Cost Accounting and Pricing Improvement at Helmond Print: Using Xeikon Digital Colour Printing Equipment: A Case study

Helmond Print B.V., a (fictional) Dutch print provider, is facing competitive problems. The student is expected to step into the role of an independent expert advising Helmond Print''s owner and manager. The first objective is to let the student find out, from a piece of qualitative and quantitative information about Xeikon N.V. machines, that the cost structure is much different than currently assumed. The student should try to improve the cost calculations, which will require linear and both non-linear regression analysis. A second objective is to make the student realize that the incorrect cost calculations affected Helmond Print''s pricing policy and may have lead to the competitive problems faced now. The student should therefore link their investigations to pricing, search for the weak spots in the current pricing policy and make suggestions for improvement. (Note: a solution to the case can be obtained by simple request)management and organization theory ;

Accounting in de "Nieuwe Economie": Op zoek naar een relevantere berichtgeving?

Voor bedrijven uit de “nieuwe economie” geldt veelal dat de marktwaarde van het eigen vermogen de boekwaarde ervan in belangrijke mate overstijgt. Het overgrote deel van de waarde van het bedrijf verschijnt dus niet op de balans, met als gevolg dat de externe verslaggeving steeds minder relevante informatie aanbiedt voor de prestatiemeting en waardebepaling van het bedrijf. Wil de verslaggeving de verloren relevantie herwinnen, dan zal een bredere en vooral meer volledige rapportering over investeringen in en creatie van niet-tastbare activa gestimuleerd of zelfs verplicht moeten worden. Enkele manieren of technieken om dit te realiseren liggen reeds ter tafel maar, hoewel noodzakelijk, bestaat er nog geen concensus over algemeen aanvaarde praktijken. Dit artikel legt de pijnpunten bloot van de huidige (regelgeving omtrent) financiële verslaggeving en geeft een overzicht van actuele denkpistes om te komen tot een meer relevante verslaggeving.management and organization theory ;

Calculations and Competitive Benchmarking: A Case study: Xeikon N.V.

Xeikon N.V. is a young NASDAQ-listed company in the digital colour printing market. First of all, the student is expected to step into the role of an independent expert advising Xeikon''s CEO. Although it is already clear that digital colour printing is competitive mainly at relatively small order quantities, the student is expected to give more specific information about the quantities for which Xeikon equipment is competitive. This will require different kinds of break-even analysis. Furthermore, students should analyse cost data using a learning curve model. In doing so, they should address the limitations of the model, test the usefulness in this situation and recognize that learning is not the right term in this context. The investigations require the use of regression analysis. (Note: a case solution can be obtained by simple request)management and organization theory ;

Structural basis of GM-CSF and IL-2 sequestration by the viral decoy receptor GIF.

Subversion of the host immune system by viruses is often mediated by molecular decoys that sequester host proteins pivotal to mounting effective immune responses. The widespread mammalian pathogen parapox Orf virus deploys GIF, a member of the poxvirus immune evasion superfamily, to antagonize GM-CSF (granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor) and IL-2 (interleukin-2), two pleiotropic cytokines of the mammalian immune system. However, structural and mechanistic insights into the unprecedented functional duality of GIF have remained elusive. Here we reveal that GIF employs a dimeric binding platform that sequesters two copies of its target cytokines with high affinity and slow dissociation kinetics to yield distinct complexes featuring mutually exclusive interaction footprints. We illustrate how GIF serves as a competitive decoy receptor by leveraging binding hotspots underlying the cognate receptor interactions of GM-CSF and IL-2, without sharing any structural similarity with the cytokine receptors. Our findings contribute to the tracing of novel molecular mimicry mechanisms employed by pathogenic viruses

Unravelling the proteomic landscape of extracellular vesicles in prostate cancer by density-based fractionation of urine

Extracellular vesicles (EV) are increasingly being recognized as important vehicles of intercellular communication and promising diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers in cancer. Despite this enormous clinical potential, the plethora of methods to separate EV from biofluids, providing material of highly variable purity, and lacking knowledge regarding methodological repeatability pose a barrier to clinical translation. Urine is considered an ideal proximal fluid for the study of EV in urological cancers due to its direct contact with the urogenital system. We demonstrate that density-based fractionation of urine by bottom-up Optiprep density gradient centrifugation separates EV and soluble proteins with high specificity and repeatability. Mass spectrometry-based proteomic analysis of urinary EV (uEV) in men with benign and malignant prostate disease allowed us to significantly expand the known human uEV proteome with high specificity and identifies a unique biological profile in prostate cancer not uncovered by the analysis of soluble proteins. In addition, profiling the proteome of EV separated from prostate tumour conditioned medium and matched uEV confirms the specificity of the identified uEV proteome for prostate cancer. Finally, a comparative proteomic analysis with uEV from patients with bladder and renal cancer provided additional evidence of the selective enrichment of protein signatures in uEV reflecting their respective cancer tissues of origin. In conclusion, this study identifies hundreds of previously undetected proteins in uEV of prostate cancer patients and provides a powerful toolbox to map uEV content and contaminants ultimately allowing biomarker discovery in urological cancers

Fuzzy Free Path Detection from Disparity Maps by Using Least-Squares Fitting to a Plane

A method to detect obstacle-free paths in real-time which works as part of a cognitive navigation aid system for visually impaired people is proposed. It is based on the analysis of disparity maps obtained from a stereo vision system which is carried by the blind user. The presented detection method consists of a fuzzy logic system that assigns a certainty to be part of a free path to each group of pixels, depending on the parameters of a planar-model fitting. We also present experimental results on different real outdoor scenarios showing that our method is the most reliable in the sense that it minimizes the false positives rate.N. Ortigosa acknowledges the support of Universidad Politecnica de Valencia under grant FPI-UPV 2008 and Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under grant MTM2010-15200. S. Morillas acknowledges the support of Universidad Politecnica de Valencia under grant PAID-05-12-SP20120696.Ortigosa Araque, N.; Morillas Gómez, S. (2014). 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