Contract Management and contract follow up

The object of this paper is to provide some basic information about the industrial service contracts, and present some ideas about how the management of these contracts may be improved. A long-term plan with a decreasing personnel (staff) but no equivalent increase in the material budget means that the best possible management of the industrial service contract is essential. This also explains why three working groups in the ST division are involved in three different areas for these contracts

A proposal to follow up costs using the connection between EDH (destinations) and BHT (activities)

External constraints like budget for material and personnel may be set outside the Division. However, the Division may measure the main output of its activities to justify the need for its resources and to maintain an optimal allocation of the resources within the Division. Before using resources (material + personnel = money) the expected output/performance should be defined. This will help us to allocate the resources where best needed and also to justify the need for resources. Possible deviations of expected output/performance may be caused by factors that should be known in advance or could not be known in advance. Deviations should be regarded as something positive - a possibility for a continuous improvement. This paper tries to show how one may use one available dimension in the financial system (EDH-BHT) to track deviations and follow up the costs

How does a successful Norwegian incubator practice learning? - A case study of Validé

Incubators have a purpose of increasing the success rate of start-up companies and entrepreneurs. Several countries, including Norway, have invested in the development of innovation as this is acknowledged to be a key contributing factor to nations’ economies. Studying successful incubators may provide useful information on how other incubators can improve. As research has shown, incubators may function differently depending on the culture they operate in. Little research has been done on learning within incubators in a Norwegian context. Therefore, this thesis studies a successful Norwegian incubator and how they practice learning with the purpose of identifying key factors for their success. This single case study compares existing literature on knowledge, learning, and incubation with findings from qualitative interviews with employees working in the incubator department in the Norwegian innovation company Validé. Seven business advisors, a fund director, and the CEO of the company were interviewed. Comparisons between literature and findings from the interviews showed that learning takes place in a variety of different ways in Validé. This study suggests that key factors to Validé's success include close collaboration between colleagues, openness and transparency in the organization, low internal competitiveness, engaged and active leadership, and a strong organizational culture. This study also points out other factors that are difficult for other incubators to copy. Findings show that factors such as current resources, historical point in time, and location may have an effect on the incubator's success.Incubators have a purpose of increasing the success rate of start-up companies and entrepreneurs. Several countries, including Norway, have invested in the development of innovation as this is acknowledged to be a key contributing factor to nations’ economies. Studying successful incubators may provide useful information on how other incubators can improve. As research has shown, incubators may function differently depending on the culture they operate in. Little research has been done on learning within incubators in a Norwegian context. Therefore, this thesis studies a successful Norwegian incubator and how they practice learning with the purpose of identifying key factors for their success. This single case study compares existing literature on knowledge, learning, and incubation with findings from qualitative interviews with employees working in the incubator department in the Norwegian innovation company Validé. Seven business advisors, a fund director, and the CEO of the company were interviewed. Comparisons between literature and findings from the interviews showed that learning takes place in a variety of different ways in Validé. This study suggests that key factors to Validé's success include close collaboration between colleagues, openness and transparency in the organization, low internal competitiveness, engaged and active leadership, and a strong organizational culture. This study also points out other factors that are difficult for other incubators to copy. Findings show that factors such as current resources, historical point in time, and location may have an effect on the incubator's success

Use of financial information and the financial system

This paper gives an overview of the different clients of the financial system and how their demands for information may influence its development. As an operating unit and a 'prime user' of the financial system we should be in the driving seat to ensure the scarce resources are used and managed in the best possible way. This paper focuses on the importance of a correct use of the financial system, awareness of its functionalities and the importance of knowing potential deviations as soon as possible while one is still able to influence the final cost. It finishes by underscoring the importance of letting our requests be heard when the financial system is developed

Marine n-3 fatty acid consumption in a Norwegian renal transplant cohort:Comparison of a food frequency questionnaire with plasma phospholipid marine n-3 levels

BackgroundHigh levels of plasma marine n-3 fatty acids (n-3FAs) are associated with improved patient and graft survival in renal transplant recipients (RTRs). The aim of this study was to evaluate the utility of a new food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) to estimate marine n-3FA consumption in future epidemiological research.MethodsWe developed an FFQ with a simple design of 10 questions to assess intake of marine sources of n-3FAs. RTRs included in the recent ORENTRA trial (n = 132) completed the study FFQ at the baseline visit eight weeks after engraftment and at the end of study visit one year post-transplant. We measured the reference biomarker plasma phospholipid (PL) marine n-3FA levels by gas chromatography at the same time points to evaluate association and degree of agreement between FFQ based marine n-3FA consumption estimates and the biomarker.ResultsThe median plasma PL marine n-3FA level was 6.0 weight percentage (wt)% (interquartile range [IQR] 4.7 to 7.3) at baseline and 6.3 wt% (IQR 4.8 to 7.4) at end of study. Median FFQ based marine n-3FA consumption estimates were 22.8 g/month (IQR 13.0 to 34.0) at baseline and 20.3 g/month (IQR 14.5 to 32.3) at end of study. FFQ based marine n-3FA consumption estimates showed a moderate correlation with plasma PL marine n-3FA levels at baseline (Spearman's correlation coefficient rs = 0.43, pConclusionsMarine n-3FA consumption estimates based on the FFQ showed a moderate correlation with the reference biomarker plasma PL marine n-3FA levels. The FFQ might be useful in epidemiological studies where resources are limited

Structural and functional studies of Escherichia coli Aggregative Adherence Fimbriae (AAF/V) reveal a deficiency in extracellular matrix binding

Enteroaggregative Escherichia coli (EAEC) is an emerging cause of acute and persistent diarrhea worldwide. The pathogenesis of different EAEC stains is complicated, however, the early essential step begins with attachment of EAEC to intestinal mucosa via aggregative adherence fimbriae (AAFs). Currently, five different variants have been identified, which all share a degree of similarity in the gene organization of their operons and sequences. Here, we report the solution structure of Agg5A from the AAF/V variant. While preserving the major structural features shared by all AAF members, only Agg5A possesses an inserted helix at the beginning of the donor strand, which together with altered surface electrostatics, renders the protein unable to interact with fibronectin. Hence, here we characterize the first AAF variant with a binding mode that varies from previously described AAF

The size-Ramsey number of powers of paths

Given graphs $G$ and $H$ and a positive integer $q$, say that $G$ \emph{is $q$-Ramsey for} $H$, denoted $G\rightarrow (H)_q$, if every $q$-colouring of the edges of $G$ contains a monochromatic copy of $H$. The \emph{size-Ramsey number} \sr(H) of a graph $H$ is defined to be \sr(H)=\min\{|E(G)|\colon G\rightarrow (H)_2\}. Answering a question of Conlon, we prove that, for every fixed~$k$, we have \sr(P_n^k)=O(n), where~$P_n^k$ is the $k$th power of the $n$-vertex path $P_n$ (i.e., the graph with vertex set $V(P_n)$ and all edges $\{u,v\}$ such that the distance between $u$ and $v$ in $P_n$ is at most $k$). Our proof is probabilistic, but can also be made constructive.Most of the work for this paper was done during my PhD, which was half funded by EPSRC grant reference 1360036, and half by Merton College Oxford. The third author was partially supported by FAPESP (Proc.~2013/03447-6) and by CNPq (Proc.~459335/2014-6, 310974/2013-5). The fifth author was supported by FAPESP (Proc.~2013/11431-2, Proc.~2013/03447-6 and Proc.~2018/04876-1) and partially by CNPq (Proc.~459335/2014-6). This research was supported in part by CAPES (Finance Code 001). The collaboration of part of the authors was supported by a CAPES/DAAD PROBRAL grant (Proc.~430/15)

The Erpenbeck high frequency instability theorem for ZND detonations

The rigorous study of spectral stability for strong detonations was begun by J.J. Erpenbeck in [Er1]. Working with the Zeldovitch-von Neumann-D\"oring (ZND) model, which assumes a finite reaction rate but ignores effects like viscosity corresponding to second order derivatives, he used a normal mode analysis to define a stability function V(\tau,\eps) whose zeros in $\Re \tau>0$ correspond to multidimensional perturbations of a steady detonation profile that grow exponentially in time. Later in a remarkable paper [Er3] he provided strong evidence, by a combination of formal and rigorous arguments, that for certain classes of steady ZND profiles, unstable zeros of $V$ exist for perturbations of sufficiently large transverse wavenumber \eps, even when the von Neumann shock, regarded as a gas dynamical shock, is uniformly stable in the sense defined (nearly twenty years later) by Majda. In spite of a great deal of later numerical work devoted to computing the zeros of V(\tau,\eps), the paper \cite{Er3} remains the only work we know of that presents a detailed and convincing theoretical argument for detecting them. The analysis in [Er3] points the way toward, but does not constitute, a mathematical proof that such unstable zeros exist. In this paper we identify the mathematical issues left unresolved in [Er3] and provide proofs, together with certain simplifications and extensions, of the main conclusions about stability and instability of detonations contained in that paper. The main mathematical problem, and our principal focus here, is to determine the precise asymptotic behavior as \eps\to \infty of solutions to a linear system of ODEs in $x$, depending on \eps and a complex frequency $\tau$ as parameters, with turning points $x_*$ on the half-line $[0,\infty)$