Book review: activating human rights and peace

Activating Human Rights and Peace is an enlightening collection of well thought through cases aimed at academics and students of human rights, political science, law and justice, peace and conflict studies and sociology. It argues that we need to appreciate that cultivating a human rights and peace consciousness is choice-less: there is a moral imperative to engender and sustain an ethical praxis that is motivated by a concern and commitment for how we live with each other. Kristen Perrin notes that each chapter gives a glimpse into the diverse range of ideas encompassing contemporary human rights issues

Searches for very rare decays to purely leptonic final states at LHCb

We present a review of the searches for very rare decays to muonic final states performed at LHCb using 1.0 fb-1 of pp collisions at 7 TeV centre of mass energy. Flavour changing neutral current processes, such as B->mumu and B->mumumumu are highly suppressed in the Standard Model (SM). Such decays therefore allow contributions from new processes or new heavy particles to significantly modify the expected SM rates. Charged lepton flavour violating processes, such as the neutrino-less tau->mumumu decay, have vanishingly small decay rates in the SM, but can be significantly enhanced in extended models. We report the latest results on these channels from LHCb.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, ICHEP 2012: 36th International Conference on High Energy Physics, Melbourne, Australi

Interview with Melinda Perrin

An oral history interview with Melinda Perrin about her career in the Texas Medical Center and work on the board of Hermann Hospital and later Memorial Hermann Healthcare System. Melinda Hill Perrin was born into a family known for the leadership it has provided both the city of Houston and the state of Texas. Her father John Hill served as the Texas’ secretary of state, then attorney general and finally Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court. Her work in the community and the non-profit sector led to her selection as a member of the Board of Hermann Hospital during its most controversial period. She was board chair when Hermann merged with the Memorial Health Care System in 1997, a perilous project that’s success meant the strengthening of two of the city’s most important healthcare institution. That work gives her a unique view of Houston, its institutions and the future of healthcare not only locally but across the nation. She is a volunteer and her willingness to provide leadership in that role makes her a role model for women in every walk of life

Lost in Translation: Why Organizations Should Facilitate Knowledge Transfer

Even if knowledge transfer has been extensively studied both in theory and in practice in the last few years, little analysis has been made regarding rhetoric. With very few exceptions (Czarniawska and Joerges, 1996; Gherardi and Nicolini, 2000) organizational knowledge transfer - defined as the process through which one unit (eg. group, department or division) is affected by the experience of another (Argote and Ingram, 2000: 151) - has been mainly represented as a communication process. Complementary to this view, I propose to interpret the circulation of knowledge in organizations as a process of translation: knowledge is not only transferred between two entities but is transformed during that process.To support my view, I look at the different theoretical views on knowledge transfer in the organizational context. Four pieces of analysis can be found: the cognitive approach, the economic approach, the situated approach and the translation approach. First, knowledge transfer can be seen as a dyadic process between a sender and a receiver. In this cognitive approach, knowledge transfer is seen as a way to change the knowing activity. In the second analysis, knowledge is considered as a commodity built on routines. Transferring knowledge means choosing and re-using the right routines to ensure the evolution of the organization. The situated approach tries to make a synthesis of both of the previous approaches by analysing knowledge in the context in which it is created, used and transferred. Finally, the translation approach focuses on the modifications of knowledge that take place when it is translated. It involves creating convergences and homologies by relating things that were previously different (Gherardi and Nicolini, 2000). Because the process involves very different communities and social actors, both geographically and functionally it is one of the most frequent ways in which knowledge crosses organisational and geographical boundaries to move into other areas (Czarniawska and Joerges, 1996).To illustrate my view, I examine a story of knowledge transfer in a multinational company. The story is about the re-use of a new device called the “lump-breaker” which improves the manufacture in a gypsum plant. I examine the story before and after the implementation of a knowledge management structure. Before, the knowledge is “lost in translation” because of lack of support from the central organization (ie. knowledge management) that creates confusion of different meanings: when the sender has made little effort to translate the best practice into simple terms, the receiver has more difficulty to re-use the device. After having put in place a knowledge management structure, the device is subsequently adopted by different factory managers who have read the database which contains the best practice. At this point, the role of the knowledge management team (ie. the “translator”) is to ease the re-use of the knowledge by “packaging” the best practice. If the effort is not made by the sender, the knowledge management team acts as a “translator” for the receiver. One implication is to minimize the role of technological mechanisms (databases and information portals) if the sender does not play his role: the practice has to be described in such a way that others can implement it. If not, the practice is lost.Knowledge Management, Best Practice Transfer, Translation

Minimum permissible leakage resistance established for instrumentation systems

Mathematical formulas are used to determine if, and to what extent, an instrumentation system that has been exposed to the elements should be dried out to restore minimum permissible leakage resistance to ground. Formulas are also derived and used for an intermediate number of systems that are exposed to moisture penetration