595 research outputs found
THE PENCIL-LESS ARCHITECT\u27S OFFICE: A 66DEVIANT CASE STUDY OF THE DYNAMICS OF STRATEGIC CHANGE AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
The dominant view in the information technology (IT) strategy literature implicitly or explicitly incorporates a normative model of dynamic alignment in which business strategy is seen as the primary driver of strategic adaptation. This paper describes and analyzes a case study of the strategic application of IT where success emerged via a different process. As well as providing evidence of a path to strategic fit that is rarely discussed in the literature, the case points to mastery and the management of risk as critical factors in the process of IT-based strategic change
Picosecond electric-field-induced threshold switching in phase-change materials
Many chalcogenide glasses undergo a breakdown in electronic resistance above
a critical field strength. Known as threshold switching, this mechanism enables
field-induced crystallization in emerging phase-change memory. Purely
electronic as well as crystal nucleation assisted models have been employed to
explain the electronic breakdown. Here, picosecond electric pulses are used to
excite amorphous AgInSbTe. Field-dependent reversible
changes in conductivity and pulse-driven crystallization are observed. The
present results show that threshold switching can take place within the
electric pulse on sub-picosecond time-scales - faster than crystals can
nucleate. This supports purely electronic models of threshold switching and
reveals potential applications as an ultrafast electronic switch.Comment: 6 pages manuscript with 3 figures and 8 pages supplementary materia
Spin gap in the Quasi-One-Dimensional S=1/2 Antiferromagnet: Cu2(1,4-diazacycloheptane)2Cl4
Cu_{2}(1,4-diazacycloheptane)_{2}Cl_{4} contains double chains of spin 1/2
Cu^{2+} ions. We report ac susceptibility, specific heat, and inelastic neutron
scattering measurements on this material. The magnetic susceptibility,
, shows a rounded maximum at T = 8 K indicative of a low dimensional
antiferromagnet with no zero field magnetic phase transition. We compare the
data to exact diagonalization results for various one dimensional
spin Hamiltonians and find excellent agreement for a spin ladder with
intra-rung coupling meV and two mutually frustrating
inter-rung interactions: meV and meV. The
specific heat in zero field is exponentially activated with an activation
energy meV. A spin gap is also found through inelastic
neutron scattering on powder samples which identify a band of magnetic
excitations for meV. Using sum-rules we derive an
expression for the dynamic spin correlation function associated with
non-interacting propagating triplets in a spin ladder. The van-Hove
singularities of such a model are not observed in our scattering data
indicating that magnetic excitations in Cu_{2}(1,4-diazacycloheptane)_{2}Cl_{4}
are more complicated. For magnetic fields above T specific
heat data versus temperature show anomalies indicating a phase transition to an
ordered state below T = 1 K.Comment: 9 pages, 8 postscript figures, LaTeX, Submitted to PRB 8/4/97, e-mail
Comments to [email protected]
Automated manufacturing of chimeric antigen receptor T cells for adoptive immunotherapy using CliniMACS prodigy
Novel cell therapies derived from human T lymphocytes are exhibiting enormous potential in early-phase clinical trials in patients with hematologic malignancies. Ex vivo modification of T cells is currently limited to a small number of centers with the required infrastructure and expertise. The process requires isolation, activation, transduction, expansion and cryopreservation steps. To simplify procedures and widen applicability for clinical therapies, automation of these procedures is being developed. The CliniMACS Prodigy (Miltenyi Biotec) has recently been adapted for lentiviral transduction of T cells and here we analyse the feasibility of a clinically compliant T-cell engineering process for the manufacture of T cells encoding chimeric antigen receptors (CAR) for CD19 (CAR19), a widely targeted antigen in B-cell malignancies. Using a closed, single-use tubing set we processed mononuclear cells from fresh or frozen leukapheresis harvests collected from healthy volunteer donors. Cells were phenotyped and subjected to automated processing and activation using TransAct, a polymeric nanomatrix activation reagent incorporating CD3/CD28-specific antibodies. Cells were then transduced and expanded in the CentriCult-Unit of the tubing set, under stabilized culture conditions with automated feeding and media exchange. The process was continuously monitored to determine kinetics of expansion, transduction efficiency and phenotype of the engineered cells in comparison with small-scale transductions run in parallel. We found that transduction efficiencies, phenotype and function of CAR19 T cells were comparable with existing procedures and overall T-cell yields sufficient for anticipated therapeutic dosing. The automation of closed-system T-cell engineering should improve dissemination of emerging immunotherapies and greatly widen applicability
Different paths to the modern state in Europe: the interaction between domestic political economy and interstate competition
Theoretical work on state formation and capacity has focused mostly on early modern Europe and on the experience of western European states during this period. While a number of European states monopolized domestic tax collection and achieved gains in state capacity during the early modern era, for others revenues stagnated or even declined, and these variations motivated alternative hypotheses for determinants of fiscal and state capacity. In this study we test the basic hypotheses in the existing literature making use of the large date set we have compiled for all of the leading states across the continent. We find strong empirical support for two prevailing threads in the literature, arguing respectively that interstate wars and changes in economic structure towards an urbanized economy had positive fiscal impact. Regarding the main point of contention in the theoretical literature, whether it was representative or authoritarian political regimes that facilitated the gains in fiscal capacity, we do not find conclusive evidence that one performed better than the other. Instead, the empirical evidence we have gathered lends supports to the hypothesis that when under pressure of war, the fiscal performance of representative regimes was better in the more urbanized-commercial economies and the fiscal performance of authoritarian regimes was better in rural-agrarian economie
The Eco-Epidemiology of Pacific Coast Tick Fever in California
Rickettsia philipii (type strain “Rickettsia 364D”), the etiologic agent of Pacific Coast tick fever (PCTF), is transmitted to people by the Pacific Coast tick, Dermacentor occidentalis. Following the first confirmed human case of PCTF in 2008, 13 additional human cases have been reported in California, more than half of which were pediatric cases. The most common features of PCTF are the presence of at least one necrotic lesion known as an eschar (100%), fever (85%), and headache (79%); four case-patients required hospitalization and four had multiple eschars. Findings presented here implicate the nymphal or larval stages of D. occidentalis as the primary vectors of R. philipii to people. Peak transmission risk from ticks to people occurs in late summer. Rickettsia philipii DNA was detected in D. occidentalis ticks from 15 of 37 California counties. Similarly, non-pathogenic Rickettsia rhipicephali DNA was detected in D. occidentalis in 29 of 38 counties with an average prevalence of 12.0% in adult ticks. In total, 5,601 ticks tested from 2009 through 2015 yielded an overall R. philipii infection prevalence of 2.1% in adults, 0.9% in nymphs and a minimum infection prevalence of 0.4% in larval pools. Although most human cases of PCTF have been reported from northern California, acarological surveillance suggests that R. philipii may occur throughout the distribution range of D. occidentalis
Attributing changes in the distribution of species abundance to weather variables using the example of British breeding birds
The BBS is undertaken by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and jointly funded by the BTO, the Joint Nature Conservation Committee and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.1. Modelling spatio-temporal changes in species abundance and attributing those changes to potential drivers such as climate, is an important but difficult problem. The standard approach for incorporating climatic variables into such models is to include each weather variable as a single covariate whose effect is expressed through a low-order polynomial or smoother in an additive model. This, however, confounds the spatial and temporal effects of the covariates. 2. We developed a novel approach to distinguish between three types of change in any particular weather covariate. We decomposed the weather covariate into three new covariates by separating out temporal variation in weather (averaging over space), spatial variation in weather (averaging over years) and a space-time anomaly term (residual variation). These three covariates were each fitted separately in the models. We illustrate the approach using generalized additive models applied to count data for a selection of species from the UK’s Breeding Bird Survey, 1994-2013. The weather covariates considered were the mean temperatures during the preceding winter and temperatures and rainfall during the preceding breeding season. We compare models that include these covariates directly with models including decomposed components of the same covariates, considering both linear and smooth relationships. 3. The lowest QAIC values were always associated with a decomposed weather covariate model. Different relationships between counts and the three new covariates provided strong evidence that the effects of changes in covariate values depended on whether changes took place in space, in time, or in the space-time anomaly. These results promote caution in predicting species distribution and abundance in future climate, based on relationships that are largely determined by environmental variation over space. 4. Our methods estimate the effect of temporal changes in weather, while accounting for spatial effects of long-term climate, improving inference on overall and/or localized effects of climate change. With increasing availability of large-scale data sets, need is growing for appropriate analytical tools. The proposed decomposition of the weather variables represents an important advance by eliminating the confounding issue often inherent in analyses of large-scale data sets.PostprintPeer reviewe
A characterization of ASAS-SN core-collapse supernova environments with VLT+MUSE: I. Sample selection, analysis of local environments, and correlations with light curve properties
The analysis of core-collapse supernova (CCSN) environments can provide
important information on the life cycle of massive stars and constrain the
progenitor properties of these powerful explosions. The MUSE instrument at the
VLT enables detailed local environment constraints of the progenitors of large
samples of CCSNe. Using a homogeneous SN sample from the ASAS-SN survey has
enabled us to perform a minimally biased statistical analysis of CCSN
environments. We analyze 111 galaxies observed by MUSE that hosted 112 CCSNe
detected or discovered by the ASAS-SN survey between 2014 and 2018. The
majority of the galaxies were observed by the the AMUSING survey. Here we
analyze the immediate environment around the SN locations and compare the
properties between the different CCSN types and their light curves. We used
stellar population synthesis and spectral fitting techniques to derive physical
parameters for all HII regions detected within each galaxy, including the star
formation rate (SFR), H equivalent width (EW), oxygen abundance, and
extinction. We found that stripped-envelope (SE) SNe occur in environments with
a higher median SFR, H EW, and oxygen abundances than SNe II and SNe
IIn/Ibn. The distributions of SNe II and IIn are very similar, indicating that
these events explode in similar environments. For the SESNe, SNe Ic have higher
median SFRs, H EWs, and oxygen abundances than SNe Ib. SNe IIb have
environments with similar SFRs and H EWs to SNe Ib, and similar oxygen
abundances to SNe Ic. We also show that the postmaximum decline rate, , of
SNe II correlates with the H EW, and that the luminosity and the
parameter of SESNe correlate with the oxygen abundance,
H EW, and SFR at their environments. This suggests a connection between
the explosion mechanisms of these events to their environment properties
LSST Science Book, Version 2.0
A survey that can cover the sky in optical bands over wide fields to faint
magnitudes with a fast cadence will enable many of the exciting science
opportunities of the next decade. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST)
will have an effective aperture of 6.7 meters and an imaging camera with field
of view of 9.6 deg^2, and will be devoted to a ten-year imaging survey over
20,000 deg^2 south of +15 deg. Each pointing will be imaged 2000 times with
fifteen second exposures in six broad bands from 0.35 to 1.1 microns, to a
total point-source depth of r~27.5. The LSST Science Book describes the basic
parameters of the LSST hardware, software, and observing plans. The book
discusses educational and outreach opportunities, then goes on to describe a
broad range of science that LSST will revolutionize: mapping the inner and
outer Solar System, stellar populations in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies,
the structure of the Milky Way disk and halo and other objects in the Local
Volume, transient and variable objects both at low and high redshift, and the
properties of normal and active galaxies at low and high redshift. It then
turns to far-field cosmological topics, exploring properties of supernovae to
z~1, strong and weak lensing, the large-scale distribution of galaxies and
baryon oscillations, and how these different probes may be combined to
constrain cosmological models and the physics of dark energy.Comment: 596 pages. Also available at full resolution at
http://www.lsst.org/lsst/sciboo
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