Organizational speed as a dynamic capability: Toward a holistic perspective

Current research on organizational speed has been disjointed, which has left organizational speed as an underdeveloped area of study. In this essay, we expand the view of organizational speed as a multidimensional gestalt-like construct that may influence firm performance and competitive advantage. We offer a capability-based definition of organizational speed and identify and review the building blocks of organizational speed. We propose new avenues and questions for future research based on our perspective

Rivals’ Reactions to Mergers and Acquisitions

Mergers and acquisitions research has principally focused on attributes of the acquiring firm and post-acquisition outcomes. To extend our knowledge, we focus on external factors, in particular rival responses, and explore when and how rivals respond to their competitor’s acquisitions. Leveraging the awareness–motivation–capability framework, we predict and find evidence that a rival’s dependence on markets in common with the acquirer, resource similarity between rival and acquirer, and a rival’s organizational slack increase the volume and, in some cases, also the complexity of a rival’s competitive actions following an acquisition. Furthermore, the type of acquisition positively moderates some of these relationships. The results extend our understanding of the influence of mergers and acquisitions on competitive dynamics in the marketplace

The interaction of knowledge sources in word sense disambiguation

Word sense disambiguation (WSD) is a computational linguistics task likely to benefit from the tradition of combining different knowledge sources in artificial in telligence research. An important step in the exploration of this hypothesis is to determine which linguistic knowledge sources are most useful and whether their combination leads to improved results. We present a sense tagger which uses several knowledge sources. Tested accuracy exceeds 94% on our evaluation corpus.Our system attempts to disambiguate all content words in running text rather than limiting itself to treating a restricted vocabulary of words. It is argued that this approach is more likely to assist the creation of practical systems

Exploring Critical Success Factors for Data Integration and Decision-Making in Law Enforcement

Agencies from various disciplines supporting law enforcement functions and processes have integrated, shared, and communicated data through ad hoc methods to address crime, terrorism, and many other threats in the United States. Data integration in law enforcement plays a critical role in the technical, business, and intelligence processes created by users to combine data from various sources and domains to transform them into valuable information. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to explore the current conditions of data integration frameworks through user and system interactions among law enforcement organizational processes. Further exploration of critical success factors used to integrate data more efficiently among systems of systems and user interactions may improve crime and intelligence analysis through modern applications and novel frameworks

Patient understanding of moles and skin cancer, and factors influencing presentation in primary care: a qualitative study.

BACKGROUND: Melanoma incidence in the UK has doubled over two decades, yet there is conflicting evidence about factors which prompt or delay patients seeking advice. AIM: To explore patient understanding of pigmented skin lesions (moles) and skin cancer, and factors which influence seeking help in primary care. METHOD: Semi-structured interviews with forty MoleMate Trial participants, analysed using the theoretical framework of the Safer-Andersen model of Total Patient Delay. RESULTS: Patient understanding and awareness was influenced by personal, family and friends' experiences of moles, skin cancer and other cancers, knowledge of risk factors, and the lay media. The route to consulting was complex and often iterative. For lesions that people could see, detecting and appraising change was influenced by comparisons with a normal mole on themselves, a family member, friend or image. Inferring illness came about with recognition of changes (particularly size) as serious, and associated 'internal' symptoms such as pain. For lesions that people could not see, family, friends and health professionals detected and appraised changes. Deciding to seek help was often prompted by another person or triggered by rapid or multiple changes in a mole. Three of four people subsequently diagnosed with melanoma did not seek help; instead, their GP opportunistically noticed the lesion. CONCLUSIONS: Changing moles are often perceived as trivial and not signifying possible skin cancer. This study contributes to current national strategies to improve patient awareness and earlier diagnosis of cancer by highlighting factors that can trigger or act as barriers to seeking help.(ISRCTN79932379).RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are

Automation of large scale transient protein expression in mammalian cells

Traditional mammalian expression systems rely on the time-consuming generation of stable cell lines; this is difficult to accommodate within a modern structural biology pipeline. Transient transfections are a fast, cost-effective solution, but require skilled cell culture scientists, making man-power a limiting factor in a setting where numerous samples are processed in parallel. Here we report a strategy employing a customised CompacT SelecT cell culture robot allowing the large-scale expression of multiple protein constructs in a transient format. Successful protocols have been designed for automated transient transfection of human embryonic kidney (HEK) 293T and 293S GnTI⁻ cells in various flask formats. Protein yields obtained by this method were similar to those produced manually, with the added benefit of reproducibility, regardless of user. Automation of cell maintenance and transient transfection allows the expression of high quality recombinant protein in a completely sterile environment with limited support from a cell culture scientist. The reduction in human input has the added benefit of enabling continuous cell maintenance and protein production, features of particular importance to structural biology laboratories, which typically use large quantities of pure recombinant proteins, and often require rapid characterisation of a series of modified constructs. This automated method for large scale transient transfection is now offered as a Europe-wide service via the P-cube initiative

Wildlife Damage to Agricultural Crops in Pennsylvania: The Farmers\u27 Perspective

Agricultural damage by wildlife is a major concern for both agricultural and wildlife agencies at the state and federal level. Our objective was to estimate wildlife damage to agricultural crops on a statewide basis. We sent questionnaires to 4,958 farmers and 1,003 were returned after 2 mailings. Twenty-five percent of farmers responding to our survey rated the level of wildlife damage to their crops as severe or very severe, 46% as moderate, and 29% had none or very little. Mean levels of crop loss to wildlife ranged from 6% for wheat to 10% for corn grain, and white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) were the most commonly reported cause of damage for all crops except soybeans. Farmers estimated the economic value of damage caused by wildlife to 6 crops (corn grain, silage, alfalfa, soybeans, oats, and wheat) as \u3e $70 million. Ninety-one percent of Pennsylvania farmers allowed deer hunting on their farms, but 62% of the farms were bordered at least partially by land that was posted (no hunting or limited hunting). Fifty-six percent of farmers whose land was bordered by posted land believed adjacent posted land made it difficult for them to control deer numbers and damage on the land they farmed. Thirty-one percent of farmers responding to the questionnaire reported that they had changed farming practices (i.e., no longer farmed a particular field or raised a particular crop) as a consequence of deer damage. Additional methods used to control deer damage included shooting (28%), chasing (13%), fencing (9.3%), repellents (7%), and noise devices (5%). Fencing and shooting were the only methods rated as being at least moderately effective

Understanding implementation and usefulness of electronic clinical decision support (eCDS) for melanoma in English primary care: a qualitative investigation.

BACKGROUND: Timely diagnosis of the serious skin cancer melanoma can improve patient outcomes. Clinical guidelines suggest that GPs use checklists, such as the 7-point checklist (7PCL), to assess pigmented lesions. In 2016, the 7PCL was disseminated by EMIS as an electronic clinical decision support (eCDS) tool. AIM: To understand GP and patient perspectives on the implementation and usefulness of the eCDS. DESIGN & SETTING: Semi-structured interviews with GPs and patients were undertaken. The interviews took place in four general practices in the south east of England following consultations using the eCDS for suspicious pigmented lesions. METHOD: Data were collected from semi-structured face-to-face interviews with GPs and from telephone interviews with patients. They were recorded and transcribed verbatim. The Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) underpinned the analysis using thematic approaches. RESULTS: A total of 14 interviews with GPs and 14 interviews with patients were undertaken. Most GPs reported that, as the eCDS was embedded in the medical record, it was useful, easy to use, time-efficient, and could facilitate patient-GP communication. They were less clear that it could meet policy or patient needs to improve early diagnosis, and some felt that it could lead to unnecessary referrals. Few felt that it had been sufficiently implemented at practice level. More felt confident with their own management of moles, and that the eCDS could be most useful for borderline decision-making. No patients were aware that the eCDS had been used during their consultation. CONCLUSION: Successful implementation of a new tool, such as eCDS for melanoma, requires GPs to perceive its value and understand how it can best be integrated into clinical practice. Disseminating a tool without such explanations is unlikely to promote its adoption into routine practice.NIH

Early Paleogene wildfires in peat-forming environments at Schöningen, Germany

AbstractWildfire activity in early Paleogene greenhouse conditions can be used as an analogue to gauge the effect of future warming trends on wildfire in the current climate system. Inertinite (fossil charcoal in coal) from 11 autochthonous early Paleogene lignite seams from the Schöningen mine (Germany) was quantified using macerations, in situ pillars and industry standard crushed samples. A new three transect method was developed to quantify in situ charcoal. The combination of in situ pillars and crushed samples accounts for temporal and spatial variation in charcoal through a stratigraphically oriented pillar, whilst maintaining comparability with industry standards and previous work. Charcoal occurs as a range of randomly distributed particle sizes, indicating that fires were burning locally in the Schöningen peat-forming environment and in the surrounding areas, but according to petrological data, not in an episodic or periodic pattern. Although charcoal abundance is low (relative to previous high fire worlds such as the Cretaceous), three quantitative and semi-quantitative methods show increased wildfire activity (relative to the modern world) in the warmest parts of the early Paleogene. As atmospheric oxygen levels stabilised to modern values and precipitation and humidity became the main control on wildfire, increased rainfall followed by drier intervals would have created an environment rich in dry fuel in which wildfires could easily propagate if humidity was low enough. In the later part of the Early Eocene (Ypresian) charcoal abundance fell to levels similar to those found in modern peats. This indicates that the transition to the modern low fire world occurred within the Early Eocene, earlier than previous records suggest