Design led innovation : shifting from smart follower to digital strategy leader in the Australian airport sector

This paper presents and discusses organisational barriers and opportunities arising from the dissemination of design led innovation within a leading Australian airport corporation. This research is part of a greater action research program which aims to integrate design as a strategic capability through design led innovation within Australian businesses. Findings reveal that there is an opportunity to employ the theoretical framework and tools of design led innovation in practice to build collaborative idea generation by involving customers and stakeholders within the proposal of new to world propositions. The iterative gathering of deep customer insights also provided an opportunity to leverage a greater understanding of stakeholders and customers in strengthening continuing business partnerships through co-design. Challenges to the design led approach include resistance to the exploratory nature of gathering deep customer insights, the testing of long held assumptions and market data, and the disruption of an organisational mindset geared toward risk aversion instilled within the aviation industry. The implication from these findings is that design led innovation can provide the critical platform to allow for a business to grow and sustain internal design capabilities necessary to challenge prevailing assumptions about how its business model operates to deliver value to customers and stakeholders alike. The platform of design led innovation also provides an avenue to support a cultural transformation towards anticipating future needs necessary for establishing a position of leadership within the broader economic environment.

Salon with door open to garden; Mosse family residence; Berlin Architecture; Residences; Interior

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Importance of non-conserved distal carboxyl terminal amino acids in two peptidases belonging to the M1 family: Thermoplasma acidophilum Tricorn interacting factor F2 and Escherichia coli Peptidase N

Enzymes belonging to the M1 family play important cellular roles and the key amino acids (aa) in the catalytic domain are conserved. However, C-terminal domain aa are highly variable and demonstrate distinct differences in organization. To address a functional role for the C-terminal domain, progressive deletions were generated in Tricorn interacting factor F2 from Thermoplasma acidophilum (F2) and Peptidase N from Escherichia coli (PepN). Catalytic activity was partially reduced in PepN lacking 4 C-terminal residues (PepNΔC4) whereas it was greatly reduced in F2 lacking 10 C-terminal residues (F2ΔC10) or PepN lacking eleven C-terminal residues (PepNΔC11). Notably, expression of PepNΔC4, but not PepNΔC11, in E. coliΔpepN increased its ability to resist nutritional and high temperature stress, demonstrating physiological significance. Purified C-terminal deleted proteins demonstrated greater sensitivity to trypsin and bound stronger to 8-amino 1-napthalene sulphonic acid (ANS), revealing greater numbers of surface exposed hydrophobic aa. Also, F2 or PepN containing large aa deletions in the C-termini, but not smaller deletions, were present in high amounts in the insoluble fraction of cell extracts probably due to reduced protein solubility. Modeling studies, using the crystal structure of E. coli PepN, demonstrated increase in hydrophobic surface area and change in accessibility of several aa from buried to exposed upon deletion of C-terminal aa. Together, these studies revealed that non-conserved distal C-terminal aa repress the surface exposure of apolar aa, enhance protein solubility, and catalytic activity in two soluble and distinct members of the M1 family.

Letter to congregation in Jamaica asking assistance to build a synagogue

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Phase space path integral approach to harmonic oscillator with a time-dependent force constant

The quantum statistical mechanical propagator for a harmonic oscillator with a time-dependent force constant, m omega(2)(t), has been investigated in the past and was found to have only a formal solution in terms of the solutions of certain ordinary differential equations. Such path integrals are frequently encountered in semiclassical path integral evaluations and having exact analytical expressions for such path integrals is of great interest. In a previous work, we had obtained the exact propagator for motion in an arbitrary time-dependent harmonic potential in the overdamped limit of friction using phase space path integrals in the context of Levy flights - a result that can be easily extended to Brownian motion. In this paper, we make a connection between the overdamped Brownian motion and the imaginary time propagator of quantum mechanics and thereby get yet another way to evaluate the latter exactly. We find that explicit analytic solution for the quantum statistical mechanical propagator can be written when the time-dependent force constant has the form omega(2)(t) = lambda(2)(t) - d lambda(t)/dt where lambda(t) is any arbitrary function of t and use it to evaluate path integrals which have not been evaluated previously. We also employ this method to arrive at a formal solution of the propagator for both Levy flights and Brownian subjected to a time-dependent harmonic potential in the underdamped limit of friction. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Developing a viable fish farming industry in Nigeria -- an alternative strategy to the strategy in the Green Revolution Programme

A study was embarked upon with the twin objectives of reviewing the Green Revolution Strategy for accelerating fish production in the country and proposing an alternative strategy, a private sector approach. Some of the programmes listed in the Green Revolution are very necessary for developing a viable - fish farming industry and that money spent under such programmes is money well spent. Programmes that are also desirable but need to be considerably expanded were identified. Other programmes have been criticised on the grounds that the method chosen to achieve the desired objectives is fraught with dangers if sufficiently long run view of fisheries development is taken

Generating artificial homologous proteins according to the representative family character in molecular mechanics properties - an attempt in validating an underlying rule of protein evolution

The molecular mechanics property is the foundation of many characters of proteins. Based on intramolecular hydrophobic force network, the representative family character underlying a protein’s mechanics property is described by a simple two-letter scheme. The tendency of a sequence to become a member of a protein family is scored according to this mathematical representation. Remote homologs of the WW-domain family could be easily designed using such a mechanistic signature of protein homology. Experimental validation showed that nearly all artificial homologs have the representative folding and bioactivity of their assigned family. Since the molecular mechanics property is the only consideration in this study, the results indicate its possible role in the generation of new members of a protein family during evolution.