The Effect of Consistent Knowledge Management Behaviors on Competitive Advantage

While Knowledge Management (KM) has been shown to be a strategic source of competitive advantage (CA), processes designed at enhancing the productivity of knowledge do not however equally contribute to the organization’s capabilities. Consequently, this research, using data collected from the entire population of a firm’s personnel in Japan, focuses on the relationship between each mode of the KM process and multiple CAs, and investigates how different perceptions and behaviors on KM affect those CAs. This research-in-progress paper reports preliminary results showing that the perceived importance of KM activities appears as an important source of ‘technical competitive advantage’, and that more time spent on KM activities contributes to an ‘affective competitive advantage’. Further analysis involves a taxonomy of employees based on their perceived importance of and the time they spend on KM. The goal of this research is to identify, among sub-groups by department or function, specific KM processes that can durably increase the firm’s competitiveness, and to examine eventually whether KM behaviors have a uniform effect on CA across national borders within the same company

β_2-インデグランド ニ カイゴウスル シンキ ヒト GPI アンカー タンパクシツ GPI-80 ニタイスル タンクローン コウタイ ワ ヒト タンキュウ ノ macropinocytosis オ センタクテキ ニ ゾウキョウ スル

We have shown previously that neutrophils and small population of human monocytes have a glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI) -anchored protein, GPI-80 on their surface. In a study of neutrophils, we reported that GPI-80 regulates the adherence and migration. In this study, we examined the functions of GPI-80 in monocytes. Treatment of monocytes with monoclonal antibody (mAb) to GPI-80 enhanced pinocytosis of fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC)-labeled dextran but not that of lucifer yellow and low-density lipoprotein. This treatment neither changed phagocytosis, adherence nor reactive oxygen production of monocytes. These results suggest that GPI-80 modulates fluid phase macropinocytosis of high molecular weight molecules, but not that of low molecular weight ones, clathrin-dependent pinocytosis, phagocytosis, adherence and reactive oxygen production. Treatment of neutrophils with mAbs to GPI-80 did not change macropinocytosis of FITC-labeled dextran, suggesting that the functions of GPI-80 on macropinocytosis of high molecular weight molecules are different between neutrophils and monocytes. This study, first reported GPI-80 function on monocytes, implies that GPI-80 may be one of the molecules associated with macropinocytosis on monocytes.　Key words: macropinocytosis, monocytes, GPI -anchored protei

The Dominant Role of Critical Valence Fluctuations on High TcT_{\rm c} Superconductivity in Heavy Fermions

Despite almost 40 years of research, the origin of heavy-fermion superconductivity is still strongly debated. Especially, the pressure-induced enhancement of superconductivity in CeCu$_2$Si$_2$ away from the magnetic breakdown is not sufficiently taken into consideration. As recently reported in CeCu$_2$Si$_2$ and several related compounds, optimal superconductivity occurs at the pressure of a valence crossover, which arises from a virtual critical end point at negative temperature $T_{\rm cr}$. In this context, we did a meticulous analysis of a vast set of top-quality high-pressure electrical resistivity data of several Ce-based heavy fermion compounds. The key novelty is the salient correlation between the superconducting transition temperature $T_{\rm c}$ and the valence instability parameter $T_{\rm cr}$, which is in line with theory of enhanced valence fluctuations. Moreover, it is found that, in the pressure region of superconductivity, electrical resistivity is governed by the valence crossover, which most often manifests in scaling behavior. We develop the new idea that the optimum superconducting $T_{\rm c}$ of a given sample is mainly controlled by the compound's $T_{\rm cr}$ and limited by non-magnetic disorder. In this regard, the present study provides compelling evidence for the crucial role of critical valence fluctuations in the formation of Cooper pairs in Ce-based heavy fermion superconductors besides the contribution of spin fluctuations near magnetic quantum critical points, and corroborates a plausible superconducting mechanism in strongly correlated electron systems in general.Comment: Supplementary Material follows after the bibliograph

Prospective and retrospective values integrated in frontal cortex drive predictive choice

予測に基づいて行動を選ぶ脳の回路の発見 --2次運動野が担う予測的な行動選択--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2023-01-30.Animals must flexibly estimate the value of their actions (action-value) to successfully adapt to a changing environment. The brain is thought to estimate action-values from two different sources, namely the action-outcome history (retrospective value) and the knowledge of the environment (prospective value), but how different estimates of action-values are reconciled to make a choice is not well understood. Here we found that as mice learn the state-transition structure of a decision-making task, retrospective and prospective values become jointly encoded in the preparatory activity of neurons in ALM. Suppressing this preparatory activity in expert mice returned their behavior to a naïve state. These results reveal the neural circuit that injects structural knowledge into action selection to promote predictive decision-making

Perceptually-Driven Video Coding with the Daala Video Codec

The Daala project is a royalty-free video codec that attempts to compete with the best patent-encumbered codecs. Part of our strategy is to replace core tools of traditional video codecs with alternative approaches, many of them designed to take perceptual aspects into account, rather than optimizing for simple metrics like PSNR. This paper documents some of our experiences with these tools, which ones worked and which did not. We evaluate which tools are easy to integrate into a more traditional codec design, and show results in the context of the codec being developed by the Alliance for Open Media.Comment: 19 pages, Proceedings of SPIE Workshop on Applications of Digital Image Processing (ADIP), 201