bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Sustained Improvements in Peripheral Venous Catheter Care in Non–Intensive Care Units: A Quasi-Experimental Controlled Study of Education and Feedback
Authors: Fakih Mohamad G. , Jones Karen , Rey Janice E. , Berriel-Cass Dorine , Kalinicheva Tatyana , Szpunar Susanna , Saravolatz Louis D.
Published: April 2012

Background and Objectives.

Peripheral venous catheters (PVCs) can be associated with serious infectious complications. We evaluated the effect of education and feedback on process measures to improve PVC care and infectious complications.

Design.

Quasi-experimental controlled crossover study with sampling before and after education.

Setting.

An 804-bed tertiary care teaching hospital.

Participants.

Nurses and patients in 10 non-intensive care units.

Methods.

We implemented a process to improve PVC care in 10 non-intensive care units. The 4 periods (each 3 months in duration) included a preintervention period and a staggered educational intervention among nurses. During intervention period 1, 5 units participated in the intervention (group A), and 5 units served as a control group (group B). Group B underwent the intervention during intervention period 2, and both groups A and B received feedback on performance during intervention period 3. Process measures were evaluated twice monthly, and feedback was given to nurses directly and to the unit manager on a monthly basis.

Results.

During the preintervention period, there were no significant differences between groups A and B. Of 4,904 intravascular catheters evaluated, 4,434 (90.4%) were peripheral. By the end of the study, there were significant improvements in processes, compared with the preintervention period, including accurate documentation of dressing (from 442 cases [38%] to 718 cases [59%]; P<.0001), catheter dressing being intact (from 968 cases [88.5%] to 1,024 cases [95.2%]; P<.0001), and correct demonstration of scrubbing the hub before infusion (from 161 demonstrations [54%] to 316 demonstrations [95%]; P <.0001). There was a significant reduction in PVC-associated bloodstream infection, from 2.2 cases per 10,000 patient-days during the preintervention period (5 cases) to 0.44 cases per 10,000 patient days during the 3 intervention periods (3 cases; P = .016).

Conclusions.

Education and real-time feedback to nurses increases and sustains compliance with processes to reduce the risk of infection from PVCs.
DADP: the database of anuran defense peptides
Authors: Novković Mario , Simunić Juraj , Bojović Viktor , Tossi Alessandro , Juretić Davor
Published: March 2012

Summary: Anuran tissues, and especially skin, are a rich source of bioactive peptides and their precursors. We here present a manually curated database of antimicrobial and other defense peptides with a total of 2571 entries, most of them in the precursor form with demarcated signal peptide (SP), acidic proregion(s) and bioactive moiety(s) corresponding to 1923 non-identical bioactive sequences. Search functions on the corresponding web server facilitate the extraction of six distinct SP classes. The more conserved of these can be used for searching cDNA and UniProtKB databases for potential bioactive peptides, for creating PROSITE search patterns, and for phylogenetic analysis.

Availability: DADP is accessible at http://split4.pmfst.hr/dadp/

Contact:  juretic@pmfst.hr

Supplementary information:  Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Inferring gene regulatory networks by ANOVA
Authors: Küffner Robert , Petri Tobias , Tavakkolkhah Pegah , Windhager Lukas , Zimmer Ralf
Published: March 2012

Motivation: To improve the understanding of molecular regulation events, various approaches have been developed for deducing gene regulatory networks from mRNA expression data.

Results: We present a new score for network inference, η2, that is derived from an analysis of variance. Candidate transcription factor:target gene (TF:TG) relationships are assumed more likely if the expression of TF and TG are mutually dependent in at least a subset of the examined experiments. We evaluate this dependency by η2, a non-parametric, non-linear correlation coefficient. It is fast, easy to apply and does not require the discretization of the input data. In the recent DREAM5 blind assessment, the arguably most comprehensive evaluation of inference methods, our approach based on η2 was rated the best performer on real expression compendia. It also performs better than methods tested in other recently published comparative assessments. About half of our predicted novel predictions are true interactions as estimated from qPCR experiments performed for DREAM5.

Conclusions: The score η2 has a number of interesting features that enable the efficient detection of gene regulatory interactions. For most experimental setups, it is an interesting alternative to other measures of dependency such as Pearson's correlation or mutual information.

Availability: See http://www2.bio.ifi.lmu.de/˜kueffner/anova.tar.gz for code and example data.

Contact:  kueffner@bio.ifi.lmu.de

Supplementary information:  Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
A subspace method for the detection of transcription factor binding sites
Authors: Pairó Erola , Maynou Joan , Marco Santiago , Perera Alexandre
Published: March 2012

Motivation: The identification of the sites at which transcription factors (TFs) bind to Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is an important problem in molecular biology. Many computational methods have been developed for motif finding, most of them based on position-specific scoring matrices (PSSMs) which assume the independence of positions within a binding site. However, some experimental and computational studies demonstrate that interdependences within the positions exist.

Results: In this article, we introduce a novel motif finding method which constructs a subspace based on the covariance of numerical DNA sequences. When a candidate sequence is projected into the modeled subspace, a threshold in the Q-residuals confidence allows us to predict whether this sequence is a binding site. Using the TRANSFAC and JASPAR databases, we compared our Q-residuals detector with existing PSSM methods. In most of the studied TF binding sites, the Q-residuals detector performs significantly better and faster than MATCH and MAST. As compared with Motifscan, a method which takes into account interdependences, the performance of the Q-residuals detector is better when the number of available sequences is small.

Availability:  http://r-forge.r-project.org/projects/meet

Contact:  epairo@ibecbarcelona.eu; alexandre.perera@upc.edu

Supplementary information:  Supplementary data (1, 2, 3 and 4) are available at Bioinformatics online.
Large-scale analysis of conserved rare codon clusters suggests an involvement in co-translational molecular recognition events
Authors: Chartier Matthieu , Gaudreault Francis , Najmanovich Rafael
Published: March 2012

Motivation: An increasing amount of evidence from experimental and computational analysis suggests that rare codon clusters are functionally important for protein activity. Most of the studies on rare codon clusters were performed on a limited number of proteins or protein families. In the present study, we present the Sherlocc program and how it can be used for large scale protein family analysis of evolutionarily conserved rare codon clusters and their relation to protein function and structure. This large-scale analysis was performed using the whole Pfam database covering over 70% of the known protein sequence universe. Our program Sherlocc, detects statistically relevant conserved rare codon clusters and produces a user-friendly HTML output.

Results: Statistically significant rare codon clusters were detected in a multitude of Pfam protein families. The most statistically significant rare codon clusters were predominantly identified in N-terminal Pfam families. Many of the longest rare codon clusters are found in membrane-related proteins which are required to interact with other proteins as part of their function, for example in targeting or insertion. We identified some cases where rare codon clusters can play a regulating role in the folding of catalytically important domains. Our results support the existence of a widespread functional role for rare codon clusters across species. Finally, we developed an online filter-based search interface that provides access to Sherlocc results for all Pfam families.

Availability: The Sherlocc program and search interface are open access and are available at http://bcb.med.usherbrooke.ca

Contact:  rafael.najmanovich@usherbrooke.ca

Supplementary information:  Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
OCAP: an open comprehensive analysis pipeline for iTRAQ
Authors: Wang Penghao , Yang Pengyi , Yang Jean Yee Hwa
Published: March 2012

Motivation: Mass spectrometry-based iTRAQ protein quantification is a high-throughput assay for determining relative protein expressions and identifying disease biomarkers. Processing and analysis of these large and complex data involves a number of distinct components and it is desirable to have a pipeline to efficiently integrate these together. To date, there are limited public available comprehensive analysis pipelines for iTRAQ data and many of these existing pipelines have limited visualization tools and no convenient interfaces with downstream analyses. We have developed a new open source comprehensive iTRAQ analysis pipeline, OCAP, integrating a wavelet-based preprocessing algorithm which provides better peak picking, a new quantification algorithm and a suite of visualizsation tools. OCAP is mainly developed in C++ and is provided as a standalone version (OCAP_standalone) as well as an R package. The R package (OCAP) provides the necessary interfaces with downstream statistical analysis.

Availability: OCAP is freely available and can be downloaded at http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/u/penghao

Contact:  penghao.wang@sydney.edu.au
Predicting giant transmembrane β-barrel architecture
Authors: Reboul Cyril F. , Mahmood Khalid , Whisstock James C. , Dunstone Michelle A.
Published: March 2012

Motivation: The β-barrel is a ubiquitous fold that is deployed to accomplish a wide variety of biological functions including membrane-embedded pores. Key influences of β-barrel lumen diameter include the number of β-strands (n) and the degree of shear (S), the latter value measuring the extent to which the β-sheet is tilted within the β-barrel. Notably, it has previously been reported that the shear value for small antiparallel β-barrels (n≤24) typically ranges between n and 2n. Conversely, it has been suggested that the β-strands in giant antiparallel β-barrels, such as those formed by pore forming cholesterol-dependent cytolysins (CDC), are parallel relative to the axis of the β-barrel, i.e. S=0. The S=0 arrangement, however, has never been observed in crystal structures of small β-barrels. Therefore, the structural basis for how CDCs form a β-barrel and span a membrane remains to be understood.

Results: Through comparison of molecular models with experimental data, we are able to identify how giant CDC β-barrels utilize a ‘near parallel’ arrangement of β-strands where S=n/2. Furthermore, we show how side-chain packing within the β-barrel lumen is an important limiting factor with respect to the possible shear values for small β-barrels (n≤24  β-strands). In contrast, our models reveal no such limitation restricts the shear value of giant β-barrels (n>24 β-strands). Giant β-barrels can thus access a different architecture compared with smaller β-barrels.

Contact:  michelle.dunstone@monash.edu

Supplementary information:  Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
GECA: a fast tool for gene evolution and conservation analysis in eukaryotic protein families
Authors: Fawal Nizar , Savelli Bruno , Dunand Christophe , Mathé Catherine
Published: March 2012

Summary: GECA is a fast, user-friendly and freely-available tool for representing gene exon/intron organization and highlighting changes in gene structure among members of a gene family. It relies on protein alignment, completed with the identification of common introns in the corresponding genes using CIWOG. GECA produces a main graphical representation showing the resulting aligned set of gene structures, where exons are to scale. The important and original feature of GECA is that it combines these gene structures with a symbolic display highlighting sequence similarity between subsequent genes. It is worth noting that this combination of gene structure with the indications of similarities between related genes allows rapid identification of possible events of gain or loss of introns, or points to erroneous structural annotations. The output image is generated in a portable network graphics format which can be used for scientific publications.

Availability and implementation: Web-implemented version and source code are freely available at https://peroxibase.toulouse.inra.fr/geca_input_demo.php and a detailed example can be found at https://peroxibase.toulouse.inra.fr/geca_instructions.php

Contact:  mathe@lrsv.ups-tlse.fr

Supplementary information:  Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Habitat associations of species show consistent but weak responses to climate
Authors: Suggitt Andrew J. , Stefanescu Constantí , Páramo Ferran , Oliver Tom , Anderson Barbara J. , Hill Jane K. , Roy David B. , Brereton Tom , Thomas Chris D.
Published: April 2012

Different vegetation types can generate variation in microclimates at local scales, potentially buffering species from adverse climates. To determine if species could respond to such microclimates under climatic warming, we evaluated whether ectothermic species (butterflies) can exploit favourable microclimates and alter their use of different habitats in response to year-to-year variation in climate. In both relatively cold (Britain) and warm (Catalonia) regions of their geographical ranges, most species shifted into cooler, closed habitats (e.g. woodland) in hot years, and into warmer, open habitats (e.g. grassland) in cooler years. Additionally, three-quarters of species occurred in closed habitats more frequently in the warm region than in the cool region. Thus, species shift their local distributions and alter their habitat associations to exploit favourable microclimates, although the magnitude of the shift (approx. 1.3% of individuals from open to shade, per degree Celsius) is unlikely to buffer species from impacts of regional climate warming.
Accounting for indirect land-use change in the life cycle assessment of biofuel supply chains
Authors: Sanchez Susan Tarka , Woods Jeremy , Akhurst Mark , Brander Matthew , O'Hare Michael , Dawson Terence P. , Edwards Robert , Liska Adam J. , Malpas Rick
Published: March 2012

The expansion of land used for crop production causes variable direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions, and other economic, social and environmental effects. We analyse the use of life cycle analysis (LCA) for estimating the carbon intensity of biofuel production from indirect land-use change (ILUC). Two approaches are critiqued: direct, attributional life cycle analysis and consequential life cycle analysis (CLCA). A proposed hybrid ‘combined model’ of the two approaches for ILUC analysis relies on first defining the system boundary of the resulting full LCA. Choices are then made as to the modelling methodology (economic equilibrium or cause–effect), data inputs, land area analysis, carbon stock accounting and uncertainty analysis to be included. We conclude that CLCA is applicable for estimating the historic emissions from ILUC, although improvements to the hybrid approach proposed, coupled with regular updating, are required, and uncertainly values must be adequately represented; however, the scope and the depth of the expansion of the system boundaries required for CLCA remain controversial. In addition, robust prediction, monitoring and accounting frameworks for the dynamic and highly uncertain nature of future crop yields and the effectiveness of policies to reduce deforestation and encourage afforestation remain elusive. Finally, establishing compatible and comparable accounting frameworks for ILUC between the USA, the European Union, South East Asia, Africa, Brazil and other major biofuel trading blocs is urgently needed if substantial distortions between these markets, which would reduce its application in policy outcomes, are to be avoided.
Streptococcus troglodytidis sp. nov., isolated from a foot abscess of a chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes)
Authors: Zhang Michael , Yan Lifang , Zhu Guan , Holifield Michael , Todd Donna , Zhang Shuping
Published: March 2012

A facultative anaerobic, non-motile, non-spore-forming, Gram-positive-staining, coccus-shaped bacterium was isolated from an abscess on the right foot of a chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). The colonies were β-haemolytic. Catalase and oxidase activities were negative. The Lancefield group B antigen was expressed. On the basis of morphological and biochemical characteristics, the bacterium was tentatively identified as a streptococcal species. 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis indicated that the bacterium shared 96.7 %, 96.4 %, 96.1 %, 95.8 % and 95.7 % sequence similarities with

Streptococcus gordonii

,

S. cristatus

,

S. intermedius

,

S. anginosus

and

S. constellatus

, respectively. Phylogenetic analyses based on the sequences of the 16S rRNA gene and housekeeping genes encoding d-alanine : d-alanine ligase (ddl), the β-subunit of RNA polymerase (rpoB) and manganese-dependent superoxide dismutase (sodA) revealed that the bacterium represented a novel species closely related to, albeit different from,

S. gordonii

,

S. cristatus

and the anginosus streptococci. The name Streptococcus troglodytidis sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is M09-11185T ( = ATCC BAA-2337T = KCTC 33006T).
Porphyromonas crevioricanis

is an earlier heterotypic synonym of

Porphyromonas cansulci

and has priority
Authors: Sakamoto Mitsuo , Ohkuma Moriya
Published: March 2012

A DNA–DNA hybridization experiment was carried out to clarify the relationship between

Porphyromonas crevioricanis

and

Porphyromonas cansulci

. The taxonomic standing of these two species was unclear so far because of the high 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity value (99.9 %). The DNA–DNA relatedness values between

P. crevioricanis

JCM 15906T and

P. cansulci

JCM 13913T were above 91 % (91–99 %). In addition,

P. crevioricanis

JCM 15906T exhibited high hsp60 gene sequence similarity with

P. cansulci

JCM 13913T (100 %). The hsp60 gene sequence analysis and the DNA–DNA relatedness values demonstrated that

P. crevioricanis

JCM 15906T and

P. cansulci

JCM 13913T are a single species. Based on these data, we propose

Porphyromonas cansulci

as a later heterotypic synonym of

Porphyromonas crevioricanis

.
Sequential ChIP-bisulfite sequencing enables direct genome-scale investigation of chromatin and DNA methylation cross-talk
Authors: Brinkman Arie B. , Gu Hongcang , Bartels Stefanie J.J. , Zhang Yingying , Matarese Filomena , Simmer Femke , Marks Hendrik , Bock Christoph , Gnirke Andreas , Meissner Alexander , Stunnenberg Hendrik G.
Published: March 2012

Cross-talk between DNA methylation and histone modifications drives the establishment of composite epigenetic signatures and is traditionally studied using correlative rather than direct approaches. Here, we present sequential ChIP-bisulfite-sequencing (ChIP-BS-seq) as an approach to quantitatively assess DNA methylation patterns associated with chromatin modifications or chromatin-associated factors directly. A chromatin-immunoprecipitation (ChIP)-capturing step is used to obtain a restricted representation of the genome occupied by the epigenetic feature of interest, for which a single-base resolution DNA methylation map is then generated. When applied to H3 lysine 27 trimethylation (H3K27me3), we found that H3K27me3 and DNA methylation are compatible throughout most of the genome, except for CpG islands, where these two marks are mutually exclusive. Further ChIP-BS-seq-based analysis in Dnmt triple-knockout (TKO) embryonic stem cells revealed that total loss of CpG methylation is associated with alteration of H3K27me3 levels throughout the genome: H3K27me3 in localized peaks is decreased while broad local enrichments (BLOCs) of H3K27me3 are formed. At an even broader scale, these BLOCs correspond to regions of high DNA methylation in wild-type ES cells, suggesting that DNA methylation prevents H3K27me3 deposition locally and at a megabase scale. Our strategy provides a unique way of investigating global interdependencies between DNA methylation and other chromatin features.
Design for manufacture and assembly: background, capabilities and applications
Authors: Bogue Robert
Published: March 2012

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to describe the design for manufacture (DFM) and design for assembly (DFA) concepts and illustrate their benefits and applications.

Design/methodology/approach

Following an introduction, this paper provides an historical background to DFM and DFA. It then describes these techniques, highlights their capabilities and benefits and provides some examples of their applications. Finally, brief conclusions are drawn.

Findings

Software implementations of DFM and DFA are shown to yield significant financial savings by allowing products to be designed with enhanced manufacturing and assembly characteristics.

Originality/value

The paper provides an introduction to the DFM and DFA concepts which play a critical role in today's highly competitive markets.
Complexity mapping of the product and assembly system
Authors: Samy S.N. , ElMaraghy H.A.
Published: March 2012

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to present methods for assessing and mapping the complexity of products and their assembly. In cases of complexity of assembly it is important to consider and model at the product design stages when only data about individual parts/products and their assembly attributes are known. Assessing the complexity of assembly systems, based on the attributes of their components, is an essential step towards designing them for the least complexity.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper presents a mapping method between the complexity of products and their variants and complexity of the system needed to assemble them. A method has also been developed to assess and compare the complexity of assembly systems based on the characteristics of their physical components for comparison and re‐design to reduce complexity.

Findings

The complexity dependency matrix estimates the average assembly equipment complexity for a certain product based on the interactions between parts handling, insertion and assembly attributes and assembly system functions. An automobile engine piston, domestic appliance drive, car fan motor and a three‐pin electric power plug products were used to demonstrate the application of the developed methodology.

Originality/value

The developed methods can be used by products and assembly systems designers to identify and alleviate major sources of complexity.
Real time facility performance monitoring system using RFID technology
Authors: Chen Kuen‐Min , Chen Joseph C. , Cox Ronald A.
Published: March 2012

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to implement a value stream map (VSM) in a lean environment by automating the collection and distribution of production data. This on‐line RFID‐based facility performance monitoring (ORFPM) system for manufacturing environments combines RFID technology and wireless internet to track movement of material and then provide the user with a real‐time VSM, even if they are not able to supervise the production flow in the facility.

Design/methodology/approach

To ensure the ORFPM system operates well in the industrial environment, two sets of laboratory layouts are simulated, one being a job shop and the other being a cellular layout.

Findings

The results indicate that the system is able to successfully transmit data via wireless Internet, develop a database for transportation time and lead time, and automatically generate a real‐time VSM.

Originality/value

This proposed system is able to use RFID technology to track the material flow in production systems, automatically generating and providing VSM to users with real time data and then allowing users to remotely supervise the performance of their production facility.
Multilinguality in the digital library
Authors: Diekema Anne R.
Published: March 2012

Purpose

Together, increasing globalization and the internet created fertile grounds for the establishment of multilingual digital libraries. Providing cross‐lingual access to materials is of particular interest to political entities such as the European Union, which currently has 23 official languages, but also to multinational companies and countries that have different languages represented among their citizens. The main objective of this paper is to review the literature on multilingual digital libraries and provide an overview of this area.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on a thorough literature search in four different databases, a core set of literature on multilingual digital libraries was retrieved. Literature on various aspects of this topic was reviewed. The paper is organized based on emerging themes directly drawn from the literature. Where warranted additional literature is brought in to provide necessary background information or clarification.

Findings

Creating a multilingual digital library is a highly complex undertaking and typically requires a collaborative effort between different organizations and people with different areas of expertise. Enabling users to search across languages requires translation resources to cross the language barrier, which can be challenging depending on the language and resource availability. Additional challenges were found to be in data management (localization and language processing), representation (dealing with different fonts and character codes), development (creating international software, cross‐cultural collaboration), and interoperability (system architecture and data sharing). Research in multilingual digital libraries was mostly system based involving experimental systems or system prototypes.

Research limitations/implications

Most likely the literature review does not include all possible journal articles on multilingual digital libraries even though the literature searches done to obtain these articles were thorough and deliberate. Journal articles without the descriptors used in this search and those articles not indexed in the four different databases used in the search will not be included here. The review excludes cross‐language information retrieval research unless it is directly related to existing multilingual digital libraries, or a connection to digital libraries in general is made in the paper itself.

Originality/value

This paper provides the first literature review on the topic of multilingual digital libraries and provides a concise overview of relevant aspects in this area. The number of multilingual digital libraries is growing, as is the interest from the research community in these libraries to apply their research findings from cross‐language information retrieval. This review article provides a valuable entry point to the field of multilingual digital libraries for researchers, practitioners, and other interested parties.
Multilingual needs and expectations in digital libraries
Authors: Wu Dan , He Daqing , Luo Bo
Published: March 2012

Purpose

This study aims to survey academic users in order to identify their needs and expectations about multilingual information processing when they interact with digital libraries. The study specifically aims to determine the disparities in needs and expectations when users speak different languages.

Design/methodology/approach

A survey was designed to fill in the gaps in the knowledge about academic users' multilingual needs and expectations for digital libraries. The survey questionnaire incorporates questions about different aspects of the participants' multilingual needs and expectations covering multilingual needs, the multilingual behavior, often‐used multilingual information resources, and desired functions for the multilingual services, retrieval and interfaces in digital libraries. The results are obtained through statistical analyses and clustering methods.

Findings

Overall, participants exhibited many multilingual needs during their academic activities. They often require multilingual information when they access academic databases or web information. Frequently, participants use online translation resources and tools, but they are not satisfied with the translation quality. Participants want many multilingual capabilities in digital libraries; they also want more sophisticated multilingual search interfaces. However, participants from different countries or who speak different languages show significant differences in their multilingual needs and expectations of digital libraries. This study's three user groups demonstrated clear differences in all aspects of multilinguality examined, as did the three latent groups identified through the clustering methods.

Originality/value

Few studies have examined the multilingual information process in digital libraries from the point of view of academic users. This study draws its inputs directly from real academic users from different countries and provides insights into multilinguality in digital libraries.
Collaboration and crowdsourcing
Authors: Budzise‐Weaver Tina , Chen Jiangping , Mitchell Mikhaela
Published: March 2012

Purpose

This study aims to understand key features of existing multilingual digital libraries and to suggest strategies for building and/or sustaining multilingual information access for digital libraries.

Design/methodology/approach

A case study approach was applied to examine four American multilingual digital libraries: Project Gutenberg, Meeting of Frontiers, The International Children's Digital Library, and the Latin American Open Archives Portal. This examination used a framework derived from digital library evaluation practice. The missions, goals, funding, partners, users, collections, services, and technologies of these digital libraries were analyzed to present their key multilingual features. The collaboration and crowdsourcing characteristics were highlighted and discussed.

Findings

These four multilingual libraries benefit substantially, both in the creation of the library and in its access, from the collaboration of groups domestic and international with different language expertise. For building the multilingual collection and services, some libraries involved both staff and users. For multilingual access to the collection, however, none of the libraries used machine translation or cross‐language information retrieval technologies.

Research limitations/implications

The four cases are all publicly available digital libraries in the USA. Their features may not be applicable to digital libraries in other countries or to commercial digital information services.

Practical implications

With the advancement of machine translation technologies and the wide application of social media, multilingual digital libraries may have even better opportunities to sustain their multilingual capabilities through crowdsourcing and the application of new technologies.

Originality/value

This study summarizes the key features of four existing multilingual digital libraries. It provides insights into important factors for building successful multilingual digital libraries. The suggested strategies may help digital library developers to design appropriate multilingual information access services.
A preliminary evaluation of metadata records machine translation
Authors: Chen Jiangping , Ding Ren , Jiang Shan , Knudson Ryan
Published: March 2012

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to evaluate freely available machine translation (MT) services' performance in translating metadata records.

Design/methodology/approach

Randomly selected metadata records were translated from English into Chinese using Google, Bing, and SYSTRAN MT systems. These translations were then evaluated using a five point scale for both fluency and adequacy. Missing count (words not translated) and incorrect count (words incorrectly translated) were also recorded.

Findings

Concerning both fluency and adequacy, Google and Bing's translations of more than 70 percent of test data received scores equal to or greater than three, representative of “non‐native Chinese” and “much coverage,” respectively. SYSTRAN scored lowest in both measures. However, these differences were not statistically significant. A Pearson correlation analysis demonstrated a strong relationship (r=0.86) between fluency and adequacy. Missing count and incorrect count strongly correlated with fluency and adequacy.

Originality/value

Most existing digital collections can be accessed in English alone. Few digital collections in the USA support multilingual information access (MLIA) that enables users of differing languages to search, browse, recognize and use information in the collections. Human translation is one solution, but it is neither time nor cost effective for most libraries. This study serves as a first step to understand the performance of current MT systems and to design effective and efficient MLIA services for digital collections.
Bilingual terminology extraction using multi‐level termhood
Authors: Zhang Chengzhi , Wu Dan
Published: March 2012

Purpose

Terminology is the set of technical words or expressions used in specific contexts, which denotes the core concept in a formal discipline and is usually applied in the fields of machine translation, information retrieval, information extraction and text categorization, etc. Bilingual terminology extraction plays an important role in the application of bilingual dictionary compilation, bilingual ontology construction, machine translation and cross‐language information retrieval etc. This paper aims to address the issues of monolingual terminology extraction and bilingual term alignment based on multi‐level termhood.

Design/methodology/approach

A method based on multi‐level termhood is proposed. The new method computes the termhood of the terminology candidate as well as the sentence that includes the terminology by the comparison of the corpus. Since terminologies and general words usually have different distribution in the corpus, termhood can also be used to constrain and enhance the performance of term alignment when aligning bilingual terms on the parallel corpus. In this paper, bilingual term alignment based on termhood constraints is presented.

Findings

Experimental results show multi‐level termhood can get better performance than the existing method for terminology extraction. If termhood is used as a constraining factor, the performance of bilingual term alignment can be improved.

Originality/value

The termhood of the candidate terminology and the sentence that includes the terminology is used for terminology extraction, which is called multi‐level termhood. Multi‐level termhood is computed by the comparison of the corpus. Bilingual term alignment method based on termhood constraint is put forward and termhood is used in the task of bilingual terminology extraction. Experimental results show that termhood constraints can improve the performance of terminology alignment to some extent.
Drivers of cross‐sectoral cross‐buying behaviour among business customers
Authors: Mäenpää Irinja
Published: March 2012

Purpose

This paper aims to examine the extent of and key determinants for bank and insurance provider selection and usage by business customers from the small to medium‐sized enterprise (SME) segment, thereby aiming to increase understanding of the drivers of customers' cross‐buying behaviour across these financial service sectors.

Design/methodology/approach

Semi‐structured interviews were carried out with key decision makers from 22 SMEs within one country. Content analysis was employed to analyse the data.

Findings

Empirical findings suggest use of multiple banks as the norm among SMEs, whereas insurances are dominantly purchased from a single provider. As SME customers appear to prefer using separate, independent providers for their banking and insurance services, absence of customer loyalty programs, unfavourable pricing of the total offering and image conflicts were identified as main factors limiting the willingness to cross‐buy across these financial services sectors.

Research limitations/implications

This qualitative research is focused on the financial industry within one country and bound to smaller business customers, limiting the generalisability of the findings.

Practical implications

The results imply that in order to succeed in cross‐selling bank and insurance services in the SME segment, financial service providers should improve their cross‐selling concepts by creating customer loyalty programs that would reward customer companies according to the use of multiple products in their total portfolio.

Originality/value

This study is the first to describe the customer perceived drivers of cross‐buying bank and insurance services from the same service provider in the business‐to‐business context.
The impacts and success factors of ISO 9001 in education
Authors: Jorge Gamboa António , Filipe Melão Nuno
Published: March 2012

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the benefits, disadvantages and success factors associated with the adoption of ISO 9001:2000 in educational organizations, more specifically in Portuguese vocational schools.

Design/methodology/approach

Through a rigorous literature review, an a priori model was developed which was then refined and validated by case studies in five Portuguese vocational schools.

Findings

The findings reveal rich and meaningful insights into a much under‐researched area, including four internal benefits, two external benefits, three disadvantages and four success factors. This research uncovered that vocational schools are using the standard as a means to provide strategic focus and as a foundation for planning. Interestingly, contrarily to previous studies, bureaucracy is depicted in a more positive light and, management commitment and support is not seen as the most important success factor.

Practical implications

The findings suggest the need, on the one hand, for schools to be more proactive in showing the benefits of quality concepts and the certification to stakeholders, and, on the other hand, for international and national quality bodies to make more efforts to produce, divulge and maintain ISO 9000 interpretation guides tailored to the specific needs of educational institutions. Overall, the findings may assist practitioners in identifying courses of action to make the implementation of this standard more effective.

Originality/value

This paper validates and extends the dispersed findings of existing literature by providing a useful unifying conceptual model of the impacts and success factors of ISO 9001 in vocational education, which can be tested in other levels of education, countries and application domains. This is also perhaps the first reported study of its kind conducted at a European country.
Management systems: integration or addition?
Authors: Sampaio Paulo , Saraiva Pedro , Domingues Pedro
Published: March 2012

Purpose

In the past few years, management systems implementation and certification has become a common practice among different types of organizations. In this context, quality management systems certification, according to the ISO 9001 standard is in the spotlight, due to over than 1.000.000 certified organizations by the end of 2009. Quality management systems can be integrated with an increasing variety of other subsystems implemented according to other standards, including environmental systems, health and safety, social responsibility, R&D, risk, or human resources, and subsystems raised from specific standards designed for specific activity sectors (HACCP, automotive or aeronautics, medical devices, pharmaceuticals and software). Due to this evolution, careful attention should be taken on how these different subsystems have been and should be articulated, harmonized and integrated. Thus, this paper intends to approach different strategies to achieve integration, with several levels of intensity, depth and authenticity between the different subsystems, and report some final recommendations related with good practices assuring the efficiency and effectiveness of the integration process.

Design/methodology/approach

A case study methodology has supported this research. Three case studies were conducted on Portuguese companies that have an integrated quality, environmental and safety management system.

Findings

If the companies' strategy is to implement more than one management system, there is a clear advantage of doing it supported on an integrated approach, avoiding the development of organizational “islands” related to each subsystem. This organizational “archipelago” structure is completely far way from any global optimized solution, based on a holistic perspective.

Originality/value

Based on the conclusions that we were able to find out, this paper is an important contribution to the integrated management systems research area, because it states different integration approaches and levels of integration and what are the features that characterize each one of those approaches and levels.
Product support improvement by considering system operating environment
Authors: Ghodrati Behzad , Benjevic Dragan , Jardine Andrew
Published: March 2012

Purpose

The ongoing availability of existing industrial systems/machines depends to a great extent on the form and level of product support. Product support, or the after sale service of a product, is important because it assures the expected function of the product in its operational phase. Product support is affected by a number of factors, including system reliability and maintainability characteristics and the operating environment. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the influence of time independent external factors of industrial systems on product support requirements and spare parts need.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper, after discussing the factors influencing product support, describes a method to estimate spare part requirements based on estimation of the actual reliability of a product under the influence of the product‐operating environment using a proportional hazard model. A spare parts estimation software, Spare Management Software (SMS), is used to check the results. Then a case study addresses the management of the spare parts inventory based on the geographical location and required performance of the product.

Findings

The lack of good support and critical spare parts can cause the untimely stoppage of a machine/system. The forecasting of product support and spare parts requirements based on the reliability and maintainability characteristics of systems/components, along with influencing environmental factors, is one of the most effective strategies for preventing unplanned stoppages. The operating environment of a system/machine has a considerable influence on the performance of the system and its technical characteristics, such as its reliability, maintainability, and, consequently, availability. Therefore, the system operating environment should be considered when the required support and spare parts estimation is under review.

Research limitations/implications

In this research, the focus is on the estimation of the number of spare parts required. Only non‐repairable components/parts in repairable systems are studied. In other words, the paper considers one‐component systems or a single component within a larger system. The operation and maintenance phases are dealt with in the study, along with the external operating environment and time independent influencing factors.

Practical implications

The introduced method for spare parts estimation will enable management to improve system availability and production line efficiency while minimizing total production costs. Consequently, the plant life cycle cost will be minimized by releasing the tied‐up costs incurred when stocking extra parts for a long time.

Originality/value

The paper provides a new outlook on product support and spare parts forecasting by taking the actual system operating environment into consideration. It helps managers and engineers to be realistic and act pragmatically while running and analyzing technical/industrial systems.
Canadian exceptionalism: shareholder proposals, filer identities, and voting outcomes
Authors: Yang Jun , Zengxiang Wang Eric , An Yunbi
Published: March 2012

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to study filer identities and voting outcomes of Canadian shareholder proposals and their impact on shareholders' wealth during the period from 2001 to 2008.

Design/methodology/approach

In total, 762 Canadian shareholder proposals and related information on targeted firms were collected from the Shareholder Association for Research and Education (SHARE) and the System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval (SEDAR) databases. Statistical analyses are carried out on the features of shareholder proposals. Regression analyses are performed on voting outcomes, and an event study is conducted to test the impact of shareholder proposals on stock prices.

Findings

The authors' analyses show that proposals submitted by institutions or coordinated shareholder groups receive stronger support than those submitted by individuals and religious groups. Targeted firms are more willing and more likely to reach agreements with institutional investors, which in turn prompts activists to withdraw their proposals. The voting behavior of the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (OTPP) has a significant impact on voting outcomes. The targeted firms' stock prices respond substantially to news on proposals submitted by institutional and coordinated investors and proposals on social and environmental issues.

Originality/value

In addition to in‐depth analyses (issues, filers, voting outcomes, and impacts on stock price) of Canadian shareholder proposals, this paper explores the voting behaviour and impact of a large institutional shareholder that has been passive in filing shareholder proposals. Special attention is paid to Canadian features of shareholder activism, and differences between Canadian and US shareholder proposals are highlighted and discussed. The paper thus extends shareholder activism studies from focusing on open shareholder activists to investigating passive institutional shareholders.