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Introduction [special issue: Critical realism in information systems research]
Adaption of the ex vivo mycobacterial growth inhibition assay for use with murine lung cells.
In the absence of a correlate(s) of protection against human tuberculosis and a validated animal model of the disease, tools to facilitate vaccine development must be identified. We present an optimised ex vivo mycobacterial growth inhibition assay (MGIA) to assess the ability of host cells within the lung to inhibit mycobacterial growth, including Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) and Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) Erdman. Growth of BCG was reduced by 0.39, 0.96 and 0.73 log10 CFU following subcutaneous (s.c.) BCG, intranasal (i.n.) BCG, or BCG s.c. + mucosal boost, respectively, versus naïve mice. Comparatively, a 0.49 (s.c.), 0.60 (i.n.) and 0.81 (s.c. + mucosal boost) log10 reduction in MTB CFU was found. A BCG growth inhibitor, 2-thiophenecarboxylic acid hydrazide (TCH), was used to prevent quantification of residual BCG from i.n. immunisation and allow accurate MTB quantification. Using TCH, a further 0.58 log10 reduction in MTB CFU was revealed in the i.n. group. In combination with existing methods, the ex vivo lung MGIA may represent an important tool for analysis of vaccine efficacy and the immune mechanisms associated with vaccination in the organ primarily affected by MTB disease
South Africa's business process outsourcing services sector: Lessons for Western-based client firms
Since 2008, South Africa has become one of the world's upcoming offshore destinations for business process outsourcing (BPO), a market estimated to be worth $US 182 billion globally by 2013. Western-based client firms evaluating South Africa as a BPO destination must consider the country's relative value against alternative locations. Client firms also have a number of engagement models from which to choose, inclucling outsourcing, erecting a captive centre, or acquiring an existing BPO business. The research finds that, for the UK, US, and Australian client companies in this study, South Africa's value proposition is not just based on costs as other locations are often cheaper. South Africa's value proposition is about overall economic value, high quality service and staff, strong cultural compatibility, and a favourable time zone. The findings reveal that South Africa complements the global portfolio for Western-based client firms that already have BPO centres in Inclia, the Philippines, and Eastern Europe. Moreover, whether client firms build or buy services from South Africa, the research identifies clistinctive risks that need to be mitigated by investing in and effectively governing the business processes performed offshore. Finally, from the case study research, this article identifies management lessons for leveraging South Africa's identifiable BPO service advantage
A Method to Improve the Early Stages of the Robotic Process Automation Lifecycle
The robotic automation of processes is of much interest to
organizations. A common use case is to automate the repetitive manual
tasks (or processes) that are currently done by back-office staff
through some information system (IS). The lifecycle of any Robotic Process
Automation (RPA) project starts with the analysis of the process
to automate. This is a very time-consuming phase, which in practical
settings often relies on the study of process documentation. Such documentation
is typically incomplete or inaccurate, e.g., some documented
cases never occur, occurring cases are not documented, or documented
cases differ from reality. To deploy robots in a production environment
that are designed on such a shaky basis entails a high risk. This paper
describes and evaluates a new proposal for the early stages of an RPA
project: the analysis of a process and its subsequent design. The idea is to
leverage the knowledge of back-office staff, which starts by monitoring
them in a non-invasive manner. This is done through a screen-mousekey-
logger, i.e., a sequence of images, mouse actions, and key actions
are stored along with their timestamps. The log which is obtained in
this way is transformed into a UI log through image-analysis techniques
(e.g., fingerprinting or OCR) and then transformed into a process model
by the use of process discovery algorithms. We evaluated this method for
two real-life, industrial cases. The evaluation shows clear and substantial
benefits in terms of accuracy and speed. This paper presents the method,
along with a number of limitations that need to be addressed such that
it can be applied in wider contexts.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2016-76956-C3-2-
Towards an OpenSource Logger for the Analysis of RPA Projects
Process automation typically begins with the observation of
humans conducting the tasks that will be eventually automated. Sim ilarly, successful RPA projects require a prior analysis of the undergo ing processes which are being executed by humans. The process of col lecting this type of information is known as user interface (UI) logging
since it records the interaction against a UI. Main RPA platforms (e.g.,
Blueprism and UIPath) incorporate functionalities that allow the record ing of these UI interactions. However, the records that these platforms
generate lack some functionalities that large-scale RPA projects require.
Besides, they are only understandable by the proper RPA platforms.
This paper presents an extensible and multi-platform OpenSource UI
logger that generate UI logs in a standard format. This system collects
information from all the computers it is running on and sends it to a
central server for its processing. Treatment of the collected information
will allow the creation of an enriched UI log which can be used, among
others purposes, for smart process analysis, machine learning training,
the creation of RPA robots, or, being more general, for task mining .Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2016-76956-C3-2-R (POLOLAS)Junta de Andalucía CEI-12-TIC021Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnol´ogico Industrial (CDTI) P011-19/E0
Characterization of inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate- and inositol 1,3,4,5-tetrakisphosphate-binding sites in rat cerebellum
UK Housing Market: Time Series Processes with Independent and Identically Distributed Residuals
The paper examines whether a univariate data generating process can be identified which explains the data by having residuals that are independent and identically distributed, as verified by the BDS test. The stationary first differenced natural log quarterly house price index is regressed, initially with a constant variance and then with a conditional variance. The only regression function that produces independent and identically distributed standardised residuals is a mean process based on a pure random walk format with Exponential GARCH in mean for the conditional variance. There is an indication of an asymmetric volatility feedback effect but higher frequency data is required to confirm this. There could be scope for forecasting the index but this is tempered by the reduction in the power of the BDS test if there is a non-linear conditional variance process
Respecting the deal: how to manage co-opetitive actors in open innovation
Platforms like E-bay allow product seekers and providers to meet and exchange goods. On the same way in open innovation, as defined by Chesbrough, an enterprise can collect ideas from outside the company. But on E-bay, the seeker can return the product if it does not correspond to the expectations, since E-bay is the third-party actor in charge of assuring that the agreement between seekers and providers will be respected. So who does provide the same service for what concerns open innovation, where specifications might not fully defined? In this paper we shall describe the business model of an organizational structure to support the elicitation and respect of agreements between actors, who have conflicting interests but that gain from cooperating together. The concepts of the model will be illustrated to derive a set of propositions and a simple example will illustrate one of its possible instantiations. The description of our first evaluation phase shall find place at the end
Towards a Taxonomy of Cognitive RPA Components
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a discipline that is
increasingly growing hand in hand with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and
Machine Learning enabling the so-called cognitive automation. In such
context, the existing RPA platforms that include AI-based solutions clas sify their components, i.e. constituting part of a robot that performs a
set of actions, in a way that seems to obey market or business deci sions instead of common-sense rules. To be more precise, components
that present similar functionality are identified with different names and
grouped in different ways depending on the platform that provides the
components. Therefore, the analysis of different cognitive RPA platforms
to check their suitability for facing a specific need is typically a time consuming and error-prone task. To overcome this problem and to pro vide users with support in the development of an RPA project, this
paper proposes a method for the systematic construction of a taxonomy
of cognitive RPA components. Moreover, such a method is applied over
components that solve selected real-world use cases from the industry
obtaining promising resultsMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2016-76956-C3-2-RJunta de Andalucía CEI-12-TIC021Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnológico Industrial P011-19/E0
Tailoring precursors for deposition:synthesis structure and thermal studies of cyclopentadienyl copper(I) isocyanide complexes
We report here the synthesis and
characterization of a family of copper(I) metal precursors based around
cyclopentadienyl and isocyanide ligands. The molecular structures
of several cyclopentadienylcopper(I) isocyanide complexes have been
unambiguously determined by single-crystal X-ray diffraction analysis.
Thermogravimetric analysis of the complexes highlighted the isopropyl
isocyanide complex [(η<sup>5</sup>-C<sub>5</sub>H<sub>5</sub>)Cu(CN<sup>i</sup>Pr)] (<b>2a</b>) and the <i>tert</i>-butyl isocyanide complex [(η<sup>5</sup>-C<sub>5</sub>H<sub>5</sub>)Cu(CN<sup>t</sup>Bu)] (<b>2b</b>) as possible copper
metal chemical vapor deposition (CVD) precursors. Further modification
of the precursors with variation of the substituents on the cyclopentadienyl
ligand system (varying between H, Me, Et, and <sup>i</sup>Pr) has
allowed the affect that these changes would have on features such
as stability, volatility, and decomposition to be investigated. As
part of this study, the vapor pressures of the complexes <b>2b</b>, [(η<sup>5</sup>-MeC<sub>5</sub>H<sub>4</sub>)Cu(CN<sup>t</sup>Bu)] (<b>3b</b>), [(η<sup>5</sup>-EtC<sub>5</sub>H<sub>4</sub>)Cu(CN<sup>t</sup>Bu)] (<b>4b</b>), and [(η<sup>5</sup>-<sup>i</sup>PrC<sub>5</sub>H<sub>4</sub>)Cu(CN<sup>t</sup>Bu)] (<b>5b</b>) over a 40–65 °C temperature range
have been determined. Low-pressure chemical vapor deposition (LP-CVD)
was employed using precursors <b>2a</b> and <b>2b</b> to
synthesize thin films of metallic copper on silicon, gold, and platinum
substrates under a H<sub>2</sub> atmosphere. Analysis of the thin
films deposited onto both silicon and gold substrates at substrate
temperatures of 180 and 300 °C by scanning electron microscopy
and atomic force microscopy reveals temperature-dependent growth features:
Films grown at 300 °C are continuous and pinhole-free, whereas
films grown at 180 °C consist of highly crystalline nanoparticles.
In contrast, deposition onto platinum substrates at 180 °C shows
a high degree of surface coverage with the formation of high-density,
continuous, and pinhole-free thin films. Powder X-ray diffraction
and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) both show the films to
be high-purity metallic copper
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