Are R&D collaborators bound to compete? Experience from Cooperative Research Centres in Australia

Increasingly, research of potential socio-economic value is being conducted within cross-sector (government, university, business) inter-organizational networks. Such networks encourage innovation and learning by breaking down rigidities in existing institutions and by providing for ‘knowledge creation in the context of application’. In the process, new organizational forms for research and development (R&D) are emerging. The Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) is the dominant organizational model for cross-sector collaborative R&D in Australia. Joining a cross-sector collaborative R&D centre poses a significant challenge for public sector research managers. Success depends on cooperation with businesses and other organizations whose interests, objectives, expectations and strategies at various times converge or conflict. The game is a risky one, with the possibility of unforeseen and unwelcome consequences such as partner opportunism and competition for resources. Yet little empirical evidence exists on how researchers perceive and manage the risks and rewards of participation in cross-sector R&D centres. Our study gives voice to the researchers within these inter-organizational networks. We draw evidence from a written survey of 370 respondents from public sector organizations involved in the management and conduct of CRC-based research. The survey questions permit an assessment of the main benefits and problems in CRC participation; the management strategies adopted; and the effect of CRC participation on careers. Responses to open-ended questions in the survey convey the ‘CRC experience’ in the participants own words. We find the concepts of risk common in the management and organizational studies literature inadequate to explain the dynamics of interaction in cross-sector R&D. We therefore extend these through notions of the domains of ‘academic’, ‘scientific’ and ‘organizational’ risk. There are two broad implications of our findings: (1) participants in the CRC need to look beyond the traditionally acknowledged risks of contractual arrangements and consider risks that relate to the nature of scientific knowledge structures and the actual concerns and careers of research scientists; and (2) once these ‘academic’ and ‘scientific’ considerations are properly assessed, government research agencies and universities may need to adopt different management responses to their participation in inter-organizational R&D. We speculate that the way these potentially competing domains are dealt with has implications for (1) the survival of individual CRCs and (2) whether cross-sector collaborative R&D organizations remain ephemeral ‘staging posts’ or become entrenched in the national research system. We argue that cross-sector collaborative R&D organizations are an important component of a dynamic ‘science system’, but that they are inherently unstable organizations. They require organizational management that recognises their differences from business IORs that involve firms alone

An evaluation of the effectiveness of the crew resource management programme in naval aviation

The US Navy’s Crew Resource Management (CRM) training programme has not been evaluated within the last decade. Reactions were evaluated by analysing 51,570 responses to an item pertaining to CRM that is part of a safety climate survey. A total of 172 responses were obtained on a knowledge test. The attitudes of 553 naval aviators were assessed using an attitudes questionnaire. The CRM mishap rate from 1997 until 2007 was evaluated. It was found that naval aviators appear to think than CRM training is useful, are generally knowledgeable of, and display positive attitudes towards, the concepts addressed in the training. However, there is a lack of evidence to support the view that CRM training is having an effect on the mishap rate. As the next generation of highly automated aircraft becomes part of naval aviation, there is a need to ensure that CRM training evolves to meet this new challenge

Enhancing the Educational Experience for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students in Software Engineering

Software engineering is largely a communication-driven, team-oriented discipline. There are numerous hurdles for ensuring proper communication and interaction between all project stakeholders, including physical, technological, and cultural barriers. These obstructions not only affect software engineering in industry, but in academia as well. One possible issue that is often overlooked in software engineering education is how to best educate Deaf and hard-of-hearing (Deaf/HoH) students, and how to fully engage them in the classroom. In this paper, we present our experiences in teaching software engineering to Deaf/HoH students. In the classroom, these students work very closely in activities and on project teams with their hearing peers. We also present recommendations for creating a more robust software engineering educational experience for not only Deaf/HoH students, but for hearing students as well. We encourage instructors not only in software engineering programs, but in other computing disciplines to consider our recommendations and observations in order to enhance the educational experience for all students in the classroom, whether Deaf/HoH or hearing

Why Pad\'e Approximants reduce the Renormalization-Scale dependence in QFT?

We prove that in the limit where the beta function is dominated by the 1-loop contribution (``large beta_0 limit'') diagonal Pad\'e Approximants (PA's) of perturbative series become exactly renormalization scale (RS) independent. This symmetry suggest that diagonal PA's are resumming correctly contributions from higher order diagrams that are responsible for the renormalization of the coupling-constant. Non-diagonal PA's are not exactly invariant, but generally reduce the RS dependence as compared to partial-sums. In physical cases, higher-order corrections in the beta function break the symmetry softly, introducing a small scale and scheme dependence. We also compare the Pad\'e resummation with the BLM method. We find that in the large-N_f limit using the BLM scale is identical to resumming the series by a $x[0/n]$ non-diagonal PA.Comment: 25 pages, LateX. Replaced so that the figures would fit into the page siz

Using Tenant-based Housing Vouchers to Help End Homelessness in Los Angeles, 2016-2020

As part of the larger evaluation of the Hilton Foundation's Homelessness initiative, Abt Associates examined how effective the Los Angeles region's public housing authorities (PHAs) have been in using vouchers to help people leave homelessness, the extent to which voucher holders succeed in using the vouchers, the locations where they use vouchers, and the implications for the PHAs' programs—who they serve and at what cost. This study focuses on 2016 through early 2020, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic

Structure-based virtual screening, synthesis and biological evaluation of potential FAK-FAT domain inhibitors for treatment of metastatic cancer

Focal adhesion kinase (FAK) is a tyrosine kinase that is overexpressed and activated in several advanced-stage solid cancers. In cancer cells, FAK promotes the progression and metastasis of tumours. In this study, we used structure-based virtual screening to filter a library of more than 210K compounds against the focal adhesion targeting FAK-focal adhesion targeting (FAT) domain to identify 25 virtual hit compounds which were screened in the invasive breast cancer line (MDA-MB-231). Most notably, compound I showed low micromolar antiproliferative activity, as well as antimigratory activity. Moreover, examination in a model of triple negative breast cancer (TNBC), revealed that, despite not effecting FAK phosphorylation, compound I significantly impairs proliferation whilst impairing focal adhesion growth and turnover leading to reduced migration. Further optimisation and synthesis of analogues of the lead compound I using a four-step synthetic procedure was performed, and analogues were assessed for their antiproliferative activity against three breast cancer (MDA-MB-231, T47D, BT474) cell lines and one pancreatic cancer (MIAPaCa2) cell line. Compound 5f was identified as a promising lead compound with IC50 values in the range of 4.59–5.28 μM in MDA-MB-231, T47D, BT474, and MIAPaCa2. Molecular modelling and pharmacokinetic studies provided more insight into the therapeutic features of this new series

A Mendelian Randomization Study Provides Evidence That Adiposity and Dyslipidemia Lead to Lower Urinary Albumin-to-Creatinine Ratio, a Marker of Microvascular Function

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from American Diabetes Association via the DOI in this record Urinary albumin-creatinine ratio is a marker of diabetic nephropathy and microvascular damage. Metabolic-related traits are observationally associated with ACR but their causal role is uncertain. Here, we confirmed ACR as a marker of microvascular damage and tested whether metabolic-related traits have causal relationships with ACR.The association between ACR and microvascular function (responses to acetylcholine and sodium nitroprusside) were tested in the SUMMIT study. Two sample Mendelian randomization (MR) was used to infer the causal effects of eleven metabolic risk factors, including glycemic, lipid and adiposity traits on ACR. MR was performed in up to 440,000 UK Biobank and 54,451 CKDGen participants.ACR was robustly associated with microvascular function measures in SUMMIT. Using MR we inferred that higher triglyceride and LDL-cholesterol levels caused elevated ACR. A one standard deviation (SD) higher triglyceride and LDL-C level caused a 0.062 [95%CI: 0.040, 0.083] and a 0.026 [95%CI: 0.008, 0.044] SD higher ACR respectively. There was evidence that higher body fat and visceral body fat distribution caused elevated ACR, whilst a metabolically "favourable adiposity" phenotype lowered ACR.ACR is a valid marker for microvascular function. MR suggested that 7 traits have causal effects on ACR, highlighting the role of adiposity related traits in causing lower microvascular function.Innovative Medicines Initiativ

Portability of Polygenic Risk Scores for Sleep Duration, Insomnia and Chronotype in 33,493 Individuals

Polygenic risk scores (PRSs) estimate genetic liability for diseases and traits. However, the portability of PRSs in sleep traits has remained elusive. We generated PRSs for self-reported insomnia, chronotype and sleep duration using summary data from genome-wide association studies (GWASs) performed in 350,000 to 697,000 European-ancestry individuals. We then projected the scores in two independent Finnish population cohorts (N = 33,493) and tested whether the PRSs were associated with their respective sleep traits. We observed that all the generated PRSs were associated with their corresponding traits (p < 0.05 in all cases). Furthermore, we found that there was a 22.2 min difference in reported sleep between the 5% tails of the PRS for sleep duration (p < 0.001). Our findings indicate that sleep-related PRSs show portability across cohorts. The findings also demonstrate that sleep measures using PRSs for sleep behaviors may provide useful instruments for testing disease and trait associations in cohorts where direct sleep parameters have not yet been measured