Market-oriented product development as an organizational learning capability: findings from two cases

Conceptualizing market orientation at the level of the product development process is relevant, because market orientation is a highly critical factor for new product success and this conceptualization can be used as a starting-point to transform the whole organization into a more market oriented one. Market-oriented product development appears to be more than carrying out a number of marketing activities in a product development process. Using concepts from resourcebased theory and organizational learning theory, we draw up a conceptual framework of marketoriented product development as an organizational learning capability substantiated by findings from two case studies. This capability encapsulates the values and norms, knowledge and skills, technical and managerial knowledge systems, which enable learning about markets through information processing behavior in product development and improve this market learning behavior. This conceptualization stimulates research on operationalizing market orientation in the managerial context of a critical business process and research on enhancing the degree of market orientation.

Outcome of renal grafts after simultaneous kidney/ pancreas transplantation

Nineteen patients with endstage renal failure due to Type 1 (insulin-dependent) diabetes mellitus received simultaneous pancreas/kidney transplants using bladder drainage technique. Another group of 25 Type 1 diabetic patients received pancreas/kidney transplants by the duct occlusion technique. We observed a higher incidence of rejection episodes in the patients of the bladder drainage group than those in the duct occlusion group, 14 of 19 patients (74%) vs 7 of 25 (28%) respectively. Anti CD3 antibodies (Orthoclone, OKT3) as a part of induction treatment was used more often in the bladder drainage group (58%) than in the control group (20%)

Three-dimensional macroporous silicon photonic crystal with large photonic band gap

Three-dimensional photonic crystals based on macroporous silicon are fabricated by photoelectrochemical etching and subsequent focused-ion-beam drilling. Reflection measurements show a high reflection in the range of the stopgap and indicate the spectral position of the complete photonic band gap. The onset of diffraction which might influence the measurement is discussed

Higraphs: an overview of theory and application

This paper presents an overview of the established concepts of David Harel' s higraphs, to increase their visibility. Higraphs are a union of extended graph and extended set theory which allows the understandable definition of complex semantics, having a powerful intuitive cognitive nature. Viewing 'the big picture' is cited as an example of this understandability. A number of other applications of higraphs are given. Some novel applications are suggested, including the use of higraphs in analyzing business processes, graphical user interface specification, graph domain specification and executable graphs, A proposition is made that process graphs and data-entity state-transition higraphs are duals. Finally, a case is made for 'informal' higraphs in group communications

Competition between benthic cyanobacteria and diatoms as influenced by different grain sizes and temperatures

An experimental laboratory set-up was used to study the influence of different grain size compositions and temperatures on the growth of benthic cyanobacteria and diatoms, and on the competition between these 2 groups. Monospecific cultures of 3 species of cyanobacteria (Merismopedia punctata, Microcoleus chthonoplastes, Oscillatoria limosa), and of 2 species of benthic diatoms (Phaeodactylum tricornutum and Nitzschia sp.) were used. The organisms were cultured in 100 ml flasks filled with medium and 3 different kinds of sediment: (1) Sand (fine sand, 63 to 200 µm), (2) Mud-I (mixed fine sand and mud <63 µm in the ratio 80:20 wt %), (3) Mud-II (mixed fine sand and mud in the ratio 50:50 wt %). Experimental temperatures were 10, 15 and 25°C. At 10°C and 15°C, both diatom species achieved the highest biomass on the sediments of the finest grain size (50 wt % < 63 µm) while cyanobacteria achieved low biomass levels. Coarsening of sediments at the same temperature levels revealed a gradually lower biomass of the diatoms. Particularly on sand, the diatoms never reached the same concentrations of chlorophyll a as on mud. The cyanobacteria, on the other hand, had the highest biomass on sand at 15°C. In the competition experiments the benthic diatom species Nitzschia sp. dominated all types of sediments at 10°C and 15°C. The experiments at 25°C were dominated by the filamentous cyanobacterium M. chthonoplastes. This indicates the importance of abiotic conditions for the distribution and abundance of benthic phototrophic micro-organisms

Eliminating Recursion from Monadic Datalog Programs on Trees

We study the problem of eliminating recursion from monadic datalog programs on trees with an infinite set of labels. We show that the boundedness problem, i.e., determining whether a datalog program is equivalent to some nonrecursive one is undecidable but the decidability is regained if the descendant relation is disallowed. Under similar restrictions we obtain decidability of the problem of equivalence to a given nonrecursive program. We investigate the connection between these two problems in more detail

Hydration-Scanning Tunneling Microscopy as a Reliable Method for Imaging Biological Specimens and Hydrophilic Insulators

The recently discovered high lateral conductivity of molecularly thin adsorbed water films enables investigation of biological specimens, and even of surfaces of hydrophilic insulators by scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). Here we demonstrate the capabilities of this method, which we call hydration-STM (HSTM), with images of various specimens taken in humid atmosphere: We obtained images of a glass coverslip, collagen molecules, tobacco mosaic virus, lipid bilayers and cryosectioned bovine achilles tendon on mica. To elucidate the physical mechanism of this conduction phenomenon we recorded current-voltage curves on hydrated mica. This revealed a basically ohmic behavior of the J-V curves without a threshold voltage to activate the current transport and indicates that electrochemistry probably does not dominate the surface conductivity. We assume that the conduction mechanism is due to structuring of water at the surface

Consistent Estimation of Time-Varying Loadings in High-Dimensional Factor Models

In this paper, we develop a two-step maximum likelihood estimator of time-varying loadings in high-dimensional factor models. We specify the loadings to evolve as stationary vector autoregressions (VAR) and show that consistent estimates of the loadings parameters can be obtained. In the first step, principal components are extracted from the data to formfactor estimates. In the second step, the parameters of the loadings VARs are estimated as a set of linear regression models with time-varying coefficients. We document the finite-sample properties of the maximum likelihood estimator through an extensive simulation study and illustrate the empirical relevance of the time-varying loadings structure using a large quarterly dataset for the US economy

Logic Programming and Logarithmic Space

We present an algebraic view on logic programming, related to proof theory and more specifically linear logic and geometry of interaction. Within this construction, a characterization of logspace (deterministic and non-deterministic) computation is given via a synctactic restriction, using an encoding of words that derives from proof theory. We show that the acceptance of a word by an observation (the counterpart of a program in the encoding) can be decided within logarithmic space, by reducing this problem to the acyclicity of a graph. We show moreover that observations are as expressive as two-ways multi-heads finite automata, a kind of pointer machines that is a standard model of logarithmic space computation

EEG functional network topology is associated with disability in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is one of the most severe neurodegenerative diseases, which is known to affect upper and lower motor neurons. In contrast to the classical tenet that ALS represents the outcome of extensive and progressive impairment of a fixed set of motor connections, recent neuroimaging findings suggest that the disease spreads along vast non-motor connections. Here, we hypothesised that functional network topology is perturbed in ALS, and that this reorganization is associated with disability. We tested this hypothesis in 21 patients affected by ALS at several stages of impairment using resting-state electroencephalography (EEG) and compared the results to 16 age-matched healthy controls. We estimated functional connectivity using the Phase Lag Index (PLI), and characterized the network topology using the minimum spanning tree (MST). We found a significant difference between groups in terms of MST dissimilarity and MST leaf fraction in the beta band. Moreover, some MST parameters (leaf, hierarchy and kappa) significantly correlated with disability. These findings suggest that the topology of resting-state functional networks in ALS is affected by the disease in relation to disability. EEG network analysis may be of help in monitoring and evaluating the clinical status of ALS patients