An approach to analyzing and planning post-merger IS integration: Insights from two field studies

Information systems (IS) integration is among the most challenging tasks in corporate mergers and acquisitions (M&As). In this paper we propose and illustrate the use of an approach to analyzing and planning post-merger IS integration that extends general theory for IS planning, considering the specific characteristics of the M&A context. We highlight that planning effectiveness is possible to achieve in fundamentally different ways, dependent on the characteristics of the merger or acquisition at hand.

Dissimilarity-based classification of chromatographic profiles

This paper proposes a non-parametric method for the classification of thin-layer chromatographic (TLC) images from patterns represented in a dissimilarity space. Each pattern corresponds to a mixture of Gaussian approximation of the intensity profile. The methodology comprises various phases, including image processing and analysis steps to extract the chromatographic profiles and a classification phase to discriminate among two groups, one corresponding to normal cases and the other to three pathological classes. We present an extensive study of several dissimilarity-based approaches analysing the influence of the dissimilarity measure and the prototype selection method on the classification performance. The main conclusions of this paper are that, Match and Profile-difference dissimilarity measures present better results, and a new prototype selection methodology achieves a performance similar or even better than conventional methods. Furthermore, we also concluded that simplest classifiers, such as k-NN and linear discriminant classifiers (LDCs), present good performance being the overall classification error less than 10% for the four-class problem.     

Is team training in briefings for surgical teams feasible in simulation?

We developed a module for surgical team training using briefings in simulated crisis scenarios and here we report preliminary findings. Nine surgical teams (34 trainees) participated in a pre-training simulation, followed by an interactive workshop on briefing and checklists, and then a post-training simulation. Both technical and non-technical skills were assessed via observation during simulations by expert trainers who provided feedback on performances at the end of simulation. Trainees also reported their attitudes to briefings and evaluated the training. Pre-training attitudes to briefing were positive, some of which improved post-training and trainees’ evaluation of the training was positive. Surgeons’ technical skill improved significantly post-training, but their decision-making skill was rated lower than other non-technical skills, compared to other trainees. The training did not appear to greatly improve non-technical skill performance. Training surgical teams in simulation is feasible but much more work is needed on measurement development and training strategy to confirm its efficacy and utility.     

Optimizing multiple dimensional queries simultaneously in multidimensional databases

Some significant progress related to multidimensional data analysis has been achieved in the past few years, including the design of fast algorithms for computing datacubes, selecting some precomputed group-bys to materialize, and designing efficient storage structures for multidimensional data. However, little work has been carried out on multidimensional query optimization issues. Particularly the response time (or evaluation cost) for answering several related dimensional queries simultaneously is crucial to the OLAP applications. Recently, Zhao et al. first exploited this problem by presenting three heuristic algorithms. In this paper we first consider in detail two cases of the problem in which all the queries are either hash-based star joins or index-based star joins only. In the case of the hash-based star join, we devise a polynomial approximation algorithm which delivers a plan whose evaluation cost is $ O(n^{\epsilon }$) times the optimal, where n is the number of queries and is a fixed constant with . We also present an exponential algorithm which delivers a plan with the optimal evaluation cost. In the case of the index-based star join, we present a heuristic algorithm which delivers a plan whose evaluation cost is n times the optimal, and an exponential algorithm which delivers a plan with the optimal evaluation cost. We then consider a general case in which both hash-based star-join and index-based star-join queries are included. For this case, we give a possible improvement on the work of Zhao et al., based on an analysis of their solutions. We also develop another heuristic and an exact algorithm for the problem. We finally conduct a performance study by implementing our algorithms. The experimental results demonstrate that the solutions delivered for the restricted cases are always within two times of the optimal, which confirms our theoretical upper bounds. Actually these experiments produce much better results than our theoretical estimates. To the best of our knowledge, this is the only development of polynomial algorithms for the first two cases which are able to deliver plans with deterministic performance guarantees in terms of the qualities of the plans generated. The previous approaches including that of [ZDNS98] may generate a feasible plan for the problem in these two cases, but they do not provide any performance guarantee, i.e., the plans generated by their algorithms can be arbitrarily far from the optimal one. Received: July 21, 1998 / Accepted: August 26, 1999     

The road to intelligence

It is argued that robotic platforms are the way forward towards building intelligent systems, where multiple sensors and manipulation are used for cognitive processes. It is also argued that the cue for developing the right architecture for such a system is human language.     

A note on stabilization of locally damped wave equations with time delay

In this paper, we consider the wave equation with internal distributed time delay and local damping in a bounded and smooth domain Ω⊂Rⁿ. When the local damping acts on a neighborhood of a suitable part of the boundary of Ω, we show that an exponential stability result holds if the coefficient of the delay term is sufficiently small.     

A survey of QoS architectures

Over the past several years there has been a considerable amount of research within the field of quality-of-service (QoS) support for distributed multimedia systems. To date, most of the work has been within the context of individual architectural layers such as the distributed system platform, operating system, transport subsystem and network layers. Much less progress has been made in addressing the issue of overall end-to-end support for multimedia communications. In recognition of this, a number of research teams have proposed the development of QoS architectures which incorporate QoS-configurable interfaces and QoS driven control and management mechanisms across all architectural layers. This paper examines the state-of-the-art in the development of QoS architectures. The approach taken is to present QoS terminology and a generalized QoS framework for understanding and discussing QoS in the context of distributed multimedia systems. Following this, we evaluate a number of QoS architectures that have emerged in the literature.     

A Peer-to-Peer Approach to Web Service Discovery

Web Services are emerging as a dominant paradigm for constructing and composing distributed business applications and enabling enterprise-wide interoperability. A critical factor to the overall utility of Web Services is a scalable, flexible and robust discovery mechanism. This paper presents a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) indexing system and associated P2P storage that supports large-scale, decentralized, real-time search capabilities. The presented system supports complex queries containing partial keywords and wildcards. Furthermore, it guarantees that all existing data elements matching a query will be found with bounded costs in terms of number of messages and number of nodes involved. The key innovation is a dimension reducing indexing scheme that effectively maps the multidimensional information space to physical peers. The design and an experimental evaluation of the system are presented.