Knowledge management in the voluntary sector: A focus on sharing project know-how and expertise

Voluntary sector organisations are operated principally by volunteers who are not obliged to share their knowledge, as might be expected in a for profit company, with a greater consequent loss of knowledge should individuals leave. This research examines how a volunteer-led organisation, the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), acquires, stores and shares its project knowledge in the context of event management. Three annual CAMRA festivals of different sizes and maturity were selected to see how volunteers' knowledge is managed in the process of organising their festivals. Key festival officers were interviewed and focus groups, comprising of festival volunteers, were conducted. While the maturity of a festival and its size seemed to influence the ways in which knowledge was managed there were some commonalities between festivals. Evident was a strong master-apprentice model of learning with little formal training or record keeping except, that is, where legislation and accountability in treasury and health and safety functions were necessary. Trust between volunteers and their need to know and to share information appeared to be dependent, in part, on their perception and confidence in the success of the overarching project organisation, and this helped shape volunteers' knowledge sharing practices. Whilst there was evidence of a laissez-faire approach to codification and the sharing of knowledge, this was less so when volunteers recognised a genuine lack of knowledge which would hinder the success of their festival. The analysis also highlighted factors related to the sharing of knowledge that, it is suggested, have not been identified in the for-profit sector

Developing a Culture of Trust Among Novice Swimmers

Novice swimmers often relate stories of being thrown into the water or pool to either “sink or swim,” while others saw or had non-fatal drowning experiences. These experiences contribute to an individual lacking confidence in their swimming skills and may limit their participation in swimming and water activities. Establishing a culture of trust is important toward developing a student\u27s competence in the water. Trust is developed by the novice swimmer through the instructor, classmates, themselves, and water through orientation, a safe environment to learn, individualizing instruction, giving specific, corrective, and positive feedback on performance. This article provides swimming instructors at various professional agencies (physical education, recreation, community, and university settings) with a unique approach by targeting acclimation activities/games, personal safety/rescue skills, and paired practice specifically for teenage (high school students) and young adult (college coeds) novice swimmers. This article guides an instructor in different ways instruction can be adapted to different contexts in teaching novice swimmers how to swim

INCORPORATING HISTOGRAMS OF ORIENTED GRADIENTS INTO MONTE CARLO LOCALIZATION

This work presents improvements to Monte Carlo Localization (MCL) for a mobile robot using computer vision. Solutions to the localization problem aim to provide fine resolution on location approximation, and also be resistant to changes in the environment. One such environment change is the kidnapped/teleported robot problem, where a robot is suddenly transported to a new location and must re-localize. The standard method of Augmented MCL uses particle filtering combined with addition of random particles under certain conditions to solve the kidnapped robot problem. This solution is robust, but not always fast. This work combines Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG) computer vision with particle filtering to speed up the localization process. The major slowdown in Augmented MCL is the conditional addition of random particles, which depends on the ratio of a short term and long term average of particle weights. This ratio does not change quickly when a robot is kidnapped, leading the robot to believe it is in the wrong location for a period of time. This work replaces this average-based conditional with a comparison of the HOG image directly in front of the robot with a cached version. This resulted in a speedup ranging from from 25.3% to 80.7% (depending on parameters used) in localization time over the baseline Augmented MCL

Is a Low Cloud Signal in Response to CO2 Forcing Potentially Observable in the Satellite Record?

Low-level clouds in the subsidence regime of the subtropical ocean have a net cooling affect on the climate and are an important factor to consider in regards to climate change. This study looks at the cloud fraction output from 6 different CMIP5 global climate models to understand how low-level clouds may respond to increasing CO2 on different time scales. We examine simulations of 1% CO2 increase per year, simulations of 4xCO2 equilibrium change, and simulations employing historical radiative forcing during 1980-2005. In particular, we are interested to determine whether the century-scale transient cloud response is similar to the equilibrium cloud response, and whether simulated cloud changes occurring since 1980 are similar to the century-scale transient cloud response. Although different models produce different cloud responses to increasing CO2, the transient cloud change for a particular model resembles the equilibrium cloud change for that model, indicating internal consistency. Furthermore, if the simulated cloud change since 1980 resembles the century-scale transient cloud change, this would suggest that observed low-level cloud changes over the subtropical ocean since 1980 may be a response to climate change rather than natural variability

A New Discriminator for Gamma-Ray Burst Classification: The Epeak-Fluence Energy Ratio

Using the derived gamma-ray burst E_peak and fluences from the complete BATSE 5B Spectral Catalog, we study the ensemble characteristics of the E_peak-fluence relation for GRBs. This relation appears to be a physically meaningful and insightful fundamental discriminator between long and short bursts. We discuss the results of the lower limit test of the E_peak-E_iso relations in the E_peak-fluence plane for BATSE bursts with no observed redshift. Our results confirm the presence of two GRB classes as well as heavily suggesting two different GRB progenitor types.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Ap