World-class is-enabled business innovation: A case study of is leadership, strategy & governance

While many global corporations acknowledge they lack corporate capabilities for successful technology-enabled business innovation, an Australian financial services provider has been ranked by an international ratings agency in its highest categories due to the capabilities of its Information Systems. Its Loan Processing system has been commended by the ratings agency as the principal reason for its high ranking and for the organization's inclusion on a global list of selected service providers. This paper presents a longitudinal case study of how an organization with 750 employees located in rural Australia came to develop world-class strategic Information Systems. From its first system nearly 30 years ago, this paper shows how the organization has grown in-house capabilities to devise, develop, implement and manage applications of technology from operational systems that automate specific functions to systems that inform and enable enterprise strategy. The implications for theory and practice are discussed

An IS contribution to the UN Millennium Development Goals: Next generation vaccination management in the developing world

More than 9.5 million people die in the developing world unnecessarily each year due not to a lack of medicine but due to poor information management. It is proposed that the IS Discipline could contribute to resolving this and similar global challenges by making a greater contribution to high impact and high visibility global issues such as the UN's Millennium Development Goals. In this paper we illustrate the potential for the IS Discipline to take a leading role in high impact issues by presenting an innovative design for a mainstream IS solution to an illustrative global healthcare issue through appropriate applications of mobile technologies, cloud computing, social networking and geolocation services. © 2010 Wei Wang, Steve Elliot & Mary-Anne Williams

AGL1-AGL6, an Arabidopsis gene family with similarity to floral homeotic and transcription factor genes

The predicted products of floral homeotic genes, AGAMOUS (AG) from Arabidopsis thaliana and DEFICIENS A (DEF A) from Antirrhinum majus, have been shown previously to share strong sequence similarity with transcription factors from humans (SRF) and yeast (MCM1). The conserved sequence between these proteins is localized within a domain known to be necessary for the DNA binding and for the dimerization of SRF. We have isolated six new genes from A. thaliana, AGL1-AGL6, which also have this conserved sequence motif. On the basis of the sequence comparison between the AG and AGL genes, they can be assigned to two subfamilies of a large gene family. RNA dot blot analysis indicates that five of these genes (AGL1, AGL2, AGL4, AGL5, and AGL6) are preferentially expressed in flowers. In addition, in situ RNA hybridization experiments with AGL1 and AGL2 show that their mRNAs are detected in some floral organs but not in others. Our results suggest that these genes may act to control many steps of Arabidopsis floral morphogenesis. In contrast, the AGL3 gene is expressed in vegetative tissues as well as in flowers, suggesting that it functions in a broader range of tissues. We discuss possible roles of this gene family during the evolution of flowers

The effects of peer influence on adolescent pedestrian road-crossing decisions

Objective: Adolescence is a high-risk period for pedestrian injury. It is also a time of heightened susceptibility to peer influence. The aim of this research was to examine the effects of peer influence on the pedestrian road-crossing decisions of adolescents. Methods: Using 10 videos of road-crossing sites, 80 16- to 18-year-olds were asked to make pedestrian road-crossing decisions. Participants were assigned to one of 4 experimental conditions: negative peer (influencing unsafe decisions), positive peer (influencing cautious decisions), silent peer (who observed but did not comment), and no peer (the participant completed the task alone). Peers from the adolescent’s own friendship group were recruited to influence either an unsafe or a cautious decision. Results: Statistically significant differences were found between peer conditions. Participants least often identified safe road-crossing sites when accompanied by a negative peer and more frequently identified dangerous road-crossing sites when accompanied by a positive peer. Both cautious and unsafe comments from a peer influenced adolescent pedestrians’ decisions. Conclusions: These findings showed that road-crossing decisions of adolescents were influenced by both unsafe and cautious comments from their peers. The discussion highlighted the role that peers can play in both increasing and reducing adolescent risk-taking

The Wide Integral Field Infrared Spectrograph: Commissioning Results and On-sky Performance

We have recently commissioned a novel infrared ($0.9-1.7$ $\mu$m) integral field spectrograph (IFS) called the Wide Integral Field Infrared Spectrograph (WIFIS). WIFIS is a unique instrument that offers a very large field-of-view (50$^{\prime\prime}$ x 20$^{\prime\prime}$) on the 2.3-meter Bok telescope at Kitt Peak, USA for seeing-limited observations at moderate spectral resolving power. The measured spatial sampling scale is $\sim1\times1^{\prime\prime}$ and its spectral resolving power is $R\sim2,500$ and $3,000$ in the $zJ$ ($0.9-1.35$ $\mu$m) and $H_{short}$ ($1.5-1.7$ $\mu$m) modes, respectively. WIFIS's corresponding etendue is larger than existing near-infrared (NIR) IFSes, which are mostly designed to work with adaptive optics systems and therefore have very narrow fields. For this reason, this instrument is specifically suited for studying very extended objects in the near-infrared such as supernovae remnants, galactic star forming regions, and nearby galaxies, which are not easily accessible by other NIR IFSes. This enables scientific programs that were not originally possible, such as detailed surveys of a large number of nearby galaxies or a full accounting of nucleosynthetic yields of Milky Way supernova remnants. WIFIS is also designed to be easily adaptable to be used with larger telescopes. In this paper, we report on the overall performance characteristics of the instrument, which were measured during our commissioning runs in the second half of 2017. We present measurements of spectral resolving power, image quality, instrumental background, and overall efficiency and sensitivity of WIFIS and compare them with our design expectations. Finally, we present a few example observations that demonstrate WIFIS's full capability to carry out infrared imaging spectroscopy of extended objects, which is enabled by our custom data reduction pipeline.Comment: Published in the Proceedings of SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation 2018. 17 pages, 13 figure

A Strategy for the Analysis of Semi-Inclusive Deep Inelastic Scattering

We present a strategy for the systematic extraction of a vast amount of detailed information on polarized parton densities and fragmentation functions from semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering l+N -> l+h+X, in both LO and NLO QCD. A method is suggested for estimating the errors involved in the much simpler, and therefore much more attractive, LO analysis. The approach is based upon a novel interplay with data from inclusive DIS and from e+e- -> hX, and leads to a much simplified form of the NLO expressions. No assumptions are made about the equality of any parton densities and the only symmetries utilised are charge conjugation invariance and isotopic spin invariance of strong interactions.Comment: 26 pages, one section (Sect.2) is removed, Sects.1,2,3,4 are changed, the main content of the paper is not changed, to appear in Nucl. Phys.

A discrete symmetry group for maximal atmospheric neutrino mixing

We propose a discrete non-abelian symmetry group which enforces maximal atmospheric neutrino mixing, while $\theta_{13} = 0$ and the solar mixing angle $\theta_{12}$ remains undetermined; without finetuning, $\theta_{12}$ will be large but non-maximal. Our extension of the Standard Model has three right-handed neutrino singlets $\nu_R$ and implements the seesaw mechanism. Furthermore, we have an enlarged scalar sector with three Higgs doublets and two scalar gauge singlets; the latter have masses and vacuum expectation values of the order of the seesaw scale. Lepton mixing stems exclusively from the $\nu_R$ Majorana mass matrix, where non-diagonal elements are generated by the vacuum expectation values of the scalar singlets. The model predicts a neutrino mass spectrum with $m_3 > m_2 > m_1$ and the effective Majorana mass of neutrinoless $\beta\beta$ decay is equal to $m_1 m_2 / m_3$.Comment: 9 pages, no figures, plain LaTeX; new section added and misprints corrected, version to be published in Phys. Lett.

AGL1-AGL6, an Arabidopsis gene family with similarity to floral homeotic and transcription factor genes

The predicted products of floral homeotic genes, AGAMOUS (AG) from Arabidopsis thaliana and DEFICIENS A (DEF A) from Antirrhinum majus, have been shown previously to share strong sequence similarity with transcription factors from humans (SRF) and yeast (MCM1). The conserved sequence between these proteins is localized within a domain known to be necessary for the DNA binding and for the dimerization of SRF. We have isolated six new genes from A. thaliana, AGL1-AGL6, which also have this conserved sequence motif. On the basis of the sequence comparison between the AG and AGL genes, they can be assigned to two subfamilies of a large gene family. RNA dot blot analysis indicates that five of these genes (AGL1, AGL2, AGL4, AGL5, and AGL6) are preferentially expressed in flowers. In addition, in situ RNA hybridization experiments with AGL1 and AGL2 show that their mRNAs are detected in some floral organs but not in others. Our results suggest that these genes may act to control many steps of Arabidopsis floral morphogenesis. In contrast, the AGL3 gene is expressed in vegetative tissues as well as in flowers, suggesting that it functions in a broader range of tissues. We discuss possible roles of this gene family during the evolution of flowers