Evaluating platform architectures within ecosystems: modeling the relation to indirect value

This thesis establishes a framework for understanding the role of a supplier within the context of a business ecosystem. Suppliers typically define their business in terms of capturing value by meeting the demands of direct customers. However, the framework recognises the importance of understanding how a supplier captures indirect value by meeting the demands of indirect customers. These indirect customers increasingly use a supplier’s products and services over time in combination with those of other suppliers. This type of indirect demand is difficult for the supplier to anticipate because it is asymmetric to their own definition of demand. Customers pay the costs of aligning products and services to their particular needs by expending time and effort, for example, to link disparate social technologies or to coordinate healthcare services to address their particular condition. The accelerating tempo of variation in individual needs increases the costs of aligning products and services for customers. A supplier’s ability to reduce its indirect customers’ costs of alignment represents an opportunity to capture indirect value. The hypothesis is that modelling the supplier's relationship to indirect demands improves the supplier’s ability to identify opportunities for capturing indirect value. The framework supports the construction and analysis of such models. It enables the description of the distinct forms of competitive advantage that satisfy a given variety of indirect demands, and of the agility of business platforms supporting that variety of indirect demands. Models constructed using this framework are ‘triply-articulated’ in that they articulate the relationships among three sub-models: (i) the technical behaviours generating products and services, (ii) the social entities managing their supply, and (iii) the organisation of value defined by indirect customers’ demands. The framework enables the derivation from such a model of a layered analysis of the risks to which the capture of indirect value exposes the supplier, and provides the basis for an economic valuation of the agility of the supporting platform architectures. The interdisciplinary research underlying the thesis is based on the use of tools and methods developed by the author in support of his consulting practice within large and complex organisations. The hypothesis is tested by an implementation of the modeling approach applied to suppliers within their ecosystems in three cases: (a) UK Unmanned Airborne Systems, (b) NATO Airborne Warning and Control Systems, both within their respective theatres of operation, and (c) Orthotics Services within the UK's National Health Service. These cases use this implementation of the modeling approach to analyse the value of platforms, their architectural design choices, and the risks suppliers face in their use. The thesis has implications for the forms of leadership involved in managing such platform-based strategies, and for the economic impact such strategies can have on their larger ecosystem. It informs the design of suppliers’ platforms as system-of-system infrastructures supporting collaborations within larger ecosystems. And the ‘triple-articulation’ of the modelling approach makes new demands on the mathematics of systems modeling

Digitally Continuous Multivalued Functions, Morphological Operations and Thinning Algorithms

In a recent paper (Escribano et al. in Discrete Geometry for Computer Imagery 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 4992, pp. 81–92, 2008) we have introduced a notion of continuity in digital spaces which extends the usual notion of digital continuity. Our approach, which uses multivalued functions, provides a better framework to define topological notions, like retractions, in a far more realistic way than by using just single-valued digitally continuous functions. In this work we develop properties of this family of continuous functions, now concentrating on morphological operations and thinning algorithms. We show that our notion of continuity provides a suitable framework for the basic operations in mathematical morphology: erosion, dilation, closing, and opening. On the other hand, concerning thinning algorithms, we give conditions under which the existence of a retraction F:X⟶X∖D guarantees that D is deletable. The converse is not true, in general, although it is in certain particular important cases which are at the basis of many thinning algorithms

Detailed studies of the subpicosecond kinetics in the primary electron transfer of reaction centers of Rhodopseudomonas viridis

The primary, light-induced charge separation in reaction centers of Rhodopseudomonas viridis is investigated with femtosecond time resolution. The absorption changes after direct excitation of the primary donor P at 955 nm are investigated in the time range from 100 fs to 600 ps. The experimental data, taken at various probing wavelengths, reveal one subpicosecond and two picosecond time constants: 0.65 ± 0.2 ps, 3.5 ± 0.4 ps, and 200 ± 20 ps. The previously undetected 0.65 ps kinetics can be observed clearly in the spectral range of the Qx and Qy transitions of the monomeric bacteriochlorophylls. The experimental data support the idea that the accessory bacteriochlorophyll B A participates in the electron-transfer process. Reference

Criteria for the diagnosis of corticobasal degeneration

Current criteria for the clinical diagnosis of pathologically confirmed corticobasal degeneration (CBD) no longer reflect the expanding understanding of this disease and its clinicopathologic correlations. An international consortium of behavioral neurology, neuropsychology, and movement disorders specialists developed new criteria based on consensus and a systematic literature review. Clinical diagnoses (early or late) were identified for 267 nonoverlapping pathologically confirmed CBD cases from published reports and brain banks. Combined with consensus, 4 CBD phenotypes emerged: corticobasal syndrome (CBS), frontal behavioral-spatial syndrome (FBS), nonfluent/agrammatic variant of primary progressive aphasia (naPPA), and progressive supranuclear palsy syndrome (PSPS). Clinical features of CBD cases were extracted from descriptions of 209 brain bank and published patients, providing a comprehensive description of CBD and correcting common misconceptions. Clinical CBD phenotypes and features were combined to create 2 sets of criteria: more specific clinical research criteria for probable CBD and broader criteria for possible CBD that are more inclusive but have a higher chance to detect other tau-based pathologies. Probable CBD criteria require insidious onset and gradual progression for at least 1 year, age at onset ≥50 years, no similar family history or known tau mutations, and a clinical phenotype of probable CBS or either FBS or naPPA with at least 1 CBS feature. The possible CBD category uses similar criteria but has no restrictions on age or family history, allows tau mutations, permits less rigorous phenotype fulfillment, and includes a PSPS phenotype. Future validation and refinement of the proposed criteria are needed

Fixed poin sets in digital topology, 1

[EN] In this paper, we examine some properties of the fixed point set of a digitally continuous function. The digital setting requires new methods that are not analogous to those of classical topological fixed point theory, and we obtain results that often differ greatly from standard results in classical topology. We introduce several measures related to fixed points for continuous self-maps on digital images, and study their properties. Perhaps the most important of these is the fixed point spectrum F(X) of a digital image: that is, the set of all numbers that can appear as the number of fixed points for some continuous self-map. We give a complete computation of F(Cn) where Cn is the digital cycle of n points. For other digital images, we show that, if X has at least 4 points, then F(X) always contains the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, and the cardinality of X. We give several examples, including Cn, in which F(X) does not equal {0, 1, . . . , #X}. We examine how fixed point sets are affected by rigidity, retraction, deformation retraction, and the formation of wedges and Cartesian products. We also study how fixed point sets in digital images can be arranged; e.g., for some digital images the fixed point set is always connected.Boxer, L.; Staecker, PC. (2020). Fixed poin sets in digital topology, 1. Applied General Topology. 21(1):87-110. https://doi.org/10.4995/agt.2020.12091OJS87110211C. Berge, Graphs and Hypergraphs, 2nd edition, North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1976.L. Boxer, Digitally continuous functions, Pattern Recognition Letters 15 (1994), 833-839. https://doi.org/10.1016/0167-8655(94)90012-4L. Boxer, A classical construction for the digital fundamental group, Journal of Mathematical Imaging and Vision 10 (1999), 51-62. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008370600456L. Boxer, Continuous maps on digital simple closed curves, Applied Mathematics 1 (2010), 377-386. https://doi.org/10.4236/am.2010.15050L. Boxer, Generalized normal product adjacency in digital topology, Applied General Topology 18, no. 2 (2017), 401-427. https://doi.org/10.4995/agt.2017.7798L. Boxer, Alternate product adjacencies in digital topology, Applied General Topology 19, no. 1 (2018), 21-53. https://doi.org/10.4995/agt.2018.7146L. Boxer, Fixed points and freezing sets in digital topology, Proceedings, 2019 Interdisciplinary Colloquium in Topology and its Applications, in Vigo, Spain; 55-61.L. Boxer, O. Ege, I. Karaca, J. Lopez, and J. Louwsma, Digital fixed points, approximate fixed points, and universal functions, Applied General Topology 17, no. 2 (2016), 159-172. https://doi.org/10.4995/agt.2016.4704L. Boxer and I. Karaca, Fundamental groups for digital products, Advances and Applications in Mathematical Sciences 11, no. 4 (2012), 161-180.L. Boxer and P. C. Staecker, Remarks on fixed point assertions in digital topology, Applied General Topology 20, no. 1 (2019), 135-153. https://doi.org/10.4995/agt.2019.10474J. Haarmann, M. P. Murphy, C. S. Peters and P. C. Staecker, Homotopy equivalence in finite digital images, Journal of Mathematical Imaging and Vision 53 (2015), 288-302. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10851-015-0578-8B. Jiang, Lectures on Nielsen fixed point theory, Contemporary Mathematics 18 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1090/conm/014E. Khalimsky, Motion, deformation, and homotopy in finite spaces, in Proceedings IEEE Intl. Conf. on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (1987), 227-234.A. Rosenfeld, "Continuous" functions on digital pictures, Pattern Recognition Letters 4 (1986), 177-184. https://doi.org/10.1016/0167-8655(86)90017-6P. C. Staecker, Some enumerations of binary digital images, arXiv:1502.06236, 2015