Pyrantel Pamoate in Roundworm Infestations

A controlled single-blind trial was carried out to compare the effect of single-dose therapy with pyrantel pamoate (Combantrin) and piperazine citrate in children infested with Ascaris lumbricoides. Fifty-six children were treated. Pyrantel pamoate was 96,4% effective and piperazine c::itrate 82,1% effective in eradicating Ascaris lumbricoides. ova from 3 consecutive stools taken on the 7th, 8th and 9th days after treatment. If results of stool examination on the 9th day only are considered, pyrantel pamoate was 100% effective and piperazine citrate was 89,3% effective. S. Afr. Med. J., 47, 91 (1973

10 Years of C-K Theory: A Survey on the Academic and Industrial Impacts of a Design Theory.

The goal of our research1 was to understand what is expected today from a design theory and what types of impact such type of scientific proposition may reach. To answer these questions with a grounded approach we chosed to study the developement of C-K theory as phenomenon per se that can inform our research work. C-K theory is clearly recognized as a design theory and it is a good representative of the level of generality and abstraction of contemporary design theory. Indeed, the validity of the theory as such has already been documented (e.g. Hatchuel & Weil 2002, 2003, 2008, 2009; Kazakçi 2009; Reich et al 2010; Le Masson et al 2010; Ullah et al 2012). Instead the current work sets out to understand the dissemination and the impact of the theory in both academic and industrial fields. The data collection overlooks the literature on C-K theory in English and in French, and includes interviews and feedbacks of students and industrial partners who applied C-K methodologies and tools. This research confirms the rapid diffusion and multiples impact of C-K theory. Beyond, such study signals that there are important expectations and potential impacts of a Design Theory within the field of knowledge at large. However there are strong conditions to meet these expectations: generality, generativity, and relatedness to contemporary sciences. A similar research could be done on Nam Suh's axiomatic approach to further test these conditions. It is impossible to say what will be the next generations of Design theory but it is sure that they should progress on these directions

What Is a Decision Problem? Designing Alternatives

International audienceThis paper presents a general framework for the design of alternatives in decision problems. The paper addresses both the issue of how to design alternatives within "known decision spaces" and on how to perform the same action within "partially known or unknown decision spaces". The paper aims at providing archetypes for the design of algorithms supporting the generation of alternatives

Engineering access to higher education through higher education fairs

Text from van Zanten A., Legavre A. “Engineering access to higher education through higher education fairs”, in Goastellec G., Picard F. (ed.) The Roles of Higher Education and Research in the Fabric of Societies, Leuven, Sense Publishers, 2014 (in press). Transition to higher education is a major social process. This transition has been mostly studied by French sociologists of education and higher education from perspectives focusing predominantly on the role of the socio-economic status, academic profiles and different tracks followed by secondary school students (Merle 1996, Duru-Bellat and Kieffer 2008, Convert 2010), and, to a lesser extent, on the types of secondary schools attended (Duru-Bellat and Mingat 1998, Nakhili 2005) and the local higher education provision (Berthet et al. 2010, Orange 2013). Although these structural determinants play a major role in explaining significant regularities, they provide more powerful explanations for individuals representing the extremes of the different variables considered, leaving room for the influence of other major factors for those students in intermediate situations. In addition, even in the case of students occupying extreme positions, structural perspectives better explain the distribution of students between different higher education tracks than they do between institutions and disciplines. In this chapter, we adopt a perspective that we see as complementary to and interacting with the perspective centred on structural determinants by focusing on the role of the devices that mediate the exchanges between students and higher education institutions, and more specifically on one device: higher education fairs. Our purpose in doing so is not only to document how these various devices frame, in ways that remain largely unexplored by researchers, exchanges between providers and consumers of higher education but also to point out – and further explore in future publications – how these devices, and the specific features of fairs, contribute to the reproduction and transformation of educational inequalities in access to higher education (Benninghoff et al. 2012)

A Chemistry of Organization: Combinatory Structural Analysis and Design

This paper is a response to the call for models of organization design as a science revealing the inner composition of organization and specifying the laws to be respected when crafting it. It maintains that the needed science is a chemistry of organization, addressing the combination of 'organizational elements' playing a role analogous to that of chemical elements in composing a variety of substances. Drawing both on classic organization design theory and on configurational and complementarity-based approaches, the paper specifies a set of basic organizational elements and a set of combinatory laws regulating their effective combinations. Testable propositions are derived on the necessary and sufficient conditions that the composition of organizations should have respect for achieving high levels of efficiency and innovation. These propositions are tested empirically on a sample of firms, using an innovative application of Boolean algebra

Towards Design Thinking as a Management Practice: A Learning Experiment in Teaching Innovation

There is an increasing need to make management knowledge more consistent with the “messiness” and complexity of actual organizational phenomena and contexts in today’s world, calling for a refoundation of mainstream management theories. The paper focuses on the contribution of design thinking approaches in this sense, particularly addressing the question of how the predisposition for a design thinking approach can be shaped in management education. Following a qualitative inductive research design, it will report the experience of the introduction of new teaching practices inspired by design thinking in a class of students from a Master program on Innovation and Marketing in an Italian University. Based on the empirical findings, the challenges and opportunities of innovating business school teaching towards the construction of a design thinking mentality will be discussed