No description available.

Synaptophysin (Syp) is a major integral synaptic vesicle (SV) protein; there are 31 copies of Syp per vesicle, which totals up to 10% of the total SV protein content. Despite being the major SV protein, little is known about the interaction partners of Syp and as a result there has been no clear role attributed to it. One key feature of Syp is that its cytoplasmic C-terminus contains 10 pentapeptide repeats, nine of which are initiated by a tyrosine residue. Syp is the major tyrosine phospho-protein on SVs. The kinase thought to phosphorylate Syp in vivo is the ubiquitously expressed non-receptor kinase C-Src. There are two splice variants of C-Src, N1- and N2-Src, which are only expressed in neuronal tissues. Although the 3 Srcs are structurally similar, they differ by a small insert of amino acids into their SH3 domains (the N-Src loop). Examination of the amino acid sequence of the cytosolic C-terminus of Syp revealed a putative type one SH3 domain interaction motif. A screen using SH3 domains of synaptic proteins as bait in GST-pull downs from nerve terminal lysate allowed an inventory of potential interaction partners of Syp to be created. Reciprocal experiments using the C-terminal of Syp as bait confirmed many of these interactions. Single point mutations of the SH3 interaction motif on Syp highlighted that syndapin and C-Src bound to Syp via this motif. These binding mutants were inserted in Syp superecliptic synaptophluorin (SypHy) to determine the functional consequences of these interactions. These mutants did not affect the trafficking of Syp when expressed in cortical neurons derived from Syp knockout mice. However, the SH3 interaction motif was fundamental for the retrieval of VAMP (vesicle associated membrane protein) when expressed in Syp knockout cultures. Importantly, this role is not mediated through a direct interaction with VAMP with the SH3 interaction motif implicating either syndapin, C-Src or both in Syp-dependent VAMP retrieval. The 3 different Srcs had different methods of interaction with Syp, and in vitro protein kinase assays the ability of the three Src splice variants to phosphorylate Syp was assessed. Key differences in both speed and efficiency of Syp phosphorylation was observed for the different Src splice variants. Mutagenesis of either all 9 tyrosine residues, only previously identified sites resulted in changes in Syp interactions in GST-pull down assays from nerve terminal lysates. To investigate the role of Syp phosphorylation in the SV lifecycle, the tyrosine pentapeptide repeats were truncated from the C-terminal of Syp in both a mCerulean tagged Syp and SypHy. The experiments showed that these potential tyrosine phosphorylation sites were not involved in the trafficking of Syp but key in the retrieval of VAMP from the plasma membrane during the SV lifecycle. I have indentified an SH3 interaction motif on the C-terminal of Syp that is critical in forming a complex of proteins that are responsible for the retrieval of VAMP during the SV lifecycle. Further experiments have shown that this key interaction is potentially phosphorylation dependent. My preliminary mass spectrometry analysis has provided a catalogue of proteins that can potentially interact with Syp, identifying proteins that may bind to either the Syp C-terminus SH3 interaction motif or to other regions in a phosphorylation dependent manner. This has provided a list of potential candidate proteins for the VAMP retrieval complex.

Solar power systems are becoming increasingly popular due to the fact that solar power can offer time and money saving solutions for off-grid and grid-connected homes, cabins, and businesses with clean and affordable energy. However, there are still significant opportunities to reduce the cost of solar power systems by optimizing system design. This paper presents a methodology for evaluating the lifecycle labor costs of solar power systems. This methodology can help optimize system designs relative to cost. It can also support solar power system selection decisions based on a holistic lifecycle view. The methodology accomplishes this by first presenting a method to evaluate the modularity of competing systems, or design variants. It then describes a method of gathering data and modeling the systems so that it can be communicated to relevant stakeholders. Finally, it uses discrete event simulation to generate an estimate of relative lifecycle labor cost performance. Verification and validation of the methods described are presented through a case study of the MegaModule residential solar power system, designed by the team at GTRI. The paper concludes with a review of limitations and proposed future work.

Le contexte économique actuel fait naître de nouveaux besoins chez les entreprises. L’élargissement du marché et la multiplication de la concurrence impliquent de nouveaux objectifs pour les industriels et doivent adapter leur mode de fonctionnement et leur organisation pour les atteindre. Les efforts se portent sur la minimisation de la distance existante entre concepteurs et clients. Cet éloignement est souvent à l’origine de mauvaises compréhensions et de dérivations par rapport à la demande client initiale. Désormais, le client est placé au cœur du processus de conception pour mieux intégrer ses exigences et ainsi satisfaire ses besoins. Ces nouvelles pratiques se démocratisent grâce à l’évolution du web vers le web 2.0 facilitant la communication et la formation de réseaux sociaux. Les systèmes de management de l’information actuellement implémentés dans les entreprises présentent des limites. Les systèmes PLM gérant les informations relatives au produit tout au long de son cycle de vie, traitent peu de l’interaction utilisateur/produit qui pourtant s’avère porteuse d’informations stratégiques pour l’amélioration de la conception et l’innovation de produits. En considérant l’interaction entre un utilisateur et un produit dans un contexte donné, il est possible d’identifier les contraintes liées aux usages de cet utilisateur. C’est sur ces informations d’usage que notre recherche s’est orienté afin d’améliorer la compréhension des besoins clients et déceler des idées innovantes de produits. En élargissant la notion d’utilisateur plutôt associé au client, nous souhaitons y inclure également les employés, les revendeurs et détaillants qui sont à leurs tours à un moment donnée du cycle de vie du produit des utilisateurs. Dans cette optique, nous proposons une approche appelée ULM (Usage Lifecycle Management) qui s’inscrit dans une dynamique de management des usages de divers produits, utilisateurs et environnements. Notre travail s’est axé sur la phase de capitalisation de ces usages à travers les processus aval du cycle de vie, utilisation/commercialisation, maintenance et recyclage. Pour cela, nous proposons l’approche ULM au travers d’une plateforme web externalisée qui se situe au carrefour de plusieurs utilisateurs. Cet outil baptisé C 3 pour Conception Consommation Communication s’oriente autour d’un trièdre utilisateur/produit/contexte pour capitaliser et formaliser les informations d’usage d’un produit. C’est en pensant conjointement les usages et les concepts qu’il sera possible d’aboutir à des produits innovants capables de faire la différence sur un marché ultra concurrentiel. / The current economical context implies news needs for companies. Market spread and competitor’s multiplication imply new objectives for companies which must adapt their functioning process and organization to succeed. Efforts focus on minimizing the distance between designers and customers. This distance often originates misunderstandings and deviations related to the initial customer’s demands. The customer is now placed at the core of the design process in order to better integrate his expectations and satisfy his needs. These new practices democratize themselves thanks to the web evolution towards web 2.0, which facilitates communication and triggered the apparition of social networks. Current information management system implement in companies have limitations. Product-Life Management (PLM) systems manage product-related information over its lifetime. They only slightly encompass the user/product interactions, hence missing strategic information for improving products design and innovations. We consider the interactions between a user and a product within a given context and identify the constraints linked to the use of the product. We oriented our research toward this usage information in order to detect the customer’s needs and better initiate product-related innovations. We widen the notion of user to include employees, retailers and suppliers who punctually interact with the product in its lifecycle. To address this issue, we suggest an approach named ULM (Usage Lifecycle Management). This approach involves a new dynamic for managing usage for several product, users and environments. Our work is axed on the usages capitalization phase through downstream lifecycle processes, use/commercialization, maintenance and recycling. We hence concretize our ULM approach trough an outsourced web platform placed as a center point for users. This tool, named C³ for Conception Consumption Communication, is articulated around the user/product/context triangle to capitalize and formalize product usage information. Only through joint reflexion over usages and concepts will it be to reach innovative products able to make a difference in an ultra-competitive market.

No description available.

Research on constraints to leisure and recreation participation has focused on various types of activities in which people would like to participate, are currently participating, or have stopped participating. However, little attention has been made to identify constraints associated with art activities participation. The objectives of this study were to 1) identify factors which limit people's attendance to art museums/galleries; 2) address the issue of the internal heterogeneity between two constrained leisure behaviors; 3) reveal the role of previous participation, interest in future participation, gender and lifecycle in the perception of constraints to art activities; and 4) show the validity of segmentation criteria which are previous participation, interest in future participation, gender and lifecycle. Data from the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA 1997) was used in this study. Total sample was divided into four categories by previous participation and interest in future participation. Further, the categories 'participants with interest' and 'non-participants with interest' were sub-divided based on gender and lifecycle. The results revealed that time, cost, access and availability were considered as the most significant constraints to art activity participation across all segments. However, the array and intensity of constraints differed depending on the types of constrained leisure. In addition, different types of constraints were experienced with different intensity by segments defined by previous participation, interest in future participation, gender and lifecycle. The analyses demonstrated that previous participation, interest in future participation, gender and lifecycle were important segmentation criteria in constructing homogeneous groups with respect to perceived leisure constraints.

The record of study, The History of Cranfills Gap ISD, traces the significant chronological events, external and internal influences and aspirations of community, parents and students through the development of this rural school in Central Texas. The development of the Cranfills Gap institution follows the organizational lifecycle theory of Ichak Adizes, Ph.D. This work poses a single question: What were the significant events throughout the 120 year history of CGISD? The pursuit of an answer to this question reveals the intricately woven web of issues associated with any discussion of educational change. On one level, the question might conjure a debate between educators who support small schools as opposed to large consolidated schools. This record of study, however, was framed to present the rural Texas school from an organizational development point of view. The rural school is remembered by former students, teachers and administrators within the context of county, state and national changes. Historic documents and oral histories are used to provide evidence of the stage of development. Within the stage of development the aspirations and needs of the community and students are revealed. Historic documents describe the school in quantitative terms, providing tangible, measurable data in the form of information such as cost of buildings, furnishings, number of pupils, teachers and length of term. Oral histories describe the rural school in qualitative terms. From the perspective of former students, teachers and administrators, a rural school is described by interpersonal relationships with the community at large, parents and classmates. The accumulation of unquantifiable, intangible, holistic data provides a complete picture of the rural school in Central Texas. The contribution of this record of study to the general knowledge of the educational community is that rural schools reflect the community’s moral convictions, aspirations and challenges. The evolution of change in education is influenced by external forces such as, state and federal policy, national economic situations, technological advances and internal factors such as leadership changes, patron demands, and financial stability. A longitudinal review of one educational system enables insight into the impact these forces have had. The 140-square-mile region around Cranfills Gap saw the convergence of Norwegian immigrants in 1854, when they began establishing churches and schools. Committed to ensuring Norwegian children were afforded sufficient education, community members took risks financially to establish and maintain the school. The reform movement to standardize education at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution propelled Cranfills Gap into providing a local high school. The 1930s and 1940s were a time of rapid growth and change. The period of greatest success featured a school-community partnership illustrated by actions of internal cohesion. By 1960 the rural district was experiencing declining enrollment, placing the district in a survival mode. Content to enjoy and rely upon the momentum created during the Prime stage of development, Cranfills Gap became a bureaucratic institution at the brink of closure in 2008.

Thesis (M.S.C.I.T.)--Regis University, Denver, Colo., 2005. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Dec. 5, 2005). Includes bibliographical references.

Seit einiger Zeit hat die Industrie hier die enge Verzahnung ihrer Güterproduktion mit Dienstleistungen, auch oft als Services oder Lösungen bezeichnet, als strategische Option erkannt. Der Vorteil einer engen Verflechtung von Produkt und Dienstleistung ist, dass insbesondere im Pre- und Aftersales-Bereich neue Wertschöpfungsmöglichkeiten entstehen, die auf dem einzigartigen Know-How und dem Wissen der anbietenden Unternehmen basieren. Zunehmend wird über solche Lösungen sogar der größere Anteil der Wertschöpfung für das Unternehmen erzielt, so dass die Bedeutung solcher Angebote beständig zunimmt. Der vorliegenden Band dokumentiert die Arbeit des Verbundvorhabens „Produkt-Dienstleistung-Lifecycle-Management“, welches von 2011-2014 den Lehrstuhl für Betriebliche Informationssysteme an der Universität Leipzig zusammen mit Unternehmen ATB Arbeit, Technik und Bildung GmbH, CADsys GmbH, Amtech GmbH und SITEC GmbH aus Chemnnitz realisiert und mit Mitteln der Europäischen Union und des Freistaates Sachsen durch das Programm FuE-Projektförderung der SAB finanziert wurde. Erstmalig werden integrierte Konzepte und Werkzeuge für ein Lebenszyklusmanagement in der Verbindung von Produktion und begleitenden Dienstleistungen vorgestellt, die in entsprechenden Use-Cases in der Praxis zur Anwendung geführt werden konnten.:Dienstleistungslebenszyklen in Produktlebenszyklen (Christian Zinke) Review und Bewertung der Eignung von Open-Source-Lösungen als technische Lösung für ein Life-Cycle-Management produktbezogener Dienstleistungen (Christian Zinke und Florian Golemo) Abbildung von Dienstleistungen im Aras Innovator (Christian Zinke) Unterstützung der produktbezogenen Dienstleistung durch die Integration des Service Modeller (Florian Golemo) Kundenintegration und Kollaborationsmöglichkeiten im Aras Innovator (Christian Zinke, Lars-Peter Meyer) Unterstützung von Pre-Sales Dienstleistungen am Beispiel der Erarbeitung eines technischen Lösungsvorschlag (Frieder Swoboda, Egbert Mauersberger, Christian Zinke) Unterstützung von After-Sales Dienstleistungen am Beispiel des Ersatzteilmanagement (Frieder Swoboda, Egbert Mauersberger, Christian Zinke) Evaluation des PDLM Konzepts und des Unterstützungssystems (Christian Zinke)

Managing and orchestrating the behaviour of virtualized Network Functions (VNFs) remains a major challenge due to their heterogeneity and the ever increasing resource demands of the served flows. In this thesis, we propose a novel VNF manager (VNFM) that employs a parameterized actions-based reinforcement learning mechanism to simultaneously decide on the optimal VNF management action (e.g., migration, scaling, termination or rebooting) and the action's corresponding configuration parameters (e.g., migration location or amount of resources needed for scaling ). More precisely, we first propose a novel parameterized-action Markov decision process (PAMDP) model to accurately describe each VNF, instances of its components and their communication as well as the set of permissible management actions by the VNFM and the rewards of realizing these actions. The use of parameterized actions allows us to rigorously represent the functionalities of the VNFM in order perform various Lifecycle management (LCM) operations on the VNFs. Next, we propose a two-stage reinforcement learning (RL) scheme that alternates between learning an action-value function for the discrete LCM actions and updating the actions parameters selection policy. In contrast to existing machine learning schemes, the proposed work uniquely provides a holistic management platform the unifies individual efforts targeting individual LCM functions such as VNF placement and scaling. Performance evaluation results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed VNFM in maintaining the required performance level of the VNF while optimizing its resource configurations.