Struggling to 'fit in': On belonging and the ethics of sharing in project teams

This paper explores the links between belonging and ethics, which remain largely underdeveloped in project studies and are overlooked in everyday practice of managing projects. It focuses on belonging as the process articulating identity-construction of an inter-organisational project team from a global management consulting firm that was working in IS design. As the team?s experienced ?sense of place?, belonging becomes the space which highlights preferred affiliations and exposes how ? individually and collectively ? ethics are played out in the context of the management of projects. Four in situ belonging-narratives (of opposition, pragmatism, reflexivity, and the habitual narrative) represent ethics as part of lived action and of a life-world that emerge from deconstructing and reconstructing ?the team? and an ideal worker in projects. The team?s struggles to ?fit in? were experienced both when resisting and when collaborating with the dominant collective narrative of belonging. Modes of belonging are constituted in the relationship between self, others, and ?otherness?, creating a situated ethical imagination of how to ?be professional?. Implications concern the politics of belonging and call for a renewed practical ethics that engages with the social nature of ?being?, to change the current view of professional identities in projects

Poetics of Identity: On entrepreneurial selves of Afghan Migrants in Pakistan

In Peshawar, evenings at tea houses in the ?market of storytellers? or Qissa Khawani Bazaar are busy. Located at the doorsteps of the famous Khyber Pass, Peshawar has historically acted as the main gateway between the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia. Qissa Khawani has always been the major market for traders in this geographical region. Indeed, the British Commissioner to Peshawar, Sir Herbert Benjamin Edwards (1853-1862), called it the Piccadilly of Central Asia (Tikekar, 2004). Every evening, tea houses would be buzzing with traders from all over Asia sipping freshly brewed green tea and relaxing. But the highlight of the evening was the storytellers called Qissa Khawans who would narrate many stories of interest to the traders. They used both prose and poetry to tell stories of traders? expeditions, their valuable items, and of far-away lands of treasures. Today, the same bazaars continue to be full of activity and their small streets have been transformed into a variety of interconnected specialised markets. There is a market for mobile phones, opening into a flower market adjoined by the sweets market, leading to a market for pet birds. One such narrow street is called Jangi Mohallah, ?the fighters? neighbourhood?. Until about three decades ago, the gangsters of Peshawar city used to settle scores there. It was a place for duels which were fought with large handmade folding knives. There is no sign of this today as the ever increasing population has taken over that ground. The u-shaped Jangi Mohallah is the hub of the printing and publishing businesses in the North West Frontier Province (Pakistan) ? the home to the Pashtun tribes. In this paper, the stories narrated by the Pashtun traders of Jangi Mohallah provide a window into their entrepreneurial identities. They stem from Afghan Pashtuns of Qissa Khawani speaking the language of Pashtu and upholding the values of the ?Pashtunwali?- a living and unwritten code of honour that ?regulates? everyday life. This paper thus engages with entrepreneurial life history narratives espousing the ways in which the identities of Afghan entrepreneurs adhere to the main Pashtunwali-tenets, if at all. The latter refer to an ideal self that has been orally transmitted through Pashtu poetry since ancient times. Afghan entrepreneurial identities tend to adhere to the core tenets of Pashtunwali. However, there are multiple uses of poetic tropes expressed in entrepreneurial life history narratives that tell us more about the subtle ambiguity and challenges that might be experienced when relating to the dominant influence of this code of honour. Thus, Pashtunwali values are very much lived and enacted in practice. This paper contends that they are inscribed as poetic tropes in main Afghan poetry shaping the moral compass that becomes central to one?s existence and mode of being an entrepreneur

AI and business models: the good, the bad and the ugly

Over the last five years, several scholars from a range of disciplines have started to analyse how Artificial Intelligence (AI) affects businesses outcomes. This research effort has produced many predictions on the expected impact of automation on labour demand and equilibrium employment. However, most of the expected results are dependent on how businesses change their behaviour due to adopting AI. We argue that, as AI diffuses across the economy, changing behaviour is a necessary outcome for incumbents: the argument is that the diffusion of AI across an industry generates the conditions for a process of value migration from incumbents to new entrants (Helper et al. 2018); in these cases, the only mechanism available to incumbents to offset the negative impact of the migration process is by changing the architecture of their business, i.e., the business model. However, companies can choose from several AI-driven business models; their preference for one model is driven by many industry-level factors such as technical standards, the structure of the technology industry and the presence of an ethical framework for the use of AI. This monologue summarises the existing literature on business model innovation and AI; it then analyses the industry-level factors that may shape the business-level preference for specific business models. Finally, the monologue offers some suggestions for future research in the area

When are bacteria dead? A step towards interpreting flow cytometry profiles after chlorine disinfection and membrane integrity staining

Flow cytometry is increasingly employed by drinking water providers. Its use with appropriate fluorescent stains allows the distinction between intact and membrane-damaged bacteria, which makes it ideally suited for assessment of disinfection efficiency. In contrast to plate counting, the technology allows the visualization of the gradual loss of membrane integrity. Although this sensitivity per se is very positive, it creates the problem of how this detailed viability information compares with binary plate counts where a colony is either formed or not. Guidelines are therefore needed to facilitate interpretation of flow cytometry results and to determine a degree of membrane damage where bacteria can be considered ‘dead’. In this study we subjected Escherichia coli and environmental microorganisms in real water to increasing chlorine concentrations. Resulting flow cytometric patterns after membrane integrity staining were compared with culturability and in part with redox activity. For laboratory-grown bacteria, culturability was lost at lower disinfectant concentrations than membrane integrity making the latter a conservative viability parameter. No recovery from chlorine was observed for four days. For real water, loss of membrane integrity had to be much more substantial to completely suppress colony formation, probably due to the heterogenic composition of the natural microbial community with different members having different susceptibilities to the disinfectant

Biodiversitätsmonitoring im Südtiroler Kräuteranbau = Biodiversity surveys in medicinal and aromatic plant fields in South Tyrol

Medicinal and aromatic plants in mountain regions such as South Tyrol are cultivated on small-scale farms, which are characterized by a high diversity of cultivated crop species grown on a relatively small area. This small-scale cultivation of medicinal and aromatic plants suggests that MAP fields are of high ecological value. However, research on this topic is generally lacking. In this study flower-visiting arthropods were recorded with pan traps in three herb fields during three survey events conducted in 2021. Our results indicate that medicinal and aromatic plant fields are valuable habitats for several taxa. In total 12.570 individuals were collected. Wild bees were particularly species-rich, accounting for 10 % of the regional wild bee species pool. Next to beneficial arthropods, potential pests, such as aphids were also highly abundant. However, natural enemies possibly counteracting pests were also numerous. Overall, we conclude that medicinal and aromatic plant cultivation may act as resource-rich oases for several arthropod groups, thereby promoting biodiversity also on a broader scale.Der Anbau von Arznei- und Gewürzpflanzen zeichnet sich in der Regel durch vielfältige Anbaukulturen auf relativ kleinen Flächen aus. Dies gilt insbesondere für Südtirol, wo diese Kulturen hauptsächlich von kleinen Betrieben im Berggebiet angebaut werden. Dieser kleinflächige Anbau von Arznei- und Gewürzpflanzen lässt vermuten, dass die Betriebe einen hohen ökologischen Wert haben. Es gibt wenige Studien zur Erfassung der Biodiversität im Anbau von Arznei- und Gewürzpflanzen. Daher wurden in dieser Arbeit Kräuteranbau-Betriebe als Lebensraum für blütenbesuchende Arthropoden untersucht. An drei Untersuchungsstandorten wurden im Jahr 2021 jeweils an drei Terminen Farbschalen zur Sammlung von Arthropoden verwendet. Kräuteranbau-Betriebe stellten sich als ein wertvoller Lebensraum für verschiedene Arthropoden heraus. Insgesamt wurden 12.570 Individuen mit den Farbschalen gesammelt. Insbesondere Wildbienen waren mit 10 % des regionalen Artenpools sehr artenreich. Auch potenzielle Schädlinge, wie zum Beispiel Blattläuse, waren sehr häufig anzutreffen, wobei natürliche Feinde, wie zum Beispiel Parasitoide, ebenfalls zahlreich vertreten waren. Insgesamt können Kräuteranbaubetriebe als strukturreiche Oasen für Arthropoden fungieren und sich somit auf einer breiteren Skala positiv auf die Biodiversität auswirken

Transmitter and receiver processing specification for a unified ULE security extension

The Unidirectional Lightweight Encapsulation (ULE) protocol has been defined for efficient transport of IPv4/6 and other protocols over the MPEG-2 Transport Stream (TS). The proliferation of this technology on the mass market may benefit from a security solution protecting against potential threats such as eavesdropping, as well as masquerading, modification of messages, and replay attacks, similar to 802.11 security. A unified ULE security extension header format has been proposed previously by the authors. This paper discusses in detail the processing required for transmitters and receivers supporting this security extension for ULE

A Conditional Yeast E1 Mutant Blocks the Ubiquitin–Proteasome Pathway and Reveals a Role for Ubiquitin Conjugates in Targeting Rad23 to the Proteasome

E1 ubiquitin activating enzyme catalyzes the initial step in all ubiquitin-dependent processes. We report the isolation of uba1-204, a temperature-sensitive allele of the essential Saccharomyces cerevisiae E1 gene, UBA1. Uba1-204 cells exhibit dramatic inhibition of the ubiquitin–proteasome system, resulting in rapid depletion of cellular ubiquitin conjugates and stabilization of multiple substrates. We have employed the tight phenotype of this mutant to investigate the role ubiquitin conjugates play in the dynamic interaction of the UbL/UBA adaptor proteins Rad23 and Dsk2 with the proteasome. Although proteasomes purified from mutant cells are intact and proteolytically active, they are depleted of ubiquitin conjugates, Rad23, and Dsk2. Binding of Rad23 to these proteasomes in vitro is enhanced by addition of either free or substrate-linked ubiquitin chains. Moreover, association of Rad23 with proteasomes in mutant and wild-type cells is improved upon stabilizing ubiquitin conjugates with proteasome inhibitor. We propose that recognition of polyubiquitin chains by Rad23 promotes its shuttling to the proteasome in vivo

The proteasome cap RPT5/Rpt5p subunit prevents aggregation of unfolded ricin A chain

The plant cytotoxin ricin enters mammalian cells by receptor-mediated endocytosis, undergoing retrograde transport to the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) where its catalytic A chain (RTA) is reductively separated from the holotoxin to enter the cytosol and inactivate ribosomes. The currently accepted model is that the bulk of ER-dislocated RTA is degraded by proteasomes. We show here that the proteasome has a more complex role in ricin intoxication than previously recognised, that the previously reported increase in sensitivity of mammalian cells to ricin in the presence of proteasome inhibitors simply reflects toxicity of the inhibitors themselves, and that RTA is a very poor substrate for proteasomal degradation. Denatured RTA and casein compete for a binding site on the regulatory particle of the 26S proteasome, but their fates differ. Casein is degraded, but the mammalian 26S proteasome AAA-ATPase subunit RPT5 acts as a chaperone that prevents aggregation of denatured RTA and stimulates recovery of catalytic RTA activity in vitro. Furthermore, in vivo, the ATPase activity of Rpt5p is required for maximal toxicity of RTA dislocated from the Saccharomyces cerevisiae ER. Our results implicate RPT5/Rpt5p in the triage of substrates in which either activation (folding) or inactivation (degradation) pathways may be initiated

ECOPLAN-SE: Ruimtelijke analyse van ecosysteemdiensten in Vlaanderen, een Q-GIS plugin

ECOPLAN-SE is een ruimtelijk expliciete tool (QGIS) voor het beoordelen van de impact van landgebruikveranderingen op de levering van ecosysteemdiensten. De ontwikkeling van deze tool kadert in het het SBO-project “ECOPLAN” (Planning for Ecosystem Services). ECOPLAN ontwikkelt ruimtelijk expliciete informatie en instrumenten voor de beoordeling van ecosysteemdiensten. Het ontwerpt instrumenten voor de evaluatie van functionele ecosystemen als een kostenefficiënte strategie om de landgebruiksefficiëntie en milieukwaliteit te verbeteren. Het ontwikkelt open source eindproducten voor het identificeren, kwantificeren, waarderen, valideren en monitoren van ecosysteemdiensten. Deze producten kunnen door administraties en consultants worden ingezet in projectontwikkeling, kosten-baten analyses, milieueffecten rapportering, etc

Effect of temperature on bacteriophage-mediated lysis efficiency with a special emphasis on bacterial temperature history

Despite the great potential of phages as biocontrol agents, there is much uncertainty about the environmental factors influencing lysis efficiency. In this study we investigated the effect of temperature using three distinct lytic E. coli phages that were isolated from a single environmental water sample. All three were identified as dsDNA phages belonging to the Myoviridae family. Whereas the optimal growth temperature of E. coli is well known to be 37 ˚C and exposure of phages (prior to mixing with bacteria) to temperatures between 4 and 37˚C did not affect their infectivity, plaque sizes and numbers greatly decreased with increasing incubation temperature (20˚C, 30˚C, 37˚C) of the phage-host mix. At 37˚C, no visible plaques were observed. Results suggest that temperature sensitivity of the phage-host interaction is distinct from the temperature susceptibility of the two players and corroborate previous reports that highest lysis rates are obtained at temperatures approximate with ambient conditions of the phage environment. Infectivity was however found not only to depend on the incubation temperature of the phage-host mix, but also on the bacterial temperature history. Moreover, exposure of bacteria to heat stress prior to phage challenge resulted in a phage-resistant phenotype raising the question whether bacterial pathogens shed from warm-blooded hosts might be less susceptible to phages adapted to environmental temperature conditions