The use of process metrics to evaluate product development projects

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2004.Includes bibliographical references (p. 72).Product development success is an important strategic factor in today's business environment. The ability to accurately predict the outcome of product development projects would be a useful strategic tool. This research will use a product development process assessment survey called "Perform" to evaluate project success and also evaluates the effectiveness of the "Perform" survey. Two abilities of the survey are evaluated. The first is the consistency of the responses from different members of the development team. The second is the ability of the survey to predict the outcome of the project. The survey is evaluated by applying the survey to two projects that have been completed. The results of each respondent are compared for consistency. The results of the project are also compared to the results of the survey to gauge the predictive ability of the survey. Perform was found to provide fairly consistent responses from members of the development team. The survey did a good job of predicting project outcome.by Benjamin A. Kellam.S.M

Enabling Factors in Successful Product Development

The research literature and industry best-practices report a vast number of enabling factors that contribute to successful product development (PD). Collectively this body of work also establishes the causal linkages between these enabling factors and overall success in PD. But what specific factors will produce what specific outcomes are vague and ambiguous. To address this apparent void, we find distinct sets of PD enabling factors that are statistically accurate predictors of the specific project outcomes of profit, market share, customer satisfaction, organizational effectiveness, and product quality. We are also motivated to help organizations improve their PD. To that end, we develop a diagnostic tool using the factors that predict our five PD outcomes. The tool is used to pinpoint weaknesses and focus improvements to achieve specific desired outcomes. Results of in situ testing of the tool are reported in this article. The guiding principles of this work are specificity and actionability: specific enabling factors that can produce specific results, and an actionable diagnostic-tool that practitioners can use to improve the practice and results of their PD projects

Human infection with MERS Coronavirus after exposure to infected camels, Saudi Arabia, 2013

We investigated a case of human infection with Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) after exposure to infected camels. Analysis of the whole human-derived virus and 15% of the camel-derived virus sequence yielded nucleotide polymorphism signatures suggestive of cross-species transmission. Camels may act as a direct source of human MERS-CoV infection

Article Global Conformational Dynamics of HIV-1 Reverse Transcriptase Bound to Non-Nucleoside Inhibitors

biolog

A highly virulent variant of HIV-1 circulating in the Netherlands

We discovered a highly virulent variant of subtype-B HIV-1 in the Netherlands. One hundred nine individuals with this variant had a 0.54 to 0.74 log10 increase (i.e., a ~3.5-fold to 5.5-fold increase) in viral load compared with, and exhibited CD4 cell decline twice as fast as, 6604 individuals with other subtype-B strains. Without treatment, advanced HIV-CD4 cell counts below 350 cells per cubic millimeter, with long-term clinical consequences-is expected to be reached, on average, 9 months after diagnosis for individuals in their thirties with this variant. Age, sex, suspected mode of transmission, and place of birth for the aforementioned 109 individuals were typical for HIV-positive people in the Netherlands, which suggests that the increased virulence is attributable to the viral strain. Genetic sequence analysis suggests that this variant arose in the 1990s from de novo mutation, not recombination, with increased transmissibility and an unfamiliar molecular mechanism of virulence

The value of open-source clinical science in pandemic response: lessons from ISARIC

International audienc