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In the early stages of the systems engineering process, an important focus is to create an understanding of the stakeholder needs. This is primarily done to prepare the system specification that forms the basis for the system’s design. By extension, example steps in this process include surveying stakeholders to better capture their intent, deriving and documenting requirements, and then using those requirements for subsequent activities, such as developing a functional baseline and candidate design alternatives. During this process, it is important to consider the full system lifecycle. As such, one major objective of a systems engineer is to translate the stakeholder’s needs into functional and nonfunctional requirements (NFRs). Despite this important role, early system designs are often faulty because important NFRs are poorly prioritized or not prioritized at all. While the prioritization of all requirements can be useful, this work focuses specifically on NFRs. It has been identified that the inability to identify the most useful NFRs can lead to system failure. Furthermore, the lack of NFR prioritization is considered one of the most expensive and difficult errors to correct, as well as one of the ten most significant risks in engineering. Systems need more emphasis on the relationships between the system’s elements, rather than on the individual elements or the whole system. Relationships among elements in a system can illustrate more than just the behavior of each element. The illustration can include the purpose for the system and the implications of changing how the NFRs associated with those elements are prioritized. This emphasis requires quantifiable tools and rigor to inform the decision makers. This research’s objective is to contribute to quantifiable decision-making methods and prioritization of NFRs in three ways: the development of a process to determine unique random index; the use of a continuous ranking scale; and the development of a universal decision-making heuristic to accompany prioritization of NFRs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to determine the factors of business excellence which are important in formulation of long-term policies leading to competitive advantage in luxury hotels in India. Malcom Baldrige model of excellence was taken for further studies. A survey was conducted amongst 20 executives from top and middle level management working in luxury and five-star hotels in NCR. AHP was used as statistical tool to determine important criteria for decision making that will help in formulation of strategies for luxury hotels. It was concluded that strategic planning and leadership are two most important criteria of excellence for luxury hotels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The “multi-functional” Ca2+ and calmodulin-dependent protein kinase, type II (CaMK-II) is an evolutionarily conserved protein. It has been found as a single gene in the horseshoe crab, marine sponge, sea urchin, nematode, and fruit fly, whereas most vertebrates possess four genes (α, β, γ, and δ). Species from fruit flies to humans encode alternative splice variants which are differentially targeted to phosphorylate diverse downstream targets of Ca2+ signaling. By comparing known CaMK-II protein and nucleotide sequences, we have now provided evidence for the evolutionary relatedness of CaMK-IIs. Parsimony analyses unambiguously indicate that the four vertebrate CaMK-II genes arose via repeated duplications. Nucleotide phylogenies show consistent but moderate support for the placement of the vertebrate δ CaMK-II as the earliest diverging vertebrate gene. δ CaMK-II is the only gene with both central and C-terminal variable domains and has three to four times more intronic sequence than the other three genes. β and γ CaMK-II genes show strong sequence similarity and have comparable exon and intron organization and utilization. α CaMK-II is absent from amphibians (Xenopus laevis) and has the most restricted tissue specificity in mammals, whereas β, γ, and δ CaMK-IIs are expressed in most tissues. All 38 known mammalian CaMK-II splice variants were compiled with their tissue specificity and exon usage. Some of these variants use alternative 5′ and 3′ donors within a single exon as well as alternative promoters. These findings serve as an important benchmark for future phylogenetic, developmental, or biochemical studies on this important, conserved, and highly regulated gene family. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]