Ends,Means and Innovation Management

The management of innovation inevitably implies the management of uncertainty. Research and practise clearly indicate that judgements about the size and the nature of this are often inaccurate. This can result in poor performance against expectations and in some cases in complete failure. In this paper it is argued that prior analysis of the type of uncertainty can help to improve the success rate and/or reduce the time to completion. Early signs that discontinuation, or a significant change in direction, might be called for are also highlighted by this analysis.     

Data management and analysis for high-throughput DNA sequencingprojects

The rapid advances in molecular biology have begun to shift many of the bottlenecks in genome research from the laboratory to the data analysis facility. The pace at which this has occurred creates a situation in which software development always has to catch up with the flow of data. Since such large-scale processes were not anticipated, the analysis infrastructure has not been fully established. Furthermore, most systems that have been built were designed by the biologists who collected the data. More recently, computer scientists, mathematicians, and engineers have taken an interest in this problem. This has had a positive effect, since it has created a tight synergy between the informatics and the biology. Several principles affected the design of the system developed at TIGR. Each of the sample preparation, sequencing, and analysis steps had to be managed, scheduled, and tracked. This information had to be made readily available to those who needed it for carrying out their tasks. Different skill levels of the users had to be taken into account. The degree of human intervention at each step had to be evaluated and built into the design. A mixed processing environment of Macintosh and Unix platforms had to be integrated. Most importantly, the system had to save time, reduce error, and ensure uniformity of the analysis and quality of the results. In the authors' experience, the tools they have built work well because of their early decisions as to which systems to use for development. The authors settled on a robust relational database management system (Sybase) and a portable development environment (C, C++)     

Prolonged hypoxaemia after nebulised salbutamol

Pulse oximetry is increasingly used to assess hypoxaemia in respiratory illnesses. Six children presenting with acute asthma and prolonged falls in oxygen saturation values after treatment with salbutamol are described who were subsequently shown to have pneumonic consolidation on chest radiography.     

Analysis of thin walled structures using the boundary element method

In this article the direct boundary element formulations of stretching and bending plate problems are combined together to solve thin walled structures and other similar frames. The final system is obtained by assuming each individual plane structural element as a subregion. After the necessary transforms of these equations they can be combined together taking into account the displacement compatibility and equilibrium conditions.     

Comparison of Displacement and Mixing Diffusers

In order to cumpare the peformance of different supply diffuers of ventilation air, the airflow passern, temperature stratifiation and contaminant dispersion in a furnitured office ventilated by three kinds of air diffuer were numerically investigated. The air diffuers studied in this paper are a quarter-cylinder displacement diffuer on the floor and mixing diffuers (linear and vortex diffuers) on the ceiling. The heat sources in the of-fice are considered to be 50% convective and 50% radiative. The k-? two-equatwn model of turbulence is employed to predict the turbulent diffusion. The results show that the displacement diffuser provides a rather uniform flow field with low velocify in most areas, and the vertical temperature difference from floor to ceiling is as high as 6 K. With the linear diffuser, the air velociry is high, and the temperature is uniform both horizontally and vertically. The air velocity generated by the vortex diffuser is moderate. The distributions of the temperature and the contaminant are rather uniform.     

Multidimensional augmented current equation including velocityovershoot

The augmented drift-diffusion current equation, which includes velocity overshoot effects through the space derivatives of the electric field, cannot be directly extended beyond one dimension. A new formalism is developed which considers the carrier heating and the distribution relaxation effects to obtain a multidimensional augmented drift diffusion current equation. The equivalent mobility containing the velocity overshoot correction is derived from the perturbation analysis on the carrier temperature using the energy balance equation. The issues related to the numerical implementation of this generalized model and the validity of the assumptions are also discussed     

EU-Weißbuch Erneuerbare Energien und die Ergebnisse von Kyoto

The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nationsl Framework Convention on Climate Change gives a target for the reduction of greenhouse gases in the EU and most associated states of 8% from 1990 levels to 2010. The European Commissions Whitebook on Renewable Energy is setting a target of doubling the share of Renewable Energy from 6% now to 12% in 2010 for the European Union. There is no contradiction between these targets.     

Accelerated aging of extruded dielectric power cables. I. Controland monitoring methodology

An improved accelerated cable life test is described. Through the use of programmable logic controllers (PLCs), very precise and consistent control of the accelerated aging process has been achieved. A computer has been utilized to make continuous real-time acquisition and storage of key operating parameters possible. This precise control and monitoring methodology has permitted the study of the synergistic effects of voltage and temperature on the accelerated aging of full-sized cables in the laboratory