Modeling Business Negotiations for Electronic Commerce

E-commerce "localizes global markets" by opening remote markets to retail and to small companies. Newly developed E-commerce tools allow individual and organizational buyers to search for suppliers anywhere and make deals electronically. We propose a software agent that interacts with a buyer and elicits information about the criteria, preferences, and limitations, and that conducts business negotiation on behalf of the buyer. The agent has been implemented and tested in Negoplan, a software system that supports the simulation of decision processes. Results of several negotiation simulations are presented

The N=2 supersymmetric unconstrained matrix GNLS hierarchies

The generalization of the N=2 supersymmetric chiral matrix (k|n,m)--GNLS hierarchy (Lett. Math. Phys. 45 (1998) 63, solv-int/9711009) to the case when matrix entries are bosonic and fermionic unconstrained N=2 superfields is proposed. This is done by exhibiting the corresponding matrix Lax--pair representation in terms of N=2 unconstrained superfields. It is demonstrated that when matrix entries are chiral and antichiral N=2 superfields, it reproduces the N=2 chiral matrix (k|n,m)-GNLS hierarchy, while in the scalar case, k=1, it is equivalent to the N=2 supersymmetric multicomponent hierarchy (J. Phys. A29 (1996) 1281, hep-th/9510185). The simplest example --the N=2 unconstrained (1|1,0)--GNLS hierarchy-- and its reduction to the N=2 supersymmetric {\alpha}=1 KdV hierarchy are discussed in more detail, and its rich symmetry structure is uncovered.Comment: 11 pages, LaTex, misprints correcte

Mechanisms of Volatile Anesthetic-Induced Myocardial Protection

Volatile anesthetics protect myocardium against reversible and irreversible ischemic injury. Experimental evidence from several in vitro and in vivo animal models demonstrates that volatile agents enhance the recovery of stunned myocardium and reduce the size of myocardial infarction after brief or prolonged coronary artery occlusion and reperfusion, respectively. This protective effect persists after the anesthetic has been discontinued, a phenomenon known as anesthetic-induced preconditioning (APC). Recent clinical data also demonstrates evidence of APC in patients during cardiac surgery. Thus, administration of volatile anesthetics may represent a novel therapeutic approach that reduces morbidity and mortality associated with perioperative myocardial ischemia and infarction. The mechanisms responsible for APC appear to be similar to those implicated in ischemic preconditioning, but nonetheless have subtle differences. Accumulating evidence indicates that APC is characterized by complex signal transduction pathways that may include adenosine receptors, G proteins, protein kinase C, reactive oxygen species, and sarcolemmal or mitochondrial KATP channels. Opioid analgesics may further enhance APC as well. This article will review recent advances in the understanding of mechanisms responsible for volatile anesthetic-induced myocardial protection

Development of a Detector Control System for the ATLAS Pixel Detector

The innermost part of the ATLAS experiment will be a pixel detector containing around 1750 individual detector modules. A detector control system (DCS) is required to handle thousands of I/O channels with varying characteristics. The main building blocks of the pixel DCS are the cooling system, the power supplies and the thermal interlock system, responsible for the ultimate safety of the pixel sensors. The ATLAS Embedded Local Monitor Board (ELMB), a multi purpose front end I/O system with a CAN interface, is foreseen for several monitoring and control tasks. The Supervisory, Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) system will use PVSS, a commercial software product chosen for the CERN LHC experiments. We report on the status of the different building blocks of the ATLAS pixel DCS.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures, ICALEPCS 200

Selective Covalent Conjugation of Phosphorothioate DNA Oligonucleotides with Streptavidin

Protein-DNA conjugates have found numerous applications in the field of diagnostics and nanobiotechnology, however, their intrinsic susceptibility to DNA degradation by nucleases represents a major obstacle for many applications. We here report the selective covalent conjugation of the protein streptavidin (STV) with phosphorothioate oligonucleotides (psDNA) containing a terminal alkylthiolgroup as the chemically addressable linking unit, using a heterobifunctional NHS-/maleimide crosslinker. The psDNA-STV conjugates were synthesized in about 10% isolated yields. We demonstrate that the terminal alkylthiol group selectively reacts with the maleimide while the backbone sulfur atoms are not engaged in chemical conjugation. The novel psDNA-STV conjugates retain their binding capabilities for both biotinylated macromolecules and the complementary nucleic acid. Moreover, the psDNA-STV conjugate retained its binding capacity for complementary oligomers even after a nuclease digestion step, which effectively degrades deoxyribonucleotide oligomers and thus the binding capability of regular DNA-STV conjugates. The psDNA-STV therefore hold particular promise for applications e.g. in proteome research and novel biosensing devices, where interfering endogenous nucleic acids need to be removed from analytes by nuclease digestion

The Effects of Culture in Anonymous Negotiations: A Four Countries Experiment

Experimental research on cross-cultural negotiations typically involves subjects negotiating in a classroom or laboratory setting. Such negotiations are brief, with a strictly imposed deadline and face-to-face. Further, the negotiations typically involve dyads from the same country. The comparisons are done on the basis of experiments replicated in several countries. Internet technologies allow for communication across the cultural frontiers. While the communication is not as rich as in the case of face-to-face discussions, it allows subjects to negotiate in an asynchronous mode and at their own pace. It is also possible to conduct anonymous negotiations for several weeks. This paper explores the implications of culture on anonymous negotiations conducted via the Web with use of INSPIRE, a Web-based negotiation support system. The negotiations involved 166 subjects from Austria, Ecuador, Finland, and Switzerland. A model to study cross-cultural negotiations is proposed and assessed based on the statistical analysis of negotiations

(Non)local Hamiltonian and symplectic structures, recursions, and hierarchies: a new approach and applications to the N=1 supersymmetric KdV equation

Using methods of math.DG/0304245 and [I.S.Krasil'shchik and P.H.M.Kersten, Symmetries and recursion operators for classical and supersymmetric differential equations, Kluwer, 2000], we accomplish an extensive study of the N=1 supersymmetric Korteweg-de Vries equation. The results include: a description of local and nonlocal Hamiltonian and symplectic structures, five hierarchies of symmetries, the corresponding hierarchies of conservation laws, recursion operators for symmetries and generating functions of conservation laws. We stress that the main point of the paper is not just the results on super-KdV equation itself, but merely exposition of the efficiency of the geometrical approach and of the computational algorithms based on it.Comment: 16 pages, AMS-LaTeX, Xy-pic, dvi-file to be processed by dvips. v2: nonessential improvements of exposition, title change

A mass spectrometry-guided genome mining approach for natural product peptidogenomics.

Peptide natural products show broad biological properties and are commonly produced by orthogonal ribosomal and nonribosomal pathways in prokaryotes and eukaryotes. To harvest this large and diverse resource of bioactive molecules, we introduce here natural product peptidogenomics (NPP), a new MS-guided genome-mining method that connects the chemotypes of peptide natural products to their biosynthetic gene clusters by iteratively matching de novo tandem MS (MS(n)) structures to genomics-based structures following biosynthetic logic. In this study, we show that NPP enabled the rapid characterization of over ten chemically diverse ribosomal and nonribosomal peptide natural products of previously unidentified composition from Streptomycete bacteria as a proof of concept to begin automating the genome-mining process. We show the identification of lantipeptides, lasso peptides, linardins, formylated peptides and lipopeptides, many of which are from well-characterized model Streptomycetes, highlighting the power of NPP in the discovery of new peptide natural products from even intensely studied organisms