Search results for "Model"
showing 10 items of 24058 documents
Quality culture boosts agile transformation : Action research in a business‐to‐business software business
2023
Agile methodologies are sometimes adopted, with the assumption that benefits can be attained by only using a set of best practices, which can sometimes work to a degree. In this paper, a case is discussed where a software-producing organization of seven teams achieved significant improvements. The goal of the research was to answer two questions: how an already agile organization could improve its performance further and what is the impact of promoting quality aspects? The questions were answered by implementing interventions based on prior literature and data emerging from semi-structured interviews. The context was an established business with a complex revenue stream structure, meaning t…
The future of bottle recycling in the United States of America
2012
In this Master’s thesis, the future of bottle recycling in the United States of America will be examined through interest, incentive and an infrastructure (iii) model. One of the American ways to recycle bottles, namely, the Dream Machine initiative, will be compared to the Finnish bottle recycling system. It will shed light through surveys done from Finnish high school students and randomly selected Americans about bottle recycling behaviour. In addition, two supportive surveys were administered to bring validity about the possible behavioral change through properly implemented recycling systems. The main conclusion is that through a proper implementation of a bottle recycling system, Amer…
Reverse Screening on Indicaxanthin from Opuntia ficus-indica as natural chemoactive and chemopreventive agent
2018
Indicaxanthin is a bioactive and bioavailable betalain pigment extracted from Opuntia ficus indica fruits. Indicaxanthin has pharmacokinetics proprieties, rarely found in other phytochemicals, and it has been demonstrated that it provides a broad-spectrum of pharmaceutical activity, exerting antiproliferative, anti-inflammatory and neuromodulator effects. The discovery of the Indicaxanthin physiological targets plays an important role in understanding the biochemical mechanism. In this study, combined reverse pharmacophore mapping, reverse docking, and text-based database search identified Inositol Trisphosphate 3-Kinase (ITP3K-A), Glutamate carboxypeptidase II (GCPII), Leukotriene-A4 hydro…
Identifying territories using presence-only citizen science data : An application to the Finnish wolf population
2022
Citizens, community groups and local institutions participate in voluntary biological monitoring of population status and trends by providing species data e.g. for regulations and conservation. Sophisticated statistical methods are required to unlock the potential of such data in the assessment of wildlife populations. We develop a statistical modelling framework for identifying territories based on presence-only citizen science data. The framework can be used to jointly estimate the number of active animal territories and their locations in time. Our approach is based on a data generating model which consists of a dynamic submodel for the appearance/removal of territories and an observatio…
Good clinical response, remission, and predictors of remission in rheumatoid arthritis patients treated with tumor necrosis factor-α blockers: The GI…
2007
OBJECTIVE: To assess the prevalence of good clinical response and remission in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients with longstanding disease treated with anti-tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) drugs at outpatient clinics. METHODS: Retrospective national study of 14 academic tertiary referral rheumatology medical centers. RA patients with a Disease Activity Score (DAS28) > 3.2 were defined as having active disease and could start TNF-alpha blockers. All patients received one TNF-alpha blocker plus methotrexate (10-20 mg/wk). At the third month the patients were categorized as responders or nonresponders, based on improvement of at least 0.25 of the Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ).…
Targeting the mevalonate pathway for improved anticancer therapy.
2009
The mevalonate pathway is important for the generation of isoprene moieties thereby providing the basis for the biosynthesis of molecules required for maintaining membrane integrity, steroid production and cell respiration. Additionally, isoprene precursors are indispensable for the prenylation of regulatory proteins such as Ras and Ras-homologous (Rho) GTPases. These low molecular GTP-binding proteins play key roles in numerous signal transduction pathways stimulated upon activation of cell surface receptors by ligand binding. Thus, Ras/Rho proteins eventually regulate cell proliferation, tumor progression and cell death induced by anticancer therapeutics. Lipid modification of Ras/Rho pro…
A novel microtubule de-stabilizing complementarity-determining region C36L1 peptide displays antitumor activity against melanoma in vitro and in vivo
2015
AbstractShort peptide sequences from complementarity-determining regions (CDRs) of different immunoglobulins may exert anti-infective, immunomodulatory and antitumor activities regardless of the specificity of the original monoclonal antibody (mAb). In this sense, they resemble early molecules of innate immunity. C36L1 was identified as a bioactive light-chain CDR1 peptide by screening 19 conserved CDR sequences targeting murine B16F10-Nex2 melanoma. The 17-amino acid peptide is readily taken up by melanoma cells and acts on microtubules causing depolymerization, stress of the endoplasmic reticulum and intrinsic apoptosis. At low concentrations, C36L1 inhibited migration, invasion and proli…
Chronic ethanol exposure alters the levels, assembly, and cellular organization of the actin cytoskeleton and microtubules in hippocampal neurons in …
2010
The organization and dynamics of microtubules (MTs) and the actin cytoskeleton are critical for the correct development and functions of neurons, including intracellular traffic and signaling. In vitro ethanol exposure impairs endocytosis, exocytosis, and nucleocytoplasmic traffic in astrocytes and alters endocytosis in cultured neurons. In astrocytes, these effects relate to changes in the organization and/or function of MTs and the actin cytoskeleton. To evaluate this possibility in hippocampal cultured neurons, we analyzed if chronic ethanol exposure affects the levels, assembly, and cellular organization of both cytoskeleton elements and the possible underlying mechanisms of these effec…
Palazzo Lanza dei Principi di Deliella. Dai disegni di archivio di Ernesto Basile alla ricostruzione virtuale
2022
Il contributo indaga il progetto di Ernesto Basile, mai realizzato, per Palazzo Lanza dei principi di Deliella a Palermo, attraverso lo studio dei disegni originali (1895-1897). Questi consistono in 15 documenti grafici che raccolgono 5 piante, 6 prospetti e 4 viste prospettiche, che rappresentano quattro versioni di progetto con diverse soluzioni, di ognuna delle quali è possibile reperire una documentazione frammentaria e incompleta, riconducibile a tempi ideativi differenti. Il contributo ripercorre, mediante il ridisegno, il percorso compiuto da Basile per giungere dalla prima all’ultima versione, raccontando graficamente l’evoluzione della pianta dell’edificio che, dall’impianto simmet…
Il Castello a Mare di Palermo: ipotesi per una ricostruzione congetturale.
2012
Il contributo proposto è incentrato sull'impiego della fotografia per lo studio di architetture perdute o profondamente alterate nel tempo; vengono descritti gli esiti dello studio sul Castello a mare, nel quale le immagini fotografiche d’epoca sono state utilizzate per la formulazione di ipotesi ricostruttive, attraverso l’applicazione di consolidate metodologie di restituzione prospettica e l’uso di tecniche fotogrammetriche digitali.