Attentional demand influences strategies for encoding into visual working memory

Visual selective attention and visual working memory (WM) share the same capacity-limited resources. We investigated whether and how participants can cope with a task in which these 2 mechanisms interfere. The task required participants to scan an array of 9 objects in order to select the target locations and to encode the items presented at these locations into WM (1 to 5 shapes). Determination of the target locations required either few attentional resources (“popout condition”) or an attention-demanding serial search (“non pop-out condition”). Participants were able to achieve high memory performance in all stimulation conditions but, in the non popout conditions, this came at the cost of additional processing time. Both empirical evidence and subjective reports suggest that participants invested the additional time in memorizing the locations of all target objects prior to the encoding of their shapes into WM. Thus, they seemed to be unable to interleave the steps of search with those of encoding. We propose that the memory for target locations substitutes for perceptual pop-out and thus may be the key component that allows for flexible coping with the common processing limitations of visual WM and attention. The findings have implications for understanding how we cope with real-life situations in which the demands on visual attention and WM occur simultaneously. Keywords: attention, working memory, interference, encoding strategie

THE IMPACT OF ADVISORY SERVICES ON CLIENTS AND VENDORS IN IT OUTSOURCING ENGAGEMENTS

Information technology outsourcing (ITO) continues to be an important market and research topic in 2016. The client-vendor relationship has been identified as one of the key driver to foster successful outsourcing engagements. But another stakeholder besides client and vendor that presumably highly influences this relationship is neglected in ITO research so far: the advisor. This research-in-progress paper propose to investigate how and why advisory services impact the relationship of clients and vendors and the project success in ITO engagements. To answer our research question, we build on principal-agent theory and social exchange theory as our theoretical lenses to explain the impact of advisory services on the client-vendor relationship. We develop our preliminary research model with three hypotheses and introduce our research design using a case study-based, mixed-method approach. Our planned outcome is a model explaining the role of advisors for improving ITO success. We conclude with an outlook about our next steps and the study’s planned contributions

Opening the Black Box of Advisors in Information Technology Outsourcing: An Advisory Activity Model

Information technology outsourcing (ITO) is an important market phenomenon and research topic. Recently, research has identified advisors as a key driver for successful ITO engagements. In this paper, we investigate the activities of third-party advisors in ITO engagements for the first time. We used an exploratory qualitative research approach and conducted 14 expert interviews with experienced industry practitioners. In analyzing the data, we identified 104 activities that serve as the basis for a novel IT advisory activity model for ITO. We also identified common viewpoints among the practitioners and matched them with findings from other research studies based on a literature review. Our model provides interesting insights into ITO and the role that advisors play in client-vendor relationships. This study delivers a basis for further research about advisors’ influence on clients and vendors in the ITO context

INNOVATION WANTED: A LITERATURE REVIEW ON INNOVATION SOURCING ENGAGEMENTS

Recent research shows the increasing importance of generating innovative IT solutions within information technology outsourcing (ITO) relationships. This literature review sheds further light on our current body of knowledge with regard to such innovation sourcing engagements. Based on a structured literature review and using citation network analysis methods, we (1) identify key articles and authors covering the topic of innovation sourcing, (2) analyze the development of innovation sourcing in ITO relationships over time, and (3) evaluate relevant concepts for innovation sourcing engagements in practice. Our main finding is the identification, categorization, and relevance ranking of 103 concepts related to innovation sourcing. Additionally, we identify research gaps as well as confirm that citation network analysis is a proper method for the visualization and analysis of literature in the research stream of innovation sourcing. We emphasize further research on innovation sourcing engagements and provide distinctive research directions for the research community

Why do some teams succeed while others fail?

People's desire to have a positive impact on the lives of others is part of the answer, find Jia (Jasmine) Hu and Robert Lide

Airlines and Air Mail: The Post Office and the Birth of the Commercial Aviation Industry

Conventional wisdom credits only entrepreneurs with the vision to create America’s commercial airline industry and contends that it was not until Roosevelt’s Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938 that federal airline regulation began. In Airlines and Air Mail, F. Robert van der Linden persuasively argues that Progressive republican policies of Herbert Hoover actually fostered the growth of American commercial aviation. Air mail contracts provided a critical indirect subsidy and a solid financial foundation for this nascent industry. Postmaster General Walter F. Brown used these contracts as a carrot and a stick to ensure that the industry developed in the public interest while guaranteeing the survival of the pioneering companies. Bureaucrats, entrepreneurs, and politicians of all stripes are thoughtfully portrayed in this thorough chronicle of one of America’s most resounding successes, the commercial aviation industry. F. Robert van der Linden, curator of air transportation at the Smithsonian Institution\u27s National Air and Space Museum, is the author of The Boeing 247: The First Modern Airliner.https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_history_of_science_technology_and_medicine/1001/thumbnail.jp

Challenges of Client-Vendor Relationships in Information Technology Outsourcing Engagements: An Interpretive Structural Modelling Approach

The client-vendor relationship is a key success factor for information technology outsourcing projects. Although many studies have been published about this concept, many of them have focused on a set of particular elements and have not investigated the relationship and dependencies between them. This research paper provides an overview about existing challenges for client-vendor relationships and discovers relationships between them by applying the ISM methodology. We conducted a literature research to gather and analyze relevant articles and identified 11 relevant challenges. Based on the literature research and 20 questionnaire responses we gathered from experts, we used interpretive structural modelling to discover the relevance and the contextual relationships among the identified challenges. The findings of this study reveal that three challenges, namely (1) lack of experience, (2) lack of good management practices and processes, and (3) lack of contractual objects can be treated as key elements for establishing a client-vendor relationship. We discuss further research directions and explain why all other identified challenges have high dependencies on each other

Effects of xanthine amine congener on hypoxic coronary resistance and venous and epicardial adenosine concentrations

Objective: The aim was to define the contributions of interstitial and vascular adenosine in regulating coronary vascular resistance during hypoxia. To help in the assessment of adenosine in the vasodilator response, a potent adenosine receptor antagonist, xanthine amine congener (XAC), was used to block adenosine receptors. Methods: Seven isolated guinea pig hearts were perfused at constant flow with Krebs buffer. Coronary vascular resistance was determined during normoxia (95% O2) and mild hypoxia (60% O2) in the absence or presence of 200 or 400 nM XAC. Interstitial fluid was sampled by the epicardial disc technique and the interstitial concentration of XAC (ISF[XAC]) was determined directly by a radioreceptor assay or as tritiated XAC. Venous and epicardial concentrations of adenosine were determined by high performance liquid chromatography. In six additional experiments, the vasodilator effect of 1 μM intracoronary adenosine was measured in the absence or presence of 100 or 200 nM XAC. Results: Mild hypoxia decreased coronary resistance by 37(SEM 4)% in the absence of XAC and 26(5)% or 17(4)% in the presence of 200 or 400 nM XAC, respectively. ISF[XAC] rapidly equilibrated with [XAC] in the arterial perfusate or venous effluent. XAC 400 nM markedly increased (p<0.05) the hypoxic levels of venous and epicardial fluid adenosine from 49(19) and 251(42) nM to 75(11) and 495(48) nM, respectively. XAC 100-200 nM almost completely prevented the vasodilatation induced by 1 μM intracoronary adenosine. Conclusions: Adenosine mediates at least 54% of hypoxic vasodilatation. XAC rapidly equilibrates within the myocardial interstitial space and, as a result of blocking adenosine receptors, increases interstitial and venous adenosine concentrations. Increases in interstitial adenosine may partially overcome the adenosine receptor blockade by XAC, thereby reducing the effectiveness of XAC in attenuating the hypoxic vasodilatation. XAC attenuates intracoronary adenosine induced vasodilatation (mediated by endothelial adenosine receptors) much more effectively than it attenuates hypoxic vasodilatation, underscoring the minimal role played by the endothelial receptors in hypoxic vasodilatation. Cardiovascular Research 1994;28:604-60

Cosmology and Astrophysics from Relaxed Galaxy Clusters I: Sample Selection

This is the first in a series of papers studying the astrophysics and cosmology of massive, dynamically relaxed galaxy clusters. Here we present a new, automated method for identifying relaxed clusters based on their morphologies in X-ray imaging data. While broadly similar to others in the literature, the morphological quantities that we measure are specifically designed to provide a fair basis for comparison across a range of data quality and cluster redshifts, to be robust against missing data due to point-source masks and gaps between detectors, and to avoid strong assumptions about the cosmological background and cluster masses. Based on three morphological indicators - Symmetry, Peakiness and Alignment - we develop the SPA criterion for relaxation. This analysis was applied to a large sample of cluster observations from the Chandra and ROSAT archives. Of the 361 clusters which received the SPA treatment, 57 (16 per cent) were subsequently found to be relaxed according to our criterion. We compare our measurements to similar estimators in the literature, as well as projected ellipticity and other image measures, and comment on trends in the relaxed cluster fraction with redshift, temperature, and survey selection method. Code implementing our morphological analysis will be made available on the web.Comment: MNRAS, in press. 43 pages in total, of which 17 are tables (please think twice before printing). 18 figures, 4 tables. Machine-readable tables will be available from the journal and at the url below; code will be posted at http://www.slac.stanford.edu/~amantz/work/morph14