86,018 research outputs found
An exploratory survey of current practice in the medical device industry
This article is (c) Emerald Group Publishing and permission has been granted for this version to appear here. Emerald does not grant permission for this article to be further copied/distributed or hosted elsewhere without the express permission from Emerald Group Publishing Limited.Purpose – This study seeks to examine the extent to which mainstream tools and strategies are applied in the medical devices sector, which is highly fragmented and contains a high percentage of small companies, and to determine if company size impacts on manufacturing strategy selection.
Design/methodology/approach – A questionnaire was developed and disseminated through a number of channels. Responses were received from 38 companies in the UK and Ireland, describing 68 products taken to market in the past five years.
Findings – Because of the limited scope of the survey, the findings are indicative rather than conclusive, and interesting trends have emerged. New to the world products were much more likely to exceed company expectations of market success compared to derivative products. It was found that the majority of these innovative products were developed by small companies. Large companies appear to favour minor upgrades over major upgrades even though these prove – on the data presented – to be less successful overall.
Practical implications – These results provide those engaged in this sector with comparative information and some insights for further improvement. The reported trends with respect to company size and product complexity (or degree of novelty) are particularly illuminating. Academically, this sets some expected trends on a firmer footing and unearths one or two unexpected findings.
Originality/value – It is believed that this is the largest survey of determinants of success in UK medical device companies and it provides a comparison with other sectors
A List of Wisconsin Springtails With New Records and Annotations (Hexapoda: Parainsecta: Collembola)
Twenty Collembola species new to Wisconsin were collected from soil at two agricultural sites in southern Wisconsin, including an undescribed species of Isotomidae. The state faunal list now contains 52 species representing seven families
A Data Exchange Standard for Optical (Visible/IR) Interferometry
This paper describes the OI Exchange Format, a standard for exchanging
calibrated data from optical (visible/infrared) stellar interferometers. The
standard is based on the Flexible Image Transport System (FITS), and supports
storage of the optical interferometric observables including squared visibility
and closure phase -- data products not included in radio interferometry
standards such as UV-FITS. The format has already gained the support of most
currently-operating optical interferometer projects, including COAST, NPOI,
IOTA, CHARA, VLTI, PTI, and the Keck Interferometer, and is endorsed by the IAU
Working Group on Optical Interferometry. Software is available for reading,
writing and merging OI Exchange Format files.Comment: 26 pages, 1 figur
Chiral extrapolations for nucleon magnetic moments
Lattice QCD simulations have made significant progress in the calculation of
nucleon electromagnetic form factors in the chiral regime in recent years. With
simulation results achieving pion masses of order ~180 MeV, there is an
apparent challenge as to how the physical regime is approached. By using
contemporary methods in chiral effective field theory, both the quark-mass and
finite-volume dependence of the isovector nucleon magnetic moment are carefully
examined. The extrapolation to the physical point yields a result that is
compatible with experiment, albeit with a combined statistical and systematic
uncertainty of 10%. The extrapolation shows a strong finite-volume dependence;
lattice sizes of L > 5 fm must be used to simulate results within 2% of the
infinite-volume result for the magnetic moment at the physical pion mass.Comment: 7 pages, 12 figures, 1 tabl
Power Counting Regime of Chiral Effective Field Theory and Beyond
Chiral effective field theory complements numerical simulations of quantum
chromodynamics (QCD) on a space-time lattice. It provides a model-independent
formalism for connecting lattice simulation results at finite volume and a
variety of quark masses to the physical world. The asymptotic nature of the
chiral expansion places the focus on the first few terms of the expansion.
Thus, knowledge of the power-counting regime (PCR) of chiral effective field
theory, where higher-order terms of the expansion may be regarded as
negligible, is as important as knowledge of the expansion itself. Through the
consideration of a variety of renormalization schemes and associated
parameters, techniques to identify the PCR where results are independent of the
renormalization scheme are established. The nucleon mass is considered as a
benchmark for illustrating this general approach. Because the PCR is small, the
numerical simulation results are also examined to search for the possible
presence of an intrinsic scale which may be used in a nonperturbative manner to
describe lattice simulation results outside of the PCR. Positive results that
improve on the current optimistic application of chiral perturbation theory
beyond the PCR are reported.Comment: 18 pages, 55 figure
On the spectrum of the AdS(5) x S-5 string at large lambda
archiveprefix: arXiv primaryclass: hep-th reportnumber: HU-EP-10-85 slaccitation: %%CITATION = ARXIV:1012.4471;%%archiveprefix: arXiv primaryclass: hep-th reportnumber: HU-EP-10-85 slaccitation: %%CITATION = ARXIV:1012.4471;%
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