Applying Online: Technological Innovation for Income Support Programs in Four States

A study examining the development, implementation, and best practices for online applications for public benefits programs in California, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Washington based on interviews with state agencies and community-based organizations

Relating HRM and MOT Capabilities to R&D Intensity

R&D activities cannot be dissociated from the broader organizational capabilities developed by a firm. These capabilities may take the form of human resource management capabilities (HRM) or management of technology capabilities (MOT). In a study conducted in 126 manufacturing firms in the electrical energy sector in Quebec, the relationship between R&D intensity and HRM and MOT was investigated. Cluster analysis conducted on these firms revealed the presence of three distinct groups of firms with respect to the level of R&D intensity, firm size, and degree of process innovativeness. Further analysis on these groups show significant relationships between the level of R&D intensity and specific HRM and MOT capabilities all of which point to the importance of developing the more intangible capabilities in organizations and taking into account the specific organizational context. La réalisation d'activités de R&D nécessite de la part des entreprises, un ensemble de compétences variées. Les entreprises doivent, entre autre, développer des habiletés en gestion des ressources humaines (GRH) et en gestion de la technologie (GT). La relation entre ces deux types de compétences et l'intensité des activités de R&D est explorée dans une étude menée auprès de 126 entreprises manufacturières québécoises du secteur de l'énergie électrique. L'analyse typologique permet d'identifier trois groupes distincts en fonction de l'intensité des activités de R&D, de la taille de l'entreprise et du degré innovateur des technologies en place (innovation de procédés). Les analyses des groupes démontrent l'existence de relations significatives entre le niveau d'intensité de la R&D et la présence de compétences spécifiques en GRH et en GT. Ces résultats font ressortir l'importance pour les entreprises de développer des compétences dites intangibles en tenant compte du contexte organisationnel qui leur est spécifique.Organizational capabilities; R&D management; Management of technology; Human resource management; Process innovation; New technology adoption, Compétences organisationnelles ; Gestion de la R&D ; Gestion de la technologie ; Gestion des ressources humaines ; Innovation de procédés ; Adoption de nouvelles technologie

Monitoring New Technological Developments in the Electricity Industry : An International Perspective

Being able to monitor and asses technological developments represents an essential activity for an industry expected to be increasingly active in all of the regions of the world and in markets which require a wide array of differing technological configurations. This paper outlines the methodological approach used to monitor new technological developments in the electricity industry and presents the results of a DELPHI survey conducted among a panel of international experts. Être capable de surveiller et d'évaluer les développements technologiques constitue une activité essentielle pour une industrie appelée à être de plus en plus active dans toutes les régions du monde et dans les marchés qui exigent un registre de configurations technologiques étendu. Cet article expose l'approche méthodologique employée pour surveiller les nouveaux développements technologiques dans l'industrie de l'électricité et dévoile les résultats d'une enquête DELPHI menée parmi un groupe d'experts internationaux.Technological Monitoring, Electricity Industry, DELPHI, Surveillance technologique, industrie électrique, DELPHI

Organic Agriculture in Denmark

Overview of the present state of Organic agriculture in Denmar

Antioxidant Supplementation in the Treatment of Aging-Associated Diseases

Oxidative stress is generally considered as the consequence of an imbalance between pro- and antioxidants species, which often results into indiscriminate and global damage at the organismal level. Elderly people are more susceptible to oxidative stress and this depends, almost in part, from a decreased performance of their endogenous antioxidant system. As many studies reported an inverse correlation between systemic levels of antioxidants and several diseases, primarily cardiovascular diseases, but also diabetes and neurological disorders, antioxidant supplementation has been foreseen as an effective preventive and therapeutic intervention for aging-associated pathologies. However, the expectations of this therapeutic approach have often been partially disappointed by clinical trials. The interplay of both endogenous and exogenous antioxidants with the systemic redox system is very complex and represents an issue that is still under debate. In this review a selection of recent clinical studies concerning antioxidants supplementation and the evaluation of their influence in aging-related diseases is analyzed. The controversial outcomes of antioxidants supplementation therapies, which might partially depend from an underestimation of the patient specific metabolic demand and genetic background, are presented

Ethnic differences in allelic distribution of IFN-g in South African women but no link with cervical cancer

BACKGROUND: The failure of specific types of human papillomaviruses (HPV) to raise effective immune responses may be important in the pathogenesis of cervical cancer, the second most common cancer in South African women. Polymorphisms of a number of cytokine genes have been implicated in inducing susceptibility or resistance to cancers caused by infectious agents owing to their role in determining host immune response. Polymorphisms of IL-10 and IFN-γ genes are believed to influence the expression and/or secretion levels of their respective cytokines. METHODS AND RESULTS: In this study, women with histologically proven cancer of the cervix (n = 458) and hospital-based controls (n = 587) were investigated for bi-allelic -1082 (A/G) polymorphisms of IL-10 and the bi-allelic +874(A/T) polymorphisms of IFN-γ. In addition, the distributions of the allelic frequencies were stratified in both the African and mixed race population groups of South Africa. We found striking differences in the allele distribution of IFN-γ (X(2 )= 0.02) among the two ethnic groups. A significant increase in the allele distribution of the IFN-γ AA genotype was found in the African group compared to the mixed population group (OR, 0.5; 95% CI, 0.2–1.0). For IL-10 there were no significant allelic differences between the two South African ethnic groups. Furthermore, when the ethnic groups were combined the IL-10 allelic frequencies in the combined South African data were similar to those observed in an Oriental population from Southern China and in an Italian population. However, the allele frequencies of the IFN-γ genotype among the two South African ethnic groups were different when compared to an Italian Caucasoid group. While crude analysis of these data showed both statistically significantly increased and diminished risks of cervical cancer among high producers of INF-γ and low producers of IL-10 respectively, these associations were no longer significant when the data were adjusted for confounding factors. CONCLUSION: These findings demonstrate a clear correlation between ethnicity and IFN-γ polymorphism across different population groups. However, these differences in ethnicity and gene polymorphisms in the aforementioned cytokines are suggested not to influence the development of invasive cervical cancer but may represent an important susceptibility biomarker for other diseases and should be explored further

Modelling diffusion of innovations in a social network

A new simple model of diffusion of innovations in a social network with upgrading costs is introduced. Agents are characterized by a single real variable, their technological level. According to local information agents decide whether to upgrade their level or not balancing their possible benefit with the upgrading cost. A critical point where technological avalanches display a power-law behavior is also found. This critical point is characterized by a macroscopic observable that turns out to optimize technological growth in the stationary state. Analytical results supporting our findings are found for the globally coupled case.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures. Final version accepted in PR

A spectroscopic look at the gravitationally lensed type Ia SN 2016geu at z=0.409

The spectacular success of type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) in SN-cosmology is based on the assumption that their photometric and spectroscopic properties are invariant with redshift. However, this fundamental assumption needs to be tested with observations of high-z SNe Ia. To date, the majority of SNe Ia observed at moderate to large redshifts (0.4 < z < 1.0) are faint, and the resultant analyses are based on observations with modest signal-to-noise ratios that impart a degree of ambiguity in their determined properties. In rare cases however, the Universe offers a helping hand: to date a few SNe Ia have been observed that have had their luminosities magnified by intervening galaxies and galaxy clusters acting as gravitational lenses. In this paper we present long-slit spectroscopy of the lensed SNe Ia 2016geu, which occurred at a redshift of z=0.409, and was magnified by a factor of ~55 by a galaxy located at z=0.216. We compared our spectra, which were obtained a couple weeks to a couple months past peak light, with the spectroscopic properties of well-observed, nearby SNe Ia, finding that SN 2016geu's properties are commensurate with those of SNe Ia in the local universe. Based primarily on the velocity and strength of the Si II 6355 absorption feature, we find that SN 2016geu can be classified as a high-velocity, high-velocity gradient and "core-normal" SN Ia. The strength of various features (measured though their pseudo-equivalent widths) argue against SN 2016geu being a faint, broad-lined, cool or shallow-silicon SN Ia. We conclude that the spectroscopic properties of SN 2016geu imply that it is a normal SN Ia, and when taking previous results by other authors into consideration, there is very little, if any, evolution in the observational properties of SNe Ia up to z~0.4. [Abridged]Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, 4 tables. Submitted to MNRAS. Comments welcome

Exponential Decay of Correlations for Strongly Coupled Toom Probabilistic Cellular Automata

We investigate the low-noise regime of a large class of probabilistic cellular automata, including the North-East-Center model of Toom. They are defined as stochastic perturbations of cellular automata belonging to the category of monotonic binary tessellations and possessing a property of erosion. We prove, for a set of initial conditions, exponential convergence of the induced processes toward an extremal invariant measure with a highly predominant spin value. We also show that this invariant measure presents exponential decay of correlations in space and in time and is therefore strongly mixing.Comment: 21 pages, 0 figure, revised version including a generalization to a larger class of models, structure of the arguments unchanged, minor changes suggested by reviewers, added reference