Information Systems in the Industrial Service Business: Analyzing Unaddressed Requirements in a Multiple Case Study

The manufacturing industry is subject to structural economic change reflected in the constantly rising fraction of industrial services. Being confronted with the strategic challenge to reduce operating costs while at the same time meeting ever-increasing industrial service demands, manufacturing firms struggle to find the appropriate information technology (IT) solution for planning and execution. Despite the existence of a parsimonious set of standardization efforts addressing product-related services, manufacturing firms have not reached a common understanding of the product-service system and the corresponding business processes and IT systems. This paper addresses this need by exploring key requirements for information systems (IS) support of product-service systems based on a multiple case study approach. For a critical reflection we confronted those requirements with scientific and managerial frameworks which are derived from a structured literature review. We contribute to the theoretical body of knowledge by outlining six highly relevant requirements for the under-researched field of back stage service systems. Based on the explored requirements, managerial practitioners are able to draw a preliminary roadmap that prioritizes their investments according to firm specific needs

Fostering Efficiency in Information Systems Support for Product-Service Systems in the Manufacturing Industry

The ongoing shift towards stronger service orientation is leading to a rising number of industrial services offered in the manufacturing industry. In the attempt to fulfill ever-increasing service demands while at the same time reducing operating costs, manufacturing firms search for appropriate information technology (IT) solution for planning and execution. The industry has not yet reached a common understanding of product-service systems and the corresponding processes and IT systems. In order to holistically support such broad design and transformation tasks, we develop a maturity model capturing the key requirements for the information systems (IS) support of product-service systems based on a multiple case study. For a critical reflection on the extant literature, we compared those requirements with scientifically recognized maturity models and standard specifications. Being an integral part of the design science research approach, the model evaluation is organized in accordance with approved evaluation perspectives

HI absorption in 3C 49 and 3C 268.3. Probing the environment of Compact Steep Spectrum and GHz Peaked Spectrum sources

We present and discuss European VLBI Network UHF band spectral line observations, made to localise the redshifted 21cm HI absorption known to occur in the subgalactic sized compact steep spectrum galaxies 3C 49 and 3C 268.3. We have detected HI absorption towards the western radio lobe of 3C 49 and the northern lobe of 3C 268.3. However, we cannot rule out the presence of similar amounts of HI towards the opposite and much fainter lobes. The radio lobes with detected HI absorption (1) are brighter and closer to the core than the opposite lobes; (2) are depolarized; and (3) are associated with optical emission line gas. The association between the HI absorption and the emission line gas, supports the hypothesis that the HI absorption is produced in the atomic cores of the emission line clouds. Our results are consistent with a picture in which compact steep spectrum sources interact with clouds of dense gas as they propagate through their host galaxy. We suggest that the asymmetries in the radio and optical emission can be due to interaction of a two sided radio source with an asymmetric distribution of dense clouds in their environment.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures. Accepted in A&

GALEX-SDSS Catalogs for Statistical Studies

We present a detailed study of the Galaxy Evolution Explorer's photometric catalogs with special focus on the statistical properties of the All-sky and Medium Imaging Surveys. We introduce the concept of primaries to resolve the issue of multiple detections and follow a geometric approach to define clean catalogs with well-understood selection functions. We cross-identify the GALEX sources (GR2+3) with Sloan Digital Sky Survey (DR6) observations, which indirectly provides an invaluable insight about the astrometric model of the UV sources and allows us to revise the band merging strategy. We derive the formal description of the GALEX footprints as well as their intersections with the SDSS coverage along with analytic calculations of their areal coverage. The crossmatch catalogs are made available for the public. We conclude by illustrating the implementation of typical selection criteria in SQL for catalog subsets geared toward statistical analyses, e.g., correlation and luminosity function studies.Comment: 12 pages, 15 figures, accepted to Ap

Resilin and chitinous cuticle form a composite structure for energy storage in jumping by froghopper insects

RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are.Abstract Background Many insects jump by storing and releasing energy in elastic structures within their bodies. This allows them to release large amounts of energy in a very short time to jump at very high speeds. The fastest of the insect jumpers, the froghopper, uses a catapult-like elastic mechanism to achieve their jumping prowess in which energy, generated by the slow contraction of muscles, is released suddenly to power rapid and synchronous movements of the hind legs. How is this energy stored? Results The hind coxae of the froghopper are linked to the hinges of the ipsilateral hind wings by pleural arches, complex bow-shaped internal skeletal structures. They are built of chitinous cuticle and the rubber-like protein, resilin, which fluoresces bright blue when illuminated with ultra-violet light. The ventral and posterior end of this fluorescent region forms the thoracic part of the pivot with a hind coxa. No other structures in the thorax or hind legs show this blue fluorescence and it is not found in larvae which do not jump. Stimulating one trochanteral depressor muscle in a pattern that simulates its normal action, results in a distortion and forward movement of the posterior part of a pleural arch by 40 μm, but in natural jumping, the movement is at least 100 μm. Conclusion Calculations showed that the resilin itself could only store 1% to 2% of the energy required for jumping. The stiffer cuticular parts of the pleural arches could, however, easily meet all the energy storage needs. The composite structure therefore, combines the stiffness of the chitinous cuticle with the elasticity of resilin. Muscle contractions bend the chitinous cuticle with little deformation and therefore, store the energy needed for jumping, while the resilin rapidly returns its stored energy and thus restores the body to its original shape after a jump and allows repeated jumping

Seasonal and annual fluxes of nutrients and organic matter from large rivers to the Arctic Ocean and surrounding seas

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2011. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Springer for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Estuaries and Coasts 35 (2012): 369-382, doi:10.1007/s12237-011-9386-6.River inputs of nutrients and organic matter impact the biogeochemistry of arctic estuaries and the Arctic Ocean as a whole, yet there is considerable uncertainty about the magnitude of fluvial fluxes at the pan-arctic scale. Samples from the six largest arctic rivers, with a combined watershed area of 11.3 x 106 km2, have revealed strong seasonal variations in constituent concentrations and fluxes within rivers as well as large differences among the rivers. Specifically, we investigate fluxes of dissolved organic carbon, dissolved organic nitrogen, total dissolved phosphorus, dissolved inorganic nitrogen, nitrate, and silica. This is the first time that seasonal and annual constituent fluxes have been determined using consistent sampling and analytical methods at the pan arctic scale, and consequently provide the best available estimates for constituent flux from land to the Arctic Ocean and surrounding seas. Given the large inputs of river water to the relatively small Arctic Ocean, and the dramatic impacts that climate change is having in the Arctic, it is particularly urgent that we establish the contemporary river fluxes so that we will be able to detect future changes and evaluate the impact of the changes on the biogeochemistry of the receiving coastal and ocean systems.This work was supported by the National Science Foundation through grants OPP-0229302, OPP-0519840, OPP-0732522, and OPP-0732944. Additional support was provided by the U. S. Geological Survey (Yukon River) and the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs (Mackenzie River)

Does Kin Recognition and Sib-Mating Avoidance Limit the Risk of Genetic Incompatibility in a Parasitic Wasp?

Background: When some combinations of maternal and paternal alleles have a detrimental effect on offspring fitness, females should be able to choose mates on the basis of their genetic compatibility. In numerous Hymenoptera, the sex of an individual depends of the allelic combination at a specific locus (single-locus Complementary Sex Determination), and in most of these species individuals that are homozygous at this sexual locus develop into diploid males with zero fitness. Methods and Findings: In this paper, we tested the hypothesis of genetic incompatibility avoidance by investigating sibmating avoidance in the solitary wasp parasitoid, Venturia canescens. In the context of mate choice we show, for the first time in a non-social hymenopteran species, that females can avoid mating with their brothers through kin recognition. In ‘‘no-choice’ ’ tests, the probability a female will mate with an unrelated male is twice as high as the chance of her mating with her brothers. In contrast, in choice tests in small test arenas, no kin discrimination effect was observed. Further experiments with male extracts demonstrate that chemical cues emanating from related males influence the acceptance rate of unrelated males. Conclusions: Our results are compatible with the genetic incompatibility hypothesis. They suggest that the female wasps recognize sibs on the basis of a chemical signature carried or emitted by males possibly using a ‘‘self-referent phenotyp

Both Geography and Ecology Contribute to Mating Isolation in Guppies

Local adaptation to different environments can promote mating isolation – either as an incidental by-product of trait divergence, or as a result of selection to avoid maladaptive mating. Numerous recent empirical examples point to the common influence of divergent natural selection on speciation based largely on evidence of strong pre-mating isolation between populations from different habitat types. Accumulating evidence for natural selection's influence on speciation is therefore no longer a challenge. The difficulty, rather, is in determining the mechanisms involved in the progress of adaptive divergence to speciation once barriers to gene flow are already present. Here, we present results of both laboratory and field experiments with Trinidadian guppies (Poecilia reticulata) from different environments, who do not show complete reproductive isolation despite adaptive divergence. We investigate patterns of mating isolation between populations that do and do not exchange migrants and show evidence for both by-product and reinforcement mechanisms depending on female ecology. Specifically, low-predation females discriminate against all high-predation males thus implying a by-product mechanism, whereas high-predation females only discriminate against low-predation males from further upstream in the same river, implying selection to avoid maladaptive mating. Our study thus confirms that mechanisms of adaptive speciation are not necessarily mutually exclusive and uncovers the complex ecology-geography interactions that underlie the evolution of mating isolation in nature

The CYCLIN-A CYCA1;2/TAM Is Required for the Meiosis I to Meiosis II Transition and Cooperates with OSD1 for the Prophase to First Meiotic Division Transition

Meiosis halves the chromosome number because its two divisions follow a single round of DNA replication. This process involves two cell transitions, the transition from prophase to the first meiotic division (meiosis I) and the unique meiosis I to meiosis II transition. We show here that the A-type cyclin CYCA1;2/TAM plays a major role in both transitions in Arabidopsis. A series of tam mutants failed to enter meiosis II and thus produced diploid spores and functional diploid gametes. These diploid gametes had a recombined genotype produced through the single meiosis I division. In addition, by combining the tam-2 mutation with AtSpo11-1 and Atrec8, we obtained plants producing diploid gametes through a mitotic-like division that were genetically identical to their parents. Thus tam alleles displayed phenotypes very similar to that of the previously described osd1 mutant. Combining tam and osd1 mutations leads to a failure in the prophase to meiosis I transition during male meiosis and to the production of tetraploid spores and gametes. This suggests that TAM and OSD1 are involved in the control of both meiotic transitions