2,712 research outputs found
Organizing the innovation process : complementarities in innovation networking
This paper contributes to the developing literature on complementarities in organizational design. We test for the existence of complementarities in the use of external networking between stages of the innovation process in a sample of UK and German manufacturing plants. Our evidence suggests some differences between the UK and Germany in terms of the optimal combination of innovation activities in which to implement external networking. Broadly, there is more evidence of complementarities in the case of Germany, with the exception of the product engineering stage. By contrast, the UK exhibits generally strong evidence of substitutability in external networking in different stages, except between the identification of new products and product design and development stages. These findings suggest that previous studies indicating strong complementarity between internal and external knowledge sources have provided only part of the picture of the strategic dilemmas facing firms
A Description of the Policies and Procedures of Retail Feed Dealers in Utah, 1958
The retail feed industry has grown continually in importance during the past 60 years. Increased population has placed ever greater demands upon food production to feed our nation\u27s people. During 1968, the average American consumed 80 pounds of beef, 63 pounds of pork, 8 pounds of veal, 4 pounds of lamb, 26 pounds of chicken, and 11 pounds of lard. This amounted to an annual per capita consumption of 188 pounds of red meat. With 173 million people to feed, vast quantities of livestock must be produced, finished, and marketed to satisfy our nation\u27s needs
The Relationship Between Measures of Annual Livestock Disturbance in Western Riparian Areas and Stream Conditions Important to Trout, Salmon, and Char
Managing livestock disturbance in riparian zones in a manner that provides economic returns to ranchers while protecting streams is an important aspect of rangeland management on public lands in the western United States. Attempts to balance economic and ecologic outcomes have been made more difficult due to the presence of several salmonid species that are protected under the Endangered Species Act. One approach to proper management of livestock use near streams has been to define the allowable limits of disturbance using 2 metrics, streambank alteration and stubble height. We evaluated 153 stream reaches within the Interior Columbia Basin to determine if these 2 surrogates of livestock disturbance measured after the vegetative growing season were associated with stream conditions important to salmonids evaluated the following summer. We found that each stream habitat attribute that was evaluated (width-to-depth ratio, streambank angle, percent undercut banks, streambank stability, residual pool depth, percent pools, percent pool-tail fine sediments \u3c2 mm, and wood frequency) trended toward lower-quality salmonid habitat as streambank alteration increased or as stubble height decreased. While the strength of these associations were variable, the slopes of the relationships suggest that managing the amount of streambank alteration or stubble height could influence stream conditions within the Interior Columbia Basin. Because improved stream conditions for salmonids corresponded to decreased livestock disturbance, the amount of disturbance allowed in a stream reach will need to reflect management expectations and the environmental setting within the allotment. As a starting point, we suggest the continued application of existing livestock disturbance standards in stream reaches with good habitat conditions, and the specification of more conservative disturbance standards in stream reaches that have degraded habitat conditions
Nod1 signaling overcomes resistance of S. pneumoniae to opsonophagocytic killing
Airway infection by the Gram-positive pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae (Sp) leads to recruitment of neutrophils but
limited bacterial killing by these cells. Co-colonization by Sp and a Gram-negative species, Haemophilus influenzae (Hi),
provides sufficient stimulus to induce neutrophil and complement-mediated clearance of Sp from the mucosal surface
in a murine model. Products from Hi, but not Sp, also promote killing of Sp by ex vivo neutrophil-enriched peritoneal
exudate cells. Here we identify the stimulus from Hi as its peptidoglycan. Enhancement of opsonophagocytic killing
was facilitated by signaling through nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain-1 (Nod1), which is involved in
recognition of γ-D-glutamyl-meso-diaminopimelic acid (meso-DAP) contained in cell walls of Hi but not Sp. Neutrophils
from mice treated with Hi or compounds containing meso-DAP, including synthetic peptidoglycan fragments, showed
increased Sp killing in a Nod1-dependent manner. Moreover, Nod1-/- mice showed reduced Hi-induced clearance of Sp
during co-colonization. These observations offer insight into mechanisms of microbial competition and demonstrate
the importance of Nod1 in neutrophil-mediated clearance of bacteria in vivo
Beaver Dam Influences on Streamflow Hydraulic Properties and Thermal Regimes
Beaver dams alter channel hydraulics which in turn change the geomorphic templates of streams. Variability in geomorphic units, the building blocks of stream systems, and water temperature, critical to stream ecological function, define habitat heterogeneity and availability. While prior research has shown the impact of beaver dams on stream hydraulics, geomorphic template, or temperature, the connections or feedbacks between these habitat measures are not well understood. This has left questions regarding relationships between temperature variability at different spatial scales to hydraulic properties such as flow depth and velocity that are dependent on the geomorphology. We combine detailed predicted hydraulic properties, field-based maps with an additional classification scheme of geomorphic units, and detailed water temperature observations throughout a study reach to demonstrate the relationship between these factors at different spatial scales (reach, beaver dam complexes, and geomorphic units). Over a three-week, low flow period we found temperature to vary 2 °C between the upstream and downstream extents of the reach with a net warming of 1 °C during the day and a net cooling of 0.5 °C at night. At the beaver dam complex scale, net warming of 1.15 °C occurred during the day with variable cooling at night. Regardless of limited temperature changes at these larger scales, the temperature variability within a beaver dam complex reached up to 10.5 °C due to the diversity of geomorphic units. At the geomorphic unit scale, the highly altered flow velocity and depth distributions within primary geomorphic units provide an explanation of the temperature variability within the dam complex and insight regarding increases in habitat heterogeneity
Evaluation of the toxicity of sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS) in the MucilAir™ human airway model in vitro
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Investigating Mobile Accessibility Guidance for People with Aphasia
The World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) have become widely accepted as the standard for web accessibility evaluation. This poster investigates how the mobile version of these guidelines caters for people with aphasia (PWA) by comparing the results from user testing against that of an audit using the guidelines. We outline the efficacy of the guidelines in the broader context of how they cater for various impairments and offer some recommendations for designing for people with aphasia
Evaluating Watershed Condition: Bottom Up Vs. Top Down Approaches?
Habitat degradation has been identified as one of the major factors affecting the declines of fishes in the Columbia River Basin. The condition of physical habitat and the biotic integrity of stream systems are often directly correlated with substantial alterations to key landscape attributes. As such, numerous approaches to measure watershed condition have been developed. Here, we compare two separate measures of watershed condition: 1) a GIS-based measure of condition, i.e., top down; and 2) a ground based assessment of condition, i.e., bottom up), using field data collected across 1200 sites in the Interior Columbia River Basin under the PIBO Effectiveness Monitoring Project. With our GIS approach, we integrate land management and natural disturbance from watershed upstream of sample reaches into an overall watershed condition score. With our bottom-up approach, we integrate stream temperature data, indices of macroinvertebrate health, and an index of physical habitat condition from reach-level field data into an overall condition score. Our results indicate significant differences in assessments of condition across the two methods, as the GIS approach ranked considerably more watersheds with management activities into a low condition category than found in the bottom-up approach. Conversely, the GIS approach also categorized most watersheds with no or minimal management activities, i.e., reference, as low risk, while the field-based, bottom up approach illustrated a wide range of condition of reference sites due to natural disturbances. Our results suggest GIS-based approaches tended to quantify the ‘risk’ rather than condition within watersheds. The bottom-up approach tended to quantify actual conditions within streams, without consideration of potential risks associated with land management activities. Here, we advocate the most beneficial approach that would be some combination of the two to help guide and prioritize restoration activities to enhance habitat conditions and minimize risk of catastrophic disturbances
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Speech diversity and speech interfaces - considering an inclusive future through stammering
The number of speech interfaces and services made available through them continue to grow. This has opened up interactions to people who rely on speech as a critical modality for interacting with systems. However, people with diverse speech patterns such as those who stammer are at risk of being negatively affected or excluded from speech interface interaction. In this paper, we consider what an inclusive speech interface future may look like for people who stammer. In doing so, we identify three key challenges: (1) developing effective speech recognition, (2) understanding the user experiences of people who stammer and (3) supporting speech interfaces designers through appropriate heuristics. We believe the interdisciplinary and cross-community strengths of venues like CUI are well positioned to address these challenges going forward
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