The aim of this article is to reflect on the evolution of total quality management (TQM) as the most widespread quality management approach during the last 25 years. However, during the first 10 years of the new millennium, the term TQM seems to have lost its attractiveness in Western parts of the world and instead new terms such as Business Excellence, Organisational Excellence, Six Sigma, and Le

Minimally modified low density lipoprotein (mmLDL) is a well-known risk factor for coronary artery disease. Upregulation of vascular endothelin type B (ETB) receptors on the vascular smooth muscle cells is predicted to be the molecular mechanism that leads to cardiovascular pathogenesis. The objective of the present study was to examine the hypothesis that mmLDL upregulates ETB receptors in rat co

Per Olov Enquist's 1985 novel Nedstörtad ängel (Downfall) is, despite its modest proportions, one of the most poetically powerful and intriguing works in his oeuvre. It consists of a number of disparate stories which are presented as intertwined fragments. In this article I argue that the novel as a whole creates its meaning in the manner of a large-scale metaphor, in which the different stories s

A bench-scale unit for the development of an enzymatic process for the bioconversion of lignocellulosics to ethanol has been used to study the recycling of waste-water streams to minimize fresh-water requirements and reduce effluent streams. Willow, after impregnation with sulphur dioxide, was steam-pretreated, enzymatically hydrolysed, and the sugars produced were fermented using S. cerevisiae. T

By homology screening using BLAST searches of expressed sequence tags (ESTs), we have found a previously unidentified cDNA encoding a putative seven-transmembrane receptor with highest similarity to the leukotriene B(4) receptor, BLTR. Analysis of calcium flow in transfected cells, along with sequence analysis, revealed that the EST encoded a functionally inactive protein, lacking the segment corr

The feasibility of using degenerate four-wave mixing (DFWM) for hot gas thermometry in the mid-infrared spectral region is, for the first time, demonstrated by probing molecular ro-vibrational transitions of water. DFWM spectra of hot water were recorded in specially designed flames, providing a series of temperatures varying from 1000 to 1900 K and, the dramatic spectral structure variations were

This paper is the follow up of a previous work and its target is to demonstrate that the best fuel for a Compression Ignition engine has to be with high Octane Number. An advanced injection strategy was designed in order to run Gasoline in a CI engine. At high load it consisted in injecting 54 % of the fuel very early in the pilot and the remaining around TDC; the second injection is used as ignit

Although estrogen receptor-alpha (ERalpha) is a marker used to identify breast cancer patients most likely to benefit from endocrine therapy, approximately 50% of ERalpha-positive breast carcinomas are resistant to tamoxifen. Preclinical studies have shown that phosphorylation of ERalpha at serine-118 (ERalphaS118-P) is required for tamoxifen-mediated inhibition of ERalpha-induced gene expression.

In this work, the photofragmentation subsequent to valence and Cd4d photoionization of cadmium dichloride (CdCl2) were studied using He I and synchrotron excitation. The measurements were performed with a photoelectron-photoion coincidence (PEPICO) setup, and the connection between the singly ionized electronic states and cationic fragments was investigated. The valence-ionized states were found t

Photon time-of-flight spectroscopy (PTOFS) is a powerful tool for analysis of turbid materials. We have constructed a time-of-flight spectrometer based on a supercontinuum fiber laser, acousto-optical tunable filtering, and an InP/InGaAsP microchannel plate photomultiplier tube. The system is capable of performing PTOFS up to 1400 nm, and thus covers an important region for vibrational spectroscop

Introduction: Human body acceleration is often used as an indicator of daily physical activity in epidemiological research. Raw acceleration signals contain three basic components: movement, gravity, and noise. Separation of these becomes increasingly difficult during rotational movements. We aimed to evaluate five different methods (metrics) of processing acceleration signals on their ability to

In this paper we present evidence for a surface resonance on the (6v root 3 x 6 root 3)-R30 degrees-reconstruction obtained on 5 monolayers (ML) of An deposited on the (root 3 x root 3)-R30 degrees-4H-SiC(0001) and subsequently annealed. We use synchrotron radiation-based angle resolved photoelectron spectroscopy to show that this resonance has no k(parallel to)-dispersion, but a parabolic-like ki