Improving outcomes in outsourced product development: a joint consultant-client perspective

Although firms increasingly outsource front end product development activities to production suppliers or design consultants, this practice has received little scholarly attention. The few existing academic studies report high failure rates but generally present only the client firms’ view of the causes. Our first results from in-depth interviews of both clients and consultants give a richer picture of enablers of success and causes of failure. We confirm some previous findings(internal divisions within the client, “poor communication” between parties),identify new ones (inadequate client capabilities, failure to transfer design intent), and combine them into a comprehensive model of outsourced product development that includes negotiating project scope, continuously managing expectations, and carefully re-integrating the design output into the client’s operations. Finally, we classify several types of client dependency (need for new ideas, extra capacity, or specific technical expertise) and highlight the particular hazards associated with each

Comparing cerebellar pathology of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in football players vs. boxers

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston UniversityChronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a neurodegenerative tauopathy and TDP-43 proteinopathy that has been documented in individuals with a history of repetitive mild brain trauma, such as boxers and football players. In addition to widespread deposits of hyperphosphorylated tau protein throughout the brain, there are also deposits of tau within the cerebellum of these individuals. Clinically CTE is associated with word finding difficulties, aggressive tendencies, short-term memory loss, executive dysfunction, attention and concentration loss, explosivity, paranoia, depression, impulsivity, visuo-spatial abnormalities and dementia. Interestingly, the symptoms found in boxers with advanced CTE are different from those reported in football players. Boxers with advanced CTE tend to have prominent gait and movement difficulties while these symptoms are rarely described in football players with CTE. This study set out to compare the pathology found in two different regions of the cerebellum (cerebellar tonsil and the superior cerebellum) in boxers with advanced CTE, to the cerebellar pathology found in football players with advanced CTE. These boxers and football players with CTE were compared against age and gender matched individuals with no evidence of neurodegenerative disease. The clinical symptoms and microscopic pathology were compared between groups using conventional staining and immunostaining techniques (p62, GFAP, AT8). We further support our findings by citing studies that report cognitive and emotional functioning of the cerebellum, cerebellar deficits following mild traumatic brain injury, and differing traumatic affects on the brain following either translational or rotational forces. This study confirmed that boxers and football players with stage four CTE manifest clinical symptoms and cerebellar pathology indicative of CTE. The dentate nucleus of the cerebellum often demonstrates significant tau pathology. Additionally, we assert the possibility that the superior cerebellum shows more widespread pathology in football players with CTE, and that the cerebellar tonsil of boxers with CTE is often more heavily affected than in football players with CTE. While these studies are intriguing, further studies should be conducted to precisely define these changes by sampling additional areas of the cerebellum, and including a larger number of brains

Natural Hazards in Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico faces natural hazards including hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides, subsidence, and flooding. Although Puerto Ricans perceive themselves as highly vulnerable to these hazards, few have adopted mitigation measures except for mandatory insurance

Earthquake Insurance: Mandated Disclosure and Homeowner Response in California

Earthquake insurance can reduce potentially disastrous economic losses to house• holds and is therefore a prime method of mitigating against the worst economic effects of damaging earthquakes. The decision to purchase such insurance is a special case in the general study of individual response to uncertainty in the environment. An understanding of this decision process elucidates the ways in which environmental information becomes translated into behavior change. Although California legislation has mandated the disclosure of the availability of earthquake insurance to all residential property owners since 1984, less than half of California homeowners have earthquake insurance. This paper reports on the results of a survey of 3,500 owner-occupiers in Contra Costa, Santa Clara, Los Angeles, and San Bernardino Counties conducted in the summer of 1989. The survey was undertaken to discover the locational concentrations of insurance policy-holders and the socioeconomic, demographic, and attitudinal characteristics that distinguish insured from noninsured homeowners. The results show that insurance purchase is not spatially related to geophysical risk and that the purchase of insurance is not systematically related to income, equity in the home, age of the head of household, or other socioeconomic characteristics. Instead, perceived risk is the primary factor associated with insurance purchase