令客户满意的五条法则及为何其重要性往往被过分夸大

根据哈佛商学院最著名的教授MichaelPorte r的观点:"运营效率意味着你能在一场赛跑中跑得更快,而战略却能帮你选择一场能最终获胜的赛跑."(引自"Michael Porte r归来",<财富>1999年2月刊.)现今,客户满意度--令客户喜欢你的产品及服务的程度,取决于企业的运营效率.因此,将企业比作一艘船,如果船即将撞上冰山,即使你能令乘客满意到最后,但却不能避免整艘船的沉没.要想成功绕开冰山,你只有想出优于对手的战略.     

Clarification of a wheat straw‐derived medium with ion‐exchange resins for xylitol crystallization

BACKGROUND: Xylitol bioproduction from lignocellulosic residues comprises hydrolysis of the hemicellulose, detoxification of the hydrolysate, bioconversion of the xylose, and recovery of xylitol from the fermented hydrolysate. There are relatively few reports on xylitol recovery from fermented media. In the present study, ion‐exchange resins were used to clarify a fermented wheat straw hemicellulosic hydrolysate, which was then vacuum‐concentrated and submitted to cooling in the presence of ethanol for xylitol crystallization. RESULTS: Sequential adsorption into two anion‐exchange resins (A‐860S and A‐500PS) promoted considerable reductions in the content of soluble by‐products (up to 97.5%) and in medium coloration (99.5%). Vacuum concentration led to a dark‐colored viscous solution that inhibited xylitol crystallization. This inhibition could be overcome by mixing the concentrated medium with a commercial xylitol solution. Such a strategy led to xylitol crystals with up to 95.9% purity. The crystallization yield (43.5%) was close to that observed when using commercial xylitol solution (51.4%). CONCLUSION: The experimental data demonstrate the feasibility of using ion‐exchange resins followed by cooling in the presence of ethanol as a strategy to promote the fast recovery and purification of xylitol from hemicellulose‐derived fermentation media. Copyright © 2008 Society of Chemical Industry     

Interobl: An interactive software tool for displaying and scaling oblique ionograms

By analyzing an oblique ionogram several characteristics, such as LOF, MOF, FMUF, FHLOF, FLLOF, and 2FMOF, can be found. These characteristics are important both for ionospheric studies and for terrestrial communication purposes, as they give information about the sky wave communication conditions in the High Frequency (HF) radio spectrum.A RCS-5B sweeping HF receiver for oblique sounding was installed at Chania (Crete, Greece, 35.7°N, 24.0°E) in April 2005 to perform a radio link with Inskip (UK, 53.5°N, 2.5°W). The receiver, able to record the sounding only as a binary file, was not equipped with a tool to display and scale the recorded trace. This work describes software that is able to do this, consequently increasing the speed of the scaling phase performed by the operator. The usefulness of this software for validating FMUF prediction models is also shown.     

Short-term frequency stability of clock generators for multigigahertz rapid-single-flux quantum digital circuits

Superconducting digital systems based on Josephson junctions have generally used a synchronous timing strategy. A master clock signal is used to delimit a data window during which the system changes state and data is transferred from one block to the next. The temporal stability of the clock signal has a profound effect on the performance of rapid single flux quantum (RSFQ) digital systems. In particular, short-term clock fluctuations, or clock jitter, can degrade system performance due to the hazard of timing constraint violations. The successful development of large-scale RSFQ digital systems will require highly stable multigigahertz on-chip clock sources. To meet this need, methods for characterizing and measuring the short-term stability of such sources are required. We identify the relevant figure of merit to characterize and compare various clocks: the cycle-to-cycle standard deviation of the clock periods. We present experimental techniques for the measurement of this figure of merit and apply them to the measurement of jitter in a clock generator used often in RSFQ systems, the ring oscillator. High-frequency phase noise measurements found the jitter of a 9.6-GHz clock to be in the range from 0.6% to 0.36% of the clock period. The measured values of clock jitter fell within the 95% confidence interval of our stochastic circuit simulations. This was sufficient evidence to conclude that thermal noise from the resistors in the circuit may be the dominant source of jitter in the ring oscillator.     

Hematological malignancies with a deletion of 11q23: cytogenetic and clinical aspects. European 11q23 Workshop participants

OBJECTIVE: Using receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curves, we tried to determine the diagnostic threshold of amniotic fluid index (AFI) that will identify abnormal fetal size (birth weights under 2500 g or at least 4000 g) at 37 weeks or beyond. METHODS: We analyzed prospectively over 2 years all parturients with intact membranes and known AFI in early labor. Patients with the following conditions were excluded: pregestational or gestational diabetes, known anomalies, and preterm labor. Two ROC curves were constructed, and the areas (+/- standard error of the mean [SE]) under the curves were calculated. P < .05 was considered significant. RESULTS: Of the 1038 subjects meeting study criteria, 3.6% and 11.5% gave birth to infants who were small for gestational age (SGA) or macrosomic, respectively. Overall, 28.7% had oligohydramnios (AFI at most 5.0 cm) and 3.6% had hydramnios (AFI at least 24.0 cm). Small for gestational age was more common in patients with AFI at most 5.0 cm (6.4%) than in those with adequate fluid (AFI 5.1-23.9; 2.5%), or hydramnios (2.7%; P = .012). Macrosomic newborns were less likely to be born to women with oligohydramnios (7.7%) than to those with adequate amniotic fluid (13.1%) or hydramnios (13.5%). Areas under ROC curves are not significantly different from the area under the nondiagnostic line, indicating that AFI (0-34 cm) cannot differentiate between newborns under 2500 g and at or over 2500 g or under 4000 and at or more 4000 g. CONCLUSION: Intraparterium AFI appears to be a poor screening test to identify risk for delivery of SGA or macrosomic fetus.     

Analysis of the validity of vaginal-cervical cytologic examination in 162 pre- and post-menopausal patients

The authors examine 162 cervico-vaginal smears of women in peri-menopause presenting cellular alterations (ASCUS). These patients were treated with a local topic therapy as the persistence of these alterations in 23 cases (14.2%) second level analyses were performed: gynecological visit, colposcopy and biopsy. In addition to inflammatory aspects 2 in situ carcinomas and 2 moderate dysplasias were recorded. We believe therefore that cytology could be a valid aid also in pre-menopausal women in the cervico-vaginal pathology.     

The beneficial effects of storage on the quality of wastewater for irrigation: a case study in Sicily.

Although the main function of reservoirs in agriculture is to allow the storage and temporal shifting of large volumes of waters, further benefits emerge from their application in wastewater reuse systems. In fact, as observed in several other studies carried out on such complex natural systems, the storage period, under proper conditions, can lead to a significant improvement of the water quality for irrigation thanks to concurrent physical, chemical and biological processes. In order to investigate the reservoir dynamics, an experimental research was carried out in a farm reservoir (volume of 11,000 m3, maximum depth of 6.3 m and mean depth of about 5 m), receiving treated wastewater and subject to scheduled highly variable input to volume ratios, in order to observe the broadest range of behaviour responses. Specifically, over a monitoring period lasted 4 months, the reservoir was operated as a standard batch reactor in the first and third phases and as a continuous flow reactor in the second one. Based on correlation analysis between the chemical, physical and biological water parameters and operational ones, a new operative index is proposed which integrates the morphological characteristics of the tank and the management ones, and shows a significant correlation with the qualitative characteristics of the stored water.     

Anodic oxidation of mecoprop herbicide at lead dioxide

The electrochemical oxidation of an aqueous solution containing mecoprop (2-(2-methyl-4-chlorophenoxy)propionic acid) has been studied at PbO₂ anodes by cyclic voltammetry and bulk electrolysis. The influence of current density, hydrodynamic conditions, temperature and pH on the degradation rate and current efficiency is reported. The results obtained show that the use of PbO₂ leads to total mineralization of mecoprop due to the production of oxidant hydroxyl radical electrogenerated from water discharge. The current efficiency for the electro-oxidation of mecoprop is enhanced by low current density, high recycle flow-rates and high temperature. In contrast, the pH effect was not significant. It has also been observed that mecoprop decay kinetics follows a pseudo-first-order reaction and the rate constant increases with rising current density.