Realizing Innovations in Service Firms: new organizational forms and supporting processes

This paper describes a number of innovation forms that are of special relevance to firms in the service industry. Not only technological innovations but also organizational innovations have been distinguished. In the service industry organizational innovations seem to play a significant role. The literature on innovations makes little mention of new organizational arrangements in services. Based on the service management literature a scheme with three forms of organizational innovation and one form of technological innovation is developed. This scheme is illustrated and elaborated in ten case studies of firms in various service industries. The case studies shed some light on innovations in multi-unit forms, combinations of services and co-operation with customers. On a basis of the service management literature and the case studies some of the main processes supporting the (organizational) innovations are analysed.client as co-producer;multi-unit organization;supporting processes;technological innovations

Classification of mineral water types and comparison with drinking water standards

In a study of 291 mineral waters from 41 different countries, 9-20% exceeded the Dutch drinking water standards for chloride, calcium, magnesium, kalium, sodium, sulphate and fluorine. The mineral water quality cannot be qualified as bad since the standards for these compounds with the exception of fluorine, are not based on health effects but on undesirable taste effects and possible negative effects on the water supply system. For the mineral water data set the amount of dissolved compounds, hardness and chloride content appear to be the most distinctive criteria. A mineral water type classification based on these criteria will offer consumers a tool for assessing the mineral water on the basis of the chemical composition data on the bottle label. In terms of the criteria mentioned, average Dutch tap water strongly resembles the Belgian and Dutch mineral waters. This similarity does not extend to the price, since Dutch tap water is about 500 times cheaper

TRIM proteins and CXS chemokines : evolutionary dynamics and functional characterization of two large protein families in teleost fish

Two large protein families with roles in the immune system were the subject of this thesis. In part one of the thesis, TRIM proteins were studied, which are part of an ancient intracellular immune system. In mammals, TRIM proteins were recently found to play an important role in the antiviral immune response as they can restrict multiple viruses. To better understand the evolution of the TRIM protein family, TRIM proteins were investigated in teleost fish, which emerged early during vertebrate evolution. A detailed description of the entire TRIM gene family in fish was made and it was discovered that certain TRIM genes have undergone a radical expansion, giving rise to three multigene families. Experimental studies indicated a role for trout TRIM proteins in antiviral immunity and demonstrated that they have E3 ubiquitin ligase activity. As it recently became evident that ubiquitination is an important mode to control the activity of proteins of innate immune pathways, possibly TRIM proteins in fish have a similar activity. In part two of this thesis, inflammatory CXC chemokines were studied, for which limited functional data was available in fish at the start of the thesis project. CXC chemokines are specialized cytokines that direct leukocyte migration during inflammation. In zebrafish and carp, two CXC lineages were identified that resemble mammalian CXCL8, a similar diversification was observed for chemokines that resemble mammalian CXCL9, CXCL10, CXCL11chemokines. A characterization of the functions for cyprinid CXCL8-like and CXCL9-11-like (named CXCb) chemokines was made by in vitro and in vivo gene expression studies. By preparation of recombinant proteins it was demonstrated that carp chemokines of the CXCL8-like and CXCb subsets are both chemotactic for fish leukocytes. Chemokines of the CXCL8-like and CXCb subsets appeared to be functionally distinct, as they have a different effect on phagocyte activation and act during different phases of the inflammatory response. These results indicate that CXC chemokines have already specialized functions in fish. </p

Sensitivity analysis for grating reconstruction

Periodic structures, called diffraction gratings, play an important role in optical lithography. The diffraction of the incident field in multiple diffraction orders provides a way to accurately determine a position on a wafer on one hand and on the other hand it provides a test method to determine the quality of the photolithographic process. For both applications it is crucial to be able to find the actual shape of the structure to correct for damages or imperfections. When besides the incident field also the shape of a diffraction grating is known, we can compute the diffracted field by using the rigorous coupled-wave analysis (RCWA) or the C method. These methods solve Maxwell’s equations for time-harmonic fields directly, which is required because such a grating typically has a period smaller than the wavelength of the incident field. The basic idea of both methods is that they transform Maxwell’s equations into algebraic eigensystems, which have to be solved in order to obtain the diffracted field. The reconstruction of the grating shape is carried out by first making an initial guess of its shape. Next the computed diffracted field is compared to actual measurements and the difference between them determines how the shape parameters should be adjusted. For the reconstruction we make use of standard optimization techniques such as quasi-Newton methods to find local optima. We assume that the initial guess of the grating shape is close enough to its actual shape such that the optimum that is found is the actual shape and take more angles of incidence to make the optimization more robust. The focus of this thesis is finding the first-order derivative information of the diffracted field with respect to the shape parameters. This is possible using finite differences where the diffracted field is computed again for a neighbouring value of the shape parameter under consideration. However, straightforward differentiation of the relations within RCWA or the C method gives a more accurate, but also faster way to find this derivative information. When straightforward differentiation is used, we also have to find eigenvalue and eigenvector derivatives, but to determine these derivatives no additional eigenvalue systems have to be solved. This implies that the reconstruction process can be performed faster and more accurate. Besides the speed-up of the reconstruction, we also provide a firm mathematical basis to this sensitivity theory. The sensitivity of RCWA is tested for some specific grating structures, such as the binary grating, the trapezoidal grating and more advanced structures as the coated trapezoid and a stacked grating of multiple trapezoids. The simulations show that for the most simple structure, the binary grating, we have the derivatives with respect to shape parameters up to twice as fast as obtained with finite differences, depending on the truncation number of the Fourier series. When the number of physical shape parameters increases, the analytical method becomes increasingly faster than finite differences. For the stacked trapezoids, the analytical method is more than 10 times faster than finite differences. In practice, the grating shapes will be more and more complex and therefore, the analytical approach offers a more and more significant speed increase in the computations of the derivatives without loss of accuracy