HRD - the shapes and things to come

There has been limited critical review and development of Human Resource Development (HRD) theory in the past two decades. It is change, and especially the rate at which change occurs, that largely influences the HRD hybrid that any organisation adopts. This paper will systematically consider the professional discussions in a number of countries to trace HRD through four key phases: the 'duet', the 'trio', the 'quartet' and concluding with the 'orchestra'. In the past, Human Resource Development (HRD) was often polarized as focusing primarily on either performance or learning - a 'duet'. The relationship between HRD and change was then developed once the integral nature of work to both performance and learning was recognised - a 'trio'. A significant addition to the exploration of learning at work then came about when authors tackled the issue of quality - a 'quartet' of learning, performance, work and quality. However, the future of HRD now lies squarely in the need for the profession to embrace fully the inextricably interrelated paradigms of movement (where people have developed from); change (and especially the rate of change); dynamism (provided from leadership); harmony and unity (resulting from cohesive partnerships) - the 'orchestra'

Two Studies on The Use of Information Technology in Collaborative Planning, Forecasting & Replenishment (CPFR)

In the 1st study, I seek to determine whether there are trends in the coverage of the use of Information Technology in CPFR in support of Supply Chain Management. I look at the way technology is studied along two dimensions. The first dimension is the function within CPFR—Planning, Forecasting or Replenishment. The second dimension is level at which the study addresses use of the technology, whether at the Operational, Tactical or Strategic level. Within this 3x3 matrix, I seek to prove that studies would primarily fall along a line where the higher the level functions should be served by systems which have a longer-term orientation. This was broadly true, along with an emphasis on studies at the strategic level. Additionally, I find an underrepresentation of Forecasting, especially at the strategic level. The 2nd study seeks to determine the factors affecting IT system use for CPFR, in the real world. I examine the factors affecting system use along two dimensions. The first is along the company-level dimension. There are 3 points along the company-level dimension, defined as follows. Strategic use is defined as use by upper level management who are interested in the long term view of the organization and its processes and products. The Tactical use of IT for CPFR includes use by middle managers at a departmental level for medium term decision making. Operational level IT use covers functions which directly affect individual customers and keep the business running day to day. The second dimension along which system use is examined, is the functional-dimension. There are 3 points along this dimension and they are defined as follows. Use of IT for Planning, based on the VICS standard, is usually, but not exclusively under the purview of senior managers to determine what products to manufacture and the features they should have. Forecasting is done mainly by middle-managers in order to move enough products at the right time, to the right paces, while avoiding over-stocking each product. The Replenishment function is the actual process of moving items to the customer as they are ordered on-line or bought from the shelf. This is typically the job of operational logistics personnel such as purchasing and, shipping and delivery, as well as front-line staff such as customer service, shop-floor attendants or cashiers who interface directly with customers. In examining real world IT use for CPFR, I build on Simmonds, Haines & Li (2013) which looks at the trends and gaps in the IT literature as far as use of IT in CPFR was concerned. The aim is to determine whether the literature lines up with reality, or whether researchers are inherently biased when studying how Information Technology is used to support CPFR. A survey instrument was sent to 4000 senior managers in manufacturing and distribution companies. IT use along the STO dimension (Haines, Hough, & Haines, 2010) and its relationship with Industry characteristics (clock-speed of the industry and technological orientation) will be investigated in the context of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (Fred D. Davis, 1989). Product factors (such as demand variability & luxury nature of the product) which drive IT use (Attaran & Attaran, 2007) along the PFR dimension will be investigated in the context of Technology Task Fit Theory (Goodhue & Thompson, 1995). Intra-firm trust (Frazier, Johnson, Gavin, Gooty, & Bradley Snow, 2010) and its effect on use on the PFR dimension, will be looked at with managerial influence within Innovation Diffusion theory (Rogers, 2010) as a basis. Trust issues including confidence of management in competence of workers and confidence of employees in dependability of IT

The influence of CpG and UpA dinucleotide frequencies on RNA virus replication and characterization of the innate cellular pathways underlying virus attenuation and enhanced replication

Most RNA viruses infecting mammals and other vertebrates show profound suppression of CpG and UpA dinucleotide frequencies. To investigate this functionally, mutants of the picornavirus, echovirus 7 (E7), were constructed with altered CpG and UpA compositions in two 1.1–1.3 Kbase regions. Those with increased frequencies of CpG and UpA showed impaired replication kinetics and higher RNA/infectivity ratios compared with wild-type virus. Remarkably, mutants with CpGs and UpAs removed showed enhanced replication, larger plaques and rapidly outcompeted wild-type virus on co-infections. Luciferase-expressing E7 sub-genomic replicons with CpGs and UpAs removed from the reporter gene showed 100-fold greater luminescence. E7 and mutants were equivalently sensitive to exogenously added interferon-β, showed no evidence for differential recognition by ADAR1 or pattern recognition receptors RIG-I, MDA5 or PKR. However, kinase inhibitors roscovitine and C16 partially or entirely reversed the attenuated phenotype of high CpG and UpA mutants, potentially through inhibition of currently uncharacterized pattern recognition receptors that respond to RNA composition. Generating viruses with enhanced replication kinetics has applications in vaccine production and reporter gene construction. More fundamentally, the findings introduce a new evolutionary paradigm where dinucleotide composition of viral genomes is subjected to selection pressures independently of coding capacity and profoundly influences host–pathogen interactions

Optimizing Computation of Recovery Plans for BPEL Applications

Web service applications are distributed processes that are composed of dynamically bounded services. In our previous work [15], we have described a framework for performing runtime monitoring of web service against behavioural correctness properties (described using property patterns and converted into finite state automata). These specify forbidden behavior (safety properties) and desired behavior (bounded liveness properties). Finite execution traces of web services described in BPEL are checked for conformance at runtime. When violations are discovered, our framework automatically proposes and ranks recovery plans which users can then select for execution. Such plans for safety violations essentially involve "going back" - compensating the executed actions until an alternative behaviour of the application is possible. For bounded liveness violations, recovery plans include both "going back" and "re-planning" - guiding the application towards a desired behaviour. Our experience, reported in [16], identified a drawback in this approach: we compute too many plans due to (a) overapproximating the number of program points where an alternative behaviour is possible and (b) generating recovery plans for bounded liveness properties which can potentially violate safety properties. In this paper, we describe improvements to our framework that remedy these problems and describe their effectiveness on a case study.Comment: In Proceedings TAV-WEB 2010, arXiv:1009.330

The integrated dynamic land use and transport model MARS

Cities worldwide face problems like congestion or outward migration of businesses. The involved transport and land use interactions require innovative tools. The dynamic Land Use and Transport Interaction model MARS (Metropolitan Activity Relocation Simulator) is part of a structured decision making process. Cities are seen as self organizing systems. MARS uses Causal Loop Diagrams from Systems Dynamics to explain cause and effect relations. MARS has been benchmarked against other published models. A user friendly interface has been developed to support decision makers. Its usefulness was tested through workshops in Asia. This paper describes the basis, capabilities and uses of MARS

Remote Sensing and Control of Phase Qubits

We demonstrate a remote sensing design of phase qubits by separating the control and readout circuits from the qubit loop. This design improves measurement reliability because the control readout chip can be fabricated using more robust materials and can be reused to test different qubit chips. Typical qubit measurements such as Rabi oscillations, spectroscopy, and excited-state energy relaxation are presented.Comment: 3 pages, 4 figure

Influence of genome-scale RNA structure disruption on the replication of murine norovirus--similar replication kinetics in cell culture but attenuation of viral fitness in vivo

Mechanisms by which certain RNA viruses, such as hepatitis C virus, establish persistent infections and cause chronic disease are of fundamental importance in viral pathogenesis. Mammalian positive-stranded RNA viruses establishing persistence typically possess genome-scale ordered RNA secondary structure (GORS) in their genomes. Murine norovirus (MNV) persists in immunocompetent mice and provides an experimental model to functionally characterize GORS. Substitution mutants were constructed with coding sequences in NS3/4- and NS6/7-coding regions replaced with sequences with identical coding and (di-)nucleotide composition but disrupted RNA secondary structure (F1, F2, F1/F2 mutants). Mutants replicated with similar kinetics to wild-type (WT) MNV3 in RAW264.7 cells and primary macrophages, exhibited similar (highly restricted) induction and susceptibility to interferon-coupled cellular responses and equal replication fitness by serial passaging of co-cultures. In vivo, both WT and F1/F2 mutant viruses persistently infected mice, although F1, F2 and F1/F2 mutant viruses were rapidly eliminated 1–7 days post-inoculation in competition experiments with WT. F1/F2 mutants recovered from tissues at 9 months showed higher synonymous substitution rates than WT and nucleotide substitutions that potentially restored of RNA secondary structure. GORS plays no role in basic replication of MNV but potentially contributes to viral fitness and persistence in vivo

STRAND: A Model for Longshore Sediment Transport in the Swash Zone

In this paper we report on the development and performance of an engineering model, STRAND which has the aim of predicting longshore movement of coarse sediment above the still water line of steep beaches. The model assumes that this transport is driven by swash run-up at the edge of an unsaturated inner surfzone and uses Nielsen's (1992) formulation for sediment transport rate. The hydrodynamic sub-model is shown to agree well with field measurements of swash run-up and swash period. We argue that consideration of interactions between subsequent swash events implies that a monotonic relationship between transport rate and incident wave period is inappropriate. Bulk longshore transport rates are shown to compare reasonably with previous estimates from field studies in the UK and accounts for up to 50% of the net longshore flux. Agreement of this simplified model with one of the best available laboratory data sets, Kamphuis (1991a,b), is very good indeed. However, new laboratory and field data are required before stronger conclusions can be drawn