The public procurement of information systems: dialectics in requirements specification

When acquiring information systems, public entities face a dilemma. On the one hand, they want to procure the system that best suits their needs, which often requires lengthy dialogues with vendors. At the same time, they are restricted by government regulations that mandate limited dialogue in the interests of transparency and equal opportunities for all vendors. To examine how public entities deal with this, we followed three procurement projects in Norway. We show that this dilemma manifests itself as a dialectic between the thesis of getting the system requirements right and the antithesis of strictly adhering to regulations. Public entities search for a resolution of this dialectic through two syntheses: selecting an appropriate tendering procedure, and learning how to specify requirements through networks of peer public entities. Our findings reveal that the syntheses are possible because the dialectic is actually complimentary, both the thesis and the antithesis are needed to create the joint outcome that satisfies both. The resolution of the dialectic unfolds differently over time. Our study contributes to the relatively neglected stream of IS research on dialectics that explicitly searches for a synthesis while revealing the complementarity of the dialectic. We show how time plays a nuanced role in the resolution of the dialectic situation.     

Unexpected High-Energy Failure of Type 304L Stainless Steel Piping in the Tail Gas System in Nitric Acid Plant Due to Intergranular Stress Corrosion Cracking (IGSCC)

An incident occurred at a Nitric Acid Plant when a failed 18-in. (457 mm)-diameter 304L stainless steel pipe connecting the Converter to the Tail Gas Catalytic Reactor ruptured. The rupture resulted in thrown fragments and some damage to equipment in the vicinity of the pipe. Normally, pipe operating conditions are about 80 psig (0.55 MPa) and 850–900 °F (454–482 °C), and the nominal thickness of the pipe was 0.180-in. (0.46 mm). This article summarizes the discovery of a very unusual condition of intergranular stress corrosion cracking due to sensitization of the low-carbon stainless steel used in manufacture of the pipe. The lessons learned from this failure investigation are vital to those who use stainless steel in Tail Gas systems.     

A matheuristic for workforce planning with employee learning and stochastic demand

This paper focuses on the opportunity to direct the development of responsive capacity by recognising that individuals learn through experience when designing workforce plans. We focus on the operations of a product manufacturer that seeks to maximise profit by selling multiple products, while recognising that demands for each product is uncertain. As such, we study a stochastic integer program wherein an organisation can hedge against uncertainty in demand both by holding inventory (at a cost) and building a more responsive production process. Solving this stochastic program presents many computational difficulties, including the fact that quantitative models of human learning are non-linear and the explosion of instance size that result from modelling uncertainty with scenarios. As a result, we propose a matheuristic for this problem and with an extensive computational study demonstrate its ability to produce high-quality solutions in little time.     

ResearchGate versus Google Scholar: Which finds more early citations?

Scientometrics - ResearchGate has launched its own citation index by extracting citations from documents uploaded to the site and reporting citation counts on article profile pages. Since authors...     

Ecological effects of cellular computing in microbial populations

Gene regulatory networks allow single cells to adopt a wide range of different phenotypes in response to changes in environmental conditions. The ecological implications of these cellular computations are poorly understood, and they are largely absent from models of microbial community assembly. Here, we highlight a number of examples where ecological interactions are or may be affected by cellular computations. Our review identifies specific opportunities for integrating cellular decision-making into mathematical models of microbe-microbe interactions and community assembly. We argue that incorporating cellular decision-making into microbial ecology will be critical in order to gain a quantitative understanding of microbial biogeography.