IT Governance and Organizational Agility: A Study based on Platform Organizing Logic Perspectives

Managing IS changes is critical for IT governance decisions. Thus, firms should be concerned IT agility in order to respond to uncertain changes in a dynamic environment. In this case study, we analyze the course of IT governance decisions to understand how the case company uses IT to enable organizational agility. Further, we adopt platform organizing logic perspectives to identify factors associated with this issue. These factors are classified as collaboration requirements and cohesion forces. We also identify four key principles used by the case company for making their IT governance decisions to sustain their IT agility: balance between collaboration requirements and cohesion forces, autonomy of IS integration and scalability, simplification of business processes by digitized process capital, and entrepreneurial alertness for absorbing new IT capabilities. These findings illustrate how to apply platform organizing logic to IT governance decisions and also respond to the call for research in reframing the role of IT in shaping organizational agility through digital options

3D Reconstruction from IR Thermal Images and Reprojective Evaluations

Infrared thermography has been widely used in various domains to measure the temperature distributions of objects and surfaces. The methodology can be further extended to 3D applications if the spatial information of the temperature distribution is available. This paper proposes a 3D infrared imaging approach based on silhouette volume intersection to reconstruct volumetric temperature data of enclosed objects. 3D IR images are taken from various angles and integrated with 2D RGB images to effectively reconstruct a 3D model of the object's temperature distributions. Various automatic thresholding methods are also compared and evaluated by reprojection scoring to systematically assess the effectiveness and accuracy of the different approaches. Experiment results have demonstrated the ability of the system to provide an estimate to the 3D location of an internal heat source from images taken externally

Microfluidic Mixing: A Review

The aim of microfluidic mixing is to achieve a thorough and rapid mixing of multiple samples in microscale devices. In such devices, sample mixing is essentially achieved by enhancing the diffusion effect between the different species flows. Broadly speaking, microfluidic mixing schemes can be categorized as either “active”, where an external energy force is applied to perturb the sample species, or “passive”, where the contact area and contact time of the species samples are increased through specially-designed microchannel configurations. Many mixers have been proposed to facilitate this task over the past 10 years. Accordingly, this paper commences by providing a high level overview of the field of microfluidic mixing devices before describing some of the more significant proposals for active and passive mixers

Structural basis for the identification of the N-terminal domain of coronavirus nucleocapsid protein as an antiviral target

Coronaviruses (CoVs) cause numerous diseases, including Middle East respiratory syndrome and severe acute respiratory syndrome, generating significant health-related and economic consequences. CoVs encode the nucleocapsid (N) protein, a major structural protein that plays multiple roles in the virus replication cycle and forms a ribonucleoprotein complex with the viral RNA through the N protein's N-terminal domain (N-NTD). Using human CoV-OC43 (HCoV-OC43) as a model for CoV, we present the 3D structure of HCoV-OC43 N-NTD complexed with ribonucleoside 5'-monophosphates to identify a distinct ribonucleotide-binding pocket. By targeting this pocket, we identified and developed a new coronavirus N protein inhibitor, N-(6-oxo-5,6-dihydrophenanthridin-2-yl)(N,N-dimethylamino)acetamide hydrochloride (PJ34), using virtual screening; this inhibitor reduced the N protein's RNA-binding affinity and hindered viral replication. We also determined the crystal structure of the N-NTD-PJ34 complex. On the basis of these findings, we propose guidelines for developing new N protein-based antiviral agents that target CoVs

A Microcantilever-based Gas Flow Sensor for Flow Rate and Direction Detection

The purpose of this paper is to apply characteristics of residual stress that causes cantilever beams to bend for manufacturing a micro-structured gas flow sensor. This study uses a silicon wafer deposited silicon nitride layers, reassembled the gas flow sensor with four cantilever beams that perpendicular to each other and manufactured piezoresistive structure on each micro-cantilever by MEMS technologies, respectively. When the cantilever beams are formed after etching the silicon wafer, it bends up a little due to the released residual stress induced in the previous fabrication process. As air flows through the sensor upstream and downstream beam deformation was made, thus the airflow direction can be determined through comparing the resistance variation between different cantilever beams. The flow rate can also be measured by calculating the total resistance variations on the four cantilevers.Comment: Submitted on behalf of EDA Publishing Association (http://irevues.inist.fr/handle/2042/16838

Distinct functional defect of three novel Brugada syndrome related cardiac sodium channel mutations

The Brugada syndrome is characterized by ST segment elevation in the right precodial leads V1-V3 on surface ECG accompanied by episodes of ventricular fibrillation causing syncope or even sudden death. The molecular and cellular mechanisms that lead to Brugada syndrome are not yet completely understood. However, SCN5A is the most well known responsible gene that causes Brugada syndrome. Until now, more than a hundred mutations in SCN5A responsible for Brugada syndrome have been described. Functional studies of some of the mutations have been performed and show that a reduction of human cardiac sodium current accounts for the pathogenesis of Brugada syndrome. Here we reported three novel SCN5A mutations identified in patients with Brugada syndrome in Taiwan (p.I848fs, p.R965C, and p.1876insM). Their electrophysiological properties were altered by patch clamp analysis. The p.I848fs mutant generated no sodium current. The p.R965C and p.1876insM mutants produced channels with steady state inactivation shifted to a more negative potential (9.4 mV and 8.5 mV respectively), and slower recovery from inactivation. Besides, the steady state activation of p.1876insM was altered and was shifted to a more positive potential (7.69 mV). In conclusion, the SCN5A channel defect related to Brugada syndrome might be diverse but all resulted in a decrease of sodium current

The Influence of Type 2 Diabetes and Glucose-Lowering Therapies on Cancer Risk in the Taiwanese

Objective. To investigate the association between type 2 diabetes, glucose-lowering therapies (monotherapy with either metformin, sulphonylurea or insulin) and cancer risk in Taiwan. Methods. Using Taiwan's National Health Research Institutes database of 1,000,000 random subjects from 2000–2008, we found 61777 patients with type 2 diabetes (age ≥20 years) and 677378 enrollees with no record of diabetes. Results. After adjusting for age and sex, we found patients with diabetes to have significantly higher risk of all cancers (OR: 1.176; 95% CI: 1.149–1.204, P < 0.001). Diabetic patients treated with insulin or sulfonylureas had significantly higher risk of all cancers, compared to those treated with metformin (OR: 1.583; 95% CI: 1.389–1.805, P < 0.001 and OR: 1.784; 95% CI: 1.406–2.262, P < 0.001). Metformin treatment was associated with a decreased risk of colon and liver cancer compared to sulphonylureas or insulin treatment. Sulfonylureas treatment was associated with an increased risk of breast and lung cancer compared to metformin therapy. Conclusions. Taiwanese with type 2 diabetes are at a high risk of breast, prostate, colon, lung, liver and pancreatic cancer. Those treated with insulin or sulfonylureas monotherapy are more likely to develop colon and liver cancer than those treated with metformin