1,354,164 research outputs found
In Vitro Differentiation and Maturation of Human Embryonic Stem Cell into Multipotent Cells
No full textHuman embryonic stem cells (hESCs), which have the potential to generate virtually any differentiated progeny, are an attractive cell source for transplantation therapy, regenerative medicine, and tissue engineering. To realize this potential, it is essential to be able to control ESC differentiation and to direct the development of these cells along specific pathways. Basic science in the field of embryonic development, stem cell differentiation, and tissue engineering has offered important insights into key pathways and scaffolds that regulate hESC differentiation, which have produced advances in modeling gastrulation in culture and in the efficient induction of endoderm, mesoderm, ectoderm, and many of their downstream derivatives. These findings have lead to identification of several pathways controlling the differentiation of hESCs into mesodermal derivatives such as myoblasts, mesenchymal cells, osteoblasts, chondrocytes, adipocytes, as well as hemangioblastic derivatives. The next challenge will be to demonstrate the functional utility of these cells, both in vitro and in preclinical models of bone and vascular diseases
A review on the critical success factors of agile software development: an empirical study
No full textGiven the evolution and increasing usage of agile development practices and techniques, the successful implementation of agile development is crucial. Agile software development has become one of the most commonly used methodologies for developing software, and it promises to deliver many benefits. Nevertheless, the implementation of agile practices and techniques requires many changes that might be a challenge for organisations attempting to succeed with agile software development. The relevant literature presents a great deal of research which has studied the critical success factors (CSFs) of agile software development. This study aims firstly to review the literature related to agile software development in order to identify the CSFs of agile software development. With this in mind, one of the objectives of this study is to investigate those factors which contribute to the success of agile software development. This study also aims to explore the relations between these factors and to suggest a set of measurements which could be used to measure the success of agile software development projects. To achieve these objectives, this research has employed empirical research methodologies aiming to address the research objectives. All of the research methods employed in this study have received ethical approval from the ethical committee of the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton.This research involved carrying out an exploratory study to investigate the identified success factors of agile software development. A web-based survey was distributed to agile practitioners in order to obtain their beliefs regarding the importance of the identified success factors. As a result, it was possible to order the CSFs of agile development by importance. Communication was found to be the most important success factor. The relations between the agile project’s progress and the importance of these factors were explored. Using factor analysis, the inter-relations between the identified success factors were also investigated. The success factors were split into two components with the aim of developing a better understanding of said factors; the two resulting components were as follows: the organisational and people component, and the technical and project component.This research, moreover, developed an instrument with which the success of agile development projects could be evaluated. The proposed instrument includes a list of questions and metrics to measure the success of agile development projects. Agile experts were interviewed to review the development of the proposed instrument. Following the feedback from the experts, the instrumentwas amended. Once this stage had been completed, the instrument was used in three case studies; the aim of this was to seek a practical evaluation on whether the proposed instrument is valid which was confirmed and some suggestions on how it could be improved were obtained.To summarise, this research attempted to recognise the CSFs and to understand their importance, how this varies through the agile project, and their interrelations to provide insights into these CSFs. Furthermore, this research developed and validated an instrument to measure and evaluate the success in addressing these CSFs during an agile software development project
Measuring success in agile software development projects: a GQM approach
No full textAgile software development has become one of the most commonly used methodologies for developing software. It promises to deliver many benefits, but nevertheless, the implementation of agile practices and techniques require many changes that might be a challenge for organizations attempting to succeed with agile software development projects. Claiming the success of agile software projects is difficult, and there is a need for more measurements with which agile success could be evaluated. This paper develops an instrument with which the success of an agile software development project could be measured. The criteria of the success are driven from the Critical Success Factors (CSFs) of agile development which have been identified prior developing this instrument. The proposed instrument will evaluate the success of agile software development projects in achieving these identified success factors. The instrument was developed following the Goal Question Metric (GQM) approach. This study conducted semi-structured interviews with 13 experts in the field of agile development. The aim of these interviews was to review and confirm the proposed instrument for measuring the success of agile projects. Following comments from the interviews, the instrument was revised. The developed instrument proposes measuring the agile success using 6 goals, 30 questions, and 7 metrics
A review study on the critical success factors of agile software development
No full textGiven the evolution and increasing usage of agile methods and practices, the successful adoption of agile is crucial. During the last decade, the critical success factors (CSFs) of agile development research developed rapidly. This paper aims to review the research on CSFs of agile software development in the last ten years (2006-2016) which used empirical methodologies to identify the success factors. In this paper, eight factors are selected as critical success factors for agile software development. A taxonomy which maps these eight CSFs into Technical, Organizational, People, Process categories is introduced in this research
Using factor analysis to study the critical success factors of agile software development
No full textThis paper aims to study the critical success factors of agile software development projects. Following a systematic review of the literature, eight success factors were selected as critical success factors of agile software development. A web based survey was designed to collect data about agile practitioners’ opinions concerning these success factors. Principal component analysis is conducted to identify the latent dimensions and how the selected success factors of agile development are related. This analysis of the eight success factors resulted in clustering them into two components. The first component labelled as Organizational and People Aspects which consist of five items which are: organizational culture, customer involvement, top management support, team capability and training, and communication. The second component labelled as Technical and Project Management Aspects which consist of three items which are: project management process, delivery strategy, and agile software techniques. The clustering of the success factors of agile projects which presented in this paper will help agile practitioners to understand how these success factors are related to each other, and may help in planning or improving agile training programmes.<br/
Chromosome copy number variation in telomerized human bone marrow stromal cells; insights for monitoring safe ex-vivo expansion of adult stem cells
No full textAdult human bone marrow stromal cells (hBMSC) cultured for cell therapy require evaluation of potency and stability for safe use. Chromosomal aberrations upsetting genomic integrity in such cells have been contrastingly described as "Limited" or "Significant". Previously reported stepwise acquisition of a spontaneous neoplastic phenotype during three-year continuous culture of telomerized cells (hBMSC-TERT20) didn't alter a diploid karyotype measured by spectral karyotype analysis (SKY). Such screening may not adequately monitor abnormal and potentially tumorigenic hBMSC in clinical scenarios. We here used array comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH) to more stringently compare non-tumorigenic parental hBMSC-TERT strains with their tumorigenic subcloned populations. Confirmation of a known chromosome 9p21 microdeletion at locus CDKN2A/B, showed it also impinged upon the adjacent MTAP gene. Compared to reference diploid human fibroblast genomic DNA, the non-tumorigenic hBMSC-TERT4 cells had a copy number variation (CNV) in at least 14 independent loci. The pre-tumorigenic hBMSC-TERT20 cell strain had further CNV including 1q44 gain enhancing SMYD3 expression and 11q13.1 loss downregulating MUS81 expression. Bioinformatic analysis of gene products reflecting 11p15.5 CNV gain in tumorigenic hBMSC-TERT20 cells highlighted networks implicated in tumorigenic progression involving cell cycle control and mis-match repair. We provide novel biomarkers for prospective risk assessment of expanded stem cell cultures
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
No full text“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
No full textWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
No full textWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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