Insights into the Strategic Sourcing Decision: Understanding Buyer- Supplier Relationships

The wide range of products and services that are being sourced today has made the company’s procurement organization an increasingly important function. The complexities of managing sourcing options is greater than ever making the procurement function critical for overcoming an increasingly global, complex and uncertain sourcing environment. This paper discusses an overview of relevant sourcing models and their importance for establishing a strategic sourcing decision, how buyer-supplier relationships play a key role in the strategic sourcing decision and key attributes of the various models for strategic sourcing. We illustrate the diversity of the sourcing choices with four strategic procurement scenarios that motivate the development of solid strategic sourcing decisions. The material is presented as a teaching document from a point of view that is integrative of key sourcing paradigms and is written from a context that is readily understandable

Polyoxometalate multi-electron-transfer catalytic systems for water splitting

The viable production of solar fuels requires a visible-light-absorbing unit, a H2O (or CO2) reduction catalyst (WRC), and a water oxidation catalyst (WOC) that work in tandem to split water or reduce CO2 with H2O rapidly, selectively, and for long periods of time. Most catalysts and photosensitizers developed to date for these triadic systems are oxidatively, thermally, and/or hydrolytically unstable. Polyoxometalates (POMs) constitute a huge class of complexes with extensively tunable properties that are oxidatively, thermally, and (over wide and adjustable pH ranges) hydrolytically stable. POMs are some of the fastest and most stable WOCs to date under optimal conditions. This Microreview updates the very active POM WOC field; it reports the application of POMs as WRCs and initial self-assembling metal oxide semiconductor–photosensitizer–POM catalyst triad photoanodes. The complexities of investigating these POM systems, including but not limited to the study of POM-hydrated metal-ion–metal-oxide speciation processes, are outlined. The achievements and challenges in POM WOC, WRC, and triad research are outlined

The homeodomain protein PAL-1 specifies a lineage-specific regulatory network in the C. elegans embryo

Maternal and zygotic activities of the homeodomain protein PAL-1 specify the identity and maintain the development of the multipotent C blastomere lineage in the C. elegans embryo. To identify PAL-1 regulatory target genes, we used microarrays to compare transcript abundance in wild-type embryos with mutant embryos lacking a C blastomere and to mutant embryos with extra C blastomeres. pal-1-dependent C-lineage expression was verified for select candidate target genes by reporter gene analysis, though many of the target genes are expressed in additional lineages as well. The set of validated target genes includes 12 transcription factors, an uncharacterized wingless ligand and five uncharacterized genes. Phenotypic analysis demonstrates that the identified PAL-1 target genes affect specification, differentiation and morphogenesis of C-lineage cells. In particular, we show that cell fate-specific genes (or tissue identity genes) and a posterior HOX gene are activated in lineage-specific fashion. Transcription of targets is initiated in four temporal phases, which together with their spatial expression patterns leads to a model of the regulatory network specified by PAL-1

Synthetic lethal analysis of Caenorhabditis elegans posterior embryonic patterning genes identifies conserved genetic interactions

Phenotypic robustness is evidenced when single-gene mutations do not result in an obvious phenotype. It has been suggested that such phenotypic stability results from 'buffering' activities of homologous genes as well as non-homologous genes acting in parallel pathways. One approach to characterizing mechanisms of phenotypic robustness is to identify genetic interactions, specifically, double mutants where buffering is compromised. To identify interactions among genes implicated in posterior patterning of the Caenorhabditis elegans embryo, we measured synthetic lethality following RNA interference of 22 genes in 15 mutant strains. A pair of homologous T-box transcription factors (tbx-8 and tbx-9) is found to interact in both C. elegans and C. briggsae, indicating that their compensatory function is conserved. Furthermore, a muscle module is defined by transitive interactions between the MyoD homolog hlh-1, another basic helix-loop-helix transcription factor, hnd-1, and the MADS-box transcription factor unc-120. Genetic interactions within a homologous set of genes involved in vertebrate myogenesis indicate broad conservation of the muscle module and suggest that other genetic modules identified in C. elegans will be conserved

Comment on 'Non-equilibrium thermodynamics of light absorption'

A recent paper by Meszéna and Westerhoff (1999 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 32 301) has aimed to address what is referred to as a principal question of biological thermodynamics, the possibility of describing photosynthesis in terms of non-equilibrium thermodynamics. The issue is associated with a misrepresentation of the fundamental photophysics involved, and as a result the analysis is invalid

Synthetic Lethal Analysis of Caenorhabditis elegans Posterior Embryonic Patterning Genes Identifies Conserved Genetic Interactions

Phenotypic robustness is evidenced when single-gene mutations do not result in an obvious phenotype. It has been suggested that such phenotypic stability results from 'buffering' activities of homologous genes as well as non-homologous genes acting in parallel pathways. One approach to characterizing mechanisms of phenotypic robustness is to identify genetic interactions, specifically, double mutants where buffering is compromised. To identify interactions among genes implicated in posterior patterning of the Caenorhabditis elegans embryo, we measured synthetic lethality following RNA interference of 22 genes in 15 mutant strains. A pair of homologous T-box transcription factors (tbx-8 and tbx-9) is found to interact in both C. elegans and C. briggsae, indicating that their compensatory function is conserved. Furthermore, a muscle module is defined by transitive interactions between the MyoD homolog hlh-1, another basic helix-loop-helix transcription factor, hnd-1, and the MADS-box transcription factor unc-120. Genetic interactions within a homologous set of genes involved in vertebrate myogenesis indicate broad conservation of the muscle module and suggest that other genetic modules identified in C. elegans will be conserved.Molecular and Cellular Biolog

A Digital Neuromorphic Architecture Efficiently Facilitating Complex Synaptic Response Functions Applied to Liquid State Machines

Information in neural networks is represented as weighted connections, or synapses, between neurons. This poses a problem as the primary computational bottleneck for neural networks is the vector-matrix multiply when inputs are multiplied by the neural network weights. Conventional processing architectures are not well suited for simulating neural networks, often requiring large amounts of energy and time. Additionally, synapses in biological neural networks are not binary connections, but exhibit a nonlinear response function as neurotransmitters are emitted and diffuse between neurons. Inspired by neuroscience principles, we present a digital neuromorphic architecture, the Spiking Temporal Processing Unit (STPU), capable of modeling arbitrary complex synaptic response functions without requiring additional hardware components. We consider the paradigm of spiking neurons with temporally coded information as opposed to non-spiking rate coded neurons used in most neural networks. In this paradigm we examine liquid state machines applied to speech recognition and show how a liquid state machine with temporal dynamics maps onto the STPU-demonstrating the flexibility and efficiency of the STPU for instantiating neural algorithms.Comment: 8 pages, 4 Figures, Preprint of 2017 IJCN

Fallstudien: kritische einschatzung

Das Ziel dieses Artikels ist es, das Wesentliche bei der Fallstudie festzustellen und eine kritische Einschatzung dieser Methode durchzufuhren. Infolgedessen wird zunachst der Versuch gemacht, den Begriff des Falls und der Fallstudie darzustellen. Anschlie?end werden die Vor- und Nachteile, d.h. die Moglichkeiten und die Grenzen der Fallstudie diskutiert und entsprechende Folgerungen gemacht.Статья посвящена проблеме определения "кейса" и "метода кейсов", а также возможностям применения и недостаткам данного метода