Knowledge based strategy: appraising knowledge creation capability in organisations.

This thesis sets out a journey which culminates in the development of an analytical framework, the "Organisational Creativity Appraisal" which is intended to assist organisations in evaluating their ability to support and develop creativity. This framework is derived from the common thread of the thesis, which is drawn from a range of research and consultancy projects, and the resulting published work, spanning an eight year period, centring on the role of knowledge and creativity in the strategy and performance of organisations. The literature of strategy, learning and creativity increasingly recognises that organisational context is critical to the formation of strategy, to the content of the strategy and to its successful implementation. The thesis explores the ways in which learning and creativity, the basis of knowledge-based strategy, are influenced by organisational context or social architecture. The research explores the ways in which managers can gain greater understanding of the social architectures of their organisations so as to assist in supporting their strategic development. The central core of the thesis is the nine published papers upon which it is based but it also derives from the broader perspective of my published work in the form of both articles and books. The thesis further draws upon my own experience as a leader and manager in the context of university business schools and as a consultant, researcher and developer in the context of a range of international private and public sector organisations. The work is based upon a premise that theory should inform practice and that practice should inform theory. The "Organisational Creativity Appraisal" framework is informed by both theory and practice and is intended to assist in management practice. There is no assumption that management research can arrive at prescriptions for managerial and organisational behaviour. On the other hand management research can usefully inform management and organisational behaviour, as long as it is employed in a critically reflective manner. The "Organisational Creativity Appraisal" presented in this work should be regarded as the framework in its present form which is likely to develop further as my research progresses in the future.

Volumetric consequences of particle loss by grading entropy.

Chemical and biological processes, such as dissolution in gypsiferous sands and biodegradation in waste refuse, result in mass or particle loss, which in turn lead to changes in solid and void phase volumes and grading. Data on phase volume and grading changes have been obtained from oedometric dissolution tests on sand–salt mixtures. Phase volume changes are defined by a (dissolution-induced) void volume change parameter (Λ). Grading changes are interpreted using grading entropy coordinates, which allow a grading curve to be depicted as a single data point and changes in grading as a vector quantity rather than a family of distribution curves. By combining Λ contours with pre- to post-dissolution grading entropy coordinate paths, an innovative interpretation of the volumetric consequences of particle loss is obtained. Paths associated with small soluble particles, the loss of which triggers relatively little settlement but large increase in void ratio, track parallel to the Λ contours. Paths associated with the loss of larger particles, which can destabilise the sand skeleton, tend to track across the Λ contours.

Feature Selection based on Rough Sets and Particle Swarm Optimization

X. Wang, J. Yang, X. Teng, W. Xia, and R. Jensen. Feature Selection based on Rough Sets and Particle Swarm Optimization. Pattern Recognition Letters, vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 459-471, 2007.

The Film Society and the Creation of an Alternative Film Culture in Britain in the 1920's

Sexton, J. (2002). The Film Society and the Creation of an Alternative Film Culture in Britain in the 1920's. In A. Higson (Ed.), Young and Innocent?: The Cinema in Britain 1896-1930 (pp.291-305). Exeter: University of Exeter Press. RAE2008

Ion Pickup by Finite Amplitude Parallel Propagating Alfven Waves

Li, Xing; Lu, Q. M.; Li, B., 'Ion Pickup by Finite Amplitude Parallel Propagating Alfven Waves', The Astrophysical Journal Letters (2007) 661(1) pp.L105-L108 RAE2008

Quantitative Particle Characterization by Scattered Ultrasound

The topic of this thesis is an acoustic scattering technique for detennining the compressibility and density of individual particles. The particles, which have diameters on the order of 10 µm, are modeled as fluid spheres. Ultrasonic tone bursts of 2 µsec duration and 30 MHz center frequency scatter from individual particles as they traverse the focal region of two confocally positioned transducers. One transducer acts as a receiver while the other both transmits and receives acoustic signals. The resulting scattered bursts are detected at 90° and at 180° (backscattered). Using either the long wavelength (Rayleigh) or the weak scatterer (Born) approximations, it is possible to detennine the compressibility and density of the particle provided we possess a priori knowledge of the particle size and the host properties. The detected scattered signals are digitized and stored in computer memory. With this information we can compute the mean compressibility and density averaged over a population of particles ( typically 1000 particles) or display histograms of scattered amplitude statistics. An experiment was run first run to assess the feasibility of using polystyrene polymer microspheres to calibrate the instrument. A second study was performed on the buffy coat harvested from whole human blood. Finally, chinese hamster ovary cells which were subject to hyperthermia treatment were studied in order to see if the instrument could detect heat induced membrane blebbing.

Overlay Network Creation and Maintenance with Selfish Users

Overlay networks have been used for adding and enhancing functionality to the end-users without requiring modifications in the Internet core mechanisms. Overlay networks have been used for a variety of popular applications including routing, file sharing, content distribution, and server deployment. Previous work has focused on devising practical neighbor selection heuristics under the assumption that users conform to a specific wiring protocol. This is not a valid assumption in highly decentralized systems like overlay networks. Overlay users may act selfishly and deviate from the default wiring protocols by utilizing knowledge they have about the network when selecting neighbors to improve the performance they receive from the overlay. This thesis goes against the conventional thinking that overlay users conform to a specific protocol. The contributions of this thesis are threefold. It provides a systematic evaluation of the design space of selfish neighbor selection strategies in real overlays, evaluates the performance of overlay networks that consist of users that select their neighbors selfishly, and examines the implications of selfish neighbor and server selection to overlay protocol design and service provisioning respectively. This thesis develops a game-theoretic framework that provides a unified approach to modeling Selfish Neighbor Selection (SNS) wiring procedures on behalf of selfish users. The model is general, and takes into consideration costs reflecting network latency and user preference profiles, the inherent directionality in overlay maintenance protocols, and connectivity constraints imposed on the system designer. Within this framework the notion of user’s "best response" wiring strategy is formalized as a k-median problem on asymmetric distance and is used to obtain overlay structures in which no node can re-wire to improve the performance it receives from the overlay. Evaluation results presented in this thesis indicate that selfish users can reap substantial performance benefits when connecting to overlay networks composed of non-selfish users. In addition, in overlays that are dominated by selfish users, the resulting stable wirings are optimized to such great extent that even non-selfish newcomers can extract near-optimal performance through naïve wiring strategies. To capitalize on the performance advantages of optimal neighbor selection strategies and the emergent global wirings that result, this thesis presents EGOIST: an SNS-inspired overlay network creation and maintenance routing system. Through an extensive measurement study on the deployed prototype, results presented in this thesis show that EGOIST’s neighbor selection primitives outperform existing heuristics on a variety of performance metrics, including delay, available bandwidth, and node utilization. Moreover, these results demonstrate that EGOIST is competitive with an optimal but unscalable full-mesh approach, remains highly effective under significant churn, is robust to cheating, and incurs minimal overheads. This thesis also studies selfish neighbor selection strategies for swarming applications. The main focus is on n-way broadcast applications where each of n overlay user wants to push its own distinct file to all other destinations as well as download their respective data files. Results presented in this thesis demonstrate that the performance of our swarming protocol for n-way broadcast on top of overlays of selfish users is far superior than the performance on top of existing overlays. In the context of service provisioning, this thesis examines the use of distributed approaches that enable a provider to determine the number and location of servers for optimal delivery of content or services to its selfish end-users. To leverage recent advances in virtualization technologies, this thesis develops and evaluates a distributed protocol to migrate servers based on end-users demand and only on local topological knowledge. Results under a range of network topologies and workloads suggest that the performance of the distributed deployment is comparable to that of the optimal but unscalable centralized deployment.

Creation of a complex butterfly attractor using a novel Lorenz-type system

A novel Lorenz-type system of nonlinear differential equations is proposed. Unlike the original Lorenz system, where the chaotic dynamics remain confined to the positive half-space with respect to the Z state variable due to a limiting threshold effect, the proposed system enables bipolar swing of this state variable. In addition, the classical set of parameters (a, b, c) controlling the behavior of the Lorenz system are reduced to a single parameter, namely a. Two possible modes of operation are admitted by the system; switching between these two modes results in the creation of a complex butterfly chaotic attractor. Numerical simulations and results from an experimental setup are presented

An investigation of innovation and knowledge creation in virtual worlds

The Internet and World Wide Web have had, and continue to have, an incredible impact on our civilization. These technologies have radically influenced the way that society is organised and the manner in which people around the world communicate and interact. The structure and function of individual, social, organisational, economic and political life begin to resemble the digital network architectures upon which they are increasingly reliant. It is increasingly difficult to imagine how our ‘offline’ world would look or function without the ‘online’ world; it is becoming less meaningful to distinguish between the ‘actual’ and the ‘virtual’. Thus, the major architectural project of the twenty-first century is to “imagine, build, and enhance an interactive and ever changing cyberspace” (Lévy, 1997, p. 10). Virtual worlds are at the forefront of this evolving digital landscape. Virtual worlds have “critical implications for business, education, social sciences, and our society at large” (Messinger et al., 2009, p. 204). This study focuses on the possibilities of virtual worlds in terms of communication, collaboration, innovation and creativity. The concept of knowledge creation is at the core of this research. The study shows that scholars increasingly recognise that knowledge creation, as a socially enacted process, goes to the very heart of innovation. However, efforts to build upon these insights have struggled to escape the influence of the information processing paradigm of old and have failed to move beyond the persistent but problematic conceptualisation of knowledge creation in terms of tacit and explicit knowledge. Based on these insights, the study leverages extant research to develop the conceptual apparatus necessary to carry out an investigation of innovation and knowledge creation in virtual worlds. The study derives and articulates a set of definitions (of virtual worlds, innovation, knowledge and knowledge creation) to guide research. The study also leverages a number of extant theories in order to develop a preliminary framework to model knowledge creation in virtual worlds. Using a combination of participant observation and six case studies of innovative educational projects in Second Life, the study yields a range of insights into the process of knowledge creation in virtual worlds and into the factors that affect it. The study’s contributions to theory are expressed as a series of propositions and findings and are represented as a revised and empirically grounded theoretical framework of knowledge creation in virtual worlds. These findings highlight the importance of prior related knowledge and intrinsic motivation in terms of shaping and stimulating knowledge creation in virtual worlds. At the same time, they highlight the importance of meta-knowledge (knowledge about knowledge) in terms of guiding the knowledge creation process whilst revealing the diversity of behavioural approaches actually used to create knowledge in virtual worlds and. This theoretical framework is itself one of the chief contributions of the study and the analysis explores how it can be used to guide further research in virtual worlds and on knowledge creation. The study’s contributions to practice are presented as actionable guide to simulate knowledge creation in virtual worlds. This guide utilises a theoretically based classification of four knowledge-creator archetypes (the sage, the lore master, the artisan, and the apprentice) and derives an actionable set of behavioural prescriptions for each archetype. The study concludes with a discussion of the study’s implications in terms of future research.

Optical micro- and nanofibres: Higher mode generation and particle manipulation studies

This thesis is centred on two experimental fields of optical micro- and nanofibre research; higher mode generation/excitation and evanescent field optical manipulation. Standard, commercial, single-mode silica fibre is used throughout most of the experiments; this generally produces high-quality, single-mode, micro- or nanofibres when tapered in a flame-heated, pulling rig in the laboratory. Single mode fibre can also support higher transverse modes, when transmitting wavelengths below that of their defined single-mode regime cut-off. To investigate this, a first-order Laguerre-Gaussian beam, LG01 of 1064 nm wavelength and doughnut-shaped intensity profile is generated free space via spatial light modulation. This technique facilitates coupling to the LP11 fibre mode in two-mode fibre, and convenient, fast switching to the fundamental mode via computer-generated hologram modulation. Following LP11 mode loss when exponentially tapering 125μm diameter fibre, two mode fibre with a cladding diameter of 80μm is selected fir testing since it is more suitable for satisfying the adiabatic criteria for fibre tapering. Proving a fruitful endeavour, experiments show a transmission of 55% of the original LP11 mode set (comprising TE01, TM01, HE21e,o true modes) in submicron fibres. Furthermore, by observing pulling dynamics and progressive mode-lass behaviour, it is possible to produce a nanofibre which supports only the TE01 and TM01 modes, while suppressing the HE21e,o elements of the LP11 group. This result provides a basis for experimental studies of atom trapping via mode-interference, and offers a new set of evanescent field geometries for sensing and particle manipulation applications. The thesis highlights the experimental results of the research unit’s Cold Atom subgroup, who successfully integrated one such higher-mode nanofibre into a cloud of cold Rubidium atoms. This led to the detection of stronger signals of resonance fluorescence coupling into the nanofibre and for light absorption by the atoms due to the presence of higher guided modes within the fibre. Theoretical work on the impact of the curved nanofibre surface on the atomic-surface van der Waals interaction is also presented, showing a clear deviation of the potential from the commonly-used flat-surface approximation. Optical micro- and nanofibres are also useful tools for evanescent-field mediated optical manipulation – this includes propulsion, defect-induced trapping, mass migration and size-sorting of micron-scale particles in dispersion. Similar early trapping experiments are described in this thesis, and resulting motivations for developing a targeted, site-specific particle induction method are given. The integration of optical nanofibres into an optical tweezers is presented, facilitating individual and group isolation of selected particles, and their controlled positioning and conveyance in the evanescent field. The effects of particle size and nanofibre diameter on pronounced scattering is experimentally investigated in this systems, as are optical binding effects between adjacent particles in the evanescent field. Such inter-particle interactions lead to regulated self-positioning and particle-chain speed enhancements.

Resource Curse or Destructive Creation: A Tale of Crony Capitalism in Transition

This paper explores the “resource curse” problem as a counter-example of creative performance and innovation by examining reliance on capital and physical resources, showing the gap between expectations and ex-post actual performance became clearer under conditions of economic turmoil. The analysis employs logistic regressions with dichotomous response and predictor variables, showing significant results.Several findings that have use for economic and business practice follow. First, in a transition period, a typical characteristic of successful firms was their reliance on either capital resources or physical asset endowments, whereas the innovation factor was not significant.Second, poor-performing enterprises exhibited evidence of over reliance on both capital and physical assets. Third, firms that relied on both types of resources tended to downplay creative performance. Fourth, reliance on capital/physical resources and adoption of “creative discipline/innovations” tend to be mutually exclusive. In fact, some evidence suggests that firms face more acute problem caused by the law of diminishing returns in troubled times. The Vietnamese corporate sector’s addiction to resources may contribute to economic deterioration, through a downward spiral of lower efficiency leading to consumption of more resources. The “innovation factor” has not been tapped as a source of economic growth. The absence of innovations and creativity has made the notion of “resource curse” become identical to “destructive creation” implemented by ex-ante resource-rich firms, and worsened the problem of resource misallocation in transition turmoil.

Ligand-induced overexpression of a constitutively active beta2-adrenergic receptor: pharmacological creation of a phenotype in transgenic mice.

Transgenic overexpression (40- to 100-fold) of the wild-type human beta2-adrenergic receptor in the hearts of mice leads to a marked increase in cardiac contractility, which is apparently due to the low level of spontaneous (i.e., agonist-independent) activity inherent in the receptor. Here we report that transgenic mice expressing a mutated constitutively active form of the receptor (CAM) show no such phenotype, owing to its modest expression (3-fold above endogenous cardiac beta-adrenergic receptor levels). Surprisingly, treatment of the animals with a variety of beta-adrenergic receptor ligands leads to a 50-fold increase in CAM beta2-adrenergic receptor expression, by stabilizing the CAM beta2-adrenergic receptor protein. Receptor up-regulation leads in turn to marked increases in adenylate cyclase activity, atrial tension determined in vitro, and indices of cardiac contractility determined in vivo. These results illustrate a novel mechanism for regulating physiological responses, i.e., ligand-induced stabilization of a constitutively active but inherently unstable protein.

Component Neural Systems for the Creation of Emotional Memories during Free Viewing of a Complex, Real-World Event.

To investigate the neural systems that contribute to the formation of complex, self-relevant emotional memories, dedicated fans of rival college basketball teams watched a competitive game while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). During a subsequent recognition memory task, participants were shown video clips depicting plays of the game, stemming either from previously-viewed game segments (targets) or from non-viewed portions of the same game (foils). After an old-new judgment, participants provided emotional valence and intensity ratings of the clips. A data driven approach was first used to decompose the fMRI signal acquired during free viewing of the game into spatially independent components. Correlations were then calculated between the identified components and post-scanning emotion ratings for successfully encoded targets. Two components were correlated with intensity ratings, including temporal lobe regions implicated in memory and emotional functions, such as the hippocampus and amygdala, as well as a midline fronto-cingulo-parietal network implicated in social cognition and self-relevant processing. These data were supported by a general linear model analysis, which revealed additional valence effects in fronto-striatal-insular regions when plays were divided into positive and negative events according to the fan's perspective. Overall, these findings contribute to our understanding of how emotional factors impact distributed neural systems to successfully encode dynamic, personally-relevant event sequences.

BEYOND THE LIBRETTO: HOW THE COMPOSER GUIDES THE CREATION OF CHARACTER THREE CASE STUDIES

When performing in opera, a singer portrays a character. A libretto is used as the principal resource for the research. Music can also reveal insights into the composer’s ideas regarding characterization. This performance dissertation examines how musical devices such as genre, texture, meter, melody, instrumentation and form can be used to inform choices of characterization. Three roles from diverse operas were examined and performed. The first role, Estelle Oglethorpe in Later the Same Evening (2007) by John Musto (b 1954) was performed November 15, 16, 17, 18 2007. The second role, Dorabella in Così fan tutte (1789) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) was performed April 20, 25, 27, 2008. The third role, Olga in Eugene Onegin (1878) by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) was performed on April 19, 2009. All operas were presented by the University of Maryland Opera Studio at the Ina and Jack Kay Theater in the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, University of Maryland College Park. DVD recordings of all performances can be found in the University of Maryland library system.

Particle size distributions from Fraunhofer diffraction

info:eu-repo/semantics/published