Alignment compass

When the senior supply chain executive team from Alfa Laval conducted an alignment analysis throughout the company, as exemplified in Figure 10.1, it realised there were a lot of basics to be improved. The team identified four areas where alignment improvement efforts could be focused in interactions with peers from other functions in interactions with their bosses and the Board in interactions with their teams and in their own day-to-day behaviour. Some of the mechanisms and actions defined by the team are captured in Figure 10.2, which they termed their Alignment Compass. ... 

True progress, from the esoteric viewpoint, consists of the alignment of the lower, personal consciousness with the higher, spiritual consciousness, to create an efficient tool whereby the will of the Eternal may be fulfilled in Earth, even as it is in the heavens above. This, of course, is the true reason for the knowledge and training imparted by the rulers of the Mysteries—the Lords of Compassion—and is the only truly acceptable reason for any esoteric work. This is the true line of advancement, the Path that leads to the fulfillment of the Great Work, for in His will is our perfect peace. All other lines of progress, all other lines of interest, ire but partial aspects of this Path of Return, which is open to all humanity. 

If a nucleus with a non-zero spin number, which can be compared to a small magnet, is exposed to a magnetic field 7i0, with an angle 6 with the spin vector, fl and Bq will become coupled. This coupling modifies the potential energy E of the nucleus. However, fl will not necessarily align itself in the direction of the external field, in contrast to the action of a compass. 

With respect to CoMFA, the Compass method effectively reduces the number of descriptors, performing a physico-chemically based variable reduction and overcomes the problem of guessing the best conformation and alignment of the molecules. 

Sadreyev, R., and N. Grishin. 2003. COMPASS A tool for comparison of multiple protein alignments with assessment of statistical significance. J Mol Biol 326 317-26. 

Sadreyev, R. I., and N. V. Grishin. 2004. Quality of alignment comparison by COMPASS improves with inclusion of diverse confident homologs. Bioinformatics 20 818-28. 

APOLLO evidently relies on external programs to perform conformational analysis, and searches for a pharmacophore among them. This pharmacophore is used to select conformations and alignments for further analysis by Yak or Prgen. COMPASS relies primarily on the input conformations and alignments, and makes small tweaks to those. 

Further additions to the 3D-QSAR arsenal include comparative molecular similarity indices analysis (CoMSIA) [15], 4D-QSAR [16], COMPASS [17], receptor surface models [18], the pseudoreceptor approach [19], ComPharm [20], and comparative molecular surface analysis (CoMSA) [21], 3-D-invariant, alignment-free descriptor systems such as comparative molecular moment analysis (CoMMA) [22], EVA [23], WHIM [24], and ALMOND [25], have also become available. A survey of the 3D-QSAR literature reveals 1154 entries in the Chemical Abstracts Plus database of these, 79% are journal publications, 19% are conference proceedings, and four are patents related to, or using, 3D-QSAR models. As the number of potential targets amenable to drug discovery is increasing exponentially, it is likely that 3D-QSAR models and methodologies will continue to be developed in the next decade. 

Some clues to the mystery may be hidden in very tiny particles of magnetite, Fe304. Magnetite contains iron that is naturally magnetic, and collections of these particles behave like a compass needle they line up in formation aligned with the... 

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