Knowledge retention in national agricultural research organisations: the case of Uganda

Organisation knowledge attrition continues to gain attention due to the increasing mobility of organisational employees. Employees leave organisations due to retirement, resignation in search for better employment opportunities, termination of employment contracts, indisposition, unofficially leaving employment, and death. When they leave organisations, they take with them tacit knowledge. Attrition of tacit knowledge leads to loss of intellectual assets and erosion of organisational memory which negatively affect learning and innovation. The knowledge can be subject matter expertise, organisational memory of why certain decisions were made, experience of past research and development projects and the social network in terms of from whom they sought out for answers or collaborated with in executing their tasks. Knowledge attrition is common in many organisations in different sectors. The literature does not show any framework that addresses knowledge attrition right from the time an employee is recruited into an organisation to when he or she leaves it. The purpose of this study was to develop an integrated knowledge retention framework for minimising organisational knowledge attrition. This was achieved by investigating how loss of organisational tacit knowledge can be minimised. The research adopted a single case study design with a concurrent parallel mixed methods research strategy informed by pragmatic philosophical assumptions. It was conducted in Uganda in a large national agricultural research organisation. Data was collected from 36 focus group discussions involving 161 participants, review of organisational documents, 35 interviews, 205 online surveys and a validation workshop by 16 top managers. The main contribution of this research is the novel framework for knowledge retention that comprehensively addresses knowledge attrition from an organisation. The framework comprises two categories of components. The first is the organisational behavioural components comprising knowledge sharing, capturing and documenting knowledge, and knowledge exploitation. This category constitutes the core components of the knowledge retention strategy. The second category is the organisational environmental components. It comprises creating organisational learning environment, having knowledge-oriented governance and leadership, providing necessary capacities and conditions, and providing strategic guidance - planning for knowledge retention. Environmental components have moderating effects on the behavioural components. In addition, it has contributed to the theoretical existing body of knowledge from the framework that was developed. This complements the reviewed literature which uncovered three conceptual categorisations of the knowledge retention strategies based on the timing of capturing knowledge from an individual. The three categories are: Reactive (short-term), Containment (medium-term) and Preventive (long-term) knowledge retention strategies. Although the concept of knowledge retention is not new, this research has contributed to the existing body of literature. Additionally, the study provides a deeper understanding of knowledge retention and opens new research areas. Perhaps this is the first study of its kind in the agricultural sector specifically focussing on agricultural research

Halting Planet Migration in the Evacuated Centers of Protoplanetary Disks

Precise Doppler searches for extrasolar planets find a surfeit of planets with orbital periods of 3-4 days, and no planets with orbital periods less than 3 days. The circumstellar distance, R_0, where small grains in a protoplanetary disk reach sublimation temperature (~1500 K) corresponds to a period of ~6 days. Interior to R_0, turbulent accretion due to magneto-rotational instability may evacuate the disk center. We suggest that planets with orbital periods of 3-4 days are so common because migrating planets halt once this evacuated region contains the sites of their exterior 2:1 Lindblad resonances.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figure, to appear in ApJ letter

Discovery of Reflection Nebulosity Around Five Vega-like Stars

Coronagraphic optical observations of six Vega-like stars reveal reflection nebulosities, five of which were previously unknown. The nebulosities illuminated by HD 4881, HD 23362, HD 23680, HD 26676, and HD 49662 resemble that of the Pleiades, indicating an interstellar origin for dust grains. The reflection nebulosity around HD 123160 has a double-arm morphology, but no disk-like feature is seen as close as 2.5 arcsec from the star in K-band adaptive optics data. We demonstrate that uniform density dust clouds surrounding HD 23362, HD 23680 and HD 123160 can account for the observed 12-100 micron spectral energy distributions. For HD 4881, HD 26676, and HD 49662 an additional emission source, such as from a circumstellar disk or non-equilibrium grain heating, is required to fit the 12-25 micron data. These results indicate that in some cases, particularly for Vega-like stars located beyond the Local Bubble (>100 pc), the dust responsible for excess thermal emission may originate from the interstellar medium rather than from a planetary debris system.Comment: The Astrophysical Journal, in press for March, 2002 (32 pages, 13 figures

Ribosomal DNA representation in the Orbach-Sachs and Vollmer-Yanofsky N. crassa cosmid libraries

We have been employing the Orbach-Sachs (1991 Fungal Genetics Newsl. 38:97) and Vollmer-Yanofsky (Vollmer and Yanofsky 1986 Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 83:4869-4873) N. crassa cosmid libraries (obtained from the Fungal Genetics Stock Center) in subtractive hybridization experiments designed to identify genes induced under conditions of oxidative stress. Because cosmids containing the 17S and 26S ribosomal RNA genes produce false positives in these experiments, it was necessary for us to identify cosmids in the Orbach-Sachs containing these genes

The Energetic Cost of Walking: A Comparison of Predictive Methods

<p>Background: The energy that animals devote to locomotion has been of intense interest to biologists for decades and two basic methodologies have emerged to predict locomotor energy expenditure: those based on metabolic and those based on mechanical energy. Metabolic energy approaches share the perspective that prediction of locomotor energy expenditure should be based on statistically significant proxies of metabolic function, while mechanical energy approaches, which derive from many different perspectives, focus on quantifying the energy of movement. Some controversy exists as to which mechanical perspective is “best”, but from first principles all mechanical methods should be equivalent if the inputs to the simulation are of similar quality. Our goals in this paper are 1) to establish the degree to which the various methods of calculating mechanical energy are correlated, and 2) to investigate to what degree the prediction methods explain the variation in energy expenditure.</p> <p>Methodology/Principal Findings: We use modern humans as the model organism in this experiment because their data are readily attainable, but the methodology is appropriate for use in other species. Volumetric oxygen consumption and kinematic and kinetic data were collected on 8 adults while walking at their self-selected slow, normal and fast velocities. Using hierarchical statistical modeling via ordinary least squares and maximum likelihood techniques, the predictive ability of several metabolic and mechanical approaches were assessed. We found that all approaches are correlated and that the mechanical approaches explain similar amounts of the variation in metabolic energy expenditure. Most methods predict the variation within an individual well, but are poor at accounting for variation between individuals.</p> <p>Conclusion: Our results indicate that the choice of predictive method is dependent on the question(s) of interest and the data available for use as inputs. Although we used modern humans as our model organism, these results can be extended to other species.</p&gt

Population-scale organization of cerebellar granule neuron signaling during a visuomotor behavior.

Granule cells at the input layer of the cerebellum comprise over half the neurons in the human brain and are thought to be critical for learning. However, little is known about granule neuron signaling at the population scale during behavior. We used calcium imaging in awake zebrafish during optokinetic behavior to record transgenically identified granule neurons throughout a cerebellar population. A significant fraction of the population was responsive at any given time. In contrast to core precerebellar populations, granule neuron responses were relatively heterogeneous, with variation in the degree of rectification and the balance of positive versus negative changes in activity. Functional correlations were strongest for nearby cells, with weak spatial gradients in the degree of rectification and the average sign of response. These data open a new window upon cerebellar function and suggest granule layer signals represent elementary building blocks under-represented in core sensorimotor pathways, thereby enabling the construction of novel patterns of activity for learning

Pandangan atau Tanggapan Akhir Peserta Mata Kuliah Pendidikan Pancasila terhadap Pendidikan Pancasila di UNPAR

Pancasila adalah philosophische grondslag, weltanschauung bangsa Indonesia. Nilai-nilai Pancasila sudah hidup jauh sebelum dirumuskan para pendiri. Maka tak berlebihan bila dikatakan bahwa Pancasila merupakan inti jiwa bangsa Indonesia. Pancasila bisa juga dikatakan sebagai kerangka pandang orang Indonesia melihat dirinya. Perjalanan sejarah bangsa seharusnya menjadikan Pancasila semakin terbuka untuk dibicarakan. Pancasila yang sudah dirumuskan itu harus terus ditafsirkan dalam konteks Indonesia yang berubah. Dengan demikian, ia menjadi semakin hidup dan kaya makna karena menjadi milik seluruh komponen bangsa.Kesan yang muncul di awal perkuliahan berhadapan dengan perkuliahan Pendidikan Pancasila adalah negatif. Mayoritas mahasiswa menganggap dan memandang mata kuliah Pendidikan Pancasila sekadar menjadi ideologi yang melayani kehendak penguasa. Model pendidikan yang indoktrinatif merupakan salah satu cara yang kerap digunakan untuk menanamkan nilai-nilai Pancasila sehingga cenderung represif. Karena itu, kecurigaan bahwa Pendidikan Pancasila merupakan sebuah upaya manipulasi dalam kerangka tafsir kelompok yang berkuasa. Sehingga menurut mayoritas mahasiswa Pancasila sebagai falsafah hidup bangsa ini tidak lagi memiliki daya atau kekuatan mempengaruhi sehingga mempelajarinya pun sekedar sebuah tuntutan teknis-akademis. Universitas Katolik Parahyangan (UNPAR) sebagai salah satu lembaga pendidikan yang masih setia pada sejarah Pendidikan Pancasila di Perguruan Tinggi merasa selalu terpanggil untuk mencoba merumuskan ulang Pancasila. UNPAR sebagai sebuah universitas yang mendasari diri pada spirit multi-kultur dan muliti-religi menjadikan Pancasila sebagai falsafah. Hal ini pula yang membuat Mata Kuliah Pendidikan Nilai Pancasila tetap dipertahankan di kampus ini. Penelitian ini mencoba menggali dan menganalisis sejauh mana mahasiswa UNPAR menyadari spirit ini.Salah satu komponen penting dinamika pembelajaran mata kuliah ini adalah mahasiswa. Maka penelitian ini mencoba menggali pendapat akhir peserta mata kuliah. Pandangan atau pendapat ini berhubungan dengan pengalaman mereka mengikuti perkuliahan Pendidikan Pancasila selama satu semester. Dalam penelitian ini ada tiga pendapat yang coba digali diantara mahasiswa peserta mata kuliah. Ketiga pendapat itu berkaitan dengan pertama, pendapat akhir tentang materi; kedua, pendapat akhir terhadap metode yang digunakan; ketiga, pendapat akhir terhadap dosen atau pengajar mata kuliah Pendidikan Pancasila.Pendapat akhir mahasiswa ini yang kemudian ditangkap dan dianalisis sehingga akhirnya pendapat akhir dari peserta didik ini memperkaya pengembangan mata kuliah ini. Sehingga sebagai falsafah bangsa Pancasila tetap hidup dalam hati, pikiran dan tindakan manusia Indonesia pada umumnya dan civitas academica UNPAR pada khususnya

Imaging Polarimetric Observations of a New Circumstellar Disk System

Few circumstellar disks have been directly observed. Here we use sensitive differential polarimetric techniques to overcome atmospheric speckle noise in order to image the circumstellar material around HD 169142. The detected envelope or disk is considerably smaller than expectations based on the measured strength of the far-IR excess from this system