Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evolution of software business in industrial companies: Resources, capabilities and strategy

Research on software business has, so far, mainly concentrated on the software industry. However, software business has recently also been practised outside the software industry, in so-called industrial companies. This research aims at increasing empirical and theoretical understanding of the development of software business in industrial companies, shedding light on why a company not belonging to the software industry starts to do business involving software, how the company goes about starting such business, and how this in turn affects the company. First, past research on the resource-based approach, capability approach, dynamic capability approach and the concept of strategy is reviewed. Based on this review, four processes that hold the potential to give a company (sustained) competitive advantage – picking resources, exploiting resources, applying capabilities and developing capabilities – and three important dimensions of strategy – the objective of strategy, the process of strategy formation, and the focus of strategy – are identified. A conceptual framework for studying the development of software business in industrial companies is developed which encompasses the processes holding the potential for (sustained) competitive advantage and the different dimensions of strategy, as well as the company’s resource, capability and dynamic capability base. Following that, empirical data collected in two internationally operating industrial companies is analyzed with the help of the conceptual framework. As a result of the empirical data analysis, 23 capabilities and several resources important for software business in industrial companies could be identified. Capabilities are categorized according to their use in and applicability to different types of software business. Factors influencing the application, development and improvement of capabilities, as well as different ways of how industrial companies start to do software business, are identified. The conceptual framework is revised by adding the process of developing capabilities further to the processes which hold the potential for competitive advantage, and clarifying the role of dynamic capabilities in the development of software business in industrial companies.
Effectiveness of Organizational Responses to Technological Change in the Production Process

This paper examines the effectiveness of organizational problem solving in response to technological change in the production process. First, the paper measures the degree of uncertainty associated with a given technological change by examining (1) the novelty of specific new features and functions, and (2) the required departure from established operating assumptions and organizational relationships. Second, the paper identifies three modes of problem solving that organizations use in dealing with technological change: modification prior to implementation (preparatory search), joint work with external technical experts during production start-up (joint search), and integration of engineering and manufacturing functions engaged in start-up (functional overlap). The effectiveness of these approaches is then tested on a sample of 48 new process introductions undertaken in eight plants by a leading global producer of precision metal components. Results indicate that the measured characteristics of technological change are significant predictors of the difficulties encountered in introducing new process technology. Findings also suggest that intensive problem solving efforts can significantly improve change outcomes, both shortening the period of disruption experienced and increasing the operating gains achieved. In addition, there was some evidence that the three organizational problem solving activities discussed here are not equally effective for responding to all types of process change. Specifically, the higher the level of technical novelty involved, the less useful was overlap between engineering and manufacturing functions. This challenges the general prescription that cross-functional team involvement in major technical projects always should be maximized, regardless of the nature of the change involved.
Improving Renewable Energy Forecasting With a Grid of Numerical Weather Predictions

In the last two decades, renewable energy forecasting progressed toward the development of advanced physical and statistical algorithms aiming at improving point and probabilistic forecast skill. This paper describes a forecasting framework to explore information from a grid of numerical weather predictions (NWP) applied to both wind and solar energy. The methodology combines the gradient boosting trees algorithm with feature engineering techniques that extract the maximum information from the NWP grid. Compared to a model that only considers one NWP point for a specific location, the results show an average point forecast improvement (in terms of mean absolute error) of 16.09% and 12.85% for solar and wind power, respectively. The probabilistic forecast improvement, in terms of continuous ranked probabilistic score, was 13.11% and 12.06%, respectively.
Using feature design to showcase the corporate brand.

In evaluating brands, consumer perceptions are the bottom line. Peter Sackett and Efstathios Kefallonitis note that problems arise from lack of differentiation, too much or confusing information, dysfunctional products and services, uncoordinated brand media, and the failure to temper global approaches with an understanding of local or regional culture. Distinctive, coherent brands depend on attention to detail and a vigilant consumer focus.
Anonymity enabling scheme for wireless ad hoc networks

With the advances of wireless and mobile telecommunications, the pressing issues for the design of future wireless ad hoc network is when anonymity becomes one. In a wireless ad hoc network, communicating nodes usually seek the help of other intermediate nodes to establish communication channels. In such an environment, malicious intermediate nodes can be a threat to the security and/or anonymity of the exchanged data between the mobile nodes. While data encryption can protect the content exchanged between nodes, routing information may reveal valuable information about end users and their relationships. This paper proposes an anonymous routing protocol, similar to onion routing used in wired networks. Our protocol includes also a mechanism to establish trust and avoid untrustworthy nodes during the route discovery process. The major objective of our protocol is to allow trustworthy intermediate nodes to participate in the routing protocol without jeopardizing the anonymity of the communicating nodes.
Financial resilience and security : Examining the impact of falling housing markets on low income homeowners in Northern Ireland. Final Report April 2014.

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Aligning transport performance measures with customised retail logistics: a structured method and its application

One way in which companies can obtain competitive advantage is through customising their logistics operations to particular market segments. A challenge for businesses pursuing this strategy is to develop a performance measurement (PM) system that enables the differing objectives of divergent distribution channels to be met. However, this issue has not been fully addressed in the literature, with the one exception of Kallio et al. ’s conceptual framework (Kallio, J., Sarrinen, T., Tinnila, M. and Vepsalainen, A.P.J., 2000. Measuring delivery process performance. International journal of logistics management, 11 (1), 75–87). The aim of this paper is thus to evaluate Kallio et al. ’s approach empirically. The context of the study is the grocery retail logistics sector. An action research methodology has been deployed, including a 3-month secondment to a case company focusing on their convenience store operations. A six-step method is developed in the paper based around business process re-engineering approaches. The research identifies the type of customised logistics solution required, and from this reveals a misalignment between the focus of the retailer's current distribution performance measures and the performance objectives of convenience stores’ logistics operations. Therefore, new measures are proposed that are more appropriate to convenience stores. A review of the research after 12 months confirmed a high degree of usefulness of the new measures to the company. The paper contributes to the literature through the empirical evaluation of PM within the context of customised logistics. Existing frameworks enable this, but have not, until this paper, been tested empirically.
Visual servoing controller for time-invariant 3D path following with remote centre of motion constraint

The Remote Centre of Motion (RCM) is an essential movement for most of the medical robotic systems during the minimal invasive surgeries. In literature, there are many references which had analysed the techniques for modelling the problem of RCM constraint. However, only very few have discussed the RCM with Path Following Controller which ensures the complexity of surgical tasks. Therefore, this article is focusing on presenting the Task Priority Controller. Such task controller deploys exteroceptive sensor (visual servoing scheme) in order that the surgical tool follows the reference path while maintaining the RCM constraints. The experimental results showed good performance of the proposed controller.
Stochastic simulations with DYNARE. A practical guide.

We consider an economy that consists of a large number of dynastic households and a large number of firms. Firms are producing a homogeneous final product that can be either consumed or invested by means of capital and labor services. Firms own their capital stock and hire labor supplied by the households. Households own the firms. In each and every period three perfectly competitive markets open — the markets for consumption goods, labor services, and financial capital in the form of firms’ shares. Household preferences are characterized by the lifetime utility function:
Epoxy-α-Lapachone Has In Vitro and In Vivo Anti-Leishmania (Leishmania) amazonensis Effects and Inhibits Serine Proteinase Activity in This Parasite

ABSTRACT Leishmania (Leishmania) amazonensis is a protozoan that causes infections with a broad spectrum of clinical manifestations. The currently available chemotherapeutic treatments present many problems, such as several adverse side effects and the development of resistant strains. Natural compounds have been investigated as potential antileishmanial agents, and the effects of epoxy-α-lapachone on L. (L.) amazonensis were analyzed in the present study. This compound was able to cause measurable effects on promastigote and amastigote forms of the parasite, affecting plasma membrane organization and leading to death after 3 h of exposure. This compound also had an effect in experimentally infected BALB/c mice, causing reductions in paw lesions 6 weeks after treatment with 0.44 mM epoxy-α-lapachone (mean lesion area, 24.9 ± 2.0 mm2), compared to untreated animals (mean lesion area, 30.8 ± 2.6 mm2) or animals treated with Glucantime (mean lesion area, 28.3 ± 1.5 mm2). In addition, the effects of this compound on the serine proteinase activities of the parasite were evaluated. Serine proteinase-enriched fractions were extracted from both promastigotes and amastigotes and were shown to act on specific serine proteinase substrates and to be sensitive to classic serine proteinase inhibitors (phenylmethylsulfonyl fluoride, aprotinin, and antipain). These fractions were also affected by epoxy-α-lapachone. Furthermore, in silico simulations indicated that epoxy-α-lapachone can bind to oligopeptidase B (OPB) of L. (L.) amazonensis, a serine proteinase, in a manner similar to that of antipain, interacting with an S1 binding site. This evidence suggests that OPB may be a potential target for epoxy-α-lapachone and, as such, may be related to the compound's effects on the parasite.
Effect of Mild Nitric Acid Oxidation on Dispersability, Size, and Structure of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes

Oxidation of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) with nitric acid increases their dispersability in water, methanol, and N,N-dimethylformamide. Two oxidation protocols, sonication in 8 M HNO3 at 40 °C and reflux in 2.6 M HNO3, have been examined using SWNTs produced by the CoMoCat, HiPco, and pulsed laser vaporization (PLV) methods. The dispersability of all types of nanotubes increased substantially after 1 h of sonication and after 2−4 h of reflux. Longer treatments resulted in little further improvement in dispersability and at reflux degraded the SWNTs. Stable dispersions of CoMoCat SWNTs in DMF at concentrations as high as 0.4 g/L were achieved without the use of surfactants or polymers. Raman spectroscopy showed greater covalent functionalization of the SWNTs by the reflux procedure than by the sonication procedure. Concurrent with improved dispersability, oxidation resulted in smaller diameters and shorter lengths as determined from AFM images, which show mostly bundles rather than individual tu.
Consideration set measurement

The consideration set is a concept that is both intuitively appealing and practically useful. However, there is no standard operational definition of the construct, little reported research investigating alternative measures for empirically assessing the construct, and only limited investigation of interproduct differences in set characteristics (typically focusing on set size). Results of the experiment reported here indicate that situation-specific operational definitions yield smaller reported consideration sets that exhibit greater correspondence to reported purchases than do situation-neutral definitions, and that semantic variations within definition type have little impact on measured set characteristics. Further, findings indicate that much of the interproduct variation in consideration set size is related to awareness set size.
Deployment of Core Competencies to obtain success in SMEs

Sources of competitive advantage are firm characteristics that allow setting up in a better position than its competitors. From the Resources Based Theory is usual to consider these sources as internal and external factors of business. Entrepreneur organizes core competences combining these factors. They are competitive advantages when firm gets better performance than the competition. The process to obtain better performance from core competences isn’t well known. In this paper we define fifth core competencies: human and technological resources management, zone resources management, customer management, product marketing and innovativeness. We determine which is the process of influence of core competencies on business performance by PLS techniques. Findings indicate a causal process in generating business performance. Only innovativeness affect to performance. But better innovativeness is achieved combining from human and technological resources. This is improved by zone resources management. In turn, this I determined by management customers, associated with produc6 management.
LSVF: Least Suggested Value First - A New Search Heuristic to Reduce the Amount of Backtracking Calls in CSP

Along the years, many researches in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) field seek for new algorithms to reduce drastically the amount of memory and time consumed for general searches in the family of constraint satisfaction problems. Normally, these improvements are reached with the use of some heuristics which either prune useless tree search branches or even “indicate” the path to reach the solution (many times, the optimal solution) more easily. Many heuristics were proposed in the literature, like Static/ Dynamic Highest Degree heuristic (SHD/DHD), Most Constraint Variable (MCV), Least Constraining Value (LCV), and while some can be used at the pre-processing time, others just at running time. In this paper we propose a new pre-processing search heuristic to reduce the amount of backtracking calls, namely the Least Suggested Value First (LSVF). LSVF emerges as a practical solution whenever the LCV can not distinguish how much a value is constrained. We present a pedagogical example to introduce the heuristics, realized through the general Constraint Logic Programming CHRv, as well as the preliminary results.
Total quality management in UK service organisations: some key findings from a survey

Total quality management (TQM) is an integrative management philosophy aimed at continuously improving the performance of products, processes and services to achieve and surpass customer expectations. In this paper, the TQM practices in the UK service industry are analysed, based on a survey of 25 service companies. The results presented here are focused on 11 critical factors of quality management: customer focus, continuous improvement, teamwork and involvement, top management commitment and recognition, training and development, quality systems and policies, supervisory leadership, communication within the company, supplier partnership or supplier management, measurement and feedback and cultural change. It was found that customer focus is the most successful driven factor for TQM programs in UK service organisations. Moreover, supplier partnership or supplier management is the least important factor.
A γ‐tubulin that associates specifically with centrioles in HeLa cells and the basal body complex in Chlamydomonas

γ‐Tubulin is a putative component of microtubule initiating material. To further explore its subcellular distribution in plant and animal cells, we have raised a polyclonal antibody, Rb27, directed towards a conserved region (EEFATEGTDRKDVFFY) of the γ‐tubulin molecule. Immunoblotting of cell protein extracts with Rb27 reveals a polypeptide band of Mr 49 kD in HeLa and a 58 kD band in Chlamydomonas. Although these polypeptides are comparable in size to forms of γ‐tubulin detected previously in mammalian and plant protein extracts by other antibodies to γ‐tubulin, by immunofluorescence microscopy Rb27 gives localization patterns not previously seen. It localizes specifically with the centrioles in HeLa cells and with the basal body complex in Chlamydomonas. Other γ‐tubulin antibodies label pericentriolar material. Because of the similarities in the size of the polypeptides recognized by our and other γ‐tubulin antibodies, and a restricted co‐localization with known microtubule‐organizing centres in evolutionarily distant organisms, we propose that Rb27 recognizes a novel conserved γ‐tubulin isotype.
The Service Models of Frontline Employees

Abstract Service literature has implicitly assumed that frontline employees (FLEs) share a common understanding of the term “customer service. ” Perhaps because of this assumption, differences in FLE attitudes, behaviors, and performance have been ascribed to organizational characteristics, social environment, job characteristics, or personality. This article shows that FLEs' interpretations of customer service also matter. Using qualitative and quantitative data, this study finds that three distinct interpretations of customer service, or service models, exist among retail FLEs: (1) the act of giving customers what they ask for, efficiently and courteously; (2) a means to accomplishing immediate objectives, such as sales quotas; and (3) the formation of mutually beneficial relationships with customers through problem solving. Service models are related to FLEs' customer orientation, competence, surface and deep acting, and interpersonal values. The findings indicate that differences in FLEs' attitudes, be.
DEVELOPING A SYSTEM FOR ASSESSMENT OF ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE USING BALANCED SCORECARD APPROACH AND SAP R/3

Achieving strategic objectives through effective organizational performance is a typical feature of corporate life. Traditional barometers of performance include productivity, quality, sales, revenues, and, more recently, Human Resource Management (HRM) practices. Of particular interest in this latter gauge, not only in determining how it contributes to organizational performance and the bottom line, but also how HRM practices are measured. While measuring HRM practices remains a challenge, it appears that gathering information and generating reports on HRM transactions, both independently and in relation to other functional areas of business, can be facilitated using Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, in general, and SAP R/3 in particular. ERP systems enable the sharing of information across the organization’s business processes which promotes accurate reporting and effective decision making: hallmarks critical to effective performance. Additionally, it is suggested that a more accurate assessment of corporate performance may be achieved using a management tool known as the Balanced Scorecard (BSC). The BSC approach is based on the philosophy that typical indicators of performance are identified and assessed in terms of how these performance indicators contribute to the achievement of the overall corporate strategy and mission. BSC
Mapping Relational Databases to Ontology Representation: A Review

Towards the recent years, huge amount of information are continuously growing and produced at a very fast pace. Nevertheless, most of it is published in formats that are not suitable to be process by analytic tools directly. In addition, most of these data sources are heterogeneous, thus, making it difficult task for data integration, and subsequently for data exchange. The aim of this paper is outline the steps to transform relational databases to ontology representation. We also review some of the recent mapping tools on the theoretical aspect of how each method works, focusing on discussing the benefits and drawbacks of these approaches. In addition, we also highlight the issues with the current tools, and subsequently outline the requirements of the mapping tools.
Extraction mechanism of alteration zones using ASTER imagery

Remote sensing plays an important role in the mineral exploration. One of the common applications is to locate alteration zones related to gold deposits. Many studies based on landsat thematic mapper (TM) imagery have been carried out and several methods have been developed. However, the advanced spaceborne thermal emission and reflection radiometer (ASTER) imagery, which has better spectral resolution (14 bands) and spatial resolution (15 m in VNIR bands), was not widely used in this application field. This article indicates the ASTER imagery application in locating alteration zones in Laizhou area of Shandong Province. First, we studied the geological information and main alteration minerals' spectral features of the study area. Based on the above work, we calculated some band ratios (b4/bl, b4/b6, b3/b2) to enhance spectral response of some mineral materials and vegetations. Then, a principal component analysis was applied to these band ratios. After applying PCA, the eigenvector matrix was analyzed to identify which PC (principal component) contained more useful information of alteration minerals. We chose the PC that enhanced the response of alteration minerals and reduced the response of vegetations, from which we could discriminate the alteration rocks. The satisfactory result shows that ASTER imagery works well in the exploration of alteration zones