Information Archeology: Excavating Lessons from Past Successes

There bas k c n an eiionnous publicity push for the dramatic force of IT as a meam of business transformation as a new and dramatically different pbenoinenon. ?\u27Lie panel will discuss the results of a six-year analysis of six organizations that, in fact, uansformed themselves. In the process tliey developed an innovative IT design that so dominated their industry that finns either adopted or lost shares. Oue of the transformations occurred between 1956 and 1959, two in the 1 9 6 0 ~and three in clie 1980s. The process typically required five to six years. A common thread of all these organizations is that today thhcy are still leaders in the use of lT and they are extending their competitive edge through IT innovations. Most of Ihe companies are wcll hiowti for their exploits: American Airlines, American Hospital Supply-Baxter Travenol, USAA, atid Frito-Lay. The sleeper and earliest innovafor is the Bank of America. We have recently completed a Federal Express saga

Degradation of Chloroaromatics: Purification and Characterization of a Novel Type of Chlorocatechol 2,3-Dioxygenase of Pseudomonas putida GJ31

A purification procedure for a new kind of extradiol dioxygenase, termed chlorocatechol 2,3-dioxygenase, that converts 3-chlorocatechol productively was developed. Structural and kinetic properties of the enzyme, which is part of the degradative pathway used for growth of Pseudomonas putida GJ31 with chlorobenzene, were investigated. The enzyme has a subunit molecular mass of 33.4 kDa by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Estimation of the native Mr value under nondenaturating conditions by gel filtration gave a molecular mass of 135 ± 10 kDa, indicating a homotetrameric enzyme structure (4 × 33.4 kDa). The pI of the enzyme was estimated to be 7.1 ± 0.1. The N-terminal amino acid sequence (43 residues) of the enzyme was determined and exhibits 70 to 42% identity with other extradiol dioxygenases. Fe(II) seems to be a cofactor of the enzyme, as it is for other catechol 2,3-dioxygenases. In contrast to other extradiol dioxygenases, the enzyme exhibited great sensitivity to temperatures above 40°C. The reactivity of this enzyme toward various substituted catechols, especially 3-chlorocatechol, was different from that observed for other catechol 2,3-dioxygenases. Stoichiometric displacement of chloride occurred from 3-chlorocatechol, leading to the production of 2-hydroxymuconate.

Organic redox-flow batteries using compounds out of bark and peat as well as humic acids

Redox-Flow-Batteries are currently being studied for the storage of wind and solar energy, especially the use of organic compounds as redox systems. With this communication we demonstrate, that these systems can be successfully used at school and in higher education. The focus is put upon the use of compounds found in bark and peat as well as humic acids. (DIPF/Orig.)Derzeit werden Redox-Flow-Batterien zur Speicherung von Wind- und Sonnenenergie untersucht, insbesondere die Nutzung organischer Verbindungen als Redoxsysteme. In diesem Artikel wird gezeigt, dass diese Systeme erfolgreich in der Schule und im Hochschulbereich eingesetzt werden können. Der Fokus liegt auf der Nutzung von Rinden- und Torfverbindungen sowie Huminsäuren

Episodic memory encoding in middle age: effects of ageing and cognitive fatigue on brain activation

Klaassen, E., Evers, E., De Groot, R. H. M., Veltman, D., & Jolles, J. (2011, September). Episodic memory encoding in middle age: effects of ageing and cognitive fatigue on brain activation. Poster presented at the Annual meeting for the international society for neuroimaging in psychiatry, Heidelberg, Germany.Healthy cognitive aging is thought to impact most heavily on episodic memory [1]. However, changes in episodic memory prior to the age of 60 are more controversial than changes in older adults [2]. Furthermore, cognitive decline already present in middle age may not yet manifest in behavior due to the action of neural compensation processes that preserve performance at the behavioral level. Therefore, fMRI can provide valuable insights into age-related changes present in middle age [3]. It is also important to determine the extent to which middle-aged adults must compensate for the effects of cognitive aging in order to maintain performance not just in the short-term, but following sustained, fatigue inducing task performance likely, for example, to be commonly encountered during the workday. Therefore, in the current study, each participant was tested twice: once following a fatiguing condition involving the sustained performance of cognitively demanding tasks and once following a less demanding baseline condition.At baseline, activation was greater, primarily in PFC regions, in middle-aged compared to young adults. This suggests increased exertion of top-down cognitive control in middle-aged adults during successful encoding. In the fatigue condition, activation differences between the two age groups were no longer apparent. Activation in both age groups, but particularly the middle-aged group, decreased in comparison to baseline activation. Therefore, in a state of induced fatigue, middle-aged adults no longer showed greater exertion of cognitive control than young adults, and instead showed activation changes suggestive of an exhaustion of cognitive resources

Age differences in brain activation associated with verbal learning and fatigue

Learning abilities have already started to decline in middle age3. However, middle-aged adults are commonly required to continue to maintain performance in fulltime employment. We investigated whether the ability of middle-aged adults to maintain performance despite the effects of cognitive aging comes at the cost of increased cognitive fatigue. Functional MRI studies in patients with disorders characterised by fatigue, such as Multiple Sclerosis3 and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome4, have shown that, although patients could maintain task performance comparable to healthy participants, their performance was associated with increased and more dispersed brain activation. This finding has been attributed to the exertion of greater cognitive effort by patients which, consequentially, has been suggested to underlie their experience of increased cognitive fatigue. Behavioural studies have shown that cognitive fatigue symptoms can be induced in healthy participants by the prolonged performance of cognitively demanding tasks5. In the present study we used fMRI to examine verbal learning related brain activation in young and middle- aged adults following a control intervention and following a fatigue inducing intervention. Conclusions: 1. Middle-aged maintained comparable verbal learning performance to young, and did not indicate greater feelings of subjective fatigue. 2. Middle-aged showed greater activation than young in areas associated with cognitive control and attentional effort following the fatigue intervention during encoding, but not during recognition. 3. Greater subjective fatigue was associated with decreased activation in the left DLPFC in both age groups during encoding, but in young participants only during recognition. 4. It is suggested that middle-aged responded to the increased demands of verbal recognition by switching to more automatic processing