Critical Success Factors for New Product Development in Biotechnology Companies

The development of new products has become increasingly critical for the competitiveness of companies, due to increased diversity and variety of products, the reduction of product life cycles, and, primarily, globalization of markets. Thus, the identification and prioritization of critical success factors for developing new products is important, particularly for the high degree of risk and uncertainty involved. The main objective of this article is the identification and prioritization of critical success factors in new product development projects in biotechnology companies in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The research method used was a survey questionnaire, which was sent to a sample of 31 biotechnology companies in Minas Gerais state. The principal findings of this research are that interpersonal skills/relationships of the project leader and technical skills are the most critical factors for successful new product development in this industry. The implications for the biotechnology industry in general, as well as for those responsible for managing new product development, are discussed.     

A mobility prediction architecture based on contextual knowledge and spatial conceptual maps

User Mobility prediction represents a key component in assisting handoff management, resource reservation, and service preconfiguration. However, most of the existing approaches presume that the user travels in an a priori known pattern with some regularity; an assumption that may not always hold. This paper presents a novel framework for user mobility prediction that can accurately predict the traveling trajectory and destination using knowledge of user's preferences, goals, and analyzed spatial information without imposing any assumptions about the availability of users' movements history. This framework thus incorporates the notion of combining user context and spatial conceptual maps in the prediction process. The main objective of this notion is to circumvent the difficulties that arise in predicting the user's future location when adequate knowledge about the history of user's traveling patterns is not available. Using concepts of evidential reasoning of Dempster-Shafer's theory, the user's navigation behavior is captured by gathering pieces of evidence concerning different groups of candidate future locations. These groups are then refined to predict the user's future location when evidence accumulates using the Dempster rule of combination. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed framework.     

Unusual immunocytochemical and ultrastructural features of synovial fluid cells in multicentric reticulohistiocytosis. A case report

We present the first report in which cells in synovial fluid from a patient with multicentric reticulohistiocytosis (MRH) were studied by immunocytochemistry for correlation with routine light and electron microscopy. MRH cells stained predominantly for lymphocyte-related surface antigens and not for the monocyte marker LEU M3 (CD14). These findings suggest a lymphocytic origin of MRH cells and not a histiocytic origin, as previously suggested. In addition, large numbers of membrane-bound, electron-dense, secretory-type granules were found ultrastructurally in the cytoplasm of these cells.     

Glucose tolerance tests and their insulin and growth hormone responses in hemodialysis patients: are they reproducible?

The concept that carbohydrate intolerance improves after hemodialysis has been challenged. Critical to this issue is the reproducibility of GTT in a dialysis population. Thirty-nine oral or i.v. GTT were performed on ten stable hemodialysis patients at weekly intervals for three weeks. Blood glucose was determined by both oxygen consumption rate during glucose oxidation and the ferricyanide method. The coefficient of variation of blood glucose ratios (Glucose at time X/Fasting glucose) by glucose oxidase varied considerably. With the i.v. GTT the coefficients of variation at 90 and 120 minutes were 27.9 and 36.8 percent in one patient but below 15 percent at 60, 90, and 120 minutes in the other four patients. Three of the five patients who received oral GTT displayed coefficients of variation greater than 20 percent at one or more sampling times. The coefficients of variation of the growth hormone ratio (Growth hormone at time X/Fasting growth hormone) during i.v. and oral GTT ranged from 2.1 to 83.6 percent. Coefficients of variation of insulinogenic indexes ranged from 16.3 to 59.3 percent. In summary, large variations in glucose, growth hormone and insulin occur during both oral and i.v. GTT when repeated on a weekly basis in stable hemodialysis patients.     

Observations regarding assumed-stress hybrid plate elements

Edge displacement of assumed-stress hybrid plate elements are commonly chosen as either linear, quadratic or cubic functions of the edge co-ordinate. The present paper examines the effect of this choice on the acceptability, accuracy, and possible zero energy modes of elements based on a linear stress field. It is concluded that triangular elements may be preferable to quadrilaterals, and that linear edge displacements are not desirable.     

The dual reciprocity method applied to free vibrations of 2D structures using compact supported radial basis functions

This paper presents a new boundary element application for free vibration analysis of 2D elastic structures. The dual reciprocity method is applied using four compact supported radial basis functions for approximating the domain inertia terms. The eigen-problem of displacement is then solved considering the traction contribution by means of static condensation. The formulation is also extended to consider additional internal nodes to improve accuracy. Three numerical problems are studied to demonstrate the validity and accuracy of the developed formulation. The results are compared to those obtained from analytical and other numerical solutions. A parametric study is set up to demonstrate the effect of the compact support radius on the final results and on the sparsity of system matrices.     

STATE-SPACE FORMULATION TO GENERALIZED THERMOVISCOELASTICITY WITH THERMAL RELAXATION

The model of the equation of generalized thermoviscoelasticity with one relaxation time is established. The state-space formulation for these equations is introduced. The formulation is valid for problems with or without heat sources. The resulting formulation together with the Laplace transform technique is applied to a variety of problems. The solutions to a thermal shock problem and to a problem of layer media, both without heat sources, are obtained. Also, the effects of a plane distribution of heat sources on the whole and semi-space are studied. A numerical method is employed for the inversion of the Laplace transforms. Numerical results are given and illustrated graphically for each problem. Comparisons are made with the results predicted by the coupled theory.     

Distribution Factors for Curved Continuous Composite Box-Girder Bridges

The use of horizontally curved composite box-girder bridges in modern highway systems has become increasingly popular for economic as well as for aesthetic considerations. Based on a recent literature review on the design of box-girder bridges, it was observed that a simple design method for curved bridges, based on load distribution factors for stresses and shears, is as yet unavailable. This paper presents the results of an extensive parametric study, using a finite element method, in which the structural responses of 240 two-equal-span continuous curved box-girder bridges of various geometries were investigated. The parameters considered in this study included span-to-radius of curvature ratio, span length, number of lanes, number of boxes, web slope, number of bracings, and truck loading type. Based on the data generated from this study, empirical formulas for load distribution factors for maximum longitudinal flexural stresses and maximum deflection due to dead load as well as AASHTO live loading were deduced. An illustrative design example is presented.     

Flexural tensile tests with vertically perforated clay unit masonry with thin layer mortar / Biegezugversuche an Planziegelmauerwerk

As part of the EU project, INSYSME – INnovative SYStems for earthquake resistant Masonry Enclosures in reinforced concrete buildings – to optimise infill masonry the German project partners carried out an initial part of the project on flexural strength testing of high‐tech clay block masonry in accordance with DIN EN 1052‐2. In this a wide range of modern products was considered which at present is regulated in Germany by means of general building authority approvals. The test results show that the specifications for flexural tensile strength of high‐tech clay block masonry in DIN EN 1996 are very conservative in most cases.     

A QoS aware joint design for wireless mesh networks

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) provide Internet access to remote areas and wireless connections on a metropolitan scale. In this paper, we focus on the problem of improving the gateway throughput in WMNs while achieving fairness and supporting quality-of-service (QoS) differentiation for end-users. To address this problem, we propose a new distributed dynamic traffic scheduling algorithm that supports different QoS requirements from different users. We also develop a joint weight-aware channel assignment and minimum expected delay routing mechanism. Simulation results demonstrate the performance of the proposed work in terms of the achieved throughput and minimized packet loss ratio and delay.