The innovation imperative: The relationships between team climate, innovation, and performance in research and development teams

A team’s climate for innovation has been shown to be important for innovation in management and work teams. This article investigates the relationship of team climate with project team innovation and performance in research and development organizations. It is argued that the relationship between team climate and innovation will be stronger for research teams than development teams as research teams have greater scope for creating novel and innovative ideas. A sample of 193 scientists and technologists in 20 research teams and 18 development teams were measured on their team’s climate for innovation, team performance, and six indicators of innovation. Research and development teams showed similar ratings for team climate and for measures of innovation. However, the relationships between team climate and individual and team innovation were stronger for research teams than development teams. These findings are significant for fostering innovativeness and innovation in knowledge work teams.

Precise Slicing in Imperative Programs via Term-Rewriting and Abstract Interpretation

We propose a new approach for producing precise constrained slices of programs in a language such as C. We build upon a previous approach for this problem, which is based on term-rewriting, which primarily targets loop-free fragments and is fully precise in this setting. We incorporate abstract interpretation into term-rewriting, using a given arbitrary abstract lattice, resulting in a novel technique for slicing loops whose precision is linked to the power of the given abstract lattice. We address pointers in a first-class manner, including when they are used within loops to traverse and update recursive data structures. Finally, we illustrate the comparative precision of our slices over those of previous approaches using representative examples.

Developing effective restoration plans to tackle the widespread impairment of coastal swimming and shellfishing waters

Congress established a legal imperative to restore the quality of our surface waters when it enacted the Clean Water Act in 1972. The act requires that existing uses of coastal waters such as swimming and shellfishing be protected and restored. Enforcement of this mandate is frequently measured in terms of the ability to swim and harvest shellfish in tidal creeks, rivers, sounds, bays, and ocean beaches. Public-health agencies carry out comprehensive water-quality sampling programs to check for bacteria contamination in coastal areas where swimming and shellfishing occur. Advisories that restrict swimming and shellfishing are issued when sampling indicates that bacteria concentrations exceed federal health standards. These actions place these coastal waters on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencies’ (EPA) list of impaired waters, an action that triggers a federal mandate to prepare a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) analysis that should result in management plans that will restore degraded waters to their designated uses. When coastal waters become polluted, most people think that improper sewage treatment is to blame. Water-quality studies conducted over the past several decades have shown that improper sewage treatment is a relatively minor source of this impairment. In states like North Carolina, it is estimated that about 80 percent of the pollution flowing into coastal waters is carried there by contaminated surface runoff. Studies show this runoff is the result of significant hydrologic modifications of the natural coastal landscape. There was virtually no surface runoff occurring when the coastal landscape was natural in places such as North Carolina. Most rainfall soaked into the ground, evaporated, or was used by vegetation. Surface runoff is largely an artificial condition that is created when land uses harden and drain the landscape surfaces. Roofs, parking lots, roads, fields, and even yards all result in dramatic changes in the natural hydrology of these coastal lands, and generate huge amounts of runoff that flow over the land’s surface into nearby waterways. (PDF contains 3 pages)

Beel fisheries of Assam - community-based co-management imperative

The freshwater wetlands (beels) of Assam, India, cover an area of 101 232 ha. For the rural poor, the neighboring wetlands are the only source of fish. They depend on them for their daily consumption of fish as well as a source of livelihood. Ecoenergy studies indicate that these wetlands have a fairly high production potential. However, the current regulations and system of management are not conducive to sustainable production from these water bodies. It is resulting in overexploitation and degradation. It is imperative some form of co-management with local communities be established for the beels of Assam.

Sustainability: A new imperative in contaminated land remediation

Land is not only a critical component of the earth's life support system, but also a precious resource and an important factor of production in economic systems. However, historical industrial operations have resulted in large areas of contaminated land that are only slowly being remediated. In recent years, sustainability has drawn increasing attention in the environmental remediation field. In Europe, there has been a movement towards sustainable land management; and in the US, there is an urge for green remediation. Based on a questionnaire survey and a review of existing theories and empirical evidence, this paper suggests the expanding emphasis on sustainable remediation is driven by three general factors: (1) increased recognition of secondary environmental impacts (e.g., life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, energy consumption, and waste production) from remediation operations, (2) stakeholders' demand for economically sustainable brownfield remediation and "green" practices, and (3) institutional pressures (e.g., social norm and public policy) that promote sustainable practices (e.g., renewable energy, green building, and waste recycling). This paper further argues that the rise of the "sustainable remediation" concept represents a critical intervention point from where the remediation field will be reshaped and new norms and standards will be established for practitioners to follow in future years. This paper presents a holistic view of sustainability considerations in remediation, and an integrated framework for sustainability assessment and decision making. The paper concludes that "sustainability" is becoming a new imperative in the environmental remediation field, with important implications for regulators, liability owners, consultants, contractors, and technology vendors. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd.

A European Perspective on the Precautionary Principle, Food Safety and the Free Trade Imperative of the WTO

A European Perspective on the Precautionary Principle, Food Safety and the Free Trade Imperative of the WTO. European Law Review, Vol.27, No.2. April 2002, pp.138-155. RAE2008

StaXML: Static Typing of XML Document Fragments for Imperative Web Scripting Languages

We present a type system, StaXML, which employs the stacked type syntax to represent essential aspects of the potential roles of XML fragments to the structure of complete XML documents. The simplest application of this system is to enforce well-formedness upon the construction of XML documents without requiring the use of templates or balanced "gap plugging" operators; this allows it to be applied to programs written according to common imperative web scripting idioms, particularly the echoing of unbalanced XML fragments to an output buffer. The system can be extended to verify particular XML applications such as XHTML and identifying individual XML tags constructed from their lexical components. We also present StaXML for PHP, a prototype precompiler for the PHP4 scripting language which infers StaXML types for expressions without assistance from the programmer.