A VALUE PLATFORM ANALYSIS PERSPECTIVE ON CUSTOMER ACCESS INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Customer access information technologies (CAITs) provide a link between a firm and its customers. Firms invest in CAITs to reduce costs, increase revenues and market share, lock in existing customers and capture new ones. These benefits, however, are notoriously difficult to measure. This paper proposes an evaluative method for CAlT deployment called value platform analysis, that is based on a conceptual model drawn from the theory of retail outlet deployment in marketing science. The model focuses on the impact of CAIT features and environmental features on transactions generated by the CAIT. Specific econometric models are developed for deployment. Hypotheses regarding the likely impact of automated teller machine (ATM) location design choices and environmental features on ATM transactions are evaluated. The results indicate that there are a number of key features influencing ATM performance. Two distinct ATM deployment scenarios emerge: one for servicing a bank's own customers, and another for providing transaction services for customers for a fee.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

A case–control study of childhood leukaemia and paternal occupational contact level in rural Sweden

In a national case–control study in Sweden, we investigated whether in rural areas (where susceptible individuals are more prevalent than in urban areas) leukaemia risk was higher among the young children of fathers with many work contacts, as the infective hypothesis has predicted. A total of 1935 cases diagnosed in 1958–1998 together with 7736 age-matched (within 1 year) population controls (of whom 970 and 3880 respectively were aged 0–4) were linked to paternal occupational details as recorded in the census closest to the year of birth. Applying the two classifications of occupational contact level used in a study of rural Scotland, the odds ratios for children aged 0–4 years in the highest contact category (which includes teachers) in the most rural Swedish counties were 3.47 (95% CI 1.54, 7.85) and 1.59 (1.07, 2.38) respectively, relative to the medium and low (reference) category; no such excess was found in urban or intermediate counties. There was also a significant positive trend at ages 0–4 in the rural counties across the three levels of increasing occupational contact (P for trend 0.02 and 0.03, respectively), but again not in the urban or intermediate counties. No such effect or trend was found at ages 5–14 in any of the three county groupings. The findings confirm those of a recent study in rural Scotland, and also suggest that unusual population mixing (as occurred in Scotland as a result of the North Sea oil industry) is not a necessary requirement for the effect, since comparable mixing has not been a feature of rural Sweden

A Geologically Based Indoor-Radon Potential Map of Kentucky

We combined 71,930 short-term (median duration 4 days) home radon test results with 1:24,000-scale bedrock geologic map coverage of Kentucky to produce a statewide geologically based indoor-radon potential map. The test results were positively skewed with a mean of 266 Bq/m3, median of 122 Bq/m3, and 75th percentile of 289 Bq/m3. We identified 106 formations with ≥10 test results. Analysis of results from 20 predominantly monolithologic formations showed indoor-radon concentrations to be positively skewed on a formation-by-formation basis, with a proportional relationship between sample means and standard deviations. Limestone (median 170 Bq/m3) and dolostone (median 130 Bq/m3) tended to have higher indoor-radon concentrations than siltstones and sandstones (median 67 Bq/m3) or unlithified surficial deposits (median 63 Bq/m3). Individual shales had median values ranging from 67 to 189 Bq/m3; the median value for all shale values was 85 Bq/m3. Percentages of values falling above the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) action level of 148 Bq/m3 were sandstone and siltstone: 24%, unlithified clastic: 21%, dolostone: 46%, limestone: 55%, and shale: 34%. Mississippian limestones, Ordovician limestones, and Devonian black shales had the highest indoor-radon potential values in Kentucky. Indoor-radon test mean values for the selected formations were also weakly, but statistically significantly, correlated with mean aeroradiometric uranium concentrations. To produce a map useful to nonspecialists, we classified each of the 106 formations into five radon-geologic classes on the basis of their 75th percentile radon concentrations. The statewide map is freely available through an interactive internet map service

An enterprise engineering approach for the alignment of business and information technology strategy

Information systems and information technology (IS/IT, hereafter just IT) strategies usually depend on a business strategy. The alignment of both strategies improves their strategic plans. From an external perspective, business and IT alignment is the extent to which the IT strategy enables and drives the business strategy. This article reviews strategic alignment between business and IT, and proposes the use of enterprise engineering (EE) to achieve this alignment. The EE approach facilitates the definition of a formal dialog in the alignment design. In relation to this, new building blocks and life-cycle phases have been defined for their use in an enterprise architecture context. This proposal has been adopted in a critical process of a ceramic tile company for the purpose of aligning a strategic business plan and IT strategy, which are essential to support this process. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.Cuenca, L.; Boza, A.; Ortiz, A. (2011). 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An Atlas of the Thioredoxin Fold Class Reveals the Complexity of Function-Enabling Adaptations

The group of proteins that contain a thioredoxin (Trx) fold is huge and diverse. Assessment of the variation in catalytic machinery of Trx fold proteins is essential in providing a foundation for understanding their functional diversity and predicting the function of the many uncharacterized members of the class. The proteins of the Trx fold class retain common features—including variations on a dithiol CxxC active site motif—that lead to delivery of function. We use protein similarity networks to guide an analysis of how structural and sequence motifs track with catalytic function and taxonomic categories for 4,082 representative sequences spanning the known superfamilies of the Trx fold. Domain structure in the fold class is varied and modular, with 2.8% of sequences containing more than one Trx fold domain. Most member proteins are bacterial. The fold class exhibits many modifications to the CxxC active site motif—only 56.8% of proteins have both cysteines, and no functional groupings have absolute conservation of the expected catalytic motif. Only a small fraction of Trx fold sequences have been functionally characterized. This work provides a global view of the complex distribution of domains and catalytic machinery throughout the fold class, showing that each superfamily contains remnants of the CxxC active site. The unifying context provided by this work can guide the comparison of members of different Trx fold superfamilies to gain insight about their structure-function relationships, illustrated here with the thioredoxins and peroxiredoxins

Exploring capability maturity models and relevant practices as solutions addressing information technology service offshoring project issues

This research investigated Capability Maturity Models (CMM) / Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) best practices and their effects on managing and mitigating critical issues associated with offshore development. Using a web-based survey, data was collected from 451 Information Technology and software development firms in the US. The results of the analysis show that IT companies applying CMM/CMMI models have fewer issues associated with IT offshoring. When US IT companies utilizing and incorporating different practices from TSP and People-CMM into CMMI-DEV/SVC and CMMI-ACQ, they have fewer offshoring issues related to language barriers and cultural differences