An investigation into challenges facing distributed teams: Case of South Australian construction projects

There is increasing momentum within the construction industry to deploy distributed teams on projects, yet the major challenges that companies face for managing teams in distributed arrangements have yet to be explored in the construction context. Driven by such need, this study is intended to present an account of the major challenges encountered throughout the life cycle of offshore outsourcing arrangements within the South Australian construction industry. To this end, the study describes the observations made within the natural contexts of one construction project in terms of the challenges to the success of deploying distributed teams for outsourcing of works. Discussions remain in dialogue with relevant theories and the pertinent literature to explain the interpretations and lessons learned and to underpin the conclusions made. It is contended that this study contributes to the field by providing an illuminating insight into potential challenges facing distributed teams being implemented in outsourcing tasks in construction projects. Discussions also offer practical guidelines for construction project managers and assist them in dealing with potential challenges of offshore outsourcing through the lenses of distributed team working principles.

Under this Sky: Logan's Musical Celebration

A creative practice as research, UNDER THIS SKY is the latest investigation in a 12-year study into the “QMF Model”, an application of principles of community and cultural practice that generates large-scale, music spectacle events that derive their narrative and expression from the communities in which they are performed. UNDER THIS SKY is a large-scale musical specially commissioned for the city of Logan (Queensland) as the signature work of the 2015 Queensland Musical Festival. The investigation centres around the capacity of the “QMF Model” to engage with performers and musicians of Logan and then, through community consultation, create a narrative based on idiosyncratic stories and themes that would culminate in a performance event in August 2015. Previous creative projects, Boomtown (Gladstone), Behind the Cane (Bowen) and The Road We’re On (Charleville), were conducted in relatively small communities, Gladstone being the largest. In UNDER THIS SKY, the model is being tested in a large metropolitan city (Logan – 300,000). The core principles of CACD (community arts and cultural development) are being interrogated and adapted to fit this large-scale, whole of community environment. The purpose is to refine and further validate the “QMF Model” as a viable and effective process for community/artistic partnerships. Since February 2014, professional artists and managers have facilitated and shaped the work, up-skilling performers over a periods of 12 months, developing new relationships and creating opportunities for participation at all levels of experience. The research methodology involved creative practice through a continuous cycle of action, reflection, adaptation and application.

Moving from evaluation to trial: The case of cloud ERP adoption in SMEs

This study proposes that the adoption process of complex-wide systems (e.g. cloud ERP) should be observed as multi-stage actions. Two theoretical lenses were utilised for this study with critical adoption factors identified through the theory of planned behaviour and the progression of each adoption factor observed through Ettlie's (1980) multi-stage adoption model. Together with a survey method, this study has employed data gathered from 162 decision-makers of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Using both linear and non-linear approaches for the data analysis, the study findings have shown that the level of importance for adoption factors changes across different adoption stages.

Pilot study: Effect of age on visual acuity with defocus and astigmatism

PURPOSE: To investigate how distance visual acuity in the presence of defocus and astigmatism is affected by age and whether aberration properties of young and older eyes can explain any differences. METHODS: Participants were 12 young adults (mean [±SD] age, 23 [±2] years) and 10 older adults (mean [±SD] age, 57 [±4] years). Cyclopleged right eyes were used with 4-mm effective pupil sizes. Thirteen blur conditions were used by adding five spherical lens conditions (-1.00 diopters [D], -0.50 D, plano/0.00 D, +0.50 D, and +1.00 D) and adding two cross-cylindrical lenses (+0.50 DS/-1.00 DC and +1.00 D/-2.00 DC, or 0.50 D and 1.00 D astigmatism) at four negative cylinder axes (45, 90, 135, and 180 degrees). Targets were single lines of high-contrast letters based on the Bailey-Lovie chart. Successively smaller lines were read until a participant could no longer read any of the letters correctly. Aberrations were measured with a COAS-HD Hartmann-Shack aberrometer. RESULTS: There were no significant differences between the two age groups. We estimated that 70 to 80 participants per group would be needed to show significant effects of the trend of greater visual acuity loss for the young group. Visual acuity loss for astigmatism was twice that for defocus of the same magnitude of blur strength (0.33 logMAR [logarithm of the minimum angle of resolution]/D compared with 0.18 logMAR/D), contrary to the geometric prediction of similar loss. CONCLUSIONS: Any age-related differences in visual acuity in the presence of defocus and astigmatism were swamped by interparticipant variation.

Achieving meaningful use of eHealth through Accountable-eHealth (AeH) systems

Meaningful use of eHealth, as seen through four key lenses: Usability; Usefulness; Utility; and Safety, is achieved through Accountable-eHealth systems.

Paraxial-wave optics and relativistic front description .1. The scalar theory

With the extension of the work of the preceding paper, the relativistic front form for Maxwell's equations for electromagnetism is developed and shown to be particularly suited to the description of paraxial waves. The generators of the Poincaré group in a form applicable directly to the electric and magnetic field vectors are derived. It is shown that the effect of a thin lens on a paraxial electromagnetic wave is given by a six-dimensional transformation matrix, constructed out of certain special generators of the Poincaré group. The method of construction guarantees that the free propagation of such waves as well as their transmission through ideal optical systems can be described in terms of the metaplectic group, exactly as found for scalar waves by Bacry and Cadilhac. An alternative formulation in terms of a vector potential is also constructed. It is chosen in a gauge suggested by the front form and by the requirement that the lens transformation matrix act locally in space. Pencils of light with accompanying polarization are defined for statistical states in terms of the two-point correlation function of the vector potential. Their propagation and transmission through lenses are briefly considered in the paraxial limit. This paper extends Fourier optics and completes it by formulating it for the Maxwell field. We stress that the derivations depend explicitly on the "henochromatic" idealization as well as the identification of the ideal lens with a quadratic phase shift and are heuristic to this extent.

Given and News : Media discourse and the construction of community on national days

National anniversaries such as independence days demand precise coordination in order to make citizens change their routines to forego work and spend the day at rest or at festivities that provide social focus and spectacle. The complex social construction of national days is taken for granted and operates as a given in the news media, which are the main agents responsible for coordinating these planned disruptions of normal routines. This study examines the language used in the news to construct the rather unnatural idea of national days and to align people in observing them. The data for the study consist of news stories about the Fourth of July in the New York Times, sampled over 150 years and are supplemented by material from other sources and other countries. The study is multidimensional, applying concepts from pragmatics (speech acts, politeness, information structure), systemic functional linguistics (the interpersonal metafunction and the Appraisal framework) and cognitive linguistics (frames, metaphor) as well as journalism and communications to arrive at an interdisciplinary understanding of how resources for meaning are used by writers and readers of the news stories. The analysis shows that on national anniversaries, nations tend to be metaphorized as persons having birthdays, to whom politeness should be shown. The face of the nation is to be respected in the sense of identifying the nation's interests as one's own (positive face) and speaking of citizen responsibilities rather than rights (negative face). Resources are available for both positive and negative evaluations of events and participants and the newspaper deftly changes footings (Goffman 1981) to demonstrate the required politeness while also heteroglossically allowing for a certain amount of disattention and even protest - within limits, for state holidays are almost never construed as Bakhtinian festivals, as they tend to reaffirm the hierarchy rather than invert it. Celebrations are evaluated mainly for impressiveness, and for the essentially contested quality of appropriateness, which covers norms of predictability, size, audience response, aesthetics, and explicit reference to the past. Events may also be negatively evaluated as dull ("banal") or inauthentic ("hoopla"). Audiences are evaluated chiefly in terms of their enthusiasm, or production of appropriate displays for emotional response, for national days are supposed to be occasions of flooding-out of nationalistic feeling. By making these evaluations, the newspaper reinforces its powerful position as an independent critic, while at the same time playing an active role in the construction and reproduction of emotional order embodied in "the nation's birthday." As an occasion for mobilization and demonstrations of power, national days may be seen to stand to war in the relation of play to fighting (Bateson 1955). Evidence from the newspaper's coverage of recent conflicts is adduced to support this analysis. In the course of the investigation, methods are developed for analyzing large collections of newspaper content, particularly topical soft news and feature materials that have hitherto been considered less influential and worthy of study than so-called hard news. In his work on evaluation in newspaper stories, White (1998) proposed that the classic hard news story is focused on an event that threatens the social order, but news of holidays and celebrations in general does not fit this pattern, in fact its central event is a reproduction of the social order. Thus in the system of news values (Galtung and Ruge 1965), national holiday news draws on "ground" news values such as continuity and predictability rather than "figure" news values such as negativity and surprise. It is argued that this ground helps form a necessary space for hard news to be seen as important, similar to the way in which the information structure of language is seen to rely on the regular alternation of given and new information (Chafe 1994).

Tyhjyyden reunalla, helvetin kannella : Yhtenäisen subjektin hajoaminen Saul Bellowin Herzogissa

The study shows that the reading paradigm derived from codes Roland Barthes presented in his S/Z exposes the postmodernic nature of Saul Bellow s Herzog (1964), and embodies in which way the novel is organized as a radical rewriting of modernism and its ideology. I explore how solid, compact and modernistic subject breaks down at every level of Herzog s narration. I actually argue that the heteroglossic novel is representative of an early American postmodern movement in literaure, and it should by no means be dissected narrowly as a realistic or naturalistic novel at all. The intertextual code verifies that the interpretation of Herzog remains inadequate if one doesn t take account of the novel s significant intertextual references to other texts. In fact, even the mind of Moses Herzog, the protagonist of the novel, is a mosaic of citations. It emerges from the dissertation that the figure of Don Quixote follows Moses Herzog as an ambiguous shadow while the professor of history struggles with his anxiety and anguish, and travels in a mentally confused state around the U.S. for five days in the early 1960s, encountering the impending atmosphere of transition as the country is on the threshold of a significant cultural and social change. There is a strong necessity for updated interpretation of Herzog partly because its centrality to Bellow s own career as a writer but mainly because it has been previously read trough modernistic lenses. I shall try to proof in my study that American Jewish Saul Bellow s (1915 2005) Herzog escapes any kind of simple, elemental or essentialistic construction or reading and in real terms it doesn t offer any comprehensive, total or coherent solution or system for those philosophical doctrines it criticizes and makes fun of. The philosophical, conceptual and cultural substance of Herzog does not constitute an independent or autonomous theoretical tract which would have a life of its own. Altough the novel reflects the continuity of Bellow s writing it is clearly some kind of conscious or unconscious experiment during his long career as a writer. He hasn t been so radical before or since the publication of Herzog. It is unarguably his most postmodern novel.The reading paradigm based on specific codes demonstrates how deep into the basic questions of his personal life and existence itself he must dive in oder to find his many ways towards authentic or primordial self in fragmented and shattered world which is constanly rewritten and which makes human being a tourist of his own life. In that ongoing process the protagonist has to accept the ultimate plurality of his mind and self. He must confront that the modernistic definition of identity as a solid, monolithic and stable entity has broken down into different, inconsistent and even contradictory possibilities of identification. Moses Herzog embodies obviously Stuart Hall s description of the postmodern self his identity has turn into a movable feast.

Differences in the accommodation stimulus response curves of adult myopes and emmetropes: A summary and update

Purpose To provide a summary of the classic paper "Differences in the accommodation stimulus response curves of adult myopes and emmetropes" published in Ophthalmic and Physiological Optics in 1998 and to provide an update on the topic of accommodation errors in myopia. Summary The accommodation responses of 33 participants (10 emmetropes, 11 early onset myopes and 12 late onset myopes) aged 18-31 years were measured using the Canon Autoref R-1 free space autorefractor using three methods to vary the accommodation demand: decreasing distance (4 m to 0.25 cm), negative lenses (0 to -4 D at 4 m) and positive lenses (+4 to 0 D at 0.25 m). We observed that the greatest accommodation errors occurred for the negative lens method whereas minimal errors were observed using positive lenses. Adult progressing myopes had greater lags of accommodation than stable myopes at higher demands induced by negative lenses. Progressing myopes had shallower response gradients than the emmetropes and stable myopes; however the reduced gradient was much less than that observed in children using similar methods. Recent Findings This paper has been often cited as evidence that accommodation responses at near may be primarily reduced in adults with progressing myopia and not in stable myopes and/or that challenging accommodation stimuli (negative lenses with monocular viewing) are required to generate larger accommodation errors. As an analogy, animals reared with hyperopic errors develop axial elongation and myopia. Retinal defocus signals are presumably passed to the retinal pigment epithelium and choroid and then ultimately the sclera to modify eye length. A number of lens treatments that act to slow myopia progression may partially work through reducing accommodation errors.

Close Encounters of the Continuum: Speaking (to), Performing and Experiencing Gender In Janet Cardiff’s Whispering Room

This 'project' investigates Janet Cardiff's Whispering Room. It examines how Cardiff deconstructs the privileging of the visual over all other corporeal senses in her work, the Whispering Room. Using sound as a fulcrum, Cardiff explores the links between subjects, collective narratives, memories, experiences and performances. Janet Cardiff destabilizes time and space and fractures the continuum through the use of sound. My 'project' celebrates sound as a transgressive medium — sound not as a gendered medium but as a vehicle in which to speak (to) gender. It explores how sound can destabilize notions of perception and reception and question art and museal practices. In the process this 'project' reveals the complexity of interpreting and representing art as an object. My aim is to reflect the very intertextual and expressionist collage that Cardiff has created in Whispering Room in my own text. Cardiff solicits the viewer's intimacy and participation. Whispering Room is a physical yet metonymic space in which Cardiff creates a place for performatvity, experience, memory, desire and speech, thus she opens up a space for the utterance and performance of the viewer. Viewers construct and create meaning/s for themselves within this mnemonic space by digging up their own memories, desires and reveries. The strength of Cardiff's work is that it relies on a viewer to perform, a body to trigger the pseudo-spectacle and a voice to interrupt the whispers. One might ask of Whispering Room where the illusionistic space begins and where the physical space ends. This 'project' investigates how in Whispering Room there is no one experience but many experiences.

Miniscleral lens wear influences corneal curvature and optics

Purpose Transient changes in corneal topography associated with soft and conventional or reverse geometry rigid contact lens wear have been well documented; however, only a few studies have examined the influence of scleral contact lens wear upon the cornea. Therefore, in this study, we examined the influence of modern miniscleral contact lenses, which land entirely on the sclera and overlying tissues, upon anterior corneal curvature and optics. Methods Anterior corneal topography and elevation data were acquired using Scheimpflug imaging (Pentacam HR, Oculus) immediately prior to and following 8 hours of miniscleral contact lens wear in 15 young healthy adults (mean age 22 ± 3 years, 8 East Asian, 7 Caucasian) with normal corneae. Corneal diurnal variations were accounted for using data collected on a dedicated measurement day without contact lens wear. Corneal clearance was quantified using an optical coherence tomographer (RS-3000, Nidek) following lens insertion and after 8 hours of lens wear. Results Although corneal clearance was maintained throughout the 8 hour lens wear period, significant corneal flattening (up to 0.08 ± 0.04 mm) was observed, primarily in the superior mid-peripheral cornea, which resulted in a slight increase in against-the-rule corneal astigmatism (mean +0.02/-0.15 x 94 for an 8 mm diameter). Higher order aberration terms of horizontal coma, vertical coma and spherical aberration all underwent significant changes for an 8 mm corneal diameter (p ≤ 0.01), which typically resulted in a decrease in RMS error values (mean change in total higher order RMS -0.035 ± 0.046 µm for an 8 mm diameter). There was no association between the magnitude of change in central or mid-peripheral corneal clearance during lens wear and the observed changes in corneal curvature (p > 0.05). However, Asian participants displayed a significantly greater reduction in corneal clearance (p = 0.04) and greater superior-nasal corneal flattening compared to Caucasians (p = 0.048). Conclusions Miniscleral contact lenses that vault the cornea induce significant changes in anterior corneal surface topography and higher order aberrations following 8 hours of lens wear. The region of greatest corneal flattening was observed in the superior-nasal mid-periphery, more so in Asian participants. Practitioners should be aware that corneal measurements obtained following miniscleral lens removal may mask underlying corneal steepening.

Hypoxic corneal changes following 8 hours of scleral contact lens wear

- Purpose To examine the change in corneal thickness and posterior curvature following 8 hours of miniscleral contact lens wear. - Methods Scheimpflug imaging (Pentacam HR, Oculus) was captured before, and immediately following, 8 hours of miniscleral contact lens wear for 15 young (mean age 22 ± 3 years), healthy participants with normal corneae. Natural diurnal variations were considered by measuring baseline corneal changes obtained on a separate control day without contact lens wear. - Results Over the central 6 mm of the cornea, a small, but highly statistically significant amount of edema was observed following 8 hours of miniscleral lens wear, after accounting for normal diurnal fluctuations (mean ± standard deviation percentage swelling 1.70 ± 0.98%, p < 0.0001). Posterior corneal topography remained stable following lens wear (-0.01 ± 0.07 mm steepening over the central 6 mm, p = 0.60). The magnitude of posterior corneal topographical changes following lens wear did not correlate with the extent of lens-related corneal edema (r = -0.16, p = 0.57). Similarly, the initial central corneal vault (maximum post-lens tear layer depth) was not associated with corneal swelling following lens removal (r = 0.27, p = 0.33). - Conclusions While a small amount of corneal swelling was induced following 8 hours of miniscleral lens wear (on average <2%), modern high Dk miniscleral contact lenses that vault the cornea do not induce clinically significant corneal edema or hypoxic related posterior corneal curvature changes during short-term wear. Longer-term studies of compromised eyes (e.g. corneal ectasia) are still required to inform the optimum lens and fitting characteristics for safe scleral lens wear to minimize corneal hypoxia.

The influence of a novel simulated learning environment upon student clinical subjective refraction performance: A pilot study

Background: Optometry students are taught the process of subjective refraction through lectures and laboratory based practicals before progressing to supervised clinical practice. Simulated learning environments (SLEs) are an emerging technology that are used in a range of health disciplines, however, there is limited evidence regarding the effectiveness of clinical simulators as an educational tool. Methods: Forty optometry students (20 fourth year and 20 fifth year) were assessed twice by a qualified optometrist (two examinations separated by 4-8 weeks) while completing a monocular non-cycloplegic subjective refraction on the same patient with an unknown refractive error simulated using contact lenses. Half of the students were granted access to an online SLE, The Brien Holden Vision Institute (BHVI®) Virtual Refractor, and the remaining students formed a control group. The primary outcome measures at each visit were; accuracy of the clinical refraction compared to a qualified optometrist and relative to the Optometry Council of Australia and New Zealand (OCANZ) subjective refraction examination criteria. Secondary measures of interest included descriptors of student SLE engagement, student self-reported confidence levels and correlations between performance in the simulated and real world clinical environment. Results: Eighty percent of students in the intervention group interacted with the SLE (for an average of 100 minutes); however, there was no correlation between measures of student engagement with the BHVI® Virtual Refractor and speed or accuracy of clinical subjective refractions. Fifth year students were typically more confident and refracted more accurately and quickly than fourth year students. A year group by experimental group interaction (p = 0.03) was observed for accuracy of the spherical component of refraction, and post hoc analysis revealed that less experienced students exhibited greater gains in clinical accuracy following exposure to the SLE intervention. Conclusions: Short-term exposure to a SLE can positively influence clinical subjective refraction outcomes for less experienced optometry students and may be of benefit in increasing the skills of novice refractionists to levels appropriate for commencing supervised clinical interactions.

Regenerative sustainability for the built environment – from vision to reality: An introductory chapter

Regenerative sustainability is emerging as an alternative discourse around the transition from a ‘mechanistic’ to an ‘ecological’ or living systems worldview. This view helps us to re-conceptualize relationships among humans’ technological, ecological, economic, social and political systems. Through exploration of ‘net positive’ or ‘regenerative’ development lenses and the traditional sustainability literature, the conceptualization and approaches to achieve sustainable development and ecological modernization are expanded to articulate and to explore the evolving sustainability discourse, ‘regenerative sustainability’. This Special Volume of Journal of Cleaner Production (SV) is focused upon various dimensions of regenerative sustainability (e.g. regenerative design, regenerative development, and positive development) applied to the urban built environment at scales, which range from individual buildings, neighborhoods, and urban developments to integrated regional sustainable development. The main focus is on how these approaches and developments are evolving, how they can help us to prevent or adapt to climate change and how these approaches are likely to evolve in the next two to three decades. These approaches are addressed in four themes: (1) reviewing the theoretical development of the discourse of regenerative sustainability, its emerging principles and practices, (2) explaining how it can be measured and monitored, (3) providing encouraging practical pathways and examples of its implementation in multiple cultural and climatic contexts, and (4) mapping obstacles and enablers that must be addressed to help to ensure that more rapid progress is made in implementing the transitions towards an urban built environment that supports genuinely sustainable societies.