi-level process of creating and acting on a shared E2E process understanding

Pathways for Digital Transformation: An Organizational Identity Perspective

In the rapidly evolving digital transformation (DT) landscape, understanding organizational identity (OI) complexities becomes imperative. Leveraging a comparative analysis of AutoCorp and its spinoff, SoftCorp, this paper unfolds OI tensions in the context of DT. Despite advances in the literature on OI and DT, a gap exists in understanding how conflicting identities within a parent company and its spinoff can impact the organizations and the products they develop. We unearth that the dominant identity in AutoCorp, rooted in traditional manufacturing, creates tensions with the digital service-provider identity in SoftCorp. Additionally, we find that such separation may temporarily relieve internal tensions but introduce new challenges at the organizations’ boundaries, affecting the digitized product. Our findings contribute to the theoretical discourse in OI and provide insights for companies undergoing DT. In our ongoing research project, we plan to develop an integrative framework reconciling these diverging identities for optimal digitized product development