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Large Scale Research Project, Daidalos Evaluation Framework
Get PDFFor large scale research projects operational over a phased timeframe of 2 years or more, the need to take a step back and evaluate their stance and direction is an important activity in providing relevant feedback and recommendations to guide the project towards success in its consecutive phase. The identification of measurable goals and evaluation profile procedures to effectively work towards a useful evaluation of the project was one of the main aims of the Evaluation taskforce. As part of the scope of the evaluation work in Daidalos, a set of evaluation criteria for Daidalos phase I processes, results and impact were determined and used as a scoreboard for the evaluation and recommendation report. Evaluating criterion such as Relevance, Potential Impact, Scientific & Technical Excellence and Resource Mobilisation provided beneficial recommendations, taking stock of previous achievements and future innovative ideas ensuring that they will impact the project as planned. As a starting point these criteria were derived from the ones used by European Commission for evaluating R&D projects. The final evaluation report included the scoreboard results, and an analysis of these results along with a set of recommendations for Daidalos Phase II. Qualitative scenario evaluation activities were adopted and implemented in an attempt to capture the richness of people's experience of the Nidaros scenario in their own terms, conveying the Daidalos technology concept transfer towards end users. By providing you with an insight into the evaluation methodology used within the Daidalos project, we hope to broaden your knowledge by introducing you to the large scale Daidalos evaluation framework used by the Daidalos research project and highlight some of the managerial and organisational aspects involved during this process
THE APPLICATION OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES IN THE PROCUREMENT AND CONSTRUCTION OF CLEANROOM PROJECTS
Get PDFMany of the world’s largest biotechnology, pharmaceutical and medical device companies have established production facilities in Ireland in recent years. The country’s leading contracting firm, Sisk have developed an expertise in constructing these facilities through the management contracting procurement route. Identifying the sector as a major growth driver, the company has established a bio-pharmaceutical division as part of their corporate strategy within the past year. The procurement of these facilities is complicated, highly regulated and knowledge-intensive. The identification and sharing of this knowledge within Sisk has been hindered by a lack of interaction between members of live projects. The proposed research concentrates on the application of knowledge management (KM) practices to one aspect of such projects; the procurement of cleanrooms through the management contracting route. This paper focuses on a review of literature related to cleanroom construction,
management contracting, and KM. In order to identify the key issues related to the procurement of cleanrooms, action research has been adopted as the research strategy.
The proposed methods include interviews with members of Sisk’s bio-pharma division, a pilot knowledge exchange seminar within a focus group framework and an
evaluative questionnaire. In terms of contribution to the current body of KM in construction, the development of a framework for sharing knowledge across simultaneous construction projects is a key objective of the research. The intention is that this exercise shall highlight the benefits of a formal KM approach, in addition to
the potential for applied academic research in industry
The Commercial Mob Amusement Racket: Eugene O'Neill and Hollywood Cinema.
No full textIt is well known that virtually every significant American dramatist in the decades after the end of the First World War worked for a period in Hollywood. Most often the period spent with the studios has been seen as having an entirely negative impact on the writing lives of those involved: Hollywood has often been seen as having a destructive effect on modern American drama, as drawing the most talented artists from the stage, corrupting them with financial rewards, and—in some cases—returning them to Broadway artistically spent and hopelessly frustrated. Clifford Odets’s case is most often quoted: his career, that began so promisingly for many with Waiting for Lefty (1935), a radical, raw, left-wing play, culminated in him writing a film for Elvis Presley and developing unproduced television shows.
My current research challenges this orthodoxy. It takes the case of Tennessee Williams—the foremost post-War American playwright, who was recruited by MGM in the early 1940s and worked in Hollywood for about six months—and argues that playwrights learned much from the film industry—in terms of technique but also in terms of commercialising their art and developing formulae likely to attract audiences. The research thus offers a new perspective on the relationship between Hollywood and the theatre, commerce and art, popular and High culture, as well as a new way of looking at the work of this particular playwright
Wind Turbine Electricity Autoproduction to reduce Carbon Footprint
Get PDFElectrical autoproduction refers to the production of electricity on site for one’s own use. The possibility of replacing oil- or gas-generated electricity with wind-generated, autoproduced electricity is examined in this paper. Efficient electrical autoproduction requires understanding of the local load. The electrical load examined here is that of Waterford Institute of Technology. The turbine selection is examined in terms of the characterised load, the displaced CO2, the amortisation of the invested capital and the local wind resources
A Study of the Leadership and Coaching Behaviours of High Level Hurling Coaches
Get PDFThe purpose of the study was to examine the various factors which have an impact on the leadership and coaching behaviours of high-level hurling coaches. A considerable gap exists between the importance assigned to athletic leadership and the efforts to understand it (Reimer & Chelladurai, 1995). Inter-county senior hurling coaches (n = 35) were surveyed on a demographic questionnaire and their self-perception of leadership and coaching behaviours were analysed using the Revised Leadership Scale for Sport (Zhang, Jensen, & Mann, 1997). Descriptive data was collected on motives for coaching, roles of the coach, criteria for measuring success, sources of coach education and development.
An analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted on quantitative data on the relationships between age, experience, coach education, and leadership. Results showed a significant relationship between age and situational consideration (P = .001), club coaching experience and training instruction (p = .020), and between inter-county coaching experience and training instruction (p = .023). The study demonstrated the value of experience in leadership and coaching behaviour and has implications for the future direction and content of coach education programmes
Towards a Definition of the Creative Process
Get PDFThe subject of this thesis is to consider how Creativity and the Creative Process might be defined. The aims are to discover if a satisfactory definition of the creative process already exists, or if it could be hoped for, especially within the realm of creative writing.
The research examined the specific writings of a number of practitioners within the remit of this work and keeping in mind its emphasis on creative writing; while attempting to elucidate their particular views and the articulation of these views.
The findings are interesting, even remarkable at times, basically definitions are varied and multiple. But particularly there is a strong bond between the sciences and the arts when writers come to express a view on creativity.
The close examination, of this particular transverse section, (it is important to keep that awareness: this research is one particular cut or take and nothing more) shows that expressions of creativity are mainly descriptive rather than explanatory; at times there is a reluctance to posit an understanding of all that is involved in the process.
Perhaps this cross-section is the most original aspect of the research – it provides evidence of insight and expression; it tracks the concept from classical times to the present and it juxtaposes different voices, thereby giving a synoptic view of how the concept is perceived.
Inherent in the study and the findings are the limitations to our understanding of the very complex and subtle workings, plus the imaginative capabilities of the human mind. Yet, it is hoped, perhaps not in our time, that the very force under discussion, creativity, will push extraordinary minds to probe further, measure and extrapolate from new data what it means to be creative
Detection of Abnormal Recordings in Irish Milk Recorded Data
No full textThe objective of this study was to detect abnormal recordings of milk yield, fat concentration and protein concentration in Irish milk recorded data. The data consisted of 14,956 records from both commercial and experimental herds with 92% of the recordings recorded manually and the remainder recorded electronically. The method used in this paper is a modified version of the method employed by the Animal Improvement Programs Laboratory in Maryland, USA and abides by the guidelines outlined by the International Committee of Animal Recording. The results illustrate the effectiveness of detecting abnormal recordings in Irish milk records. The method described in this paper, defines the upper and lower limits for each production trait and these limits along with the slope parameters are used to determine if a recording is abnormal or not. Three percent of milk yield recordings, 5% of fat concentration recordings and less than 1% of protein concentration recordings were found to be abnormal. The proportion of values declared abnormal in manually recorded and electronically recorded data were examined and found to be significantly different for fat concentration
Reconciling the Theory and Practice of Line Management Involvement in HR The Case of an Irish SemiState
Get PDFThe notion of line managers assuming an increased involvement in human resource management (HRM) is not a contemporary phenomenon, although the practice of devolving HRM responsibilities to line managers has received increased attention in the management and HRM literature in recent years (Guest, 1987; and Storey, 1992; Legge, 1995; Ulrich, 1998; Budwhar, 2000; Renwick, 2000; Brewster et al., 2004; Mesner-Andolsek and Stebe, 2005; IRS, 2006, Watson et al., 2007). Within the last decade, the issue of line management involvement in HR has maintained a significant focus by both academics and practitioners alike (Budwhar, 2000; Renwick, 2000; Holt Larsen and Brewster, 2003; Brewster et al., 2004; Mesner-Andolsek and Stebe, 2005; Papalexandris and Panaayotopoulou, 2005; IRS, 2006; Cascon Pereira et al., 2006; Maxwell et al., 2007). The consensus from this literature is that a partnership between HR and line management is increasingly being adopted for the process of HR delivery. The forming of this collaborative partnership impacts on the roles and responsibilities performed by both line management and HR specialists and in turn affects the organisational outcomes (Harris et al., 2002; Holden and Roberts, 2004). Utilising case methodology, within a large semi-state organisational environment, the findings draw on a series of interviews with senior HR specialists, a survey of line managers and the analysis of HR documentation at the research site
On integer sequences associated to the cyclic and regular graphs
Get PDFWe study integer sequences associated to the cyclic graph C_r and the complete graph K_r. Fourier techniques are used to characterise the sequences that count walks of length n on both these families of graphs. In the case of the cyclic graph, we show that these sequences are associated to an
induced colouring of Pascal's triangle. This extends previous
results concerning the Jacobsthal numbers
Real-Time Optimisation of TTCAN Networks
Get PDFController Area Network is widely used as a communications network in automotive applications, typically motor cars, commercial vehicles, and utility vehicles. CAN is operated either by spontaneous messaging or by time triggered messaging. Time triggered messaging is the preferred option on modern systems as it allows all messages access to the bus at some defined period in time. Using time triggered messaging alone does not allow real-time access to the network, therefore spontaneous messaging is used in conjunction with the time triggered messaging to ensure this. Presently there are two types of schedulers available for the development of TTCAN message sets. They are the stochastic and heuristic scheduler, which are both useful, but they do not provide the capability of ensuring real-time messages arrive within their deadline. Stochastic schedulers generate message sets by a probability distribution and heuristic schedulers develop a message set solution by trial and error. They both define the optimum message set as the one with the least jitter by use of a cost function analysis. Neither of the two methods take into account the effect the schedules may have on spontaneous real-time messaging. Real-time messages have the best opportunity of meeting their deadline, if the TTCAN messages are not sent sequentially, in fact the larger the arbitration window size between TTCAN messages, the more successful will be the real-time performance of the network. Schedulers are essentially designed to load balance system resources and in the case of a TTCAN network, the ideal situation is that all messages are separated by the same size arbitration window. This provides the optimum real-time performance, however with messages of different time periods being broadcast, it should be realised that arbitration windows will nearly always be of different sizes. A statistical message scheduler has been devised and demonstrated to produced an optimum message set for real-time operation on a TTCAN network and hence improve the results produced by stochastic or heuristic techniques