Magnetic latching valve

Latching, fast-acting 2-port poppet valve has been developed for use in gas chromatograph - mass spectrometer combinations. Requisites included positive actuation time, few hundredths of a second, and static force holding valve in position at all times

Toni M. Conley - An Empirical Analysis of How Purchase Decision Makers Arrive at a Fair Price for Subscription-Based CRM

Internet based technologies have played an important role in the development of modern CRM applications over the last several years. They have been the critical driving force behind the rise of on-demand CRM, and have also enabled on-premise CRM vendors to dramatically simplify deployment and administration. As a result of this, business purchase decision makers are in the midst of a recent and accelerating shift in how they acquire marketing support solutions for their enterprises. They are moving from a CAPEX (capital expenditure) to an OPEX (operational expenditure) model. Many time, marketing support solutions acquired via an on-demand model (OPEX) are called hosted or cloud-based solutions, where service providers own, maintain and upgrade the software applications on their servers at their locations. Customers then access the solutions using web browsers and broadband Internet connections at their offices. This research is an analysis of how purchase decision makers actively weigh a cloud-based approach to CRM versus a premises-based approach. It’s an exploration of how IT and marketing decision makers optimize the profitability of acquiring marketing support solutions using price analysis for these two approaches? Out of the criteria used to select an approach, we want to know how important is price in that decision. We have interviewed 5 executives in the greater Milwaukee area, who have recently deployed a CRM solution for their businesses to better understand the role of price in their decision.https://epublications.marquette.edu/mcnair_2013/1010/thumbnail.jp

Oscillating hot-wire anemometer

Performance analysis was made of oscillating hot-wire anemometer electrical output in gas stream. Advantages include no calibration and measurement of fluid direction as well as fluid speed

The international law of business method patents

Before the landmark State Street case in 1998, the courts and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) had often denied patents to inventions that were no more than methods of doing business. But State Street swept away three decades of complex, inconsistent case law, firmly establishing the patentability of business methods and computer software. ; This article reviews the current state of U.S. and international patent law with respect to business methods. After outlining the basic U.S. and international requirements for patentability, the author describes the evolution and current state of both American law and international law, particularly in the European Union, various European countries, and Japan. ; After reviewing a number of case histories, the author argues that the differences between U.S. and international law that appear so striking in theory are probably less profound in practice. While the American patent system has seemingly become more lenient in granting business method patents, the USPTO has taken steps to scrutinize such patents more rigorously on certain grounds. In contrast, Europe and Japan, which have apparently more rigorous business method patent standards than the United States does, may in practice be somewhat more liberal than their policies would indicate. ; Eventually, the author predicts, U.S. and international business method patent standards will converge, with the United States being more permissive in theory but more demanding in practice and Europe and Japan displaying the opposite tendency.Patents ; Financial services industry

Crime and Custom in Corporate Society: A Cultural Perspective on Corporate Misconduct

Conley and O\u27Barr take an anthropological perspective on three cases of alleged corporate misconduct--car dealer discrimination, Archer Daniels Midland, and the tobacco industry trials

Hearing the Hidden Agenda: The Ethnographic Investigation of Procedure

Laser Doppler flowmetry (LDF) is virtually the only non-invasive technique, except for other laser speckle based techniques, that enables estimation of the microcirculatory blood flow. The technique was introduced into the field of biomedical engineering in the 1970s, and a rapid evolvement followed during the 1980s with fiber based systems and improved signal analysis. The first imaging systems were presented in the beginning of the 1990s. Conventional LDF, although unique in many aspects and elegant as a method, is accompanied by a number of limitations that may have reduced the clinical impact of the technique. The analysis model published by Bonner and Nossal in 1981, which is the basis for conventional LDF, is limited to measurements given in arbitrary and relative units, unknown and non-constant measurement volume, non-linearities at increased blood tissue fractions, and a relative average velocity estimate. In this thesis a new LDF analysis method, quantitative LDF, is presented. The method is based on recent models for light-tissue interaction, comprising the current knowledge of tissue structure and optical properties, making it fundamentally different from the Bonner and Nossal model. Furthermore and most importantly, the method eliminates or highly reduces the limitations mentioned above. Central to quantitative LDF is Monte Carlo (MC) simulations of light transport in tissue models, including multiple Doppler shifts by red blood cells (RBC). MC was used in the first proof-of-concept study where the principles of the quantitative LDF were tested using plastic flow phantoms. An optically and physiologically relevant skin model suitable for MC was then developed. MC simulations of that model as well as of homogeneous tissue relevant models were used to evaluate the measurement depth and volume of conventional LDF systems. Moreover, a variance reduction technique enabling the reduction of simulation times in orders of magnitudes for imaging based MC setups was presented. The principle of the quantitative LDF method is to solve the reverse engineering problem of matching measured and calculated Doppler power spectra at two different source-detector separations. The forward problem of calculating the Doppler power spectra from a model is solved by mixing optical Doppler spectra, based on the scattering phase functions and the velocity distribution of the RBC, from various layers in the model and for various amounts of Doppler shifts. The Doppler shift distribution is calculated based on the scattering coefficient of the RBC:s and the path length distribution of the photons in the model, where the latter is given from a few basal MC simulations. When a proper spectral matching is found, via iterative model parameters updates, the absolute measurement data are given directly from the model. The concentration is given in g RBC/100 g tissue, velocities in mm/s, and perfusion in g RBC/100 g tissue × mm/s. The RBC perfusion is separated into three velocity regions, below 1 mm/s, between 1 and 10 mm/s, and above 10 mm/s. Furthermore, the measures are given for a constant output volume of a 3 mm3 half sphere, i.e. within 1.13 mm from the light emitting fiber of the measurement probe. The quantitative LDF method was used in a study on microcirculatory changes in type 2 diabetes. It was concluded that the perfusion response to a local increase in skin temperature, a response that is reduced in diabetes, is a process involving only intermediate and high flow velocities and thus relatively large vessels in the microcirculation. The increased flow in higher velocities was expected, but could not previously be demonstrated with conventional LDF. The lack of increase in low velocity flow indicates a normal metabolic demand during heating. Furthermore, a correlation between the perfusion at low and intermediate flow velocities and diabetes duration was found. Interestingly, these correlations were opposites (negative for the low velocity region and positive for the mediate velocity region). This finding is well in line with the increased shunt flow and reduced nutritive capillary flow that has previously been observed in diabetes

Crime and Custom in Corporate Society: A Cultural Perspective on Corporate Misconduct

Conley and O\u27Barr take an anthropological perspective on three cases of alleged corporate misconduct--car dealer discrimination, Archer Daniels Midland, and the tobacco industry trials