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.     

Probing the early stages of polymerization of ethylene on a model chromium/silica catalyst by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy

The nature of the interaction of monomer, and the early stages of growth of oligomers of ethylene on a rather more uniform surface of Cr/SiO₂ catalyst than hitherto studied has been investigated by differenceFTIR spectroscopy using C₂D₄ and C₂H₄ as reactants both with and without subsequent treatment of the catalyst with CO andTHF. The active catalyst was prepared by reaction of vapour phase CrO₂Cl₂ with the vicinal hydroxyls of the silica surface. Three distinct kinds of methylene groups were detected. Arguments are given for assigning the peaks at 2935 and 2860 cm^–1 to CH₂ groups directly bound to the active site and those at 2920 and 2850 to CH₂s in the growing chain well removed from the Cr. The peaks at 2160 and 2165 cm^–1 are attributed to CD₂ groups hydrogen bonded to surface hydroxyls.     

School psychologists' acceptability of behavioral and traditional assessment procedures for externalizing problem behaviors.

A national survey of school psychologists' acceptability of psychological assessment techniques in the area of externalizing problem behaviors was examined. School psychologists' ratings of 2 procedures, Behavioral Assessment (BA) and Traditional Assessment (TA), were compared using an analog case study methodology. Using a random sample of 500 National Association of School Psychologists members from the 1991–1992 membership directory, 339 Ss completed the Assessment Rating Profile after reading a hypothetical case summary describing a student with suspected externalizing problem behaviors. Results indicated statistically significant differences between assessment methods and ratings of acceptability. BA procedures were found to be more acceptable than TA procedures. Implications related to the acceptability of psychological assessment techniques, as well as implications for school psychology practitioners are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Macroscopic analysis of design processes based on a scheme for coding designers' cognitive actions

We have devised a new scheme for coding designers' cognitive actions from video/audio design protocols. Designers' actions are coded into four cognitive levels; physical, perceptual, functional and conceptual. Relations between actions belonging to different levels, such as dependencies and triggering relations, are also coded. The present scheme has two benefits. First, we found that design actions are definable in a systematic way using the vocabulary of the scheme, and thus a designer's cognitive behaviours in each of local design stages is represented as a structure composed of defined primitive actions. This is expected to lay the foundation for microscopic analyses of how particular types of actions contribute to the formation of key design ideas. Second, this scheme is suitable for macroscopic analyses of how designers cognitively interact with their own sketches. We examined, for a practising architect, the ways in which drawing, inspection of drawings, perception, and functional thoughts correlated with one another in his design process. The findings suggest that design sketches serve not only as external memory or as a provider of visual cues for association of non-visual information, but also as a physical setting in which design thoughts are constructed on the fly.     

Parents and procedures: a randomized controlled trial

INTRODUCTION: Previous work has shown that parents prefer to be present when their children undergo common invasive procedures, although physicians are ambivalent about parental presence. PURPOSE: To determine the effect of a parent-focused intervention on the pain and performance of the procedure, anxiety of parents and clinicians, and parental satisfaction with care. POPULATION: Children younger than 3 years old undergoing venipuncture, intravenous cannulation, or uretheral catheterization. SETTING: Pediatric emergency department of Boston City Hospital. DESIGN: Randomized controlled trial with three groups; parents present and given instructions on how to help their children; parents present, but no instructions given; and parents not present. INTERVENTION: The parents were instructed to touch, talk to, and maintain eye contact during the procedure. RESULTS: A total of 431 parents was randomized to the intervention (N = 153), present (N = 147), and not present (N = 131) groups. The groups were equivalent with respect to measured sociodemographic variables and parents' previous experience in the pediatric emergency department. No differences emerged with respect to pain (3-point scale measured by parent and clinician, and analysis of cry); performance of the procedure (number of attempts, completion of procedure by first clinician, time); clinician anxiety; or parental satisfaction with care. Parents who were present were more likely to rate the pain of the children as extreme/severe (52%) in comparison to clinicians (15%, kappa .07, poor agreement) and were significantly less anxious than parents who were not present. CONCLUSION: Overall, the intervention was not effective in reducing the pain of routine procedures. Parental presence did not negatively affect performance of the procedure or increase clinician anxiety. Parents who were present were less anxious than those who were not present. CLINICAL IMPLICATION: In general, parents have indicated that they want to be present when their children undergo procedures. The results of this study challenge the traditional belief that parental presence negatively affects our ability to successfully complete procedures. We should encourage parents who want to be present to stay during procedures.     

The Advance Toward Distinction in Engineering Technology

This paper traces the development of engineering technology from bifurcation to the present time. They assert that ET desires to be distinguished more than it seeks to be distinct. This analysis of the successes and failures of bifurcation lead to a differentiation between engineering technology's being distinct as a discipline and becoming distinguished in its own right. They offer some conjecture about the bright future of ET as a partner with science and engineering in an atmosphere of increased technological development but intense international competition.     

Rapid identification of protein phosphatase 1-binding proteins by mixed peptide sequencing and data base searching. Characterization of a novel holoenzymic form of protein phosphatase 1

Microcystin-affinity chromatography was used to purify 15 protein phosphatase 1 (PP1)-binding proteins from the myofibrillar fraction of rabbit skeletal muscle. To reduce the time and amount of material required to identify these proteins, proteome analysis by mixed peptide sequencing was developed. Proteins are resolved by SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, electroblotted to polyvinylidene fluoride membrane, and stained. Bands are sliced from the membrane, cleaved briefly with CnBr, and applied without further purification to an automated Edman sequencer. The mixed peptide sequences generated are sorted and matched against the GenBank using two new programs, FASTF and TFASTF. This technology offers a simple alternative to mass spectrometry for the subpicomolar identification of proteins in polyacrylamide gels. Using this technology, all 15 proteins recovered in PP-1C affinity chromatography were sequenced. One of the proteins, PP-1bp55, was homologous to human myosin phosphatase, MYPT2. A second, PP-1bp80, identified in the EST data bases, contained a putative PP-1C binding site and a nucleotide binding motif. Further affinity purification over ATP-Sepharose isolated PP-1bp80 in a quaternary complex with PP-1C and two other proteins, PP-1bp29 and human p20. Recombinant PP-1bp80 also bound PP-1C and suppressed its activity toward a variety of substrates, suggesting that the protein is a novel regulatory subunit of PP-1.     

Adaptive Spatial Partitioning for Multidimensional Data Streams

We propose a space-efficient scheme for summarizing multidimensional data streams. Our sketch can be used to solve spatial versions of several classical data stream queries efficiently. For instance, we can track ε-hot spots, which are congruent boxes containing at least an ε fraction of the stream, and maintain hierarchical heavy hitters in d dimensions. Our sketch can also be viewed as a multidimensional generalization of the ε-approximate quantile summary. The space complexity of our scheme is O((1/ε) log R) if the points lie in the domain [0, R]^d, where d is assumed to be a constant. The scheme extends to the sliding window model with a log (ε n) factor increase in space, where n is the size of the sliding window. Our sketch can also be used to answer ε-approximate rectangular range queries over a stream of d-dimensional points.     

Investigation of texture effect on visual colour difference evaluation

The texture effect on visual colour difference evaluation was investigated in this study. Five colour centers were selected and textured colour pairs were generated using scanned textile woven fabrics and colour‐mapping technique. The textured and solid colour pairs were then displayed on a characterized cathode ray tube (CRT) monitor for colour difference evaluation. The colour difference values for the pairs with texture patterns are equal to 5.0 CIELAB units in lightness direction. The texture level was represented by the half‐width of histogram, which is called texture strength in this study. High correlation was found between texture strength and visual colour difference for textured colour pairs, which indicates that an increasing of 10 units of texture strength in luminance would cause a decreasing of 0.25 units visual difference for the five colour centers. The ratio of visual difference between textured and solid colour pairs also indicates a high parametric effect of texture. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 30, 341–347, 2005; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/col.