Intelligent purchasing : How artificial intelligence can redefine the purchasing function

Artificial intelligence (AI) can affect all of a company's functions, not least the purchasing department. In addition to automating and optimizing existing processes, AI opens up new opportunities for purchasers to undertake new, strategic, collaborative, enduring missions. AI enables complex, strategic decision-making in an unpredictable, hostile environment. This article analyzes to what extent AI can improve the performance of the purchasing department. First, a review is undertaken of how AI is used in purchasing. Thereafter, the research follows an exploratory, inductive, and qualitative approach based on a multiple case study of the following technologies: (1) the Synertrade automated international purchasing system; (2) the Silex matching system; (3) SAP Ariba decision support; (4) Jaggaer supplier relations management; and (5) the Ideapoke collaborative ideation and innovative project management platform. The present study's contributions lie in its redefinition of the purchasing function, of the purchaser's role, of supplier relationship management policy, and of interdepartmental collaboration, involving, for example, Marketing and R

Five decades of corporate entrepreneurship research : measuring and mapping the field

Research on corporate entrepreneurship venturing activities by established corporations has received increasing scholarly attention. We employ bibliometric methods to analyze the literature on corporate entrepreneurship published over the last five decades. Based on the results of citation and co-citation analyses, we reveal central works in the field and how they are interconnected. We investigate the underlying intellectual structure of the field. Our findings provide evidence of the growing maturity and interdisciplinarity of corporate entrepreneurship and provide insight into research themes. We find that resource-based view and its extensions still remain the predominant theoretical perspectives in the field. Drawing on these findings, we suggest directions for future research

What drives the helpfulness of online reviews? A deep learning study of sentiment analysis, pictorial content and reviewer expertise for mature destinations

Los destinos turísticos se ven cada vez más afectados por la información relacionada con los viajes que se comparte a través de las redes sociales. Basándose en teorías de proceso dual sobre cómo los individuos procesan la información, este estudio examina el papel de las rutas de procesamiento de información central y periférica en la formación de las percepciones de los consumidores sobre la utilidad de las reseñas en línea de destinos maduros. Llevamos a cabo un proceso de dos pasos para abordar la utilidad percibida del contenido generado por el usuario, un análisis de sentimiento utilizando técnicas avanzadas de aprendizaje automático (aprendizaje profundo) y un análisis de regresión. La base de datos constaba de 2023 comentarios publicados en TripAdvisor sobre dos atracciones culturales icónicas de Venecia, la Plaza de San Marcos (una atracción abierta y gratuita) y el Palacio Ducal (que cobra una tarifa de entrada). Usando técnicas de aprendizaje profundo, con regresión logística, primero identificamos qué factores influyeron en si una revisión recibió un voto de "útil". En segundo lugar, seleccionamos aquellas reseñas que recibieron al menos un voto útil para identificar, a través de una regresión lineal, los determinantes significativos del comportamiento de voto de los usuarios de TripAdvisor. Los resultados mostraron que la experiencia del revisor influye tanto en las atracciones gratuitas como en las de pago, aunque el impacto de las señales centrales (polaridad del sentimiento, subjetividad, contenido pictórico) difiere para ambas atracciones. Nuestro estudio sugiere que se debe mirar más allá de las calificaciones individuales y enfocarse en el análisis de sentimientos de las reseñas en línea, que se basan en la naturaleza de la atracción (gratis o de pago).Tourist destinations are increasingly affected by travel-related information shared through social media. Drawing on dual-process theories on how individuals process information, this study examines the role of central and peripheral information processing routes in the formation of consumers' perceptions of the helpfulness of online reviews of mature destinations. We carried out a two-step process to address the perceived helpfulness of user-generated content, a sentiment analysis using advanced machine-learning techniques (deep learning), and a regression analysis. The database was 2023 comments posted on TripAdvisor about two iconic Venetian cultural attractions, St. Mark's Square (an open, free attraction) and the Doge's Palace (which charges an entry fee). Using deep-learning techniques, with logistic regression, we first identified which factors influenced whether a review received a “helpful” vote. Second, we selected those reviews which received at least one helpful vote to identify, through linear regression, the significant determinants of TripAdvisor users' voting behaviour. The results showed that reviewer expertise is influential in both free and paid-for attractions, although the impact of central cues (sentiment polarity, subjectivity, pictorial content) differs for both attractions. Our study suggests that managers should look beyond individual ratings and focus on the sentiment analysis of online reviews, which are shown to be based on the nature of the attraction (free vs. paid-for)

Automatic quantification of cardiomyocyte dimensions and connexin 43 lateralization in fluorescence images

Cardiomyocytes’ geometry and connexin 43 (CX43) amount and distribution are structural features that play a pivotal role in electrical conduction. Their quantitative assessment is of high interest in the study of arrhythmias, but it is usually hampered by the lack of automatic tools. In this work, we propose a software algorithm (Myocyte Automatic Retrieval and Tissue Analyzer, MARTA) to automatically detect myocytes from fluorescent microscopy images of cardiac tissue, measure their morphological features and evaluate the expression of CX43 and its degree of lateralization. The proposed software is based on the generation of cell masks, contouring of individual cells, enclosing of cells in minimum area rectangles and splitting of these rectangles into end-to-end and middle compartments to estimate CX43 lateral-to-total ratio. Application to human ventricular tissue images shows that mean differences between automatic and manual methods in terms of cardiomyocyte length and width are below 4 µm. The percentage of lateral CX43 also agrees between automatic and manual evaluation, with the interquartile range approximately covering from 3% to 30% in both cases. MARTA is not limited by fiber orientation and has an optimized speed by using contour filtering, which makes it run hundreds of times faster than a trained expert. Developed for CX43 studies in the left ventricle, MARTA is a flexible tool applicable to morphometric and lateralization studies of other markers in any heart chamber or even skeletal muscle. This open-access software is available online.Fil: Oliver Gelabert, Antoni. Universidad de Zaragoza; EspañaFil: García Mendívil, Laura. Universidad de Zaragoza; EspañaFil: Vallejo Gil, José María. University Hospital Miguel Servet; EspañaFil: Fresneda Roldán, Pedro Carlos. University Hospital Miguel Servet; EspañaFil: Andelová, Katarína. Centre of Experimental Medicine; EslovaquiaFil: Fañanás Mastral, Javier. University Hospital Miguel Servet; EspañaFil: Vázquez Sancho, Manuel. University Hospital Miguel Servet; EspañaFil: Matamala Adell, Marta. University Hospital Miguel Servet; EspañaFil: Sorribas Berjón, Fernando. University Hospital Miguel Servet; EspañaFil: Ballester Cuenca, Carlos. University Hospital Miguel Servet; EspañaFil: Tribulova, Narcisa. Centre of Experimental Medicine; EslovaquiaFil: Ordovás, Laura. Universidad de Zaragoza; EspañaFil: Diez, Emiliano Raúl. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza. Instituto de Medicina y Biología Experimental de Cuyo; ArgentinaFil: Pueyo, Esther. Biomedical Research Networking Center in Bioengineering; España. Universidad de Zaragoza; Españ

Minimally invasive system to reliably characterize ventricular electrophysiology from living donors

Cardiac tissue slices preserve the heterogeneous structure and multicellularity of the myocardium and allow its functional characterization. However, access to human ventricular samples is scarce. We aim to demonstrate that slices from small transmural core biopsies collected from living donors during routine cardiac surgery preserve structural and functional properties of larger myocardial specimens, allowing accurate electrophysiological characterization. In pigs, we compared left ventricular transmural core biopsies with transmural tissue blocks from the same ventricular region. In humans, we analyzed transmural biopsies and papillary muscles from living donors. All tissues were vibratomesliced. By histological analysis of the transmural biopsies, we showed that tissue architecture and cellular organization were preserved. Enzymatic and vital staining methods verifed viability. Optically mapped transmembrane potentials confrmed that action potential duration and morphology were similar in pig biopsies and tissue blocks. Action potential morphology and duration in human biopsies and papillary muscles agreed with published ranges. In both pigs and humans, responses to increasing pacing frequencies and β-adrenergic stimulation were similar in transmural biopsies and larger tissues. We show that it is possible to successfully collect and characterize tissue slices from human myocardial biopsies routinely extracted from living donors, whose behavior mimics that of larger myocardial preparations both structurally and electrophysiologically.Fil: Oliván Viguera, Aida. Universidad de Zaragoza; EspañaFil: Pérez Zabalza, María. Universidad de Zaragoza; EspañaFil: García Mendívil, Laura. Universidad de Zaragoza; EspañaFil: Mountris, Konstantinos A.. Universidad de Zaragoza; EspañaFil: Orós Rodrigo, Sofía. Universidad de Zaragoza; EspañaFil: Ramos Marquès, Estel. Universidad de Zaragoza; EspañaFil: Vallejo Gil, José María. University Hospital Miguel Servet; EspañaFil: Fresneda Roldán, Pedro Carlos. University Hospital Miguel Servet; EspañaFil: Fañanás Mastral, Javier. University Hospital Miguel Servet; EspañaFil: Vázquez Sancho, Manuel. University Hospital Miguel Servet; EspañaFil: Matamala Adell, Marta. University Hospital Miguel Servet; EspañaFil: Sorribas Berjón, Fernando. University Hospital Miguel Servet; EspañaFil: Bellido Morales, Javier André. University Hospital Miguel Servet; EspañaFil: Mancebón Sierra, Francisco Javier. University Hospital Miguel Servet; EspañaFil: Vaca Núñez, Alexánder Sebastián. University Hospital Miguel Servet; EspañaFil: Ballester Cuenca, Carlos. University Hospital Miguel Servet; EspañaFil: Marigil, Miguel Ángel. Hospital San Jorge; EspañaFil: Pastor, Cristina. Aragón Institute of Health Sciences; EspañaFil: Ordovás, Laura. Aragón Agency for Research and Development; España. Universidad de Zaragoza; EspañaFil: Köhler, Ralf. Aragón Institute of Health Sciences; España. Aragón Agency for Research and Development; EspañaFil: Diez, Emiliano Raúl. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Médicas. Cátedra de Fisiología Humana Normal; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza. Instituto de Medicina y Biología Experimental de Cuyo; ArgentinaFil: Pueyo, Esther. Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red en Bioingeniería, Biomateriales y Nanomedicina; España. Universidad de Zaragoza; Españ

Chronological and biological aging of the human left ventricular myocardium: Analysis of microRNAs contribution

Aging is the main risk factor for cardiovascular diseases. In humans, cardiac aging remains poorly characterized. Most studies are based on chronological age (CA) and disregard biological age (BA), the actual physiological age (result of the aging rate on the organ structure and function), thus yielding potentially imperfect outcomes. Deciphering the molecular basis of ventricular aging, especially by BA, could lead to major progresses in cardiac research. We aim to describe the transcriptome dynamics of the aging left ventricle (LV) in humans according to both CA and BA and characterize the contribution of microRNAs, key transcriptional regulators. BA is measured using two CA-associated transcriptional markers: CDKN2A expression, a cell senescence marker, and apparent age (AppAge), a highly complex transcriptional index. Bioinformatics analysis of 132 LV samples shows that CDKN2A expression and AppAge represent transcriptomic changes better than CA. Both BA markers are biologically validated in relation to an aging phenotype associated with heart dysfunction, the amount of cardiac fibrosis. BA-based analyses uncover depleted cardiac-specific processes, among other relevant functions, that are undetected by CA. Twenty BA-related microRNAs are identified, and two of them highly heart-enriched that are present in plasma. We describe a microRNA-gene regulatory network related to cardiac processes that are partially validated in vitro and in LV samples from living donors. We prove the higher sensitivity of BA over CA to explain transcriptomic changes in the aging myocardium and report novel molecular insights into human LV biological aging. Our results can find application in future therapeutic and biomarker research

Coordinación horizontal de la evaluación continua de primer y segundo curso en el Máster en Ingeniería de Telecomunicación de la EPS

En el contexto del próximo proceso de re-acreditación de la titulación, se trabaja de forma conjunta para asegurar sistemas de evaluación continua coordinados, de acuerdo con la filosofía EESS. El objetivo principal es desarrollar mecanismos para distribuir de forma adecuada la carga de trabajo del alumnado a lo largo de cada semestre en cada curso. Este tipo de coordinación en las titulaciones es algo en lo que se ha incidido mucho desde la ANECA y la AVAP en procesos de re-acreditación de otras titulaciones de la Escuela Politécnica Superior. Se pretende que la coordinación repercuta en una mejora del proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje que se evidencie en tasas de rendimiento satisfactorias en las asignaturas de la titulación

Seguimiento del Máster en Ingeniería de Telecomunicación: medidas para conseguir la calidad y la excelencia

El Máster Universitario en Ingeniería de Telecomunicación en la Universidad de Alicante es el título que se imparte desde la Escuela Politécnica Superior y que habilita para el ejercicio de la profesión regulada de Ingeniero de Telecomunicación. Consta de 90 ECTS y se imparte a lo largo de 2 cursos académicos. El máster está implantado desde el curso 2011-2012 por lo que durante el actual curso 2012-2013 tendremos egresados de la primera promoción. Una vez implantado en su totalidad, es posible realizar un seguimiento del máster con la intención de obtener la excelencia académica mediante todas aquellas medidas y procesos de evaluación internos que sean necesarios. Además también es conveniente evaluar el impacto social, universitario y empresarial del máster evaluando las carencias, lagunas y oportunidades de formación que se detecten y tomando las oportunas medidas correctoras. Será necesario tener en cuenta la relación del título con el mundo empresarial y con la sociedad en general que tiene el sector de las telecomunicaciones en la evaluación de la calidad docente en el aula