The impact of process standardization on business process outsourcing success

What is the impact of business process standardization on business process outsourcing (BPO) success? This paper argues that there is a direct impact of process standardization on BPO success, due to production cost economies, and also an indirect effect via improved contractual and relational governance resulting from better monitoring opportunities and facilitated communication and coordination. This threefold impact of standardization on BPO success is empirically confirmed using data from 335 BPO ventures in 215 German banks.     

Data cache and direct memory access in programming mediaprocessors

Mediaprocessors provide high performance by using both instruction- and data-level parallelism. Because of the increased computing power, transferring data between off- and on-chip memories without slowing down the core processor's performance is challenging. Two methods, data cache and direct memory access, address this problem in different ways     

High-speed multidimensional convolution

Fast computation algorithms are developed for twodimensional and general multidimensional convolutions. Two basic techniques (overlap-and-add, overlap-and-save) are described in detail. These techniques allow speed and storage requirement tradeoffs and they define a decomposition of the total convolution into partial convolutions that can be easily found by parallel use of fast sequential cyclic convolution algorithms. It is shown that unlike what is the case in one dimension, the ``overlap-and-save' method enjoys a clear advantage over the ``overlap-and-add' method with respect to speed and storage in multidimensional convolution. A specific computational burden is assessed for the case where these methods are used in conjunction with radix-2 fast Fourier transform algorithms.     

Three-dimensional digital line segments

Digital arcs in 3-D digital pictures are defined. The digital image of an arc is also defined. A digital arc is defined to be a digital line segment if it is the digital image of a line segment. It is shown that a digital line segment may be characterized by the chord property holding for its projections onto the coordinate planes. It is also shown that a digital line segment may not be characterized by its own chord property. A linear time algorithm is presented that determines whether or not a digital arc is a digital line segment.     

Biofouling control by quorum sensing inhibition and its dependence on membrane surface

Biofouling control by quorum sensing (QS) inhibition and the influence of membrane surface characteristics on biofilm formation and QS inhibition were investigated. Pseudomonas putida isolated from the bio-fouled reverse osmosis (RO) membranes in a real plant was used. Acylase was chosen as a model QS inhibitor. Bacteria on the membrane coupons were quantified with the heterotrophic plate count method. Cell distribution was imaged by a confocal laser scanning microscope. Results showed that biofilm formation on the membrane was reduced by acylase as it inhibits the activity of N-acylhomoserine lactone (AHL) which is a signal molecule of QS. It was also shown that membrane surface characteristics were influential factors affecting bacterial adhesion, biofilm formation, and QS inhibition.     

Proactive Human Search for the Designated Person with Prior Context Information in an Undiscovered Environments

This paper describes a scheme for proactive human search for a designated person in an undiscovered indoor environment without human operation or intervention. In designing and developing human identification with prior information a new approach that is robust to illumination and distance variations in the indoor environment is proposed. In addition, a substantial exploration method with an octree structure, suitable for path planning in an office configuration, is employed. All these functionalities are integrated in a message- and component-based architecture for the efficient integration and control of the system. This approach is demonstrated by succeeding human search in the challenging robot mission of the 2009 Robot Grand Challenge Contest.     

Availability of a newly devised ambulatory urodynamics monitoring system based on personal device assistance in patients with spinal cord injury

Conventional urodynamics systems have been widely used for the assessment of bladder functions. However, they have some drawbacks due to the unfamiliar circumstances for the patient, restrictive position during the test, expense and immovability of the instrument as well as the unphysiological filling of the bladder. To mitigate these problems, we developed a fully ambulatory urodynamics monitoring system, which enables the abdominal pressure to be measured in a non-invasive manner, as well as the manual recording of various events such as the bladder sensations or leakage of urine. Conventional (CMG) and furosemide-stimulated filling cystometry (FCMG) were performed for 28 patients with neurogenic bladders caused by spinal cord injury (24 males and 4 females, age: 49.4 ± 13.9 years, BMI: 23.5 ± 2.4). There were high correlation coefficients (r=0.97 ± 0.02) between the clinical parameters measured by the conventional rectal catheter and those measured by our non-invasive algorithm in the FCMG studies. Also, 10 of the patients (36%) were diagnosed as having different reflexibility of the bladder between conventional CMG and FCMG (p<0.05). In the patients with detrusor overactivity, the average volume and detrusor pressure at bladder sensation in FCMG were lower than those in CMG, while the average compliance was higher (p<0.05). In the patients with areflexic bladders, the number of patients with detrusor overactivity was higher in FCMG and leakage was observed more frequently. These results showed that our system could be a useful additional tool in the clinical assessment of patients in which conventional cystometry failed to explain their symptoms.