Browsing by Author "Hu, Ye"
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Item Implementing Key Account Strategy Implementation in the Sales Force(2012-04-19) Bolander, William; Ahearne, Michael J.; Du, Rex; Hu, Ye; Phillips, JamesThis dissertation examines how key account (KA) managers from an organization’s marketing department (i.e., KA marketing managers) implement a new KA program by simultaneously influencing sales managers and frontline salespeople, despite not having the authority to direct individuals in the sales department. Specifically, this dissertation focuses on the effectiveness of different KA marketing manager influence tactics over time and considers how sales managers’ KA implementation commitment (KAIC) moderates the relationship between KA marketing manager’s salesperson-directed influence behaviors and salespeople’s KA product sales performance (KASP). Findings show that KA marketing managers’ use of inspirational influence tactics have no impact on KAIC or KASP initially, but that this impact grows and levels off over time. On the other hand, KA marketing managers’ use of pressure influence tactics has a positive initial impact on KAIC and KASP, but this impact diminishes and bottoms out over time. The results for KA marketing managers’ use of consultative influence tactics are mixed: exhibiting an effect on KAIC that grows over time, but showing no effect on KASP. Furthermore, I demonstrate how KAIC moderates the effectiveness of KA marketing managers’ salesperson-directed influence tactics in a way that may not be intuitively obvious to managers.Item Mesoporous silica chips for harvesting the low molecular weight proteome from human serum(2009-12) Hu, Ye; Ferrari, Mauro, 1959-In this dissertation, mesoporous silica thin films with tunable features at the nanoscale were fabricated using the triblock copolymer template pathway, with the aim of specifically harvesting the low molecular weight peptides and proteins from human serum, which has been regarded as a potential source of diagnostic biomarkers for the early detection of disease. The superior properties of mesoporous silica have been demonstrated in applications which include chemical sensing, filtration, catalysis, drug-delivery and selective biomolecular uptake. These properties depend on the architectural, physical and chemical properties of the materials, which in turn are determined by the processing parameters in evaporation-induced self-assembly (EISA). Using the different polymer templates and polymer concentration in the precursor solution, various pore size distributions, pore structures and surface hydrophilicities were obtained and applied for nanotexture-selective recovery of low mass proteins. With the assistance of mass spectrometry and statistic analysis, we demonstrated the correlation between the nanophase characteristics of the mesoporous silica thin film and the specificity and efficacy of low mass proteome harvesting. In addition, to overcome the limitations of the pre-functionalization method in polymer selection, plasma ashing was used for the first time for the treatment of the mesoporous silica surface prior to chemical modification. Opposite surface charges due to the different functional groups used, resulted in a distinctive selectivity of the low molecular weight proteins from the serum sample. The mesoporous silica chips operate with extraordinary rapidity, high reproducibility, no sample pre-processing, and substantial independence from sample acquisition and storage temperature.In conclusion our study demonstrates that the ability to tune the physicochemical properties of mesoporous silica surfaces has the potential to promote the use of this material as a tool for the selective separation and concentration of the low molecular weight proteome from complex biological fluids.Item Miniaturized antenna and transponder based wireless sensors for internet of things in healthcare(2014-12) Huang, Haiyu; Akinwande, Deji; Gharpurey, Ranjit; Neikirk, Dean; Hu, Ye; Lu, NanshuFuture medical and healthcare systems will be largely improved by the wide-spreading of internet of things (IoTs). One of the crucial challenges of IoTs for healthcare is at the wireless sensors. Miniaturization of sensor node profile, minimizing power consumption as well as lowering down design/production cost of antenna, RF circuits and sensor modules have become the key issues for realizing more exciting applications in medical and healthcare fields that never seemed to be possible before. In this dissertation work, we first focus on electrically small antenna (ESA) design and fabrication for medical telemetry. A comprehensive analysis of the radiation properties of a novel electrically small folded ellipsoidal ESA is presented, showing its ability to self-resonate and impedance match without external components. It will benefit various size-restricted applications especially with wireless medical implants. The second focus is on healthcare sensors using ESA as the sensing agent, which saves the power and cost by eliminating the need of extra sensing modules. Specifically, miniaturized helix ESAs are integrated with drug reservoirs to function as wireless transponder sensors for real-time drug dosage monitoring. We also introduce a system level innovation of a passive wireless harmonic transponder/harmonic sniffer/frequency hopped interrogator based sensing system. The μL- liquid level resolution and absolute-accuracy passive sensing is demonstrated in the presence of strong direct coupling, background scatters, distance variance as well as near-filed human body movement interference. Furthermore, we investigate how modern ubiquitous wireless sensor networks could take advantage of sensitive nanostructure materials for enhanced performance. Here we propose a new paradigm of chemically-gated mixed modulation on a single homogeneous graphene device in which the chemical exposure directly modulates an electrical carrier signal. To make the device ubiquitously reusable, a method of precisely tuning the charge neutrality point (Vcnp) is introduced by electrochemical calibration with gate voltage pulse sequence. Such chemically gated graphene modulator can be potentially used in a harmonic transponder as a passive ubiquitous sensor node for chemical and bio sensing applications. Overall the research work presented in the dissertation will help enable cost and power-efficient wireless sensor networks in future healthcare IoTs.