Are Tier-one contractors making their money out of wasteful procurement arrangements?

The UK Government challenged construction to achieve 50% faster delivery and a 33% reduction of clients' capital costs by 2025 – prevailing business models won't meet these targets. Eliminating waste from construction design and delivery as advocated by lean ideals is therefore a necessary step towards these goals. However, waste understood simply as the improvement of current processes rather than fundamental system redesign will not be enough. Obtaining a better understanding and conceptualisation of waste in construction is therefore becoming more crucial. One aspect of this is to challenge the apparent coherence of prevailing procurement practices generated by the institutional, organisational, and commercial environments that surround the design and delivery of construction projects. This paper contributes to this by examining Tier 1 contractors and presents examples of practices that open debate on how to challenge prevailing procurement models for construction. Through literature review and interviews, the study discusses the factors influencing the ‘Principal-Agent’ relationship demonstrating how procurement arrangements often mirror institutional forces. These forces do not necessarily guarantee better value services, they are more likely to serve the interests of large industry players with the bargaining power to create new rules (North, 1994). A radically different delivery model, where the client intends to eliminate the management fees and confrontational behaviours of their Tier 1 contractors is described

Author Correction: 3D shear wave velocity model of the crust and uppermost mantle beneath the Tyrrhenian basin and margins

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the pape

Solitons in finite droplets of noncommutative Maxwell-Chern-Simons theory

We find soliton solutions of the noncommutative Maxwell-Chern-Simons theory confined to a finite quantum Hall droplet. The solitons are exactly as hypothesized in \cite{Manu}. We also find new variations on these solitons. We compute their flux and their energies. The model we consider is directly related to the model proposed by Polychronakos\cite{Poly} and studied by Hellerman and Van Raamsdonk\cite{HvR} where it was shown that it is equivalent to the quantum Hall effect.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures, minor corrections, version accepted for publication, this time really

Sistem pakar mendiagnosa penyakit pada balita usia 0 – 60 bulan menggunakan metode Dempster-Shafer

Toddlers are susceptible to germs and viruses so that they are susceptible to various types of diseases because the immune system that has not been built properly. Most parents don't know about the symptoms and diseases suffered by toddlers, which is why sometimes the disease gets worse. The solution to the disease experienced by toddlers can be overcome is to take them to a hospital or health center. Binaus Health Center located in Mollo Tengah District, TTS Regency is one of the community health centers where most of the patients are toddlers. The obstacle of Binaus Community Health Center in operating is the specialist doctor of children or toddlers is not available, so an expert system was created as a media for consultation and monitoring of toddlers with the Dempster-Shafer Method whose end result was the diagnosis of diseases suffered by toddlers. Comparison of expert diagnosis results with expert systems obtained an average range of trust of 92.86% for appropriate testing experts above the threshold value and testing below the threshold value obtained miss-classification 7.14%. The expert system does not provide 100% results according to expert diagnosis not because of inference errors but the inappropriate value of expert density. Data testing based on case studies taken from medical record data at the Binaus Health Center, Kec. Mollo Tengah, Kab. TTS has a 100% accuracy rate.    Balita rentan terhadap kuman dan virus sehingga mudah terkena berbagai jenis penyakit karena sistem imun yang belum terbangun dengan sempurna. Kebanyakan orangtua kurang tahu tentang gejala dan penyakit yang diderita oleh balita, karena itulah terkadang penyakitnya semakin parah. Solusi supaya penyakit yang dialami oleh balita bisa teratasi adalah dengan membawanya ke rumah sakit atau pusat kesehatan. Puskesmas Binaus yang terletak di Kecamatan Mollo Tengah, Kabupaten TTS merupakan salah satu pusat kesehatan masyarakat yang kebanyakan pasiennya adalah balita. Kendala Puskesmas Binaus dalam beroperasi adalah dokter spesialias anak atau balita tidak tersedia, sehingga dibuatlah sebuah sistem pakar sebagai media konsultasi dan monitoring terhadap balita dengan Metode Dempster-Shafer yang hasil akhirnya berupa diagnosa penyakit yang di derita oleh balita. Perbandingan hasil diagnosis pakar dengan sistem pakar diperoleh rata-rata rentangan kepercayaan sebesar 92,86% untuk pengujian yang sesuai pakar berada diatas nilai treshold dan pengujian yang dibawah nilai treshold diperoleh miss-klasifikasi 7,14%. Sistem pakar tidak memberikan hasil 100% sesuai dengan diagnosis pakar bukan karena kesalahan pada inferensi tetapi pemberian nilai densitas pakar yang kurang tepat. Pengujian data berdasarkan studi kasus yang diambil dari data rekam medis pada Puskesmas Binaus Kec. Mollo Tengah, Kab. TTS memiliki tingkat akurasi 100%. &nbsp

Feedback Control as a Framework for Understanding Tradeoffs in Biology

Control theory arose from a need to control synthetic systems. From regulating steam engines to tuning radios to devices capable of autonomous movement, it provided a formal mathematical basis for understanding the role of feedback in the stability (or change) of dynamical systems. It provides a framework for understanding any system with feedback regulation, including biological ones such as regulatory gene networks, cellular metabolic systems, sensorimotor dynamics of moving animals, and even ecological or evolutionary dynamics of organisms and populations. Here we focus on four case studies of the sensorimotor dynamics of animals, each of which involves the application of principles from control theory to probe stability and feedback in an organism's response to perturbations. We use examples from aquatic (electric fish station keeping and jamming avoidance), terrestrial (cockroach wall following) and aerial environments (flight control in moths) to highlight how one can use control theory to understand how feedback mechanisms interact with the physical dynamics of animals to determine their stability and response to sensory inputs and perturbations. Each case study is cast as a control problem with sensory input, neural processing, and motor dynamics, the output of which feeds back to the sensory inputs. Collectively, the interaction of these systems in a closed loop determines the behavior of the entire system.Comment: Submitted to Integr Comp Bio

Study of Long Weight Relation of Scylla Serrata in Mangrove Forest Around the Wet Laboratory FPIK Eeast Likupang District North Minahasa

Kepiting bakau (Scylla serrata) adalah binatang anggota crustasea berkaki sepuluh dari infraordo Brachura, yang dikenal mempunyai ekor yang sangat pendek (dalam bahasa Yunani : brachy = pendek, ura = ekor). Kepiting bakau adalah salah satu biota perairan yang bernilai ekonomis penting dan kehidupannya sangat dipengaruhi oleh keberadaan hutan mangrove. Adapun tujuan dari penelitian ini yaitu untuk mengidentifikasi dan menganalisis hubungan panjang berat berserta pola pertumbuhan dari kepiting bakau (Scylla serrata). Pengambilan sampel diperoleh dengan melakukan kegiatan penangkapan menggunakan alat tangkap yaitu bubu (chang). Berdasarkan hasil penelitian yang dilakukan di Daerah Hutan Mangrove sekitar Laboratorium Basah Fakultas Perikanan dan Ilmu Kelautan, Likupang Timur pada bulan Agustus – September 2017. Kepiting bakau (Scylla serrata) yang di dapat selama melalukan penelitian diperoleh sebanyak 32 individu

SU(N) Coherent States and Irreducible Schwinger Bosons

We exploit the SU(N) irreducible Schwinger boson to construct SU(N) coherent states. This construction of SU(N) coherent state is analogous to the construction of the simplest Heisenberg-Weyl coherent states. The coherent states belonging to irreducible representations of SU(N) are labeled by the eigenvalues of the $(N-1)$ SU(N) Casimir operators and are characterized by $(N-1)$ complex orthonormal vectors describing the SU(N) group manifold.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figure