225 research outputs found
Predicting technical communication in product development organizations
No full text"February 1995 [i.e. 1993]. -- Revised May 1995." "Forthcoming, IEEE transactions on engineering management." Title of original version: Evaluating communications in product development organizations, by Mark D. Morelli and Steven D. Eppinger.Includes bibliographical references (p. 15-16).Mark D. Morelli, Steven D. Eppinger, Rosaline K. Gulati
Design alternatives to improve consumer appeal and manufacturability of a water-filled teether for babies
No full textThesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1990.by Mark Alan Lester.M.S
Exploring the Duality between Product and Organizational Architectures: A Test of the Mirroring Hypothesis
No full textA variety of academic studies argue that a relationship exists between the structure of an organization and the design of the products that this organization produces. Specifically, products tend to "mirror" the architectures of the organizations in which they are developed. This dynamic occurs because the organization's governance structures, problem solving routines and communication patterns constrain the space in which it searches for new solutions. Such a relationship is important, given that product architecture has been shown to be an important predictor of product performance, product variety, process flexibility and even the path of industry evolution. We explore this relationship in the software industry. Our research takes advantage of a natural experiment, in that we observe products that fulfill the same function being developed by very different organizational forms. At one extreme are commercial software firms, in which the organizational participants are tightly-coupled, with respect to their goals, structure and behavior. At the other, are open source software communities, in which the participants are much more loosely-coupled by comparison. The mirroring hypothesis predicts that these different organizational forms will produce products with distinctly different architectures. Specifically, loosely-coupled organizations will develop more modular designs than tightly-coupled organizations. We test this hypothesis, using a sample of matched-pair products. We find strong evidence to support the mirroring hypothesis. In all of the pairs we examine, the product developed by the loosely-coupled organization is significantly more modular than the product from the tightly-coupled organization. We measure modularity by capturing the level of coupling between a product's components. The magnitude of the differences is substantial - up to a factor of eight, in terms of the potential for a design change in one component to propagate to others. Our results have significant managerial implications, in highlighting the impact of organizational design decisions on the technical structure of the artifacts that these organizations subsequently develop.Organizational Design, Product Design, Architecture, Modularity, Open-Source Software.
Predicting Technical Communication in Product DevelopmentOrganization
No full textA critical evaluation of the research paper: Morelli, Mark D., Eppinger, Steven D., and Gulati, Rosaline K. Predicting Technical Communication in product Development Organizations. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management. 42 (August 1995): 215-222
Influence profile of wastewater chain in Amsterdam: Towards resilient system for phosphorus recovery and Valorisation
No full textThe wastewater system of Amsterdam offers an opportunity to recover phosphorus, and contribute to circular economy. However, it remains unclear where to intervene in system to maximize recovery and valorisation in a resilient and feasible way. The Design Structure Matrix method was tested to define the system architecture from Food-Water-Energy nexus perspective. Physical, phosphorus, and ownership dependencies between Infrastructure, Stakeholder, Resource and Cleantech domains (elements) of the wastewater system in Amsterdam are analyzed in a Multi-Domain Matrix model. Change Propagation Indicator quantified critical elements, and emergent changes. An Influence Profile unveiled four levels of system leverage: household, neighborhood, city-block, region. The stakeholders can engage into optimizations at each level, to generate individual and shared benefits. Hybrid infrastructure, plug&play solutions and modular approach to cleantech will harness up to 100% of phosphorus available. The method proved to be an effective tool for analysing complexity and engineering resilient solutions for the circular economy.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Sanitary Engineerin
Influence of cleantech interventions on wastewater chain and City of Amsterdam: Towards a resilient system for phosphorus recovery & valorisation
No full textThe wastewater chain of Amsterdam offers an opportunity to recover up to 100% of phosphorus per year, versus 47% currently recovered. However, for the stakeholders of Amsterdam (e.g. citizens, business) it remains difficult to scale-up existing solutions for resource recovery. Mainly, due to the limitations of the widelyused methods (e.g. mass flow, life-cycle analysis) to provide holistic assessment of the solutions and the changes they will propagate outside the wastewater chain (e.g. solid waste). In the current study, three existing phosphorus recovery Solutions applied at three scales of Amsterdam (city, neighborhood, house) were analyzed. The study showed that the house scale closed-loop solution has higher positive influence on resilience of the city. Moreover, the DSM indicators could be used to measure resilience of the city and constituent parts, given an influence of a specific Solution. The developed toolkit is applicable for analysis of other resources in the wastewater of Amsterdam.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Sanitary Engineerin
Infectivity and Mutational Analysis of Two Tomato Infecting Geminiviruses
No full textThis item is available only to currently enrolled UTSA students, faculty or staff. To download, navigate to Log In in the top right-hand corner of this screen, then select Log in with my UTSA ID.The present work is aimed toward the study of infectivity and mutational analysis of two geminviruses that infect tomatoes, Pepper golden mosaic virus (PePGMV) and Tomato mottle virus (ToMoV) along with its potential to be used as delivery vector. Infectious viral clones of PepGMV and ToMoV were developed and used to infect Nicotiana benthamiana and tomato plants via agroinoculation. Plants inoculated with the DNA-A and DNA-B components of PepGMV developed systemic infection with characteristic yellow mosaic patterns on leaves in an average of 15 days. Southern blot hybridization of DNA extracts from symptomatic plants revealed different viral DNA forms suggesting active replication of the virus. The replication kinetics of ToMoV cloned into different vectors was assessed by agroinfusion of N. benthamiana or tomato plants with 1.5 copies of a tandemly repeating DNA-A component of ToMoV. Viral DNA was detectable at 3 days post infusion (dpi) in N. benthamiana using all three vectors. However, viral DNA was detectable at 3 days post infusion (dpi) in tomato using the pLSU vectors only. Another aim of the study was to develop a vector to assess the potential use of the virus to deliver a cargo. A PepGMV clone containing GFP instead of CP was able to express GFP in plants but was unable to start an infection even in the presence of DNA-B. The viral DNAs couldn't be detected in DNA extracts obtained from inoculated plants. Lastly, a method was developed to study the mutation in GFP gene delivered by the PepGMV virus. A high rate of mutation was observed based on the positive samples we had, although the number of sequenced clones needs to be increased. Together the experiments in this study have determined that both PePGMV and ToMoV can potentially be used to further develop a viral delivery system to introduce beneficial traits into plants.Integrative Biolog
Elucidating Genomics of Lactobacillus ruminis Interactions with Candida albicans
No full textThis item is available only to currently enrolled UTSA students, faculty or staff. To download, navigate to Log In in the top right-hand corner of this screen, then select Log in with my UTSA ID.Medical advancements to life threatening wounds and illnesses have led to a better understanding of how dangerous Candida albicans can be. Opportunistic Candida species are responsible for up to 90% of all fungal sepsis cases in the United States, with a staggering candidiasis mortality rate as high as 60% (Delaloye et. al, 2013;Turner et. al, 2014). A prominent research target is Candida's yeast to hyphae transition that unveils a repertoire of resources that increase pathogenicity dramatically, especially with the production of candidalysin. Preliminary findings identified candidalysin, a hyphal specific toxin, acts on epithelial cells of the intestines to induce a "leaky gut" phenotype to facilitate translocation and dissemination (Lee, 2021; Vellanki 2019). As a result of this assault, the damaged intestinal epithelium becomes a beacon for inflammatory responses and pathway activation that can lead to chronic inflammation. A recent study discovered a significant resemblance between the pathological findings of candidalysin induced intestinal inflammation and ulcerative colitis (Li, 2022). This can infer that inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) may be influenced, or even caused, by candidalysin damage on intestinal epithelial cells. Chronic inflammation is a trademark symptom of IBD, but is also a major risk factor for the onset and progression of colorectal cancer (CRC). This research is part of an ongoing investigation to evaluate the role of Candida albicans induced inflammation on CRC and IBD. Previous phases of this study identified an inverse relationship between Lactobacillus ruminis and Candida albicans in association with IBD. Lactobacillus ruminis was later identified to successfully inhibit Candida albicans hyphal formation during in-vitro challenges. The objective of this study was to identify genes within the Lactobacillus ruminis genome associated with Candida albicans hyphal inhibition. Genomic analysis identified fifteen significant genes with nonsynonymous SNPs shared in over ten L. ruminis mutants.Integrative Biolog
Identifying biomarkers for monitoring disease progression of multiple sclerosis
No full textThis item is available only to currently enrolled UTSA students, faculty or staff. To download, navigate to Log In in the top right-hand corner of this screen, then select Log in with my UTSA ID.Multiple sclerosis (MS) is the most common debilitating, progressive neurological disorder which afflicts over 400,000 Americans. Currently, determining clinical and sub-clinical progression for MS patients is a significant obstacle due to the lack of specific and sensitive laboratory tests. Recently, our lab has developed a technique called Microwave & Magnetic (M 2) proteomics, which is a rapid quantitative approach ideal for identifying putative protein biomarkers and therapeutic targets of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), a commonly used animal model for MS research. Notably we identified a number of putative-biomarkers which correlated with different stages of a monophasic EAE disease course. The objective of our research is to identify protein biomarkers correlated to disease progression using the progressive EAE disease model in non-obese diabetic (NOD) mice. We hypothesize that during the disease several key central nervous system (CNS) disease specific proteins will be released into blood and changes of these proteins can be used to determine disease progression. Using EAE NOD mice, we verified putative biomarkers in EAE NOD mice, followed by ELISA to detect these proteins in serum samples harvested at different time points throughout the disease course. We identified several potential biomarkers from CNS samples that correlate with different stages of EAE. These candidates were further investigated by ELISA in serum samples. Our study identified potential prognostic biomarkers for disease progression using the EAE NOD mouse model. This research will provide a proof-of-principle for the development of novel prognostic tests in MS patients.Integrative Biolog
Phenotypic characterization of the shiga toxin mediated pathogenic potential of enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) of the O157:H7 serotype
No full textThis item is available only to currently enrolled UTSA students, faculty or staff. To download, navigate to Log In in the top right-hand corner of this screen, then select Log in with my UTSA ID.Escherichia coli O157:H7 poses a major threat to public health. This zoonotic food and water-borne human pathogen, notorious for its low infectious dose and its capacity to cause severe disease and potentially lethal complications such as hemorrhagic colitis (HC) and hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS). A major virulence hallmark is the production of a potent Shiga toxin (stx) which are encoded on lysogenic lambdoid phages that is a direct mediator of human disease. This study presents the characterization of different E. coli O157:H7 strains based on phenotypic traits and identification of its specific virulence traits. More than 25 epidemiological diverse E. coli O157:H7 strains that represent all nine established phylogenetic clades were selected from our collections to determine their geno- and phenotypic virulence states. Chromosomal phage locations were determined using Shiga-toxin bacteriophage insertion sites (SBI) assay. We treated cultures with the antibiotic ciprofloxacin, a known phage-inducing agent to determine efficiency of Stx phage mobilization using Digoxygenin labels, and consequently stx transcription by qPCR, toxin production and cytotoxicity assay. In summary, we characterized variation in Stx production and mobilization across and within different phylogenetic clades, and categorized isolates according to their Stx mediated pathogenic potential; and identified previously unknown types of Stx-producing phages. This approach allowed us to identify high Stx producers and correlate recorded virulence phenotypes to underlying bacterial loci and pathomechanisms responsible for Stx production levels, and consequently human disease severity.Integrative Biolog
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