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In contrast to prior studies examining burnout in academic employees, this paper explores how academic employee agency mitigates burnout risks in the context of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) and how this agency facilitates research productivity and influences well-being in the face of changes in learning and teaching practices.

The authors use collaborative auto-ethnography (CAE) in the higher education (HE) sector to probe how an employee productivity group supported the group's members during the pandemic.

Thematic analysis revealed four emerging themes: burnout, beneficial habits for research productivity, blocking-out-time and belonging. The authors' findings suggest that by acknowledging and legitimising employee-initiated groups, feelings of neglect can be combatted. Purposeful employee groups have the potential to create a therapeutic, safe space and, in addition to the groups' productivity intent, diminish the negative effects of a crisis on organisational effectiveness.

This paper contributes to the literature by utilising a CAE approach to provide greater insight into how academics enact agency by creating digital research workspaces, attending to the spatial dimensions of well-being especially during turbulent times.

Under this heading are published regularly abstracts of all Reports and Memoranda of the Aeronautical Research Council, Reports and Technical Memoranda of the United States National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and publications of other similar Research Bodies as issued.

Managers as Actors Those of us who manage are playing on an organisational stage every day. We enter early every morning to take up our roles, whether it is as chief executive, marketing manager, personnel adviser, production executive or any of the numerous other roles that have to be performed if work is to be done effectively.

I ENTERED the literary world late in the immediate post‐war years when changes of literary taste and loyalty were already in the air. The first broadcast I gave was, I remember, an attack upon Virginia Woolf. Her books had nurtured me as an adolescent, and I was in reaction against her influence.

In this chapter I wish to acknowledge the unintentional contributions made by Norman K. Denzin to the new Iowa School, one which championed laboratory research, or what Dr. Denzin referred to as, “Green Carpet Sociology.” The term refers to the pea-soup-colored rug that covered the new Iowa School Research Laboratory. I also wish to extend the notion of Dr. Denzin as one of the unintended fathers of the Green Carpet approach by describing my particular intellectual relationship with him and noting how he inspired me while I completed my undergraduate degree in Sociology at the University of Illinois. In particular, I review three phases of Dr. Denzin's influence: the awakening, the metamorphoses, and the benediction. All three phases relate to how Dr. Denzin inspired a commitment to the ethos of the “Green Carpet Way.”

The purpose of this paper is to call into question the most longstanding pedagogical practices in academia while analyzing their potential to foster student creativity and innovation in the classroom. While some suggestions advanced in this paper may not have the same importance in other fields and disciplines, they are highly relevant in the applied, interdisciplinary, and very fast moving field of Library and Information Science (LIS).

Positioning creativity as a teachable skill and relying on the learner-centered pedagogy of Carl Rogers, the paper presents a model that can serve as a litmus test for the creative potential of graduate-level assignments in LIS programs. The model is called “Walls,” “Doors,” and “Fences” (WalDorF); these terms refer to specific statements in graduate assignment descriptions that are necessary (“Walls”); conducive to creative expression (“Doors”); or unjustifiably restrictive (“Fences”). The paper uses a sample assignment from a “Foundations of LIS” course to illustrate the model; it also provides several examples of the WalDorF model application in other LIS courses.

Using the WalDorF model, the paper revisits and challenges some of the most common pedagogical practices in graduate LIS teaching, including the prevalence of written papers as course assignments; the implications of equating “research” with an overview of secondary literature; the need for professors’ approvals of research topics; the meaning of the “quality of writing;” the imperative of “academic” writing as opposed to other types of writing; the word/page limit; the use of standardized reference styles; the class participation requirement; and the late assignment policies, among others.

The real change in education is foundational and goes beyond cosmetic improvements. If we want to develop learning experiences that tap into students’ creative potential, the very core of our approaches needs to be scrutinized and questioned, even the centuries-old staples of academic teaching. At the end of the day, we may decide that changing things is not in the best interests of learning. However, a complete critical analytical work must be done to convince and reassure ourselves that tried-and-true methods are the best way to go. The proposed WalDorF model presents one possible frame for critical revision.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the representation of workplaces in the cinema and discuss its relevance to facilities management research.

An analysis of representation of work and the workplace in three films is made. These are Metropolis (1927), Wall Street (1987) and Clerks (1994). Cross‐case themes are then discussed.

Although the three films are of different time periods and genres a number of common themes emerge. These include level of control over the work process, alienation from the product of work and social capital gained. This may have implications for how workplaces are perceived and interpreted. Analysis of representations of the workplace in popular culture may contribute to user‐centred approaches to facilities management.

The study is limited to three films. A different choice might produce different results.

Understanding representations of the workplace in popular culture may give insights into user responses to management actions.

Although there is a research literature on the analysis of popular culture within organizational studies this has not been taken up by facilities management researchers. This paper explores the relevance of the analysis of an aspect of popular culture for facilities management.

Wireless sensor networks (WSN), as a solution for buried water pipe monitoring, face a new set of challenges compared to traditional application for above-ground infrastructure monitoring. One of the main challenges for underground WSN deployment is the limited range (less than 3 m) at which reliable wireless underground communication can be achieved using radio signal propagation through the soil. To overcome this challenge, the purpose of this paper is to investigate a new approach for wireless underground communication using acoustic signal propagation along a buried water pipe.

An acoustic communication system was developed based on the requirements of low cost (tens of pounds at most), low power supply capacity (in the order of 1 W-h) and miniature (centimetre scale) size for a wireless communication node. The developed system was further tested along a buried steel pipe in poorly graded SAND and a buried medium density polyethylene (MDPE) pipe in well graded SAND.

With predicted acoustic attenuation of 1.3 dB/m and 2.1 dB/m along the buried steel and MDPE pipes, respectively, reliable acoustic communication is possible up to 17 m for the buried steel pipe and 11 m for the buried MDPE pipe.

Although an important first step, more research is needed to validate the acoustic communication system along a wider water distribution pipe network.

This paper shows the possibility of achieving reliable wireless underground communication along a buried water pipe (especially non-metallic material ones) using low-frequency acoustic propagation along the pipe wall.

This paper proposes new methods of fault detection for fuel systems in order to improve system availability. Novel fault systems are required for environmentally friendly lean burn combustion, but can carry high risk failure modes particularly through their control valves. The purpose of the developed technology is the rapid detection of these failure modes, such as valve sticking or impending sticking, and therefore to reduce this risk. However, sensing valve state is challenging due to hot environmental temperatures, which results in a low reliability for conventional position sensing.

Starting with the business needs elicited from stakeholders, a quality functional deployment process is performed to derive sensing system requirements. The process acknowledges the difference between test-bed and in-service aerospace needs through weightings on requirements and maps these customer requirements to systems performance metrics. The design of the system must therefore optimise the sensor suite, on- and off-board signal processing and acquisition strategy.

Against this systems engineering process, two sensing strategies are outlined which illustrate the span of solutions, from conventional gas path sensing with advanced signal processing to novel non-invasive sensing concepts. While conventional sensing may be feasible within a test cell, the constraints of aerospace in-service operation may necessitate more novel alternatives. Acoustic emission (detecting very high frequency surface vibration waves) sensing technology is evaluated to provide a non-invasive, remote and high temperature tolerant solution. Through this comparison, the considerations for the end-to-end system design are highlighted to be critical to sensor deployment success in-service.

The paper provides insight into different means of addressing the important problem of monitoring faults in combustor systems in gas turbines. By casting of the complex design problem within a systems engineering framework, the outline of a toolset for solution evaluation is provided.

The paper provides three areas of significant contributions: a diversity of methods to diagnosing fuel system malfunctions by measuring changes fuel flow distributions, through novel means, and the combustor exit temperature profiles (cause and effect); the use of analytical methods to support the selection (types and quantities) and placement of sensors to ensure adequate state awareness while minimising their impact on the engine system cost and weight; and an end-to-end data processing approach to provide optimised information for the engine maintainers allowing informed decision-making.