'I've got those empty diary blues': a wee case study of performance management in a Glasgow office

Friedrich Nietzsche's writings are currently threatened in that he is he treated only as a philosopher or a poet, and his relationship with twentieth century politics and latterly Management theory is largely ignored, excepting of course when he is held to be responsible for the growth in Fascism. In this paper an attempt will be made to show that Nietzsche should not simply be considered as the deracine par excellence with no interest with more general humanitarian concerns. This paper presents a background to Nietzsche and his relationship to Managerialism and then provides a story written in Glaswegian argot of the relationship between a recruit to a Law Enforcement Office in Glasgow, Scotland and his new Manager. An interesting tale about performance management, illustrates how the abuse of power hides personal and organizational dysfunctionality. Another key feature in the twist at the end of the tale is the manifestation of simulacra in performance measures relating to inspection tasks, where we see that 'work not done but recorded' becomes more important, more 'real' than 'work done but not recorded'. This is the excess of history. The story is written in the Glaswegian vernacular partly as homage to the renowned author James Kelman, but more significantly in an attempt take us closer to the lived experience of the actors - as opposed to the more usual sanitised accounts which abound in the management literature. The language is surprisingly 'industrial' in what is regarded as a 'professional' setting

On a photon-counting array using the Fairchild CCD-201

The evaluation of certain performance parameters of the Fairchild CCD 201 and the proposed method of operation of an electron bombarded charge coupled device are described. Work in progress on the evaluation of the parameters relevant to remote, low noise operation is reported. These tests have been conducted using light input. The video data from the CCD are amplified, digitized, stored in a minicomputer memory, and then recorded on magnetic tape for analyzing. The device will be used in an array of sensors in the aperture plane of a telescope to discriminate between photoelectron events, and in the focal plane operating at single photoelectron sensitivity at a minimum of blooming and lag

Laser beam pointing tests

Laser beam pointing tests for lunar communication and rangefinding and tracking using Surveyor 7 vidicon camer

An evaluation of an ICCD imager of dynamic range expansion technique and application of insitu procedures for life-time extension

Research toward practical implementation of the Intensified Charge Coupled Device (ICCD) as a photon-counting array detector for astronomy is reported. The first area of concentration was to determine the rate and extent of the lifetime limiting damage to the CCD caused by the impact of high energy electrons, and to find whether various methods of annealing the damage were productive. The second effort was to determine the performance of the ICCD in a photon-counting mode to produce extended dynamic range measurements. There are two main effects that appear as the practical results of the electron damage to the CCD. One is an increase in the leakage current, i.e., the normal thermal generation of charge carriers in the silicon that provides a background dark signal that adds to the light produced image. In an undamaged CCD, the leakage current is usually fairly uniform across the photosensitive area of the silicon chip, with the exception of various bright pixels which have an anomalous leakage current well above the overall level

Research concerning the geophysical causes and measurement accuracies related to the irregularities in the rotation of the earth

The primary objective of this effort consisted of a detailed study of the history of the motion of the moon. Several analyses were developed which are related to the determination of the effect of various refractive phenomena on the accuracy of measurements made through the earth's atmosphere

Socioeconomic inequalities in childhood exposure to secondhand smoke before and after smoke-free legislation in three UK countries

Background: Secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure is higher among lower socioeconomic status (SES) children. Legislation restricting smoking in public places has been associated with reduced childhood SHS exposure and increased smoke-free homes. This paper examines socioeconomic patterning in these changes.<p></p> Methods: Repeated cross-sectional survey of 10 867 schoolchildren in 304 primary schools in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Children provided saliva for cotinine assay, completing questionnaires before and 12 months after legislation.<p></p> Results: SHS exposure was highest, and private smoking restrictions least frequently reported, among lower SES children. Proportions of saliva samples containing <0.1 ng/ml (i.e. undetectable) cotinine increased from 31.0 to 41.0%. Although across the whole SES spectrum, there was no evidence of displacement of smoking into the home or increased SHS exposure, socioeconomic inequality in the likelihood of samples containing detectable levels of cotinine increased. Among children from the poorest families, 96.9% of post-legislation samples contained detectable cotinine, compared with 38.2% among the most affluent. Socioeconomic gradients at higher exposure levels remained unchanged. Among children from the poorest families, one in three samples contained > 3 ng/ml cotinine. Smoking restrictions in homes and cars increased, although socioeconomic patterning remained.<p></p> Conclusions Urgent action is needed to reduce inequalities in SHS exposure. Such action should include emphasis on reducing smoking in cars and homes

Tumour specific immunogenicity of methylcholanthrene-induced sarcoma cells after incubation in neuraminidase.

IT was previously suggested (Currie and Bagshawe, 1967) that effective antigenic expression by some types of tumour cell may be inhibited by the presence of sialic (N-acetylneuraminic) acid in the cell periphery. Treatment of the cells from several " non-specific " transplantable mouse tumours with neuraminidase results in a marked increase in their immunogenicity when subsequently injected into intact host mice and leads to a powerful anti-tumour immunity in these animals. So far this phenomenon has been reported using the Ehrlich (Lindenmann and- Klein, 1967), Landschuitz (Currie, 1967), and TA3 (Sanford, 1967) ascitic tumours. The antigenic discrepancies between these tumours and their respective host mice are probably related to strain-specific histocompatibility differences, i.e. these tumours are malignant allografts. Little of the information obtained from the study of such tumours is of immediate relevance to the growth and development of autochthonous tumours where the only tumour-host antigen discrepancy (if any) is specific to the tumour. The purpose of this paper is to report studies of the effects of incubation i

The far field diffraction pattern for corner reflectors with complex reflection coefficients

The far field diffraction pattern of a geometrically perfect corner reflector is examined analytically for normally incident monochromatic light. The states of polarization and the complex amplitudes of the emerging light are expressed through transformation matrices in terms of those of the original incident light for each sextant of the face in a single coordinate system. The analytic expression of the total diffraction pattern is obtained for a circular face. This expression consists of three component functions in addition to the basic Airy function. The coefficient of each function is expressed in terms of complex coefficients of reflectance of the reflecting surface. Some numerical results for different reflecting surfaces, including total internal reflection, are presented. The iso-intensity contours of the diffraction pattern evaluated from the analytical expressions for an uncoated solid corner reflector are also presented along with the photographs of the pattern