When "made in italy" meets global competition: a theoretical appraisal

2011 ◽  
pp. 31-52
Author(s):  
Jean J. Gabszewicz ◽  
Ornella Tarola

The fierce growth in global competition has led politicians and economists in Italy to shift the focus of the debate to the pressing need for the country's small firms to formulate appropriate strategic responses. In particular, the discussion has prompted the question of how best to ensure their survival: should these firms expand to a size that would enable them to tap into new markets through de novo entry strategies? Or should they pursue cooperation ventures with interested larger rivals? The paper seeks to contribute to the theoretical debate by illustrating a simple example, that of a small firm investigating the possibility of accessing a new market. Given that "made in Italy" companies leverage their competitive edge through the high quality of their products, we study when, in this context and in cases where potential licensing or other cooperation ventures are open to the firm, acquisition is preferable to a de novo entry plan.

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Momchilo Vuyisich ◽  
Ayesha Arefin ◽  
Karen Davenport ◽  
Shihai Feng ◽  
Cheryl Gleasner ◽  
...  

Sequencing bacterial genomes has traditionally required large amounts of genomic DNA (~1 μg). There have been few studies to determine the effects of the input DNA amount or library preparation method on the quality of sequencing data. Several new commercially available library preparation methods enable shotgun sequencing from as little as 1 ng of input DNA. In this study, we evaluated the NEBNext Ultra library preparation reagents for sequencing bacterial genomes. We have evaluated the utility of NEBNext Ultra for resequencing andde novoassembly of four bacterial genomes and compared its performance with the TruSeq library preparation kit. The NEBNext Ultra reagents enable high quality resequencing andde novoassembly of a variety of bacterial genomes when using 100 ng of input genomic DNA. For the two most challenging genomes (Burkholderiaspp.), which have the highest GC content and are the longest, we also show that the quality of both resequencing andde novoassembly is not decreased when only 10 ng of input genomic DNA is used.


2019 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafael Novais de Miranda ◽  
Caroline Marcela da Silva ◽  
Antonio Carlos da Mota Porto ◽  
Welison Andrade Pereira

ABSTRACT The Straw Test is an assay developed to evaluate the resistance of common bean to white mold, in which the plant stems are inoculated and the symptoms of the disease are monitored. It is plausible to admit that investigating gene expression in pathogen-infected tissues may be strategically interesting. However, obtaining a quality RNA is a basic requirement for this purpose. Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate adjustments in protocols of commercial kits in the expectation of improving the quality of RNA obtained from bean stems. For this, plants of two lines were inoculated and the stems pathogen-infected were collected 72 hours after. For RNA extraction, two commercial reagents were used following the manufacturer’s recommendations and then following adaptations in these protocols. In particular, the proposed modifications relate to volumes of supernatant recovered in purification steps, additional step of chloroform purification and extended time for nucleic acids precipitation. The obtained RNA was analyzed by spectrophotometer, electrophoresis and bioanalyzer, then converted into cDNA and subsequently submitted to PCR. From the obtained data, it was observed that the adaptations made in the protocols contributed to better results and that, when the indicative values of RNA quality are guaranteed, the subsequent reactions are more pure, precise and representative.


2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Kamińska

Abstract„Quality is not everything but everything is nothing without quality”. The famous quotation from K. Ishikawa brings to our attention the fact that nowadays quality is one of strategic concepts from the point of view of functioning of companies, especially production-oriented ones. The lack of quality often eliminates a product from the basket of potential further choices. That means that quality is a prerequisite in the contemporary, highly competitive and saturated market. In order to ensure quality, enterprises introduce various concepts and methods to support quality management. They include, among others, the kaizen philosophy, which allows to minimize unnecessary actions (losses). It is especially recommended to small firms as an inexpensive method assuring high quality of products because they are constantly improved, which, in turn, guarantees maintaining a high position among competitors. This article aims to introduce the concept of kaizen by describing how it works and considering whether it can be successful in Polish companies.


2020 ◽  
pp. 37-45
Author(s):  
V.M. Dvornyk ◽  
H.M. Kuz ◽  
O.B. Tumakova ◽  
O.S. Shemetov ◽  
V.S. Kuz

Background. The problem of providing high-quality dental care to edentulous patients remains one of the most important and unresolved to this day in the clinic of prosthodontics. The causes of complete loss of teeth can be both periodontal tissue diseases and diseases of hard tooth tissues of carious and non-carious origin, trauma and the like. It becomes necessary to fabricate complete removable dentures to prevent the occurrence of pathologies in such situations. Complete secondary adentia leads to a large number of local and general complications. The chewing apparatus undergoes a number of functional and morphological changes. Therefore, the complete absence of teeth sets the dentist the task of restoring the functions of full chewing, the appearance of the patient, and speech. The complexity of high-quality prosthetics for edentulous patients is also because the clinical characteristics of supporting tissues are diverse, constantly changing, so a personal approach to creating stable denture is needed. It should be added that the fabrication of high-quality complete removable dentures largely depends on the properties of the base material. The main group of materials for the fabrication of such dentures is acrylic plastics. The aim. The work is focused on the study of the functional state of the masticatory muscles and the restoration of masticatory effectiveness in edentulous patients, for whom dentures were made in the prosthodontics clinic from the acrylic base material «Ftorax». Material and methods. Hot curing plastic based on fluorine-containing acrylic copolymers «Ftorax» was used in the work. Our evaluation of the quality of all constructions was carried out using the «BOFSAS» test, determining the biopotentials of the masticatory muscles using electromyography, and determining the masticatory effectiveness according to I.S. Rubinov. Results. Based on our work, it can be noted that the use of the basic acrylic material «Ftorax» allows us to achieve good fixation and stabilization of complete removable dentures, which is subjectively confirmed by the «BOFSAS» test, objectively – by the electromyographic studies and time indices during chewing test according to I.S. Rubinov. The amplitude during volitional compression is 556.90±8.72 μV, which approaches the norm (641.58±10.01 μV), and almost four times higher than before prosthetics (188.11±8,13 μV) after 1 year of constructions using. A similar pattern is observed with arbitrary chewing: the amplitude (547.32±8.43 μV) approaches normal (643.92±9.11 μV) compared with the results before prosthetics (201.40±9.39 μV). As for the coefficient «K», its value decreased almost twofold compared with the results before prosthetics (2.44±0.14) and equals to 1.25±0.03, which is significantly closer to normal (1,02±0.01). After the test by Rubinov the following results were obtained: the average time that patients with intact dentitions spent chewing on the stimulus was approximately 12.97±0.13 seconds and the average time for patients before prosthetics (with old dentures) was approximately 45.16±0,41 sec. The time that patients spent chewing a nut after 1 month was 28.97±0.42 seconds, after 6 months – 26.94±0.44 seconds, and after 1 year of using the entures – 25.48±0.45 sec. Based on this, it can be summarized that adaptation to such dentures takes place at the appropriate time with minor corrections. Conclusion. The results of our clinical study indicate the feasibility of using «Ftorax» in prosthodontics clinic for treatment of edentulous patients.


2014 ◽  
Vol 70 (a1) ◽  
pp. C607-C607 ◽  
Author(s):  
Severine Freisz ◽  
Juergen Graf ◽  
Matthew Benning ◽  
Vernon Smith

Advances in crystallographic hardware and software are enabling structural biologists to investigate more challenging projects. Recent developments in hardware and software are greatly increasing the capabilities of in-house diffraction systems making it more routine to obtain de novo structural information in the home lab. Single-wavelength anomalous diffraction (SAD) techniques with Cu Ka or Ga Ka radiation are now widely used for structure solution even in cases involving weak anomalous scatterers, like sulfur. We have now introduced the D8 Venture solution for structural biology with the PHOTON 100 detector featuring the first CMOS active pixel sensor for X-ray crystallography. Our new microfocus source, the METALJET delivers beam intensity exceeding those of typical bending-magnet beamlines. The very high intensity, the small beam focus and the lower air scatter produced by Gallium Kα radiation help to greatly reduce the background scatter. This provides greater signal to noise essential to identify weak anomalous signal. Due to the very weak anomalous scattering of S, data multiplicities in the order of 40 are typically necessary to obtain phases by S-SAD. Collecting high-multiplicity data minimizes systematic experimental errors to measure with very high accuracy the minute intensity difference between Friedel Pairs (1.0 – 1.5 %) [1]. This requires software which optimizes the collection strategy, for example with respect to overall data collection time to minimize radiation damage. The combination of a brighter, more stable X-ray source with a high sensitivity low noise detector have greatly improved the quality of data collected in-house. The high quality allows successful SAD measurements far away from the absorption edge. Here we present a low multiplicity sulfur-SAD phasing experiment on a small Thaumatin crystal showing the high quality of the data collected on the D8 VENTURE with the METALJET.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karyn Meltz Steinberg ◽  
Tina Graves Lindsay ◽  
Valerie A. Schneider ◽  
Mark J.P. Chaisson ◽  
Chad Tomlinson ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTDe novo assembly of human genomes is now a tractable effort due in part to advances in sequencing and mapping technologies. We use PacBio single-molecule, real-time (SMRT) sequencing and BioNano genomic maps to construct the first de novo assembly of NA19240, a Yoruban individual from Africa. This chromosome-scaffolded assembly of 3.08 Gb with a contig N50 of 7.25 Mb and a scaffold N50 of 78.6 Mb represents one of the most contiguous high-quality human genomes. We utilize a BAC library derived from NA19240 DNA and novel haplotype-resolving sequencing technologies and algorithms to characterize regions of complex genomic architecture that are normally lost due to compression to a linear haploid assembly. Our results demonstrate that multiple technologies are still necessary for complete genomic representation, particularly in regions of highly identical segmental duplications. Additionally, we show that diploid assembly has utility in improving the quality of de novo human genome assemblies.


2014 ◽  
Vol 70 (a1) ◽  
pp. C1448-C1448
Author(s):  
Rojan Shrestha ◽  
David Simoncini ◽  
Kam Zhang

Recent advancement in computational methods for protein structure prediction has made it possible to generate high quality de novo models required for ab initio phasing of crystallographic diffraction data using molecular replacement. Despite those encouraging achievements in ab initio phasing using de novo models, its success is limited only to those targets for which high quality de novo models can be generated. Here, an approach is introduced that can identify and rebuild the residues with larger errors, which subsequently reduces the overall C-alpha root mean square deviations (CA-RMSD) to the native protein structure. The error in a predicted model is estimated by the average pairwise geometric distance per residue computed among selected lowest energy coarse-grained models. This score is subsequently employed to guide a rebuilding process that focuses on more error-prone residues in the coarse-grained models. These rebuilt coarse-grained models were then turned into all-atom models and refined to produce improved de novo models for molecular replacement. This rebuilding methodology has been tested on ten protein targets that were unsuccessful with the current state-of-the-art methods. Seven diffraction datasets were successfully phased using rebuilt de novo models indicating the improved quality of these rebuilt de novo models and the effectiveness of this rebuilding process.


1992 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 163-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham J. King

Many of the factors affecting the production and quality of apples are genetically determined. This paper describes how progress being made in identifying these genetic components will help to develop the European apple crop by integrating the demand for high quality and disease resistant varieties with advanced breeding methods.


2020 ◽  
Vol 217 (6) ◽  
pp. 663-664
Author(s):  
Nav Kapur

SummaryThis editorial considers whether the quality of care for people who present to clinical services in the UK following self-harm has improved or stagnated. Some real progress has been made in the areas of service provision and research, and self-harm has never had a higher priority in policy terms. However, major gaps remain. We need to enhance people's experience of services and improve access to high-quality assessment and aftercare.


Author(s):  
A. T. Kunakbaeva ◽  
A. M. Stolyarov ◽  
M. V. Potapova

Free-cutting steel gains specific working properties thanks to the high content of sulfur and phosphorus. These elements, especially sulfur, have a rather high tendency to segregation. Therefore, segregation defects in free-cutting steel continuously cast billets can be significantly developed. The aim of the work was to study the influence of the chemical composition of freecutting steel and casting technological parameters on the quality of the macrostructure of continuously cast billets. A metallographic assessment of the internal structure of cast metal made of free-cutting steel and data processing by application of correlation and regression analysis were the research methods. The array of production data of 43 heats of free-cutting steel of grade A12 was studied. Steel casting on a five-strand radial type continuous casting machine was carried out by various methods of metal pouring from tundish into the molds. Metal of 19 heats was poured with an open stream, and 24 heats – by a closed stream through submerged nozzles with a vertical hole. High-quality billets had a cross-sectional size of 150×150 mm. The macrostructure of high-quality square billets made of free-cutting steel of A12 grade is characterized by the presence of central porosity, axial segregation and peripheral point contamination, the degree of development of which was in the range from 1.5 to 2.0 points, segregation cracks and strips – about 1.0 points. In the course of casting with an open stream, almost all of these defects are more developed comparing with the casting by a closed stream. As a result of correlation and regression analysis, linear dependences of the development degree of segregation cracks and strips both axial and angular on the sulfur content in steel and on the ratio of manganese content to sulfur content were established. The degree of these defects development increases with growing of sulfur content in steel of A12 grade. These defects had especially strong development when sulfur content in steel was of more than 0.10%. To improve the quality of cast metal, it is necessary to have the ratio of the manganese content to the sulfur content in the metal more than eight.


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