bNAber: database of broadly neutralizing HIV antibodies.

The discovery of broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) has provided an enormous impetus to the HIV vaccine research and to entire immunology. The bNAber database at http://bNAber.org provides open, user-friendly access to detailed data on the rapidly growing list of HIV bNAbs, including neutralization profiles, sequences and three-dimensional structures (when available). It also provides an extensive list of visualization and analysis tools, such as heatmaps to analyse neutralization data as well as structure and sequence viewers to correlate bNAbs properties with structural and sequence features of individual antibodies. The goal of the bNAber database is to enable researchers in this field to easily compare and analyse available information on bNAbs thereby supporting efforts to design an effective vaccine for HIV/AIDS. The bNAber database not only provides easy access to data that currently is scattered in the Supplementary Materials sections of individual papers, but also contributes to the development of general standards of data that have to be presented with the discovery of new bNAbs and a universal mechanism of how such data can be shared

ARE USERS THE NEXT ENTREPRENEURS? A CASE STUDY ON THE VIDEO GAME INDUSTRY.

Knowledge based-entrepreneurial firms struggle to survive because they must be simultaneously entrepreneurial on several dimensions. Can those firms rely on users to achieve sufficient efficiency in some entrepreneurial dimensions? To answer this question we drew on the entrepreneurial theories of the firm and on the users/innovator literature. In this work we present the plural entrepreneurship framework and then with a longitudinal case study of a mobile phone video-game firm which relies on users to improve their games we show that the user can significantly enhance the efficiency of the innovation of the firm. We also show that the other important dimensions of the firm behavior (organization, business model) can be significantly improved by the implication of users.Plural entrepreneurship; management of innovation; Video-game case study.

EcoGIS – GIS tools for ecosystem approaches to fisheries management

Executive Summary: The EcoGIS project was launched in September 2004 to investigate how Geographic Information Systems (GIS), marine data, and custom analysis tools can better enable fisheries scientists and managers to adopt Ecosystem Approaches to Fisheries Management (EAFM). EcoGIS is a collaborative effort between NOAA’s National Ocean Service (NOS) and National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), and four regional Fishery Management Councils. The project has focused on four priority areas: Fishing Catch and Effort Analysis, Area Characterization, Bycatch Analysis, and Habitat Interactions. Of these four functional areas, the project team first focused on developing a working prototype for catch and effort analysis: the Fishery Mapper Tool. This ArcGIS extension creates time-and-area summarized maps of fishing catch and effort from logbook, observer, or fishery-independent survey data sets. Source data may come from Oracle, Microsoft Access, or other file formats. Feedback from beta-testers of the Fishery Mapper was used to debug the prototype, enhance performance, and add features. This report describes the four priority functional areas, the development of the Fishery Mapper tool, and several themes that emerged through the parallel evolution of the EcoGIS project, the concept and implementation of the broader field of Ecosystem Approaches to Management (EAM), data management practices, and other EAM toolsets. In addition, a set of six succinct recommendations are proposed on page 29. One major conclusion from this work is that there is no single “super-tool” to enable Ecosystem Approaches to Management; as such, tools should be developed for specific purposes with attention given to interoperability and automation. Future work should be coordinated with other GIS development projects in order to provide “value added” and minimize duplication of efforts. In addition to custom tools, the development of cross-cutting Regional Ecosystem Spatial Databases will enable access to quality data to support the analyses required by EAM. GIS tools will be useful in developing Integrated Ecosystem Assessments (IEAs) and providing pre- and post-processing capabilities for spatially-explicit ecosystem models. Continued funding will enable the EcoGIS project to develop GIS tools that are immediately applicable to today’s needs. These tools will enable simplified and efficient data query, the ability to visualize data over time, and ways to synthesize multidimensional data from diverse sources. These capabilities will provide new information for analyzing issues from an ecosystem perspective, which will ultimately result in better understanding of fisheries and better support for decision-making. (PDF file contains 45 pages.

A matter of time: phases of customer co-creation community participation and their impact on customer behavior

Despite the growing relevance of co-creating customer communities only little scientific evidence is available on their impact on transactional behavior of participants. Previous research has mostly used self-reported data or distinguished only between during and pre-community phases obtaining mixed results. However, the author proposes that co-creating community activity takes place in five distinguishable phases and changes in transactional behavior are limited to certain phases. Using 33 months of transactional data of a Dutch online auction provider a study was conducted covering all five phases of the community co-creation process from community planning over community set-up, co-development and co-testing to post-launch. The overall results indicate mixed effects of community participation on the different transactional variables during the co-creation process. Community participation had positive effects on auctions listing behavior at the community set-up, co-development and post-launch phases, whereby the number of auctions listed peaked during the community set-up phase. These results suggest that the impact on transactional behavior differs between co-creation phases and different psychological mechanism limited to certain phases might trigger the respective changes.NSBE - UN

Failure factors of technological driven start-ups: datris solutions case study

Dissertação de mestrado em International BusinessThis internship report reflects the status and evolution of the technological driven start-up, Datris Solutions, which is a start-up focused on exploring opportunities in the open data and membership management applications sectors. Datris was created in 2015 and presently, in 2018 has yet to release a finished product that can be used to generate revenue. Continuous issues afflict the development of the start-up’s team and products which resulted in the slow progress and evolution of the two. In an attempt to pump fresh ideas and motivation into the current start-up’s team members, additional personal was hired, in this case a marketing research intern to assist the team in every marketing related effort with special focus for marketing research. This created the adequate scenery for an internship in the area of International Business since it allowed a look into the development and evolution of a young technological driven startup in a foreign country. The knowledge gained during the regular theoretical modules of the International Business masters classes provided the necessary tools to assess an international business/start-up health and the insight to provide advice on what would be the best suggestions to increase the start-up’s productivity, development and how to develop an accurate market research. With that in mind, this internship report will focus on assessing the current factors that are inhibiting the development and growth potential of technological driven start-ups. By identifying, analysing and comparing them to the literature research findings regarding failure factors that inhibit technological start-up development, we hope to contribute to the current literature. In addition, we will suggest an action plan to reduce the influence of these negative factors to ensure a better survivability rate for the start-up for the years to come.Este relatório de estágio reflete o status e a evolução da start-up tecnologicamente orientada, Datris Solutions, que é uma start-up focada na exploração de oportunidades nos setores de aplicativos abertos de gerenciamento de dados e de membros. A Datris foi criada em 2015 e atualmente, em 2018, ainda não lançou um produto acabado que pode ser usado para gerar receita. Problemas contínuos afligem o desenvolvimento da equipa e dos produtos da startup, que resultaram no lento progresso e evolução dos dois. Na tentativa de impulsionar novas ideias e motivação para os atuais membros da equipa da start-up, foi contratado um membro adicional, neste caso um estagiário de marketing para auxiliar a equipa em todos os esforços relacionados ao marketing com foco especial para pesquisa de marketing. Isso criou o cenário adequado para um estágio na área de Negócios Internacionais, uma vez que permitiu analisar o desenvolvimento e a evolução de uma jovem startup tecnológica num país estrangeiro. Os conhecimentos adquiridos durante os módulos teóricos regulares das aulas de Mestrado em Negócios Internacionais forneceram as ferramentas necessárias para avaliar a saúde de uma empresa internacional / start-up e a visão para fornecer conselhos sobre quais seriam as melhores sugestões para aumentar a produtividade, desenvolvimento e desenvolvimento. e como desenvolver uma pesquisa de mercado precisa. Com isso em mente, este relatório de estágio será concentrado na avaliação dos fatores atuais que estão limitando o desenvolvimento e o potencial de crescimento de startups tecnologicamente orientadas. Ao identificá-los, analisá-los e compará-los com os o que nos diz a pesquisa bibliográfica sobre a falta de start-up tecnológico, esperamos contribuir para a literatura atual. Além disso, sugeriremos um plano de ação para reduzir a influência dos fatores negativos para garantir uma melhor taxa de sobrevivência para o início dos próximos anos

Understanding Extended Testing Feedback

The independent (“indie”) game is a common category of video games, referring generally to those that are developed by individuals or small teams. When creating new games, most developers recruit a testing team made up of users/gamers who are not in the immediate design team and generate feedback about the game. The main objective of this study is to explore a qualitative way for categorising and filtering online reviews through social media platforms to help indie developers process user feedback efficiently during the extended game testing phase. This research adopts a qualitative methodology to develop in-depth and high-quality results based on case studies of Manifold Garden (William Chyr Studio, 2019) and No Man’s Sky (Hello Games, 2016). It includes qualitative content analysis based on Grabarczyk and Aarseth’s (2018) ontological meta-model (2018). A comparative investigation is also used to evaluate two key media platforms: YouTube and Steam. The results indicate that Steam users’ reviews focused on fundamental aspects of the game operation and game mechanics. In contrast, reviews on YouTube were related to the visual performance of games. The researcher observed an understanding gap between reviewers and developers, which means not all reviewers’ advice had been accepted. In conclusion, indie developers could consider platform types when categorising and targeting user feedback

Improving The Reliability And Cost-Effectiveness Of Usability Inspection Method For Mobile Application With Integrated Inspection Framework

Permintaan berterusan bagi perkhidmatan dan aplikasi mudah alih yang inovatif telah mewujudkan satu peluang ekonomi baru dalam perniagaan pembangunan aplikasi. The on-going demand for innovative mobile services and applications has created a whole new economic opportunity in the business of app development