DSC studies on the phase transformation of hydrazonium sulfate

The high temperature phase transformation of hydrazonium sulfate, N2H6SO4 has been studied using DSC. The enthalpy of phase transition is found to be 3.63 ± 0.1 kJ mole−1. The phase transition temperature is found to decrease with the increase of particle size. It appears that the strain energy and not surface energy, is responsible for the phase transformation. The molar volume of the salt increases during the transformation as found by the dilatometric experiment involving percentage of linear thermal expansion. On cooling, the transformation from the high temperature modification to orthorhombic form is incomplete and extends over a wide range of temperature.

The National Road Safety Partnership Program providing a pathway for any business/organisation to create a positive road safety culture

The National Road Safety Partnership Program (NRSPP) is an industry-led collaborative network which aims to support Australian businesses in developing a positive road safety culture. It aims to help businesses to protect their employees and the public, not only during work hours, but also when their staff are ‘off-duty’. How do we engage and help an organisation minimise work-related vehicle crashes and their consequences both internally, and within the broader community? The first step is helping an organisation to understand the true cost of its road incidents. Larger organisations often wear the costs without knowing the true impact to their bottom line. All they perceive is the change in insurance or vehicle repairs. Understanding the true cost should help mobilise a business’s leadership to do more. The next step is ensuring the business undertakes an informed, structured, evidence-based pathway which will guide them around the costly pitfalls. A pathway based around the safe system approach with buy-in at the top which brings the workforce along. The final step, benchmarking, allows the organisation to measure and track its change. This symposium will explore the pathway steps for organisations using NRSPP resources to become engaged in road safety. The 'Total Cost of Risk' calculator has been developed by Zurich, tested in Europe by Nestle and modified by NRSPP for Australia. This provides the first crucial step. The next step is a structured approach through the Workplace Road Safety Guide using experts and industry to discuss the preferred safe system approach which can then link into the national Benchmarking Project. The outputs from the symposium can help frame a pathway for organisations to follow through the NRSPP website.

Rikollisia sattumalta? : Naisten keskinäistä haureutta koskevat oikeudenkäynnit 1950-luvun Itä-Suomessa

The main focus of the research is on the genealogy of women's same-sex fornication in Finnish criminal law from 1889/1894 to 1971. Why were women included in the concept of same-sex fornication in Finland and why, where, and when was the law put into effect? Which women were tried, how did the trial proceedings evolve, and what kind of effects did the trials have afterwards? Which concepts were used? These questions have been approached through the analysis of the Finnish Penal Code, the criminal law science and four trial proceedings in Eastern Finland during the 1950s. The research draws on the epistemology of the closet and the concept of heteronormativity adapted from queer theories. It is method critical in utilising ethnography, micro history and feminist ethical self-reflection. The research consists of six scientific refereed articles (see appendix) and of a theoretical introduction. The main results of the research are: 1) The genealogy of Finnish decency [Sittlichkeit] can not be researched without oral histories, due to the late modernisation of Finnish society and the legal system, which does not follow the pattern of English, French and German societies. 2) The inclusion of women's same-sex fornication in the Finnish Penal Code is not incomprehensible when compared to the early modern European legislations and court practices. Women have been punished for the sins of Sodom, though not directly under the 1734 Swedish law. 3) Fornication and decency were ambivalent concepts in the 1889/1894 law, and juridical authorities offered controversial interpretations of them during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 4) A peak in women's convictions occurred in the 1950s, and most of the trial proceedings took place in rural Eastern Finland. Neither the state nor the police were active in prosecuting; instead, the trial proceedings began "by accident". 5) From 1940 to 1960 police training lacked instructions concerning the interrogation of women suspected of same-sex fornication. 6) The figure of the penitent woman was produced in the chiasmic encounter of confession and police interrogation which moulded and was moulded by the epistemological matrix of shame, honour, and decency. Women's speech acts were judicialised as confessions which enabled the disciplinary tampering with the women's bodies. 7) Gender and personality, more than sexuality, or "criminality" defined the status of the convicted women in their village communities after the trials. 8) Relations between police training, sexuality, and decency have not been well researched in Finland. 9) Decriminalisation in 1971 did not mark the end of homophobic legal discourse, even though the 1999 reform of sexual crimes took the form of gender neutral conceptualisation

Murtuva säätyvalta, kestävä eliitti : Senaattori Lennart Gripenbergin sukupiiri ja sääty-yhteiskunnan muodonmuutos

This study examines the transformation of the society of estates in the Finnish Grand Duchy through the case study of Senator Lennart Gripenberg and his family circle. While national borders and state structures changed, the connections between old ruling elite families remained intact as invisible family networks, ownership relations, economic collaboration and power of military families. These were the cornerstones of trust, which helped to strengthen positions gained in society. Also, these connections often had a central if unperceivable impact on social development and modernization. Broadly speaking, the intergenerational social reproduction made it possible for this network of connections to remain in power and, as an imperceptible factor, also influenced short-term developments in the long run. Decisions which in the short term appeared unproductive, would in the long run produce cumulative immaterial and material capital across generations as long-term investments. Social mobility, then, is a process which clearly takes several generations to become manifest. The study explores long-term strategies of reproducing and transferring the capital accumulated in multinational elite networks. Also, what was the relationship of these strategies to social change? For the representatives of the military estate the nobility and for those men of the highest estates who had benefited from military training, this very education of a technical-military nature was the key to steering, controlling and dealing with the challenges following the industrial breakthrough. The disintegration of the society of estates and the rising educational standards also increased the influence of those professionals previously excluded, which served to intensify competition for positions of power. The family connections highlighted in this study overlapped in many ways, working side by side and in tandem to manage the economic and political life in Finland, Russia and Sweden. The analysis of these ties has opened up a new angle to economic co-operation, for example, as seen in the position of such family networks not only in Finnish, but also Swedish and Russian corporations and in the long historical background of the collaboration. This also highlights in a new way the role of women in transferring the cumulative social capital and as silent business partners. The marriage strategies evident in business life clearly had an impact on the economic life. The collaborative networks which transcended generations, national boundaries and structures also uncover, as far as the elites are concerned, serious problems in comparative studies conducted from purely national premises. As the same influential families and persons in effect held several leading positions in society, the line would blur between public and invisible uses of power. The power networks thus aimed to build monopolies to secure their key positions at the helm. This study therefore examines the roles of Lennart Gripenberg senator, business executive, superintendent of the Department of Industry, factory inspector, and founding member of industrial interest groups as part of the reproduction strategies of the elite. The family and other networks of the powerful leaders of society, distinguished by social, economic and cultural capital, provided a solid backdrop for the so-called old elites in their quest for strategies to reproducing power in a changing world. Crucially, it was easier for the elites to gain expertise to steer the modernization process and thereby secure for the next generation a leading position in society, something that they traditionally, too, had had the greatest interest in.

In Vitro Conditions for a Successful Biolistics transformation System of Pineapples (ananas comosus merr.), in 'Contributing to a Sustainable Future'

In order to develop an efficient and reliable biolistics transformation system for pineapples parameters need to be optimised for growth, survival and development of explants pre- and post transformation. We have optimised in vitro conditions for culture media for the various stages of plant and callus initiation and development, and for effective selection of putative transgenic material. Shoot multiplication and proliferation is best on medium containing MS basic nutrients and vitamins with the addition of 0.1 mg/L myo-inositol, 20 g/L sucrose, 2.5 mg/L BAP and 3 g/L Phytagel, followed by transfer to basic MS medium for further development. Callus production on leaf base explants is best on MS nutrients and vitamins, to which 10 mg/L of BAP and NAA each was added. Optimum explant age for bombardment is 17-35 week old callus, while a pre-bombardment osmoticum treatment in the medium is not required. By comparing several antibiotics as selective agent, it has been established that a two-step selection of 2 fortnightly sub-cultures on 50 μg/mL of geneticin in the culture medium, followed by monthly sub-cultures on 100 μg/mL geneticin is optimal for survival of transgenic callus. Shoot regeneration from callus cultures is optimal on medium containing MS nutrients and vitamins, 5% coconut water and 400 mg/L casein hydrolysate. Plants can be readily regenerated and multiplied from transgenic callus through organogenesis. Rooting of shoots does not require any additional plant hormones to the medium. A transformation efficiency of 1 – 3.5% can be achieved, depending on the gene construct applied.

Microbial transformation of a fungicide-derived amine, dimethyl-p-phenylene diamine by Alcaligenes DM4

Abstract Microbial transformation of N, N-dimethyl-p-phenylene diamine (DMPDA), a microbial product formed from the fungicide fenaminosulf (p-dimethylaminobenzenediazo sodium sulfonate) was studied by enriching microbes in soils treated with the amine. Microorganisms isolated from DMPDA-treated soil belonged to the genera of Micrococcus, Alcaligenes, and Corynebacterium. Of the various isolates, Alcaligenes DM4 showed maximal growth on DMPDA utilizing it as sources of carbon and nitrogen. When grown in mineral salts basal medium containing 0.05% DMPDA to serve as carbon and nitrogen sources, Alcaligenes DM4 grew exponentially up to 18 h. Even though the characterization of the complete pathway of microbial degradation of DMPDA could not be carried out due to the auto-oxidation of the compound, the initial transformation product of DMPDA by Alcaligenes DM4 has been identified as a dimer. The dimer is generated into the culture medium presumably by the extra-cellular oxidase of Alcaligenes DM4. It is suggested that the risk-benefit evaluation on the use of fenaminosulf is to be made taking into consideration the microbial transformations of the fungicide.

A Conjecture Concerning Transformation Of A Supercooled Hard-Sphere Liquid To A Metastable Disordered Solid

It is conjectured that the hard sphere system has several distinct solid phases, all but one of which are metastable. The bifurcation theory analysis of freezing is extended to the description of the transition between a supercooled liquid and a disordered solid by defining a restricted phase space for the disordered solid. This approach leads to the prediction of a first order transition between a supercooled hard sphere fluid and a disordered metastable hard sphere solid. The results of the calculation are in qualitative agreement with the results of Woodcock's molecular dynamics computer simulations. The Journal of Chemical Physics is copyrighted by The American Institute of Physics.

Oppimisen kohteen ja oppijan vastavuoroinen kehitys : Teleyrityksen asiakaspalvelun työyhteisöjen oppimiskäytäntöjen uudistaminen osana teknologis-taloudellista kumousta

Reciprocal development of the object and subject of learning. The renewal of the learning practices of front-line communities in a telecommunications company as part of the techno-economical paradigm change. Current changes in production have been seen as an indication of a shift from the techno-economical paradigm of a mass-production era to a new paradigm of the information and communication technological era. The rise of knowledge management in the late 1990s can be seen as one aspect of this paradigm shift, as knowledge creation and customer responsiveness were recognized as the prime factors in business competition. However, paradoxical conceptions concerning learning and agency have been presented in the discussion of knowledge management. One prevalent notion in the literature is that learning is based on individuals’ voluntary actions and this has now become incompatible with the growing interest in knowledge-management systems. Furthermore, commonly held view of learning as a general process that is independent of the object of learning contradicts the observation that the current need for new knowledge and new competences are caused by ongoing techno-economic changes. Even though the current view acknowledges that individuals and communities have key roles in knowledge creation, this conception defies the idea of the individuals’ and communities’ agency in developing the practices through which they learn. This research therefore presents a new theoretical interpretation of learning and agency based on Cultural-Historical Activity Theory. This approach overcomes the paradoxes in knowledge-management theory and offers means for understanding and analyzing changes in the ways of learning within work communities. This research is also an evaluation of the Competence-Laboratory method which was developed as part of the study as a special application of Developmental Work Research methodology. The research data comprises the videotaped competence-laboratory processes of four front-line work communities in a telecommunications company. The findings reported in the five articles included in this thesis are based on the analyses of this data. The new theoretical interpretation offered here is based on the assessment that the findings reported in the articles represent one of the front lines of the ongoing historical transformation of work-related learning since the research site represents one of the key industries of the new “knowledge society”. The research can be characterized as elaboration of a hypothesis concerning the development of work related learning. According to the new theoretical interpretation, the object of activity is also the object of distributed learning in work communities. The historical socialization of production has increased the number of actors involved in an activity, which has also increased the number of mutual interdependencies as well as the need for communication. Learning practices and organizational systems of learning are historically developed forms of distributed learning mediated by specific forms of division of labor, specific tools, and specific rules. However, the learning practices of the mass production era become increasingly inadequate to accommodate the conditions in the new economy. This was manifested in the front-line work communities in the research site as an aggravating contradiction between the new objects of learning and the prevailing learning practices. The constituent element of this new theoretical interpretation is the idea of a work community’s learning as part of its collaborative mastery of the developing business activity. The development of the business activity is at the same time a practical and an epistemic object for the community. This kind of changing object cannot be mastered by using learning practices designed for the stable conditions of mass production, because learning has to change along the changes in business. According to the model introduced in this thesis, the transformation of learning proceeds through specific stages: predefined learning tasks are first transformed into learning through re-conceptualizing the object of the activity and of the joint learning and then, as the new object becomes stabilized, into the creation of new kinds of learning practices to master the re-defined object of the activity. This transformation of the form of learning is realized through a stepwise expansion of the work community’s agency. To summarize, the conceptual model developed in this study sets the tool-mediated co-development of the subject and the object of learning as the theoretical starting point for developing new, second-generation knowledge management methods. Key words: knowledge management, learning practice, organizational system of learning, agency

Minimizing overprocessing waste in business processes via predictive activity ordering

Overprocessing waste occurs in a business process when effort is spent in a way that does not add value to the customer nor to the business. Previous studies have identied a recurrent overprocessing pattern in business processes with so-called "knockout checks", meaning activities that classify a case into "accepted" or "rejected", such that if the case is accepted it proceeds forward, while if rejected, it is cancelled and all work performed in the case is considered unnecessary. Thus, when a knockout check rejects a case, the effort spent in other (previous) checks becomes overprocessing waste. Traditional process redesign methods propose to order knockout checks according to their mean effort and rejection rate. This paper presents a more fine-grained approach where knockout checks are ordered at runtime based on predictive machine learning models. Experiments on two real-life processes show that this predictive approach outperforms traditional methods while incurring minimal runtime overhead.

Evaluating business process compliance management frameworks

This research contributes a formal framework to evaluate whether existing CMFs can model and reason about various types of normative requirements. The framework can be used to determine the level of coverage of concepts provided by CMFs, establish mappings between CMF languages and the semantics for the normative concepts and evaluate the suitability of a CMF for issuing a certification of compliance. The developed framework is independent of any specific formalism and it has been formally defined and validated through the examples of such mappings of CMFs.

Kaveriporukasta liiketoiminnaksi : Tuotannon häiriöt ja organisaation oppiminen nopeasti muuttuvassa yrityksessä

In the 1990 s the companies utilizing and producing new information technology, especially so-called new media, were also expected to be forerunners in new forms of work and organization. Researchers anticipated that new, more creative forms of work and the changing content of working life were about to replace old industrial and standardized ways of working. However, research on actual companies in the IT sector revealed a situation where only minor changes to existing organizational forms were seen .Many of the independent companies faced great difficulties trying to survive the rapid changes in the products and production forms in the emerging field. Most of the research on the new media field has been conducted as surveys, and an understanding of the actual everyday work process has remained thin. My research is a longitudinal study of the early phases of one new media company in Finland. The study is an analysis of the challenges the company faced in a rapidly changing business field and the attempts to overcome these challenges. The two main analyses in the study focus on the developmental phases of the company and the disturbances in the production process. Based on these analyses, I study changes and learning at work using the methodological framework of developmental work research. Developmental work research is a Finnish variant of the cultural-historical activity theory applied to the study of learning and transformations at work. The data was gathered over a three-year period of ethnographic fieldwork. I documented the production processes and everyday life in the company as a participant observer. I interviewed key persons, video and audio-taped meetings, followed e-mail correspondence and collected various documents, such as agreements and memos. I developed a systematic method for analyzing the disturbances in the production process by combining the various data sources. The systematic analysis of the disturbances depicted a very complex and only partly managed production process. The production process had a long duration, and no single actor had an understanding of it as a whole. Most of the disturbances had to do with the customer relationships. The nature of the disturbances was latent; they were recognized but not addressed. In the particular production processes that I analyzed, the ending life span of a particular product, a CD-ROM, became obvious. This finding can be interpreted in relation to the developmental phase of the production and the transformation of the field as a whole. Based on the analysis of the developmental phases and the disturbances, I formulate a hypothesis of the contradictions and developmental potentials of the activity studied. The conclusions of the study challenge the existing understanding of how to conceptualize and study organizational learning in production work. Most theories of organizational learning do not address qualitative changes in production nor historical challenges of organizational learning itself. My study opens up a new horizon in understanding organizational learning in a rapidly changing field where a learning culture based on craft or mass production work is insufficient. There is a need for anticipatory and proactive organizational learning. Proactive learning is needed to anticipate the changes in production type, and the life cycles of products.

Mielikuvat transformatiivisen oppimisen välineenä : Tutkimus mielikuvaoppimisesta luontevan esiintymistavan löytämiseksi

The research focus of this study is imagery-based learning aimed at discovering an authentic way of public speaking in the context of transformative learning. The experiences of the participants in this learning process were also a subject of study. This learning process consisted of both guided and independent imagery-based training techniques. Critical reflection plays an important role in transformative learning. Actions, and interpretations and assumptions guiding them, are recognised and subjected to critical reflection. The goal of the learning process is an authentic and wide meaning perspective. Imagery-based training benefits from the gap between the new and the old experience of public speaking, and this is utilised as an activating factor for learning. The study is qualitative, looking at the imagery learning process and its outcomes from the subjective viewpoint of the participants personal experience. The imagery training acted as an intervention in the process of learning authentic public performance. The number of participants in this study was ten, five men and five women from four different working backgrounds. There were 80 individual training sessions, each attended by one person. The author conducted the imagery-based training. For each participant the learning process took roughly nine months. The research data consisted in the answers to questions in writing, diary entries, interviews and researcher notes. The data gathered by these methods was compiled into a personal report for each participant. The learners perceived authentic public speaking performance at the end of the learning process as wider, more flexible and more genuine than at the start of the training. Authenticity was defined through an internal process of becoming aware instead of some external characteristics. The learners understood the process of imagery learning as training for public performance and as an opportunity to become familiar with one s own personal way of acting and with one s own attitudes. They also perceived it as a tool that enabled the observation of personal experiences from different points of view. The learners reflected on ways of acting related to public speaking as well as on contributing factors to performance anxiety during the imagery learning process. Towards the end of the learning process, even critical reflection took place. The learners were categorized into three groups according to differences in their learning processes: the participants, the actors and the critical reflectors. This grouping reflected the relative amount of transformation in their learning processes. The participants became aware of their actions and assumptions. They took part in guided training sessions only. Worries in private life also had some consequences to their training in imagery learning. Apart from than becoming more conscious, the learning process did not yield much difference to the public speaking experiences of the participants. The actors attended both guided imagery training sessions and did individual training on their own. They became aware of their assumptions and their ways of acting. The encounter of the new and the old way of acting stimulated their learning. The actors advanced towards their own goals or even achieved them. The critical reflectors recognised their own assumptions and ways of acting and started to reflect critically on their own attitudes, as well as external attitudes and interpretations. Their assumptions, interpretations and experiences of public performance started to change in a positive direction. The learning process of the critical reflectors was functioning as a transformative process. This learning process revealed old assumptions hindering learning and old ways of acting resulting from these assumptions, thus opening up an opportunity for critical reflection and transformation. Avainsanat Nyckelord imagery learning, imagery-based training, transformative learning, reflection, critical reflection, public speaking anxiety, authentic public performance

Calf wastage - how big an issue is it?

What is calf wastage. Breeding female cattle in north Australia contribute best to business success by producing a heavy weaner each year at the first weaning round. This maximises increase in value by the cow unit over the year, generally from mid-year to mid-year. The ability to cycle in both maiden heifers and lactating cows is the primary limitation to achieving this. Wastage of a calf at any stage between conception and weaning also substantially limits fertility and value increase at a herd level. Embryo loss may result in later calves as cows re-conceive; the calves produced are smaller at weaning and have to be weaned later into the dry season. Late calf wastage usually results in breeders missing a calf for the year. Late calving often also results in failure to cycle, thus cows rear a calf in the subsequent year.