Solution oriented partnerships - A new business model for integrating global-production efficiencies with sustainability

A business model for integrating global-production efficiencies with sustainability is discussed. Two trends that emulate some of the aspects of the wealthy are the increasing willingness of many to pay extra for customization such as clothes, of kitchens and the increasing acceptance of purchasing a service as a product substitute. Two final trends that are also based in the attitudes of people is an increased awareness of the value of local culture and an increased concern with issues of sustainability. The results show that the goal congruence between for-profit and not-for-profit organizations puts emphasis on value and belief of the organization.

The Brushless Doubly-Fed Machine vector model in the rotor flux oriented reference frame

The paper presents the vector model of the Brushless Doubly-Fed Machine (BDFM) in the rotor flux oriented reference frame. The rotor flux oriented reference frame is well known in the standard AC machines analysis and control. Similar benefits can be sought by employing this method for the BDFM The vector model is implemented in MATLAB/SIVIULINK to simulate the BDFM dynamic performance under different operating conditions. The predictions from the vector model are compared to those from the coupled circuit model in simulation. The results are shown for the cascade mode of operation. © 2008 IEEE.

IS/IT resources and business value: Operationalization of an information oriented framework

Several studies have highlighted the importance of information and information quality in organisations and thus information is regarded as key determinant for the success and organisational performance. In this paper, we review selected contributions and introduce a model that shows how IS/IT resources and capabilities could be interlinked with IS/IT utilization, organizational performance and business value. Complementing other models and frameworks, we explicitly consider information from a management maturity, quality and risk perspective and show how the new framework can be operationalized with existing assessment approaches by using empirical data from four industrial case studies. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.

Room-temperature remote-plasma sputtering of c-axis oriented zinc oxide thin films

Highly c-axis oriented ZnO films have been deposited at room temperature with high rates (∼50 nm·min -1) using an innovative remote plasma sputtering configuration, which allows independent control of the plasma density and the sputtering ion energy. The ZnO films deposited possess excellent crystallographic orientation, high resistivity (>10 9 Ω·m), and exhibit very low surface roughness. The ability to increase the sputtering ion energy without causing unwanted Ar + bombardment onto the substrate has been shown to be crucial for the growth of films with excellent c-axis orientation without the need of substrate heating. In addition, the elimination of the Ar + bombardment has facilitated the growth of films with very low defect density and hence very low intrinsic stress (100 MPa for 3 μm-thick films). This is over an order of magnitude lower than films grown with a standard magnetron sputtering system. © 2012 American Institute of Physics.

An information oriented framework for relating IS/IT resources and business value

Several studies have highlighted the importance of information and information quality in organisations and thus information is regarded as key determinant for the success and organisational performance. At the same time, there are numerous studies, frameworks and case studies examining the impact of information technology and systems to business value. Recently, several studies have proposed maturity models for information management capabilities in the literature, which claim that a higher maturity results in a higher organizational performance. Although these studies provide valuable information about the underlying relations, most are limited in specifying the relationship in more detail. Furthermore, most prominent approaches do not or at least not explicitly consider information as important influencing factor for organisational performance. In this paper, we aim to review selected contributions and introduce a model that shows how IS/IT resources and capabilties could be interlinked with IS/IT utilization, organizational performance and business value. Complementing other models and frameworks, we explicitly consider information from a management maturity, quality and risk perspective. Moreover, the paper discusses how each part of the model can be assessed in order to validate the model in future studies.

Electrostatic effects in filamentous protein aggregation.

Electrostatic forces play a key role in mediating interactions between proteins. However, gaining quantitative insights into the complex effects of electrostatics on protein behavior has proved challenging, due to the wide palette of scenarios through which both cations and anions can interact with polypeptide molecules in a specific manner or can result in screening in solution. In this article, we have used a variety of biophysical methods to probe the steady-state kinetics of fibrillar protein self-assembly in a highly quantitative manner to detect how it is modulated by changes in solution ionic strength. Due to the exponential modulation of the reaction rate by electrostatic forces, this reaction represents an exquisitely sensitive probe of these effects in protein-protein interactions. Our approach, which involves a combination of experimental kinetic measurements and theoretical analysis, reveals a hierarchy of electrostatic effects that control protein aggregation. Furthermore, our results provide a highly sensitive method for the estimation of the magnitude of binding of a variety of ions to protein molecules.

Taper-free and vertically oriented Ge nanowires on Ge/Si substrates grown by a two-temperature process

Taper-free and vertically oriented Ge nanowires were grown on Si (111) substrates by chemical vapor deposition with Au nanoparticle catalysts. To achieve vertical nanowire growth on the highly lattice mismatched Si substrate, a thin Ge buffer layer was first deposited, and to achieve taper-free nanowire growth, a two-temperature process was employed. The two-temperature process consisted of a brief initial base growth step at high temperature followed by prolonged growth at lower temperature. Taper-free and defect-free Ge nanowires grew successfully even at 270 °C, which is 90 °C lower than the bulk eutectic temperature. The yield of vertical and taper-free nanowires is over 90%, comparable to that of vertical but tapered nanowires grown by the conventional one-temperature process. This method is of practical importance and can be reliably used to develop novel nanowire-based devices on relatively cheap Si substrates. Additionally, we observed that the activation energy of Ge nanowire growth by the two-temperature process is dependent on Au nanoparticle size. The low activation energy (∼5 kcal/mol) for 30 and 50 nm diameter Au nanoparticles suggests that the decomposition of gaseous species on the catalytic Au surface is a rate-limiting step. A higher activation energy (∼14 kcal/mol) was determined for 100 nm diameter Au nanoparticles which suggests that larger Au nanoparticles are partially solidified and that growth kinetics become the rate-limiting step. © 2011 American Chemical Society.

Vertically oriented epitaxial germanium nanowires on silicon substrates using thin germanium buffer layers.

We demonstrate a method to realize vertically oriented Ge nanowires on Si(111) substrates. Ge nanowires were grown by chemical vapor deposition using Au nanoparticles to seed nanowire growth via a vapor-liquid-solid growth mechanism. Rapid oxidation of Si during Au nanoparticle application inhibits the growth of vertically oriented Ge nanowires directly on Si. The present method employs thin Ge buffer layers grown at low temperature less than 600 degrees C to circumvent the oxidation problem. By using a thin Ge buffer layer with root-mean-square roughness of approximately 2 nm, the yield of vertically oriented Ge nanowires is as high as 96.3%. This yield is comparable to that of homoepitaxial Ge nanowires. Furthermore, branched Ge nanowires could be successfully grown on these vertically oriented Ge nanowires by a secondary seeding technique. Since the buffer layers are grown under moderate conditions without any high temperature processing steps, this method has a wide process window highly suitable for Si-based microelectronics.