Business Process Reengineering (BPR) Versus Outsourcing—Critical Perspectives

This article presents a case example involving the renaming of an organizational change process from BPR to outsourcing. The paper discusses the important ramifications of such a name change in that the recognition of outsourcing allowed an organizational commitment to counseling and termination advice. The paper discusses two ways of looking at the name change, one from a critical theory perspective and one from a realist perspective. It demonstrates how theory can provide useful yet markedly different interpretations of such organizational events. Critical theory operates from within what can be termed the transitive epistemological dimension, whereas critical realism tends to emphasize the importance of ontological issues. Each has important things to say about the situation and improves our understanding overall.     

Subset threshold autoregression

We develop in this paper an efficient way to select the best subset threshold autoregressive model. The proposed method uses a stochastic search idea. Differing from most conventional approaches, our method does not require us to fix the delay or the threshold parameters in advance. By adopting the Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques, we can identify the best subset model from a very large of number of possible models, and at the same time estimate the unknown parameters. A simulation experiment shows that the method is very effective. In its application to the US unemployment rate, the stochastic search method successfully selects lag one as the time delay and five best models from more than 4000 choices. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Specific binding of antigenic peptides to cell-associated MHC class I molecules

T lymphocytes recognize antigen in the form of peptides that associate with specific alleles of class I or class II major histocompatibility (MHC) molecules. By contrast with the clear MHC allele-specific binding of peptides to purified class II molecules purified solubilized class I molecules either bind relatively poorly or show degenerate specificity. Using photo-affinity labelling, we demonstrate here the specific interaction of peptides with cell-associated MHC class I molecules and show that this involves metabolically active processes.     

Structure of the detoxification catalyst mercuric ion reductase from Bacillus sp. strain RC607

Several hundred million tons of toxic mercurials are dispersed in the biosphere. Microbes can detoxify organo-mercurials and mercury salts through sequential action of two enzymes, organomercury lyase and mercuric ion reductase (MerA). The latter, a homodimer with homology to the FAD-dependent disulphide oxidoreductases, catalyses the reaction NADPH + Hg(II)----NADP+ + H+ + Hg(0), one of the very rare enzymic reactions with metal substrates. Human glutathione reductase serves as a reference molecule for FAD-dependent disulphide reductases and between its primary structure and that of MerA from Tn501 (Pseudomonas), Tn21 (Shigella), p1258 (Staphylococcus) and Bacillus, 25-30% of the residues have been conserved. All MerAs have a C-terminal extension about 15 residues long but have very varied N termini. Although the enzyme from Streptomyces lividans has no addition, from Pseudomonas aeruginosa Tn501 and Bacillus sp. strain RC607 it has one and two copies respectively of a domain of 80-85 residues, highly homologous to MerP, the periplasmic component of proteins encoded by the mer operon. These domains can be proteolytically cleaved off without changing the catalytic efficiency. We report here the crystal structure of MerA from the Gram-positive bacterium Bacillus sp. strain RC607. Analysis of its complexes with nicotinamide dinucleotide substrates and the inhibitor Cd(II) reveals how limited structural changes enable an enzyme to accept as substrate what used to be a dangerous inhibitor. Knowledge of the mode of mercury ligation is a prerequisite for understanding this unique detoxification mechanism.     

Genetic and photoperiodic control of an avian reproductive cycle

European blackcaps,Sylvia atricapilla, with one breeding season per year, have a single-peaked annual testes cycle. However, African conspecifics from the Cape Verde Islands with two breeding seasons per annum demonstrate a two-peaked cycle. Both population-specific cycles reflect differences in the respective endogenous circannual rhythms. Experimental hybridization of birds of the two populations resulted in an intermediate pattern of testes cycle, thus demonstrating that there are genetic components for some temporal aspects in an avian reproductive cycle. Another characteristic of the African birds, their extremely rapid juvenile development and early sexual maturity (at an age of 5–6 months) proved largely to be a photoperiodic (short-day) effect in birds hatched in autumn. The same effect could also be induced in European conspecifics exposed to correspondingly short day-lengths.     

Characterization of the rough endoplasmic reticulum ribosome-binding activity.

The rough endoplasmic reticulum membranes of mammalian cells contain specific ribosome-binding sites. A purification to apparent homogeneity of a negatively charged protein (ERp180) of relative molecular mass 180,000 (180 K) was reported which was proposed to function as a rough endoplasmic reticulum ribosome receptor. We report here that ribosome-binding site activity quantitatively solubilized from rough endoplasmic reticulum membranes does not cofractionate with ERp180. By contrast, ribosome-binding site activity fractionates as a much smaller, positively charged protein.     

PDE-Based Medial Axis Extraction and Shape Manipulation of Arbitrary Meshes

Shape skeletonization （i.e., medial axis extraction） is powerful in many visual computing applications, such as pattern recognition, object segmentation, registration, and animation. In this paper, the authors expand the use of diffusion equations combined with distance field information to approximate medial axes of arbitrary 3D differential properties. It offers an alternative solids represented by polygonal meshes based on their but natural way for medial axis extraction for commonly used 3D polygonal models. By solving the PDE along time axis, this system can not only quickly extract diffusion-based medial axes of input meshes, but also allow users to visualize the extraction process at each time step. In addition, the proposed model provides users a set of manipulation toolkits to sculpt extracted medial axes, then use diffusion-based techniques to recover corresponding deformed shapes according to the original input datasets. This skeleton-based shape manipulation offers a fast and easy way for animation and deformation of complicated mesh objects.