Information governance,records management,and freedom of information: A study of local government authorities in England

In many democratic states political rhetoric gives weight to increasing public participation in and understanding of the political process; (re)-establishing public trust in government decision making; increasing transparency, openness, and accountability of public authorities; and, ultimately, improving government decision-making on behalf of citizens. Access to the public record and freedom of information (FOI) are mechanisms which help to facilitate the accountability of public authorities. Many jurisdictions have introduced legislation related to these mechanisms, and the UK government is no exception with its enactment of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in 2000. University College London (UCL) ran a research project over 12 months in 2008–2009, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. The research project examined what the impact of the UK FOIA had been on records management services in public authorities, especially local government. This article reports on some of the findings of the study. It considers how FOI compliance and records management functions are organized in local government and the role of information governance which is emerging as an umbrella for such functions. It draws some conclusions about the contributions that records management services make to the ability of local authorities to comply with the FOIA and identifies some ways in which user experience may be affected by the management of records.     

Biomechanical characterization of the Junzuki karate punch: indexes of performance

The aims of this study were: (i) to determine kinematic, kinetic, and electromyographic characteristics of Junzuki karate punch in professional karate athletes; (ii) to identify biomechanical parameters that correlate with punch force and lead to a higher punching performance; (iii) to verify the presence of muscle co-activation in the upper limb, trunk, and lower limb muscles. Data were collected from nine experienced karatekas from the Accademia Italiana Karate e Arti Marziali during the execution of the specific punch. Mean punch forces (181.2?N) delivered to the target, the range of motion of both right and left knees (1.13 and 0.82?rad) and right elbow (1.49?rad) joints, and the angles at impact (knee: 0.81 and 0.91?rad; elbow: 1.19?rad) in the sagittal plane were computed. Furthermore, the trunk rotational angular acceleration (63.1?rad^?s^?2), force related to the lower limbs (550.2 and 425.1?N), and co-activation index for the upper limb (36.1% and 34.7%), trunk (24.5% and 16%), and lower limbs (16.0% and 16.1%) muscles were evaluated bilaterally. Significant positive correlations were found between the punch force and both right and left knee flexion at the instant of impact and right and left leg force. Significant negative correlation was found between the punch force and maximum trunk angular acceleration. Significant differences (p?=?.03) in the co-activation index among the upper limb, trunk, and lower limbs muscles highlighted a rostro-caudal gradient on both body sides. This research could be of use to performers and coaches when considering training preparations.     

Resistance and support to electronic government,building a model of innovation

In several countries forces that resist e-government innovations apparently override those that support them. A first step is taken in order to identify organizational processes of resistance and support to e-government innovations. A multi-disciplinary and non-linear innovation model is proposed that is inspired by the Minnesota Innovation Research Program's Innovation Pathway-model. The proposed model grasps the whole process of adoption and implementation of e-government services. Observable indicators of resistance and support on the complete innovation pathway of electronic government are derived from the proposed model. Future research will have to conceptually refine and empirically test both model and indicators.     

Public memories and private tastes: The shifting definitions of museums and their visitors in the UK

There is no doubt that museums now operate in a distinctly different market to those of the past. Rottenberg [Rottenberg, B. (2002). Museums, information and the public sphere. Museum International, 54(4), 21-28] identifies the two major trends in museums in the latter years of the 20th century as being ‘the prevalence of a new market-orientated ideology that stressed the importance of revenue generation’ and ‘the introduction of new technologies that transfixed not only the museum profession, but also the world’. The main impact, which these and other changes have had is the revision of the museum into a setting for recreational experiences [Foley, M. and McPherson, G. (2000). Museums as leisure. International Journal of Heritage Studies 16(2), 161-174; Stephen, A. (2001). The contemporary museum and leisure: Recreation as a museum function. MuseumManagement and Curatorship 19(3), 297-308], rather than an educative one. This paper attempts to address some of these shifts in ideology and purpose.The main concern that museums face as they become more ‘recreation-focused’ is that they will lose what has long been believed to be their ‘integrity’, and thus stray from their original missions to preserve and educate, with critics suggesting that they may simply become arenas for pleasure rather than education.This paper concludes that in future, it seems inevitable that museums will become ‘hybrid places, combining recreation and learning, allowing visitors diversions from the intense stimuli of strolling through galleries and viewing multitudinous objects’ [Kotler, N. (2004). New ways of experiencing culture: the role of museums and marketing implications. Museum Management and Curatorship, 19(4), 417-425], with entertainment and education working together to fulfil the museum's mission. Museums need not be afraid of using entertainment, but should embrace it as a tool for learning, potentially attracting a wider and more diversified public.     

The role of cognitive competence in the art museum experience

The gap between the potential for works of art in museums to offer unique experiences, and the actual outcomes of visitor encounters, highlights the importance of the cultural competence of museum visitors. However, when applied to museum visiting, cultural competence should be primarily treated as perceptual and cognitive—one needs to exercise the perceptual activities that works of art require in order for a museum visit to register as some form of satisfying experience. The main part of the paper is devoted to discussion of some aspects of the perceptual basis of cultural competence required for perception of works of art—the problem of attention, the misplaced dichotomy of ‘museum viewing’ versus ‘everyday perception’, and the problem of defining the current cognitive style. It is argued that one of the greatest challenges to the museological profession is the problem of how to engage the complex issues of perception, vision and subjective experience more properly in the museological discourse, so that they can be reflected in theories of presentation and interpretation.     

The 2005 Benjamin Franklin medal in physics presented to Yoichiro Nambu

The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, awarded the 2005 Benjamin Franklin medal in physics to Yoichiro Nambu for his seminal contributions which introduced the modern concept of broken symmetry to elementary particle physics, for his invention of the particle property called color which is the key to quark confinement, and for his ground-breaking work on the theory of string-like elementary particles.     

Characterizing the technology firm: An exploratory study

Technology firms occupy a central position in modern economies. They drive economic growth, productivity gains and have created new industries and innovative products.Many will agree that technology firms are distinguished from others in their emphasis on technological activities. Since this observation is too general, researchers suggested a variety of specific criteria and definitions. A number of definitions of technology firms appear in the literature but many are arbitrary and simplistic and none gained wide acceptance. Similarly, the number of characteristics suggested is large, reflecting a variety of perspectives and interests. In this case too no agreement exists as to which are the important ones. Also, many seem to be interrelated capturing different aspects of the same underlying concepts.This paper is concerned with the issue of definition and classification of technology firms. We demonstrate the usefulness of a different approach to the definition and classification problem. We rely on executives’ evaluations of their firms’ technology profile and level. An analysis of these evaluations reveals the underlying dimensions the executives used in making their judgments. We regard the dimensions we uncover as capturing the essence of technology firms and use them to classify the firms we study. The specific characteristics the executives used to evaluate their firms were derived from a systematic scan of the literature. Thus, the list represents the set of characteristics early researchers viewed as describing and defining technology firms. The connection to early work enhances our findings’ validity and lends some credence to our belief that the three dimensions we uncover (R&D activities which are closely associated with a set of organizational elements and market conditions, product strategy, and corporate culture) can be used by others to define technology firms and classify firms according to their technology level. In our study we use these three dimensions to classify the firms studied. We show that the commonly used practice of classifying firms as high and low technology according to the industry to which they belong is flawed.Our goal in this study is not to offer a “new” or “better” definition and characterization of technology firms or to offer the “best” approach to the generation of the classification criteria. Rather, we demonstrate here the usefulness of a different approach to the problem. While our approach does suffer from limitations it has important advantages. We hope future studies will confirm not only the usefulness of our approach but also the general applicability of the specific criteria we identify in this study.     

Evaluation of the Agricultural Information Service (AIS) in Lesotho

This paper presents findings of a study conducted to evaluate the extent to which the Agricultural Information Service (AIS) is providing agricultural information services to farmers in Maseru district, Lesotho.     

Limiting GPR in a two-layer soil model via genetic algorithms

In this paper, an optimum grounding grid that provides the conditions of GPR<E_touch and minimum cost in the structures of two-layer soil model is designed and the length of total conductor and the quantity of ground rod are calculated via Genetic Algorithms (GA). A new approach is presented for the calculation of total conductor length. At the same time, the subject regarding in which layer the ground conductors and rods that form the grounding grid in a substation are to be placed in two-layer soil is analysed using GA. With this as the goal, the depth of optimum grid burial is determined. Our study is compared with the design study for a two-layer soil model in the literature. As a result, the high performance of optimum grid design that is achieved using GA is emphasized by varied applications.     

Simulation of small humanoid robots for soccer domain

In this paper, we illustrate the development of a realistic simulation of a humanoid robot model in a virtual environment using USARSim (Urban Search and Rescue Simulator). USARSim provides an accurate 3D simulation of a virtual environment with a detailed rendering and a realistic physics. Moreover, USARSim allows users to observe the virtual environment from different views. One of these is the egocentric view, which can simulate the camera mounted on the robot. The small humanoid robot presented in this work is Robovie-M, developed by VStone Ltd. (Japan). This robot is used by our team Artisti in the RobotCup soccer competitions.Reported experiments compare the behaviors of a real robot and of its virtual model, when controlled by the same control software to asses the possibility to faithfully simulate a robot with 22 degrees of freedom in USARSim. Moreover, we discuss the possibility to close the control loop of the robot in simulation, by simulating also the main robot sensor, i.e. the camera.The experiments show that USARSim, despite being a simple simulator based on a low cost computer game, provides an accurate enough simulation of the physics and a realistic rendering of the 3D scene enabling a faithful simulation of a small humanoid robot at low cost. Thus, one can entirely test the robot software modules in the simulation (namely: the motion control modules, the vision system modules and, by closing the robot control loop in simulation, the behavior and behavior-selection modules).