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Resulting Improvements (resulting + improvement)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	40%

Selected Abstracts

A flexible framework for consistency management

CONCURRENCY AND COMPUTATION: PRACTICE & EXPERIENCE, Issue 1 2002
S. Weber
Abstract Recent distributed shared memory (DSM) systems provide increasingly more support for the sharing of objects rather than portions of memory. However, like earlier DSM systems these distributed shared object systems (DSO) still force developers to use a single protocol, or a small set of given protocols, for the sharing of application objects. This limitation prevents the applications from optimizing their communication behaviour and results in unnecessary overhead. A current general trend in software systems development is towards customizable systems, for example frameworks, reflection, and aspect-oriented programming all aim to give the developer greater flexibility and control over the functionality and performance of their code. This paper describes a novel object-oriented framework that defines a DSM system in terms of a consistency model and an underlying coherency protocol. Different consistency models and coherency protocols can be used within a single application because they can be customized, by the application programmer, on a per-object basis. This allows application specific semantics to be exploited at a very fine level of granularity and with a resulting improvement in performance. The framework is implemented in JAVA and the speed-up obtained by a number of applications that use the framework is reported. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

An imprint and merge algorithm incorporating geometric tolerances for conformal meshing of misaligned assemblies

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR NUMERICAL METHODS IN ENGINEERING, Issue 14 2004
David R. White
Abstract A size tolerant algorithm for imprinting and merging adjacent part geometries is presented in this paper. This approach cleans up misaligned and dirty assembly geometry that is intended for conformal mesh generation. The algorithm first discretizes the boundary edges of adjacent faces into linear segments. The segments are then intersected and a partial intersection graph is calculated from the intersection results. The intersections are calculated by accounting for size tolerances to minimize the effect of misaligned parts on the meshing process. The partial intersection graph is next used to imprint the adjacent faces as appropriate. The imprints are generated using virtual geometry so that the tolerant topology created therein can be employed. Several examples are given to demonstrate the resulting improvement in the mesh quality of conformal meshes. The approach is shown to work robustly with misaligned and poorly defined parts. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Unravelling the Capital Charging Riddle , Some Empirical Evidence from Victoria

FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY & MANAGEMENT, Issue 1 2003
Tyrone M. Carlin
Since 1995, the State of Victoria has been experimenting with capital charging regimes for budget sector agencies. The intent of these schemes is to allow the opportunity cost of capital to be reflected in the assessed total costs of outputs produced by agencies the subject of the charge. While literature produced by government central financial agencies has forcefully advocated this experiment, and asserted a range of resulting improvements to budget sector asset management and general financial management practices, academic examinations of the subject have been mixed in their conclusions. Empirical evidence relating to the effect and effectiveness of these schemes has been scarce. This paper seeks to contribute to the literature by providing some empirical evidence on the impact of capital charging in one jurisdiction, Victoria, Australia. [source]

A PROCESS ANALYSIS OF GLOBAL TRADE MANAGEMENT: AN INDUCTIVE APPROACH,

JOURNAL OF SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2010
WARREN H. HAUSMAN
This paper describes a new, detailed process model for Global Trade Management (GTM) that contains sufficient detail on cross-border trade processes to estimate the benefits of Information Technology-Enabled Global Trade Management (IT-GTM). Our methodology combines a grounded theory approach with data analysis and analytical modeling. GTM describes the processes required to support cross-border transactions between importers, exporters, their trading partners and governments. IT-GTM is the set of information technologies and software solutions that can be used by companies to carry out their global trading processes in a streamlined manner. We collect data on time reductions for individual trade process steps using IT-GTM and use Critical Path Analysis to calculate the resulting improvements in key metrics such as the Manufacture to Invoice Cycle and Days Sales Outstanding for exporters, and the Order to Receipt Cycle for importers. Under reasonably conservative scenarios the gross savings from IT-GTM amount to 1.7 percent and 0.6 percent of annual sales for exporters and importers, respectively. [source]

MolProbity: all-atom structure validation for macromolecular crystallography

ACTA CRYSTALLOGRAPHICA SECTION D, Issue 1 2010
Vincent B. Chen
MolProbity is a structure-validation web service that provides broad-spectrum solidly based evaluation of model quality at both the global and local levels for both proteins and nucleic acids. It relies heavily on the power and sensitivity provided by optimized hydrogen placement and all-atom contact analysis, complemented by updated versions of covalent-geometry and torsion-angle criteria. Some of the local corrections can be performed automatically in MolProbity and all of the diagnostics are presented in chart and graphical forms that help guide manual rebuilding. X-ray crystallography provides a wealth of biologically important molecular data in the form of atomic three-dimensional structures of proteins, nucleic acids and increasingly large complexes in multiple forms and states. Advances in automation, in everything from crystallization to data collection to phasing to model building to refinement, have made solving a structure using crystallography easier than ever. However, despite these improvements, local errors that can affect biological interpretation are widespread at low resolution and even high-resolution structures nearly all contain at least a few local errors such as Ramachandran outliers, flipped branched protein side chains and incorrect sugar puckers. It is critical both for the crystallographer and for the end user that there are easy and reliable methods to diagnose and correct these sorts of errors in structures. MolProbity is the authors' contribution to helping solve this problem and this article reviews its general capabilities, reports on recent enhancements and usage, and presents evidence that the resulting improvements are now beneficially affecting the global database. [source]