Pesquisa em serviços de metodologia: do estudo de caso em pesquisa à teoria

In this essay Prof. Evert Gummesson, Professor Emeritus at the Stockholm Business School (SBS) and pioneer in the studies in the fields of service, presented the use of case studies in academic research from a European perspective. The article was built through the perspective of service research that evolved to a strategic paradigm more recently. The essay stresses the importance and the proper use of case studies in academic research.Neste ensaio o Prof. Evert Gummesson, Professor Emérito da Stockholm Business School (SBS) e pioneiro nos estudos do tema de serviços, apresenta o uso de estudos de caso na pesquisa acadêmica a partir de uma perspectiva européia. O artigo foi construído na pespectiva da pesquisa em serviços que evoluiu para um paradigm estratégico mais recentemente. Este ensaio estressa a importância e o uso apropriado dos estudos de caso na pesquisa acadêmica

Sequential Decision-Making for Drug Design: Towards closed-loop drug design

Drug design is a process of trial and error to design molecules with a desired response toward a biological target, with the ultimate goal of finding a new medication. It is estimated to be up to 10^{60} molecules that are of potential interest as drugs, making it a difficult problem to find suitable molecules. A crucial part of drug design is to design and determine what molecules should be experimentally tested, to determine their activity toward the biological target. To experimentally test the properties of a molecule, it has to be successfully made, often requiring a sequence of reactions to obtain the desired product. Machine learning can be utilized to predict the outcome of a reaction, helping to find successful reactions, but requires data for the reaction type of interest. This thesis presents a work that combinatorially investigates the use of active learning to acquire training data for reaching a certain level of predictive ability in predicting whether a reaction is successful or not. However, only a limited number of molecules can often be synthesized every time. Therefore, another line of work in this thesis investigates which designed molecules should be experimentally tested, given a budget of experiments, to sequentially acquire new knowledge. This is formulated as a multi-armed bandit problem and we propose an algorithm to solve this problem. To suggest potential drug molecules to choose from, recent advances in machine learning have also enabled the use of generative models to design novel molecules with certain predicted properties. Previous work has formulated this as a reinforcement learning problem with success in designing and optimizing molecules with drug-like properties. This thesis presents a systematic comparison of different reinforcement learning algorithms for string-based generation of drug molecules. This includes a study of different ways of learning from previous and current batches of samples during the iterative generation

Diagnostic properties of nerve conduction tests in population-based carpal tunnel syndrome

BACKGROUND: Numerous nerve conduction tests are used for the electrodiagnosis of carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS), with a wide range of sensitivity and specificity reported for each test in clinical studies. The tests have not been assessed in population-based studies. Such information would be important when using electrodiagnosis in epidemiologic research. The purpose of this study was to compare the diagnostic accuracy of various nerve conduction tests in population-based CTS and determine the properties of the most accurate test. METHODS: In a population-based study a questionnaire was mailed to a random sample of 3,000 persons. Of 2,466 responders, 262 symptomatic (numbness/tingling in the radial fingers) and 125 randomly selected asymptomatic responders underwent clinical and electrophysiologic examinations. A standardized hand diagram was administered to the symptomatic persons. At the clinical examination, the examining surgeon identified 94 symptomatic persons as having clinically certain CTS. Nerve conduction tests were then performed on the symptomatic and the asymptomatic persons by blinded examiners. Analysis with receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves was used to compare the diagnostic accuracy of the nerve conduction tests in distinguishing the persons with clinically certain CTS from the asymptomatic persons. RESULTS: No difference was shown in the diagnostic accuracy of median nerve distal motor latency, digit-wrist sensory latency, wrist-palm sensory conduction velocity, and wrist-palm/forearm sensory conduction velocity ratio (area under curve, 0.75–0.76). Median-ulnar digit-wrist sensory latency difference had a significantly higher diagnostic accuracy (area under curve, 0.80). Using the optimal cutoff value of 0.8 ms for abnormal sensory latency difference shown on the ROC curve the sensitivity was 70%, specificity 82%, positive predictive value 19% and negative predictive value 98%. Based on the clinical diagnosis among the symptomatic persons, the hand diagram (classified as classic/probable or possible/unlikely CTS) had high sensitivity but poor specificity. CONCLUSIONS: Using the clinical diagnosis of CTS as the criterion standard, nerve conduction tests had moderate sensitivity and specificity and a low positive predictive value in population-based CTS. Measurement of median-ulnar sensory latency difference had the highest diagnostic accuracy. The performance of nerve conduction tests in population-based CTS does not necessarily apply to their performance in clinical settings

Balanced centricity: deinstitutionalizing the arts sector

Balanced centricity (BC) is a concept that removes the customer from the central position in a network, thereby allowing other actors to engage in it more fully. Changing the central position of the customer or the role of the firm as the main decision-maker in a market represents a deinstitutionalization process that breaks with very institutionalized norms / institutions in most traditional markets. Nevertheless, new collaborative contexts like crowdfunding represents a growing formula in which the described deinstitutionalization process is taking place.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

An exploratory study looking at the relationship marketing techniques used in the music festival industry

There are current issues and trends in the music festival market, which may affect the success of an event, and market saturation is at the forefront of these issues. Previous literature, maintaining the need for a marketing approach to festivals, identifi es the need for maintaining strong stakeholder relationships in order to succeed in a business environment; attention has been focused to the theory of relationship marketing (RM) because of the recognition that this practice is complementary to the marketing of festivals. The very nature of the music festival as an annual, usually, 4-day event means that effective marketing is needed to keep connections with the consumer throughout the year. This article focuses on the RM techniques utilised within the music festival industry from the viewpoint of the festival organiser in an attempt to establish how festival organisations value and monitor organisational relationships. This article explores the extent to which these relationships are valued and managed; furthermore, the variations between these intricate relationships are considered by focusing on those held with the organisation ’ s consumers and sponsors, the results of which have provided the ability to establish the importance and relevance of RM to the industry and further identify the marketing communication methods employed to establish and maintain such relationships. In-depth, convergent interviews have been conducted with a segment of music festival organisers from a range of events. The results have been integrated with the study of current literature to best exemplify these issues. It has been established that RM has a strong role in today ’ s commercial and independent music festival industry; technological advances are enabling the organiser to support online relationships further and increase consumer loyalty. There is a need to expand the research further because of the complexity of organisational relationships and the varying categories of festivals

Thermomorphe Lösungsmittelsysteme unter Verwendung von Ionischen Flüssigkeiten und deren Einsatz in der Biokatalyse

Thermomorphe Lösungsmittelsysteme (TMS) bestehen aus Lösungsmittelmischungen, welche eine temperaturabhängige Mischungslücke aufweisen. Dieses Verhalten ermöglicht eine reversible makroskopische Phasenänderung zwischen Ein- und Zweiphasensystem und bietet damit einige Vorteile gegenüber klassischen Reaktionssystemen. In dieser Arbeit wurden verschiedene Mischungen Ionischer Flüssigkeiten und organischer Lösungsmittel mit Wasser und Salzen hinsichtlich ihres Phasenverhaltens und der Verwendbarkeit solcher Lösungsmittelsysteme für biokatalytische Reaktionen untersucht.Thermomorphic solvent systems are specific solvent mixtures that exhibit a temperature-dependent miscibility gap, which allows the utilization of a reversible macroscopic phase change between mono- and multiphasic conditions. In this study various ionic liquid/ water/ salt/ organic solvent-mixtures were screened regarding their liquid-liquid phase equilibria and evaluated with selected biocatalytic reactions

Autonomous Drug Design with Multi-Armed Bandits

Recent developments in artificial intelligence and automation support a new drug design paradigm: autonomous drug design. Under this paradigm, generative models can provide suggestions on thousands of molecules with specific properties, and automated laboratories can potentially make, test and analyze molecules with minimal human supervision. However, since still only a limited number of molecules can be synthesized and tested, an obvious challenge is how to efficiently select among provided suggestions in a closed-loop system. We formulate this task as a stochastic multi-armed bandit problem with multiple plays, volatile arms and similarity information. To solve this task, we adapt previous work on multi-armed bandits to this setting, and compare our solution with random sampling, greedy selection and decaying-epsilon-greedy selection strategies. According to our simulation results, our approach has the potential to perform better exploration and exploitation of the chemical space for autonomous drug design

Co-patenting, co-ownership, and co-ideation as drivers for university business innovation: the case of public universities in Spain

Purpose: This paper explores whether, in the context of university–industry (U–I) collaboration, new innovation strategies can be developed through actors' interactions, the exchange of resources and the co-creation of value for and within the system. In the context of the U–I relationship, the innovation perspective can highlight the need to develop strategies that elicit new formulas of value co-creation, which then facilitate innovation as a result of actor collaboration. Design/methodology/approach: A total of 45 public universities in Spain, representing 95% of the total, participated in qualitative research. Personal in-depth interviews with technology transfer officers (TTOs) were conducted by an external firm; in a second phase, two of the researchers conducted eight interviews with the directors of TTOs in those universities with higher rates of transfer. Findings: Findings reveal that enterprises with a technological focus are strengthening their relationships with universities and attempting to build a university business ecosystem by designing strategies for value co-creation such as co-ownership, co-patenting, and co-invention. Research limitations/implications: The empirical research is conducted in Spain, and results should be interpreted according to this context. Future research should examine new contexts (other countries) to improve the robustness of the data and enrich the results, thus enabling generalization of the management consequences. Originality/value: The results provide a means to design strategies under a new collaborative and innovating logic. The theoretical framework contributes to theory, with implications for management.The authors thank Gorka Artola, Ivan Martínez, Manel Arrufat, Xavier Vallvé, Jesús Banqueri, Antonio Peñafiel and Marina Rosales and all the universities in the sample for sharing their experience and knowledge in the development of the present research. // Funding for open access charge: Universidad de Málaga / CBU