Using a change management perspective, this paper studies the implementation process of life cycle thinking and sustainable design in practice, based on empirical data from eight firms involved in product development. The data indicate that different firms take different trajectories and approaches towards implementation, which in turn depends on a number of human factors, including participati...

AIM To analyze access (availability, affordability and acceptability) to biologicals for Crohn's disease (CD) in ten European countries and to explore the associations between these dimensions, the uptake of biologicals and economic development. METHODS A questionnaire-based survey combined with desk research was carried out in May 2016. Gastroenterologists from the Czech Republic, France, Ge...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the association between socioeconomic factors and suicide rates. METHODS Analysis of time series of suicide rates, gross domestic product, unemployment rates, labor force participation, and divorce rates of 18 countries are analyzed by the application of panel-vector error correction models. Main outcome measures are the association between the socioeconomic factors and ...

BACKGROUND Leprosy is a chronic infectious disease that is considered to be declining, though it still remains prevalent in many parts of the world. A study was made to explore the health and socioeconomic factors that most influenced the trend of the disease in a typical Mediterranean country. MATERIALS AND METHODS An ecological study was conducted, investigating possible social, economic an...

Background. Brand personality as a part of brand identity plays an important role in communications; if a brand has no personality, it cannot introduce itself and stay in the mind of the customer. Customer understanding about a brand is far more important than what is expressed as brand reality. Thus, developing an appropriate personality for creating a compatible image of the brand in the cust...

In general, it is difficult to select a satisfactory product concept because the information in the early stage of design process is subjective, qualitative, and even uncertain to design engineers. The correlations among engineering characteristics for a product concept also increase the complexity of conceptual design. Moreover, it becomes important to consider not only customer requirements b...

We briefly review and illustrate our procedure to ‘decouple’ by transformation of generators: either a Hopf algebra H from a Hmodule algebra A1 in their cross-product A1>⊳H; or two (or more) H-module algebras A1,A2. These transformations are based on the existence of an algebra map A1>⊳H → A1. Preprint 02-64 Dip. Matematica e Applicazioni, Università di Napoli DSF/29-2002 ∗Contribution to the P...

The cycloalkylation of diethyl malonate and ethyl cyanoacetate with alkyl dihalide was investigated by using comminuted potassium carbonate as a base and toluene as a solvent in the presence of hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide (HTMAB) as a phase-transfer catalyst, which provided a conventional procedure with the advantage of short reaction period and high product yield. The factors influencin...