| 1. |
- Ade, Peter, et al.
(author)
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The Simons Observatory : science goals and forecasts
- 2019
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In: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. - : IOP Publishing. - 1475-7516. ; :2
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The Simons Observatory (SO) is a new cosmic microwave background experiment being built on Cerro Toco in Chile, due to begin observations in the early 2020s. We describe the scientific goals of the experiment, motivate the design, and forecast its performance. SO will measure the temperature and polarization anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background in six frequency bands centered at: 27, 39, 93, 145, 225 and 280 GHz. The initial con figuration of SO will have three small-aperture 0.5-m telescopes and one large-aperture 6-m telescope, with a total of 60,000 cryogenic bolometers. Our key science goals are to characterize the primordial perturbations, measure the number of relativistic species and the mass of neutrinos, test for deviations from a cosmological constant, improve our understanding of galaxy evolution, and constrain the duration of reionization. The small aperture telescopes will target the largest angular scales observable from Chile, mapping approximate to 10% of the sky to a white noise level of 2 mu K-arcmin in combined 93 and 145 GHz bands, to measure the primordial tensor-to-scalar ratio, r, at a target level of sigma(r) = 0.003. The large aperture telescope will map approximate to 40% of the sky at arcminute angular resolution to an expected white noise level of 6 mu K-arcmin in combined 93 and 145 GHz bands, overlapping with the majority of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope sky region and partially with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument. With up to an order of magnitude lower polarization noise than maps from the Planck satellite, the high-resolution sky maps will constrain cosmological parameters derived from the damping tail, gravitational lensing of the microwave background, the primordial bispectrum, and the thermal and kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effects, and will aid in delensing the large-angle polarization signal to measure the tensor-to-scalar ratio. The survey will also provide a legacy catalog of 16,000 galaxy clusters and more than 20,000 extragalactic sources.
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| 2. |
- Brout, Dillon, et al.
(author)
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The Pantheon+ analysis : cosmological constraints
- 2022
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In: Astrophysical Journal. - : Institute of Physics (IOP). - 0004-637X .- 1538-4357. ; 938:2
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We present constraints on cosmological parameters from the Pantheon+ analysis of 1701 light curves of 1550 distinct Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) ranging in redshift from z = 0.001 to 2.26. This work features an increased sample size from the addition of multiple cross-calibrated photometric systems of SNe covering an increased redshift span, and improved treatments of systematic uncertainties in comparison to the original Pantheon analysis, which together result in a factor of 2 improvement in cosmological constraining power. For a flat ΛCDM model, we find ΩM = 0.334 ± 0.018 from SNe Ia alone. For a flat w0CDM model, we measure w0 = −0.90 ± 0.14 from SNe Ia alone, H0 = 73.5 ± 1.1 km s−1 Mpc−1 when including the Cepheid host distances and covariance (SH0ES), and w0 = -0.978-+0.0310.024 when combining the SN likelihood with Planck constraints from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO); both w0 values are consistent with a cosmological constant. We also present the most precise measurements to date on the evolution of dark energy in a flat w0waCDM universe, and measure wa = -0.1-+2.00.9 from Pantheon+ SNe Ia alone, H0 = 73.3 ± 1.1 km s−1 Mpc−1 when including SH0ES Cepheid distances, and wa = -0.65-+0.320.28 when combining Pantheon+ SNe Ia with CMB and BAO data. Finally, we find that systematic uncertainties in the use of SNe Ia along the distance ladder comprise less than one-third of the total uncertainty in the measurement of H0 and cannot explain the present “Hubble tension” between local measurements and early universe predictions from the cosmological model.
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| 3. |
- Carter, Bob, et al.
(author)
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Nothing gets done and no one knows why : PCS and workplace control of lean in HM revenue and customs
- 2012
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In: Industrial relations journal. - : Wiley. - 0019-8692 .- 1468-2338. ; 43:5, s. 416-432
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This article examines the willingness and capacity of public sector unions to mobilise action against changes in the labour process in order to maintain some measure of control at the point of production. Taking as an instance an extended dispute in Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs over the introduction and impact of Lean processes, it marshals evidence gathered from documentary sources, branch representatives and national lay full-time officers to engage with the notion of a trade union bureaucracy. In taking a union with a left-wing leadership and a section with 80 per cent membership with an expressed willingness to escalate industrial action, the article tests Hyman's 1979 contention that, rather than a concentration on a bureaucratic caste, a much better explanation for conservatism centres on the nature of social relations within the union that encompass a wider layer of representatives.
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| 4. |
- Carter, Bob, et al.
(author)
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‘Stressed out of my box’: employee experience of lean working and occupational ill-health in clerical work in the UK public sector
- 2013
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In: Work, Employment and Society. - : SAGE Publications. - 0950-0170 .- 1469-8722. ; 27:5, s. 747-767
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Occupational health and safety (OHS) is under-researched in the sociology of work and employment. This deficit is most pronounced for white-collar occupations. Despite growing awareness of the significance of psychosocial conditions – notably stress – and musculoskeletal disorders, white-collar work is considered by conventional OHS discourse to be ‘safe’. This study’s locus is clerical processing in the UK public sector, specifically Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, in the context of efficiency savings programmes. The key initiative was lean working, which involved redesigned workflow, task fragmentation, standardization and individual targets. Utilizing a holistic model of white-collar OHS and in-depth quantitative and qualitative data, the evidence of widespread self-reported ill-health symptoms is compelling. Statistical tests of association demonstrate that the transformed work organization that accompanied lean working contributed most to employees’, particularly women’s, ill-health complaints.
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| 5. |
- Carter, Bob, et al.
(author)
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Taxing times : lean working and the creation of (in)efficiencies in hm revenue and costums
- 2013
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In: Public Administration. - : Wiley. - 0033-3298 .- 1467-9299. ; 91:1, s. 83-97
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The prevailing economic and budgetary climate is intensifying the search for methods and practices aimed at generating efficiencies in public sector provision. This paper investigates the increasingly popular bundle of techniques operating under the generic descriptor of lean, which promises to improve operational quality processes while simultaneously reducing cost. It offers a critical appraisal of lean as a fashionable component of public sector reform and challenges the received wisdom that it unambiguously delivers ‘efficiencies’. Quantitative and qualitative research in HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) centred on employees' experiences has indicated the extent to which work has been reorganized along lean principles. However, employees perceive that changes in organizational processes and working practices have unintentionally generated inefficiencies which have impacted on the quality of public service. These suggested outcomes raise wider concerns as lean working is adopted in other public sector organizations.
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| 6. |
- Carter, Bob, et al.
(author)
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‘‘They can’t be a buffer any longer’ : Supervisors and class relations under white-collar lean production’
- 2014
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In: Capital and Class. - : SAGE Publications. - 0309-8168 .- 2041-0980. ; 38:2, s. 323-343
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This article reasserts the value of the examination of class relations. It does so via a case study of tax-processing sites within HM Revenue and Customs, focusing on the changes wrought by the alterations to labour and supervisory processes implemented under the banner of ‘lean production’. It concentrates on the transformation of front-line managers, as their tasks moved from those that required tax knowledge and team support to those that narrowed their work towards output monitoring and employee supervision. Following Carchedi, these changes are conceptualised as strengthening the function of capital performed by managers, and weakening their role within the labour process.
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| 7. |
- Carter, Bob, et al.
(author)
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Uncomfortable truths : teamworking under lean in the UK
- 2017
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In: International Journal of Human Resource Management. - : Taylor & Francis. - 0958-5192 .- 1466-4399. ; 28:3, s. 449-467
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- A recent contribution in this journal – Procter, S. and Radnor, Z. (2014) ‘Teamworking under Lean in UK public services: lean teams and team targets in Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC)’ International Journal of Human Resource Management, 25:21, 2978–2995 – provides an account of teamworking in the UK Civil Service, specifically Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), focused on the relationship between recently implemented lean work organisation and teams and teamworking. Procter and Radnor claim in this work that it delivers a ‘more nuanced’ analysis of lean in this government department and, it follows, of the lean phenomenon more generally. Our riposte critiques their article on several grounds. It suffers from problems of logic and construction, conceptual confusion and definitional imprecision. Methodological difficulties and inconsistent evidence contribute additionally to analytical weakness. Included in our response are empirical findings on teamworking at HMRC that challenge Procter and Radnor’s evidential basis and further reveal the shortcomings of their interpretation
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| 8. |
- Feng, Shaohong, et al.
(author)
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Dense sampling of bird diversity increases power of comparative genomics
- 2020
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In: Nature. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0028-0836 .- 1476-4687. ; 587:7833
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Whole-genome sequencing projects are increasingly populating the tree of life and characterizing biodiversity(1-4). Sparse taxon sampling has previously been proposed to confound phylogenetic inference(5), and captures only a fraction of the genomic diversity. Here we report a substantial step towards the dense representation of avian phylogenetic and molecular diversity, by analysing 363 genomes from 92.4% of bird families-including 267 newly sequenced genomes produced for phase II of the Bird 10,000 Genomes (B10K) Project. We use this comparative genome dataset in combination with a pipeline that leverages a reference-free whole-genome alignment to identify orthologous regions in greater numbers than has previously been possible and to recognize genomic novelties in particular bird lineages. The densely sampled alignment provides a single-base-pair map of selection, has more than doubled the fraction of bases that are confidently predicted to be under conservation and reveals extensive patterns of weak selection in predominantly non-coding DNA. Our results demonstrate that increasing the diversity of genomes used in comparative studies can reveal more shared and lineage-specific variation, and improve the investigation of genomic characteristics. We anticipate that this genomic resource will offer new perspectives on evolutionary processes in cross-species comparative analyses and assist in efforts to conserve species. A dataset of the genomes of 363 species from the Bird 10,000 Genomes Project shows increased power to detect shared and lineage-specific variation, demonstrating the importance of phylogenetically diverse taxon sampling in whole-genome sequencing.
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| 9. |
- Field, Dawn, et al.
(author)
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The minimum information about a genome sequence (MIGS) specification.
- 2008
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In: Nature biotechnology. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1546-1696 .- 1087-0156. ; 26:5, s. 541-7
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- With the quantity of genomic data increasing at an exponential rate, it is imperative that these data be captured electronically, in a standard format. Standardization activities must proceed within the auspices of open-access and international working bodies. To tackle the issues surrounding the development of better descriptions of genomic investigations, we have formed the Genomic Standards Consortium (GSC). Here, we introduce the minimum information about a genome sequence (MIGS) specification with the intent of promoting participation in its development and discussing the resources that will be required to develop improved mechanisms of metadata capture and exchange. As part of its wider goals, the GSC also supports improving the 'transparency' of the information contained in existing genomic databases.
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| 10. |
- Karlsson, Mikael, 1978, et al.
(author)
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Characterisation of silicon, zirconium and aluminium coated titanium dioxide pigments recovered from paint waste
- 2019
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In: Dyes and Pigments. - : Elsevier BV. - 0143-7208 .- 1873-3743. ; 162, s. 145-152
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- © 2018 Elsevier Ltd Titanium dioxide (TiO2) is the major white pigment used by the paint industry. However, the production of TiO2is associated with a high carbon footprint. An alternative source of pigment could be created by developing a method to recover it from waste paint. In this paper two rutile pigments with different surface treatments were recovered from paint by a thermal recycling process. The pigments were analysed using powder x-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), surface area measurements (BET), laser diffraction for particle size analysis and zeta potential measurements before and after the recycling process. It was concluded that the rutile cores of both pigments were intact and there were no major changes in particle size distribution or surface charge for either pigment induced by the recycling process. However, XPS and zeta potential measurements showed that the surface coating of the pigments can be more or less degraded depending on the chemical nature, which might imply the need for further re-coating after-treatment. Another option would be to find another application for the pigment where the quality and function of the coating is of less importance.
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| 11. |
- Karlsson, Mikael, 1978, et al.
(author)
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Characterization of paint formulated using secondary TiO2 pigments recovered from waste paint
- 2019
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In: JCT Research. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1547-0091 .- 2168-8028 .- 1935-3804. ; 16:2, s. 607-614
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The paint industry is continuously striving to reduce its environmental impact, especially when it comes to the major virgin white pigment, titanium dioxide (TiO2). In this work, recycled TiO2 pigment was used in a paint formulation as a replacement for pigment made from virgin raw materials. The paint was evaluated based on pH, Stormer and ICI viscosities, gloss, hiding power, and color characteristics. The paint films were also characterized by LVSEM–EDS, AFM, and profilometry. The most significant difference between a paint based on recycled pigments and a paint based on virgin pigments was the agglomeration of pigment particles which gave a reduction in gloss and a rougher surface of the dried paint film based on recycled pigment, and it could be concluded that the recycled pigment could not be used without accepting a small decrease in paint quality. This points toward two main directions: (1) the use of recycled pigment in applications with less demand on surface finish and gloss, such as ceiling paints, and (2) that further work on formulation should be carried out with the recycled pigment as for any other new pigment introduced in a paint formulation to optimize its performance. © 2018, The Author(s).
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| 12. |
- Karlsson, Mikael, 1978, et al.
(author)
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Surface properties of recycled titanium oxide recovered from paint waste
- 2018
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In: Progress in organic coatings. - : Elsevier BV. - 0300-9440 .- 1873-331X. ; 125, s. 279-286
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Aluminium oxide coated rutile pigment was extracted from a paint matrix by means of a thermal recycling process. The objective was to investigate the effect of the recycling process on the surface properties of the pigment. The pigment was analysed using powder x-ray diffraction (XRD), surface area measurements (BET), laser diffraction for particle size analysis and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) before and after the recycling process. Investigations on the zeta potential and the surface charge were performed as well. It was concluded that the rutile crystalline core and the aluminium oxide coating of the pigment were still intact after the recycling process. The particle size distribution of the recycled pigment was slightly broader compared to the virgin pigment. The measured magnitude in zeta potential of the recycled pigment was lower than for the virgin pigment. This difference is thought to be caused by alteration in the surface hydroxyl concentration. Surface charge titrations showed differences between the virgin and the recycled pigment at alkaline pH and at low salt concentrations.
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| 13. |
- Valentini, Vincenzo, et al.
(author)
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Multidisciplinary Rectal Cancer Management : 2nd European Rectal Cancer Consensus Conference (EURECA-CC2)
- 2009
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In: Radiotherapy and Oncology. - : Elsevier BV. - 0167-8140 .- 1879-0887. ; 92:2, s. 148-163
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Research review (peer-reviewed)abstract
- BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: During the first decade of the 21st century a number of important European randomized studies were published. In order to help shape clinical practice based on best scientific evidence from the literature, the International Conference on 'Multidisciplinary Rectal Cancer Treatment: Looking for an European Consensus' (EURECA-CC2) was organized in Italy under the endorsement of European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO), European Society of Surgical Oncology (ESSO), and European Society of Therapeutic Radiation Oncology (ESTRO). METHODS: Consensus was achieved using the Delphi method. The document was available to all Committee members as a web-based document customized for the consensus process. Eight chapters were identified: epidemiology, diagnostics, pathology, surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, treatment toxicity and quality of life, follow-up, and research questions. Each chapter was subdivided by a topic, and a series of statements were developed. Each member commented and voted, sentence by sentence thrice. Sentences upon which an agreement was not reached after voting round # 2 were openly debated during a Consensus Conference in Perugia (Italy) from 11 December to 13 December 2008. A hand-held televoting system collected the opinions of both the Committee members and the audience after each debate. The Executive Committee scored percentage consensus based on three categories: "large consensus", "moderate consensus", and "minimum consensus". RESULTS: The total number of the voted sentences was 207. Of the 207, 86% achieved large consensus, 13% achieved moderate consensus, and only 3 (1%) resulted in minimum consensus. No statement was disagreed by more than 50% of the members. All chapters were voted on by at least 75% of the members, and the majority was voted on by >85%. CONCLUSIONS: This Consensus Conference represents an expertise opinion process that may help shape future programs, investigational protocols, and guidelines for staging and treatment of rectal cancer throughout Europe.
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