The Partner Ecosystem Evolution from On-premises Software to Cloud Services: a case study of SAP

The application software enterprise market is facing a fundamental change from onpremises software products to cloud-installed services based on ‘pay-per-use’ subscriptions. We propose a novel conceptual framework to analyze this transformation from an ecosystem perspective. Through a case study of SAP, we demonstrate that the cloud platform ecosystem differs from the on-premises software product ecosystem, with changed roles, responsibilities, patterns, and key stakeholder relationships. The findings suggest that the traditional product platform ecosystem has evolved in three directions: 1) the structures of partner ecosystems are changing, with partners and platform leaders forming a new micro-ecosystem as a basic unit to interact with customers; 2) the role and function of the traditional distribution channel have been eroded and weakened; and 3) the growing importance of platforms has changed the value relationships amongst stakeholders. Based on these findings, we discuss the managerial implications for the stakeholders in the cloud platform

Contacts Between Locals and Migrants Among Chinese Youth: Out-group Bias and Familial Transmission

Conflicts between local and migrant populations have been ubiquitous in modern China. We examine the longer-term potentials for resolution through inter-group contact and persistence through the inter-generational transmission of preferences. Public schooling in Chinese cities provides one of the largest interventions for children with different group identities to interact extensively. We adopt the perspective that in- and out-group biased behavior structurally arises from group-conditional social preferences. By conducting experiments consisting of binary dictator allocation tasks in schools in a Chinese city, we can analyze how integrated schooling shapes the respective behavior. Surprisingly, we do not observe any negative out-group bias. In fact, local students exhibit a positive out-group bias by choosing sharing behavior more toward migrant than other local peers. This sharing behavior is most prevalent among primary school cohorts. We also do not find a higher prevalence of out-group bias among parents. However, parents make more envious choices, highlighting the potential for broader positive effects of schooling. In addition, we find strong evidence for the inter-generational transmission of preferences. Overall, these findings suggest that more directed efforts to establish contact between locals and migrants may be successful in overcoming the conflict

Immunotherapy for Glioblastomas

Glioblastoma (GBM), a WHO grade IV brain tumor, is an aggressive tumor with poor prognosis; even with current standard care of triple therapy, consisting of surgical resection, chemo and radiation therapy, the patients’ median survival time is only approximately 15 months. Recent practice shows that immunotherapy made some progress in some other solid tumors, like melanoma or non-small cell lung cancer. This chapter is going to review some advances in immunotherapy for GBM

3D reconstruction of biological structures: automated procedures for alignment and reconstruction of multiple tilt series in electron tomography

Transmission electron microscopy allows the collection of multiple views of specimens and their computerized three-dimensional reconstruction and analysis with electron tomography. Here we describe development of methods for automated multi-tilt data acquisition, tilt-series processing, and alignment which allow assembly of electron tomographic data from a greater number of tilt series, yielding enhanced data quality and increasing contrast associated with weakly stained structures. This scheme facilitates visualization of nanometer scale details of fine structure in volumes taken from plastic-embedded samples of biological specimens in all dimensions. As heavy metal-contrasted plastic-embedded samples are less sensitive to the overall dose rather than the electron dose rate, an optimal resampling of the reconstruction space can be achieved by accumulating lower dose electron micrographs of the same area over a wider range of specimen orientations. The computerized multiple tilt series collection scheme is implemented together with automated advanced procedures making collection, image alignment, and processing of multi-tilt tomography data a seamless process. We demonstrate high-quality reconstructions from samples of well-described biological structures. These include the giant Mimivirus and clathrin-coated vesicles, imaged in situ in their normal intracellular contexts. Examples are provided from samples of cultured cells prepared by high-pressure freezing and freeze-substitution as well as by chemical fixation before epoxy resin embedding

Value of information methods to design a clinical trial in a small population to optimise a health economic utility function

Background: Most confirmatory randomised controlled clinical trials (RCTs) are designed with specified power, usually 80% or 90%, for a hypothesis test conducted at a given significance level, usually 2.5% for a one-sided test. Approval of the experimental treatment by regulatory agencies is then based on the result of such a significance test with other information to balance the risk of adverse events against the benefit of the treatment to future patients. In the setting of a rare disease, recruiting sufficient patients to achieve conventional error rates for clinically reasonable effect sizes may be infeasible, suggesting that the decision-making process should reflect the size of the target population. Methods: We considered the use of a decision-theoretic value of information (VOI) method to obtain the optimal sample size and significance level for confirmatory RCTs in a range of settings. We assume the decision maker represents society. For simplicity we assume the primary endpoint to be normally distributed with unknown mean following some normal prior distribution representing information on the anticipated effectiveness of the therapy available before the trial. The method is illustrated by an application in an RCT in haemophilia A. We explicitly specify the utility in terms of improvement in primary outcome and compare this with the costs of treating patients, both financial and in terms of potential harm, during the trial and in the future. Results: The optimal sample size for the clinical trial decreases as the size of the population decreases. For non-zero cost of treating future patients, either monetary or in terms of potential harmful effects, stronger evidence is required for approval as the population size increases, though this is not the case if the costs of treating future patients are ignored. Conclusions: Decision-theoretic VOI methods offer a flexible approach with both type I error rate and power (or equivalently trial sample size) depending on the size of the future population for whom the treatment under investigation is intended. This might be particularly suitable for small populations when there is considerable information about the patient population

The Moderating Impact of Local Communities’ Attitudes on Tourism Attributes towards Destination Competitiveness of Cat Museum in Kuching

Tourism attributes such as destination image, tourists’ satisfaction and tourists’ perceived values are nothing new in the research study on destination competitiveness. These are considered as factors that affect the competitiveness of a destination, however local communities’ attitudes (LCA) have yet to be tested whether it has an influence on the relationships on all these three attributes against competitiveness. Hence, Cat Museum in Kuching has been selected as a research site to be tested on, as this site carries its own unique selling proposition and believed to be able to satisfy tourists and given an utmost distinguished value in their travel. This study has introduced the local communities’ attitudes into the framework as moderator to test out whether local communities have an influence on these attributes that eventually affect destination competitiveness. For this study, 150 sets of questionnaires in total were collected. Both Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 23.0 and Smart PLS (version 3.2.7) were used for analyzing the data collected. The findings revealed that destination image, tourists’ satisfaction and tourists’ perceived values were significantly impacting on destination competitiveness and were proven as positively affecting the destination competitiveness. The implications of the study were further discussed

Approaches to sample size calculation for clinical trials in rare diseases

We discuss 3 alternative approaches to sample size calculation: traditional sample size calculation based on power to show a statistically significant effect, sample size calculation based on assurance, and sample size based on a decision-theoretic approach. These approaches are compared head-to-head for clinical trial situations in rare diseases. Specifically, we consider 3 case studies of rare diseases (Lyell disease, adult-onset Still disease, and cystic fibrosis) with the aim to plan the sample size for an upcoming clinical trial. We outline in detail the reasonable choice of parameters for these approaches for each of the 3 case studies and calculate sample sizes. We stress that the influence of the input parameters needs to be investigated in all approaches and recommend investigating different sample size approaches before deciding finally on the trial size. Highly influencing for the sample size are choice of treatment effect parameter in all approaches and the parameter for the additional cost of the new treatment in the decision-theoretic approach. These should therefore be discussed extensively

Supersolar Ni/Fe production in the Type IIP SN 2012ec

SN 2012ec is a Type IIP supernova (SN) with a progenitor detection and comprehensive photospheric-phase observational coverage. Here, we present Very Large Telescope and PESSTO observations of this SN in the nebular phase. We model the nebular [O I] 6300, 6364 lines and find their strength to suggest a progenitor main-sequence mass of 13-15 Msun. SN 2012ec is unique among hydrogen-rich SNe in showing a distinct and unblended line of stable nickel [Ni II] 7378. This line is produced by 58Ni, a nuclear burning ash whose abundance is a sensitive tracer of explosive burning conditions. Using spectral synthesis modelling, we use the relative strengths of [Ni II] 7378 and [Fe II] 7155 (the progenitor of which is 56Ni) to derive a Ni/Fe production ratio of 0.20pm0.07 (by mass), which is a factor 3.4pm1.2 times the solar value. High production of stable nickel is confirmed by a strong [Ni II] 1.939 micron line. This is the third reported case of a core-collapse supernova producing a Ni/Fe ratio far above the solar value, which has implications for core-collapse explosion theory and galactic chemical evolution models.Comment: Published versio