The electronic markets hypothesis holds that information technology use influences the dismantling of vertical firm boundaries because of reductions in the cost of transactions between firms. Anecdotal evidence of merger and alliance activity for information goods producing firms seems to be at odds with these predictions of an IT-driven rise in vertical market coordination structures. An inter...

Until recently, electronic markets were dominated by the combination of static offer schemes and fixed pricing. Static offer schemes such as online catalogues apparently bear the risk of not matching the requirements of all potential buyers. But fixing a price also imposes another risk to the seller the price might not always reflect the current market balance of supply and demand and the speci...

This paper examines the value drivers and e-business infrastructures for collaborative commerce across two distinct types of business-to-business governance arrangements in Financial Services, i.e., (a) electronic markets and (b) electronic networks. This paper addresses the changing dynamics underlying global trading communities as they evolve towards greater reach and range of services for th...

The article discusses the issues of conducting transactions for agricultural products via the Internet between businesses. In particular, it is dedicated to the so-called electronic agricultural commodity marketplaces that are virtual meeting places of buyers and sellers of agricultural commodities. The purpose of this article is an indication of the changes taking place in the agricultural mar...

Bariatric surgery is recommended for Indian patients with body mass index (BMI) >32.5 kg/m(2) with at least one comorbidity and >37.5 kg/m(2) without a comorbidity. In laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy, bleeding and leakage from the staple line are common post-operative events. Peri-Strips Dry® with Veritas® (PSD-V) is used in staple-line reinforcement. This was a single-investigator, multicenter...

Burroughs, A.K., Hamilton, G. Phillips, A., Mezzanotte, G., Mclntyre, N. and Hobbs, K.E.F. (1989) A comparison of sclerotherapy with staple transection of the esophagus for the emergency control of bleeding from esophagus varices. The New England Journal of Medicine; 321:857-862 We compared two procedures for the emergency treatment of bleeding esophageal varices in patients who did not respond...

Giant? The Potentials and the Pitfalls1 In 2009 the World Bank published a report entitled Awakening Africa’s Sleeping Giant: Prospects for Commercial Agriculture in the Guinea Savannah Zone and Beyond. The report highlights the agricultural potential of Africa’s Guinea Savannah (henceforth GS) zone, which it describes as “one of the largest underused agricultural land reserves in the world” (p...

In this paper we analyze the properties of the well-known segmentation fusion algorithm STAPLE, using a novel inference technique that analytically marginalizes out all model parameters. We demonstrate both theoretically and empirically that when the number of raters is large, or when consensus regions are included in the model, STAPLE devolves into thresholding the average of the input segment...