The integration approach: Integrating technology strategy with business strategy in the airline industry

Technology has emerged as a key component in solving complex strategic issues. Much of the relevant literature recognises technology as the driving force behind the fast rate of change in many markets. Consequently, organisations are becoming increasingly dependent on advanced technology to improve their performance. At the same time organisations need to be extremely flexible in order to meet the demands of customers quickly, accurately and cost-effectively. To benefit from the potential of technology in highly dynamic environments, there is a need to integrate technology strategy with business strategy. This research explores the integration between technology strategy and business strategy in the airline industry. The literature on technology, technology strategy, corporate strategy, business strategy, competitive advantage and the integration of technology strategy with business strategy is critically evaluated and shortcomings of the literature are identified. The literature review was evaluated and identifies gaps and possible future directions. This indicated a need for a systematic way of linking technology and business strategies. Thus an Integration Model is proposed consisting of three stages involving business strategy, competitive strategy and technology strategy. The literature review and the Integration Model identified the importance of technology assessment in formulating a technology strategy and the need for a supportive tool to aid this process

Aligning enterprise risk management with business strategy and information systems

Business leaders recognise effective risk management as one of the main success drivers for enterprises. Even though the Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) concept has evolved significantly in the past years, in the aftermath of recent economic crises it became evident some of its critical challenges still need to be addressed. The review of subject literature led to a conclusion that current ERM approaches failed to protect enterprise value in turbulent and risky market conditions. Therefore, this paper aims to provide a conceptual analysis of the most common ERM practices and frameworks, in order to identify their shortcomings and areas requiring development. It is further aimed to provide guidance to business practitioners in implementing more integrated and effective Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) solutions. This research recognises the importance of aligning ERM programmes with business strategies, and with consolidated Information Systems. A “New Approach ERM Model” is developed as guidance for a successful alignment of ERM with enterprise business strategy, and for an effective adaption of Information Systems to requirements of ERM programmes. The “New Approach ERM Model” steers risk management initiatives and strategies in the same direction, and consequently allows enterprises to improve organisational effectiveness, increase shareholders value, and gain competitive advantage in the market

The formation of intercultural competence based on information and analytical technologies

The choice of a profession is a crucial part of our life. It can be claimed that nowadays many new professions have appeared connected with information and data analysis. Besides, one should take into account the importance of intercultural and communicative competence (ICC) and emphasize the need to consider ICC based on the information and analytical technologies as a positive influence for the future career. The aim of this research is to investigate the cognitive and communicative process of foreign language education at the profile or specialized level of a secondary general school. In this regard we set specific tasks to determine the nomenclature of sub-competencies that are part of the ICC of specialized schools students; draw up a system of communicative tasks aiming at the formation of ICC of specialized schools students; substantiate the relevance of integrating information and analytical technologies in the formation of specialized schools students' ICC. In this paper, we demonstrate a model for the formation of intercultural and communicative competence of specialized school students based on the information and analytical technologies. All approaches, stages, and experimental techniques conducted at a specialized school in the city of Karaganda are detailed

Deep active learning for suggestive segmentation of biomedical image stacks via optimisation of Dice scores and traced boundary length

Manual segmentation of stacks of 2D biomedical images (e.g., histology) is a time-consuming task which can be sped up with semi-automated techniques. In this article, we present a suggestive deep active learning framework that seeks to minimise the annotation effort required to achieve a certain level of accuracy when labelling such a stack. The framework suggests, at every iteration, a specific region of interest (ROI) in one of the images for manual delineation. Using a deep segmentation neural network and a mixed cross-entropy loss function, we propose a principled strategy to estimate class probabilities for the whole stack, conditioned on heterogeneous partial segmentations of the 2D images, as well as on weak supervision in the form of image indices that bound each ROI. Using the estimated probabilities, we propose a novel active learning criterion based on predictions for the estimated segmentation performance and delineation effort, measured with average Dice scores and total delineated boundary length, respectively, rather than common surrogates such as entropy. The query strategy suggests the ROI that is expected to maximise the ratio between performance and effort, while considering the adjacency of structures that may have already been labelled – which decrease the length of the boundary to trace. We provide quantitative results on synthetically deformed MRI scans and real histological data, showing that our framework can reduce labelling effort by up to 60–70% without compromising accuracy

Transformational Leadership Style and School Transformation: The Case of Secondary Schools in Kuwait

In education, transformational leadership is an approach to human resource management (HRM) that emphasizes the need to alter an organization's operations to accomplish the desired results. The prosperity of a nation depends in part on the knowledge and education of its citizens, but some countries, such as Kuwait, have inadequate secondary education, resulting in poor outcomes. This document demonstrates the significance of school transformation in Kuwait, where the primary author resides. Twenty-five semi-structured interviews were conducted to determine the most prevalent leadership style in secondary schools in Kuwait, the impact of transformational leadership on the transformation of secondary schools, and the factors that influence transformational leadership roles and practices in secondary schools. This investigation recommended that secondary schools in Kuwait overcome the challenges of transactional leadership and implement democratic, empowering, and non-authoritarian leadership styles so that teachers will be motivated and committed to an effective education process and schools will be transformed positively. This would contribute to realizing the country's Vision 2035 by stimulating the economy through the country's knowledgeable and educated citizens

Bi-allelic JAM2 Variants Lead to Early-Onset Recessive Primary Familial Brain Calcification.

Primary familial brain calcification (PFBC) is a rare neurodegenerative disorder characterized by a combination of neurological, psychiatric, and cognitive decline associated with calcium deposition on brain imaging. To date, mutations in five genes have been linked to PFBC. However, more than 50% of individuals affected by PFBC have no molecular diagnosis. We report four unrelated families presenting with initial learning difficulties and seizures and later psychiatric symptoms, cerebellar ataxia, extrapyramidal signs, and extensive calcifications on brain imaging. Through a combination of homozygosity mapping and exome sequencing, we mapped this phenotype to chromosome 21q21.3 and identified bi-allelic variants in JAM2. JAM2 encodes for the junctional-adhesion-molecule-2, a key tight-junction protein in blood-brain-barrier permeability. We show that JAM2 variants lead to reduction of JAM2 mRNA expression and absence of JAM2 protein in patient's fibroblasts, consistent with a loss-of-function mechanism. We show that the human phenotype is replicated in the jam2 complete knockout mouse (jam2 KO). Furthermore, neuropathology of jam2 KO mouse showed prominent vacuolation in the cerebral cortex, thalamus, and cerebellum and particularly widespread vacuolation in the midbrain with reactive astrogliosis and neuronal density reduction. The regions of the human brain affected on neuroimaging are similar to the affected brain areas in the myorg PFBC null mouse. Along with JAM3 and OCLN, JAM2 is the third tight-junction gene in which bi-allelic variants are associated with brain calcification, suggesting that defective cell-to-cell adhesion and dysfunction of the movement of solutes through the paracellular spaces in the neurovascular unit is a key mechanism in CNS calcification

Accurate Bayesian segmentation of thalamic nuclei using diffusion MRI and an improved histological atlas

Data availability: Data will be made available on request.Supplementary materials are available online at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811923002744?via%3Dihub#sec0024 .Research data are available online at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811923002744?via%3Dihub#ec-research-data .Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). The human thalamus is a highly connected brain structure, which is key for the control of numerous functions and is involved in several neurological disorders. Recently, neuroimaging studies have increasingly focused on the volume and connectivity of the specific nuclei comprising this structure, rather than looking at the thalamus as a whole. However, accurate identification of cytoarchitectonically designed histological nuclei on standard in vivo structural MRI is hampered by the lack of image contrast that can be used to distinguish nuclei from each other and from surrounding white matter tracts. While diffusion MRI may offer such contrast, it has lower resolution and lacks some boundaries visible in structural imaging. In this work, we present a Bayesian segmentation algorithm for the thalamus. This algorithm combines prior information from a probabilistic atlas with likelihood models for both structural and diffusion MRI, allowing segmentation of 25 thalamic labels per hemisphere informed by both modalities. We present an improved probabilistic atlas, incorporating thalamic nuclei identified from histology and 45 white matter tracts surrounding the thalamus identified in ultra-high gradient strength diffusion imaging. We present a family of likelihood models for diffusion tensor imaging, ensuring compatibility with the vast majority of neuroimaging datasets that include diffusion MRI data. The use of these diffusion likelihood models greatly improves identification of nuclear groups versus segmentation based solely on structural MRI. Dice comparison of 5 manually identifiable groups of nuclei to ground truth segmentations show improvements of up to 10 percentage points. Additionally, our chosen model shows a high degree of reliability, with median test-retest Dice scores above 0.85 for four out of five nuclei groups, whilst also offering improved detection of differential thalamic involvement in Alzheimer’s disease (AUROC 81.98%). The probabilistic atlas and segmentation tool will be made publicly available as part of the neuroimaging package FreeSurfer.This work was primarily funded by Alzheimers Research UK (ARUK-IRG2019A003). PGs work in this area was supported by NIH NIBIB NAC P41EB015902 AYs work in this area was supported by NIH grants R01 EB021265 and R56 MH121426. DCAs work in this area was supported by EPSRC grant EP/R006032/1 and Wellcome Trust award 221915/Z/20/Z. The Dementia Research Centre is supported by Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society, Brain Research UK, and The Wolfson Foundation. This work was supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Queen Square Dementia Biomedical Research Unit and the University College London Hospitals Biomedical Research Centre, the Leonard Wolfson Experimental Neurology Centre (LWENC) Clinical Research Facility, and the UK Dementia Research Institute, which receives its funding from UK DRI Ltd, funded by the UK Medical Research Council, Alzheimer’s Society and Alzheimer’s Research UK. This project has received funding from the European Unions Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 765148, as well as from the National Institutes Of Health under project number R01NS112161. MB is supported by a Fellowship award from the Alzheimers Society, UK (AS-JF-19a-004-517). MBs work was also supported by the UK Dementia Research Institute which receives its funding from DRI Ltd, funded by the UK Medical Research Council, Alzheimers Society and Alzheimers Research UK. JDR is supported by the Miriam Marks Brain Research UK Senior Fellowship and has received funding from an MRC Clinician Scientist Fellowship (MR/M008525/1) and the NIHR Rare Disease Translational Research Collaboration (BRC149/NS/MH). JEI is supported by the European Research Council (Starting Grant 677697, project BUNGEE-TOOLS) and the NIH (1RF1MH123195-01 and 1R01AG070988-01). The collection and sharing of the ADNI data was funded by the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (National Institutes of Health Grant U01 AG024904) and Department of Defence (W81XWH-12-2-0012). ADNI is funded by the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, and the following: Alzheimer’s Association; Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation; BioClinica, Inc.; Biogen Idec Inc.; Bristol-Myers Squibb Company; Eisai Inc.; Elan Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Eli Lilly and Company; F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd and affiliated company Genentech, Inc.; GE Healthcare; Innogenetics, N.V.; IXICO Ltd.; Janssen Alzheimer Immunotherapy Research & Development, LLC.; Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development LLC.; Medpace, Inc.; Merck & Co., Inc.; Meso Scale Diagnostics, LLC.; NeuroRx Research; Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation; Pfizer Inc.; Piramal Imaging; Servier; Synarc Inc.; and Takeda Pharmaceutical Company. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research is providing funds for ADNI clinical sites in Canada. Private sector contributions are facilitated by the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health. The grantee is the Northern California Institute for Research and Education, and the study is coordinated by the Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study at the University of California, San Diego. ADNI is disseminated by the Laboratory for Neuro Imaging at the University of Southern California

Integrating technology strategy with business strategy in the airline industry

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Transformation of consumer behavior in the tourism industry in the conditions of digital economy

The tourist’s «mobility» increasing trend is the result of traveler’s activity, who prefer to build the routes and book the accommodations trough deferent services themselves, and digitalization of tourist market. Blackwell-Miniard-Engel model was used for the Customer Journey Map creation. The Customer Journey Map includes the possible touch points with customers for impact (communication) and help meet the need at different stages of the make buying decision. Studying the characteristics of digital travel services, the authors applied an online survey of 100 consumers aged 18-35. Because the estimation of the correctness of the choice concerns not only the tourist object, but also digital travel applications, respondents were asked about the used travel applications, the desired benefits and the degree of customer satisfaction with an available service. The usefulness of content and travel applications can be viewed in terms of the reliability of the information provider, the breadth of opportunities in evaluating options, price incentives, service levels and usability.Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation on the program to improve the competitiveness of Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU) among the world's leading research and education centers in the 2016-2020