Enthusiasm in the Development of Radical Innovations

People involved in the development of radical innovations tend to feel a lot of enthusiasm. It has been claimed that, in fact, this enthusiasm fosters the innovativeness. The purpose of this study is to analyse how enthusiasm is created and sustained in this process. The theoretical framework combines the previous literature on champions and enthusiasm‐creating systems. The study analyses enthusiasm in five processes of radical innovation. The results indicate that it is not only champions but also innovation‐development teams who contribute to spreading enthusiasm throughout organizations. Eventually, the enthusiasm also spreads outside to the customers. Five inhibitors of enthusiasm were identified: commitment, engagement, trust, results and help gaps.     

Indexed families of functionals and gaussian radial basis functions

We report on results concerning the capabilities of gaussian radial basis function networks in the setting of inner product spaces that need not be finite dimensional. Specifically, we show that important indexed families of functionals can be uniformly approximated, with the approximation uniform also with respect to the index. Applications are described concerning the classification of signals and the synthesis of reconfigurable classifiers.     

Particle identification by laser-induced incandescence in a solid-state laser cavity

The laser-induced incandescence of a particle of unknown size and composition can be detected simultaneously with the light elastically scattered by the particle, providing information on both the size and composition of the particle. The technique relies on vaporization of the particle; detection of the incandescence signal at the time of vaporization allows determination of the boiling point of the particle, which can in turn be related to the composition of the particle. The elastically scattered signal provides information about the size of the particle and confirmation that it was vaporized. The technique is demonstrated by directing particles through a Nd:YAG laser cavity with approximately 10(6) W/cm2 of circulating intensity. Elements such as tungsten, silicon, and graphite, as well as common aerosols such as soot, can be detected and identifed.     

On the representation of linear system time‐varying half‐line maps

An expression is given for the most general continuous causal linear input–output map that takes the space of (Lebesgue) integrable functions into itself. This expression is a function‐space limit of an integral. As an application, a representation result is given for an important family of linear maps that take the space of bounded measurable functions into itself and satisfy a certain continuity condition. Some related material concerning engineering education is also given. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Series expansions for nonlinear systems

In this paper we generalize recent theorems concerning the existence (and algorithms for obtaining) a power-series-type expansion for a nonlinear system's outputs in terms of its inputs. The results given here are directly applicable to a much larger class of systems.This paper was presented at the 1982 International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (Rome, Italy, May 1982).     

Chromosomes and causation of human cancer and leukemia. XLVIII. T-cell acute leukemia in ataxia telangiectasia

Cytogenetic and immunologic studies were performed on the cells of an 18-year-old female with ataxia telangiectasia (AT) associated with acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL). At the onset of the leukemia 15.4% of peripheral blood cells stimulated with phytohemagglutinin (PHA) contained a tandem translocation of the long arm of chromosome #14, i.e., t(14;14). To ascertain if these karyotypically abnormal cells and the leukemic cells had a common lineage, chromosome analyses were performed on bone marrow cells. Examination of the marrow cells on the seven occasions when leukemic cells were present in the marrow, including times when they were predominant, showed only a normal karyotype without the presence of t(14;14). However, an abnormal clone, which had the karyotype 45,XX,-9,t(9;6)(q12;q13), was identified in the marrow cells on the last examination during the terminal phase of the leukemia. Immunologically, the ALL was classified as an atypical type which had characteristics in common with certain T-cell subsets. We suggest that the malignant cells did not originate from the preexisting cells with a tandem duplication of the 14q.     

Derivatization for LC-electrospray ionization-MS: a tool for improving reversed-phase separation and ESI responses of bases, ribosides, and intact nucleotides

We have developed a method for analyzing polar compounds by reversed-phase LC-ESI-MS following esterification of the analytes' free hydroxyl groups with propionyl or benzoyl acid anhydride. The method was applied to members of the plant hormone group cytokinins, which includes adenine bases, ribosides/glycosides, and nucleotides substituted at N-6 with an isoprenoid side chain, spanning a wide range of polarity. It was also used to analyze other compounds of biological importance, e.g., the nucleotides AMP, ADP, and ATP. The formation of more hydrophobic derivatives had a significant impact on two aspects of the analysis. The retention on a reversed-phase material was greatly increased without the use of any acetate/formate buffer or ion pairing reagent, and the ESI response was enhanced, due to the higher surface activities of the derivatives. Detection limits of propionylated cytokinins were in the high-attomole to low-femtomole range, an improvement by factors of 10-100 compared to previously reported figures. Using an automated SPE-based purification method, 12 endogenous cytokinins were quantified in extracts from 20- to 100-mg samples of leaves (from the plant Arabidopsis thaliana) with high accuracy and precision. Furthermore, the chromatographic properties of the benzoylated AMP, ADP, and ATP in the reversed-phase LC-MS system were much better in terms of retention, separation, and sensitivity than those of their underivatized counterparts, even without the use of any ion pairing reagent. Our data show that derivatization followed by LC-ESI-MS is an effective strategy for analyzing low molecular weight compounds, enabling compounds with a wide range of polarity to be determined in a single-injection LC-MS analysis.     

Gaussian radial basis functions and inner product spaces

An approximation result is given concerning Gaussian radial basis functions in a general inner product space. Applications are described concerning the classification of the elements of disjoint sets of signals, and also the approximation of continuous real functions defined on all of ⁿ using radial basis function (RBF) networks. More specifically, it is shown that an important large class of classification problems involving signals can be solved using a structure consisting of only a generalized RBF network followed by a quantizer. It is also shown that Gaussian radial basis functions defined on ⁿ can uniformly approximate arbitrarily well over all of ⁿ any continuous real functionalf on ⁿ that meets the condition that |f(x)|0 as x.