Collaborative Project Management: A Systemic Approach to Heavy Equipment Manufacturing Project Management

Quite often over the last decade, heavy equipment manufacturers are trying to improve their project management performance with the use of effective project management methods. However, the challenges encountered aren’t isolated problems and a systemic approach is required. This paper exemplifies how a systemic approach can be applied to heavy equipment manufacturing project (HEMP) management, through of a multifaceted vision. The findings present in the paper are based on a two-year case study in a metallurgic equipment manufacturing enterprise in China. Based on the analysis of HEMP management problems and the contributions on systemic approach application in project management, the paper enriches existing theory by: (1) interpreting the HEMP management system with the top-down disassembly method; (2) developing the collaborative project management approach with a systems view highlighting the project characteristics management and inter-departmental collaboration; (3) making suggestions for systemic approach application in project management. For practitioners and researchers, the findings are particularly meaningful for manufacturing project management and systemic approach application.     

Adaptation in the innate immune system and heterologous innate immunity

The innate immune system recognizes deviation from homeostasis caused by infectious or non-infectious assaults. The threshold for its activation seems to be established by a calibration process that includes sensing of microbial molecular patterns from commensal bacteria and of endogenous signals. It is becoming increasingly clear that adaptive features, a hallmark of the adaptive immune system, can also be identified in the innate immune system. Such adaptations can result in the manifestation of a primed state of immune and tissue cells with a decreased activation threshold. This keeps the system poised to react quickly. Moreover, the fact that the innate immune system recognizes a wide variety of danger signals via pattern recognition receptors that often activate the same signaling pathways allows for heterologous innate immune stimulation. This implies that, for example, the innate immune response to an infection can be modified by co-infections or other innate stimuli. This “design feature” of the innate immune system has many implications for our understanding of individual susceptibility to diseases or responsiveness to therapies and vaccinations. In this article, adaptive features of the innate immune system as well as heterologous innate immunity and their implications are discussed.     

Chromatin-remodeling complex specificity and embryonic vascular development

Vascular development is a dynamic process that relies on the coordinated expression of numerous genes, but the factors that regulate gene expression during blood vessel development are not well defined. ATP-dependent chromatin-remodeling complexes are gaining attention for their specific temporal and spatial effects on gene expression during vascular development. Genetic mutations in chromatin-remodeling complex subunits are revealing roles for the complexes in vascular signaling pathways at discrete developmental time points. Phenotypic analysis of these models at various stages of vascular development will continue to expand our understanding of how chromatin remodeling impacts new blood vessel growth. Such research could also provide novel therapeutic targets for the treatment of vascular pathologies.     

Infection of young Douglas-firs by dwarf mistletoe in the Southwest

Studies in several areas in Arizona and New Mexico show that dwarf mistletoe ( Arceuthobium douglasii ) is rare in young Douglas-firs growing under infected overstories. Less than 5% of the Douglas-firs under 26 years old and less than 6% of those under 1.4m tall were infected in 77 mistletoe-infested stands. Both percent infection and mean dwarf mistletoe rating of young Douglas-firs increased as tree age, height, and stand dwarf mistletoe ratings increased.     

Network Motif Detection： Algorithms, Parallel and Cloud Computing,and Related Tools

Network motif is defined as a frequent and unique subgraph pattern in a network, and the search involves counting all the possible instances or listing all patterns, testing isomorphism known as NP-hard and large amounts of repeated processes for statistical evaluation. Although many efficient algorithms have been introduced, exhaustive search methods are still infeasible and feasible approximation methods are yet implausible.Additionally, the fast and continual growth of biological networks makes the problem more challenging. As a consequence, parallel algorithms have been developed and distributed computing has been tested in the cloud computing environment as well. In this paper, we survey current algorithms for network motif detection and existing software tools. Then, we show that some methods have been utilized for parallel network motif search algorithms with static or dynamic load balancing techniques. With the advent of cloud computing services, network motif search has been implemented with MapReduce in Hadoop Distributed File System(HDFS), and with Storm, but without statistical testing. In this paper, we survey network motif search algorithms in general, including existing parallel methods as well as cloud computing based search, and show the promising potentials for the cloud computing based motif search methods.     

ARFIMA approximation and forecasting of the limiting aggregate structure of long‐memory process

This article studies Man and Tiao's (2006) low‐order autoregressive fractionally integrated moving‐average (ARFIMA) approximation to Tsai and Chan's (2005b) limiting aggregate structure of the long‐memory process. In matching the autocorrelations, we demonstrate that the approximation works well, especially for larger d values. In computing autocorrelations over long lags for larger d value, using the exact formula one might encounter numerical problems. The use of the ARFIMA(0, d, d?₁) model provides a useful alternative to compute the autocorrelations as a really close approximation. In forecasting future aggregates, we demonstrate the close performance of using the ARFIMA(0, d, d?₁) model and the exact aggregate structure. In practice, this provides a justification for the use of a low‐order ARFIMA model in predicting future aggregates of long‐memory process. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Immune recognition. A new receptor for beta-glucans.

The carbohydrate polymers known as beta-1,3-d-glucans exert potent effects on the immune system - stimulating antitumour and antimicrobial activity, for example - by binding to receptors on macrophages and other white blood cells and activating them. Although beta-glucans are known to bind to receptors, such as complement receptor 3 (ref. 1), there is evidence that another beta-glucan receptor is present on macrophages. Here we identify this unknown receptor as dectin-1 (ref. 2), a finding that provides new insights into the innate immune recognition of beta-glucans.     

Expanding the diversity of chemical protein modification allows post-translational mimicry

One of the most important current scientific paradoxes is the economy with which nature uses genes. In all higher animals studied, we have found many fewer genes than we would have previously expected. The functional outputs of the eventual products of genes seem to be far more complex than the more restricted blueprint. In higher organisms, the functions of many proteins are modulated by post-translational modifications (PTMs). These alterations of amino-acid side chains lead to higher structural and functional protein diversity and are, therefore, a leading contender for an explanation for this seeming incongruity. Natural protein production methods typically produce PTM mixtures within which function is difficult to dissect or control. Until now it has not been possible to access pure mimics of complex PTMs. Here we report a chemical tagging approach that enables the attachment of multiple modifications to bacterially expressed (bare) protein scaffolds: this approach allows reconstitution of functionally effective mimics of higher organism PTMs. By attaching appropriate modifications at suitable distances in the widely-used LacZ reporter enzyme scaffold, we created protein probes that included sensitive systems for detection of mammalian brain inflammation and disease. Through target synthesis of the desired modification, chemistry provides a structural precision and an ability to retool with a chosen PTM in a manner not available to other approaches. In this way, combining chemical control of PTM with readily available protein scaffolds provides a systematic platform for creating probes of protein-PTM interactions. We therefore anticipate that this ability to build model systems will allow some of this gene product complexity to be dissected, with the aim of eventually being able to completely duplicate the patterns of a particular protein's PTMs from an in vivo assay into an in vitro system.