Leadership and capability development and deployment in the New Zealand State Service

This article describes the design during 2013 of a model and implementation principles of a leadership and capability development and deployment (LCDD) model for the state services system. In this process, an initial prototype model was developed to describe a desired future state. It was informed by the best traditions of state services leadership development, together with models used by the world’s best companies, such as Procter & Gamble, for leadership development (Filipkowski and Donlon, 2013). The model was then enhanced based on our research in other jurisdictions, including Australia, Singapore and the United Kingdom, and co-creation with stakeholders. This is further discussed in the article. Dr Mike Pratt is Professor of Leadership and Sustainability at the University of Waikato, and a professional director and business adviser. Dr Murray Horn is a former Secretary to the Treasury of New Zealand and bank chief executive, and a professional director and business adviser

Role of fluctuations in a snug-fit mechanism of KcsA channel selectivity

The KcsA potassium channel belongs to a class of K+ channels that is selective for K+ over Na+ at rates of K+ transport approaching the diffusion limit. This selectivity is explained thermodynamically in terms of favorable partitioning of K+ relative to Na+ in a narrow selectivity filter in the channel. One mechanism for selectivity based on the atomic structure of the KcsA channel invokes the size difference between K+ and Na+, and the molecular complementarity of the selectivity filter with the larger K+ ion. An alternative view holds that size-based selectivity is precluded because atomic structural fluctuations are greater than the size difference between these two ions. We examine these hypotheses by calculating the distribution of binding energies for Na+ and K+ in a simplified model of the selectivity filter of the KcsA channel. We find that Na+ binds strongly to the selectivity filter with a mean binding energy substantially lower than that for K+. The difference is comparable to the difference in hydration free energies of Na+ and K+ in bulk aqueous solution. Thus, the average filter binding energies do not discriminate Na+ from K+ when measured from the baseline of the difference in bulk hydration free energies. Instead, Na+/K+ discrimination can be attributed to scarcity of good binding configurations for Na+ compared to K+. That relative scarcity is quantified as enhanced binding energy fluctuations, and is consistent with predicted relative constriction of the filter by Na+.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

On the Decidability of Connectedness Constraints in 2D and 3D Euclidean Spaces

We investigate (quantifier-free) spatial constraint languages with equality, contact and connectedness predicates as well as Boolean operations on regions, interpreted over low-dimensional Euclidean spaces. We show that the complexity of reasoning varies dramatically depending on the dimension of the space and on the type of regions considered. For example, the logic with the interior-connectedness predicate (and without contact) is undecidable over polygons or regular closed sets in the Euclidean plane, NP-complete over regular closed sets in three-dimensional Euclidean space, and ExpTime-complete over polyhedra in three-dimensional Euclidean space.Comment: Accepted for publication in the IJCAI 2011 proceeding

Marriages of Convenience and Other Trade-offs: Exploring the Ambivalent Nature of Organizational Relationships

Depictions of organizational life have ranged from depictions of extreme alienation (Erikson, 1986) to extreme commitment (Butterfield, 1985; Kunda, 1992). However, the emotional portrait of workers may not be so easily captured by simple shades of positive or negative feelings. Rather, the rapid rate of change, the ever-increasing complexity, and the seeming incompleteness characteristic of social life in the twentieth century suggest that this is an "age of ambivalence" (Weigert & Franks, 1989). In the work place, individuals confront the realities of hyper-competitive market places, technologically mediated relationships, empowerment, and economic insecurity. These and other issues have become embedded in the social structure of organizations and affect the bonds between individuals and between individuals and their organization. The result, we argue, is that individuals often experience ambivalence: "overlapping approach-avoidance tendencies" (Sincoff, 1990) characterized by "mixed feelings" about their work groups and organizations. Despite the fact that ambivalence is inherent in modern life, and is a central concept in many social sciences (cf. Boehm, 1989; Freud, 1950/1920; Bowlby, 1982; Merton, 1976; Smelser, 1998), our understanding of ambivalence in organizations is limited. In this chapter, we examine the topic of emotional ambivalence in the context of work relationships. We have four major goals in this regard: (1) to briefly review the concept of ambivalence, especially emotional ambivalence; (2) to argue for the prevalence of ambivalence in individuals' relationships both with and in organizations; (3) to propose two major sources of ambivalence in these relationships; and (4) to offer a typology of responses that individuals use to cope with emotional ambivalence. To illustrate these goals, we draw upon two different cases, rural doctors whose practices have been recently bought out by a large managed care organization (referred to hereafter as HealthCo), and employees at bank call-centers. These cases reveal two types of ambivalent relationships in organizations. The case of the rural doctors illustrates how individuals can become ambivalent with their employing organization. Thus, it illustrates an individuals' ambivalence with their collective. The call-center, by contrast, primarily illustrates ambivalent relationships between bank call-center employees and co-workers, as well as between employees and customers. Thus, it shows us ambivalent relationships within (rather than with) an organization. We believe that both types of ambivalent relationships (both with and within) are likely to be common in modern organizations.

Quasi-chemical theory with a soft cutoff

In view of the wide success of molecular quasi-chemical theory of liquids, this paper develops the soft-cutoff version of that theory. This development has important practical consequences in the common cases that the packing contribution dominates the solvation free energy of realistically-modeled molecules because treatment of hard-core interactions usually requires special purpose simulation methods. In contrast, treatment of smooth repulsive interactions is typically straightforward on the basis of widely available software. This development also shows how fluids composed of molecules with smooth repulsive interactions can be treated analogously to the molecular-field theory of the hard-sphere fluid. In the treatment of liquid water, quasi-chemical theory with soft-cutoff conditioning doesn't change the fundamental convergence characteristics of the theory using hard-cutoff conditioning. In fact, hard cutoffs are found here to work better than softer ones.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

FutureGRID: A Program for long-term research into GRID systems architecture

Proceedings of the 2003 UK e-Science All Hands Meeting, 31st August - 3rd September, Nottingham UKThis is a project to carry out research into long-term GRID architecture, in the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory and the Cambridge eScience Center, with support from the Microsoft Research Laboratory, Cambridge. It is part of a larger vision for future systems architectures for public computing platforms, including both scientitic GRID and commodity level computing such as games, peer2peer computing and storage services and so forth, based on work in the laboratories in recent years into massively scaleable distributed systems for storage, computation, content distribution and collaboration[26]

Redefining the Class of Qualitative States—A Reply to Shoemaker

The so-called qualia-type objections to functionalism seem to imply that some qualitative states are not functionally definable (or identical to some functional state type). In “Functionalism and Qualia,” Sydney Shoemaker concedes that functionalists can allow for some types of mental states to be functionally undefinable without committing themselves to a view that cannot account for the class qualitative states. If qualitative states are construed as a relation of qualitative similarity, Shoemaker argues that qualia are functionally definable, and thus do not pose a serious problem for functionalists. In this paper I argue that (i) Shoemaker’s argument against the possibility of absent qualia is untenable, (ii) if cases of absent-qualia are possible, then Shoemaker’s reconciliation fails, and (iii) even if his reconciliation succeeds in functionally defining the class of qualitative states, it still fails to account for qualitative states being capable of existing independently from functional characterization

Lattice QCD and Hydro/Cascade Model of Heavy Ion Collisions

We report here on a recent lattice study of the QCD transition region at finite temperature and zero chemical potential using domain wall fermions (DWF). We also present a parameterization of the QCD equation of state obtained from lattice QCD that is suitable for use in hydrodynamics studies of heavy ion collisions. Finally, we show preliminary results from a multi-stage hydrodynamics/hadron cascade model of a heavy ion collision, in an attempt to understand how well the experimental data (e.g. particle spectra, elliptic flow, and HBT radii) can constrain the inputs (e.g. initial temperature, freezeout temperature, shear viscosity, equation of state) of the theoretical model.Comment: 10 pages, 12 figures. Proceedings for the 26th Winter Workshop on Nuclear Dynamics, Ocho Rios, Jamaica, Jan 2-9, 201