Biosynthesis and Characterization of Silver Nanoparticles by Aspergillus Species

Currently, researchers turn to natural processes such as using biological microorganisms in order to develop reliable and ecofriendly methods for the synthesis of metallic nanoparticles. In this study, we have investigated extracellular biosynthesis of silver nanoparticles using four Aspergillus species including A. fumigatus, A. clavatus, A. niger, and A. flavus. We have also analyzed nitrate reductase activity in the studied species in order to determine the probable role of this enzyme in the biosynthesis of silver nanoparticles. The formation of silver nanoparticles in the cell filtrates was confirmed by the passage of laser light, change in the color of cell filtrates, absorption peak at 430 nm in UV-Vis spectra, and atomic force microscopy (AFM). There was a logical relationship between the efficiencies of studied Aspergillus species in the production of silver nanoparticles and their nitrate reductase activity. A. fumigatus as the most efficient species showed the highest nitrate reductase activity among the studied species while A. flavus exhibited the lowest capacity in the biosynthesis of silver nanoparticles which was in accord with its low nitrate reductase activity. The present study showed that Aspergillus species had potential for the biosynthesis of silver nanoparticles depending on their nitrate reductase activity

A Reflection on the Interrelations Between Business Process Management and Requirements Engineering with an Agility Perspective

The paper points out some aspects of the interrelations between business process management, agility, flexibility, and requirements engineering. It shows some possibilities for agile development of business processes and for the development of flexible processes for changing requirements

Reasoning with Key Performance Indicators

Part 3: Business ModelingInternational audienceBusiness organizations continuously monitor their environments, looking out for opportunities and threats that may help/hinder the fulfilment of their objectives. We are interested in strategic business models that support such governance activities. In this paper, we focus on the concept of composite indicator and show how it can be used as basic building block for strategic business models that support evaluation and decision-making. The main results of this paper include techniques and algorithms for deriving values for composite indicators, when the relationship between a composite indicator and its component indicators cannot be fully described using well-defined mathematical functions. Evaluation of our proposal includes an implemented Eclipse-based prototype tool supporting these techniques and two ongoing case studies

An aspect-oriented framework for business process improvement

Recently, many organizations invested in Business Process Management Systems (BPMSs) in order to automate and monitor their processes. Business Activity Monitoring is one of the essential modules of a BPMS as it provides the core monitoring capabilities. Although the natural step after process monitoring is process improvement, most of the existing systems do not provide the means to help users with the improvement step. In this paper, we address this issue by proposing an aspect-oriented framework that allows the impact of changes to business processes to be explored with what-if scenarios based on the most appropriate process redesign patterns among several possibilities. As the four cornerstones of a BPMS are process, goal, performance and validation views, these views need to be aligned automatically by any approach that intends to support automated improvement of business processes. Our framework therefore provides means to reflect process changes also in the other views of the business process. A health care case study presented as a proof of concept suggests that this novel approach is feasible

Towards a Goal-Driven Approach for Business Process Improvement Using Process-Oriented Data Warehouse

An emerging approach for business process analysis is to use business intelligence practices by employing data warehouse and decision-making techniques. However, little work has been done on developing core methods and tools to guide process analysis and improvement. Our research addresses this issue by introducing a goal-driven approach for business process improvement using process warehouse. In this paper, we present our three step method and its evaluation through an empirical study. The results showed that the impact of applying our method for process improvement has been perceived positively