A case study of lean software practices in an IT application support department

The concept of lean manufacturing was formed at Toyota by Taiichi Ohno, who originated the system of “Just-in-Time” production with the goals of delivering high value and cutting down waste. These concepts were partially adapted to software development in an Agile development context [1] where the goal is to deliver value to the customers more quickly by eliminating waste and improving quality. However, we are not aware of any published attempt to adapt lean principles to IT maintenance work. The purpose of the case study reported here is to demonstrate that the principles of lean software development could be effectively applied to a specific IT application support department. It is an empirical study of lean practices in the maintenance department of a large organization. A comparison was made from the collected data from our release management tool before and after applying the lean principles to our IT group. Our analysis shows that the lean principles improved the developers’ focus on the given corrective or preventive task. Application quality also improved to a significant extent. More importantly, our customers did see more efficient support efforts that delivered good quality in a shorter time. All in all, the newly conceived support process adapting lean principles to our situation did, in fact, deliver more highly valued software to our customers more quickly while cutting down waste. On the other hand, we also learned that there were some challenges that arose from a conflict between the new lean practices and our previous practices. The most significant of these conflicts was revealed in developer work load imbalances and customer confusion due to having to communicate with different IT support teams for different type of maintenance requests. A future adjustment of how the lean principles can be applied to IT maintenance may be necessary.Electrical and Computer Engineerin

A comparative study of intercultural sensitivity among postgraduates majoring in International Chinese Education in China context

Based on a survey sample of 435 China postgraduates majoring in International Chinese Education with different undergraduate English learning experience, the research attempted to find out how five elements proposed by Chen & Starosta (2000), interacted or influenced with each other. Those five elements incorporated in Intercultural Communication Competence Scale (ICCS), developed by Chen & Starosta (2000), are interaction engagement, respect for cultural differences, interaction confidence, interaction enjoyment and interaction attentiveness. The survey results from the multiple regression charts demonstrated that the elements composed of intercultural sensitivity actually interacted or influenced interactants’ actual intercultural communication process

World Dissemination and Influence of Chinese Historical Classic Shi Ji (Historical Records) (Note 1)

Shi Ji is the first biography history in China and the most influential historical masterpiece in Chinese history. In the past 2000 years, the cultural classic had exerted remarkable influence upon scholars all over the world, becoming the cultural heritage for all human civilizations. The richness of the relative research findings and significance to overseas scholars of ancient Chinese culture are prominent in numerous ancient codes and books. By literature study, we traced the historical impact of Shi Ji in East Asia, Europe and the United States, exploring its contribution to the human world civilization. It is found that, due to different research emphasis and cultural backgrounds, overseas scholars’ researches of Shi Ji have presented us with many different outcomes: translations and studies of Shi Ji in East Asia should be much earlier than those in Europe and America; related studies in East Asia were focused on interpretation and understanding of the text from its translation and annotation, whereas those in Europe and America showed more interests to the holistic study of the cultural background, the author as well as his life. Despite their different research focuses, all the scholars, on the basis of repeated studies and textual researches of Shi Ji, had contributed their own constructive views

Evaluating the Information Usefulness of Online Health Information for Third-party Patients

Online health interactions (OHIs) can benefit patients, physicians, and society. However, little research has been conducted that studies the social value of OHIs for third-party patients who view previous OHIs concerning similar health issues to theirs. Drawing on the literature on social support and information uncertainty, this study established a theoretical model to explore the roles of treatment information, prevention information, and emotional support in determining information usefulness perceived by third-party patients, and whether such relationships are contingent on information uncertainty. The model was tested using “health questions and answers” textual data from 1,848 OHIs. The results indicate that prevention information and emotional support significantly improve information usefulness perceived by third-party patients. When the level of information uncertainty regarding physicians’ replies is high, the effect of treatment information is strengthened and the effect of emotional support is weakened, indicating both positive and negative contingent roles of information uncertainty. This study has implications for practitioners and also contributes to the literature on online health information, social support, information science, and information uncertainty

Dichlorido[3-meth­oxy­methyl-4-phenyl-5-(2-pyrid­yl)-4H-1,2,4-triazole-κ2 N 1,N 5]copper(II)

In the title complex, [CuCl2(C15H14N4O)], the CuII atom possesses a highly distorted square-planar geometry with N—Cu—N and Cl—Cu—Cl angles of 79.86 (8) and 98.65 (3)°, respectively, while the Cl—Cu—N angles fall into two distinct groups with values of 95.26 (6), 98.75 (6), 150.56 (6) and 152.04 (6)°. The pyridyl ring is twisted by 9.4 (2)° with respect to the triazole ring, which is oriented at approximately right angles [84.66 (8)°] with respect to the phenyl ring

Low-Cost Smart Antenna Using Active Frequency Selective Surfaces

Smart antenna is a key technology for advanced wireless systems and one of the most important features of smart antenna is electronically beam scanning or switching. It is highly desirable to reduce the mass, power consumption and cost of smart antennas, as the traditional phased array is always associated with high cost due to the use of many T/R modules and complicated beamforming network (BFN). This paper presents the University of Kent's recent research progress in the field of low-cost smart antenna design using active frequency selective surfaces (AFSS). Firstly, this paper presents a brief review of AFSS based beam-reconfigurable antenna including several recent designs reported by the authors' group. Then, a new high-gain AFSS antenna design with some preliminary results will be presented. This is design achieves higher gain than the reported AFSS antennas. A detailed list of references is given at the end of this paper

A Compact Monopole Antenna With Filtering Response for WLAN Applications

A novel compact monopole antenna with filtering response for WLAN applications is presented in this paper. The antenna is composed of a capacity-loaded matching patch, two resonators, and two end-coupled monopoles. The resonators consist of wide rectangular patches and narrow shorted lines to form the resonance, and the resonators are printed on the different layers to increase the design flexibility. Two meandering monopoles are located at the edges of the top layer with capacitive coupling at each other's end. The mutual couplings between the meander monopoles are utilized to produce two radiation nulls at the two band-edges. Based on the design method, the prototype of the proposed antenna was designed, fabricated and measured. The measured results show that the antenna has a broad bandwidth of 16% for S 11 <; -10 dB. Also, ideal omnidirectional radiation patterns, and steep band-edge selectivity with two radiation nulls are achieved for the proposed antenna

PSME2 identifies immune-hot tumors in breast cancer and associates with well therapeutic response to immunotherapy

Breast cancer (BrCa) is a heterogeneous disease, which leads to unsatisfactory prognosis in females worldwide. Previous studies have proved that tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) plays crucial roles in oncogenesis, progression, and therapeutic resistance in Breast cancer. However, biomarkers related to TIME features have not been fully discovered. Proteasome activator complex subunit 2 (PSME2) is a member of proteasome activator subunit gene family, which is critical to protein degradation mediated by the proteasome. In the current research, we comprehensively analyzed the expression and immuno-correlations of Proteasome activator complex subunit 2 in Breast cancer. Proteasome activator complex subunit 2 was significantly upregulated in tumor tissues but associated with well prognosis. In addition, Proteasome activator complex subunit 2 was overexpressed in HER2-positive Breast cancer but not related to other clinicopathological features. Interestingly, Proteasome activator complex subunit 2 was positively related to immune-related processes and identified immuno-hot TIME in Breast cancer. Specifically, Proteasome activator complex subunit 2 was positively correlated with immunomodulators, tumor-infiltrating immune cells (TIICs), immune checkpoints, and tumor mutation burden (TMB) levels. Moreover, the positive correlation between Proteasome activator complex subunit 2 and PD-L1 expression was confirmed in a tissue microarray (TMA) cohort. Furthermore, in an immunotherapy cohort of Breast cancer, patients with pathological complete response (pCR) expressed higher Proteasome activator complex subunit 2 compared with those with non-pathological complete response. In conclusion, Proteasome activator complex subunit 2 is upregulated in tumor tissues and correlated with the immuno-hot tumor immune microenvironment, which can be a novel biomarker for the recognition of tumor immune microenvironment features and immunotherapeutic response in Breast cancer

Investigating the Role of FlhF Identifies Novel Interactions With Genes Involved in Flagellar Synthesis in Campylobacter jejuni.

FlhF is a key protein required for complete flagellar synthesis, and its deletion results in the complete absence of a flagella and thus motility in Campylobacter jejuni. However, the specific mechanism still remains unknown. In this study, RNA-Seq, EMSAs, ChIP-qPCR and β-Galactosidase assays were performed to elucidate the novel interactions between FlhF and genes involved in flagellar synthesis. Results showed that FlhF has an overall influence on the transcription of flagellar genes with an flhF mutant displaying down-regulation of most flagellar related genes. FlhF can directly bind to the flgI promoter to regulate its expression, which has significant expression change in an flhF mutant. The possible binding site of FlhF to the flgI promoter was explored by continuously narrowing the flgI promoter region and performing further point mutations. Meanwhile, FlhF can directly bind to the promoters of rpoD, flgS, and fliA encoding early flagellin regulators, thereby directly or indirectly regulating the synthesis of class I, II, and III flagellar genes, respectively. Collectively, this study demonstrates that FlhF may directly regulate the transcription of flagellar genes by binding to their promoters as a transcriptional regulator, which will be helpful in understanding the mechanism of FlhF in flagellar biosynthetic and bacterial flagellation in general