Technical Risk Management on Enterprise Integration Projects

Enterprise Integration (EI) is essential to organisations wishing to fulfill broader business objectives related to e-business, customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM) and business-to-business (B2B) commerce. This paper describes and presents the results of a study into practices for managing technical risk on EI projects. In the study, 21 managers participated in a facilitated workshop or interview sessions to identify areas of risk (RAs) associated with EI projects and risk management practices (RMP) for addressing those RAs. Risks were identified in four separate phases in the lifecycle of an EI project, namely the strategy, planning, implementation and rollout phases. Many of the risks identified were not specific to EI projects, but were applicable to large IT projects in general. The paper is primarily concerned with technical risk although some aspects of business and organizational risk are discussed briefly

Information Systems Integration and Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) Adoption: A Case from Financial Services

Increasingly, organizations find that they need to integrate large number of information systems in order to support enterprise-wide business initiatives such as e-business, supply chain management and customer relationship management. To date, organizations have largely tended to address information systems (IS) integration in an ad-hoc manner. However, some organizations are now realizing the value of adopting a more strategic and systematic approach to IS integration, and are therefore turning to the Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) tools being marketed by a number of integration vendors. EAI initiatives, however, not only involve technical challenges, but also significant business and organizational challenges. This instructional case, adapted from a real-life case, describes the EAI initiative at a Europe-based financial services provider. The case brings out several important lessons in relation to EAI adoption including the business justification for IS integration, EAI vendor selection and evaluation, business process co-ordination and EAI customization

Encouraging Online Participation

Online discussion forums are an excellent environment for peer and collaborative learning. Online discussion forums may be used to support out-of-class interaction in traditional on-campus education, or become the virtual classroom in a subject (or course) that is taught entirely online. However, one of the problems often encountered with online discussion forums is that they can suffer from a lack of student participation. This paper provides instructors with a number of guidelines for encouraging student participation in online discussion forums

Listening under pressure : the downside of motivation

The desire for self-improvement is critical to human performance and learning outcomes. Paradoxically, however, being subjected to increased performance pressure can also result in “choking under pressure”. No studies have experimentally examined the extent to which motivation impacts native speech processing. This dissertation manipulated performance pressure in listeners, and systematically examined its impact on three speech-processing experiments. Sixty adult native English listeners and 45 non-native listeners with poorer English proficiency completed three speech processing experiments, twice – once to establish a baseline, and again to measure changes in performance. In these experiments using native English speech, listeners detected (illusionary) sound changes, categorized phonemes under lexical interference, and recognized words in noises. After baseline testing, half of the participants in each language group were instructed to work, with a fictitious partner, towards a performance-contingent monetary reward; the other half, as controls, simply performed the tasks a second time. This study demonstrated a negative impact of performance pressure on native listeners in all experiments. Relative to the controls, the motivation group were more susceptible to illusions, failed to ignore lexical interference despite prior exposure, and recognized fewer words in cognitively-demanding listening situations. Unexpectedly, relative to native listeners, non-native listeners perceived it as less important to perform well, and those who were in the high performance-pressure group requested significantly greater amount of money for improvement. These language-group differences in task-related attitudes might be a confounding factor that moderate the effect of motivation. By illustrating a complex interaction among motivation, listener status, and performance-induced demands, this dissertation highlights the importance of motivation in speech science.Communication Sciences and Disorder

Fracture of particle-modified epoxies: effect of test rate and temperature

This study compares the effect on the fracture energy of epoxy from addition of different weight % of particles, at both quasi-static and high test rates (up to 1 m/s). Silica and core-shell rubber (CSR) particles, and the hybrid of both (from 0.5 weight % to the maximum concentration of 25.4 weight %) are used. Tapered double cantilever beam (TDCB) and single-edge notch bending (SENB) specimens were used for measurement of the fracture energy, Gc. The silica and CSR formulations were then compared with ceramic microsphere and PES formulations. The toughening mechanisms involved were con rmed by fracture surface images obtained from eld emission gun scanning electron microscopy (FEG- SEM). Most of the specimens from all formulations show debonding and void growth is also expected in silica due to the relatively high fracture energy found. As the CSRs were made up from small CSR particles, mostly localised deformations were found, with some debonding of small CSR particles. In ceramic microsphere and PES specimens, fracture energy improvement was small, and the amount of improvement was similar. PES modifed epoxy shows different structures at different wt% as they were dissolved before mixing with the epoxy. Some brittle particles tear o were found in low wt%, while some local phase inversions were found in high wt%. The main mechanisms in PES specimens were particle pull out, bridging and debonding. The experimental results were compared with simulation results using the nite el- ement analysis software `Abaqus' and analytical models. When compared to exper- imental results, analytical models predicted the modulus and fracture energy of each formulation according, predictions agreed with experimental results, while di erent pre- dictions were found from FE model.Open Acces

Bioavailability of Bioactive Compounds

Arachidin-1 (Ara-1) and arachidin-3 (Ara-3) are stilbenoids found in hairy peanut roots, which have been shown to possess similar, if not higher, efficacy in biological activities when compared to nonprenylated analogs such as piceatannol and resveratrol. Blackberry essences are concentrated volatiles, which are characterized by low molecular weight, lipophilic properties, and have also been demonstrated to have health benefits. As interest in dietary bioactive compounds functional ingredients increase, more emphasis has been placed on identifying which compounds have high efficacy as well as bioavailability. The ability of a compound to exert its health promoting effects depends on its bioavailable dose, rather than the administered dose. The present study aimed to evaluate the stability of Ara-1 and Ara-3 under cell incubation conditions and attempts to determine bioavailability of Ara-1, Ara-3, and blackberry essences using an in vitro Caco-2 transport assay. Caco-2 cells were seeded on semipermeable membranes and allowed to differentiate into a morphology that resembles mature small intestine enterocytes. Sample preparation, extraction methods, and enzymatic treatments were adjusted to enhance recovery of Ara-1 and Ara-3. However, Ara-1 was shown to be more susceptible to the effects of oxidation and degradation. At this time, it is inconclusive whether Ara-1 and Ara-3 possesses higher bioavailability than its analog, resveratrol (Resv), in cell incubation conditions due to little to no recovery during transport. On the other than, individual volatiles from the blackberry essences were tentatively identified and transport rates determined based on the peak area found in the starting material. Results suggests that though esters and monoterpenes make up the two most abundant functional groups in the blackberry essence profile, higher transport rates and recovery were observed in aldehydes

Calorimetric investigation of olivine carbonation as a mechanism for carbon sequestration

OCN 499 - Undergraduate Thesi

Electric Vehicle Charging Station Placement: Formulation, Complexity, and Solutions

To enhance environmental sustainability, many countries will electrify their transportation systems in their future smart city plans. So the number of electric vehicles (EVs) running in a city will grow significantly. There are many ways to re-charge EVs' batteries and charging stations will be considered as the main source of energy. The locations of charging stations are critical; they should not only be pervasive enough such that an EV anywhere can easily access a charging station within its driving range, but also widely spread so that EVs can cruise around the whole city upon being re-charged. Based on these new perspectives, we formulate the Electric Vehicle Charging Station Placement Problem (EVCSPP) in this paper. We prove that the problem is non-deterministic polynomial-time hard. We also propose four solution methods to tackle EVCSPP and evaluate their performance on various artificial and practical cases. As verified by the simulation results, the methods have their own characteristics and they are suitable for different situations depending on the requirements for solution quality, algorithmic efficiency, problem size, nature of the algorithm, and existence of system prerequisite.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, revise