Involving suppliers in product development in the United States andJapan: evidence for set-based concurrent engineering

Concurrent engineering (CE) involves a widely recognized revolution in the social organization of product development and a corresponding revolution in the underlying paradigm of design. We distinguish between two paradigms-point-based design and set-based design-and argue that effective, truly concurrent design requires shifting to a paradigm where design team members reason and communicate about sets of designs which we call “set-based concurrent engineering”. A survey of 92 Japanese and 119 US automotive parts suppliers who design their own products sought to quantify the pervasiveness and correlates of “set-based approaches”. The survey evidence indicates that set-based design communication is more prevalent among Japanese than among US parts suppliers, and is correlated with certain product development characteristics including years of experience with early involvement of suppliers in design, the degree of product-process design overlap, the degree to which subsystems are interdependent, and the use of quality function deployment (QFD)     

Effect of acute dietary alteration upon intestinal lipid synthesis

The specific activities of three enzymes engaged in complex lipid synthesis, diglyceride acyltransferase, cholinephosphotransferase, and lysolecithin acyltransferase were studied in intestinal mucosa of hamsters fed either saline, hydrolyzed casein, or corn oil for 9 1/2 hr. In the most proximal intestine, saline feeding was associated with a reduced specific activity in villous tips with all three enzymes studied when compared with the two caloric supplemented groups. In the most distal intestine, oil feeding increased the activity of lysolecithin acyltransferase and choline phosphotransferase twofold as compared to casein fed hamsters; diglyceride acyltransferase was increased one- and one-half-fold. The response of lysolecithin acyltransferase and diglyceride acyltransferase to fat feeding was incomplete when compared to hamsters fed a fat supplemented diet for 7 days, suggesting that their pattern of response to dietary substrate was similar to the disaccharidases. By contrast, the response of cholinephosphotransferase to fat feeding was complete at 24 hr, suggesting that it responds in a manner similar to the glycolytic enzymes.     

A deconvolution technique for improved estimation of rapid changesin ion concentration recorded with ion-selective microelectrodes

In biological preparations, measurements of rapid, stimulus-evoked changes in ion concentration by ion-selective microelectrodes can be distorted by the limited bandwidth of these sensors. Techniques were developed to reconstruct the actual change in ion concentration using deconvolution of the electrode's output signal and the electrode's transfer function. In the vertebrate retina, a knowledge of the actual time course of a light-evoked increase in extracellular K+ concentration was used to provide a rigorous test of a hypothesis regarding the electrical origin of a clinically important component of the electroretinogram.     

Lysolecithin acyltransferase in hamster intestinal mucosa

1-Acyl-lysolecithin acyltransferase has been demonstrated in the microsomal fraction of hamster intestinal mucosa. The characteristics of the enzyme, with respect to substrate concentration, time of incubation and protein concentration, were studied. Ca⁺⁺ was found to severely inhibit enzymatic activity. More modest inhibitors were found to be Mg⁺⁺ and F⁻; EDTA and albumin had no effect. Enzyme activity was reduced when palmityl CoA was substituted for oleoyl CoA as substrate. The specific activity of intestinal microsomes was modestly greater than liver microsomes.