BUSINESS PROCESS REENGINEERING

The new paradigm of business process reengineering seeks to achieve dramatic performance improvement by radically redesigning the organization; it replaces information systems development that has focused largely on automating and supporting existing organizational procedures. The Process Reengineering Life Cycle (PRLC) proposed in this article is a comprehensive, six-stage methodology with guidelines for envisioning a reengineering project, getting started, diagnosing process pathologies, and redesigning, reorganizing, and measuring the newly configured process.     

Suspension of solids by bubble agitation

Using fundamental aspects of the fluid mechanics of a single particle, a relation for the velocity of liquid necessary to suspend solid particles in a shallow depth column is derived. This liquid velocity is developed by the movement of the gas bubbles inside the column with the potential energy dissipated by the bubble during its ascent taken as the gain in the kinetic energy of the liquid. This energy brings about sufficient liquid motion to suspend the particles. The corresponding superficial gas velocity to suspend all the particles present in the column is theoretically estimated and compared to experimental values of superficial gas velocities obtained for various solids concentrations. A set pattern of deviation is observed, and empirical correlations are suggested for predicting the superficial gas velocity to suspend a given amount of solid particles in liquid.     

Studies on mass transfer during drop formation in a pulsating gaseous medium

Theoretical and experimental investigations have been carried out for the mass transfer to an internally circulating drop forming in a continuously pulsating gas-phase. Enhancement in mass transfer rate of about 200% has been achieved by increased internal circulation within the large-sized drop during its formation, through pulsations in the gas-stream. Effects of pulsation parameters on the overall mass transfer rate have been investigated. The experimental and computed data have also been compared for both the cases of physical absorption and absorption accompanied by fast, irreversible pseudo-first order chemical reaction. Data show a good agreement for the two systems studied, the agreement being particularly good for the reacting system.     

Low-temperature polycrystalline-silicon TFT on 7059 glass

A polycrystalline-silicon (poly-Si) thin-film transistor (TFT) deposited at low temperature on Corning 7059 glass is reported. It has practical applications for low-cost thin-film display and imaging electronics manufacturing. All the process steps used to fabricate the poly-Si device take place at temperatures of 550°C or less. The poly-Si films exhibit crystallite grain sizes on the order of 5000 Å, and the fabricated devices show field-effect mobilities of 10-20 cm²/V-s and threshold voltages around zero. A plasma process to form the source and drain contacts has also been developed     

Picosecond photocarrier transport in hydrogenated amorphous-siliconp-i-n diodes

Optically detected, picosecond-domain photocarrier transport measurements for hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) p-i-n diodes with uniform and nonuniform electric fields are reported. The transient electroabsorption bleaching mechanism for optical detection is described, and the interpretation of these transients is extended to the case of nonuniform electric fields. A technique for using surface-absorbed light and optical detection for measurement of nonuniform electric fields is presented     

A proton NMR study of the effect of a new intravasal injectable male contraceptive RISUG on seminal plasma metabolites

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy was used to quantify citrate, glucose, lactate, glycerophosphorylcholine and choline in seminal plasma from subjects injected with a new male contraceptive RISUG, a copolymer of styrene maleic anhydride dissolved in dimethyl sulphoxide, and in seminal plasma from normal ejaculates. No significant difference in the concentration of citrate was observed between the groups, indicating that the prostate is not affected by the contraceptive. The concentrations of glucose, lactate, glycerophosphorylcholine and choline were significantly lower (P < 0.01) in subjects injected with RISUG compared with controls. In addition, metabolite ratios such as choline:citrate, citrate:lactate, choline:lactate and glycerophosphorylcholine:choline were calculated. Citrate:lactate and glycerophosphorylcholine:choline ratios were significantly lower in RISUG-injected subjects than in controls (P < 0.01), thereby indicating the occurrence of partial obstructive azoospermia. The most important finding of the present study was that the intervention of RISUG in the vas deferens even for a period as long as 8 years is absolutely safe and does not lead to prostatic diseases.     

Electrical and optical properties of diketopyrrolopyrrole-based copolymer interfaces in thin film devices

Two donor-acceptor diketopyrrolopyrrole (DPP)-based copolymers (PDPP-BBT and TDPP-BBT) have been synthesized for their application in organic devices such as metal-insulator semiconductor (MIS) diodes and field-effect transistors (FETs). The semiconductor-dielectric interface was characterized by capacitance-voltage and conductance-voltage methods. These measurements yield an interface trap density of 4.2 × 10(12) eV?1 cm?2 in TDPP-BBT and 3.5 × 1012 eV?1 cm?2 in PDPP-BBT at the flat-band voltage. The FETs based on these spincoated DPP copolymers display p-channel behavior with hole mobilities of the order 10?3 cm2/(Vs). Light scattering studies from PDPP-BBT FETs show almost no change in the Raman spectrum after the devices are allowed to operate at a gate voltage, indicating that the FETs suffer minimal damage due to the metal-polymer contact or the application of an electric field. As a comparison Raman intensity profile from the channel-Au contact layer in pentacene FETs are presented, which show a distinct change before and after biasing.     

Auto-association measures for stationary time series of categorical data

For stationary time series of nominal categorical data or ordinal categorical data (with arbitrary ordered numberings of the categories), autocorrelation does not make much sense. Biswas and Guha (J Stat Plan Infer 139:3076–3087, 2009a) used mutual information as a measure of association and introduced the concept of auto-mutual information in this context. In this present paper, we introduce general auto-association measures for this purpose and study several special cases. Theoretical properties and simulation results are given along with two illustrative real data examples.