IMPLEMENTATION OF THE LEAN-KAIZEN APPROACH IN FASTENER INDUSTRIES USING THE DATA ENVELOPMENT ANALYSIS

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Sunil Kumar

2017-04-01

Full Text Available This research paper is an attempt to improve the quality system of ten small scale fastener manufacturing industries through the implementation of the Lean-Kaizen approach using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA Charnes Cooper & Rhodes (CCR model with constant returns to scale (CRS. Output maximization is taken as the objective function to identify the percentage scope of improvements. The data is collected by paying personal visits to the selected industries for three inputs (manpower, maintenance, and training of employees and two outputs (quality, on-time delivery of their quality system. The DEA CCR model is applied to identify efficiency scores of the quality system by taking the most efficient industry as a benchmark for the rest of the organizations. The Lean-Kaizen approach is applied to identify waste / non-value added activities in outputs of the selected industries. Four Kaizen events are proposed to eliminate waste / non-value added activities in their quality system. The data collected after the Kaizen events are further analyzed by the DEA CCR model. The improvements in efficiency scores of the selected industries are presented as findings in this research paper. Two fastener industries became 100% efficient while the rest of the organizations reported 8% to 49% improvements in their efficiency scores of the quality system. The conclusions are made as the Lean-Kaizen using DEA is found to be an effective approach to improve the quality system of fastener industries. This study will be beneficial for researchers, practitioners and academicians for tackling the inefficiencies in the organization.

TAKING ADVANTAGES OF KAIZEN TO IMPROVE LABOUR PRODUCTIVITY

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T. Kostenko

2013-09-01

Full Text Available The paper encapsulates the essence of kaizen system, its main elements and the possibility of use it in enhancing labour productivity. The study examines a specific of kaizen implementation in Japan, the U.S. and Europe as well as in Ukraine and Russia. The comparative analysis of traditional and kaizen management is presented.

The "special K" in kaizen.

Science.gov (United States)

McAtee, L F

1999-05-01

Do you want a strategy that guarantees the success of kaizen in your organization? This article will provide insights as to why one organization may succeed and another fails. Learn why the "Special K" is the difference. Idea will be presented on how to develop the "Special K" in others and ourselves. You will be challenged to become a "kaizener".

Kaizen and ergonomics: the perfect marriage.

Science.gov (United States)

Rodriguez, Martin Antonio; Lopez, Luis Fernando

2012-01-01

This paper is an approach of how Kaizen (Continuous Improvement) and Ergonomics could be implemented in the field of work. The Toyota's Team Members are the owners of this job, applying tools and techniques to improve work conditions using the Kaizen Philosophy in a QCC Activity (Quality Control Circle).

Sistema Kaizen en la administracion

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Gallegos, H.

2007-01-01

Full Text Available En este artículo presentaremos la importancia que tiene el área de administración como factor de reducción de costos para la empresa aplicando el sistema kaizen. Analizaremos en forma general la administración de las empresas, enfocándonos en las áreas de oportunidad que pueden existir, así como la posible solución a esto, utilizando el sistema kaizen, obteniendo como resultado una reducción de costos, tiempos o mejoras en los procesos administrativos. También se anexa un caso practico en el cual se muestra como aplicando la metodología kaizen en las actividades administrativas podemos lograr una reducción de tiempos y/o costos todo esto causado por la reingeniería de los procesos.

Using "Kaizen" to Improve Graduate Business School Degree Programs

Science.gov (United States)

Emiliani, M. L.

2005-01-01

Purpose: To illustrate the applicability of "kaizen" in higher education. Design/methodology/approach: "Kaizen" process was used for ten courses contained in a part-time executive MS degree program in management. Findings: "Kaizen" was found to be an effective process for improving graduate business school courses and the value proposition for…

The application of kaizen as a continuous technology innovation

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Martynyuk A.V.

2016-11-01

Full Text Available this article describes the essence of technology Kaizen, which was developed in Japan to improve business processes with the aim of improving the quality of products, to improve production processes and the efficiency of management of the organization. In contrast to Western technology, Cirio, which involves the introduction of a radical innovation, technology Kaizen involves the development and implementation of small improvements on an ongoing basis, which ensures stable growth of the main processes of the company. The article presents the description and requirements of the five basic elements of the Kaizen system, and describes the activities of Kaizen teams.

The role of kaizen in creating radical performance results in a logistics service provider

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Erez Agmoni

2016-09-01

Full Text Available Background: This study investigates the role of an incremental change in organizational process in creating radical performance results in a service provider company. The role of Kaizen is established prominently in manufacturing, but is nascent in service applications. This study examines the impact of introducing Kaizen as an ODI tool-how it is applied, how it works, and whether participants believe it helps service groups form more effective working relationships that result in significant performance improvements. Methods: Exploring the evolving role of Kaizen in service contexts, this study explores a variety of facets of human communication in the context of continuous improvement and teamwork inter-organizationally. The paper consists of an archival study and an action research case study. A pre-intervention study consisting of observations, interviews, and submission of questionnaires to employees of a manufacturing and air-sea freight firm was conducted. A Kaizen intervention occurred subsequently, and a post-intervention study was then conducted. Results: Radical improvements in both companies such as 30% financial growth, 81% productivity improvement and more are demonstrated in this paper. Conclusions: Findings offer unique insights into the effects of Kaizen in creating radical performance improvements in a service company and its customer. Both qualitative and quantitative results of business, satisfaction, and productivity suggest time invested in introducing Kaizen into a service organization helps the companies improve relationships and improve the bottom line dramatically.

Kaizen practice in healthcare: a qualitative analysis of hospital employees' suggestions for improvement

OpenAIRE

Mazzocato, Pamela; Stenfors-Hayes, Terese; von Thiele Schwarz, Ulrica; Hasson, Henna; Nystr?m, Monica Elisabeth

2016-01-01

OBJECTIVES: Kaizen, or continuous improvement, lies at the core of lean. Kaizen is implemented through practices that enable employees to propose ideas for improvement and solve problems. The aim of this study is to describe the types of issues and improvement suggestions that hospital employees feel empowered to address through kaizen practices in order to understand when and how kaizen is used in healthcare. METHODS: We analysed 186 structured kaizen documents containing improvement suggest...

Cost reduction by using budgeting via the Kaizen method

OpenAIRE

Dorina Budugan; Iuliana Georgescu

2009-01-01

In the current conditions, continuous improvement is one of the main issues faced by the manag-ers of organizations. The Japanese use the term kaizen to designate continuous improvement. Budgeting via the kaizen method explicitly integrates improvement throughout the period budgeted in the budget data. Budget explanation via the kaizen method refers, on the one hand, to budgeting for the purposes of continuously improving the number of work hours per product unit, and, on the other hand, to t...

Kaizen as a business philosophy in sport organizations

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Nešić Milan

2014-01-01

Full Text Available The success of any sports organization, in addition to possessing optimal contingent and quality of all the necessary resources, is conditioned by the proper management systems. By applying appropriate business philosophy (in line with the shape and the specific characteristics of sport organizations the management seeks to achieve its objectives, particularly sportingones, which are the basis for all other (business goals of the organization. Kaizen, as a modern business philosophy, was said by its founder (Masaki Imai to be a continuous work on how to be a better man. Simply saying 'better' is not a precise definition. Kaizen is primarily a daily and continuous improvement. When it comes to sports organizations, one can also talk about the realistic possibilities for the application of kaizen philosophy in their business processes and activities. Seeing as in business organizations the kaizen system requires involvement of all employees (of course, respecting the specific position, role and responsibilities of individuals in the organizational set up it is quite logical that the sports organization and this approach may be completely acceptable. Essentially the paper, deals with the explication of the determinants of Kaizen as a business philosophy and its possible applicability to sports organizations; as well as a possible model for creating organizational change in them.

Kaizen practice in healthcare: a qualitative analysis of hospital employees' suggestions for improvement

Science.gov (United States)

Mazzocato, Pamela; Stenfors-Hayes, Terese; von Thiele Schwarz, Ulrica; Hasson, Henna

2016-01-01

Objectives Kaizen, or continuous improvement, lies at the core of lean. Kaizen is implemented through practices that enable employees to propose ideas for improvement and solve problems. The aim of this study is to describe the types of issues and improvement suggestions that hospital employees feel empowered to address through kaizen practices in order to understand when and how kaizen is used in healthcare. Methods We analysed 186 structured kaizen documents containing improvement suggestions that were produced by 165 employees at a Swedish hospital. Directed content analysis was used to categorise the suggestions into following categories: type of situation (proactive or reactive) triggering an action; type of process addressed (technical/administrative, support and clinical); complexity level (simple or complex); and type of outcomes aimed for (operational or sociotechnical). Compliance to the kaizen template was calculated. Results 72% of the improvement suggestions were reactions to a perceived problem. Support, technical and administrative, and primary clinical processes were involved in 47%, 38% and 16% of the suggestions, respectively. The majority of the kaizen documents addressed simple situations and focused on operational outcomes. The degree of compliance to the kaizen template was high for several items concerning the identification of problems and the proposed solutions, and low for items related to the test and implementation of solutions. Conclusions There is a need to combine kaizen practices with improvement and innovation practices that help staff and managers to address complex issues, such as the improvement of clinical care processes. The limited focus on sociotechnical aspects and the partial compliance to kaizen templates may indicate a limited understanding of the entire kaizen process and of how it relates to the overall organisational goals. This in turn can hamper the sustainability of kaizen practices and results. PMID:27473953

Kaizen - continuous improvement of high voltage products; Kaizen - kontinuierliche Verbesserung bei Hochspannungsprodukten

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Schwarz, M. [ABB Calor Emag Schaltanlagen AG, Hanau-Grossauheim (Germany); Goessmann, T. [ABB Calor Emag Schaltanlagen AG, Mannheim (Germany)

1999-07-12

In the actual global competition only the company can survive who cares for the continuous improvement of all business activities. The ABB Calor Emag Schaltanlagen AG at his production site in Hanau-Grossauheim has installed a specific improvement programm called KVP what is based on the ideas of Kaizen. Aim is the improvement of processes, mainly in production, concerning quality, dates, costs and environment by activating all colleagues. (orig.) [Deutsch] Im heutigen globalen Wettbewerb kann sich nur der behaupten, der sich kontinuierlich in allen Unternehmensbereichen weiterentwickelt. Die ABB Calor Emag Schaltanlagen AG hat in ihrem Werk Hanau-Grossauheim nach den Ideen des Kaizen ein werkspezifisches Programm zur kontinuierlichen Verbesserung der Prozesse in der Fertigung eingefuehrt. Ziel ist die stetige Verbesserung von Fertigungsparametern, wie Qualitaet, Termine, Kosten und Umwelt unter Einbeziehung aller Mitarbeiter. (orig.)

Quality Management in the Knowledge Based Economy – Kaizen Method

OpenAIRE

Popa Liliana Viorica

2010-01-01

In the knowledge based economy, organisations are influenced by the quality movement, Kaizen, which plays a strategic role for optimization of organizational capabilities of managers as well as of all the employees. Kaizen represents the philosophy of continuous improvement, until the economic activities inside the organisation reach zero deficiencies. In order to implement in a proper manner Kaizen into the organization, managers must decide what to improve, why to improve, who shall improve...

ROMANIAN COMPANIES DILEMMAS - BUSINESS REENGINEERING OR KAIZEN

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MIHAELA GHICAJANU

2011-01-01

Full Text Available This paper presents an analysis of two American and Japanese management strategies, the reengineering and Kaizen strategies, which can be used successfully by the Romanian companies, too. Reengineering is the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical contemporary measures of performance such as cost, quality, service and speed. Kaizen is a philosophy of life that addresses to the best who want to be more and better. It is a process of improvement that never ends and it results in many advantages. The Japanese leadership model has shown that progress in small steps, but fast, reliable and leads to long-term wins. Kaizen method, implemented in Romania, too, has brought to people satisfaction and more money in their pocket.

International transfer of Kaizen: Japanese manufacturers in the Netherlands

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Yokozawa, Kodo

2012-01-01

Kaizen, the synonym for continuous improvement, is an essential component of Japanese management system. Kaizen programs have long been employed with great success in Japanese companies. Due to their origin in Japanese organisations, and their embeddedness in Japanese context, applicability of

Kaizen practice in healthcare: a qualitative analysis of hospital employees' suggestions for improvement.

Science.gov (United States)

Mazzocato, Pamela; Stenfors-Hayes, Terese; von Thiele Schwarz, Ulrica; Hasson, Henna; Nyström, Monica Elisabeth

2016-07-29

Kaizen, or continuous improvement, lies at the core of lean. Kaizen is implemented through practices that enable employees to propose ideas for improvement and solve problems. The aim of this study is to describe the types of issues and improvement suggestions that hospital employees feel empowered to address through kaizen practices in order to understand when and how kaizen is used in healthcare. We analysed 186 structured kaizen documents containing improvement suggestions that were produced by 165 employees at a Swedish hospital. Directed content analysis was used to categorise the suggestions into following categories: type of situation (proactive or reactive) triggering an action; type of process addressed (technical/administrative, support and clinical); complexity level (simple or complex); and type of outcomes aimed for (operational or sociotechnical). Compliance to the kaizen template was calculated. 72% of the improvement suggestions were reactions to a perceived problem. Support, technical and administrative, and primary clinical processes were involved in 47%, 38% and 16% of the suggestions, respectively. The majority of the kaizen documents addressed simple situations and focused on operational outcomes. The degree of compliance to the kaizen template was high for several items concerning the identification of problems and the proposed solutions, and low for items related to the test and implementation of solutions. There is a need to combine kaizen practices with improvement and innovation practices that help staff and managers to address complex issues, such as the improvement of clinical care processes. The limited focus on sociotechnical aspects and the partial compliance to kaizen templates may indicate a limited understanding of the entire kaizen process and of how it relates to the overall organisational goals. This in turn can hamper the sustainability of kaizen practices and results. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For

Kaizen: a method of process improvement in the emergency department.

Science.gov (United States)

Jacobson, Gregory H; McCoin, Nicole Streiff; Lescallette, Richard; Russ, Stephan; Slovis, Corey M

2009-12-01

Recent position statements from health care organizations have placed a strong emphasis on continuous quality improvement (CQI). CQI finds many of its roots in kaizen, which emphasizes small, low-cost, low-risk improvements. Based on the successful Kaizen Programs at organizations such as Toyota, the authors thought the emergency department (ED) would be an ideal environment to benefit from such a program. The authors sought to create a CQI program using a suggestion-based model that did not require a large time commitment, was easy to implement, and had the potential to empower all physicians in the department. It would not take the place of other improvement efforts, but instead augment them. The hypothesis was that such a program would foster sustainable engagement of emergency physicians in system improvement efforts and lead to a continuous stream of low-cost implementable system improvement interventions. A CQI program was created for the physician staff of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, focusing on a suggestion-based model using kaizen philosophy. Lectures teaching kaizen philosophy were presented. Over the past 4 years, a methodology was developed utilizing a Web-based application, the Kaizen Tracker, which aids in the submission and implementation of suggestions that are called kaizen initiatives (KIs). The characteristics of the KIs submitted, details regarding resident and faculty participation, and the effectiveness of the Kaizen Tracker were retrospectively reviewed. There were 169, 105, and 101 KIs placed in the postimplementation calendar years 2006, 2007, and 2008, respectively. Seventy-six percent of KIs submitted thus far have identified a "process problem." Fifty-three percent of KIs submitted have led to operational changes within the ED. Ninety-three percent of the resident physicians entered at least one KI, and 73% of these residents submitted more than one KI. Sixty-nine percent of the

Kaizen planning, implementing and controlling

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García-Alcaraz, Jorge Luis; Maldonado-Macías, Aidé Aracely

2017-01-01

This book reports a literature review on kaizen, its industrial applications, critical success factors, benefits gained, journals that publish about it, main authors (research groups) and universities. Kaizen is treated in this book in three stages: planning, implementation and control. The authors provide a questionnaire designed with activities in every stage, highlighting the benefits gained in each stage. The study has been applied to more than 400 managers and leaders in continuous improvement in Mexican maquiladoras. A univariate analysis is provided to the activities in every stage. Moreover, structural equation models associating those activities with the benefits gained are presented for a statistical validation. Such a relationship between activities and benefits helps managers to identify the most important factor affecting their benefits and financial income.

Kaizen Award in Romania: the KAIZEN™ way in obtaining the continuous improvement success

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Bratu Julien

2017-07-01

Full Text Available In the times when the economic performance and sustainable management are representing two of the most challenging characteristics of the business environment, there are some methods and techniques that passed the test of time. The great majority of companies are using in the present the KAIZEN™ Business System, a system of management which has been expanding in all over the world, by having and implying the power of continuous improvement and standardization. Having as “role-model” the well-known Toyota Production System, KAIZEN™ Business System has become the fundamental way of managing a business, which led to the creation of personalized management systems for companies. In Romania, it was also developed the Kaizen by Harmony concept, as an approach of KAIZEN™ Business System, its results being highly appreciated at the international level. In the daily challenging task of changing the paradigms and mentalities, several companies succeeded in understanding the importance of KAIZEN™ Business System and have been applying the Kaizen by Harmony concept ever since. Their results are impressive, few companies reaching to the international benchmark level in their fields of activity and becoming leaders of the Romanian or European markets. Therefore, the Kaizen Award in Romania has become the proper way of acknowledging their results and efforts to strive for excellence in the endless cycle of the continuous improvement. The aim of this paper is to describe the competitive advantage offered by KAIZEN™ Business System and Kaizen by Harmony, in strong correlation with the practical approach of the case-studies representing the amazing stories of the Kaizen Award in Romania winners until the present moment. The use of these best practices will underline once again some important business characteristics that must exist in every company, for it to become and remain competitive.

Encontrando al Kaizen : un análisis teórico de la mejora continua

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Manuel Francisco Suárez Barraza

2008-12-01

Full Text Available Desde que Masaaki lmai acuño el término de Kaizen a mediados de los años ochenta, este se ha visto como un elemento clave para la competitividad de las empresas japonesas. No obstante, y a pesar de que el Kaizen ha sido definido por el autor que condujo a la luz el término, todavía sigue existiendo en la literatura sobre el tema cierta ambigüedad e inconsistencia. Además, existe una clara necesidad de desarrollar esta teoría en el campo de la dirección de operaciones.El propósito de este trabajo es analizar el Kaizen en la literatura académica y práctica con el fin de mejorar, explorar y hacer una contribución a su potencial perfil teórico. Se realizó una revisión de la literatura usando Kaizen como término de búsqueda en varias bases de datos: Proquest, Business Source Elite, Business Source Premier, Emerald, Science Direct and Google Scholar. También se consultaron libros escritos tanto por académicos como por los que lo practican. La literatura concerniente al Kaizen fue metodológicamente analizada y clasificada. Los hallazgos del estudio indican que el Kaizen es presentado bajo tres perspectivas o esferas, que incluyen una serie de principios y técnicas. Comparando los tres puntos de vista, emergieron un conjunto de principios y/o piedras angulares.Since Masaaki 'mai coined the term Kaizen in the mid eighties it has been regarded as a key element in the competitiveness of Japanese companies. However, even though Kaizen was defined by the author who created the term, writings by scholars and practitioners in the field exhibit a certain degree of ambiguity and inconsistency. Finally, there is a clear need to develop this theory in the field of operations management. Kaizen in the academic and practitioner literature in order to better understand it and further explore and contribute to its potential theoretical profile. A literature review was carried out using Kaizen as a search term. Various databases were used for this

Kaizen: The Search for Quality.

Science.gov (United States)

Zimmerman, William J.

1991-01-01

The Japanese concept of Kaizen (continuous improvement) may be applied to higher education institutions. Focus is on improvement of the products produced, the process by which they are delivered, and the people involved in the products and the process. (SK)

[The organizational benefits of the Kaizen approach at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Sherbrooke (CHUS)].

Science.gov (United States)

Comtois, Jonathan; Paris, Yvon; Poder, Thomas G; Chaussé, Sylvain

2013-01-01

The purpose of this study was to calculate the cost savings associated with using the kaizen approach in our hospital. Originally developed in Japan, the kaizen approach, based on the idea of continuous improvement, has considerable support in North America, including in the Quebec health care system. This study assessed the first fifteen kaizen projects at the CHUS. Based on an economic evaluation, we showed that using the kaizen approach can result in substantial cost savings. The success of the kaizen approach requires compliance with specific prerequisites. The future of the approach will depend on our ability to comply with these prerequisites. More specifically, such compliance will determine whether the approach is merely a passing fad or a strategy for improving our management style to promote greater efficiency.

A Literature Review on Kaizen : What Have We Learned over the Past 30 Years?

OpenAIRE

Shang, Huaxing

2018-01-01

In order to survive and maintain competitive advantages in a specific market, an enterprise needs to continuously improve the level of its products' quality by using appropriate technologies, systematically increase productivity and shorten lead time. Kaizen is a significant and recognized management philosophy that can help enterprises achieve these goals, no matter what their products are. Since the concept of Kaizen was definitively put forward by Imai Masaki in 1986, Kaizen management has...

The role of Japanese expatriates when Japanese companies transfer kaizen principles to their overseas affiliates

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Yokozawa, Kodo; Steenhuis, H.J.; de Bruijn, E.J.

2011-01-01

This paper examines the challenges faced by Japanese manufacturers during the process of transferring kaizen to overseas subsidiaries. Case study research was conducted among l5 Japanese manufacturers in the Netherlands. The first-level analysis confirms the conclusions from the literature that the

"Kaizen" and Technology Transfer Instructors as Work-based Learning Facilitators in Overseas Transplants: A Case Study.

Science.gov (United States)

Elsey, Barry; Fujiwara, Asahi

2000-01-01

A study of 240 instructors of kaizen (continuous quality improvement) and technology transfer in overseas assignments for Toyota found that commitment to work and corporate cultural values were significant. Instructors recognized the responsibility and challenges of communicating and transferring their know-how across cultures. (SK)

Quick and continuous improvement through kaizen blitz.

Science.gov (United States)

McNichols, T; Hassinger, R; Bapst, G W

1999-05-01

It is our objective to provide you with a step-by-step approach to conducting a kaizen blitz within two days and describe how to achieve dramatic performance improvement with employee buy-in through this process. Kaizen blitz has been used dozens of times by the authors, and in some instances the same area has been blitzed as many as four times, with significant improvements each and every time. Employees have even taken it on themselves to conduct informal blitzes as a continuing improvement effort after a formal blitz has been conducted in their area. Blitzes can succeed in a variety of environments. The morning after the employees of one company attended this presentation, they self initiated a mini-blitz and discovered opportunities for improvement that they enthusiastically presented to management.

Kaizen: a process improvement model for the business of health care and perioperative nursing professionals.

Science.gov (United States)

Tetteh, Hassan A

2012-01-01

Kaizen is a proven management technique that has a practical application for health care in the context of health care reform and the 2010 Institute of Medicine landmark report on the future of nursing. Compounded productivity is the unique benefit of kaizen, and its principles are change, efficiency, performance of key essential steps, and the elimination of waste through small and continuous process improvements. The kaizen model offers specific instruction for perioperative nurses to achieve process improvement in a five-step framework that includes teamwork, personal discipline, improved morale, quality circles, and suggestions for improvement. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Rapid-fire improvement with short-cycle kaizen.

Science.gov (United States)

Heard, E

1999-05-01

Continuous improvement is an attractive idea, but it is typically more myth than reality. SCK is no myth. It delivers dramatic improvements in traditional measures quickly. SCK accomplishes this via kaizens: rapid, repeated, time-compressed changes for the better in bite-sized chunks of the business.

Affecting the value chain through supplier kaizen.

Science.gov (United States)

Forman, C R; Vargas, D H

1999-02-01

In the aerospace industry, typically 60 percent of a product's cost and 70 percent of the lead time are due to purchased material. To affect price and customer responsiveness, improvement initiatives must be extended into the supply chain. Many companies have developed supply base management systems that include long-term agreements with suppliers, partnering with suppliers in risk taking and product design, information sharing, and quality and delivery rating systems. The premise is that suppliers are an extension of the factory. But to take full advantage of customer-supplier relationships, the suppliers must be "developed" in the same manner as a manufacturing unit. Supplier kaizen is a method of bringing suppliers to the same level of operations as the parent company, through training and improvement projects, to ensure superior performance and nurture the trust that is required for strong partnerships. This article describes Sikorsky Aircraft's use of kaizen to improve its supply base management.

PRINSIP-PRINSIP KAIZEN JEPANG DALAM PERSPEKTIF AL-QUR’AN DAN SUMBANGANNYA BAGI PSIKOLOGI PENDIDIKAN ISLAM

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Azam Syukur Rahmatullah

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Abstract: The paper discuss and study about Kaizen principle, that is Japanese culture principle and its quality have to attest and aims to point of successfully both individual and group also. This Kaizen principle substances and values that contained in it apparently have discussed long time ago by founding further of Islam, and have taught in al-Qur’an. Unfortunately the people who studied it and become expert precisely are Japanese people that isn’t moslem/Islam. So, in this short paper will explain the strong relevance/great relevance between Kaizen principle and al-Qur’an and also the implication for the psychology of Islamic Education.

The influence of national level factors on international kaizen transfer: an exploratory study in the Netherlands

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Yokozawa, Kodo; Steenhuis, H.J.

2013-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this research study was to examine the international transfer of kaizen or continuous improvement. The central research question was formulated as: what national level factors influence the transfer of kaizen, and how? Design/methodology/approach: In the study, a survey

The Mediating Effect of Kaizen between Total Quality Management (TQM) and Business Performance

Science.gov (United States)

Shan, Ang Wei; Fauzi Ahmad, Mohd; Hisyamudin Muhd Nor, Nik

2016-11-01

Every customer preference is different but yet important. The global market is shifting rapidly, organizations are needed to continuously identify new opportunity to obtain competitive advantages. Literature suggested that manufacturing companies are needed to differentiate themselves through emphasize on quality and continuous improvement in product and services as a crucial part to secure and success in the future. The Total Quality Management (TQM) practices has developed a strong bearing on growth and competitiveness in market. Therefore, a proper continuous improvement (Kaizen) practice is needed to eliminate waste and value added in production to remain competitiveness and retained the potential customer. However, based on the previous study it had indicated an inconsistent result between TQM and BP. Besides that, researcher also less emphasized on mediator in previous work. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to recommend the relationship between TQM and business performance with a mediator's effect of Kaizen. This proposed model attempt to create knowledge to both academician and company players to acquire a better understanding among the TQM and Kaizen practices. Consequently, the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) techniques is applying to identify and evaluate the relationship among TQM, Kaizen, and business performance in developing a new TQM model.

Kaizen method for esophagectomy patients: improved quality control, outcomes, and decreased costs.

Science.gov (United States)

Iannettoni, Mark D; Lynch, William R; Parekh, Kalpaj R; McLaughlin, Kelley A

2011-04-01

The majority of costs associated with esophagectomy are related to the initial 3 days of hospital stay requiring intensive care unit stays, ventilator support, and intraoperative time. Additional costs arise from hospital-based services. The major cost increases are related to complications associated with the procedure. We attempted to define these costs and identify expense management by streamlining care through strict adherence to patient care maps, operative standardization, and rapid discharge planning to reduce variability. Utilizing methods of Kaizen philosophy we evaluated all processes related to the entire experience of esophageal resection. This process has taken over 5 years to achieve, with quality and cost being tracked over this time period. Cost analysis included expenses related to intensive care unit, anesthesia, disposables, and hospital services. Quality improvement measures were related to intraoperative complications, in-hospital complications, and postoperative outcomes. The Institutional Review Board approved the use of anonymous data from standard clinical practice because no additional treatment was planned (observational study). Utilizing a continuous process improvement methodology, a 43% reduction in cost per case has been achieved with a significant increase in contribution margin for esophagectomy. The length of stay has been reduced from 14 days to 5. With intraoperative and postoperative standardization the leak rate has dropped from 12% to less than 3% to no leaks in our current Kaizen modification of care in our last 64 patients. Utilizing lean manufacturing techniques and continuous process evaluation we have attempted to eliminate variability, standardized the phases of care resulting in improved outcomes, decreased length of stay, and improved contribution margins. These Kaizen improvements require continuous interventions, strict adherence to care maps, and input from all levels for quality improvements. Copyright © 2011 The

KAIZEN Application

OpenAIRE

Špavor, Peter

2012-01-01

V teoretické části této diplomové práce je nejprve rozebrán pojem KAIZEN, v následující kapitole jsou popsány jednotlivé struktury v organizacích. Dále jsou v práci uvedeny požadavky příslušných norem (ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 27001, OHSAS 18001). V závěru teoretické části je vysvětlen audit, jeho typy, druhy a samotný průběh auditu. Praktická část obsahuje Projekt škola – certifikační orgán – organizace. V projektu je řešeno zapojení studentů do interních auditů ve vybraných organizacích, je...

The Kaizen Connection: How Companies Pick Tomorrow's Workers.

Science.gov (United States)

Feuer, Dale; Lee, Chris

1988-01-01

Kaizen is a Japanese management concept that means gradual, ongoing improvement involving everyone from top management to production workers. This concept is starting to appear in American companies, and it requires the personnel department to do a much more thorough assessment of job applicants, testing for leadership skills, interpersonal…

ANALISIS PENGARUH KAIZEN TERHADAP KINERJA KARYAWAN PT FUMAKILLA INDONESIA UNIT BANJARMASIN

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Muhammad Iman Ramadhan

2016-04-01

Full Text Available This  research  aimed  to  identify  and  analyze  the  infl uence  of  kaizen  which consist of seiri (X1, seiton (X2, seiso (X3, seikestu (X4, and shitsuke (X5 as independent variables either simultaneously or partially to the employees’ performance (Y as dependent variable at PT Fumakilla Indonesia, Banjarmasin unit.  The instrument used in this research was questionnaire and then it distributed to all production employees (105 people at PT Fumakilla Indonesia, Banjarmasin Unit based on a sample census. The variable measured by using Likert Scale from 1 to 5. Multiple linear regression analysis also used to determine the effect of independent variables, namely seiri (X1, seiton (X2, seiso (X3, seikestu (X4, and shitsuke (X5 to the dependent variable, that is employees’ performance (Y simultaneously or partially. The results indicate that kaizen which consist of seiri (X1, seiton (X2, seiso (X3,  seikestu  (X4,  and  shitsuke  (X5  simultaneously  affect  the  employees’ performance (Y. Whereas, as partially, only seiri (X1, seiton (X2, and seiso (X3 signifi cantly have infl uence to the employees’ performance, whereas seikestu (X4 and shitsuke (X5 have no signifi cant infl uence. Keywords : Kaizen, employees’ performance

Ares Launch Vehicles Lean Practices Case Study

Science.gov (United States)

Doreswamy, Rajiv, N.; Self, Timothy A.

2008-01-01

This viewgraph presentation describes test strategies and lean philisophies and practices that are applied to Ares Launch Vehicles. The topics include: 1) Testing strategy; 2) Lean Practices in Ares I-X; 3) Lean Practices Applied to Ares I-X Schedule; 4) Lean Event Results; 5) Lean, Six Sigma, and Kaizen Practices in the Ares Projects Office; 6) Lean and Kaizen Success Stories; and 7) Ares Six Sigma Practices.

GELECEĞİN MALİYETLERİNİN KONTROLÜNDE YENİ BİR YAKLAŞIM: HEDEF VE KAIZEN MALİYETLEME

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ZEYNEP TÜRK

2013-05-01

Full Text Available Firmalar tarafından modern üretim teknolojilerinin kullanılması yeni maliyet ve yönetim muhasebesi yöntemlerinin geliştirilmesine ve uygulanmasına neden olmuştur. Hedef ve kaizen maliyetleme bu yeni sistemlerin örneklerindendir. Japon elektronik ve araç üreticileri hedef ve kaizen maliyetlemeyi yoğun bir şekilde kullanmışlardır. Hedef ve kaizen maliyetleme, firmalara bugünün dizaynı ile geleceğin maliyetlerinin düşürülmesinde ve kontrol edilmesinde yardımcı olmaktadır. Çalışmamızda, söz konusu maliyet sistemleri ayrıntıları ile incelenecektir.

Kaizen aplicado à logística

OpenAIRE

Santos, Ana Catarina Almeida

2011-01-01

O presente trabalho propõe alcançar um aumento de produtividade e consequente redução de custos e desperdícios ajudando o departamento logístico da Empresa Revigrés – Industria de Revestimentos de Grés, Lda, a tornar-se mais eficiente, através da aplicação da filosofia kaizen que propõe melhorias no desempenho por implementação de pequenas ações. O objetivo deste projeto é a melhoria do departamento logístico globalmente, para isso houve o recurso a pesquisas e levantamento ...

Transferencia de conocimiento dentro de la empresa: análisis de variables precursoras en un entorno lean-kaizen

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Aurora Irma Máynez-Guaderrama

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Introducción: La manufactura esbelta es un enfoque sistemático que identifica y elimina el desperdicio, a través del mejoramiento continuo. Una actividad común en ella son los eventos kaizen, los cuales impactan a los subsistemas técnico y humano de la organización, pero desafortunadamente son pocos los trabajos que indagan sobre su efecto en el segundo subsistema. Por ello, este trabajo busca contribuir con evidencia empírica de variables asociadas al mismo, particularmente las relaciones entre la cultura organizacional y la transferencia de conocimiento tácito dentro de la empresa, a través de la mediación de la comprensión de la necesidad de kaizen, el espíritu de trabajo y el compromiso afectivo organizacional. Método: Se diseñó una investigación cuantitativa, empírica y de sección transversal, basada en la revisión literaria del espíritu de trabajo, la comprensión de la necesidad de kaizen, el compromiso afectivo, la cultura organizacional y la transferencia de conocimiento tácito dentro de la empresa. El muestreo fue no probabilístico por conveniencia. Se aplicaron 100 encuestas en una empresa localizada en Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, que labora en un entorno lean y donde cotidianamente se llevan a cabo eventos kaizen. Como técnica de análisis estadístico se utilizó la modelación a través de ecuaciones estructurales [SEM] con base en mínimos cuadrados parcializados [PLS], por su utilidad para estimar modelos que utilizan variables latentes. Resultados: Se encontró que la cultura organizacional influye de forma directa e indirecta a la transferencia de conocimiento tácito dentro de la empresa. La cultura organizacional ayuda a la comprensión de la necesidad de kaizen [condición que apoya al éxito de los eventos kaizen], y ésta incide favorablemente sobre el espíritu de trabajo de los empleados. Por otra parte, el compromiso organizacional, recibe influencia positiva y significativa, tanto del espíritu de

INSTRUMENTOS PARA GERENCIAMENTO DE CUSTOS: CUSTO-META, CUSTO-PADRÃO E CUSTO KAIZEN

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Daiane Fraga Lerner

2007-01-01

Full Text Available No mundo competitivo dos negócios, com o avanço de tecnologias e consumidores cada vez mais exigentes, as empresas buscam constantemente novas formas de gerenciar seus custos. A contabilidade não deve restringir-se apenas à mensuração dos estoques, mas precisa se adequar às novas exigências de mercado, fornecendo informações úteis para a tomada de decisões pelos gestores. Nesse contexto, surgem novos instrumentos para o controle gerencial. Nesta pesquisa mostra-se, em um único estudo, uma técnica de gerenciamento de custos na fase de planejamento do produto (custo-meta, outro utilizado na fase de produção (custo-padrão e um sistema de melhoria contínua (custo kaizen. O objetivo é expor a utilidade e as relações existentes entre estas técnicas. Para tanto, optou-se por apresentar os sistemas na seqüência em que influenciam na determinação e ocorrência dos custos dos produtos. Sendo assim, apresenta-se primeiro o custo-meta e logo após o custopadrão. Por último, analisa-se o custo kaizen. Concluise que estas três ferramentas utilizadas em conjunto auxiliam para que a empresa atinja o resultado esperado, através da possibilidade de gerenciamento de seus custos. Palavras-Chave: Custo-Meta. Custo-Padrão. Custo Kaizen.

Gemba Kaizen Dan Hubungannya Dengan Penerapan Sistem Manajemen Kualitas Iso 9001

OpenAIRE

Fitri, Muhamad

2016-01-01

Gemba kaizen adalah budaya Jepang untuk melakukan perbaikan dan peningkatan secara terus atau berkesinambungan di tempat kerja. Budaya Jepang ini diterapkan oleh kebanyakan Perusahaan Jepang di dunia. ISO 9001 sebagai sistem manajemen kualitas yang dikeluarkan oleh badan Dunia IOS (International Organization for Standardization) juga menekankan kepada organisasi mulai dari manajemen puncak sampai ke level bawah untuk melakukan peningkatan berkesinambungan ...

Modelo para o desenvolvimento de projetos kaizen para a indústria da construção civil

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André Luiz Vivan

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Resumo O kaizen é um dos princípios que sustentam o Sistema Toyota de Produção (STP como filosofia, porém é árduo seu uso na Indústria da Construção Civil (ICC devido às suas inerentes características de produção. Assim, foi desenvolvido um modelo que auxilia o profissional da ICC a desenvolver de forma sistemática um projeto kaizen, por meio do uso de ferramentas de diagnóstico e análise do sistema de produção. O método de pesquisa é definido por três etapas sequenciais governadas por duas estratégias de pesquisa: teórico-conceitual, para as atividades de revisão bibliográfica e desenvolvimento do modelo, e pesquisa-ação visando à aplicação em um canteiro de obras voltado para a produção de habitações. Como resultado da pesquisa-ação, por meio do modelo, foram identificados e classificados nove problemas no sistema produtivo, suas raízes e oportunidades de kaizen. A proposta de sistematização da geração de oportunidades de kaizen para a ICC contribui diretamente para a qualidade dos produtos finais e redução de custos nos canteiros de obras, pois possibilita a melhoria contínua dos processos a partir de maiores níveis de valor agregado, com a redução do uso de recursos na produção.

6th Annual National Small Business Conference

Science.gov (United States)

2009-06-03

Extension Partnership – MIT Lean Advancement Initiative – Customers • Lean Tools – Value Stream Mapping – Kaizen Events Center for Management...Blue denotes kaizen events Most suppliers did not have in-house lean capability therefore the OEM and customer facilitated the events 36 Center for...Management & Economic Research 37 Kaizen Events • Kaizen is the process of: – Identifying & eliminating waste – as quickly as possible – at the

STUDIES AND RESEARCH ON THE CREATION OF A THEORETICAL BASIS FOR THE PURPOSE OF IMPROVING A PRODUCT/PROCESS THROUGH THE KAIZEN METHOD

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SPIRIDON Cosmin

2012-11-01

Full Text Available Kaizen is a Japanese word which is today used as an international mark for quality management. Composed by two words, “kai” which means “change” and “zen” which means “good”, kaizen translates into “continuous improvement” which describes a simple philosophy on how to improve the quality of a product or a process, by taking small steps each day to obtain the desired improvements.

International transfer of kaizen: an empirical study of Japanese manufacturers in the Netherlands

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Yokozawa, Kodo; Steenhuis, H.J.; de Bruijn, E.J.

2010-01-01

In the past few decades, a number of studies have been published that have identified specific Japanese approaches to management as being superior to other types of approaches (e.g. Toyota Production System). Recently, one of the specific issues that received attention is the concept of kaizen.

Kaizen: Uma Metodologia Inovadora na Siderurgia

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Hericson Estanislau Prata

2017-04-01

Full Text Available A racionalização do processo produtivo industrial, por meio da redução dos desperdícios e da modernização do processo produtivo, com a adoção do Sistema Toyota de Produção (Produção Enxuta, tem sido adotada por uma parte importante das indústrias no mundo. O objetivo deste artigo é descrever essa metodologia empregada pelo grupo de melhoria de fase intensiva adotado na Vallourec Tubos do Brasil S.A. Como resultado, verificou-se que o processo utilizado para a implantação de mudanças em curto prazo foi a semana intensiva, também conhecida como evento Kaizen na indústria automotiva.

Kaizen and the Art of University Administration. AIR 1992 Annual Forum Paper.

Science.gov (United States)

Muffo, John A.; Krallman, John D.

This paper examines how the concepts of strategic planning, assessment, and Total Quality Management fit together and relate to one another in the field of higher education. Central to the explanation of how these topics are related is the Japanese philosophy of Kaizen, a driving force behind the quality improvement movement in that country. The…

A kaizen approach to food safety quality management in the value chain from wheat to bread

CERN Document Server

Hill, Victoria

2014-01-01

This book provides a Management Science approach to quality management in food production. Aspects of food quality, product conformance and reliability/food safety are examined, starting with wheat and ending with its value chain transformation into bread. Protein qualities that influence glycemic index levels in bread are used to compare the value chains of France and the US. With Kaizen models the book shows how changes in these characteristics are the result of management decisions made by the wheat growers in response to government policy and industry strategy. Lastly, it provides step-by-step instructions on how to apply kaizen methodology and Deming's work on quality improvement to make the HACCPs (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) in food safety systems more robust.

Výrobní aplikace KAIZEN

OpenAIRE

Novák, Jaroslav

2010-01-01

Teoretická část diplomové práce popisuje metodu Kaizen a její části, která byla vyvinuta v Japonsku po druhé světové válce. Jednou z částí této metody je pojem 3MU, který zahrnuje definici nedostatků ovlivňující každý podnik. Jedním z pojmů v této části je pojem „Muda“, který označuje plýtvání. Praktická část se zabývá plýtváním v oblasti produktivity v jednom z výrobních středisek společnosti Bosch Diesel s.r.o. v Jihlavě. Jednotlivé operace tohoto výrobního střediska jsou posuzovány z hledi...

Implementación del Kaizen en méxico: un estudio exploratorio de una aproximación gerencial japonesa en el contexto latinoamericano

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Manuel F. Suárez-Barraza

2011-09-01

Full Text Available En los últimos años, los términos Lean Thinking y Kaizen han cobrado gran importancia en la gestión operacional y estratégica de las organizaciones de este nuevo siglo. dicha relevancia se ha centrado en la búsqueda constante por reducir los costos operativos mejorando con ello la productividad y la competitividad de las organizaciones multinacionales. Por ello, parte de la pregunta de investigación que rige este artículo es: ¿Cómo se presenta la implementación del Kaizen en un contexto organizacional como es una empresa multinacional en méxico? el propósito del estudio es, por tanto, explorar empíricamente la implementación del Kaizen en algunas organizaciones multinacionales de méxico, con el fin de analizarlas y compararlas con los esquemas teóricos del tema. la investigación es de corte cualitativo siguiendo la estrategia de múltiples casos de estudio. se seleccionaron dos empresas multinacionales ubicadas en la zona industrial de toluca del estado de méxico, méxico. los resultados demuestran, con base en la evidencia empírica, que existe una brecha entre los esquemas teóricos del Kaizen y la realidad práctica estudiada en los dos casos de estudios seleccionados. Partiendo de estos resultados del estudio exploratorio fue posible proponer cuatro proposiciones teóricas que condensan el presente trabajo de investigación. este artículo, a pesar de ser de carácter exploratorio, busca generar un aporte teórico de lo que ocurre en las empresas multinacionales ubicadas en méxico en materia de la implementación de una técnica gerencial japonesa como el Kaizen en un contexto latinoamericano.

Teaching experience of application of Kaizen in a company

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Blanca Alhely Ceballos Cháve

2017-06-01

Full Text Available The paper presents the relationship between teaching and business, highlighting the importance of training in the workplace. Specifically, the professional experience of one of the signers of the article is described when passing from student to graduate and work as an Industrial Engineer. Once in the company, when the problems were detected, a training program was elaborated to give a workshop on Kaizen that solved those problems. To this end, the workshop focused on the 5S methodology. The result was that it began to be implemented in the other plants of the company where the same problem existed.

Kaizen Costing: Experience and Prospects of Implementation at Industrial Enterprises of Ukraine

OpenAIRE

Kachalay Valeriy V.

2013-01-01

The article focuses on a necessity to apply effective methods of cost accounting of products for gaining competitive advantages by the Ukrainian industrial enterprises in the world market of goods and services. It describes the essence of the kaizen costing as a process of continuous and gradual improvement and also identifies factors, which de-stimulate rapid propagation of these methods of cost accounting at domestic enterprises. It provides experience of its implementation at the Ukrainian...

Implementation of lean manufacturing to reduce waste in production line with value stream mapping approach and Kaizen in division sanding upright piano, case study in: PT. X

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Santosa W. A.

2018-01-01

Full Text Available PT. XY produces musical instruments such as Upright Pianos and Grand Pianos. Due to a competitive competition, a good quality product is highly required as well as increasing the production scale. To achieve these objectives, company needs to reduce wastes occurred in its production lines, particularly in the division of sanding panel upright piano (UP which produces type of PE B1 pianos. High cycle time and lead-time are caused by wastes in UP panel sanding division. Therefore, it is needed improvements to be applied here so that the production lines will be run more effectively and efficiently. This study aims to identify wastes using Value Stream Mapping (VSM as a tool of lean manufacturing and to implement the improvements using Kaizen. It is found that the wastes are motion and waiting. Furthermore, the improvements (kaizen are focused on reducing motion and waiting wastes. It is shown that cycle time decreased from 51.16 minutes to 41.90 minutes, work in process or inventory can be reduced to 24 pcs over 32 pcs, and the lead-time is 0.167 days of 0.222 days.

Improving efficiency and safety in external beam radiation therapy treatment delivery using a Kaizen approach.

Science.gov (United States)

Kapur, Ajay; Adair, Nilda; O'Brien, Mildred; Naparstek, Nikoleta; Cangelosi, Thomas; Zuvic, Petrina; Joseph, Sherin; Meier, Jason; Bloom, Beatrice; Potters, Louis

Modern external beam radiation therapy treatment delivery processes potentially increase the number of tasks to be performed by therapists and thus opportunities for errors, yet the need to treat a large number of patients daily requires a balanced allocation of time per treatment slot. The goal of this work was to streamline the underlying workflow in such time-interval constrained processes to enhance both execution efficiency and active safety surveillance using a Kaizen approach. A Kaizen project was initiated by mapping the workflow within each treatment slot for 3 Varian TrueBeam linear accelerators. More than 90 steps were identified, and average execution times for each were measured. The time-consuming steps were stratified into a 2 × 2 matrix arranged by potential workflow improvement versus the level of corrective effort required. A work plan was created to launch initiatives with high potential for workflow improvement but modest effort to implement. Time spent on safety surveillance and average durations of treatment slots were used to assess corresponding workflow improvements. Three initiatives were implemented to mitigate unnecessary therapist motion, overprocessing of data, and wait time for data transfer defects, respectively. A fourth initiative was implemented to make the division of labor by treating therapists as well as peer review more explicit. The average duration of treatment slots reduced by 6.7% in the 9 months following implementation of the initiatives (P = .001). A reduction of 21% in duration of treatment slots was observed on 1 of the machines (P Kaizen approach has the potential to improve operational efficiency and safety with quick turnaround in radiation therapy practice by addressing non-value-adding steps characteristic of individual department workflows. Higher effort opportunities are identified to guide continual downstream quality improvements. Copyright © 2017 American Society for Radiation Oncology. Published by

Strategi Peningkatan Daya Saing Usaha Kecil dan Menengah (UKM Berbasis Kaizen

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Andi Suranta Meliala

2016-04-01

Perekonomian adalah salah satu faktor kemajuan suatu negara. Setiap negara bersaing ketat untuk meningkatkan produktvitas perekonomiannya. Perekonomian Indonesia saat ini menempati urutan ke 17 dunia. Pertumbuhan ekonomi di Indonesia yang sangat signifikan ternyata tidak lepas dari peran dari usaha kecil dan menengah (UKM yang menopang pertumbuhan ekspor dan impor, salah satu UKM yang bisa diunggulkan adalah UKM pembuatan sepatu. Peran UKM yang begitu besar dan signifikan harus terus dijaga dan dikembangkan untuk bisa bersaing pada era persaingan global seperti penerapan Masyarakat Ekonomi Asean (MEA pada januari 2015. Permasalahan yang mengganggu perkembangan dan produktivitas dari UKM sepatu, khususnya di sekitar Kota Medan akan dibagi kedalam 4 kategori, yaitu:(1 manusia, (2 proses, (3 fasilitas, dan (4 Persaingan usaha. Berdasarkan hasil penelitian, diketahui bahwa permasalahan yang paling utama yang mempengaruhi perkembangan UKM sepatu di Kota Medan adalah sumber daya manusianya. Pemecahan permasalahan ini akan dilakukan dengan strategi Kaizen (5S yang akan dipadukan dengan konsep Training within industry (TWI dan konsep P-Course. Perbaikan ini akan menghasilkan strategi-strategi untuk peningkatan produktivitas kerja UKM secara keseluruhan dengan fokus utama adalah pekerja dan sistem kerjanya. Strategi ini diharapkan mampu membenahi kelemahan UKM sepatu yang ada, guna menghadapi ketatnya persaingan global yang akan datang.  Kata kunci: Usaha kecil dan menengah (UKM, kaizen, training within industry (TWI,konsep p-course, konsep 5S

Development of the workflow kine systems for support on KAIZEN.

Science.gov (United States)

Mizuno, Yuki; Ito, Toshihiko; Yoshikawa, Toru; Yomogida, Satoshi; Morio, Koji; Sakai, Kazuhiro

2012-01-01

In this paper, we introduce the new workflow line system consisted of the location and image recording, which led to the acquisition of workflow information and the analysis display. From the results of workflow line investigation, we considered the anticipated effects and the problems on KAIZEN. Workflow line information included the location information and action contents information. These technologies suggest the viewpoints to help improvement, for example, exclusion of useless movement, the redesign of layout and the review of work procedure. Manufacturing factory, it was clear that there was much movement from the standard operation place and accumulation residence time. The following was shown as a result of this investigation, to be concrete, the efficient layout was suggested by this system. In the case of the hospital, similarly, it is pointed out that the workflow has the problem of layout and setup operations based on the effective movement pattern of the experts. This system could adapt to routine work, including as well as non-routine work. By the development of this system which can fit and adapt to industrial diversification, more effective "visual management" (visualization of work) is expected in the future.

REDUCTION OF CYCLE TIME IN SCREW AIR COMPRESSOR ASSEMBLY LINE USING KAIZEN SURVEY

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D. Rajenthirakumar

2015-12-01

Full Text Available In this competitive world, any company has to fulfill its customer needs to survive in the market. Lean manufacturing is a technique that can be adopted in a company to improve the quality of its products, reduce the cost of the production and also deliver the products in less time. The goal of this work is to show the applicability of lean manufacturing’s body of knowledge in a screw air compressor manufacturing company. Here, the main objective is to evolve and test several methodologies to eliminate wastes in the assembly line as the company at present unable to meet the customer demand. A systematic approach is suggested for the implementation of lean principles to showcase that lean could be applied to the compressor assembly line to enhance the productivity thereby making the line more efficient. In the current assembly line there was no work standardization followed by absence of kaizen that has led to an increased assembly time. Thus with the help of lean tools and techniques such as 5S, kaizen, standardization, visual management, poke yoke and string diagram the total cycle time has been reduced from 236 to 209 minutes. This reduction has benefitted the company in meeting the customer demand, increased profit and work satisfaction.

KAIZEN METHODOLOGY IN QUALITY MANAGEMENT TO REDUCE WASTES

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Boca Gratiela Dana

2011-01-01

Full Text Available Kaizen cannot deal with all problems and one size does not fit all but a flexibleimplementation opens up the dimension of collaboration between the workforce, themanagement and the technical departments. In every company, it operates in a differentway to suit the circumstances but all consider it indispensable. It is more flexible andtolerant than may be expected; it is a tool for integration of technological strategy with thebusiness strategy of the organization. Technology is forcing organizations to become morecompetitive as at every instance innovations take place. Recent innovations in the form oftotal quality management, reengineering work process, flexible manufacturing system haveonly one thing in common - well serving the customer by improved operational efficiency.For instant Quality Management advocates emphasize the importance of achieving higherquality and flexibility at lower level of cost and waste.

Otimização de um programa Kaizen em uma empresa do setor metal mecânico

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Josimara Santos Cardoso

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Manter um programa de melhoria contínua ativo dentro das organizações é um desafio permanente para os gestores. Após a implantação, muitos programas perdem força e caem em descrédito. Este artigo apresenta o programa Kaizen em uma empresa do setor metal mecânico, tendo como objetivo avaliar as etapas de implantação, as facilidades e dificuldades enfrentadas após a implantação e contribuir com sugestões de melhorias. O escopo do trabalho fundamenta-se na base Kaizen e suas práticas de implantação, focando na mudança cultural e comportamental dos funcionários de chão de fábrica. O resultado mostrou que são grandes as chances de abandonar a ferramenta após o surgimento das primeiras melhorias. Para evitar isso, o comprometimento das lideranças e os resultados obtidos em curto período de tempo são elementos vitais.

Kaizen en el gemba de jean para microempresas textiles cantón Pelileo

OpenAIRE

Miño, Gloria Elizabeth; Moyano Alulema, Julio César; García Flores, Alcides Napoléon

2017-01-01

  La aplicación del Kaizen toma importancia en la gestión operativa, productiva de la empresa industrial moderna, debido a que se utiliza un conjunto de conceptos, técnicas y procedimientos que ayudan buscar el mejoramiento continuo, al ser las acciones diarias sencillas de todos los participantes que buscan la solución de los problemas, está filosofía busca reducir costos operativos para el mejoramiento productivo empresarial. Las actividades se realizan en el Gemba, término gerencia...

Root Cause Analysis and Productivity Improvement Of An Apparel Industry In Bangladesh Through Kaizen Implementation

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Taposh Kumar Kapuria

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Garments industry is playing the pioneering role in improving Bangladesh economic condition. It was started in late 1970’s and now the leading foreign currency earner for Bangladesh. It’s no dubiousness to say that, the Bangladesh garment industry is ameliorating garment’s service quality and innovative design features to exist in the global competitive market. Global competition in the garment’s market is changing day to day. Leading garment manufacturer from all over the world are adopting new innovative features and techniques to sustain global fierce competitive market. But the point is, Bangladeshi garment manufacturers are not lingered. They are also emphasizing on better service quality by adding latest design features and using the latest technologies to the garments. The sole purpose of this paper is to identify the root causes of sewing defects of an apparel industry in Bangladesh and continuous improvement in reducing the defects through Kaizen (Continuous Improvement system. In short, productivity improvement of the apparel industry. Our studied garment manufacturing company is “ABONTI Color Tex. Ltd.”. Pareto Analysis is used to identify the top defect items. Cause-Effect Analysis helped to identify the root causes of sewing defects. Then, Kaizen is used for continuous improvement of the minimization of sewing defects.

Kaizen en el gemba de jean para microempresas textiles cantón Pelileo

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Gloria Elizabeth Miño

2017-07-01

Full Text Available La aplicación del Kaizen toma importancia en la gestión operativa, productiva de la empresa industrial moderna, debido a que se utiliza un conjunto de conceptos, técnicas y procedimientos que ayudan buscar el mejoramiento continuo, al ser las acciones diarias sencillas de todos los participantes que buscan la solución de los problemas, está filosofía busca reducir costos operativos para el mejoramiento productivo empresarial. Las actividades se realizan en el Gemba, término gerencial japonés utilizado para describir el puesto o lugar de trabajo (Work station, donde la productividad-competitividad tiene que ir unida a la calidad, obligando a todos los participantes a mejorar el trabajo en equipo en forma sistemática, para evitar las mudas, tiempos perdidos por excesivas esperas e incrementar el valor añadido al producto en elaboración, utilizando para aquello diagramas propios de estudio de trabajo, en especial el de análisis de procesos, recorrido para el mejoramiento productivo del antes y después de la confección textil en este caso pantalones jean´s, este tipo de prendas se realiza en la ciudad de Pelileo la cual no solo es comercializada en la misma, sino que es para la población a nivel nacional.   Palabras clave: kaizen, gemba, producción, productividad, optimización de la producción.

Critical success factors model developing for sustainable Kaizen implementation in manufactur-ing industry in Ethiopia

OpenAIRE

Haftu Hailu; Abdelkadir Kedir; Getachew Bassa; Kassu Jilcha

2017-01-01

The purpose of the research is to identify critical success factors and model developing for sustaining kaizen implementation. Peacock shoe is one of the manufacturing industries in Ethiopia facing challenges on sustaining. The methodology followed is factor analysis and empirically testing hypothesis. A database was designed using SPSS version 20. The survey was validated using statistical validation using the Cronbach alpha index; the result is 0.908. The KMO index value was obtained for th...

Effects of management commitment and organization of work teams on the benefits of Kaizen: Planning stage

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Midiala Oropesa-Vento

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Este trabajo presenta un análisis de los efectos que tienen el compromiso gerencial y la organización de equipos de trabajo en los beneficios de la implementación del kaizen en las empresas industriales durante su etapa de planeación. Para buscar la información se aplicaron 200 cuestionarios a 68 empresas distribuidas en los estados de Tabasco, Sinaloa y Chihuahua en México y también en la provincia de Camagüey. Cuba. Para obtener un modelo de ecuaciones estructurales explicativo de los efectos, se utilizó la metodología de mínimos cuadrados parciales usando WarpPLS 4.0. Los resultados obtenidos muestran que cuando existe un alto compromiso gerencial se tiene impactos positivos en los beneficios económicos y competitivos de las empresas. Asimismo, la organización de equipos de trabajo tiene impactos positivos sobre los beneficios competitivos y estos a su vez sobre los beneficios económicos obtenidos. Como resultado de este estudio se muestra el impacto que tienen determinados factores críticos de éxito del Kaizen, en los beneficios de implementación del mismo, elemento primordial para su sostenibilidad en el tiempo.

Formy zlepšujících (KAIZEN) aktivit ve firmách z vybraných oborů

OpenAIRE

Sukdolák, Martin

2009-01-01

The goal of the thesis is to analyze continuous improvement (Kaizen) activities in companies, which operates in the Czech Rep. Based on this analysis, defining criteria for optimal selection of forms of continuous improvement activities, and aplling suitable tools and methods of continuous process improvement will follow.

Ergonomics and Kaizen as strategies for competitiveness: a theoretical and practical in an automotive industry.

Science.gov (United States)

Vieira, Leandro; Balbinotti, Giles; Varasquin, Adriano; Gontijo, Leila

2012-01-01

With increased international competitiveness in the automotive industry, came the concern of the companies save costs and lower production costs. For this purpose many ways are designed to reduce costs and waste of raw materials and reduce activities that do not aggregate value to manufacturing processes. In the early XVII appears the manufacturing system, which processes were hard with little concern for the health and safety of employees and conditions of the workplace. After the advent of the production system called lean manufacturing, a new paradigm in terms of production system capable of providing high levels of productivity and quality. It is based on waste elimination that occur during the production process. After began a new way of thinking, creating a culture of continuous improvement and lean process with no waste and reducing costs, without neglecting the welfare worker and improving the conditions of their work environment. This paper presents a reflection on the application of ergonomics in a lean production system of an automotive industry, using methodology based on the Kaizen (Continuous Improvement) to gain performance and improving the conditions of the workplace, also will be presented with positive and negative points in using this methodology in relation to ergonomics. The research will be conducted by collecting data 'in loco' and interviews with workers. Some studies show that in companies that are lean system and using the methodology of Kaizen, the results of product quality, levels of absenteeism and accidents are better than those obtained in companies that do not apply the same concept.

Resolución estructurada de problemas a través del método Kobetsu Kaizen

OpenAIRE

Torre Llera, Francisco

2017-01-01

En este Trabajo Fin de Grado nos centraremos en explicar la importancia de la resolución de problemas dentro de una empresa. Definiremos los métodos seguidos por una empresa para conseguir la resolución de problemas. En este caso, nos centraremos en la resolución estructurada de problemas. Más concretamente, nos centraremos en resolver el problema de control visual de los discos en busca de defectos de fundición. El método a aplicar será el Kobetsu Kaizen, relacionado con la...

MAPEAMENTO DO FLUXO DE VALOR E KAIZEN COMO INSTRUMENTOS DE REDUÇÃO DE PERDAS: UM CASO NA INDÚSTRIA DE MOTOSSERRAS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Luis Gilberto Scherer

2007-01-01

Full Text Available Tem se verificado que as operações industriais aplicam, cada vez mais, esforços e recursos no sentido de promover a melhoria contínua de seus processos e assim garantir uma sólida posição no mercado. Este artigo visa a identificar oportunidades de redução das perdas do processo de manufatura, através da utilização da ferramenta de mapeamento de fluxo de valor e a aplicação de Kaizen. Trata-se de um estudo de caso na indústria de motosserras, em que há um levantamento detalhado de dados de todo o processo produtivo através do mapeamento da cadeia de valor, desde o recebimento da matéria-prima até os clientes. A partir da análise desses dados, demonstra-se o aumento de produtividade e outros ganhos em termos de resposta rápida e flexibilidade. Palavras-Chave: Mapeamento do Fluxo de Valor. Kaizen. Produtividade.

Kaizen newspaper

Science.gov (United States)

Shearer, Scott C. (Inventor); Proferes, John Nicholas (Inventor); Baker, Sr., Mitchell D. (Inventor); Reilly, Kenneth B. (Inventor); Tiwari, Vijai K. (Inventor)

2013-01-01

Systems, computer program products, and methods are disclosed for tracking an improvement event. An embodiment includes an event interface configured to receive a plurality of entries related to each of a plurality of improvement events. The plurality of entries includes a project identifier for the improvement event, a creation date, an objective, an action related to reaching the objective, and a first deadline related to the improvement event. A database interface is configured to store the plurality of entries in an event database.

APLICAÇÃO DA FILOSOFIA KAIZEN EM UMA EMPRESA DO RAMO DE SEGURANÇA ELETRÔNICA

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ludimila Aparecida de Oliveira Lima

2016-11-01

Full Text Available Este trabalho apresenta a aplicação da filosofia Kaizen em uma linha de produção em uma empresa do ramo de segurança eletrônica localizada no distrito industrial de Santa Rita do Sapucaí- MG. O objetivo dessa filosofia é a melhoria contínua nos processos e produtos da empresa. Sendo assim foram realizadas reuniões e tarefas com a equipe, nas quais se buscam obter resultados e melhorias durante o período de uma semana. Foram utilizadas ferramentas da produção enxuta para analisar os processos. Da mesma forma foram identificados os problemas e suas respectivas causas raízes e, implementadas ações de melhorias. Assim, são apresentados dois momentos distintos, o anterior à aplicação da técnica de eventos Kaizen e pós-aplicação da mesma. Como resultado foi evidenciado aumento de produtividade da célula em cerca de 8,33%, houve a eliminação de um posto de trabalho, com a liberação de um operador para outra linha produtiva, na qual o mesmo se fazia necessário. Houve ainda a redução do custo de fabricação, do produto estudado, em cerca de 20,60%, bem como a implantação de 18 melhorias na célula em questão, ambas superando as metas do início do evento.

El Kaizen-GP: un modelo gerencial para mejorar los procesos y los servicios públicos municipales

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Manuel Francisco Suárez Barraza

2013-06-01

Full Text Available Ante los cambios vertiginosos que se experimentan alrededor del mundo en el siglo XXI, los retos en materia de servicios públicos exigen mejoras constantes en la gestión pública, sobre todo aquella del ámbito local. Por tal motivo, esta investigación de dos casos de estudio de ayuntamientos (uno mexicano y otro español brindan un esquema conceptual denominado Kaizen-GP, que representa un modelo gerencial único, inédito y adaptado a la realidad del sector público. Dicho modelo de mejora continua busca consolidar la innovación de los procesos y servicios públicos de las administraciones locales de los países iberoamericanos.

El Kaizen-GP: un modelo gerencial para mejorar los procesos y los servicios públicos municipales

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Manuel Francisco Suárez Barraza

2013-07-01

Full Text Available Ante los cambios vertiginosos que se experimentan alrededor del mundo en el siglo XXI, los retos en materia de servicios públicos exigen mejoras constantes en la gestión pública, sobre todo aquella del ámbito local. Por tal motivo, esta investigación de dos casos de estudio de ayuntamientos (uno mexicano y otro español brindan un esquema conceptual denominado Kaizen-GP, que representa un modelo gerencial único, inédito y adaptado a la realidad del sector público. Dicho modelo de mejora continua busca consolidar la innovación de los procesos y servicios públicos de las administraciones locales de los países iberoamericanos.

Adaptación de modelos Kanban, Kaizen y 5´s en la empresa de caucho Miguel García

OpenAIRE

Paredes Lozano, Eduardo Enrique

2013-01-01

Para competir en el mercado actual, las compañías tienen que aprender a ser más eficientes y concentrarse en eliminar el desperdicio en todos sus procesos. Una herramienta que ayuda a lograr este cometido es la metodología 5S, Kaizen y Kanban, las cuales enseña a los empleados a tener conciencia del desperdicio en todo lo que hacen, mejorando la seguridad y el flujo de trabajo, permitiendo a la vez manejar mejor el proceso como un todo. Con estas primicias se estableció la necesidad de tra...

Probability model for worst case solar proton event fluences

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Xapsos, M.A.; Summers, G.P.; Barth, J.L.; Stassinopoulos, E.G.; Burke, E.A.

1999-01-01

The effects that solar proton events have on microelectronics and solar arrays are important considerations for spacecraft in geostationary orbits, polar orbits and on interplanetary missions. A predictive model of worst case solar proton event fluences is presented. It allows the expected worst case event fluence to be calculated for a given confidence level and for periods of time corresponding to space missions. The proton energy range is from >1 to >300 MeV, so that the model is useful for a variety of radiation effects applications. For each proton energy threshold, the maximum entropy principle is used to select the initial distribution of solar proton event fluences. This turns out to be a truncated power law, i.e., a power law for smaller event fluences that smoothly approaches zero at a maximum fluence. The strong agreement of the distribution with satellite data for the last three solar cycles indicates this description captures the essential features of a solar proton event fluence distribution. Extreme value theory is then applied to the initial distribution of events to obtain the model of worst case fluences

The Application of Lean Thinking Principles and Kaizen Practices for the Successful Development and Implementation of the Ares I-X Flight Test Rocket and Mission

Science.gov (United States)

Askins, B. R.; Davis, S. R.; Heitzman, K. S.; Olsen, R. A.

2011-01-01

On October 28, 2009 the Ares I-X flight test rocket launched from Kennedy Space Center and flew its suborbital trajectory as designed. The mission was successfully completed as data from the test, and associated development activities were analyzed, transferred to stakeholders, and well documented. A positive lesson learned from Ares I-X was that the application of lean thinking principles and kaizen practices was very effective in streamlining development activities. Ares I-X, like other historical rocket development projects, was hampered by technical, cost, and schedule challenges and if not addressed boldly could have resulted in cancellation of the test. The mission management team conducted nine major meetings, referred to as lean events, across its elements to assess plans, procedures, processes, requirements, controls, culture, organization, use of resources, and anything that could be changed to optimize schedule or reduce risk. The preeminent aspect of the lean events was the focus on value added activities and the removal or at least reduction in non-value added activities. Trained Lean Six Sigma facilitators assisted the Ares I-X developers in conducting the lean events. They indirectly helped formulate the mission s own unique methodology for assessing schedule. A core team was selected to lead the events and report to the mission manager. Each activity leveraged specialized participants to analyze the subject matter and its related processes and then recommended alternatives and solutions. Stakeholders were the event champions. They empowered and encouraged the team to succeed. The keys to success were thorough preparation, honest dialog, small groups, adherence to the Ares I-X ground rules, and accountability through disciplined reporting and tracking of actions. This lean event formula was game-changing as demonstrated by Ares I-X. It is highly recommended as a management tool to help develop other complex systems efficiently. The key benefits for

Superando el síndrome del "enemigo externo" en una firma autopartista a través del kaizen

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jorge Iván Pérez Rave

2014-12-01

Full Text Available Dos problemas de una firma autopartista, con causas atribuidas inicialmente a factores externos no controlables (síndrome del "enemigo externo", motivan el uso del kaizen, incorporando concepciones filosóficas y metodológicas. La metodología propuesta consta de tres etapas; la primera, iniciar, pretende conducir hacia el compromiso, la participación y el desarrollo de habilidades iniciales de los empleados; luego sigue desarrollar, que ejecuta el análisis y la solución del problema; se culmina con sostener, para mantener las contramedidas, evitar la recurrencia del problema e incentivar a los participantes. Al desplegar la metodología en los dos casos objeto de estudio (1. Muda de espera por falta de suministro y 2. Muda de defectos de hojas impresas, se identificó que las causas de dichos muda se debieron a factores internos a la empresa y no a las creencias iniciales de la firma sobre aspectos externos, no controlables. La causa del muda de espera estuvo relacionada con la cantidad de personal programado en la línea de ensamble; las impresiones defectuosas se asociaron a la política de almacenaje y protección de las hojas, así como a las instrucciones de impresión. El impacto del despliegue en la empresa se dedujo satisfactorio, ya que mediante la implantación de contramedidas basadas en creatividad, sentido común, consenso y participación de los empleados, se favorecen indicadores asociados a los problemas precisos, entre ellos, costos anuales de los muda (reducción: 87% en costos del muda de espera y 60,5% en costos de hojas defectuosas. Este trabajo provee elementos teóricos y metodológicos, que posibilitan la adaptación a otros contextos, exigiendo: compromiso directivo, justificación del cambio, entrenamiento de empleados, incentivos, comunicación y estrategias de aprendizaje, entre otros, para solucionar problemas y sostener los eventos kaizen.

Use cases of discrete event simulation. Appliance and research

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Bangsow, Steffen (ed.)

2012-11-01

Use Cases of Discrete Event Simulation. Includes case studies from various important industries such as automotive, aerospace, robotics, production industry. Written by leading experts in the field. Over the last decades Discrete Event Simulation has conquered many different application areas. This trend is, on the one hand, driven by an ever wider use of this technology in different fields of science and on the other hand by an incredibly creative use of available software programs through dedicated experts. This book contains articles from scientists and experts from 10 countries. They illuminate the width of application of this technology and the quality of problems solved using Discrete Event Simulation. Practical applications of simulation dominate in the present book. The book is aimed to researchers and students who deal in their work with Discrete Event Simulation and which want to inform them about current applications. By focusing on discrete event simulation, this book can also serve as an inspiration source for practitioners for solving specific problems during their work. Decision makers who deal with the question of the introduction of discrete event simulation for planning support and optimization this book provides a contribution to the orientation, what specific problems could be solved with the help of Discrete Event Simulation within the organization.

Cost management in the internal value chain of integrated application of activity-based costing, Kaizen concept and target costing

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Pešić-Tomić Vesna

2014-01-01

Full Text Available The objective of this paper is an effort to view the possibilities of integrated use of target costing, activity based costing and Kaizen concept in the internal value chain as the central link of the entire chain. The idea is to stimulate the company management to think about the costs, position they take in the structure of price cost and their influence on forming the sales price since it is very important to produce right product for the consumer, of desired quality and functionality but along with as low production costs as possible. It is therefore needed to construct the right design of a product and provide its production at the shortest possible time along with as low costs as possible which will impact the efficiency of the entire value chain.

Planning and managing a corporate event : case: Event Activation Galaxy Studio Samsung S7/ S7 Edge

OpenAIRE

Bui, Quyen; Tran, Fa

2017-01-01

The thesis was written about the case: Event Activation Studio Galaxy Samsung S7/S7 Edge. Samsung is a global leading conglomerate company in the technology industry. This thesis discusses how to plan and manage an Event Activation for Samsung. The primary objective of this thesis was to provide a step-by-step guideline for planning and managing a corporate event. This objective was achieved by performing the following tasks: clarifying the influential role of corporate events in marketi...

365 MAPPING MALARIA CASE EVENT AND FACTORS OF ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Osondu

Key words: Malaria case event; prevention; vulnerability; GIS; Nigeria. Introduction. The mapping of ... Ethiopian Journal of Environmental Studies and Management Vol. 6 No.4 2013 ... review articles Tanser et al., (2000), indicate that. Satellite ...

Critical success factors model developing for sustainable Kaizen implementation in manufactur-ing industry in Ethiopia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Haftu Hailu

2017-12-01

Full Text Available The purpose of the research is to identify critical success factors and model developing for sustaining kaizen implementation. Peacock shoe is one of the manufacturing industries in Ethiopia facing challenges on sustaining. The methodology followed is factor analysis and empirically testing hypothesis. A database was designed using SPSS version 20. The survey was validated using statistical validation using the Cronbach alpha index; the result is 0.908. The KMO index value was obtained for the 32 items and had a value of 0.642 with Bartlett's Test of Sphericity Approx. Chi-Square 4503.007, degree of freedom 496 and significance value 0.000. A factor analysis by principal components and varimax rotation was applied for finding the critical success factors. Finding designates that 32 items were merged into eight critical success factors. All the eight factors together explain for 76.941 % of the variance. Multiple regression model analysis has indicated that some of the critical success factors had relationship with success indicators. Due to constraint of time, the researcher focused only at peacock shoe manufacturing industry. Other limitation also includes the absence of any local research that shows the critical success factors at the moment.

Radiation protection criteria for cases of probabilistic disruptive events

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Beninson, D.J.

1985-01-01

The individual risk limitation for the case of probabilistic disruptive events is studied, when the radiation effects cease to be only stochastic; the proposed criterion is applied for the case of high level waste repositories. The protection's optimization results from the differential cost-benefit. More general procedures of decision theory that use probabilistically defined utility functions are considered for its calculation. These more general procedures can be applied also in cases where radiation exposures are only potential, to optimize the required level of safety features. It is shown that for disruptive events of low probability and large resulting consequences, the concept of 'expectation' of consequence can not be used in decision making, but that the use of probabilistically based utility functions can conceptually assure a consistent approach in deciding the required level of safety. The use of utility functions of logaritmic form to assign weights to consequences involving different loss of life is explored (M.E.L.) [es

Generalization of Poisson distribution for the case of changing probability of consequential events

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kushnirenko, E.

1995-01-01

The generalization of the Poisson distribution for the case of changing probabilities of the consequential events is done. It is shown that the classical Poisson distribution is the special case of this generalized distribution when the probabilities of the consequential events are constant. The using of the generalized Poisson distribution gives the possibility in some cases to obtain analytical result instead of making Monte-Carlo calculation

Adaptation of Chain Event Graphs for use with Case-Control Studies in Epidemiology.

Science.gov (United States)

Keeble, Claire; Thwaites, Peter Adam; Barber, Stuart; Law, Graham Richard; Baxter, Paul David

2017-09-26

Case-control studies are used in epidemiology to try to uncover the causes of diseases, but are a retrospective study design known to suffer from non-participation and recall bias, which may explain their decreased popularity in recent years. Traditional analyses report usually only the odds ratio for given exposures and the binary disease status. Chain event graphs are a graphical representation of a statistical model derived from event trees which have been developed in artificial intelligence and statistics, and only recently introduced to the epidemiology literature. They are a modern Bayesian technique which enable prior knowledge to be incorporated into the data analysis using the agglomerative hierarchical clustering algorithm, used to form a suitable chain event graph. Additionally, they can account for missing data and be used to explore missingness mechanisms. Here we adapt the chain event graph framework to suit scenarios often encountered in case-control studies, to strengthen this study design which is time and financially efficient. We demonstrate eight adaptations to the graphs, which consist of two suitable for full case-control study analysis, four which can be used in interim analyses to explore biases, and two which aim to improve the ease and accuracy of analyses. The adaptations are illustrated with complete, reproducible, fully-interpreted examples, including the event tree and chain event graph. Chain event graphs are used here for the first time to summarise non-participation, data collection techniques, data reliability, and disease severity in case-control studies. We demonstrate how these features of a case-control study can be incorporated into the analysis to provide further insight, which can help to identify potential biases and lead to more accurate study results.

Development of INSTEC(INformation System of Trip Event Cases)

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Lee, Jeong Woon; Shim, Bong Sik; Park, Keun Oak; Cheon, Se Woo

1996-09-01

In this research, we established an incident analysis procedure based on the concept of interaction between plant components and developed INSTEC(INformation System of Trip Event Cases) which can manage data obtained as the result of incident analysis. The analysis procedure is consisted of the following steps; reconfiguration of incident context, identification of the paths and contents of the interaction between plant components, identification of unit event obstructing normal plant operation, identification of possible erroneous actions, decision of error modes, identification of likely causes, summarization of analysis results. INSTEC was developed to effectively present the result of incident analysis. This system offers the analyzed information such as analysis results of human error cases, operating issues and problems, recommendations to prevent a similar incident, etc. 24 tabs., 18 figs., 10 refs. (Author)

Upotreba Kaizen filozofije u upravljačkim strukturama kompanija u Srbiji / The Use of Keizen Philosophy in the Managing Structures in the Companies in Serbia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Simona Žikić

2016-11-01

Full Text Available In the moment when there is a question mark over the economy of every country and the markets are not stable, but ever changing, moving forward, and/or collapsing, one of the most successful approaches to the survival and improvement of the management of the companies is Keizen concept. Keizen concept of management is philosophy that is initially used in Japan, where it comes from, but in other places all around the world as well, mostly in America and the countries in Western civilization. Keizen philosophy is the concept of continuous improvement, which, strategically observed, contributes improvement and prosperity of the companies. Having in mind its occurrence, the first results of Keizen philosophy’s approach can be identified in the development of Japanese economy, which reached unbelievable results and improvement only few years after the Second World War. Japanese companies very soon became competitive at the global market thanks to Kaizen philosophy, no matter the fact that his approach includes managing concepts and concepts of business organization which are diametrically opposite to the current dominant opinion and application of the concepts of managing business organization from the Western companies. This is the reason why the idea of this paper is to show the main values that are in the core of Kaizen philosophy and to show that the application of this business  concept is possible in Serbia, besides the small number of those who already did it. The aim of this paper is to bring closer the importance of the development of human resources and their influence on the structure of the companies’ management, because only with the human resources department based well, there is a possibility of Keizen philosophy application.

Prehospital Interventions During Mass-Casualty Events in Afghanistan: A Case Analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Schauer, Steven G; April, Michael D; Simon, Erica; Maddry, Joseph K; Carter, Robert; Delorenzo, Robert A

2017-08-01

Mass-casualty (MASCAL) events are known to occur in the combat setting. There are very limited data at this time from the Joint Theater (Iraq and Afghanistan) wars specific to MASCAL events. The purpose of this report was to provide preliminary data for the development of prehospital planning and guidelines. Cases were identified using the Department of Defense (DoD; Virginia USA) Trauma Registry (DoDTR) and the Prehospital Trauma Registry (PHTR). These cases were identified as part of a research study evaluating Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC) guidelines. Cases that were designated as or associated with denoted MASCAL events were included. Data Fifty subjects were identified during the course of this project. Explosives were the most common cause of injuries. There was a wide range of vital signs. Tourniquet placement and pressure dressings were the most common interventions, followed by analgesia administration. Oral transmucosal fentanyl citrate (OTFC) was the most common parenteral analgesic drug administered. Most were evacuated as "routine." Follow-up data were available for 36 of the subjects and 97% were discharged alive. The most common prehospital interventions were tourniquet and pressure dressing hemorrhage control, along with pain medication administration. Larger data sets are needed to guide development of MASCAL in-theater clinical practice guidelines. Schauer SG , April MD , Simon E , Maddry JK , Carter R III , Delorenzo RA . Prehospital interventions during mass-casualty events in Afghanistan: a case analysis. Prehosp Disaster Med. 2017;32(4):465-468.

Report: Agency-Wide Application of Region 7 NPDES Program Process Improvements Could Increase EPA Efficiency

Science.gov (United States)

Report #11-P-0315, July 6, 2011. Although Region 7 NPDES Kaizen event participants continued to follow up on the commitments and action items identified, no single authority was responsible for tracking the process improvement outcomes.

Case study of lean manufacturing application in a die casting manufacturing company

Science.gov (United States)

Ching, Ng Tan; Hoe, Clarence Chan Kok; Hong, Tang Sai; Ghobakhloo, Morteza; Pin, Chen Kah

2015-05-01

The case study of lean manufacturing aims to study the application of lean manufacturing in a die casting manufacturing company located in Pulau Penang, Malaysia. This case study describes mainly about the important concepts and applications of lean manufacturing which could gradually help the company in increasing the profit by studying and analyzing their current manufacturing process and company culture. Many approaches of lean manufacturing are studied in this project which includes: 5S housekeeping, Kaizen, and Takt Time. Besides, the lean tools mentioned, quality tool such as the House of Quality is being used as an analysis tool to continuously improve the product quality. In short, the existing lean culture in the company is studied and analyzed, with recommendations written at the end of this paper.

KAIZEN – A case study

OpenAIRE

Manjunath Shettar; Pavan Hiremath

2015-01-01

The ultimate objective of manufacturing industries is to increase productivity with high quality. At present, many manufacturing companies are facing problems such as high quality rejection, high inventories, high lead time, high costs of production, and inability to cope with customer orders. By implementing and practicing the lean production system many problems can be solved without employing high-tech and high-touch approaches but by involving people on the shop floor in Kaize...

Events as a Framework for Tourist Destination Branding – Case Studies of Two Cultural Events in Croatia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Klara Trošt

2012-04-01

Full Text Available Events have become an increasingly significant component of destination branding. Many destinations throughout the world have developed events portfolios as a strategic initiative to attract tourists and to reinforce their brand. In this paper, the focus of research will be on tourist destination branding by means of events. The relationship between events and destination branding is examined through six phases of the process of building a destination brand identity with the use of events. When it comes to destination branding, a need for an analysis of strategic documents of destination development imposes because event tourism strategies help destinations plan how to use events in a tourism role. The purpose of this study is to examine which factors are of the top priorities when using events as a marketing approach. The method of case study will be used, by which two cultural events which take place in the Republic of Croatia will be analyzed, namely, “Špancirfest” in Varaždin and “Trka na prstenac” in Barban. Varaždin and Barban are on different levels in their branding work. The different sizes and locations of the destinations naturally affect the operating procedures. This article may be of interest to destination marketers and event organizers, especially in developing destinations which intend to differentiate themselves from the competitive market.

EL KAIZEN COMO UN SISTEMA ACTUAL DE GESTIÓN PERSONAL PARA EL ÉXITO ORGANIZACIONAL EN LA EMPRESA ENSAMBLADORA TOYOTA

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Edgar Chirinos

2010-07-01

Full Text Available La investigación propone estrategias kaizen para la mejora de estándares tecnológicos, gerenciales y operacionales en la empresa Toyota ubicada en Cumaná, estado Sucre. Es una investigación no experimental, de campo de carácter descriptivo. El análisis se enmarcó dentro de la estadística descriptiva, así como las proyecciones de la población en estudio, los encuestados revelaron tendencias y comportamiento de las opiniones emitidas en relación a las metodologías para diagnosticar las necesidades de aplicaciones de los ciclos PDCA/SDCA, como vehículo político para el mantenimiento y mejoramiento de los estándares empleados. Se concluye que es imprescindible efectuar una revisión de los indicadores que se encuentran en el nivel Requieren Atención, hasta que se logre indicadores definitivamente en otra escala positiva.

Managing the Urban Image. Cities as Scenery for Events: A White Night Event as a Case Study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

ELENI ATHANASOPOULOU

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Organizing street events in the cities is not something new. Many cultural, social or religious events take place on the streets, whereas many of them have become international events and attract pan-european attention and coverage. Mega cities are organizing festivals and cultural events in order to attract tourists and contribute to local and regional development. This trend has started growing and spreading around Europe. Medium-sized cities are also organising such multi-dimensional public space events. As a case study it is interesting to present a white night event that took place in Kalamata (a medium-sized city in southern Greece, in August 2013. The shops stayed open until 3 in the morning, offering their products at reduced prices and encouraging people to consume. The city center provided the scenery for an alternative massive celebration. Parties were thrown and concerts took place, around the city. Many people from the Kalamata Region visited Kalamata City. The success was unexpected. This article describes what good can come out of the adoption of a successful north-European cultural white night event (in St. Petersburg and elsewhere. The implementation of an interesting idea, adjusted to the local circumstances, is worth to be looked into. The article concludes that urban scenery can play an important role to the organisation and success of such multicultural events.

Event dependent sampling of recurrent events

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kvist, Tine Kajsa; Andersen, Per Kragh; Angst, Jules

2010-01-01

The effect of event-dependent sampling of processes consisting of recurrent events is investigated when analyzing whether the risk of recurrence increases with event count. We study the situation where processes are selected for study if an event occurs in a certain selection interval. Motivation...... retrospective and prospective disease course histories are used. We examine two methods to correct for the selection depending on which data are used in the analysis. In the first case, the conditional distribution of the process given the pre-selection history is determined. In the second case, an inverse...

Expectations in case of event - from a television editor's point of view

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Engelhardt, H.

1997-01-01

Informing the public about emergencies requires two different phases a of necessary operation: (1) a pre-event culture of permanent relations and communication, training authors and editors, and footage-providing, and (2) a mobile information task force to be alerted very quickly in case of event. Special television needings and recommandations are elaborated, the legal duties of german public radio and television corporations are outlined. (orig.) [de

PROMOTING TOURIST DESTINATIONS THROUGH SPORT EVENTS. THE CASE OF BRAŞOV

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Adina Nicoleta CANDREA

2010-12-01

Full Text Available Sport event tourism is a huge and growing global industry with important economic implications for both the sport, the event and the impact of travel and tourism related benefits on host destinations. A primary function of a sport event is to provide the host community with an opportunity to secure high prominence in the tourism market place. However, international or regional prominence may be gained with significant social and environmental costs. Hosting sport events has been a focus of destination marketers as a strategy to enhance its destination image and differentiate its tourism products. Communities are attracted to hosting sport events to draw marketing benefits that will contribute to the success of the destination in the long run by creating awareness, improving their image with visitors and attracting tourism business to generate future inbound travel. As such, destination images can be influenced by the hosting of a sport event and the attributes associated with this event. The purpose of this paper is to outline the role of sport event tourism in the promotion of tourist destinations. A case study has been chosen in order to illustrate the interdependence between event and destination marketing: Braşov, hosting the winter edition of The European Youth Olympic Festival in 2013. The paper includes a series of recommendations for destination managers in order to maximise the benefits of this event and take this opportunity to promote Braşov on the international market.

Developing future precipitation events from historic events: An Amsterdam case study.

Science.gov (United States)

Manola, Iris; van den Hurk, Bart; de Moel, Hans; Aerts, Jeroen

2016-04-01

Due to climate change, the frequency and intensity of extreme precipitation events is expected to increase. It is therefore of high importance to develop climate change scenarios tailored towards the local and regional needs of policy makers in order to develop efficient adaptation strategies to reduce the risks from extreme weather events. Current approaches to tailor climate scenarios are often not well adopted in hazard management, since average changes in climate are not a main concern to policy makers, and tailoring climate scenarios to simulate future extremes can be complex. Therefore, a new concept has been introduced recently that uses known historic extreme events as a basis, and modifies the observed data for these events so that the outcome shows how the same event would occur in a warmer climate. This concept is introduced as 'Future Weather', and appeals to the experience of stakeholders and users. This research presents a novel method of projecting a future extreme precipitation event, based on a historic event. The selected precipitation event took place over the broader area of Amsterdam, the Netherlands in the summer of 2014, which resulted in blocked highways, disruption of air transportation, flooded buildings and public facilities. An analysis of rain monitoring stations showed that an event of such intensity has a 5 to 15 years return period. The method of projecting a future event follows a non-linear delta transformation that is applied directly on the observed event assuming a warmer climate to produce an "up-scaled" future precipitation event. The delta transformation is based on the observed behaviour of the precipitation intensity as a function of the dew point temperature during summers. The outcome is then compared to a benchmark method using the HARMONIE numerical weather prediction model, where the boundary conditions of the event from the Ensemble Prediction System of ECMWF (ENS) are perturbed to indicate a warmer climate. The two

The Skateboard Factory: a teaching case on discrete-event simulation

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Marco Aurélio de Mesquita

Full Text Available Abstract Real-life applications during the teaching process are a desirable practice in simulation education. However, access to real cases imposes some difficulty in implement such practice, especially when the classes are large. This paper presents a teaching case for a computer simulation course in a production engineering undergraduate program. The motivation for the teaching case was to provide students with a realistic manufacturing case to stimulate the learning of simulation concepts and methods in the context of industrial engineering. The case considers a virtual factory of skateboards, which operations include parts manufacturing, final assembly and storage of raw materials, work-in-process and finished products. Students should model and simulate the factory, under push and pull production strategies, using any simulation software available in the laboratory. The teaching case, applied in the last two years, contributed to motivate and consolidate the students’ learning of discrete-event simulation. It proved to be a feasible alternative to the previous practice of letting students freely choose a case for their final project, while keeping the essence of project-based learning approach.

Case Report of Multiembolic Cerebrovascular Event Associated with Ramp Study Echocardiogram

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Brian C. Butera

2017-01-01

Full Text Available The incidence of ramp test echocardiogram-associated embolic events in the setting of therapeutic anticoagulation is likely rare and has not been reported. We present such a case in a patient with a HeartMate II left ventricular assist device (LVAD whose serial head computed tomography images, deteriorating clinical course, and the multiembolic nature of the event suggest causality. If the pretest probability of pump thrombosis in an individual LVAD patient is sufficiently high, the potential risks of performing a ramp study echocardiogram may not be warranted, even in the setting of adequate anticoagulation.

Ares Launch Vehicles Lean Practices Case Study

Science.gov (United States)

Doreswamy, Rajiv; Self, Timothy A.

2007-01-01

The Ares launch vehicles team, managed by the Ares Projects Office (APO) at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, has completed the Ares I Crew Launch Vehicle System Requirements Review and System Definition Review and early design work for the Ares V Cargo Launch Vehicle. This paper provides examples of how Lean Manufacturing, Kaizen events, and Six Sigma practices are helping APO deliver a new space transportation capability on time and within budget, while still meeting stringent technical requirements. For example, Lean philosophies have been applied to numerous process definition efforts and existing process improvement activities, including the Ares I-X test flight Certificate of Flight Readiness (CoFR) process, risk management process, and review board organization and processes. Ares executives learned Lean practices firsthand, making the team "smart buyers" during proposal reviews and instilling the team with a sense of what is meant by "value-added" activities. Since the goal of the APO is to field launch vehicles at a reasonable cost and on an ambitious schedule, adopting Lean philosophies and practices will be crucial to the Ares Project's long-term SUCCESS.

Leverage of a sport mega-event branding : a case study of the 2010 FIFA World Cup

OpenAIRE

2014-01-01

D.Comm. (Sport Management) The primary objective of the study was to establish what brand leverage strategies could be implemented in sport mega-event branding based on the case study of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa. The secondary objectives focused on discovering the dimensions of sport mega-event branding, investigating the areas of sport mega-event impacts and leverage, identifying sport mega-event brand leverage activation tools and understanding the role of mega-event brand le...

Stressful life events and Graves' disease: Results of a case control study

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Pintor, A.B.; Barrenechea, E.A.; Laureta, E.G.; Ligon, R.A.

2003-01-01

Prolonged worry has generally been acknowledged as one of the main precipitating factors of the onset of Graves' disease. A review of literature reveals that emotional stresses of considerable severity precede the onset of hyperthyroidism in about 90% of cases. However, not everyone subscribes to the Stress/Graves' disease hypothesis. Attempts to resolve this issue have tended to focus on whether a correlation can be shown between the magnitude of antecedent life events and the disease. Hence the main objective of the present study was to identify the possible association between stressful life events and Graves' disease. This paper presents the results of a case-control study, involving patents and subjects from the Veterans Memorial Medical Centre of Manila. A total of 224 patients of Graves' disease, newly or previously diagnosed, representing the 'patient's' arm were interviewed. All patients were questioned regarding various stresses, which greatly affected their life style spanning over a 12-month period prior to the onset of the disease. Simultaneously, 224 control subjects were also interviewed, and their stresses spanning over a similar period preceding the dates of interviews were recorded in quantifiable terms. Different stresses were given different intensity scores based on a social readjustment scale taking into consideration the life situations, emotions and diseases. In cases of multiple stresses, intensity scores were added to obtain the total stress intensity. Results were expressed as mean, standard deviation, median, frequency and percent distribution. Scatter plot was also constructed for intensity of stressful life events. To determine association of different factors with Graves' disease, Students t-test and chi-square tests were applied to the data. Odds ratio (OR) was also computed to determine risk attributed to each factor. Since there was significant difference in gender distribution between the patients and controls, stratified Mantel

Root Cause Assessment for a Manufacturing Industry: A Case Study

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R. Kalantri

2013-03-01

Full Text Available Root-cause identification for quality related problems are key issues for manufacturing processes. It has been a very challenging engineering problem particularly in a multistage manufacturing, where maximum number of processes and activities are performed. However, it may also be implemented with ease in each and every individual set up and activities in any manufacturing process. Kaizen is aimed towards reduction in different types of losses i.e. Failure Loss/ Breakdown Loss, Minor stoppage, idling loss, Setup and adjustment loss etc. So as to improve quality and productivity.In this report, root-cause identification methodology has been adopted to eliminate the rejection of product manufactured by the enterprise and improving the life of product. Brainstorming and other Root Cause Assesmenttools have been used to find out the reasons of tube failure and vibration in tubular strander. Solutions of these problems have also given in this report. Kaizen activities have reduced the time consumed in daily activities of cleaning, lubricating, inspection etc. A detailed study has illustrated the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.

Characteristics of event tourism marketing. Case study: the European youth Olympic festival, Brasov 2013

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Herţanu, A.

2011-01-01

Full Text Available Event tourism is a very important branch of tourism, not only from the economic point of view, but also as the cultural and social development of a tourism destination. Organizing sporting events is considered, by the managers of tourism destinations, as an improvement strategy regarding the destination image, and as a competitive advantage. This article brings forward the features of event tourism concerning the marketing mix policies and the importance of events in the development of an area. The chosen study case is Brasov County area, which will host, in 201,3 the winter edition of the European Youth Olympic Festival.

Model Development and Process Analysis for Lean Cellular Design Planning in Aerospace Assembly and Manufacturing

Science.gov (United States)

Hilburn, Monty D.

Successful lean manufacturing and cellular manufacturing execution relies upon a foundation of leadership commitment and strategic planning built upon solid data and robust analysis. The problem for this study was to create and employ a simple lean transformation planning model and review process that could be used to identify functional support staff resources required to plan and execute lean manufacturing cells within aerospace assembly and manufacturing sites. The lean planning model was developed using available literature for lean manufacturing kaizen best practices and validated through a Delphi panel of lean experts. The resulting model and a standardized review process were used to assess the state of lean transformation planning at five sites of an international aerospace manufacturing and assembly company. The results of the three day, on-site review were compared with baseline plans collected from each of the five sites to determine if there analyzed, with focus on three critical areas of lean planning: the number and type of manufacturing cells identified, the number, type, and duration of planned lean and continuous kaizen events, and the quantity and type of functional staffing resources planned to support the kaizen schedule. Summarized data of the baseline and on-site reviews was analyzed with descriptive statistics. ANOVAs and paired-t tests at 95% significance level were conducted on the means of data sets to determine if null hypotheses related to cell, kaizen event, and support resources could be rejected. The results of the research found significant differences between lean transformation plans developed by site leadership and plans developed utilizing the structured, on-site review process and lean transformation planning model. The null hypothesis that there was no difference between the means of pre-review and on-site cell counts was rejected, as was the null hypothesis that there was no significant difference in kaizen event plans. These

Climate Change Risks – Methodological Framework and Case Study of Damages from Extreme Events in Cambodia

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Halsnæs, Kirsten; Kaspersen, Per Skougaard; Trærup, Sara Lærke Meltofte

2016-01-01

Climate change imposes some special risks on Least Developed Countries, and the chapter presents a methodological framework, which can be used to assess the impacts of key assumptions related to damage costs, risks and equity implications on current and future generations. The methodological...... framework is applied to a case study of severe storms in Cambodia based on statistical information on past storm events including information about buildings damaged and victims. Despite there is limited data available on the probability of severe storm events under climate change as well on the actual...... damage costs associated with the events in the case of Cambodia, we are using the past storm events as proxy data in a sensitivity analysis. It is here demonstrated how key assumptions on future climate change, income levels of victims, and income distribution over time, reflected in discount rates...

#DDOD Use Case: Access to Medicare Part D Drug Event File (PDE) for cost transparency

Data.gov (United States)

U.S. Department of Health & Human Services — SUMMARY DDOD use case to request access to Medicare Part D Drug Event File (PDE) for cost transparency to pharmacies and patients. WHAT IS A USE CASE? A “Use Case”...

Neurologic Adverse Events Associated with Voriconazole Therapy: Report of Two Pediatric Cases

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Sevliya Öcal Demir

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Although voriconazole, a triazole antifungal, is a safe drug, treatment with this agent is associated with certain adverse events such as hepatic, neurologic, and visual disturbances. The current report presents two cases, one a 9-year-old boy and the other a 17-year-old girl, who experienced neurologic side effects associated with voriconazole therapy. Our aim is to remind readers of the side effects of voriconazole therapy in order to prevent unnecessary investigations especially for psychological and ophthalmologic problems. The first case was a 9-year-old boy with cystic fibrosis and invasive aspergillosis that developed photophobia, altered color sensation, and fearful visual hallucination. The second case was a 17-year-old girl with cystic fibrosis and allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis, and she experienced photophobia, fatigue, impaired concentration, and insomnia, when the dose of voriconazole therapy was increased from 12 mg/kg/day to 16 mg/kg/day. The complaints of the two patients disappeared after discontinuation of voriconazole therapy. Our experience in these patients reminded us of the importance of being aware of the neurologic adverse events associated with voriconazole therapy in establishing early diagnosis and initiating prompt treatment. In addition, although serum voriconazole concentration was not measured in the present cases, therapeutic drug monitoring for voriconazole seems to be critically important in preventing neurologic side effects in pediatric patients.

Organizational suggestion system in the era of holding by developing an innovative model : the case of bonyade ta avon holding in Iran(an applied model

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Meysam Ghasemi

2010-01-01

Full Text Available One of the popular ways of taking advantage of personnel creativity is through suggestionsystems. Our main question is how to implement suggestion system in holding with conglomeratestructure. The paper presents an innovative model that were named ITFSK Model with accordanceof Bonayade Taavone (a holding that has many companies and institutions with conglomeratestructure. ITFSK is a model that explains how participation management and suggestion system isimplemented effectively in huge Enterprises (holding and this approach brings continuousimprovement (kaizen and it impacts the productivity of these enterprises.The paper is based on field research and the research in Bonyade Tavan that has 22 companies and2 institutions that activity fields of the subholdings is very varied.Our model consists of five main parts such as ideas bank, think-tank, feedback, sharing ofknowledge and kaizen that was named ITFSK.Implementation of “Suggestion system” rules has immediate and significant effects on theproductivity of activities in the jobs, thus influencing the performance of processes in the analyzedorganization. Suggestion system can result in kaizen and innovation in environment oforganization.The model was used to implement and evaluate a suggestion system of holding with conglomeratedstructure. The application of the model to evaluate the suggestion system provided some goodinsights and highlighted some areas of improvement.

The average cost of measles cases and adverse events following vaccination in industrialised countries

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Kou Ulla

2002-09-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Even though the annual incidence rate of measles has dramatically decreased in industrialised countries since the implementation of universal immunisation programmes, cases continue to occur in countries where endemic measles transmission has been interrupted and in countries where adequate levels of immunisation coverage have not been maintained. The objective of this study is to develop a model to estimate the average cost per measles case and per adverse event following measles immunisation using the Netherlands (NL, the United Kingdom (UK and Canada as examples. Methods Parameter estimates were based on a review of the published literature. A decision tree was built to represent the complications associated with measles cases and adverse events following imminisation. Monte-Carlo Simulation techniques were used to account for uncertainty. Results From the perspective of society, we estimated the average cost per measles case to be US$276, US$307 and US$254 for the NL, the UK and Canada, respectively, and the average cost of adverse events following immunisation per vaccinee to be US$1.43, US$1.93 and US$1.51 for the NL, UK and Canada, respectively. Conclusions These average cost estimates could be combined with incidence estimates and costs of immunisation programmes to provide estimates of the cost of measles to industrialised countries. Such estimates could be used as a basis to estimate the potential economic gains of global measles eradication.

Reconstructing the 2015 Flash Flood event of Salgar Colombia, The Case of a Poor Gauged Basin

Science.gov (United States)

Velasquez, N.; Zapata, E.; Hoyos Ortiz, C. D.; Velez, J. I.

2017-12-01

Flash floods events associated with severe precipitation events are highly destructive, often resulting in significant human and economic losses. Due to their nature, flash floods trend to occur in medium to small basins located within complex high mountainous regions. In the Colombian Andean region these basins are very common, with the aggravating factor that the vulnerability is considerably high as some important human settlements are located within these basins, frequently occupating flood plains and other flash-flood prone areas. During the dawn of May 18 of 2015 two severe rainfall events generated a flash flood event in the municipality ofSalgar, La Liboriana basin, locatedin the northwestern Colombian Andes, resulting in more than 100 human casualties and significant economic losses. The present work is a reconstruction of the hydrological processes that took place before and during the Liboriana flash flood event, analyzed as a case of poorly gauged basin.The event conditions where recreated based on radar retrievals and a hydrological distributed model, linked with a proposed 1D hydraulic model and simple shallow landslide model. Results suggest that the flash flood event was caused by the occurrence of two successive severe convective events over the same basin, with an important modulation associated with soil characteristics and water storage.Despite of its simplicity, the proposed hydraulic model achieves a good representation of the flooded area during the event, with limitations due to the adopted spatial scale (12.7 meters, from ALOS PALSAR images). Observed landslides were obtained from satellite images; for this case the model simulates skillfully the landslide occurrence regions with small differences in the exact locations.To understand this case, radar data shows to be key due to specific convective cores location and rainfall intensity estimation.In mountainous regions, there exists a significant number of settlements with similar

Study on workloads of human care worker with the introduction of IT system - the characteristics of work loads by observational research and the suggestions for KAIZEN.

Science.gov (United States)

Mizuno, Yuki; Yoshikawa, Toru; Matsuda, Fumiko; Takeuchi, Yuriko; Motegi, Nobuyuki; Ikegami, Thor; Sakai, Kazuhiro

2012-01-01

The purpose of this study was to clarify the characteristic of workloads on human care worker with the introduction of IT system, and suggested the support measures for KAIZEN in Japan. The investigation method is workflow line and hearing with a focus on work observation. The objects were 8 human care workers of the acute hospital that introduced an electronic system. By the introduction of the electronic chart, the nurse station sojourn time decreased, sickroom sojourn time increased, and time about direct nursing care to a patient increased. In addition, access to patient information became easy, and the offer of the health care service based on correct information came to be possible in real time. By The point of workflow line, it was effect that moving lengths decreased in order to install the electronic chart in patients' rooms. Though, it was a problem that it hasn't formed where to place the instruments such as sphygmomanometer, clinical thermometer and others.

Serious adverse events after HPV vaccination: a critical review of randomized trials and post-marketing case series.

Science.gov (United States)

Martínez-Lavín, Manuel; Amezcua-Guerra, Luis

2017-10-01

This article critically reviews HPV vaccine serious adverse events described in pre-licensure randomized trials and in post-marketing case series. HPV vaccine randomized trials were identified in PubMed. Safety data were extracted. Post-marketing case series describing HPV immunization adverse events were reviewed. Most HPV vaccine randomized trials did not use inert placebo in the control group. Two of the largest randomized trials found significantly more severe adverse events in the tested HPV vaccine arm of the study. Compared to 2871 women receiving aluminum placebo, the group of 2881 women injected with the bivalent HPV vaccine had more deaths on follow-up (14 vs. 3, p = 0.012). Compared to 7078 girls injected with the 4-valent HPV vaccine, 7071 girls receiving the 9-valent dose had more serious systemic adverse events (3.3 vs. 2.6%, p = 0.01). For the 9-valent dose, our calculated number needed to seriously harm is 140 (95% CI, 79–653) [DOSAGE ERROR CORRECTED] . The number needed to vaccinate is 1757 (95% CI, 131 to infinity). Practically, none of the serious adverse events occurring in any arm of both studies were judged to be vaccine-related. Pre-clinical trials, post-marketing case series, and the global drug adverse reaction database (VigiBase) describe similar post-HPV immunization symptom clusters. Two of the largest randomized HPV vaccine trials unveiled more severe adverse events in the tested HPV vaccine arm of the study. Nine-valent HPV vaccine has a worrisome number needed to vaccinate/number needed to harm quotient. Pre-clinical trials and post-marketing case series describe similar post-HPV immunization symptoms.

Reactor protection system software test-case selection based on input-profile considering concurrent events and uncertainties

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Khalaquzzaman, M.; Lee, Seung Jun; Cho, Jaehyun; Jung, Wondea

2016-01-01

Recently, the input-profile-based testing for safety critical software has been proposed for determining the number of test cases and quantifying the failure probability of the software. Input-profile of a reactor protection system (RPS) software is the input which causes activation of the system for emergency shutdown of a reactor. This paper presents a method to determine the input-profile of a RPS software which considers concurrent events/transients. A deviation of a process parameter value begins through an event and increases owing to the concurrent multi-events depending on the correlation of process parameters and severity of incidents. A case of reactor trip caused by feedwater loss and main steam line break is simulated and analyzed to determine the RPS software input-profile and estimate the number of test cases. The different sizes of the main steam line breaks (e.g., small, medium, large break) with total loss of feedwater supply are considered in constructing the input-profile. The uncertainties of the simulation related to the input-profile-based software testing are also included. Our study is expected to provide an option to determine test cases and quantification of RPS software failure probability. (author)

Sport tourism event impacts on the host community – a case study of ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

South African Journal for Research in Sport, Physical Education and ... Sport tourism event impacts on the host community – a case study of Red Bull Big Wave Africa ... and direct observations were carried out as methods of obtaining data.

Spatial distribution of ozone over Indonesia (Study case: Forest fire event 2015)

Science.gov (United States)

Muslimah, Sri; Buce Saleh, Muhamad; Hidayat, Rahmat

2018-05-01

Tropospheric ozone is known as surface ozone and caused several health impact. The objective of this study was to analysis spatial distribution of tropospheric ozone over Indonesia case study forest fire event in 2015. Monthly observation measured by Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) have been analysed from January – December 2015 to study spatial distribution of tropospheric ozone related to forest fire event 2015. The study discovered high level of tropospheric column ozone (TCO) from October to November 2015. The result shows increasing average of TCO from September to October almost 6 DU. Meanwhile, monthly number of hotspot is higher in September 2015 with total number 257 hotspot which is acquired by Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) Terra version 6.1 with confidence level same or more than 90%. The hotspot distribution compared with spatial TCO distribution and shows interesting time lag with respect to hotspot distribution, one month. Further study for daily comparison of TCO and forest fire event needed. This result suggested that the tropospheric ozone over the Indonesian region increases in 2015 were remarkable and corresponded to forest fire event.

Kennedy Space Center Orion Processing Team Planning for Ground Operations

Science.gov (United States)

Letchworth, Gary; Schlierf, Roland

2011-01-01

Topics in this presentation are: Constellation Ares I/Orion/Ground Ops Elements Orion Ground Operations Flow Orion Operations Planning Process and Toolset Overview, including: 1 Orion Concept of Operations by Phase 2 Ops Analysis Capabilities Overview 3 Operations Planning Evolution 4 Functional Flow Block Diagrams 5 Operations Timeline Development 6 Discrete Event Simulation (DES) Modeling 7 Ground Operations Planning Document Database (GOPDb) Using Operations Planning Tools for Operability Improvements includes: 1 Kaizen/Lean Events 2 Mockups 3 Human Factors Analysis

Hierarchical event selection for video storyboards with a case study on snooker video visualization.

Science.gov (United States)

Parry, Matthew L; Legg, Philip A; Chung, David H S; Griffiths, Iwan W; Chen, Min

2011-12-01

Video storyboard, which is a form of video visualization, summarizes the major events in a video using illustrative visualization. There are three main technical challenges in creating a video storyboard, (a) event classification, (b) event selection and (c) event illustration. Among these challenges, (a) is highly application-dependent and requires a significant amount of application specific semantics to be encoded in a system or manually specified by users. This paper focuses on challenges (b) and (c). In particular, we present a framework for hierarchical event representation, and an importance-based selection algorithm for supporting the creation of a video storyboard from a video. We consider the storyboard to be an event summarization for the whole video, whilst each individual illustration on the board is also an event summarization but for a smaller time window. We utilized a 3D visualization template for depicting and annotating events in illustrations. To demonstrate the concepts and algorithms developed, we use Snooker video visualization as a case study, because it has a concrete and agreeable set of semantic definitions for events and can make use of existing techniques of event detection and 3D reconstruction in a reliable manner. Nevertheless, most of our concepts and algorithms developed for challenges (b) and (c) can be applied to other application areas. © 2010 IEEE

Factores determinantes en la implementacion de manufactura esbelta utilizando la teoria del desarrollo psicosocial: caso aplicado en una empresa del sector acerero en Nuevo Leon

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dante Cortez

2009-07-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a case of the implementation of some lean manufacturing initiatives such as lean Kaizen events, improvement project, standardization, training center, "Stage Gate", ideas and suggestion, ISO 14000, ISO 17025 in a steel company in Nuevo León. This study used a diagnostic tool proposed by Hiroyuki Hirano to determine the degree of maturity of the initiative of continuous improvement, and compare against the steps suggested by the main authors in this issue. The above determine the main steps and factors of success and crises and barriers that were presented. Also, we propose an adaptation of the model proposed by Erik Erikson to organism principle, which takes into account at every stage life cycle.

Event seeking for sponsors: Case Helsinki Pride

OpenAIRE

Jaakkola, Johanna

2014-01-01

This thesis was done for HeSeTa Ry (Helsingin seudun seksuaalinen tasavertaisuus ry) and the goal was to find out how Helsinki Pride could get sponsors more efficiently and how the co-operation could be made more long lasting with the current sponsors. Helsinki Pride is an event organized in Helsinki each year in June. It is also the biggest LGBT event organized in Finland. The biggest event of the week is the Gay Parade and the Party in the Park. In 2014 only these events had over 20 000 par...

ATLAS TDAQ/DCS Event Filter Event Handler Requirements

CERN Document Server

Bee, C P; Meessen, C; Qian, Z; Touchard, F; Green, P; Pinfold, J L; Wheeler, S; Negri, A; Scannicchio, D A; Vercesi, V

2002-01-01

The second iteration of the Software Development Process of the ATLAS Event Filter has been launched. A summary of the design phase of the first iteration is given in the introduction. The document gives constraints, use cases, functional and non-functional requirements for the Event Handler sub-system of the Event Filter.

SENTINEL EVENTS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Andrej Robida

2004-09-01

Full Text Available Background. The Objective of the article is a two year statistics on sentinel events in hospitals. Results of a survey on sentinel events and the attitude of hospital leaders and staff are also included. Some recommendations regarding patient safety and the handling of sentinel events are given.Methods. In March 2002 the Ministry of Health introduce a voluntary reporting system on sentinel events in Slovenian hospitals. Sentinel events were analyzed according to the place the event, its content, and root causes. To show results of the first year, a conference for hospital directors and medical directors was organized. A survey was conducted among the participants with the purpose of gathering information about their view on sentinel events. One hundred questionnaires were distributed.Results. Sentinel events. There were 14 reports of sentinel events in the first year and 7 in the second. In 4 cases reports were received only after written reminders were sent to the responsible persons, in one case no reports were obtained. There were 14 deaths, 5 of these were in-hospital suicides, 6 were due to an adverse event, 3 were unexplained. Events not leading to death were a suicide attempt, a wrong side surgery, a paraplegia after spinal anaesthesia, a fall with a femoral neck fracture, a damage of the spleen in the event of pleural space drainage, inadvertent embolization with absolute alcohol into a femoral artery and a physical attack on a physician by a patient. Analysis of root causes of sentinel events showed that in most cases processes were inadequate.Survey. One quarter of those surveyed did not know about the sentinel events reporting system. 16% were having actual problems when reporting events and 47% beleived that there was an attempt to blame individuals. Obstacles in reporting events openly were fear of consequences, moral shame, fear of public disclosure of names of participants in the event and exposure in mass media. The majority of

Pre-event Social Media Marketing To Promote Ticket Sales : Case: Eläköön koirat!

OpenAIRE

Tolvanen, Noora

2016-01-01

The rise of social media has provided useful marketing tools for companies to promote their events. The purpose of this thesis was to research social media marketing and how it can be used in event promotion. The theory part also includes research of the event marketing process, as it can help to plan the social media marketing strategy. The purpose of the case study in this thesis was to study the ways the commissioning company can use social media marketing in their event promotion. Hence, ...

Bleeding events associated with novel anticoagulants: a case series.

Science.gov (United States)

Mirzaee, Sam; Tran, Tara Thi Thien; Amerena, John

2013-12-01

Until lately warfarin was the only valuable oral anticoagulant in stroke reduction in high risk cases with non valvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF). Although with warfarin the rate of stroke reduced notably, the major concern is the risk of serious bleeding and difficulty of establishing and maintaining the international normalised ratio (INR) within the therapeutic range. With the development of the novel anticoagulants we now have for the first time since the innovation of Warfarin feasible alternatives to it to decrease stroke rates in high risk patients with NVAF. To diminish adverse bleeding events with the novel anticoagulant proper selection of patients prior starting treatment is essential. Crown Copyright © 2013. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Two Cases of Nivolumab Re-Administration after Pneumonitis as Immune-Related Adverse Events

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Keisuke Imafuku

2017-04-01

Full Text Available Nivolumab is a recently approved medication for the treatment of unresectable malignant melanoma. Many immune-related adverse events (irAEs associated with nivolumab have been reported, such as pneumonitis, hepatitis, dermatitis, and thyroiditis. Prednisolone can effectively treat irAEs. However, it is unclear how or if nivolumab should be administered to patients after they have experienced an irAE. Herein, we show 2 patients who underwent pneumonitis as irAE. Case 1 demonstrated a cryptogenic organizing pneumonia pattern in the CT scan and case 2 had a diffuse alveolar damage (DAD pattern. Oral corticosteroids improved chest shadow of CT scan in both cases. However, when nivolumab was re-administrated, case 1 demonstrated no symptoms, but case 2 demonstrated pneumonia again. From our cases, it is difficult to re-administrate nivolumab for the patients with pneumonitis which shows a DAD pattern in CT, even if oral corticosteroids improve their symptoms.

An economic analysis of a system wide Lean approach: cost estimations for the implementation of Lean in the Saskatchewan healthcare system for 2012-2014.

Science.gov (United States)

Sari, Nazmi; Rotter, Thomas; Goodridge, Donna; Harrison, Liz; Kinsman, Leigh

2017-08-03

The costs of investing in health care reform initiatives to improve quality and safety have been underreported and are often underestimated. This paper reports direct and indirect cost estimates for the initial phase of the province-wide implementation of Lean activities in Saskatchewan, Canada. In order to obtain detailed information about each type of Lean event, as well as the total number of corresponding Lean events, we used the Provincial Kaizen Promotion Office (PKPO) Kaizen database. While the indirect cost of Lean implementation has been estimated using the corresponding wage rate for the event participants, the direct cost has been estimated using the fees paid to the consultant and other relevant expenses. The total cost for implementation of Lean over two years (2012-2014), including consultants and new hires, ranged from $44 million CAD to $49.6 million CAD, depending upon the assumptions used. Consultant costs accounted for close to 50% of the total. The estimated cost of Lean events alone ranged from $16 million CAD to $19.5 million CAD, with Rapid Process Improvement Workshops requiring the highest input of resources. Recognizing the substantial financial and human investments required to undertake reforms designed to improve quality and contain cost, policy makers must carefully consider whether and how these efforts result in the desired transformations. Evaluation of the outcomes of these investments must be part of the accountability framework, even prior to implementation.

Discussions On Worst-Case Test Condition For Single Event Burnout

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Sandra; Zafrani, Max; Sherman, Phillip

2011-10-01

This paper discusses the failure characteristics of single- event burnout (SEB) on power MOSFETs based on analyzing the quasi-stationary avalanche simulation curves. The analyses show the worst-case test condition for SEB would be using the ion that has the highest mass that would result in the highest transient current due to charge deposition and displacement damage. The analyses also show it is possible to build power MOSFETs that will not exhibit SEB even when tested with the heaviest ion, which have been verified by heavy ion test data on SEB sensitive and SEB immune devices.

Análisis de la gestión estratégica y operativa de una empresa industrial del sector del mueble y reingeniería de procesos en la planta de producción de tapicería. Aplicación del modelo 7s y de las técnicas Kaizen, Seis Sigma y Lean Manufacturing

OpenAIRE

ESTEVE FERNÁNDEZ DE CORDOVA, JAVIER

2013-01-01

Proyecto Confidencial Esteve Fernández De Cordova, J. (2008). Análisis de la gestión estratégica y operativa de una empresa industrial del sector del mueble y reingeniería de procesos en la planta de producción de tapicería. Aplicación del modelo 7s y de las técnicas Kaizen, Seis Sigma y Lean Manufacturing. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/34162. Archivo delegado

A case-crossover analysis of forest fire haze events and mortality in Malaysia

Science.gov (United States)

Sahani, Mazrura; Zainon, Nurul Ashikin; Wan Mahiyuddin, Wan Rozita; Latif, Mohd Talib; Hod, Rozita; Khan, Md Firoz; Tahir, Norhayati Mohd; Chan, Chang-Chuan

2014-10-01

The Southeast Asian (SEA) haze events due to forest fires are recurrent and affect Malaysia, particularly the Klang Valley region. The aim of this study is to examine the risk of haze days due to biomass burning in Southeast Asia on daily mortality in the Klang Valley region between 2000 and 2007. We used a case-crossover study design to model the effect of haze based on PM10 concentration to the daily mortality. The time-stratified control sampling approach was used, adjusted for particulate matter (PM10) concentrations, time trends and meteorological influences. Based on time series analysis of PM10 and backward trajectory analysis, haze days were defined when daily PM10 concentration exceeded 100 μg/m3. The results showed a total of 88 haze days were identified in the Klang Valley region during the study period. A total of 126,822 cases of death were recorded for natural mortality where respiratory mortality represented 8.56% (N = 10,854). Haze events were found to be significantly associated with natural and respiratory mortality at various lags. For natural mortality, haze events at lagged 2 showed significant association with children less than 14 years old (Odd Ratio (OR) = 1.41; 95% Confidence Interval (CI) = 1.01-1.99). Respiratory mortality was significantly associated with haze events for all ages at lagged 0 (OR = 1.19; 95% CI = 1.02-1.40). Age-and-gender-specific analysis showed an incremental risk of respiratory mortality among all males and elderly males above 60 years old at lagged 0 (OR = 1.34; 95% CI = 1.09-1.64 and OR = 1.41; 95% CI = 1.09-1.84 respectively). Adult females aged 15-59 years old were found to be at highest risk of respiratory mortality at lagged 5 (OR = 1.66; 95% CI = 1.03-1.99). This study clearly indicates that exposure to haze events showed immediate and delayed effects on mortality.

Epistaxis and other haemorrhagic events associated with the smoking cessation medicine varenicline : a case series from two national pharmacovigilance centres

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Harrison-Woolrych, Mira; Harmark, Linda; Tan, Ming; Maggo, Simran; van Grootheest, Kees

Purpose To present a case series of haemorrhagic events associated with varenicline identified from the New Zealand (NZ) and Netherlands national pharmacovigilance centres and propose a possible mechanism for these adverse events. Methods Reports of epistaxis and other haemorrhagic events (in all

A severe blizzard event in Romania – a case study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

F. Georgescu

2009-04-01

Full Text Available During winter cold strong winds associated with snowfalls are not unusual for South and Southeastern Romania. The episode of 2–4 January 2008 was less usual due to its intensity and persistence. It happened after a long period (autumn 2006–autumn 2007 of mainly southerly circulations inducing warm weather, when the absolute record of the maximum temperature was registered. The important snowfalls and snowdrifts, leading to a consistent snow layer (up to 100 cm, produced serious transport and electricity supply perturbations.

Since this atypical local weather event was not correctly represented by the operational numerical forecasts, several cross-comparison numerical simulations were performed to analyze the relative role of the coupler/coupling models and to compare two ways of process-scale uncertainties mitigation: optimizing the forecast range and performing ensemble forecast through the perturbation of the lateral boundary conditions. The results underline, for this case, the importance of physical parametrization package on the first place and secondary, the importance of the model horizontal resolution. The resolution increase is beneficial only in the local process representation; on larger scale it may either improve or decrease the accuracy effect, depending on the specified nudging between large-scale and small-scale information. The event capture is likely to be favored by two elements: a more appropriate time-scale of the event's physics and the quality of the transmitted large-scale information. Concerning the time scale, the statistics on skill as a function of forecast range are shown to be a useful tool in order to increase the accuracy of the numerical simulations. Ensembles forecasting versus resolution increase experiments indicate, for such atypical events, an interesting supply in the forecast accuracy through the ensemble method when applied to correct the minimum skill of the deterministic forecast.

Event group importance measures for top event frequency analyses

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

1995-01-01

Three traditional importance measures, risk reduction, partial derivative, nd variance reduction, have been extended to permit analyses of the relative importance of groups of underlying failure rates to the frequencies of resulting top events. The partial derivative importance measure was extended by assessing the contribution of a group of events to the gradient of the top event frequency. Given the moments of the distributions that characterize the uncertainties in the underlying failure rates, the expectation values of the top event frequency, its variance, and all of the new group importance measures can be quantified exactly for two familiar cases: (1) when all underlying failure rates are presumed independent, and (2) when pairs of failure rates based on common data are treated as being equal (totally correlated). In these cases, the new importance measures, which can also be applied to assess the importance of individual events, obviate the need for Monte Carlo sampling. The event group importance measures are illustrated using a small example problem and demonstrated by applications made as part of a major reactor facility risk assessment. These illustrations and applications indicate both the utility and the versatility of the event group importance measures

Event group importance measures for top event frequency analyses

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

NONE

1995-07-31

Three traditional importance measures, risk reduction, partial derivative, nd variance reduction, have been extended to permit analyses of the relative importance of groups of underlying failure rates to the frequencies of resulting top events. The partial derivative importance measure was extended by assessing the contribution of a group of events to the gradient of the top event frequency. Given the moments of the distributions that characterize the uncertainties in the underlying failure rates, the expectation values of the top event frequency, its variance, and all of the new group importance measures can be quantified exactly for two familiar cases: (1) when all underlying failure rates are presumed independent, and (2) when pairs of failure rates based on common data are treated as being equal (totally correlated). In these cases, the new importance measures, which can also be applied to assess the importance of individual events, obviate the need for Monte Carlo sampling. The event group importance measures are illustrated using a small example problem and demonstrated by applications made as part of a major reactor facility risk assessment. These illustrations and applications indicate both the utility and the versatility of the event group importance measures.

Treatment of complementary events in event trees in constructing linked fault trees for level 1 and level 2 PRA

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Jo, Y. G.

2008-01-01

Complementary events in the event trees for a PRA model should be treated properly in order to evaluate plant risk correctly. In this study, the characteristics of the following three different cut-set generation methods were investigated first in order to find the best practical way for treating complementary events: 1) exact method which treats complementary events logically, 2) no-delete term method which does not treat complementary events at all, and 3) delete term method which treats complementary events by deleting nonsense cut-sets which are generated as a result of ignoring complementary events. Then, practical methods for treating complementary events in constructing linked fault trees for level 1 and level 2 PRA in EPRI R and R workstation software environment, where CAFTA is the fault tree editor and FORTE is the cut-set engine, were suggested and demonstrated. The suggested methods deal with the following selected four typical cases: Case 1: an event tree event (E) is represented by a fault tree gate whose inputs consist of only fault tree gates, Case 2: E is represented by a single basic event, Case 3: E is represented by an OR fault tree gate which has a single basic event and a fault tree gate as inputs, and Case 4: E is represented by an AND fault tree gate which has a single basic event and a fault tree gate as inputs. In the suggested methods, first the high level logic structures of event tree events are examined and restructured, if needed. Then, the delete term method, the exact method, and the combination of the two methods are applied to Case 1, Case 2, and Cases 3 and 4, respectively. Also, it is recommended to treat complementary events, using the suggested methods, before level 1 and level 2 PRA fault trees are coupled. It should be noted that the selected four typical cases may not cover all different cases encountered in level 1 and level 2 PRA modeling. However, a process similar to the one suggested in this study may be used to find

Volunteer Tourism as a Sustainable Form of Tourism—The Case of Organized Events

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kristína Pompurová

2018-05-01

Full Text Available This paper focuses on volunteer tourism as a sustainable form of tourism relating to the volunteer service at a tourism destination and specific tourism activities. The aim of the paper is to explore volunteer tourism in Slovakia with examples of organized events, especially to search exactly how event’s organizers support the development of domestic and inbound volunteer tourism in Slovakia. This paper is based on a sociological survey. We addressed 653 heterogeneous event’s organizers in Slovakia. 18% of them participated in the questionnaire survey. The collected data were processed by selected mathematical and statistical methods in SPSS statistics program. As such, we found most events organizers team up with volunteers. Only half of the organizers cooperate with local volunteers, while the second half also support the development of volunteer tourism engaging in voluntourism. In the case of attractive events, the engagement of voluntourists could be more effective. The current situation has resulted from missing information about the management of volunteers but it could be improved through an e-manual for event organizers providing an outline guide for volunteer management.

Damaging events along roads during bad weather periods: a case study in Calabria (Italy)

Science.gov (United States)

Petrucci, O.; Pasqua, A. A.

2012-02-01

The study focuses on circumstances that affect people during periods of bad weather conditions characterised by winds, rainfall, landslides, flooding, and storm surges. A methodological approach and its application to a study area in southern Italy are presented here. A 10-yr database was generated by mining data from a newspaper. Damaging agents were sorted into five types: flood, urban flooding, landslide, wind, and storm surge. Damage to people occurred in 126 cases, causing 13 victims, 129 injured and about 782 people involved but not injured. For cases of floods, urban flooding and landslides, the analysis does not highlight straightforward relationships between rainfall and damage to people, even if the events showed different features according to the months of occurrence. The events occurring between May and October were characterised by concentrated and intense rainfall, and between May and July, the highest values of hourly (103 mm on the average) and monthly rainfall (114 mm on the average) were recorded. Urban flooding and flash floods were the most common damaging agents: injured, involved people and more rarely, cases with victims were reported. Between November and April, the highest number of events was recorded. Rainfall presented longer durations and hourly and sub-hourly rainfall were lower than those recorded between May and October. Landslides were the most frequent damaging agents but the highest number of cases with victims, which occurred between November and January, were mainly related to floods and urban flooding. Motorists represent the totality of the victims; 84% of the people were injured and the whole of people involved. All victims were men, and the average age was 43 yr. The primary cause of death was drowning caused by floods, and the second was trauma suffered in car accidents caused by urban flooding. The high number of motorists rescued in submerged cars reveals an underestimation of danger in the case of floods, often

Short-term nighttime wind turbine noise and cardiovascular events: A nationwide case-crossover study from Denmark.

Science.gov (United States)

Poulsen, Aslak Harbo; Raaschou-Nielsen, Ole; Peña, Alfredo; Hahmann, Andrea N; Nordsborg, Rikke Baastrup; Ketzel, Matthias; Brandt, Jørgen; Sørensen, Mette

2018-05-01

The number of people exposed to wind turbine noise (WTN) is increasing. WTN is reported as more annoying than traffic noise at similar levels. Long-term exposure to traffic noise has consistently been associated with cardiovascular disease, whereas effects of short-term exposure are much less investigated due to little day-to-day variation of e.g. road traffic noise. WTN varies considerably due to changing weather conditions allowing investigation of short-term effects of WTN on cardiovascular events. We identified all hospitalisations and deaths from stroke (16,913 cases) and myocardial infarction (MI) (17,559 cases) among Danes exposed to WTN between 1982 and 2013. We applied a time-stratified, case-crossover design. Using detailed data on wind turbine type and hourly wind data at each wind turbine, we simulated mean nighttime outdoor (10-10,000 Hz) and nighttime low frequency (LF) indoor WTN (10-160 Hz) over the 4 days preceding diagnosis and reference days. For indoor LF WTN between 10 and 15 dB(A) and above 15 dB(A), odds ratios (ORs) for MI were 1.27 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.97-1.67; cases = 198) and 1.62 (95% CI: 0.76-3.45; cases = 21), respectively, when compared to indoor LF WTN below 5 dB(A). For stroke, corresponding ORs were 1.17 (95% CI: 0.95-1.69; cases = 166) and 2.30 (95% CI: 0.96-5.50; cases = 15). The elevated ORs above 15 dB(A) persisted across sensitivity analyses. When looking at specific lag times, noise exposure one day before MI events and three days before stroke events were associated with the highest ORs. For outdoor WTN at night, we observed both increased and decreased risk estimates. This study did not provide conclusive evidence of an association between WTN and MI or stroke. It does however suggest that indoor LF WTN at night may trigger cardiovascular events, whereas these events seemed largely unaffected by nighttime outdoor WTN. These findings need reproduction, as they were based on few cases

Case studies of selected Project "Flash" events

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

K. A. Nicolaides

2009-03-01

Full Text Available Flooding is a consequence of the prevailing meteorological situation, the intensity and duration of precipitation, geomorphology, human activities over a geographical region and other factors. Floods result in damage and destruction of infrastructure and private property and, in some cases, in fatalities. Flash floods are sudden and quite localized in extend, characterized by excessive amounts of rainfall within a short period of time and are distinguished from other floods by their degree of severity. The broader knowledge concerning flash floods is useful for the better understanding of the underlying thermodynamic and dynamic mechanisms, as well as the associated physical processes. The wider understanding of flashfloods can form part of an integrated system for short and very short forecasting of these events. In the present study, the synoptic, dynamic and thermodynamic conditions during the development of a baroclinic depression which affected the area of Cyprus on 6 November 2005 are studied. The depression was associated with extreme weather phenomena, such as thunderstorms, a water spout and high precipitation accumulations. The results indicate the importance of the dynamic parameters in the system's development and the thermodynamic analysis has shown the convective potential of the atmosphere.

Adverse events associated with acupuncture: three multicentre randomized controlled trials of 1968 cases in China.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhao, Ling; Zhang, Fu-wen; Li, Ying; Wu, Xi; Zheng, Hui; Cheng, Lin-hao; Liang, Fan-rong

2011-03-24

In order to evaluate the safety of acupuncture in China objectively, we investigated the adverse events associated with acupuncture based on three multicentre randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to assess the safety of acupuncture, identifying the common types of acupuncture adverse events, and analysing the related risk factors for their occurrence. This observational study included patients who received acupuncture from three multicentre RCTs respectively for migraine, functional dyspepsia and Bell's palsy. The 1968 patients and their acupuncturists documented adverse events associated with acupuncture after treatment. We collected data about adverse events due to acupuncture treatment from their case report forms. We analysed the incidence and details of the adverse effects, and studied the risk factors for acupuncture adverse events with non-conditional logistic regression analysis. Among the 1968 patients, 74 patients (3.76%) suffered at least one adverse event throughout the treatment period. We did not observe the occurrence of serious adverse events. 73 patients with adverse events recovered within 2 weeks through effective treatment such as physiotherapy or self-treatment. A total of 3 patients withdrew because of adverse events. There were 9 types of adverse events related to acupuncture, including subcutaneous haematoma, bleeding, skin bruising and needle site pain. Subcutaneous haematoma and haemorrhage in the needling points were the most common adverse events. Age and gender were related to the occurrence of acupuncture adverse events. The older the patients were, the higher the risk of adverse events was. In addition, male patients had slightly higher risk of an adverse event than female patients. Acupuncture is a safe therapy with low risk of adverse events in clinical practice. The risk factors for adverse events (AEs) were related to the patients' gender and age and the local anatomical structure of the acupoints. AEs could be reduced and

Damaging events along roads during bad weather periods: a case study in Calabria (Italy

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

O. Petrucci

2012-02-01

Full Text Available The study focuses on circumstances that affect people during periods of bad weather conditions characterised by winds, rainfall, landslides, flooding, and storm surges. A methodological approach and its application to a study area in southern Italy are presented here. A 10-yr database was generated by mining data from a newspaper. Damaging agents were sorted into five types: flood, urban flooding, landslide, wind, and storm surge. Damage to people occurred in 126 cases, causing 13 victims, 129 injured and about 782 people involved but not injured.

For cases of floods, urban flooding and landslides, the analysis does not highlight straightforward relationships between rainfall and damage to people, even if the events showed different features according to the months of occurrence. The events occurring between May and October were characterised by concentrated and intense rainfall, and between May and July, the highest values of hourly (103 mm on the average and monthly rainfall (114 mm on the average were recorded. Urban flooding and flash floods were the most common damaging agents: injured, involved people and more rarely, cases with victims were reported.

Between November and April, the highest number of events was recorded. Rainfall presented longer durations and hourly and sub-hourly rainfall were lower than those recorded between May and October. Landslides were the most frequent damaging agents but the highest number of cases with victims, which occurred between November and January, were mainly related to floods and urban flooding.

Motorists represent the totality of the victims; 84% of the people were injured and the whole of people involved. All victims were men, and the average age was 43 yr. The primary cause of death was drowning caused by floods, and the second was trauma suffered in car accidents caused by urban flooding. The high number of motorists rescued in submerged cars reveals an underestimation of

Adverse events following yellow fever immunization: Report and analysis of 67 neurological cases in Brazil.

Science.gov (United States)

Martins, Reinaldo de Menezes; Pavão, Ana Luiza Braz; de Oliveira, Patrícia Mouta Nunes; dos Santos, Paulo Roberto Gomes; Carvalho, Sandra Maria D; Mohrdieck, Renate; Fernandes, Alexandre Ribeiro; Sato, Helena Keico; de Figueiredo, Patricia Mandali; von Doellinger, Vanessa Dos Reis; Leal, Maria da Luz Fernandes; Homma, Akira; Maia, Maria de Lourdes S

2014-11-20

Neurological adverse events following administration of the 17DD substrain of yellow fever vaccine (YEL-AND) in the Brazilian population are described and analyzed. Based on information obtained from the National Immunization Program through passive surveillance or intensified passive surveillance, from 2007 to 2012, descriptive analysis, national and regional rates of YFV associated neurotropic, neurological autoimmune disease, and reporting rate ratios with their respective 95% confidence intervals were calculated for first time vaccinees stratified on age and year. Sixty-seven neurological cases were found, with the highest rate of neurological adverse events in the age group from 5 to 9 years (2.66 per 100,000 vaccine doses in Rio Grande do Sul state, and 0.83 per 100,000 doses in national analysis). Two cases had a combination of neurotropic and autoimmune features. This is the largest sample of YEL-AND already analyzed. Rates are similar to other recent studies, but on this study the age group from 5 to 9 years of age had the highest risk. As neurological adverse events have in general a good prognosis, they should not contraindicate the use of yellow fever vaccine in face of risk of infection by yellow fever virus. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Leader Development: The Importance of Communication, Trust, and Legacy

Science.gov (United States)

2014-06-13

Toyota Way were the spirit of challenge, kaizen (constantly improve performance), genchi genbutsu (philosophy of how leaders make decisions...the results will follow. Take responsibility for helping people advance through self-developing learning cycle. 3. Support Daily Kaizen : learn how

A case for multi-model and multi-approach based event attribution: The 2015 European drought

Science.gov (United States)

Hauser, Mathias; Gudmundsson, Lukas; Orth, René; Jézéquel, Aglaé; Haustein, Karsten; Seneviratne, Sonia Isabelle

2017-04-01

Science on the role of anthropogenic influence on extreme weather events such as heat waves or droughts has evolved rapidly over the past years. The approach of "event attribution" compares the occurrence probability of an event in the present, factual world with the probability of the same event in a hypothetical, counterfactual world without human-induced climate change. Every such analysis necessarily faces multiple methodological choices including, but not limited to: the event definition, climate model configuration, and the design of the counterfactual world. Here, we explore the role of such choices for an attribution analysis of the 2015 European summer drought (Hauser et al., in preparation). While some GCMs suggest that anthropogenic forcing made the 2015 drought more likely, others suggest no impact, or even a decrease in the event probability. These results additionally differ for single GCMs, depending on the reference used for the counterfactual world. Observational results do not suggest a historical tendency towards more drying, but the record may be too short to provide robust assessments because of the large interannual variability of drought occurrence. These results highlight the need for a multi-model and multi-approach framework in event attribution research. This is especially important for events with low signal to noise ratio and high model dependency such as regional droughts. Hauser, M., L. Gudmundsson, R. Orth, A. Jézéquel, K. Haustein, S.I. Seneviratne, in preparation. A case for multi-model and multi-approach based event attribution: The 2015 European drought.

Productivity improvement in the production line with lean manufacturing approach: case study PT. XYZ

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

diah Halimatussa’

2018-01-01

Full Text Available The increaseing productivity is one of the competitive strategies that can be applied in a company in order to survive in an intense competitive presure. PT. XYZ is a textile industry manufacturing golf gloves and caddy bag. Every day, the company has a production target of 600 pieces per line. However, the desired target is not achieved that it will affect the delay in delivery of products to customers. In this research, a case study on implementing value stream mapping and Kaizen as the lean manufacturing concept is reported. The purpose of this study is to map the current production line, analyse and design the future value stream mapping by eliminating waste occured. It is obtained a lead time reduction as much as 440.4 seconds through eliminating 17 non-value added activities. Then, the output can be increased up to 21% which is equal to 502 pieces.

A Supply chain performance measurement system: A Case study in automotive industry

OpenAIRE

Çapar, İsmail; Capar, Ismail

2002-01-01

Today's fierce market conditions drive companies to effectively evaluate their overall supply chain performance and identify improvement areas for gaining competitive advantages. In the last few decades, organizations have improved their internal processes by using initatives such as JIT, Kanban, Kaizen, and TQM. At the same time new methods and initiatives in the area of Supply Chain Management have forced organizations to improve not only their internal processes but also the supply chain t...

Kaizen koncept i njegova primena u logistici / Kaizen concept and its application in logistics / Применение практики Кайдзен при решении логистических задач

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Predrag J. Pešić

2015-04-01

Full Text Available Kaizen je japanska filozofija koja se fokusira na kontinualno poboljšanje, pojednostavljenje i ubrzanje procesa, smanjenjem ili eliminisanjem rasipanja, trošeći minimum potrebnih resursa, a pri tome isporučuje najbolji mogući kvalitet proizvoda ili usluga. To je proces koji, kada se uradi pravilno, humanizuje radno mesto, eliminiše preterano težak rad i uči ljude kako da vrše ispitivanja sopstvenog rada (koristeći naučne metode, eliminišući škart u procesu poslovanja. Mnoge vojne organizacije prepoznale se prednosti Kaizena i implementirale ga u svoju praksu. Kaizen je jedna od najprihvatljivijih metoda kontinualnog unapređenja procesa u logistici. Omogućava inkrementalno poboljšanje procesa, jeftin je i fleksibilan. Istovremeno, pruža mogućnost organima logistike da brzo, efektno i efikasno reaguju na sve promene u njenom turbulentnom i složenom okruženju. / Kaizen is a Japanese philosophy that focuses on continuous improvement, simplification and acceleration of processes, by reducing or eliminating waste and by spending a minimum of resources needed, while delivering the best possible quality products and services. It is a process that, when done correctly, humanizes the workplace, eliminates overly hard work and teaches people how to perform tests of their own work (using scientific methods and eliminating scrap in the business process. Many military organizations have recognized the benefits of Kaizen and implemented it into their practice. Kaizen is one of the most acceptable methods of continuous process improvement in logistics. It is cost effective and flexible and allows incremental process improvement. At the same time, it provides logistics with quick, effective and efficient responses to any changes in its turbulent and complex environment. / Кайдзен, кайдзэн (яп. 改善 – японская философия или практика, которая фокусируется на �

Augmenting Naval Capabilities in Remote Locations

Science.gov (United States)

2009-12-01

process receives information to stop the process, the team must resolve the design stoppage immediately. This action is a “ Kaizen Blitz”, which...problems rapidly. The concepts employ Kanban, Kaizen , and Entry/Exit Criteria. Each milestone review can correlate to a design review

Analyses of robot systems using fault and event trees: case studies

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Khodabandehloo, Koorosh

1996-01-01

Safety in the use of robotics outside factories or processing plants has become a matter of great international concern. Domestic robots and those intended to assist nurses and surgeons in hospitals are examples of cases where safety and reliability are considered critical. The safe performance of robot systems depends on many factors, including the integrity of the robot's hardware and software, the way it communicates with sensory and other production equipment, the reliable function of the safety features present and the way the robot interacts with its environment. The use of systematic techniques such as Fault and Event Tree analysis to examine the safety and reliability of a given robotic system is presented. Considerable knowledge is needed before the application of such analysis techniques can be translated into safety specifications or indeed 'fail-safe' design features of robotic systems. The skill and understanding required for the formulation of such specifications is demonstrated here based on a number of case studies

Mission impossible? The boss wants to double our inventory turns.

Science.gov (United States)

Gips, J

1998-11-01

Despite the prolific implementation of manufacturing systems, JIT principles, Kaizen events, and cycle time reduction programs over the past few years, high inventories still plague many companies. The assumption that implementing these principles and techniques will automatically result in inventory levels that satisfy management frequently proves to be false. Events like mergers, introduction of new competition, and a dropoff in business often trigger edicts to cut inventories. The cost of inventories also extends beyond the traditional accounting measurements to include hidden operating costs that everyone should want to eliminate. This article looks at the reasons for inventories and explores strategies for reducing them.

A Geo-Event-Based Geospatial Information Service: A Case Study of Typhoon Hazard

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yu Zhang

2017-03-01

Full Text Available Social media is valuable in propagating information during disasters for its timely and available characteristics nowadays, and assists in making decisions when tagged with locations. Considering the ambiguity and inaccuracy in some social data, additional authoritative data are needed for important verification. However, current works often fail to leverage both social and authoritative data and, on most occasions, the data are used in disaster analysis after the fact. Moreover, current works organize the data from the perspective of the spatial location, but not from the perspective of the disaster, making it difficult to dynamically analyze the disaster. All of the disaster-related data around the affected locations need to be retrieved. To solve these limitations, this study develops a geo-event-based geospatial information service (GEGIS framework and proceeded as follows: (1 a geo-event-related ontology was constructed to provide a uniform semantic basis for the system; (2 geo-events and attributes were extracted from the web using a natural language process (NLP and used in the semantic similarity match of the geospatial resources; and (3 a geospatial information service prototype system was designed and implemented for automatically retrieving and organizing geo-event-related geospatial resources. A case study of a typhoon hazard is analyzed here within the GEGIS and shows that the system would be effective when typhoons occur.

Iso-risk air no decompression limits after scoring marginal decompression sickness cases as non-events.

Science.gov (United States)

Murphy, F Gregory; Swingler, Ashleigh J; Gerth, Wayne A; Howle, Laurens E

2018-01-01

Decompression sickness (DCS) in humans is associated with reductions in ambient pressure that occur during diving, aviation, or certain manned spaceflight operations. Its signs and symptoms can include, but are not limited to, joint pain, radiating abdominal pain, paresthesia, dyspnea, general malaise, cognitive dysfunction, cardiopulmonary dysfunction, and death. Probabilistic models of DCS allow the probability of DCS incidence and time of occurrence during or after a given hyperbaric or hypobaric exposure to be predicted based on how the gas contents or gas bubble volumes vary in hypothetical tissue compartments during the exposure. These models are calibrated using data containing the pressure and respired gas histories of actual exposures, some of which resulted in DCS, some of which did not, and others in which the diagnosis of DCS was not clear. The latter are referred to as marginal DCS cases. In earlier works, a marginal DCS event was typically weighted as 0.1, with a full DCS event being weighted as 1.0, and a non-event being weighted as 0.0. Recent work has shown that marginal DCS events should be weighted as 0.0 when calibrating gas content models. We confirm this indication in the present work by showing that such models have improved performance when calibrated to data with marginal DCS events coded as non-events. Further, we investigate the ramifications of derating marginal events on model-prescribed air diving no-stop limits. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Patterns of life events preceding the suicide in rural young Chinese: a case control study.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Jie; Ma, Zhenyu

2012-10-01

Previous studies on the Chinese suicide found some life events prior to the suicide different from those in the West, but there is a lack of summary of the Chinese life event patterns to better understand the effects of the social structure on Chinese suicide. We tried to identify the life events that precede the Chinese rural youth suicides and compare them with what are found in the West, so as to find the patterns that are particularly true in the Chinese culture contexts. Suicide cases were investigated with a psychological autopsy study in rural China, and local community living controls were also interviewed with the same protocol. We collapsed 64 negative life events into six categories: (1) Marriage/Love, (2) Family/Home, (3) Work/Business, (4) Health/Hospital, (5) Law/Legal, (6) Friend/Relationship. About 92.3% of the suicides studied had experienced at least one type of negative life events. The three most common negative life events categories in the past one year were Family/Home (60.7%), Health/Hospital (53.8%) and Marriage/Love (51.3%) in the rural young suicide victims. Among the negative life events, those related to family relations, love affairs, and marital issues were most likely to precede a suicide of rural suicides in China, and it is especially true of rural young women. Family is an important social institution in rural China for suicide prevention efforts. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Personality characteristics of excellent lean managers

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Steendahl Nielsen, Jacob; Boer, Harry; Lindgren, Peter

2016-01-01

Today many Danish companies are implementing Lean and hereby trying to implement a continuous improvement (CI) program and culture. We have observed that companies can easily implement the artifacts of CI, such as Kaizen boards, Kaizen meetings, Performance management (KPI), A3 and PDCA reports...

Use of Hypoprothrombinemia-Inducing Cephalosporins and the Risk of Hemorrhagic Events: A Nationwide Nested Case-Control Study

Science.gov (United States)

Shen, Li-Jiuan; Wu, Fe-Lin Lin; Tsay, Woei; Hung, Chien-Ching; Lin, Shu-Wen

2016-01-01

Objective Existing data regarding the risk of hemorrhagic events associated with exposure to hypoprothrombinemia-inducing cephalosporins are limited by the small sample size. This population-based study aimed to examine the association between exposure to hypoprothrombinemia-inducing cephalosporins and hemorrhagic events using National Health Insurance Research Database in Taiwan. Design A nationwide nested case-control study. Setting National Health Insurance Research database. Participants We conducted a nested case-control study within a cohort of 6191 patients who received hypoprothrombinemia-inducing cephalosporins and other antibiotics for more than 48 hours. Multivariable conditional logistic regressions were used to calculate the adjusted odds ratio (aOR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) for hemorrhagic events associated with exposure to hypoprothrombinemia-inducing cephalosporins (overall, cumulative dose measured as defined daily dose (DDD), and individual cephalosporins). Results Within the cohort, we identified 704 patients with hemorrhagic events and 2816 matched controls. Use of hypoprothrombinemia-inducing cephalosporins was associated with increased risk of hemorrhagic events (aOR, 1.71; 95% CI, 1.42–2.06), which increased with higher cumulative doses (5 DDDs, aOR 1.89). The aOR for individual cephalosporin was 2.88 (95% CI, 2.08–4.00), 1.35 (1.09–1.67) and 4.57 (2.63–7.95) for cefmetazole, flomoxef, and cefoperazone, respectively. Other risk factors included use of anticoagulants (aOR 2.08 [95% CI, 1.64–2.63]), liver failure (aOR 1.69 [1.30–2.18]), poor nutritional status (aOR 1.41 [1.15–1.73]), and history of hemorrhagic events (aOR 2.57 [1.94–3.41]) 6 months prior to the index date. Conclusions Use of hypoprothrombinemia-inducing cephalosporins increases risk of hemorrhagic events. Close watch for hemorrhagic events is recommended when prescribing these cephalosporins, especially in patients who are at higher risk. PMID:27463687

Differences in Work-Related Adverse Events by Sex and Industry in Cases Involving Compensation for Mental Disorders and Suicide in Japan From 2010 to 2014.

Science.gov (United States)

Yamauchi, Takashi; Sasaki, Takeshi; Yoshikawa, Toru; Matsumoto, Shun; Takahashi, Masaya; Suka, Machi; Yanagisawa, Hiroyuki

2018-04-01

This study aimed to clarify whether work-related adverse events in cases involving compensation for mental disorders and suicide differ by sex and industry using a database containing all relevant cases reported from 2010 to 2014 in Japan. A total of 1362 eligible cases involving compensation for mental disorders (422 females and 940 males) were analyzed. Among males, 55.7% of cases were attributed to "long working hours." In both sexes, the frequencies of cases attributed to "long working hours" and other events differed significantly by industry. Among cases involving compensation for suicide, 71.4% were attributed to "long working hours." The frequency distribution of work-related adverse events differed significantly by sex and industry. These differences should be taken into consideration in the development of industry-specific preventive measures for occupational mental disorders.

Event planning the ultimate guide to successful meetings, corporate events, fundraising galas, conferences, conventions, incentives and other special events

CERN Document Server

Allen, Judy

2009-01-01

This bestselling all–in–one guide to the event planning business is back and better than ever, fully updated and revised to reflect the very latest trends and best practices in the industry. This handy, comprehensive guide includes forms, checklists, and tips for managing events, as well as examples and case studies of both successful and unsuccessful events. Judy Allen (Toronto, ON, Canada) is founder and President of Judy Allen Productions, a full–service event planning production company.

Analysis of the United States Marine Corps Continuous Process Improvement Program Applied to the Contracting Process at Marine Corps Regional Contracting Office - Southwest

Science.gov (United States)

2007-12-01

errors • Motion study and material handling • Systems for workplace organization (5S approach) • Just-in-time principles • Kaizen methods • Continuous...profitability. Quality Progress, May. Imai, M. (1997). Gemba Kaizen : A commonsense, low-cost approach to management. New York: McGraw-Hill. Lean

The Contest with Context: Theory and Military Innovation

Science.gov (United States)

2009-04-01

willingness of all workers to push themselves beyond where they feel comfortable— kaizen in action.‖ 32 The idea that a peculiar organizational...Economist 374 (29 Jan 95): 73. The Japanese word kaizen is equivalent to the English concept of ―continuous improvement.‖ Similarly, recent research

Creating an Event: Case “Spring Festival” in Imatra

OpenAIRE

Serous, Alina

2014-01-01

The purpose of the project was to create a new event in Imatra, Finland, and to see how theoretical approach to event management is applied in practice. The event was designed to be public non-profit event for local families. The work was carried out in co-operation with Imitsi, the local association of town businesses, which aims at improving business environment and developing the town centre of Imatra to be a lively place. Theoretical background for the project was gathered using variou...

A strategy for company improvement.

Science.gov (United States)

Howley, L

2000-03-01

Strategies based on the kaizen methodology are designed to continuously improve company performance without the need for large capital investments. This article looks at how one company used simple kaizen principles to its advantage, achieving 67% increase in productivity and 10% reduction in the standard cost of product.

Stressful life events and maltreatment in conversion (functional neurological) disorder: systematic review and meta-analysis of case-control studies.

Science.gov (United States)

Ludwig, Lea; Pasman, Joëlle A; Nicholson, Timothy; Aybek, Selma; David, Anthony S; Tuck, Sharon; Kanaan, Richard A; Roelofs, Karin; Carson, Alan; Stone, Jon

2018-04-01

Stressful life events and maltreatment have traditionally been considered crucial in the development of conversion (functional neurological) disorder, but the evidence underpinning this association is not clear. We aimed to assess the association between stressors and functional neurological disorder. We systematically reviewed controlled studies reporting stressors occurring in childhood or adulthood, such as stressful life events and maltreatment (including sexual, physical abuse, and emotional neglect) and functional neurological disorder. We did a meta-analysis, with assessments of methodology, sources of bias, and sensitivity analyses. 34 case-control studies, with 1405 patients, were eligible. Studies were of moderate-to-low quality. The frequency of childhood and adulthood stressors was increased in cases compared with controls. Odds ratios (OR) were higher for emotional neglect in childhood (49% for cases vs 20% for controls; OR 5·6, 95% CI 2·4-13·1) compared with sexual abuse (24% vs 10%; 3·3, 2·2-4·8) or physical abuse (30% vs 12%; 3·9, 2·2-7·2). An association with stressful life events preceding onset (OR 2·8, 95% CI 1·4-6·0) was stronger in studies with better methods (interviews; 4·3, 1·4-13·2). Heterogeneity was significant between studies (I 2 21·1-90·7%). 13 studies that specifically ascertained that the participants had not had either severe life events or any subtype of maltreatment all found a proportion of patients with functional neurological disorder reporting no stressor. Stressful life events and maltreatment are substantially more common in people with functional neurological disorder than in healthy controls and patient controls. Emotional neglect had a higher risk than traditionally emphasised sexual and physical abuse, but many cases report no stressors. This outcome supports changes to diagnostic criteria in DSM-5; stressors, although relevant to the cause in many patients, are not a core diagnostic feature. This

Numerical Simulations as Tool to Predict Chemical and Radiological Hazardous Diffusion in Case of Nonconventional Events

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

J.-F. Ciparisse

2016-01-01

Full Text Available CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics simulations are widely used nowadays to predict the behaviour of fluids in pure research and in industrial applications. This approach makes it possible to get quantitatively meaningful results, often in good agreement with the experimental ones. The aim of this paper is to show how CFD calculations can help to understand the time evolution of two possible CBRNe (Chemical-Biological-Radiological-Nuclear-explosive events: (1 hazardous dust mobilization due to the interaction between a jet of air and a metallic powder in case of a LOVA (Loss Of Vacuum Accidents that is one of the possible accidents that can occur in experimental nuclear fusion plants; (2 toxic gas release in atmosphere. The scenario analysed in the paper has consequences similar to those expected in case of a release of dangerous substances (chemical or radioactive in enclosed or open environment during nonconventional events (like accidents or man-made or natural disasters.

Bias correction of risk estimates in vaccine safety studies with rare adverse events using a self-controlled case series design.

Science.gov (United States)

Zeng, Chan; Newcomer, Sophia R; Glanz, Jason M; Shoup, Jo Ann; Daley, Matthew F; Hambidge, Simon J; Xu, Stanley

2013-12-15

The self-controlled case series (SCCS) method is often used to examine the temporal association between vaccination and adverse events using only data from patients who experienced such events. Conditional Poisson regression models are used to estimate incidence rate ratios, and these models perform well with large or medium-sized case samples. However, in some vaccine safety studies, the adverse events studied are rare and the maximum likelihood estimates may be biased. Several bias correction methods have been examined in case-control studies using conditional logistic regression, but none of these methods have been evaluated in studies using the SCCS design. In this study, we used simulations to evaluate 2 bias correction approaches-the Firth penalized maximum likelihood method and Cordeiro and McCullagh's bias reduction after maximum likelihood estimation-with small sample sizes in studies using the SCCS design. The simulations showed that the bias under the SCCS design with a small number of cases can be large and is also sensitive to a short risk period. The Firth correction method provides finite and less biased estimates than the maximum likelihood method and Cordeiro and McCullagh's method. However, limitations still exist when the risk period in the SCCS design is short relative to the entire observation period.

Probability estimation of rare extreme events in the case of small samples: Technique and examples of analysis of earthquake catalogs

Science.gov (United States)

Pisarenko, V. F.; Rodkin, M. V.; Rukavishnikova, T. A.

2017-11-01

The most general approach to studying the recurrence law in the area of the rare largest events is associated with the use of limit law theorems of the theory of extreme values. In this paper, we use the Generalized Pareto Distribution (GPD). The unknown GPD parameters are typically determined by the method of maximal likelihood (ML). However, the ML estimation is only optimal for the case of fairly large samples (>200-300), whereas in many practical important cases, there are only dozens of large events. It is shown that in the case of a small number of events, the highest accuracy in the case of using the GPD is provided by the method of quantiles (MQs). In order to illustrate the obtained methodical results, we have formed the compiled data sets characterizing the tails of the distributions for typical subduction zones, regions of intracontinental seismicity, and for the zones of midoceanic (MO) ridges. This approach paves the way for designing a new method for seismic risk assessment. Here, instead of the unstable characteristics—the uppermost possible magnitude M max—it is recommended to use the quantiles of the distribution of random maxima for a future time interval. The results of calculating such quantiles are presented.

Use of a prescribed ephedrine/caffeine combination and the risk of serious cardiovascular events: a registry-based case-crossover study

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hallas, Jesper; Bjerrum, Lars; Støvring, Henrik

2008-01-01

Ephedrine and herbal ephedra preparations have been shown to induce a small-to-moderate weight loss. Owing to reports on serious cardiovascular events, they were banned from the US market in 2004. There have been no large controlled studies on the possible association between prescribed ephedrine/caffeine...... and cardiovascular events in general. The authors linked data from four different sources within Statistics Denmark, using data on 257,364 users of prescribed ephedrine/caffeine for the period 1995-2002. The data were analyzed using a case-crossover technique with a composite endpoint: death outside of a hospital......, myocardial infarction, or stroke. To account for effects of chronic exposure and effects in naïve users, the authors performed a secondary case-control study nested within the cohort of ephedrine/caffeine ever users. Among 2,316 case subjects, 282 (12.2%) were current users of ephedrine/caffeine. The case...

Patterns of Life Events Preceding the Suicide in Rural Young Chinese: A Case Control Study1

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Jie; Ma, Zhenyu

2012-01-01

Background Previous studies on the Chinese suicide found some life events prior to the suicide different from those in the West, but there is a lack of summary of the Chinese life event patterns to better understand the effects of the social structure on Chinese suicide. Aim We tried to identify the life events that precede the Chinese rural youth suicides and compare them with what found in the West, so as to find the patterns that are particularly true in the Chinese culture contexts. Methods Suicide cases were investigated with a psychological autopsy study in rural China, and local community living controls were also interviewed with the same protocol. Results We collapsed 64 negative life events into six categories: (1) Marriage/Love, (2) Family/Home, (3) Work/Business, (4) Health/Hospital, (5) Law/Legal, (6) Friend/Relationship. About 92.3% of the suicides studied had experienced at least one type of negative life events. The three most common negative life events categories in the past one year were Family/Home (60.7%), Health/Hospital (53.8%) and Marriage/Love (51.3%) in the rural young suicide victims. Conclusions Among the negative life events, those related to family relations, love affairs, and marital issues were most likely to precede a suicide of rural suicides in China, and it is especially true of rural young women. Family is an important social institution in rural China for suicide prevention efforts. PMID:22595373

The environmental impacts of beach sport tourism events: a case ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Durban has several established beach sport events. One of the many events is the Mr Price Pro, an internationally recognised surfi ng event, which takes place during the Vodacom Beach Africa festival, held annually during the July holiday season. This article examines the environmental impact of beach tourism events by ...

Memory effect triggered by exceptional event: the Rio Cordon study case

Science.gov (United States)

Rainato, Riccardo; Mao, Luca; Picco, Lorenzo; Garcia-Rama, Adriana; Aristide Lenzi, Mario

2016-04-01

the floods are investigated as a function of Qpeak, using a power-law regression. Bedload (r2= 0.739) and suspended load (r2= 0.565) appear positively correlated with Qpeak, also showing that floods of a certain magnitude transported more sediments after the exceptional 1994 flood. A comparable behavior can be observed by the Qpeak/D50 relationship (r2= 0.688). The ratio between sediment load and effective runoff of the events allowed the temporal trend of transport efficiency to be inferred. The results highlight that nearly a decade with high transport efficiency appears to have occurred subsequently to the September 1994 event. This result confirms that exceptional floods, rarely assessed by short-term monitoring programs, can strongly affect the long-term sediment fluxes. In the case of Rio Cordon, the exceptional event triggered a "memory effect" in the basin, altering the sediment dynamics for roughly 10 years. This research was supported by the Italian Research Project of Relevant Interest PRIN2010-2011, prot. 20104ALME4, ITSE; and by the University of Padova Research Project CPDA149091- WoodAlp.

Use Cases of Discrete Event Simulation Appliance and Research

CERN Document Server

2012-01-01

Over the last decades Discrete Event Simulation has conquered many different application areas. This trend is, on the one hand, driven by an ever wider use of this technology in different fields of science and on the other hand by an incredibly creative use of available software programs through dedicated experts. This book contains articles from scientists and experts from 10 countries. They illuminate the width of application of this technology and the quality of problems solved using Discrete Event Simulation. Practical applications of simulation dominate in the present book.   The book is aimed to researchers and students who deal in their work with Discrete Event Simulation and which want to inform them about current applications. By focusing on discrete event simulation, this book can also serve as an inspiration source for practitioners for solving specific problems during their work. Decision makers who deal with the question of the introduction of discrete event simulation for planning support and o...

Event-Based Conceptual Modeling

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bækgaard, Lars

The paper demonstrates that a wide variety of event-based modeling approaches are based on special cases of the same general event concept, and that the general event concept can be used to unify the otherwise unrelated fields of information modeling and process modeling. A set of event......-based modeling approaches are analyzed and the results are used to formulate a general event concept that can be used for unifying the seemingly unrelated event concepts. Events are characterized as short-duration processes that have participants, consequences, and properties, and that may be modeled in terms...... of information structures. The general event concept can be used to guide systems analysis and design and to improve modeling approaches....

Crime event 3D reconstruction based on incomplete or fragmentary evidence material--case report.

Science.gov (United States)

Maksymowicz, Krzysztof; Tunikowski, Wojciech; Kościuk, Jacek

2014-09-01

Using our own experience in 3D analysis, the authors will demonstrate the possibilities of 3D crime scene and event reconstruction in cases where originally collected material evidence is largely insufficient. The necessity to repeat forensic evaluation is often down to the emergence of new facts in the course of case proceedings. Even in cases when a crime scene and its surroundings have undergone partial or complete transformation, with regard to elements significant to the course of the case, or when the scene was not satisfactorily secured, it is still possible to reconstruct it in a 3D environment based on the originally-collected, even incomplete, material evidence. In particular cases when no image of the crime scene is available, its partial or even full reconstruction is still potentially feasible. Credibility of evidence for such reconstruction can still satisfy the evidence requirements in court. Reconstruction of the missing elements of the crime scene is still possible with the use of information obtained from current publicly available databases. In the study, we demonstrate that these can include Google Maps(®*), Google Street View(®*) and available construction and architecture archives. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Event boundaries and anaphoric reference.

Science.gov (United States)

Thompson, Alexis N; Radvansky, Gabriel A

2016-06-01

The current study explored the finding that parsing a narrative into separate events impairs anaphor resolution. According to the Event Horizon Model, when a narrative event boundary is encountered, a new event model is created. Information associated with the prior event model is removed from working memory. So long as the event model containing the anaphor referent is currently being processed, this information should still be available when there is no narrative event boundary, even if reading has been disrupted by a working-memory-clearing distractor task. In those cases, readers may reactivate their prior event model, and anaphor resolution would not be affected. Alternatively, comprehension may not be as event oriented as this account suggests. Instead, any disruption of the contents of working memory during comprehension, event related or not, may be sufficient to disrupt anaphor resolution. In this case, reading comprehension would be more strongly guided by other, more basic language processing mechanisms and the event structure of the described events would play a more minor role. In the current experiments, participants were given stories to read in which we included, between the anaphor and its referent, either the presence of a narrative event boundary (Experiment 1) or a narrative event boundary along with a working-memory-clearing distractor task (Experiment 2). The results showed that anaphor resolution was affected by narrative event boundaries but not by a working-memory-clearing distractor task. This is interpreted as being consistent with the Event Horizon Model of event cognition.

Discrete event simulation for exploring strategies: an urban water management case.

Science.gov (United States)

Huang, Dong-Bin; Scholz, Roland W; Gujer, Willi; Chitwood, Derek E; Loukopoulos, Peter; Schertenleib, Roland; Siegrist, Hansruedi

2007-02-01

This paper presents a model structure aimed at offering an overview of the various elements of a strategy and exploring their multidimensional effects through time in an efficient way. It treats a strategy as a set of discrete events planned to achieve a certain strategic goal and develops a new form of causal networks as an interfacing component between decision makers and environment models, e.g., life cycle inventory and material flow models. The causal network receives a strategic plan as input in a discrete manner and then outputs the updated parameter sets to the subsequent environmental models. Accordingly, the potential dynamic evolution of environmental systems caused by various strategies can be stepwise simulated. It enables a way to incorporate discontinuous change in models for environmental strategy analysis, and enhances the interpretability and extendibility of a complex model by its cellular constructs. It is exemplified using an urban water management case in Kunming, a major city in Southwest China. By utilizing the presented method, the case study modeled the cross-scale interdependencies of the urban drainage system and regional water balance systems, and evaluated the effectiveness of various strategies for improving the situation of Dianchi Lake.

Simulating large-scale pedestrian movement using CA and event driven model: Methodology and case study

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Jun; Fu, Siyao; He, Haibo; Jia, Hongfei; Li, Yanzhong; Guo, Yi

2015-11-01

Large-scale regional evacuation is an important part of national security emergency response plan. Large commercial shopping area, as the typical service system, its emergency evacuation is one of the hot research topics. A systematic methodology based on Cellular Automata with the Dynamic Floor Field and event driven model has been proposed, and the methodology has been examined within context of a case study involving the evacuation within a commercial shopping mall. Pedestrians walking is based on Cellular Automata and event driven model. In this paper, the event driven model is adopted to simulate the pedestrian movement patterns, the simulation process is divided into normal situation and emergency evacuation. The model is composed of four layers: environment layer, customer layer, clerk layer and trajectory layer. For the simulation of movement route of pedestrians, the model takes into account purchase intention of customers and density of pedestrians. Based on evacuation model of Cellular Automata with Dynamic Floor Field and event driven model, we can reflect behavior characteristics of customers and clerks at the situations of normal and emergency evacuation. The distribution of individual evacuation time as a function of initial positions and the dynamics of the evacuation process is studied. Our results indicate that the evacuation model using the combination of Cellular Automata with Dynamic Floor Field and event driven scheduling can be used to simulate the evacuation of pedestrian flows in indoor areas with complicated surroundings and to investigate the layout of shopping mall.

Organizational Learning in Rare Events

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Andersen, Kristina Vaarst; Tyler, Beverly; Beukel, Karin

When organizations encounter rare events they often find it challenging to extract learning from the experience. We analyze opportunities for organizational learning in one such rare event, namely Intellectual Property (IP) litigation, i.e., when organizations take disputes regarding their intell......When organizations encounter rare events they often find it challenging to extract learning from the experience. We analyze opportunities for organizational learning in one such rare event, namely Intellectual Property (IP) litigation, i.e., when organizations take disputes regarding...... the organization little discretion to utilize any learning from past litigation success. Thus, learning appears be to most beneficial in infringement cases. Based on statistical analysis of 10,211 litigation court cases in China, we find support for our hypotheses. Our findings suggest that organizations can learn...

A classification of event sequences in the influence network

Science.gov (United States)

Walsh, James Lyons; Knuth, Kevin H.

2017-06-01

We build on the classification in [1] of event sequences in the influence network as respecting collinearity or not, so as to determine in future work what phenomena arise in each case. Collinearity enables each observer to uniquely associate each particle event of influencing with one of the observer's own events, even in the case of events of influencing the other observer. We further classify events as to whether they are spacetime events that obey in the fine-grained case the coarse-grained conditions of [2], finding that Newton's First and Second Laws of motion are obeyed at spacetime events. A proof of Newton's Third Law under particular circumstances is also presented.

The Agency of Event

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nicholas, Paul; Tamke, Martin; Riiber, Jacob

2014-01-01

This paper explores the notion of agency within event-based models. We present an event-based modeling approach that links interdependent generative, analytic and decision making sub-models within a system of exchange. Two case study projects demonstrate the underlying modeling concepts and metho...

Ergonomics Risk Assessment with Participation of Supervisors in Production Line: a Successful Experience in Pars Khodro Company

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Adel Mazloumi

2014-04-01

Full Text Available Background & Objectives: According to previous researches, workers' participation in issues affecting their working condition is the key to success in ergonomics interventions in working environments. Therefore, the present study was performed to increase active particapitation of supervisors in production line and also to identify and assess ergonomics risks and presenting modification actions (Kaizen by themselves in Pars Khodro automobile manufacturing company. Methods: A manual regarding lifting objects and body postures, according to the Finish evaluation method, was provided for supervisors in production line and related trainings were presented to them. Then, they were asked to insert the results of their assessments and suggestions in special forms during one year. The presented assessments and suggestions were examined by ergonomics experts. Results: According to the assessments conducted by supervisors, 26 work stations had high ergonomics risks, 51 had ergonomics risks with an average level, and 45 had low ergonomics risks. Moreover, the number of required Kaizens presented by supervisors was increased from 18 cases in the first year to 42 cases in the second year, after implementation of ergonomics training and identifying and assessing ergonomic risks by supervisors. Conclusion: Empowering and training supervisors increased workers' participation. In case of adequate training, supervisors can present practical solutions to reduce ergonomics risks in their workstations.

A case study of lightning, whistlers, and associated ionospheric effects during a substorm particle injection event

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Rodriguez, J.V.; Inan, U.S.; Li, Y.Q.; Holzworth, R.H.; Smith, A.J.; Orville, R.E.; Rosenberg, T.J.

1992-01-01

Simultaneous ground-based observations of narrowband and broadband VLF radio waves and of cloud-to-ground lightning were made at widely spaced locations during the 1987 Wave-Induced Particle Precipitation (WIPP) campaign, conducted from Wallops Island, Virginia. Based on these observations, the first case study has been made of the relationships among located cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning flashes, whistlers, and associated ionospheric effects during a substorm particle injection event. This event took place 2 days after the strongest geomagnetic storm of 1987, during a reintensification in geomagnetic activity that did not affect the high rate of whistlers observed at Faraday Station, Antarctica. At the time of the injection event, several intense nighttime thunderstorms were located over Long Island and the coast of New England, between 400 km northwest and 600 km north of the region geomagnetically conjugate to Faraday. About two thirds of the CG flashes that were detected in these thunderstorms during the hour following the injection event onset were found to be causatively associated with whistlers received at Faraday. During the same period the amplitude of the 24.0-kHz signal from the NAA transmitter in Cutler, Maine, propagating over the thunderstorm centers toward Wallops Island was repeatedly perturbed in a manner characteristic of previously reported VLF signatures of transient and localized ionization enhancements at D region altitudes. Though such enhancements may have been caused by whistler-induced bursts electron precipitation from the magnetosphere, the data in this case are insufficient to establish a clear connection between the NAA amplitude perturbations and the Faraday Station whistlers. In view of the proximity of the NAA great circle path to the storm center, having the lower ionosphere by intense radiation from lightning may also have played a role in the observed VLF perturbations

Integrating health promotion with quality improvement in a Swedish hospital.

Science.gov (United States)

Astnell, Sandra; von Thiele Schwarz, Ulrica; Hasson, Henna; Augustsson, Hanna; Stenfors-Hayes, Terese

2016-09-01

Integration of workplace employee health promotion (HP) and occupational health and safety (OHS) work into organizational quality improvement systems is suggested as a way to strengthen HP and OHS activities in an organization. The aim of this article was to study what consequences integration of HP, OHS and a quality improvement system called kaizen has on the frequency and type of HP and OHS activities. A quasi-experimental study design was used where an integration of the three systems for HP, OHS respectively kaizen, was performed at six intervention units at a Swedish hospital. The remaining six units served as controls. Document analysis of all employees' written improvement suggestions (kaizen notes) during 2013 was conducted. The findings show that the intervention group had more suggestions concerning HP and OHS (n = 114) when compared with the control group (n = 78) and a greater variety of HP and OHS suggestions. In addition, only the intervention group had included HP aspects. In both groups, most kaizen notes with health consideration had a preventive focus rather than rehabilitative. The intervention, i.e. the integration of HP, OHS and kaizen work, had a favourable effect on HP and OHS work when compared with the controls. The results of the study support that this system can work in practice at hospitals. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

A Case of Apparent Life-Threatening Event: Comorbid Gastric Volvulus Associated Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease and Epilepsy in a 4-Month-Old Boy

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Yoshihiko Takano

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Most isolated episodes of apparent life-threatening events (ALTEs do not lead to the diagnosis of serious conditions, and their prognoses are generally benign. However, recurrent ALTEs are often associated with a risk of future serious adverse events and should be evaluated for appropriate management. Here we present ALTE case in which gastric volvulus associated gastroesophageal reflux disease was detected as an etiology initially, followed by the detection of epilepsy as another etiology. Clinicians should consider possibility of two or more etiologies in a single recurrent ALTE case.

Comparison of event landslide inventories: the Pogliaschina catchment test case, Italy

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Mondini, A. C.; Viero, A.; Cavalli, M.; Marchi, L.; Herrera, G.; Guzzetti, F.

2014-07-01

Event landslide inventory maps document the extent of populations of landslides caused by a single natural trigger, such as an earthquake, an intense rainfall event, or a rapid snowmelt event. Event inventory maps are important for landslide susceptibility and hazard modelling, and prove useful to manage residual risk after a landslide-triggering event. Standards for the preparation of event landslide inventory maps are lacking. Traditional methods are based on the visual interpretation of stereoscopic aerial photography, aided by field surveys. New and emerging techniques exploit remotely sensed data and semi-automatic algorithms. We describe the production and comparison of two independent event inventories prepared for the Pogliaschina catchment, Liguria, Northwest Italy. The two inventories show landslides triggered by an intense rainfall event on 25 October 2011, and were prepared through the visual interpretation of digital aerial photographs taken 3 days and 33 days after the event, and by processing a very-high-resolution image taken by the WorldView-2 satellite 4 days after the event. We compare the two inventories qualitatively and quantitatively using established and new metrics, and we discuss reasons for the differences between the two landslide maps. We expect that the results of our work can help in deciding on the most appropriate method to prepare reliable event inventory maps, and outline the advantages and the limitations of the different approaches.

Embryo developmental events and the egg case of the Aleutian skate Bathyraja aleutica (Gilbert) and the Alaska skate Bathyraja parmifera (Bean).

Science.gov (United States)

Hoff, G R

2009-02-01

Embryo development events were correlated with egg-case changes for the Aleutian skate Bathyraja aleutica and the Alaska skate Bathyraja parmifera. Yolk absorption underwent two phases: that of steady absorption during early development and that of rapid yolk absorption during the final development stages. Total length (L(T)) for 50% of the pre-hatching embryos egg-case jelly disappearance was 92.04 mm (range 81-102 mm) and 99.36 mm (range 81-100 mm) for B. aleutica and B. parmifera, respectively, allowing the inner chamber to open to seawater flow. The tail filament underwent three phases of growth: rapid elongation during early development (70 mm L(T) for both species and the sex ratio was 1:1 well before hatching. Egg cases that were devoid of an ova or developing embryo were c. 5.0 and 6.5% of the egg cases examined for B. aleutica and B. parmifera, respectively. Measurements showed that egg cases containing only egg jelly were smaller in both width and length than those possessing an ova. Embryo stages were punctuated with distinct events that correlated with egg case changes controlling the internal environment of the developing embryo.

Metrics for Polyphonic Sound Event Detection

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Annamaria Mesaros

2016-05-01

Full Text Available This paper presents and discusses various metrics proposed for evaluation of polyphonic sound event detection systems used in realistic situations where there are typically multiple sound sources active simultaneously. The system output in this case contains overlapping events, marked as multiple sounds detected as being active at the same time. The polyphonic system output requires a suitable procedure for evaluation against a reference. Metrics from neighboring fields such as speech recognition and speaker diarization can be used, but they need to be partially redefined to deal with the overlapping events. We present a review of the most common metrics in the field and the way they are adapted and interpreted in the polyphonic case. We discuss segment-based and event-based definitions of each metric and explain the consequences of instance-based and class-based averaging using a case study. In parallel, we provide a toolbox containing implementations of presented metrics.

Trends in swimming training for individual medley events

OpenAIRE

Brtník, Tomáš

2013-01-01

Title: Trends in swimming training for individual medley events Objectives: The aim of our study was to analyze performance and training for 200 and 400 m individual medley events and describe new trends in training for these swimming events Methods: Our research design was a case study. We were interested in training of three swimmers of elite performance in the 200 and 400 m individual medley events. To identify cases, we used the analysis of documents and literature, to a limited extent, t...

Impact of a poka-yoke device on job performance of individuals with cognitive impairments.

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Erlandson, R F; Noblett, M J; Phelps, J A

1998-09-01

Job performance and production related issues are important not only to successful vocational training and ultimate job placement for individuals with cognitive disabilities, but also for their ability to have expanded vocational options. This study hypothesized that the application of Kaizen philosophy, and poka-yoke techniques in particular, could create job opportunities and improve productivity of individuals with cognitive disabilities. Poka-yoke or error-proofing techniques are part of the collection of Kaizen techniques. Kaizen refers to continuous improvement in performance, cost/effectiveness, and quality. Kaizen strives to empower the worker, increase worker satisfaction, facilitate a sense of accomplishment, and thereby create pride-of-work. These techniques typically reduce the physical and cognitive demands of a task and thereby render the task more accessible. The job was a fuel clamp assembly. A redesigned assembly fixture was the poka-yoke intervention. Consistent with poka-yoke principles, the intervention improved the productivity of everyone attempting the assembly. In particular, the workers in this study showed an 80% increase in productivity and an average percent error drop from 52% to about 1% after the process redesign. Furthermore, the workers showed improved morale, self-esteem, and pride-of-work. Prior to the process redesign, only the higher functioning workers could successfully perform the assembly. After the redesign a greater number of workers could successfully perform the assembly. These results not only validated the study hypothesis, but demonstrated that the success facilitated by applying Kaizen techniques had similar results with individuals with cognitive disabilities as with nondisabled workers.

Prescription-event monitoring: developments in signal detection.

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Ferreira, Germano

2007-01-01

Prescription-event monitoring (PEM) is a non-interventional intensive method for post-marketing drug safety monitoring of newly licensed medicines. PEM studies are cohort studies where exposure is obtained from a centralised service and outcomes from simple questionnaires completed by general practitioners. Follow-up forms are sent for selected events. Because PEM captures all events and not only the suspected adverse drug reactions, PEM cohorts potentially differ in respect to the distribution of number of events per person depending on the nature of the drug under study. This variance can be related either with the condition for which the drug is prescribed (e.g. a condition causing high morbidity will have, in average, a higher number of events per person compared with a condition with lower morbidity) or with the drug effect itself. This paper describes an exploratory investigation of the distortion caused by product-related variations of the number of events to the interpretation of the proportional reporting ratio (PRR) values ("the higher the PRR, the greater the strength of the signal") computed using drug-cohort data. We studied this effect by assessing the agreement between the PRR based on events (event of interest vs all other events) and PRR based on cases (cases with the event of interest vs cases with any other events). PRR were calculated for all combinations reported to ten selected drugs against a comparator of 81 other drugs. Three of the ten drugs had a cohort with an apparent higher proportion of patients with lower number of events. The PRRs based on events were systematically higher than the PRR based on cases for the combinations reported to these three drugs. Additionally, when applying the threshold criteria for signal screening (n > or =3, PRR > or =1.5 and Chi-squared > or =4), the binary agreement was generally high but apparently lower for these three drugs. In conclusion, the distribution of events per patient in drug cohorts shall be

Ischaemic cardiac events and use of strontium ranelate in postmenopausal osteoporosis: a nested case-control study in the CPRD.

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Cooper, C; Fox, K M; Borer, J S

2014-02-01

We explored the cardiac safety of the osteoporosis treatment strontium ranelate in the UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink. While known cardiovascular risk factors like obesity and smoking were associated with increased cardiac risk, use of strontium ranelate was not associated with any increase in myocardial infarction or cardiovascular death. It has been suggested that strontium ranelate may increase risk for cardiac events in postmenopausal osteoporosis. We set out to explore the cardiac safety of strontium ranelate in the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) and linked datasets. We performed a nested case-control study. Primary outcomes were first definite myocardial infarction, hospitalisation with myocardial infarction, and cardiovascular death. Cases and matched controls were nested in a cohort of women treated for osteoporosis. The association with exposure to strontium ranelate was analysed by multivariate conditional logistic regression. Of the 112,445 women with treated postmenopausal osteoporosis, 6,487 received strontium ranelate. Annual incidence rates for first definite myocardial infarction (1,352 cases), myocardial infarction with hospitalisation (1,465 cases), and cardiovascular death (3,619 cases) were 3.24, 6.13, and 14.66 per 1,000 patient-years, respectively. Obesity, smoking, and cardiovascular treatments were associated with significant increases in risk for cardiac events. Current or past use of strontium ranelate was not associated with increased risk for first definite myocardial infarction (odds ratio [OR] 1.05, 95 % confidence interval [CI] 0.68-1.61 and OR 1.12, 95 % CI 0.79-1.58, respectively), hospitalisation with myocardial infarction (OR 0.84, 95 % CI 0.54-1.30 and OR 1.17, 95 % CI 0.83-1.66), or cardiovascular death (OR 0.96, 95 % CI 0.76-1.21 and OR 1.16, 95 % CI 0.94-1.43) versus patients who had never used strontium ranelate. Analysis in the CPRD did not find evidence for a higher risk for cardiac events associated

Seventh-day syndrome: a catastrophic event after liver transplantation: case report.

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Pereira, M; Ferreira, I; Gandara, J; Ferreira, S; Lopes, V; Coelho, A; Vizcaino, R; Marinho, A; Daniel, J; Miranda, H P

2015-05-01

Seventh-day syndrome (7DS) is an early serious complication of liver transplantation, characterized by sudden failure of a previously normally functioning liver graft ∼1 week after the surgery. Although it is an uncommon event, it has major associated mortality. As its etiology is yet to be recognized, the only currently available treatment is retransplantation. We present 3 cases of orthotopic liver transplantation recipients who had an initial uneventful recovery after surgery followed by a dramatic rise of serum liver enzyme levels ∼7 days later and hepatic failure with subsequent graft loss and death despite high-dose immunosuppressive therapy. Histologic findings showed massive centrolobular hemorrhage and hepatocellular necrosis with reduced inflammation. It is essential to review and accumulate more clinical and laboratory information to better understand this syndrome and to better prevent and treat it. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Using Information Communication Technologies to Develop Dynamic Curriculum Frameworks for Diverse Cohorts: A Case Study from Event Management

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Hadley, Bree Jamila

2012-01-01

This article investigates the role of information communication technologies (ICTs) in establishing a well-aligned, authentic learning environment for a diverse cohort of non-cognate and cognate students studying event management in a higher education context. Based on a case study which examined the way ICTs assisted in accommodating diverse…

Application of information retrieval approaches to case classification in the vaccine adverse event reporting system.

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Botsis, Taxiarchis; Woo, Emily Jane; Ball, Robert

2013-07-01

Automating the classification of adverse event reports is an important step to improve the efficiency of vaccine safety surveillance. Previously we showed it was possible to classify reports using features extracted from the text of the reports. The aim of this study was to use the information encoded in the Medical Dictionary for Regulatory Activities (MedDRA(®)) in the US Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) to support and evaluate two classification approaches: a multiple information retrieval strategy and a rule-based approach. To evaluate the performance of these approaches, we selected the conditions of anaphylaxis and Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS). We used MedDRA(®) Preferred Terms stored in the VAERS, and two standardized medical terminologies: the Brighton Collaboration (BC) case definitions and Standardized MedDRA(®) Queries (SMQ) to classify two sets of reports for GBS and anaphylaxis. Two approaches were used: (i) the rule-based instruments that are available by the two terminologies (the Automatic Brighton Classification [ABC] tool and the SMQ algorithms); and (ii) the vector space model. We found that the rule-based instruments, particularly the SMQ algorithms, achieved a high degree of specificity; however, there was a cost in terms of sensitivity in all but the narrow GBS SMQ algorithm that outperformed the remaining approaches (sensitivity in the testing set was equal to 99.06 % for this algorithm vs. 93.40 % for the vector space model). In the case of anaphylaxis, the vector space model achieved higher sensitivity compared with the best values of both the ABC tool and the SMQ algorithms in the testing set (86.44 % vs. 64.11 % and 52.54 %, respectively). Our results showed the superiority of the vector space model over the existing rule-based approaches irrespective of the standardized medical knowledge represented by either the SMQ or the BC case definition. The vector space model might make automation of case definitions for

Review of serious events in cases of (suspected) child abuse and/or neglect: A RoSE by any other name?

Science.gov (United States)

Raman, Shanti; Maiese, Michelle; Vasquez, Viviana; Gordon, Paola; Jones, Jennifer M

2017-08-01

Child abuse and neglect (CAN) cases presenting to health-services may be complex; when things go seriously wrong such as a child death or near miss, cases are reviewed and health-services and professionals subject to intense scrutiny. While there are a variety of mechanisms to review critical incidents in health-services no formal process for the review of cases where child protection is the primary concern exists in Australia. We aimed to develop a systematic process to review serious events in cases of suspected CAN across two health districts in Sydney, so that shared learnings could fuel system change. Drawing upon mapping, case review, literature findings and using quality improvement methodology, we developed a model named Review of Serious Events (RoSE), in suspected cases of CAN. The RoSE model has the key features of: being child focused; seeking to examine care over a period of time; using child protection staff as lead reviewers; involving health professionals/services in the review who have been involved with the child; and actioning systems change at local levels. The RoSE model was trialled through 2014-2015. Eight cases were reviewed using RoSE; cases were similar to those reviewed prior to having a model. Participant feedback from RoSE group processes was overwhelmingly positive; outputs were transparent and accessible to key stakeholders, there was mixed progress with implementation. The RoSE model is a serious case review process that is strongly child-focused, is both investigative and reflective, led by child protection experts; and can be adapted to other settings and systems. Crown Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Polar cap flow channel events: spontaneous and driven responses

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P. E. Sandholt

2010-11-01

Full Text Available We present two case studies of specific flow channel events appearing at the dusk and/or dawn polar cap boundary during passage at Earth of interplanetary (IP coronal mass ejections (ICMEs on 10 January and 25 July 2004. The channels of enhanced (>1 km/s antisunward convection are documented by SuperDARN radars and dawn-dusk crossings of the polar cap by the DMSP F13 satellite. The relationship with Birkeland currents (C1–C2 located poleward of the traditional R1–R2 currents is demonstrated. The convection events are manifest in ground magnetic deflections obtained from the IMAGE (International Monitor for Auroral Geomagnetic Effects Svalbard chain of ground magnetometer stations located within 71–76° MLAT. By combining the ionospheric convection data and the ground magnetograms we are able to study the temporal behaviour of the convection events. In the two ICME case studies the convection events belong to two different categories, i.e., directly driven and spontaneous events. In the 10 January case two sharp southward turnings of the ICME magnetic field excited corresponding convection events as detected by IMAGE and SuperDARN. We use this case to determine the ground magnetic signature of enhanced flow channel events (the NH-dusk/By<0 variant. In the 25 July case a several-hour-long interval of steady southwest ICME field (Bz<0; By<0 gave rise to a long series of spontaneous convection events as detected by IMAGE when the ground stations swept through the 12:00–18:00 MLT sector. From the ground-satellite conjunction on 25 July we infer the pulsed nature of the polar cap ionospheric flow channel events in this case. The typical duration of these convection enhancements in the polar cap is 10 min.

Probabilistic Models for Solar Particle Events

Science.gov (United States)

Adams, James H., Jr.; Dietrich, W. F.; Xapsos, M. A.; Welton, A. M.

2009-01-01

Probabilistic Models of Solar Particle Events (SPEs) are used in space mission design studies to provide a description of the worst-case radiation environment that the mission must be designed to tolerate.The models determine the worst-case environment using a description of the mission and a user-specified confidence level that the provided environment will not be exceeded. This poster will focus on completing the existing suite of models by developing models for peak flux and event-integrated fluence elemental spectra for the Z>2 elements. It will also discuss methods to take into account uncertainties in the data base and the uncertainties resulting from the limited number of solar particle events in the database. These new probabilistic models are based on an extensive survey of SPE measurements of peak and event-integrated elemental differential energy spectra. Attempts are made to fit the measured spectra with eight different published models. The model giving the best fit to each spectrum is chosen and used to represent that spectrum for any energy in the energy range covered by the measurements. The set of all such spectral representations for each element is then used to determine the worst case spectrum as a function of confidence level. The spectral representation that best fits these worst case spectra is found and its dependence on confidence level is parameterized. This procedure creates probabilistic models for the peak and event-integrated spectra.

Hospital deaths and adverse events in Brazil

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Pavão Ana Luiza B

2011-09-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Adverse events are considered a major international problem related to the performance of health systems. Evaluating the occurrence of adverse events involves, as any other outcome measure, determining the extent to which the observed differences can be attributed to the patient's risk factors or to variations in the treatment process, and this in turn highlights the importance of measuring differences in the severity of the cases. The current study aims to evaluate the association between deaths and adverse events, adjusted according to patient risk factors. Methods The study is based on a random sample of 1103 patient charts from hospitalizations in the year 2003 in 3 teaching hospitals in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The methodology involved a retrospective review of patient charts in two stages - screening phase and evaluation phase. Logistic regression was used to evaluate the relationship between hospital deaths and adverse events. Results The overall mortality rate was 8.5%, while the rate related to the occurrence of an adverse event was 2.9% (32/1103 and that related to preventable adverse events was 2.3% (25/1103. Among the 94 deaths analyzed, 34% were related to cases involving adverse events, and 26.6% of deaths occurred in cases whose adverse events were considered preventable. The models tested showed good discriminatory capacity. The unadjusted odds ratio (OR 11.43 and the odds ratio adjusted for patient risk factors (OR 8.23 between death and preventable adverse event were high. Conclusions Despite discussions in the literature regarding the limitations of evaluating preventable adverse events based on peer review, the results presented here emphasize that adverse events are not only prevalent, but are associated with serious harm and even death. These results also highlight the importance of risk adjustment and multivariate models in the study of adverse events.

Cinnamon: A systematic review of adverse events.

Science.gov (United States)

Hajimonfarednejad, Mahdie; Ostovar, Mohadeseh; Raee, Mohammad Javad; Hashempur, Mohammad Hashem; Mayer, Johannes Gottfried; Heydari, Mojtaba

2018-04-05

Cinnamon, from the genus Cinnamomum and Lauraceae family, has been used as a popular spice for thousands of years around the world. Many studies have shown therapeutic effects of cinnamon including its antimicrobial, antiviral, antifungal, antioxidant, antitumor, antihypertensive, antilipemic, antidiabetic, gastroprotective, and immunomodulatory effects. Due to popular use of cinnamon and several human reports on adverse events associated with short or long term use of cinnamon, we aimed to systematically review its human reports of adverse event. Databases including Medline, Scopus, Science Direct, Embase, PubMed Central and Google scholar were searched using the key words "cinnamon" or "cinnamomum" for clinical trials, case reports and case series. Also spontaneous reports about adverse effects of cinnamon were collected from five national and international spontaneous reporting schemes. Thirty eight clinical trials were found, five of them reported adverse events. Twenty case reports and seven case series, as well as, spontaneous reports including 160 adverse events were also included. The most frequent adverse events were gastrointestinal disorders and allergic reactions which were self-limiting in the majority of cases. The available data suggests that despite the safety of cinnamon use as a spice and/or flavoring agent, its use may be associated with significant adverse effects in medicinal uses with larger doses or longer duration of use and should be clinically monitored. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd and European Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism. All rights reserved.

The cost of nurse-sensitive adverse events.

Science.gov (United States)

Pappas, Sharon Holcombe

2008-05-01

The aim of this study was to describe the methodology for nursing leaders to determine the cost of adverse events and effective levels of nurse staffing. The growing transparency of quality and cost outcomes motivates healthcare leaders to optimize the effectiveness of nurse staffing. Most hospitals have robust cost accounting systems that provide actual patient-level direct costs. These systems allow an analysis of the cost consumed by patients during a hospital stay. By knowing the cost of complications, leaders have the ability to justify the cost of improved staffing when quality evidence shows that higher nurse staffing improves quality. An analysis was performed on financial and clinical data from hospital databases of 3,200 inpatients. The purpose was to establish a methodology to determine actual cost per case. Three diagnosis-related groups were the focus of the analysis. Five adverse events were analyzed along with the costs. A regression analysis reported that the actual direct cost of an adverse event was dollars 1,029 per case in the congestive heart failure cases and dollars 903 in the surgical cases. There was a significant increase in the cost per case in medical patients with urinary tract infection and pressure ulcers and in surgical patients with urinary tract infection and pneumonia. The odds of pneumonia occurring in surgical patients decreased with additional registered nurse hours per patient day. Hospital cost accounting systems are useful in determining the cost of adverse events and can aid in decision making about nurse staffing. Adverse events add costs to patient care and should be measured at the unit level to adjust staffing to reduce adverse events and avoid costs.

RANTES/CCL5 and risk for coronary events: results from the MONICA/KORA Augsburg case-cohort, Athero-Express and CARDIoGRAM studies.

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Christian Herder

Full Text Available The chemokine RANTES (regulated on activation, normal T-cell expressed and secreted/CCL5 is involved in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease in mice, whereas less is known in humans. We hypothesised that its relevance for atherosclerosis should be reflected by associations between CCL5 gene variants, RANTES serum concentrations and protein levels in atherosclerotic plaques and risk for coronary events.We conducted a case-cohort study within the population-based MONICA/KORA Augsburg studies. Baseline RANTES serum levels were measured in 363 individuals with incident coronary events and 1,908 non-cases (mean follow-up: 10.2±4.8 years. Cox proportional hazard models adjusting for age, sex, body mass index, metabolic factors and lifestyle factors revealed no significant association between RANTES and incident coronary events (HR [95% CI] for increasing RANTES tertiles 1.0, 1.03 [0.75-1.42] and 1.11 [0.81-1.54]. None of six CCL5 single nucleotide polymorphisms and no common haplotype showed significant associations with coronary events. Also in the CARDIoGRAM study (>22,000 cases, >60,000 controls, none of these CCL5 SNPs was significantly associated with coronary artery disease. In the prospective Athero-Express biobank study, RANTES plaque levels were measured in 606 atherosclerotic lesions from patients who underwent carotid endarterectomy. RANTES content in atherosclerotic plaques was positively associated with macrophage infiltration and inversely associated with plaque calcification. However, there was no significant association between RANTES content in plaques and risk for coronary events (mean follow-up 2.8±0.8 years.High RANTES plaque levels were associated with an unstable plaque phenotype. However, the absence of associations between (i RANTES serum levels, (ii CCL5 genotypes and (iii RANTES content in carotid plaques and either coronary artery disease or incident coronary events in our cohorts suggests that RANTES may not be a

Multi-Unit Initiating Event Analysis for a Single-Unit Internal Events Level 1 PSA

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kim, Dong San; Park, Jin Hee; Lim, Ho Gon [KAERI, Daejeon (Korea, Republic of)

2016-05-15

The Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011 highlighted the importance of considering the risks from multi-unit accidents at a site. The ASME/ANS probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) standard also includes some requirements related to multi-unit aspects, one of which (IE-B5) is as follows: 'For multi-unit sites with shared systems, DO NOT SUBSUME multi-unit initiating events if they impact mitigation capability [1].' However, the existing single-unit PSA models do not explicitly consider multi-unit initiating events and hence systems shared by multiple units (e.g., alternate AC diesel generator) are fully credited for the single unit and ignores the need for the shared systems by other units at the same site [2]. This paper describes the results of the multi-unit initiating event (IE) analysis performed as a part of the at-power internal events Level 1 probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) for an OPR1000 single unit ('reference unit'). In this study, a multi-unit initiating event analysis for a single-unit PSA was performed, and using the results, dual-unit LOOP initiating event was added to the existing PSA model for the reference unit (OPR1000 type). Event trees were developed for dual-unit LOOP and dual-unit SBO which can be transferred from dual- unit LOOP. Moreover, CCF basic events for 5 diesel generators were modelled. In case of simultaneous SBO occurrences in both units, this study compared two different assumptions on the availability of the AAC D/G. As a result, when dual-unit LOOP initiating event was added to the existing single-unit PSA model, the total CDF increased by 1∼ 2% depending on the probability that the AAC D/G is available to a specific unit in case of simultaneous SBO in both units.

[Is a patient's knowledge of cardiovascular risk factors better after the occurrence of a major ischemic event? Survey of 135 cases and 260 controls].

Science.gov (United States)

Lensel, A-S; Lermusiaux, P; Boileau, C; Feugier, P; Sérusclat, A; Zerbib, Y; Ninet, J

2013-12-01

We hypothezised that patients (cases) who are hospitalized for a major ischemic event--myocardial infarction, stroke, decompensation of peripheral arterial disease--acquire better knowledge than a control population--atheromatous patients without a major ischemic event, patients consulting for a vein disease or a diabetes evaluation, and accompanists--about cardiovascular risk factors (smoking, hypertension, diabetes, dyslipidemia, obesity) and have a better understanding of the usefulness of making changes in their lifestyle (quit smoking, regular exercise, Mediterranean diet, low salt diet, weight control, diabetes care). A questionnaire was proposed at vascular surgery consultations and vascular and cardiac functional explorations, at the M Pavillon of the Édouard-Herriot hospital, Lyon, France. In five months, 395 questionnaires (135 cases and 260 controls) were analyzed. The global knowledge score was statistically higher for cases than for controls (cases 3.23±1.81; controls 2.77±2.03; P=0.037). Cases did not abide by monitoring and dietary rules better, except as regards the management of diabetes. Regular physical activity was statistically more prevalent among controls than among cases. Cases mainly received their information from their doctors (general practitioner for 59% of controls and 78% of cases, cardiologist for 25% of controls and 57% of cases) while controls got their information more through magazines or advertising. Our results show that after a major ischemic event, cases' knowledge of risk factors is better than the rest of the population without improved rules lifestyle changes. This suggests the usefulness of evaluating a therapeutic education program for atheromatous disease. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

Hosting mega sport events in a small country: The (real impact on the development - cases of Croatia and Serbia

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Šimić-Banović Ružica

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Majority of studies on the impact of the sports events on country's development are produced before the events take place and as such are in favour of the bidding process. When comparing these ex ante analyses to the ex post evidence, it has been in most cases obvious that they have been overly optimistic. This paper analyses the ex ante analysis provided by the Croatian bidding committee for the European Football Championship 2012. In addition to that, the ex ante study for the World Handball Championship 2009 in Croatia and (insufficient data for the handball championships that took place in Serbia were analysed as well. This paper contributes both to the debate on the realistic approach of several failed and won bids, and the debate on the future bids for the other sport events.

CDC Wonder Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System

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U.S. Department of Health & Human Services — The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) online database on CDC WONDER provides counts and percentages of adverse event case reports after vaccination,...

Calcium Channel Blockers in Secondary Cardiovascular Prevention and Risk of Acute Events: Real-World Evidence from Nested Case-Control Studies on Italian Hypertensive Elderly.

Science.gov (United States)

Bettiol, Alessandra; Lucenteforte, Ersilia; Vannacci, Alfredo; Lombardi, Niccolò; Onder, Graziano; Agabiti, Nera; Vitale, Cristiana; Trifirò, Gianluca; Corrao, Giovanni; Roberto, Giuseppe; Mugelli, Alessandro; Chinellato, Alessandro

2017-12-01

Antihypertensive treatment with calcium channel blockers (CCBs) is consolidated in clinical practice; however, different studies observed increased risks of acute events for short-acting CCBs. This study aimed to provide real-world evidence on risks of acute cardiovascular (CV) events, hospitalizations and mortality among users of different CCB classes in secondary CV prevention. Three case-control studies were nested in a cohort of Italian elderly hypertensive CV-compromised CCBs users. Cases were subjects with CV events (n = 25,204), all-cause hospitalizations (n = 19,237), or all-cause mortality (n = 17,996) during the follow-up. Up to four controls were matched for each case. Current or past exposition to CCBs at index date was defined based on molecule, formulation and daily doses of the last CCB delivery. The odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were estimated using conditional logistic regression models. Compared to past users, current CCB users had significant reductions in risks of CV events [OR 0.88 (95% CI: 0.84-0.91)], hospitalization [0.90 (0.88-0.93)] and mortality [0.48 (0.47-0.49)]. Current users of long-acting dihydropyridines (DHPs) had the lowest risk [OR 0.87 (0.84-0.90), 0.86 (0.83-0.90), 0.55 (0.54-0.56) for acute CV events, hospitalizations and mortality], whereas current users of short-acting CCBs had an increased risk of acute CV events [OR 1.77 (1.13-2.78) for short-acting DHPs; 1.19 (1.07-1.31) for short-acting non-DHPs] and hospitalizations [OR 1.84 (0.96-3.51) and 1.23 (1.08-1.42)]. The already-existing warning on short-acting CCBs should be potentiated, addressing clinicians towards the choice of long-acting formulations.

[A systematic review of decided litigated cases on adverse drug events in Japan: classification of decided cases appearing in law reports].

Science.gov (United States)

Eguchi, Rika; Kato, Masahisa; Kaneko, Erina; Kusaba, Kenji; Yoshikawa, Manabu; Yamano, Toru; Seo, Takashi; Hagihara, Akihito

2015-01-01

Much of the damage to health caused by drugs could be prevented by appropriate care. A well-defined duty of care and further information are required for healthcare professionals. Although there are many litigation cases to use as references, neither the extent of the duty of care nor the obligation to explain medication according to the type of drug prescribed has yet been fully established. Thus, we systematically collected decided cases of adverse drug events, and assessed the degree of the duties of care and information. Specifically, we collected decided cases in which physicians, dentists, pharmacists, nurses, or hospitals had been sued. Data were derived from Bessatsu Jurist Iryo-kago Hanrei Hyakusen, Hanrei Jihou, and Hanrei Times from 1989 to November 2013, and information on precedents in the records of the Supreme Court of Japan from 2001 to November 2013. We analyzed the cases, and assessed the following according to the type of drug: (1) standards and explanations when dealing with drugs that were critical issues in litigation, and (2) the degree of the physician's or pharmacist's duties of care and information. In total, 126 cases were collected. The number of drug categories classified was 27, and 9 were considered of practical importance. After this systematic review, we found a trend in the degree of the required level of care and information on several drugs. With respect to duties of care and information, the gap between the required level and actual practice suggests that healthcare professionals must improve their care and explanations.

Using lean principles to improve outpatient adult infusion clinic chemotherapy preparation turnaround times.

Science.gov (United States)

Lamm, Matthew H; Eckel, Stephen; Daniels, Rowell; Amerine, Lindsey B

2015-07-01

The workflow and chemotherapy preparation turnaround times at an adult infusion clinic were evaluated to identify opportunities to optimize workflow and efficiency. A three-phase study using Lean Six Sigma methodology was conducted. In phase 1, chemotherapy turnaround times in the adult infusion clinic were examined one year after the interim goal of a 45-minute turnaround time was established. Phase 2 implemented various experiments including a five-day Kaizen event, using lean principles in an effort to decrease chemotherapy preparation turnaround times in a controlled setting. Phase 3 included the implementation of process-improvement strategies identified during the Kaizen event, coupled with a final refinement of operational processes. In phase 1, the mean turnaround time for all chemotherapy preparations decreased from 60 to 44 minutes, and a mean of 52 orders for adult outpatient chemotherapy infusions was received each day. After installing new processes, the mean turnaround time had improved to 37 minutes for each chemotherapy preparation in phase 2. In phase 3, the mean turnaround time decreased from 37 to 26 minutes. The overall mean turnaround time was reduced by 26 minutes, representing a 57% decrease in turnaround times in 19 months through the elimination of waste and the implementation of lean principles. This reduction was accomplished through increased efficiencies in the workplace, with no addition of human resources. Implementation of Lean Six Sigma principles improved workflow and efficiency at an adult infusion clinic and reduced the overall chemotherapy turnaround times from 60 to 26 minutes. Copyright © 2015 by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, Inc. All rights reserved.

Sudden Event Recognition: A Survey

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mohd Asyraf Zulkifley

2013-08-01

Full Text Available Event recognition is one of the most active research areas in video surveillance fields. Advancement in event recognition systems mainly aims to provide convenience, safety and an efficient lifestyle for humanity. A precise, accurate and robust approach is necessary to enable event recognition systems to respond to sudden changes in various uncontrolled environments, such as the case of an emergency, physical threat and a fire or bomb alert. The performance of sudden event recognition systems depends heavily on the accuracy of low level processing, like detection, recognition, tracking and machine learning algorithms. This survey aims to detect and characterize a sudden event, which is a subset of an abnormal event in several video surveillance applications. This paper discusses the following in detail: (1 the importance of a sudden event over a general anomalous event; (2 frameworks used in sudden event recognition; (3 the requirements and comparative studies of a sudden event recognition system and (4 various decision-making approaches for sudden event recognition. The advantages and drawbacks of using 3D images from multiple cameras for real-time application are also discussed. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research directions in sudden event recognition.

Warning and prevention based on estimates with large uncertainties: the case of low-frequency and large-impact events like tsunamis

Science.gov (United States)

Tinti, Stefano; Armigliato, Alberto; Pagnoni, Gianluca; Zaniboni, Filippo

2013-04-01

Geoscientists deal often with hazardous processes like earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, hurricanes, etc., and their research is aimed not only to a better understanding of the physical processes, but also to provide assessment of the space and temporal evolution of a given individual event (i.e. to provide short-term prediction) and of the expected evolution of a group of events (i.e. to provide statistical estimates referred to a given return period, and a given geographical area). One of the main issues of any scientific method is how to cope with measurement errors, a topic which in case of forecast of ongoing or of future events translates into how to deal with forecast uncertainties. In general, the more data are available and processed to make a prediction, the more accurate the prediction is expected to be if the scientific approach is sound, and the smaller the associated uncertainties are. However, there are several important cases where assessment is to be made with insufficient data or insufficient time for processing, which leads to large uncertainties. Two examples can be given taken from tsunami science, since tsunamis are rare events that may have destructive power and very large impact. One example is the case of warning for a tsunami generated by a near-coast earthquake, which is an issue at the focus of the European funded project NearToWarn. Warning has to be launched before tsunami hits the coast, that is in a few minutes after its generation. This may imply that data collected in such a short time are not yet enough for an accurate evaluation, also because the implemented monitoring system (if any) could be inadequate (f.i. one reason of inadequacy could be that implementing a dense instrumental network could be judged too expensive for rare events) The second case is the long term prevention from tsunami strikes. Tsunami infrequency may imply that the historical record for a given piece of coast is too short to capture a statistical

An exemplary case of a bromine explosion event linked to cyclone development in the Arctic

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

A.-M. Blechschmidt

2016-02-01

Full Text Available Intense, cyclone-like shaped plumes of tropospheric bromine monoxide (BrO are regularly observed by GOME-2 on board the MetOp-A satellite over Arctic sea ice in polar spring. These plumes are often transported by high-latitude cyclones, sometimes over several days despite the short atmospheric lifetime of BrO. However, only few studies have focused on the role of polar weather systems in the development, duration and transport of tropospheric BrO plumes during bromine explosion events. The latter are caused by an autocatalytic chemical chain reaction associated with tropospheric ozone depletion and initiated by the release of bromine from cold brine-covered ice or snow to the atmosphere. In this manuscript, a case study investigating a comma-shaped BrO plume which developed over the Beaufort Sea and was observed by GOME-2 for several days is presented. By making combined use of satellite data and numerical models, it is shown that the occurrence of the plume was closely linked to frontal lifting in a polar cyclone and that it most likely resided in the lowest 3 km of the troposphere. In contrast to previous case studies, we demonstrate that the dry conveyor belt, a potentially bromine-rich stratospheric air stream which can complicate interpretation of satellite retrieved tropospheric BrO, is spatially separated from the observed BrO plume. It is concluded that weather conditions associated with the polar cyclone favoured the bromine activation cycle and blowing snow production, which may have acted as a bromine source during the bromine explosion event.

An Oracle-based Event Index for ATLAS

CERN Document Server

Gallas, Elizabeth; The ATLAS collaboration; Petrova, Petya Tsvetanova; Baranowski, Zbigniew; Canali, Luca; Formica, Andrea; Dumitru, Andrei

2016-01-01

The ATLAS EventIndex System has amassed a set of key quantities for a large number of ATLAS events into a Hadoop based infrastructure for the purpose of providing the experiment with a number of event-wise services. Collecting this data in one place provides the opportunity to investigate various storage formats and technologies and assess which best serve the various use cases as well as consider what other benefits alternative storage systems provide. In this presentation we describe how the data are imported into an Oracle RDBMS, the services we have built based on this architecture, and our experience with it. We've indexed about 15 billion real data events and about 25 billion simulated events thus far and have designed the system to accommodate future data which has expected rates of 5 and 20 billion events per year for real data and simulation, respectively. We have found this system offers outstanding performance for some fundamental use cases. In addition, profiting from the co-location of this data ...

Regional decision-makers as potential users of Extreme Weather Event Attribution - Case studies from the German Baltic Sea coast and the Greater Paris area

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Maria Schwab

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Extreme Event Attribution has raised increasing attention in climate science in the last years. It means to judge the extent to which certain weather-related extreme events have changed due to human influences on climate with probabilistic statements. Extreme Event Attribution is often anticipated to spur more than just scientific ambition. It is able to provide answers to a commonly asked questions after extreme events, namely, ‘can we blame it on climate change’ and is assumed to support decision-making of various actors engaged in climate change mitigation and adaptation. More in-depth research is widely lacking about who these actors are; in which context they can make use of it; and what requirements they have, to be able to actually apply Extreme Event Attribution. We have therefore addressed these questions with two empirical case studies looking at regional decision-makers who deal with storm surge risks in the German Baltic Sea region and heat waves in the Greater Paris area. Stakeholder interviews and workshops reveal that fields of application and requirements are diverse, difficult to explicitly identify, and often clearly associated with stakeholders' specific mandate, the hazard background, and the regional socio-economic setting. Among the considered stakeholders in the Baltic Sea region, Extreme Event Attribution is perceived to be most useful to awareness-raising, in particular for climate change mitigation. They emphasised the importance of receiving understandable information - and that, rather later, but with smaller uncertainties than faster, but with higher uncertainties. In the Paris case, we typically talked to people engaged in adaptation with expertise in terms of climate science, but narrowly defined mandates which is typical for the Paris-centred political system with highly specialised public experts. The interviewees claimed that Extreme Event Attribution is most useful to political leverage and public

Potentially disruptive life events: what are the immediate impacts on chronic disease management? A case-crossover analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Lauffenburger, Julie C; Gagne, Joshua J; Song, Zirui; Brill, Gregory; Choudhry, Niteesh K

2016-08-04

To explore the association between unexpected potentially disruptive life events in a patient or family member that may challenge an individual's ability to take medications as prescribed and the discontinuation of evidence-based medications for common, chronic conditions. Understanding the relationship between medication adherence and life stressors, especially those that can be identified using administrative data, may help identify patients at risk of non-adherence. Observational self-controlled case-crossover design. Individuals in a nationally representative US commercial health insurance database. Adult individuals who initiated an oral hypoglycaemic, antihypertensive and/or statin and subsequently stopped the medication for ≥90 days. Potentially disruptive life events among patients and their family members measured in the 30 days just before the medication was discontinued ('hazard period') compared with the 30 days before this period ('control period'). These events included personal injury, hospitalisation, emergency room visits, changes in insurance coverage, acute stress or acute anxiety. Among the 326 519 patients meeting study criteria who discontinued their chronic disease medications, 88 896 (27.2%) experienced at least one potentially disruptive life event. Newly experiencing an injury (OR: 1.26, 95% CI 1.12 to 1.42), an emergency room visit (OR: 1.19, 95% CI 1.13 to 1.26) and acute stress (OR: 1.19, 95% CI 1.08 to 1.31) were associated with discontinuation. Life events among patients' family members did not appear to be associated with medication discontinuation or occurred less frequently just prior to discontinuation. Potentially disruptive life events among individuals identified using routinely collected claims data are associated with discontinuation of chronic disease medications. Awareness of these events may help providers or payers identify patients at risk of non-adherence to maximise patient outcomes. Published by the BMJ

Safety case for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel at Olkiluoto. Features, events and processes 2012

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

NONE

2012-12-15

Features, Events and Processes sits within Posiva Oy's Safety Case 'TURVA-2012' portfolio and has the objective of presenting the main features, events and processes (FEPs) that are considered to be potentially significant for the long-term safety of the planned KBS-3V repository for spent nuclear fuel at Olkiluoto. The primary purpose of this report is to support Performance Assessment, Formulation of Radionuclide Release Scenarios, Assessment of the Radionuclide Release Scenarios for the Repository System and Biosphere Assessment by ensuring that the scenarios are comprehensive and take account of all significant FEPs. The main FEPs potentially affecting the disposal system are described for each relevant subsystem component or barrier (i.e. the spent nuclear fuel, the canister, the buffer and tunnel backfill, the auxiliary components, the geosphere and the surface environment). In addition, a small number of external FEPs that may potentially influence the evolution of the disposal system are described. The conceptual understanding and operation of each FEP is described, together with the main features (variables) of the disposal system that may affect its occurrence or significance. Olkiluoto-specific issues are considered when relevant. The main uncertainties (conceptual and parameter/data) associated with each FEP that may affect understanding are also documented. Indicative parameter values are provided, in some cases, to illustrate the magnitude or rate of a process, but it is not the intention of this report to provide the complete set of numerical values that are used in the quantitative safety assessment calculations. Many of the FEPs are interdependent and, therefore, the descriptions also identify the most important direct couplings between the FEPs. This information is used in the formulation of scenarios to ensure the conceptual models and calculational cases are both comprehensive and representative. (orig.)

Safety case for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel at Olkiluoto. Features, events and processes 2012

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

NONE

2012-12-15

Features, Events and Processes sits within Posiva Oy's Safety Case 'TURVA-2012' portfolio and has the objective of presenting the main features, events and processes (FEPs) that are considered to be potentially significant for the long-term safety of the planned KBS-3V repository for spent nuclear fuel at Olkiluoto. The primary purpose of this report is to support Performance Assessment, Formulation of Radionuclide Release Scenarios, Assessment of the Radionuclide Release Scenarios for the Repository System and Biosphere Assessment by ensuring that the scenarios are comprehensive and take account of all significant FEPs. The main FEPs potentially affecting the disposal system are described for each relevant subsystem component or barrier (i.e. the spent nuclear fuel, the canister, the buffer and tunnel backfill, the auxiliary components, the geosphere and the surface environment). In addition, a small number of external FEPs that may potentially influence the evolution of the disposal system are described. The conceptual understanding and operation of each FEP is described, together with the main features (variables) of the disposal system that may affect its occurrence or significance. Olkiluoto-specific issues are considered when relevant. The main uncertainties (conceptual and parameter/data) associated with each FEP that may affect understanding are also documented. Indicative parameter values are provided, in some cases, to illustrate the magnitude or rate of a process, but it is not the intention of this report to provide the complete set of numerical values that are used in the quantitative safety assessment calculations. Many of the FEPs are interdependent and, therefore, the descriptions also identify the most important direct couplings between the FEPs. This information is used in the formulation of scenarios to ensure the conceptual models and calculational cases are both comprehensive and representative. (orig.)

Safety case for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel at Olkiluoto. Features, events and processes 2012

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

2012-12-01

Features, Events and Processes sits within Posiva Oy's Safety Case 'TURVA-2012' portfolio and has the objective of presenting the main features, events and processes (FEPs) that are considered to be potentially significant for the long-term safety of the planned KBS-3V repository for spent nuclear fuel at Olkiluoto. The primary purpose of this report is to support Performance Assessment, Formulation of Radionuclide Release Scenarios, Assessment of the Radionuclide Release Scenarios for the Repository System and Biosphere Assessment by ensuring that the scenarios are comprehensive and take account of all significant FEPs. The main FEPs potentially affecting the disposal system are described for each relevant subsystem component or barrier (i.e. the spent nuclear fuel, the canister, the buffer and tunnel backfill, the auxiliary components, the geosphere and the surface environment). In addition, a small number of external FEPs that may potentially influence the evolution of the disposal system are described. The conceptual understanding and operation of each FEP is described, together with the main features (variables) of the disposal system that may affect its occurrence or significance. Olkiluoto-specific issues are considered when relevant. The main uncertainties (conceptual and parameter/data) associated with each FEP that may affect understanding are also documented. Indicative parameter values are provided, in some cases, to illustrate the magnitude or rate of a process, but it is not the intention of this report to provide the complete set of numerical values that are used in the quantitative safety assessment calculations. Many of the FEPs are interdependent and, therefore, the descriptions also identify the most important direct couplings between the FEPs. This information is used in the formulation of scenarios to ensure the conceptual models and calculational cases are both comprehensive and representative. (orig.)

The development of Haze Events observed by multi-satellite retrievals and Meteorological Analysis: A Case Study over Eastern China in December 2013

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Xiaoyu; Jiang, Binbin; Du, Yong; Yao, Lingling; Huang, Dasong

2015-04-01

With the rapid development of national economy and urbanization, the haze has been one of the environment disasters in eastern China. It is necessary that building a model of monitoring the haze for preventing and solving it in the future. In this study, NPP/AOT(550nm) >1and GOCI/AOT(555nm) >1 are adopted to dynamically monitor severe haze events in December 2013 over eastern China. Meanwhile, wind field data from CDAS-NCEP/DOE Reanalysis data and air temperature data from CDAS-NCEP/FNL are adopted to study the mechanism of the occurrence, migration and decay of the haze events. The haze event is composed of two consecutive cases. The first case occurred during 4-9 December is an exogenous haze for Yangtze River Delta, whereas the second case appeared during 11-15 December is an endogenous haze. This result shows:1) With the improved two-stream approximation model, GOCI is successful used to retrieve AOT with compared AERONET AOT, which demonstrates to be feasible in monitoring severe haze events. 2)Because of the large-scale observation capacity of NPP/AOT(550nm) product (×6km) and the high temporal resolution of GOCI/AOT(555nm), this study establishes a framework that detect the large-scale haze events using both data sets. 3)Weak wind speed of less than 5 m*s-1 is important for the development of the haze but the inversion is not a necessary condition for the haze. The strong cold air mass from the northern Siberia area and from East China Sea is the main force for the immigration, diffusion and decay of this haze event. 4)The air quality around Yangtze River Delta in winter is apt to suffer widely divergent influences including exogenous hazes carried by winter northwestward monsoon flows from northern Asia, and endogenous hazes induced by the rapid development of urbanization. The hit of multiple hazes over Yangtze River Delta lead to one of the most severe polluted regions of haze in China. Key words: NPP/AOT；GOCI/AOT; Haze；dynamic monitoring�

CONTEMPORARY ART EVENTS IN TOURISM: THE CASE OF INTERNATIONAL ISTANBUL BIENNALE

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nazmi EROGLU,

2017-02-01

Full Text Available Known as a contemporary art event of the biennial is organized every two years and mostly take the name from host city. The name of biennial used firstly in Venice and it was organized first time in Venice as Venice Biennial. Biennials accessed to many cities of the world and has provided economic contributions except of the social and cultural contributions for the city. International Istanbul Biennial that organized since 1987 in Turkey is not known and realized enough in terms of contribution and potential in Turkey. Especially paying attention to provided and providing contribution of biennials are necessary in tourism field. In the research biennials were examined on the field of event tourism as contemporary art events. Also in this research tourism were associated and classified with biennials in the framework of literature. Making assessment about contemporary art events in tourism is made with example of İnternational İstanbul Biennials in Turkey. Some examples and suggestions were tried to give for understanding potential of contemporary art events in tourism and relationship between biennials and tourism. In addition, information is given about biennials that are at international level. The main purpose of the research is that paying attention to benefits which is provided and possible from İnternational Istanbul Biennial and emphasized to importance of event tourism in Turkey.

Vulnerability and impact assessment of extreme climatic event: A case study of southern Punjab, Pakistan.

Science.gov (United States)

Aslam, Abdul Qayyum; Ahmad, Sajid R; Ahmad, Iftikhar; Hussain, Yawar; Hussain, Muhammad Sameem

2017-02-15

Understanding of frequency, severity, damages and adaptation costs of climate extremes is crucial to manage their aftermath. Evaluation of PRECIS RCM modelled data under IPCC scenarios in Southern Punjab reveals that monthly mean temperature is 30°C under A2 scenario, 2.4°C higher than A1B which is 27.6°C in defined time lapses. Monthly mean precipitation under A2 scenario ranges from 12 to 15mm and for A1B scenario it ranges from 15 to 19mm. Frequency modelling of floods and droughts via poisson distribution shows increasing trend in upcoming decades posing serious impacts on agriculture and livestock, food security, water resources, public health and economic status. Cumulative loss projected for frequent floods without adaptation will be in the range of USD 66.8-79.3 billion in time lapse of 40years from 2010 base case. Drought damage function @ 18% for A2 scenario and @ 13.5% for A1B scenario was calculated; drought losses on agriculture and livestock sectors were modelled. Cumulative loss projected for frequent droughts without adaptation under A2 scenario will be in the range of USD 7.5-8.5 billion while under A1B scenario it will be in the range of USD 3.5-4.2 billion for time lapse of 60years from base case 1998-2002. Severity analysis of extreme events shows that situation get worse if adaptations are not only included in the policy but also in the integrated development framework with required allocation of funds. This evaluation also highlights the result of cost benefit analysis, benefits of the adaptation options (mean & worst case) for floods and droughts in Southern Punjab. Additionally the research highlights the role of integrated extreme events impact assessment methodology in performing the vulnerability assessments and to support the adaptation decisions. This paper is an effort to highlight importance of bottom up approaches to deal with climate change. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

To a cultural perspective of mixed reality events: a case study of event overflow in operas and concerts in mixed reality

Science.gov (United States)

Lucas, Jean-François; Cornish, Tracy; Margolis, Todd

2012-12-01

Mixed reality defines the sharing of a space-time between the real and the virtual world. The definition of this concept is further extended when virtual worlds such as Second Life® (SL) are included. Through cultural events such as concerts and operas, we will see that the main goal of these kinds of projects is not simply to offer a video and audio broadcast of these events in the digital dimension. The current challenge is to create interactions between the individuals who are in different shared spaces. By studying the unfolding of these events in its various phases-before, during, and after-we examine the culture of the event. We question how the culture of the event can be transposed in a mixed reality display, and how this kind of event can affect people on both sides of the "membrane" made by the technical configuration. Beyond the alignments and adjustments that we can see between the different individuals involved in these events, we examine more broadly the changes and mutations of the culture of the event in this specific configuration.

Visitors' motives for attending a hybrid event: A case study of agricultural fair

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ivkov Milan

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Management of a complex events such as hybrid ones, relies on understanding a modern market trends. The purpose of this study is to determine visitors' motives for attending a hybrid event, to identify clusters based on those motives, and to help organizers and exhibitors to meet visitors' expectations. Therefore, authors performed ANOVA analysis, factor analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis. The findings clearly indicate elements of trade fairs and consumer exhibitions integrated in hybrid event and therefore, some of the main motives for visiting those two types of events are also present among hybrid event visitors. However, hybrid event tends to be more than just place for business meetings. It is also a venue for education and leisure time activities. Moreover, event organizers and exhibitors need to pay more attention on their strategic approach to managing their event activities. The paper suggests that hybrid event organizers should focus on establishing dialogue with both exhibitors and visitors.

Integrated analyzing method for the progress event based on subjects and predicates in events

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Minowa, Hirotsugu; Munesawa, Yoshiomi

2014-01-01

It is expected to make use of the knowledge that was extracted by analyzing the mistakes of the past to prevent recurrence of accidents. Currently main analytic style is an analytic style that experts decipher deeply the accident cases, but cross-analysis has come to an end with extracting the common factors in the accident cases. We propose an integrated analyzing method for progress events to analyze among accidents in this study. Our method realized the integration of many accident cases by the integration connecting the common keyword called as 'Subject' or 'Predicate' that are extracted from each progress event in accident cases or near-miss cases. Our method can analyze and visualize the partial risk identification and the frequency to cause accidents and the risk assessment from the data integrated accident cases. The result of applying our method to PEC-SAFER accident cases identified 8 hazardous factors which can be caused from tank again, and visualized the high frequent factors that the first factor was damage of tank 26% and the second factor was the corrosion 21%, and visualized the high risks that the first risk was the damage 3.3 x 10 -2 [risk rank / year] and the second risk was the destroy 2.5 x 10 -2 [risk rank / year]. (author)

Eating and weight/shape criticism as a specific life-event related to bulimia nervosa: a case control study.

Science.gov (United States)

Gonçalves, Sonia Ferreira; Machado, Bárbara César; Martins, Carla

2014-01-01

The present study aims to evaluate the occurrence of life events preceding the onset of eating problems in bulimia nervosa patients. A case-control design was used involving the comparison of 60 female subjects who meet DSM-IV criteria for bulimia nervosa with 60 healthy control subjects and 60 subjects with other psychiatric disorders. The RFI (Fairburn et al., 1998) subset of factors that represent exposure to life events in the 12 months immediately before the development of eating problems was used. Women with bulimia nervosa reported higher rates of major stress, criticism about eating, weight and shape and also a great number of antecedent life events during the year preceding the development of eating problems than the healthy control group. However, when compared with the general psychiatric control group only the exposure to critical comments about weight, shape, or eating emerged as a specific trigger for bulimia nervosa. Our findings support the fact that eating and shape/weight criticism in the year preceding the development of eating disturbance seems to be specifically related to bulimia nervosa.

Adverse events associated with pediatric exposures to dextromethorphan.

Science.gov (United States)

Paul, Ian M; Reynolds, Kate M; Kauffman, Ralph E; Banner, William; Bond, G Randall; Palmer, Robert B; Burnham, Randy I; Green, Jody L

2017-01-01

Dextromethorphan is the most common over-the-counter (OTC) antitussive medication. We sought to characterize adverse events associated with dextromethorphan in children dextromethorphan with ≥1 adverse event from multiple U.S. sources (National Poison Data System, FDA Adverse Event Reporting System, manufacturer safety reports, news/media, medical literature) reported between 2008 and 2014. An expert panel determined the relationship between exposure and adverse events, estimated dose ingested, intent of exposure, and identified contributing factors to exposure. 1716 cases contained ≥1 adverse event deemed at least potentially related to dextromethorphan; 1417 were single product exposures. 773/1417 (55%) involved only one single-ingredient dextromethorphan product (dextromethorphan-only). Among dextromethorphan-only cases, 3% followed ingestion of a therapeutic dose; 78% followed an overdose. 69% involved unsupervised self-administration and 60% occurred in children dextromethorphan-only ingestion. Adverse events were predominantly associated with overdose, most commonly affecting the central nervous and autonomic systems.

Qualification of Staff as a Quality Strategy for S.C. Schaeffler Romania

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Madar, A.

2014-06-01

Full Text Available Particular attention is given in the present paper to the strategy of continuous improvement. This is considered an integrating strategy, an across-functional strategy of the enterprise and it envisages the gradual, continuous improvement of products and services quality, as well as productivity and competitiveness, with the participation of all staff. This strategy has been defined in Japan under the name Kaizen. The Kaizen strategy is oriented towards the employee, who is considered the main factor of enterprise success.

Probabilistic Cross-Identification of Cosmic Events

OpenAIRE

Budavari, Tamas

2011-01-01

We discuss a novel approach to identifying cosmic events in separate and independent observations. In our focus are the true events, such as supernova explosions, that happen once, hence, whose measurements are not repeatable. Their classification and analysis have to make the best use of all the available data. Bayesian hypothesis testing is used to associate streams of events in space and time. Probabilities are assigned to the matches by studying their rates of occurrence. A case study of ...

戦後教育運動の自主編成に関する一考察 : 数学教育を事例として

OpenAIRE

相澤, 真一

2006-01-01

This paper investigates the issue of whether Japan Teachers'Union's (JTU) independent practices of aiming to improve(Kaizen) the method of Japanese mathematics teaching in the late 1950s to 60s succeed as an school policy to include students of various abilities. Two cases are chosen. One is the teaching of Functions, and the other the teaching of Demonstration of Figures in mathematics. Results of analyses show that JTU's independent practices were slightly, though not dramatically, successf...

Adverse events following 12 and 18 month vaccinations: a population-based, self-controlled case series analysis.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kumanan Wilson

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: Live vaccines have distinct safety profiles, potentially causing systemic reactions one to 2 weeks after administration. In the province of Ontario, Canada, live MMR vaccine is currently recommended at age 12 months and 18 months. METHODS: Using the self-controlled case series design we examined 271,495 12 month vaccinations and 184,312 18 month vaccinations to examine the relative incidence of the composite endpoint of emergency room visits or hospital admissions in consecutive one day intervals following vaccination. These were compared to a control period 20 to 28 days later. In a post-hoc analysis we examined the reasons for emergency room visits and the average acuity score at presentation for children during the at-risk period following the 12 month vaccine. RESULTS: Four to 12 days post 12 month vaccination, children had a 1.33 (1.29-1.38 increased relative incidence of the combined endpoint compared to the control period, or at least one event during the risk interval for every 168 children vaccinated. Ten to 12 days post 18 month vaccination, the relative incidence was 1.25 (95%, 1.17-1.33 which represented at least one excess event for every 730 children vaccinated. The primary reason for increased events was statistically significant elevations in emergency room visits following all vaccinations. There were non-significant increases in hospital admissions. There were an additional 20 febrile seizures for every 100,000 vaccinated at 12 months. CONCLUSIONS: There are significantly elevated risks of primarily emergency room visits approximately one to two weeks following 12 and 18 month vaccination. Future studies should examine whether these events could be predicted or prevented.

Etanercept An Overview of Dermatologic Adverse Events

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Lecluse, Lidian L. A.; Dowlatshahi, Emmilia A.; Limpens, C. E. Jacqueline M.; de Rie, Menno A.; Bos, Jan D.; Spuls, Phyllis I.

2011-01-01

Objectives: To provide a comprehensive overview of dermatologic adverse events of etanercept described in the literature (including all study types, case reports, and surveys) and to present information on the occurrence, severity, treatment, and course of these adverse events. Data Sources: MEDLINE

CDC WONDER: Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)

Data.gov (United States)

U.S. Department of Health & Human Services — The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) online database on CDC WONDER provides counts and percentages of adverse event case reports after vaccination, by...

The effect of a Lean quality improvement implementation program on surgical pathology specimen accessioning and gross preparation error frequency.

Science.gov (United States)

Smith, Maxwell L; Wilkerson, Trent; Grzybicki, Dana M; Raab, Stephen S

2012-09-01

Few reports have documented the effectiveness of Lean quality improvement in changing anatomic pathology patient safety. We used Lean methods of education; hoshin kanri goal setting and culture change; kaizen events; observation of work activities, hand-offs, and pathways; A3-problem solving, metric development, and measurement; and frontline work redesign in the accessioning and gross examination areas of an anatomic pathology laboratory. We compared the pre- and post-Lean implementation proportion of near-miss events and changes made in specific work processes. In the implementation phase, we documented 29 individual A3-root cause analyses. The pre- and postimplementation proportions of process- and operator-dependent near-miss events were 5.5 and 1.8 (P < .002) and 0.6 and 0.6, respectively. We conclude that through culture change and implementation of specific work process changes, Lean implementation may improve pathology patient safety.

Treatment of complementary events in constructing the linked Level 1 and Level 2 fault trees

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Jo, Young G.; Ahn, Kwang-Il

2009-01-01

Complementary events in the event trees for a PRA model should be treated properly in order to evaluate plant risk correctly. In this paper, the characteristics of the following three different cutset generation methods were investigated first in order to find the best practical way for treating complementary events: (1) exact method which treats complementary events logically, (2) no-delete term method which does not treat complementary events at all, and (3) delete term method which treats complementary events by deleting nonsense cutsets which are generated as a result of ignoring complementary events. Then, practical methods for treating complementary events in constructing linked fault trees for Level 1 and Level 2 PRA were suggested and demonstrated. The suggested methods deal with the following selected four typical cases: (1) Case 1-an event tree event (E) is represented by a fault tree gate whose inputs consist of only fault tree gates, (2) Case 2-E is represented by a single basic event, (3) Case 3-E is represented by an OR fault tree gate which has a single basic event and a fault tree gate as inputs, and (4) Case 4-E is represented by an AND fault tree gate which has a single basic event and a fault tree gate as inputs. In the suggested methods, first the high level logic structures of event tree events are examined and restructured, if needed. Then, the delete term method, the exact method, and the combination of the two methods are applied to through Case 1 to Case 4, respectively. As a result, it is recommended to treat complementary events, using the suggested methods, before Level 1 and Level 2 PRA fault trees are coupled

Events that lead university students to change their major to Information Systems: A retroductive South African case

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lisa Florence Seymour

2016-07-01

Full Text Available Shortage of computing skills is a global concern as it affects national development and business success. Yet, despite high job availability and high salaries in computing professions, insufficient numbers of students are choosing to study the various computing disciplines. This South African study looks at the Information Systems (IS major which is misunderstood by high school students. This retroductive case study identifies the events which lead students to change their major to IS. The study confirms the importance of interest in a major as well as the perceived high value of a major, which feature as dominant factors in the literature. Yet these are not the initial events that lead to students changing their major to IS. Events that initiate the process include losing passion for a previous major, experiencing difficulty in a previous major as well as enjoying the introductory IS course. The paper has practical advice for IS Departments and argues for a generic first year for students as well as a focus on enjoyment and skills aligned to IS professional practice in introductory IS courses. These findings can be generalised to other majors and, hence, the theoretical contribution adds to the literature on career choice in general.

Prediction problem for target events based on the inter-event waiting time

Science.gov (United States)

Shapoval, A.

2010-11-01

In this paper we address the problem of forecasting the target events of a time series given the distribution ξ of time gaps between target events. Strong earthquakes and stock market crashes are the two types of such events that we are focusing on. In the series of earthquakes, as McCann et al. show [W.R. Mc Cann, S.P. Nishenko, L.R. Sykes, J. Krause, Seismic gaps and plate tectonics: seismic potential for major boundaries, Pure and Applied Geophysics 117 (1979) 1082-1147], there are well-defined gaps (called seismic gaps) between strong earthquakes. On the other hand, usually there are no regular gaps in the series of stock market crashes [M. Raberto, E. Scalas, F. Mainardi, Waiting-times and returns in high-frequency financial data: an empirical study, Physica A 314 (2002) 749-755]. For the case of seismic gaps, we analytically derive an upper bound of prediction efficiency given the coefficient of variation of the distribution ξ. For the case of stock market crashes, we develop an algorithm that predicts the next crash within a certain time interval after the previous one. We show that this algorithm outperforms random prediction. The efficiency of our algorithm sets up a lower bound of efficiency for effective prediction of stock market crashes.

Leveraging Small-Scale Sport Events: Challenges of Organising, Delivering and Managing Sustainable Outcomes in Rural Communities, the Case of Gorski kotar, Croatia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marko Perić

2016-12-01

Full Text Available Sports and events play an important role in local identity building and creating a sense of community that encourages participation and increases social capital. Rural communities are specific areas with special needs and can face challenges and restraints when it comes to event organisation. The purpose of this paper is to identify organisational challenges and analyse the potential to achieving long-term sustainable social and economic outcomes linked to small-scale sports events in rural communities. Organisational challenges of rural communities in terms of organising sport events are examined and discussed using the framework of event leveraging developed by O’Brien and Chalip. This methodology is applied and discussed to a case study focusing on small-scale winter sport events in rural Croatia. Semi-structured interviews with local organisers were conducted in order to collect data on the overall event organisation and management, local coordination, role of community stakeholders and challenges facing strategic planning, with the intent to identify objectives for future events. Results were discussed independently and in the context of the leverage framework, with reflection on its applicability to rural communities as the event organisers. Recommendations are provided based on critical insight from the literature and are oriented on how to streamline the process of organising, delivering and managing of events in remote rural communities. Finally, the idea of inter-community organisation is proposed to ensure long-term social and economic benefits and to address the existing issues of overlapping of stakeholder categories, mixed objectives, distrust among stakeholders and inefficiently used local resources.

Sensitivity of the WRF model to the lower boundary in an extreme precipitation event - Madeira island case study

Science.gov (United States)

Teixeira, J. C.; Carvalho, A. C.; Carvalho, M. J.; Luna, T.; Rocha, A.

2014-08-01

The advances in satellite technology in recent years have made feasible the acquisition of high-resolution information on the Earth's surface. Examples of such information include elevation and land use, which have become more detailed. Including this information in numerical atmospheric models can improve their results in simulating lower boundary forced events, by providing detailed information on their characteristics. Consequently, this work aims to study the sensitivity of the weather research and forecast (WRF) model to different topography as well as land-use simulations in an extreme precipitation event. The test case focused on a topographically driven precipitation event over the island of Madeira, which triggered flash floods and mudslides in the southern parts of the island. Difference fields between simulations were computed, showing that the change in the data sets produced statistically significant changes to the flow, the planetary boundary layer structure and precipitation patterns. Moreover, model results show an improvement in model skill in the windward region for precipitation and in the leeward region for wind, in spite of the non-significant enhancement in the overall results with higher-resolution data sets of topography and land use.

An Oracle-based event index for ATLAS

CERN Document Server

AUTHOR|(INSPIRE)INSPIRE-00083337; The ATLAS collaboration; Dimitrov, Gancho

2017-01-01

The ATLAS Eventlndex System has amassed a set of key quantities for a large number of ATLAS events into a Hadoop based infrastructure for the purpose of providing the experiment with a number of event-wise services. Collecting this data in one place provides the opportunity to investigate various storage formats and technologies and assess which best serve the various use cases as well as consider what other benefits alternative storage systems provide. In this presentation we describe how the data are imported into an Oracle RDBMS (relational database management system), the services we have built based on this architecture, and our experience with it. We’ve indexed about 26 billion real data events thus far and have designed the system to accommodate future data which has expected rates of 5 and 20 billion events per year. We have found this system offers outstanding performance for some fundamental use cases. In addition, profiting from the co-location of this data with other complementary metadata in AT...

Managing Expectations: Results from Case Studies of US Water Utilities on Preparing for, Coping with, and Adapting to Extreme Events

Science.gov (United States)

Beller-Simms, N.; Metchis, K.

2014-12-01

Water utilities, reeling from increased impacts of successive extreme events such as floods, droughts, and derechos, are taking a more proactive role in preparing for future incursions. A recent study by Federal and water foundation investigators, reveals how six US water utilities and their regions prepared for, responded to, and coped with recent extreme weather and climate events and the lessons they are using to plan future adaptation and resilience activities. Two case studies will be highlighted. (1) Sonoma County, CA, has had alternating floods and severe droughts. In 2009, this area, home to competing water users, namely, agricultural crops, wineries, tourism, and fisheries faced a three-year drought, accompanied at the end by intense frosts. Competing uses of water threatened the grape harvest, endangered the fish industry and resulted in a series of regulations, and court cases. Five years later, new efforts by partners in the entire watershed have identified mutual opportunities for increased basin sustainability in the face of a changing climate. (2) Washington DC had a derecho in late June 2012, which curtailed water, communications, and power delivery during a record heat spell that impacted hundreds of thousands of residents and lasted over the height of the tourist-intensive July 4th holiday. Lessons from this event were applied three months later in anticipation of an approaching Superstorm Sandy. This study will help other communities in improving their resiliency in the face of future climate extremes. For example, this study revealed that (1) communities are planning with multiple types and occurrences of extreme events which are becoming more severe and frequent and are impacting communities that are expanding into more vulnerable areas and (2) decisions by one sector can not be made in a vacuum and require the scientific, sectoral and citizen communities to work towards sustainable solutions.

Financial impact of inaccurate Adverse Event recording post Hip Fracture surgery: Addendum to 'Adverse event recording post hip fracture surgery'.

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, Matthew J; Doody, Kevin; Mohamed, Khalid M S; Butler, Audrey; Street, John; Lenehan, Brian

2018-02-15

A study in 2011 by (Doody et al. Ir Med J 106(10):300-302, 2013) looked at comparing inpatient adverse events recorded prospectively at the point of care, with adverse events recorded by the national Hospital In-Patient Enquiry (HIPE) System. In the study, a single-centre University Hospital in Ireland treating acute hip fractures in an orthopaedic unit recorded 39 patients over a 2-month (August-September 2011) period, with 55 adverse events recorded prospectively in contrast to the HIPE record of 13 (23.6%) adverse events. With the recent change in the Irish hospital funding model from block grant to an 'activity-based funding' on the basis of case load and case complexity, the hospital financial allocation is dependent on accurate case complexity coding. A retrospective assessment of the financial implications of the two methods of adverse incident recording was carried out. A total of €39,899 in 'missed funding' for 2 months was calculated when the ward-based, prospectively collected data was compared to the national HIPE data. Accurate data collection is paramount in facilitating activity-based funding, to improve patient care and ensure the appropriate allocation of resources.

Coordination activities of human planners during rescheduling: Case analysis and event handling procedure

OpenAIRE

2010-01-01

Abstract This paper addresses the process of event handling and rescheduling in manufacturing practice. Firms are confronted with many diverse events, like new or changed orders, machine breakdowns, and material shortages. These events influence the feasibility and optimality of schedules, and thus induce rescheduling. In many manufacturing firms, schedules are created by several human planners. Coordination between them is needed to respond to events adequately. In this paper,...

Centauro- and anti-Centauro-type events

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Martinis, M.; Mikuta-Martinis, V.; Svarc, A.; Crnugelj, J.

1995-01-01

Assuming that leading particles in high-energy hadronic and nuclear collisions become sources of a classical pion field, we show that the direct production of pions favors Centauro (mainly charged) events and that the production of pions through the ρ-type channel favors anti-Centauro (mainly neutral) events. We also observe a strong negative neutral-charged correlation in both cases

Investigating casino event management integration: The case of East and South Asia casinos

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tzu-Wei (Arwen Huang

2017-03-01

Full Text Available The aim of this study is to investigate the gap of event management in East and South Asia’s casinos throughout the information provided by casinos on their websites. Main objective is to identify the differences and similarities of event holding in East and South Asia’s casinos and suggest future directions for casino managers and event organizers. Four research questions were developed to provide ourselves a goal, as well as to further our understanding of our investigation. There are two steps to structure our study. First is to evaluate the performance of 138 casino’s websites, which were obtained from worldcasinodirectory. com by using a website evaluation tool that we have constructed. In the second step, we conduct a content analysis for the website so we can identify what kind of events are organized in the area on our samples. The data of the content analysis provides a comparison of events in our sampling, such as the event’s size, type, and frequency of holding an event. We believe that our research would contribute to event organizers and large scale corporations to give them an insight on the overall efficiency of websites, as well as the frequency of events around East and South Asian casinos.

Event visualization in ATLAS

CERN Document Server

AUTHOR|(INSPIRE)INSPIRE-00211497; The ATLAS collaboration; Boudreau, Joseph; Konstantinidis, Nikolaos; Martyniuk, Alex; Moyse, Edward; Thomas, Juergen; Waugh, Ben; Yallup, David

2017-01-01

At the beginning, HEP experiments made use of photographical images both to record and store experimental data and to illustrate their findings. Then the experiments evolved and needed to find ways to visualize their data. With the availability of computer graphics, software packages to display event data and the detector geometry started to be developed. Here, an overview of the usage of event display tools in HEP is presented. Then the case of the ATLAS experiment is considered in more detail and two widely used event display packages are presented, Atlantis and VP1, focusing on the software technologies they employ, as well as their strengths, differences and their usage in the experiment: from physics analysis to detector development, and from online monitoring to outreach and communication. Towards the end, the other ATLAS visualization tools will be briefly presented as well. Future development plans and improvements in the ATLAS event display packages will also be discussed.

The CMS Event Builder

CERN Document Server

Brigljevic, V; Cano, E; Cittolin, Sergio; Csilling, Akos; Gigi, D; Glege, F; Gómez-Reino, Robert; Gulmini, M; Gutleber, J; Jacobs, C; Kozlovszky, Miklos; Larsen, H; Magrans de Abril, Ildefons; Meijers, F; Meschi, E; Murray, S; Oh, A; Orsini, L; Pollet, L; Rácz, A; Samyn, D; Scharff-Hansen, P; Schwick, C; Sphicas, Paris; ODell, V; Suzuki, I; Berti, L; Maron, G; Toniolo, N; Zangrando, L; Ninane, A; Erhan, S; Bhattacharya, S; Branson, J G

2003-01-01

The data acquisition system of the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider will employ an event builder which will combine data from about 500 data sources into full events at an aggregate throughput of 100 GByte/s. Several architectures and switch technologies have been evaluated for the DAQ Technical Design Report by measurements with test benches and by simulation. This paper describes studies of an EVB test-bench based on 64 PCs acting as data sources and data consumers and employing both Gigabit Ethernet and Myrinet technologies as the interconnect. In the case of Ethernet, protocols based on Layer-2 frames and on TCP/IP are evaluated. Results from ongoing studies, including measurements on throughput and scaling are presented. The architecture of the baseline CMS event builder will be outlined. The event builder is organised into two stages with intelligent buffers in between. The first stage contains 64 switches performing a first level of data concentration by building super-fragments from fragmen...

Fusion events

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Aboufirassi, M; Angelique, J.C.; Bizard, G.; Bougault, R.; Brou, R.; Buta, A.; Colin, J.; Cussol, D.; Durand, D.; Genoux-Lubain, A.; Horn, D.; Kerambrun, A.; Laville, J.L.; Le Brun, C.; Lecolley, J.F.; Lefebvres, F.; Lopez, O.; Louvel, M.; Meslin, C.; Metivier, V.; Nakagawa, T.; Peter, J.; Popescu, R.; Regimbart, R.; Steckmeyer, J.C.; Tamain, B.; Vient, E.; Wieloch, A.; Yuasa-Nakagawa, K.

1998-01-01

The fusion reactions between low energy heavy ions have a very high cross section. First measurements at energies around 30-40 MeV/nucleon indicated no residue of either complete or incomplete fusion, thus demonstrating the disappearance of this process. This is explained as being due to the high amount o energies transferred to the nucleus, what leads to its total dislocation in light fragments and particles. Exclusive analyses have permitted to mark clearly the presence of fusion processes in heavy systems at energies above 30-40 MeV/nucleon. Among the complete events of the Kr + Au reaction at 60 MeV/nucleon the majority correspond to binary collisions. Nevertheless, for the most considerable energy losses, a class of events do occur for which the detected fragments appears to be emitted from a unique source. These events correspond to an incomplete projectile-target fusion followed by a multifragmentation. Such events were singled out also in the reaction Xe + Sn at 50 MeV/nucleon. For the events in which the energy dissipation was maximal it was possible to isolate an isotropic group of events showing all the characteristics of fusion nuclei. The fusion is said to be incomplete as pre-equilibrium Z = 1 and Z = 2 particles are emitted. The cross section is of the order of 25 mb. Similar conclusions were drown for the systems 36 Ar + 27 Al and 64 Zn + nat Ti. A cross section value of ∼ 20 mb was determined at 55 MeV/nucleon in the first case, while the measurement of evaporation light residues in the last system gave an upper limit of 20-30 mb for the cross section at 50 MeV/nucleon

An Oracle-based event index for ATLAS

Science.gov (United States)

Gallas, E. J.; Dimitrov, G.; Vasileva, P.; Baranowski, Z.; Canali, L.; Dumitru, A.; Formica, A.; ATLAS Collaboration

2017-10-01

The ATLAS Eventlndex System has amassed a set of key quantities for a large number of ATLAS events into a Hadoop based infrastructure for the purpose of providing the experiment with a number of event-wise services. Collecting this data in one place provides the opportunity to investigate various storage formats and technologies and assess which best serve the various use cases as well as consider what other benefits alternative storage systems provide. In this presentation we describe how the data are imported into an Oracle RDBMS (relational database management system), the services we have built based on this architecture, and our experience with it. We’ve indexed about 26 billion real data events thus far and have designed the system to accommodate future data which has expected rates of 5 and 20 billion events per year. We have found this system offers outstanding performance for some fundamental use cases. In addition, profiting from the co-location of this data with other complementary metadata in ATLAS, the system has been easily extended to perform essential assessments of data integrity and completeness and to identify event duplication, including at what step in processing the duplication occurred.

ATLAS TDAQ/DCS Event filter : Supervision Requirements

CERN Document Server

Bee, C P; Meessen, C; Qian, Z; Touchard, F; Green, P; Pinfold, J L; Wheeler, S; Negri, A; Scannicchio, D A; Vercesi, V

2002-01-01

The second iteration of the Software Development Process of the ATLAS Event Filter has been launched. A summary of the design phase of the first iteration is given in the introduction. The document gives constraints, use cases, functional and non-functional requirements for the Supervision sub-system of the Event Filter.

Vpliv kaizna na proizvodno linijo podjetja TPV d.d.

OpenAIRE

Gramc, Nina

2013-01-01

Domnevamo lahko, da je filozofija Kaizen eden od vzrokov in hkrati motivator za dolgoročno konkurenčno prednost podjetja. Koncept je definiran kot obsežen organizacijski proces, osredotočen na kontinuiteto izboljšav in načrtno vključevanje vsakega posameznika v organizaciji v iskanje izboljšav. Zato je lahko prav Kaizen eden ključnih pokazateljev, ki loči med uspehom enih in odpovedjo oziroma propadom drugih podjetij. Razmere, ki jih dandanes srečujemo v podjetju (razne napake, strojelomi...

TOURISMOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION OF SPORTING EVENTS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Željko Bjeljac

2017-04-01

Full Text Available Sporting events are programs, which are dominated by creative and complex facilities, primarily sports, but also recreation and entertainment. As such, they achieve tourism effects and goals and have a socio-economic importance for the city, region or state. Depending on the size and importance of sports event, sport has a different role in the context of promoting tourist destination, as well as different values. Each sport discipline has its own criteria by which athletes are ranked individually or as team. The subject of the research is to determine the criteria for the categorization of sporting events, in order to determine the importance of sporting events as an element of the tourist offer (individually or as part of a tourist destination. Also, this paper’s results present a comparative analysis of similar methodologies for the categorization of sporting events. Based on the research presented in the paper, there are four groups of criteria: economic, media, social and environmental. Together with this, paper gives the classification of traditional sporting events in the case of Serbia, dividing them in four groups.

Study on Motives of University Students for Watching Sport Events (Sırnak Province Case Study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hanifi ÜZÜM

2014-07-01

Full Text Available This case study has been conducted to determine the factors influencing motives of university students in Sirnak on watching sport events. The sampling group includes 73 females and 107 males, totally 180 students. External motivations scale for sport spectators (EMSSS and internal motivations scale for sport spectators (IMSSS developed by Polat and Yalçın (2014 were used as a data collection tool for this study. (EMSSS consists of totally 34 articles and 9 sub - dimensions, which are defined as Social Sharing , Popularity and Actuality, Family Bonds, Promotion and Media, Ethics, Opportunities for Betting, Knowledge, Cultural Development, and Esthetic Values (IMSSS consists of 40 articles and 7 sub - dimensions, whic h are described as National Sentiments, Passion for the Sport, Quality and Sense of Competition, Fanship, Regional Loyalty, Success and Level of Skill, Relaxation and Reducing Stress . T - test, Pearson's correlation analysis and one - way analysis of varianc e test were applied for the analysis of survey data. According to the survey findings; it is possible to say that factors such as gender, active sportsmanship, the most watched sport branch, age, the amount of expenses for watching competitions etc. can in fluence motives for watching sport events.

Isolated Horizon, Killing Horizon and Event Horizon

OpenAIRE

Date, G.

2001-01-01

We consider space-times which in addition to admitting an isolated horizon also admit Killing horizons with or without an event horizon. We show that an isolated horizon is a Killing horizon provided either (1) it admits a stationary neighbourhood or (2) it admits a neighbourhood with two independent, commuting Killing vectors. A Killing horizon is always an isolated horizon. For the case when an event horizon is definable, all conceivable relative locations of isolated horizon and event hori...

Advanced Melanoma Facebook Live Event

Science.gov (United States)

In case you missed it, watch this recent Facebook Live event about the current state of research and treatment for advanced stage melanoma. To learn more, see our evidence-based information about skin cancer, including melanoma.

Loss of preferred power events in German BWRs and PWRs

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Frisch, W.

1984-01-01

This chapter examines the variety of courses which the loss of auxiliary power case may take in different plants, depending on the initiation of the event, the switching to the alternate auxiliary power supply and the automatic start-up sequences of auxiliaries (e.g. feedwater pumps, condensate pumps) after a short term interruption of auxiliary power. Topics considered include main station transformer failure in a boiling water reactor (BWR), main plant features, event description, evaluation of the event, deviations from expected behavior, operator actions, a comparison with start-up tests and other events, a comparison with postcalculations, and auxiliary transformer failure in a pressurized water reactor (PWR). Loss of preferred (or auxiliary) power events are standard design cases taken into account in the design of many reactor and plant systems

Stressful life events and occupational accidents.

Science.gov (United States)

Cordeiro, Ricardo; Dias, Adriano

2005-10-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the association between stressful life events and occupational accidents. This was a population-based case-control study, carried out in the city of Botucatu, in southeast Brazil. The cases consisted of 108 workers who had recently experienced occupational accidents. Each case was matched with three controls. The cases and controls answered a questionnaire about recent exposure to stressful life events. Reporting of "environmental problems", "being a victim of assault", "not having enough food at home" and "nonoccupational fatigue" were found to be risk factors for work-related accidents with estimated incidence rate ratios of 1.4 [95% confidence interval (95% CI) 1.1-1.7], 1.3 (95% CI 1.1-1.7), 1.3 (95% CI 1.1-1.6), and 1.4 (95% CI 1.2-1.7) respectively. The findings of the study suggested that nonwork variables contribute to occupational accidents, thus broadening the understanding of these phenomena, which can support new approaches to the prevention of occupational accidents.

UBICOMP-KAIZEN

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Schoch, Odilo

This paper describes the successful development of a design supporting method called ‘Ubicomp-Kaizen’ for the design of computer-integrated ‘smart’ buildings. The tool uses known methods of quality-management of the car-manufacturing industry and integrates them into the architectural design...... process. By this, the CAAD-topics ‘design methodology’, ‘ubicomp/smart buildings’, ‘interactive architecture’ and ‘Building Information Model (BIM)’ are involved. In result it proves the successful integration and application of tools known from the product development industry such as ‘Quality...

Ubicomp-Kaizen

OpenAIRE

Schoch, Odilo

2009-01-01

This paper describes the successful development of a tool for use within architectural design. The tool is named ‘Ubicomp-Kaizen’. It enables quality control for the design of computer integrated academic buildings. Based on the principles and methods of the Japanese management philosophy ‘Kaizen’, it aims for the holistic consideration of heterogeneous demands of both building and digitally networked building- and media-services (known as ‘ubiquitous computing’ or ‘Ubicomp’). In order to ach...

UBICOMP-KAIZEN

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Schoch, Odilo

This paper describes the successful development of a design supporting method called ‘Ubicomp-Kaizen’ for the design of computer-integrated ‘smart’ buildings. The tool uses known methods of quality-management of the car-manufacturing industry and integrates them into the architectural design...

Regional economic impact of an event: the case of the Rotterdam Marathon

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Willem, Jan; Goedknegt, Bart; Heijman, W.J.M.

2016-01-01

The Rotterdam Marathon is an annual sports event in Rotterdam. This biggest one-day event in the Netherlands attracted around 925,000 visitors in 2014. This paper aims at evaluating its regional economic impact by way of input output analysis in terms of number of jobs.

Visual pattern discovery in timed event data

Science.gov (United States)

Schaefer, Matthias; Wanner, Franz; Mansmann, Florian; Scheible, Christian; Stennett, Verity; Hasselrot, Anders T.; Keim, Daniel A.

2011-01-01

Business processes have tremendously changed the way large companies conduct their business: The integration of information systems into the workflows of their employees ensures a high service level and thus high customer satisfaction. One core aspect of business process engineering are events that steer the workflows and trigger internal processes. Strict requirements on interval-scaled temporal patterns, which are common in time series, are thereby released through the ordinal character of such events. It is this additional degree of freedom that opens unexplored possibilities for visualizing event data. In this paper, we present a flexible and novel system to find significant events, event clusters and event patterns. Each event is represented as a small rectangle, which is colored according to categorical, ordinal or intervalscaled metadata. Depending on the analysis task, different layout functions are used to highlight either the ordinal character of the data or temporal correlations. The system has built-in features for ordering customers or event groups according to the similarity of their event sequences, temporal gap alignment and stacking of co-occurring events. Two characteristically different case studies dealing with business process events and news articles demonstrate the capabilities of our system to explore event data.

Urban strategies and post-event legacy : The case of summer Olympic cities

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Chen, Y.

2012-01-01

Mega-event strategies and their impact on host cities have drawn increasing interest, as organising large-scale urban events has become part of a deliberate urban policy strategy to promote local economic growth, improve the city image and put the host city on the world agenda. Most cities stressed

Tool for Constructing Data Albums for Significant Weather Events

Science.gov (United States)

Kulkarni, A.; Ramachandran, R.; Conover, H.; McEniry, M.; Goodman, H.; Zavodsky, B. T.; Braun, S. A.; Wilson, B. D.

2012-12-01

Case study analysis and climatology studies are common approaches used in Atmospheric Science research. Research based on case studies involves a detailed description of specific weather events using data from different sources, to characterize physical processes in play for a given event. Climatology-based research tends to focus on the representativeness of a given event, by studying the characteristics and distribution of a large number of events. To gather relevant data and information for case studies and climatology analysis is tedious and time consuming; current Earth Science data systems are not suited to assemble multi-instrument, multi mission datasets around specific events. For example, in hurricane science, finding airborne or satellite data relevant to a given storm requires searching through web pages and data archives. Background information related to damages, deaths, and injuries requires extensive online searches for news reports and official storm summaries. We will present a knowledge synthesis engine to create curated "Data Albums" to support case study analysis and climatology studies. The technological challenges in building such a reusable and scalable knowledge synthesis engine are several. First, how to encode domain knowledge in a machine usable form? This knowledge must capture what information and data resources are relevant and the semantic relationships between the various fragments of information and data. Second, how to extract semantic information from various heterogeneous sources including unstructured texts using the encoded knowledge? Finally, how to design a structured database from the encoded knowledge to store all information and to support querying? The structured database must allow both knowledge overviews of an event as well as drill down capability needed for detailed analysis. An application ontology driven framework is being used to design the knowledge synthesis engine. The knowledge synthesis engine is being

Air pollution events from forest fires and emergency department attendances in Sydney, Australia 1996-2007: a case-crossover analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Johnston, Fay H; Purdie, Stuart; Jalaludin, Bin; Martin, Kara L; Henderson, Sarah B; Morgan, Geoffrey G

2014-12-10

Severe air pollution generated by forest fires is becoming an increasingly frequent public health management problem. We measured the association between forest fire smoke events and hospital emergency department (ED) attendances in Sydney from 1996-2007. A smoke event occurred when forest fires caused the daily citywide average concentration of particulate matter (PM10 or PM2.5) to exceed the 99th percentile of the entire study period. We used a time-stratified case-crossover design and conditional logistic regression models adjusted for meteorology, influenza epidemics, and holidays to estimate odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for ED attendances on event days compared with non-event days for all non-trauma ED attendances and selected cardiorespiratory conditions. The 46 validated fire smoke event days during the study period were associated with same day increases in ED attendances for all non-trauma conditions (1.03, 95% CI 1.02, 1.04), respiratory conditions (OR 1.07, 95% CI 1.04, 1.10), asthma (OR 1.23, 95% CI 1.15, 1.30), and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (OR 1.12, 95% CI 1.02, 1.24). Positive associations persisted for one to three days after the event. Ischaemic heart disease ED attendances were increased at a lag of two days (OR 1.07, 95% CI 1.01, 1.15) while arrhythmias had an inverse association at a lag of two days (OR 0.91, 95% CI 0.83, 0.99). In age-specific analyses, no associations present in children less than 15 years of age for any outcome, although a non-significant trend towards a positive association was seen with childhood asthma. A further association between smoke event and heart failure attendances was present for the 15-65 year age group, but not older adults at a lag of two days (OR 1.37 95% CI 1.05, 1.78). Smoke events were associated with an immediate increase in presentations for respiratory conditions and a lagged increase in attendances for ischaemic heart disease and heart failure. Respiratory impacts were

Transient paralysis during acupuncture therapy: a case report of an adverse event.

Science.gov (United States)

Beable, Anne

2013-09-01

A patient with apparently well-controlled epilepsy with a painful musculoskeletal condition was treated successfully with two sessions of acupuncture. However, 4 h after the first treatment and during the second, an adverse event involving impairment of consciousness occurred. The patient subsequently experienced an increased frequency of complex partial seizures resulting in the loss of his driving licence. A detailed retrospective review of the past medical history indicated that the patient probably had comorbidities in the form of rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder and dysfunctional somatosensory/vestibular processing. Acupuncture may have triggered the adverse event via shared neurosubstrates. This adverse event raises possible implications regarding safe clinical acupuncture practice.

Probabilistic analysis of external events with focus on the Fukushima event

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kollasko, Heiko; Jockenhoevel-Barttfeld, Mariana; Klapp, Ulrich

2014-01-01

External hazards are those natural or man-made hazards to a site and facilities that are originated externally to both the site and its processes, i.e. the duty holder may have very little or no control over the hazard. External hazards can have the potential of causing initiating events at the plant, typically transients like e.g., loss of offsite power. Simultaneously, external events may affect safety systems required to control the initiating event and, where applicable, also back-up systems implemented for risk-reduction. The plant safety may especially be threatened when loads from external hazards exceed the load assumptions considered in the design of safety-related systems, structures and components. Another potential threat is given by hazards inducing initiating events not considered in the safety demonstration otherwise. An example is loss of offsite power combined with prolonged plant isolation. Offsite support, e.g., delivery of diesel fuel oil, usually credited in the deterministic safety analysis may not be possible in this case. As the Fukushima events have shown, the biggest threat is likely given by hazards inducing both effects. Such hazards may well be dominant risk contributors even if their return period is very high. In order to identify relevant external hazards for a certain Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) location, a site specific screening analysis is performed, both for single events and for combinations of external events. As a result of the screening analysis, risk significant and therefore relevant (screened-in) single external events and combinations of them are identified for a site. The screened-in events are further considered in a detailed event tree analysis in the frame of the Probabilistic Safety Analysis (PSA) to calculate the core damage/large release frequency resulting from each relevant external event or from each relevant combination. Screening analyses of external events performed at AREVA are based on the approach provided

INNOVATION IN THE CREATIVE INDUSTRIES – CASE STUDY OF AN EVENT PLANNING COMPANY

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Filculescu Adina

2013-07-01

Full Text Available Creative industries have recently gained attention from economists and policy makers as they are said to contribute in a significant way to the economic and technological development of knowledge societies. In Romania there has not been too much talk about the way in which these industries are inserted in the larger chain of industrial innovation, nor about the particularities of their innovation processes which could provide interesting insights for the more traditional industries that are in need of a creativity boost. This paper seeks to fill this gap by offering a process view of business innovation in an event management company, which we argue has many of the characteristics encountered in organizations belonging to creative industries. Through an in-depth case study based on diary entries and interviews we uncover the way in which innovation is understood in this service sector and how this understanding is translated into repeatable business processes. Based on the review of the literature concerned with innovativeness in creative industries we have decided upon four important research themes: people, products, places and policies. By people we refer, first of all, to the entrepreneur who was asked to reflexively answer questions related to passions/interests, formal and non-formal knowledge and social capital in order to assess the entrepreneurial capacity. Also included in this category are the clients of the company and the employees, which represent major players in the innovation process during different stages. Places are important because they are used in the definition of innovation: something new to someone somewhere, and also because they are regarded as a source of inspiration and a possible hindrance in the implementation of the desired event design. Products encompass the raw materials that are used in creating the flower arrangements and the general room décor as well as the technologies that stand behind them, while

Modeling a Civil Event Case Study for Consequence Management Using the IMPRINT Forces Module

Science.gov (United States)

Gacy, Marc; Gosakan, Mala; Eckdahl, Angela; Miller, Jeffrey R.

2012-01-01

A critical challenge in the Consequence Management (CM) domain is the appropriate allocation of necessary and skilled military and civilian personnel and materiel resources in unexpected emergencies. To aid this process we used the Forces module in the Improved Performance Research Integration Tool (IMPRINT). This module enables analysts to enter personnel and equipment capabilities, prioritized schedules and numbers available, along with unexpected emergency requirements in order to assess force response requirements. Using a suspected terrorist threat on a college campus, we developed a test case model which exercised the capabilities of the module, including the scope and scale of operations. The model incorporates data from multiple sources, including daily schedules and frequency of events such as fire calls. Our preliminary results indicate that the model can predict potential decreases in civilian emergency response coverage due to an involved unplanned incident requiring significant portions of police, fire and civil responses teams.

Relationship model and supporting activities of JIT, TQM and TPM

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nuttapon SaeTong

2011-02-01

Full Text Available This paper gives a relationship model and supporting activities of Just-in-time (JIT, Total Quality Management (TQM,and Total Productive Maintenance (TPM. By reviewing the concepts, 5S, Kaizen, preventive maintenance, Kanban, visualcontrol, Poka-Yoke, and Quality Control tools are the main supporting activities. Based on the analysis, 5S, preventive maintenance,and Kaizen are the foundation of the three concepts. QC tools are required activities for implementing TQM, whereasPoka-Yoke and visual control are necessary activities for implementing TPM. After successfully implementing TQM andTPM, Kanban is needed for JIT.

Protection of nuclear power plants against external events

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Suetterlin, L.

1978-01-01

The different aspects for the selection of external events to be accounted for in designing nuclear power plants and in defining load assumptions are illustrated: 1) In case of earthquake the severest possible events according to the state of science and technology are assumed. 2) For events where it is not or only to a certain extent possible to apply this method, e.g. in the load case airplane crash, load assumptions are defined in a combined probabilitic-deterministic way. By the example of plant protection, it is shown that by integrating all measures for protecting against interference of third parties (sabotage) or other external events, optimum protection concepts may be achieved. In all considerations on interference of third parties or other external events, one has to take into account that absolute protection is not possible. Nevertheless, it may be confirmed that nuclear power plants not only have a much higher level of protection than other, non-nuclear plants with equal or even higher potential hazard, but also that they meet the requirement not to increase significantly the current risk of society. (orig./HP) [de

Feasibility study on the acquisition of licensee event data

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kato, W.Y.; Hall, R.E.; Teichmann, T.; Taylor, J.; Luckas, W.J. Jr.; Saha, P.; Samanta, P.; Fragola, J.

1983-01-01

Objective of the study was to assess the feasibility of modifying the LER reporting system as proposed by NRC-AEOD, and/or developing an alternative plan that would in addition collect information about significant events amenable to statistical analysis, such as multi-case, multi-variate analysis. The study indicated that the LERs constitute reports from a large variety of events which have in most cases many different plant parameters, both measured and currently not measured, to characterize the event. In order to determine event-specific plant parameters required for statistical and deterministic analysis, a data matrix approach was used to identify those parameters which are currently being recorded, those which could be measured and recorded, and those which are required for certain types of events involving thermal-hydraulics and neutronics as illustrative of events requiring in-depth analysis. Also included in the study was a review of INPO's Nuclear Plant Reliability Data System; NASA's Problem Reporting and Corrective Action (PRACA) program; Electricite de France's KIT system, an automatic computer-based reactor parameter monitoring and recording system; and the regulatory relationship between the FAA and the commercial airline industry

Life event stress in duodenal ulcer compared with functional dyspepsia: A case-control study

OpenAIRE

Abdel Hafeiz Hassan; Al Quorain Abdulaziz; Karim Ahmed; Al-Mangoor Shuaa

1997-01-01

This is a prospective study of life event stress in 80 duodenal ulcer patients compared with 80 patients with functional dyspepsia and 80 healthy controls; matched for age, sex and marital status. A semi structured psychiatric interview was used in the psychiatric assessment of the dyspeptic patients and controls. A modified version of Life Events Scale by Tennant and Andrews was used in the assessment of life event stress. More dyspeptic patients reported life events than the controls, but, ...

Maternal life event stress and congenital anomalies.

Science.gov (United States)

Carmichael, S L; Shaw, G M

2000-01-01

We used data from a population-based case-control study to explore the relation between certain life events during the periconceptional period and several types of congenital anomalies. We ascertained cases from pregnancies ending in 1987-1989 and randomly selected controls from eligible liveborn infants. In telephone interviews, women reported deaths of anyone close to them. They also reported job losses or separations/divorces, for themselves or anyone close to them. Experiencing at least one stressful event during the periconceptional period was associated with a prevalence odds ratio of 1.4-1.5 for the delivery of infants with conotruncal heart defects, neural tube defects, and isolated cleft lip with or without palate. These associations tended to be restricted to women who were not obese and women with less than or equal to a high school education. This study suggests that women who experience stressful life events around the time of conception or early gestation may be at increased risk of delivering infants with certain congenital anomalies.

Transient global amnesia and neurological events: the Framingham Heart Study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jose Rafael Romero

2013-05-01

Full Text Available Background/ objective: Transient global amnesia (TGA is a temporary amnestic syndrome characterized by lack of other focal neurological deficits. Cerebrovascular disease, migraine and seizures have been suggested as underlying mechanisms. TGA may be a risk factor for cerebrovascular or other neurological events. We studied the relation of TGA, vascular risk factors, brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI indices of subclinical ischemia and neurological events in a community-based sample. Design/setting: A total of 12 TGA cases were ascertained using standard criteria by experienced neurologists, and matched to 41 stroke- and seizure-free controls. Vascular risk factors, brain MRI findings, and subsequent cerebrovascular or seizure events were compared in cases and controls. Participants: Framingham Heart Study (FHS original and offspring cohort participants were included.Results: No significant differences between the groups were observed in the prevalence of vascular risk factors, or brain MRI measures. Few incident stroke/transient ischemic attacks (TIA (1 event among the cases and 4 in controls or subsequent seizures occurred in either group. Head CT during the acute event (n=11 and brain MRI (n=7 were negative for acute abnormalities. Electroencephalograms (EEG (n=5 were negative for epileptiform activity. Extracranial vascular studies were negative for significant stenosis in all cases.Conclusions: In our community-based study TGA was not related to traditional vascular risk factors, or cerebrovascular disease. However, our study is limited by small sample size and power, and larger studies are required to exclude an association.

Events Marketing Model of Dubai Shopping Festival

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

K. Prakash Vel

2014-12-01

Full Text Available Cities and places have become major destinations through taking the extra mile of creativity and offering a well-researched package of offerings through systematically planned events. One such leading example in the list of successful festivals that have earned a global reputation due to its uniqueness and creative event offerings is the Dubai Shopping Festival (DSF in the United Arab Emirates. This paper is a case study based description of the internal and external drivers involved in planning and implementing a global event successfully and has captured the various drivers through a structured framework. The analysis serves as a good addition to the existing literature on ‘Events Marketing’. 

Analyzing time-ordered event data with missed observations.

Science.gov (United States)

Dokter, Adriaan M; van Loon, E Emiel; Fokkema, Wimke; Lameris, Thomas K; Nolet, Bart A; van der Jeugd, Henk P

2017-09-01

A common problem with observational datasets is that not all events of interest may be detected. For example, observing animals in the wild can difficult when animals move, hide, or cannot be closely approached. We consider time series of events recorded in conditions where events are occasionally missed by observers or observational devices. These time series are not restricted to behavioral protocols, but can be any cyclic or recurring process where discrete outcomes are observed. Undetected events cause biased inferences on the process of interest, and statistical analyses are needed that can identify and correct the compromised detection processes. Missed observations in time series lead to observed time intervals between events at multiples of the true inter-event time, which conveys information on their detection probability. We derive the theoretical probability density function for observed intervals between events that includes a probability of missed detection. Methodology and software tools are provided for analysis of event data with potential observation bias and its removal. The methodology was applied to simulation data and a case study of defecation rate estimation in geese, which is commonly used to estimate their digestive throughput and energetic uptake, or to calculate goose usage of a feeding site from dropping density. Simulations indicate that at a moderate chance to miss arrival events ( p  = 0.3), uncorrected arrival intervals were biased upward by up to a factor 3, while parameter values corrected for missed observations were within 1% of their true simulated value. A field case study shows that not accounting for missed observations leads to substantial underestimates of the true defecation rate in geese, and spurious rate differences between sites, which are introduced by differences in observational conditions. These results show that the derived methodology can be used to effectively remove observational biases in time-ordered event

A study of the recovery from 120 events

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Baumont, Genevieve; Menage, F.; Bigot, F.

1998-01-01

The author reports a study which aimed at providing additional information for improving safety by using event analysis. The approach concentrates on the dynamics of error detection and the way errors and shortcomings are managed. The study is based on a systematic analysis of 120 events in nuclear power plants. The authors first outline the differences between the activities described in significant events and that which is assumed to take place during event and accident situations. They describe the methods used to transpose human reliability PSA model to event analysis, report the analysis (event selection, data studied during event analysis, types of errors). Studies concern events during power operation or plant outage. Results are analyzed in terms of number of events, percentage of error type, percentage of activation of engineered safety features before operators recovered the situation. They comment who recovers the error and how it is recovered, and more precisely discuss the case of multiple error situations

Toward an Automated Labeling of Event Log Attributes

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Abbad Andaloussi, Amine; Burattin, Andrea; Weber, Barbara

2018-01-01

information systems often do not comply with the required maturity level, since they lack the notion of process instance, also referred in process mining as “case id”. Without a proper identification of the case id attribute in log files, the outcome of process mining algorithms is unpredictable. This paper...... proposes a new approach that aims to overcome this challenge by automatically inferring the case id attribute from log files. The approach has been implemented as a ProM plugin and evaluated with several real-world event logs. The results demonstrate a high accuracy in inferring the case id attribute.......Process mining aims at exploring the data produced by executable business processes to mine the underlying control-flow and dataflow. Most of the process mining algorithms assume the existence of an event log with a certain maturity level. Unfortunately, the logs provided by process unaware...

Multiple Case Study of Event Management Curricula and Industry Professionals' Expectations of New Graduates

Science.gov (United States)

Whitney, Premila A.

2016-01-01

The event management segment of the hospitality industry has experienced tremendous growth in recent years. As a result, demand for qualified event management professionals continues to increase. To help prepare qualified professionals for the event management industry, higher education institutions in the United States are now offering…

Evolution caused by extreme events.

Science.gov (United States)

Grant, Peter R; Grant, B Rosemary; Huey, Raymond B; Johnson, Marc T J; Knoll, Andrew H; Schmitt, Johanna

2017-06-19

Extreme events can be a major driver of evolutionary change over geological and contemporary timescales. Outstanding examples are evolutionary diversification following mass extinctions caused by extreme volcanism or asteroid impact. The evolution of organisms in contemporary time is typically viewed as a gradual and incremental process that results from genetic change, environmental perturbation or both. However, contemporary environments occasionally experience strong perturbations such as heat waves, floods, hurricanes, droughts and pest outbreaks. These extreme events set up strong selection pressures on organisms, and are small-scale analogues of the dramatic changes documented in the fossil record. Because extreme events are rare, almost by definition, they are difficult to study. So far most attention has been given to their ecological rather than to their evolutionary consequences. We review several case studies of contemporary evolution in response to two types of extreme environmental perturbations, episodic (pulse) or prolonged (press). Evolution is most likely to occur when extreme events alter community composition. We encourage investigators to be prepared for evolutionary change in response to rare events during long-term field studies.This article is part of the themed issue 'Behavioural, ecological and evolutionary responses to extreme climatic events'. © 2017 The Author(s).

'Case reporting of rare adverse events in otolaryngology': can we defend the case report?

LENUS (Irish Health Repository)

Dias, Andrew

2012-01-31

The study of errors in medicine has proliferated since the publication of The Institute of Medicine Report \\'TO ERR IS HUMAN\\' in 2000. Case nuances and process of care issues are valuable areas to explore if the goal is to provide the health care worker with the knowledge to avoid future errors. Meta-analysis and randomized controlled trials provide a large data base of evidence towards improvement and opportunities, but it is suggested that case reports can still provide valuable clinical information. The aim is to use the published literature to produce a series of rare harm case reports in E.N.T. The methods include systematic literature review. Journals searched in PUBMED were 60. Rare harm case obtained from the search were 5,322. Rare harm case reports not reported in any other form of evidence-based medicine were 40. Yes, the case report can be defended as it is an important pillar of evidence-based medicine.

Event-by-event gluon multiplicity, energy density, and eccentricities in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions

Science.gov (United States)

Schenke, Björn; Tribedy, Prithwish; Venugopalan, Raju

2012-09-01

The event-by-event multiplicity distribution, the energy densities and energy density weighted eccentricity moments ɛn (up to n=6) at early times in heavy-ion collisions at both the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) (s=200GeV) and the CERN Large Hardron Collider (LHC) (s=2.76TeV) are computed in the IP-Glasma model. This framework combines the impact parameter dependent saturation model (IP-Sat) for nucleon parton distributions (constrained by HERA deeply inelastic scattering data) with an event-by-event classical Yang-Mills description of early-time gluon fields in heavy-ion collisions. The model produces multiplicity distributions that are convolutions of negative binomial distributions without further assumptions or parameters. In the limit of large dense systems, the n-particle gluon distribution predicted by the Glasma-flux tube model is demonstrated to be nonperturbatively robust. In the general case, the effect of additional geometrical fluctuations is quantified. The eccentricity moments are compared to the MC-KLN model; a noteworthy feature is that fluctuation dominated odd moments are consistently larger than in the MC-KLN model.

Reliability of the peer-review process for adverse event rating.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alan J Forster

Full Text Available Adverse events are poor patient outcomes caused by medical care. Their identification requires the peer-review of poor outcomes, which may be unreliable. Combining physician ratings might improve the accuracy of adverse event classification.To evaluate the variation in peer-reviewer ratings of adverse outcomes; determine the impact of this variation on estimates of reviewer accuracy; and determine the number of reviewers who judge an adverse event occurred that is required to ensure that the true probability of an adverse event exceeded 50%, 75% or 95%.Thirty physicians rated 319 case reports giving details of poor patient outcomes following hospital discharge. They rated whether medical management caused the outcome using a six-point ordinal scale. We conducted latent class analyses to estimate the prevalence of adverse events as well as the sensitivity and specificity of each reviewer. We used this model and Bayesian calculations to determine the probability that an adverse event truly occurred to each patient as function of their number of positive ratings.The overall median score on the 6-point ordinal scale was 3 (IQR 2,4 but the individual rater median score ranged from a minimum of 1 (in four reviewers to a maximum median score of 5. The overall percentage of cases rated as an adverse event was 39.7% (3798/9570. The median kappa for all pair-wise combinations of the 30 reviewers was 0.26 (IQR 0.16, 0.42; Min = -0.07, Max = 0.62. Reviewer sensitivity and specificity for adverse event classification ranged from 0.06 to 0.93 and 0.50 to 0.98, respectively. The estimated prevalence of adverse events using a latent class model with a common sensitivity and specificity for all reviewers (0.64 and 0.83 respectively was 47.6%. For patients to have a 95% chance of truly having an adverse event, at least 3 of 3 reviewers are required to deem the outcome an adverse event.Adverse event classification is unreliable. To be certain that a case

ATLAS EventIndex General Dataflow and Monitoring Infrastructure

CERN Document Server

Barberis, Dario; The ATLAS collaboration

2016-01-01

The ATLAS EventIndex has been running in production since mid-2015, reliably collecting information worldwide about all produced events and storing them in a central Hadoop infrastructure at CERN. A subset of this information is copied to an Oracle relational database for fast datasets discovery, event-picking, crosschecks with other ATLAS systems and checks for event duplication. The system design and its optimization is serving event picking from requests of a few events up to scales of tens of thousand of events, and in addition, data consistency checks are performed for large production campaigns. Detecting duplicate events with a scope of physics collections has recently arisen as an important use case. This paper describes the general architecture of the project and the data flow and operation issues, which are addressed by recent developments to improve the throughput of the overall system. In this direction, the data collection system is reducing the usage of the messaging infrastructure to overcome t...

ATLAS EventIndex general dataflow and monitoring infrastructure

CERN Document Server

AUTHOR|(SzGeCERN)638886; The ATLAS collaboration; Barberis, Dario; Favareto, Andrea; Garcia Montoro, Carlos; Gonzalez de la Hoz, Santiago; Hrivnac, Julius; Prokoshin, Fedor; Salt, Jose; Sanchez, Javier; Toebbicke, Rainer; Yuan, Ruijun

2017-01-01

The ATLAS EventIndex has been running in production since mid-2015, reliably collecting information worldwide about all produced events and storing them in a central Hadoop infrastructure at CERN. A subset of this information is copied to an Oracle relational database for fast dataset discovery, event-picking, crosschecks with other ATLAS systems and checks for event duplication. The system design and its optimization is serving event picking from requests of a few events up to scales of tens of thousand of events, and in addition, data consistency checks are performed for large production campaigns. Detecting duplicate events with a scope of physics collections has recently arisen as an important use case. This paper describes the general architecture of the project and the data flow and operation issues, which are addressed by recent developments to improve the throughput of the overall system. In this direction, the data collection system is reducing the usage of the messaging infrastructure to overcome th...

Three Mile Island accident: a case study of life event appraisal

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Goldsteen, R.L.

1983-01-01

This research investigates community reactions to the accident at the Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear powered electric generating plant in March, 1979. The investigation is placed in the context of life event research and chooses an appraisal orientation. Three innovations are argued: 1) perceived consequences of the event best predict reactions to it, 2) the attitudes of significant others toward the event influence reactions to the accident under certain circumstances, and 3) sense of well-being is a good outcome measure for a general population. The hypotheses posit that the attitudes of others will affect sense of well-being only when individual attitudes concerning the consequences of the accident are moderate; when individual attitudes are extreme, the attitudes of others will have no demonstrable effect on outcomes. The findings did not support all the prediction of the hypotheses. However, they indicate that perceived consequences are the best predictors of sense of well-being and that an individual's attitudinal position, his strength of attitude, and the nature of the stimulus are highly related to whether or not an individual will be influenced by the views of others

Logistic Organization of Mass Events in the Light of SWOT Analysis - Case Study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Joanna Woźniak

2018-02-01

Full Text Available Rzeszow Juwenalia is the largest free-entry student event in Subcarpathia, and, at the same time, one of the best in Poland. On average, more than 25,000 people stay on the campus of Rzeszow University of Technology for every single day of the event. Such an enormous undertaking requires developing a strategy which will make it possible to design and coordinate the event effectively. In connection with that, the principal objective of this paper is to present the strengths and weaknesses of Rzeszow Juwenalia, and also to attempt to verify opportunities and threats related to the event. SWOT analysis was used in order to attain the adopted objective. With the use of it, results making it possible to conduct a detailed assessment of the undertaking were obtained. In the publication were presented proposals of improvement activities which may be implemented in the future.

Second-order analysis of semiparametric recurrent event processes.

Science.gov (United States)

Guan, Yongtao

2011-09-01

A typical recurrent event dataset consists of an often large number of recurrent event processes, each of which contains multiple event times observed from an individual during a follow-up period. Such data have become increasingly available in medical and epidemiological studies. In this article, we introduce novel procedures to conduct second-order analysis for a flexible class of semiparametric recurrent event processes. Such an analysis can provide useful information regarding the dependence structure within each recurrent event process. Specifically, we will use the proposed procedures to test whether the individual recurrent event processes are all Poisson processes and to suggest sensible alternative models for them if they are not. We apply these procedures to a well-known recurrent event dataset on chronic granulomatous disease and an epidemiological dataset on meningococcal disease cases in Merseyside, United Kingdom to illustrate their practical value. © 2011, The International Biometric Society.

Human reliability analysis using event trees

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Heslinga, G.

1983-01-01

The shut-down procedure of a technologically complex installation as a nuclear power plant consists of a lot of human actions, some of which have to be performed several times. The procedure is regarded as a chain of modules of specific actions, some of which are analyzed separately. The analysis is carried out by making a Human Reliability Analysis event tree (HRA event tree) of each action, breaking down each action into small elementary steps. The application of event trees in human reliability analysis implies more difficulties than in the case of technical systems where event trees were mainly used until now. The most important reason is that the operator is able to recover a wrong performance; memory influences play a significant role. In this study these difficulties are dealt with theoretically. The following conclusions can be drawn: (1) in principle event trees may be used in human reliability analysis; (2) although in practice the operator will recover his fault partly, theoretically this can be described as starting the whole event tree again; (3) compact formulas have been derived, by which the probability of reaching a specific failure consequence on passing through the HRA event tree after several times of recovery is to be calculated. (orig.)

Stable Low Cloud Phase II: Nocturnal Event Study

Science.gov (United States)

Bauman, William H., III; Barrett, Joe, III

2007-01-01

This report describes the work done by the Applied Meteorology Unit (AMU) in developing a database of nights that experienced rapid (formation in a stable atmosphere, resulting in ceilings at the Shuttle Landing Facility (TTS) that violated Space Shuttle Flight Rules (FR). This work is the second phase of a similar AMU task that examined the same phenomena during the day. In the first phase of this work, the meteorological conditions favoring the rapid formation of low ceilings include the presence of any inversion below 8000 ft, high relative humidity (RH) beneath the inversion and a clockwise turning of the winds from the surface to the middle troposphere (-15000 ft). The AMU compared and contrasted the atmospheric and thermodynamic conditions between nights with rapid low ceiling formation and nights with low ceilings resulting from other mechanisms. The AMU found that there was little to discern between the rapidly-forming ceiling nights and other low ceiling nights at TTS. When a rapid development occurred, the average RH below the inversions was 87% while non-events had an average RH of 79%. One key parameter appeared to be the vertical wind profile in the Cape Canaveral, FL radiosonde (XMR) sounding. Eighty-three percent of the rapid development events had veering winds with height from the surface to the middle troposphere (-15,000 ft) while 61% of the non-events had veering winds with height. Veering winds indicate a warm-advection regime, which supports large-scale rising motion and ultimately cloud formation in a moist environment. However, only six of the nights (out of 86 events examined) with low cloud ceilings had an occurrence of rapidly developing ceilings. Since only 7% rapid development events were observed in this dataset, it is likely that rapid low cloud development is not a common occurrence during the night, or at least not as common as during the day. In the AMU work on the daytime rapid low cloud development (Case and Wheeler 2005), nearly

Mellemledelse i forbedringskultur

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hansen, David; Jørgensen, Rasmus

2013-01-01

Lean er kommet for at blive. I over et årti har produktions- og serviceledelse i hele verden taget Toyotas produktionssystem til sig for at øge effektivitet og skabe løbende forbedringer. Japanske termer som kanban, muda og kaizen er ved at være mainstream sammen med forståelsen for floweffektivi......Lean er kommet for at blive. I over et årti har produktions- og serviceledelse i hele verden taget Toyotas produktionssystem til sig for at øge effektivitet og skabe løbende forbedringer. Japanske termer som kanban, muda og kaizen er ved at være mainstream sammen med forståelsen...

A mathematical model for the occurrence of historical events

Science.gov (United States)

Ohnishi, Teruaki

2017-12-01

A mathematical model was proposed for the frequency distribution of historical inter-event time τ. A basic ingredient was constructed by assuming the significance of a newly occurring historical event depending on the magnitude of a preceding event, the decrease of its significance by oblivion during the successive events, and an independent Poisson process for the occurrence of the event. The frequency distribution of τ was derived by integrating the basic ingredient with respect to all social fields and to all stake holders. The function of such a distribution was revealed as the forms of an exponential type, a power law type or an exponential-with-a-tail type depending on the values of constants appearing in the ingredient. The validity of this model was studied by applying it to the two cases of Modern China and Northern Ireland Troubles, where the τ-distribution varies depending on the different countries interacting with China and on the different stage of history of the Troubles, respectively. This indicates that history is consisted from many components with such different types of τ-distribution, which are the similar situation to the cases of other general human activities.

PROBABILISTIC CROSS-IDENTIFICATION OF COSMIC EVENTS

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Budavari, Tamas

2011-01-01

I discuss a novel approach to identifying cosmic events in separate and independent observations. The focus is on the true events, such as supernova explosions, that happen once and, hence, whose measurements are not repeatable. Their classification and analysis must make the best use of all available data. Bayesian hypothesis testing is used to associate streams of events in space and time. Probabilities are assigned to the matches by studying their rates of occurrence. A case study of Type Ia supernovae illustrates how to use light curves in the cross-identification process. Constraints from realistic light curves happen to be well approximated by Gaussians in time, which makes the matching process very efficient. Model-dependent associations are computationally more demanding but can further boost one's confidence.

CATASTROPHIC EVENTS MODELING

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ciumas Cristina

2013-07-01

Full Text Available This paper presents the emergence and evolution of catastrophe models (cat models. Starting with the present context of extreme weather events and features of catastrophic risk (cat risk we’ll make a chronological illustration from a theoretical point of view of the main steps taken for building such models. In this way the importance of interdisciplinary can be observed. The first cat model considered contains three modules. For each of these indentified modules: hazard, vulnerability and financial losses a detailed overview and also an exemplification of a potential case of an earthquake that measures more than 7 on Richter scale occurring nowadays in Bucharest will be provided. The key areas exposed to earthquake in Romania will be identified. Then, based on past catastrophe data and taking into account present conditions of housing stock, insurance coverage and the population of Bucharest the impact will be quantified by determining potential losses. In order to accomplish this work we consider a scenario with data representing average values for: dwelling’s surface, location, finishing works. On each step we’ll make a reference to the earthquake on March 4 1977 to see what would happen today if a similar event occurred. The value of Bucharest housing stock will be determined taking firstly the market value, then the replacement value and ultimately the real value to quantify potential damages. Through this approach we can find the insurance coverage of potential losses and also the uncovered gap. A solution that may be taken into account by public authorities, for example by Bucharest City Hall will be offered: in case such an event occurs the impossibility of paying compensations to insured people, rebuilding infrastructure and public buildings and helping the suffering persons should be avoided. An actively public-private partnership should be created between government authorities, the Natural Disaster Insurance Pool, private

CNS adverse events associated with antimalarial agents. Fact or fiction?

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Phillips-Howard, P. A.; ter Kuile, F. O.

1995-01-01

CNS adverse drug events are dramatic, and case reports have influenced clinical opinion on the use of antimalarials. Malaria also causes CNS symptoms, thus establishing causality is difficult. CNS events are associated with the quinoline and artemisinin derivatives. Chloroquine, once considered too

Clinical study on role of life events in genesis of neurotic disorders and depression

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Deepanjali Medhi

2015-07-01

Full Text Available Background: This study was conducted to know about the role of life events in genesis of neurotic disorders and depression in four groups of patients with dissociative disorder, somatisation disorder, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD, and depression. It was conducted in the Department of Psychiatry, Gauhati Medical College and Hospital, Guwahati, Assam, India. Methods and materials: It was a case control study with 100 cases of neurotic disorders and depression (25 cases in each group attending indoor and outdoor, and diagnosed using research diagnostic criteria of the tenth revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10. The groups were compared with similar number of matched controls, in respect to number, scoring, and type of life events occurring within one year prior to the onset of illness using the Presumptive Stressful Life Events Scale (PSLES. Variables related to socio-demographic characteristics were also seen between cases and controls. Result and conclusion: Number of life events was significantly higher in depressive and generalized anxiety groups than control group. Total life events scores were significantly higher in depressive and generalized anxiety group than control group. Undesirable events were significantly higher in all groups. Personal events were significantly higher in depressives than control. Events related to interpersonal relation were significantly higher in depressive, dissociative, and GAD groups than control. Bereavement was closely associated with depression and GAD. Events related to health, finance, and education were higher in dissociative group than control. Events related to move were found significantly higher in GAD group than control. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Suicide in Relation to the Experience of Stressful Life Events

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Fjeldsted, Rita; Teasdale, Thomas William; Jensen, Martin

2017-01-01

Stressful life events have been associated with high risk of suicidal behavior. The aim of this study was to examine whether persons who died by suicide in Denmark had more frequently been exposed to stressful life events, specifically divorce, death of a close relative, exposure to violence......, and imprisonment, when compared to gender and age-matched controls. Data from Danish national registers were obtained for the period of 2000-2010 and a nested case-control design was applied. The association between exposure to stressful life events and suicide was examined using logistic regression analysis...... compared to controls. People who died by suicide had 1.5-fold (CI-95%: 1.3-1.6) higher risk of having experienced a divorce. Stressful life events, such as divorce and imprisonment, were more frequent in temporal proximity to the date of death among the suicide cases than for end of exposure for controls...

A formal modeling approach for supply chain event management

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Liu, R.; Kumar, Akhil; Aalst, van der W.M.P.

2007-01-01

As supply chains become more dynamic, there is a need for a sense-and-respond capability to react to events in a real-time manner. In this paper, we propose Petri nets extended with time and color (to represent case data) as a formalism for managing events. We designed seven basic patterns to

Feasibility of performing high resolution cloud-resolving simulations of historic extreme events: The San Fruttuoso (Liguria, italy) case of 1915.

Science.gov (United States)

Parodi, Antonio; Boni, Giorgio; Ferraris, Luca; Gallus, William; Maugeri, Maurizio; Molini, Luca; Siccardi, Franco

2017-04-01

Recent studies show that highly localized and persistent back-building mesoscale convective systems represent one of the most dangerous flash-flood producing storms in the north-western Mediterranean area. Substantial warming of the Mediterranean Sea in recent decades raises concerns over possible increases in frequency or intensity of these types of events as increased atmospheric temperatures generally support increases in water vapor content. Analyses of available historical records do not provide a univocal answer, since these may be likely affected by a lack of detailed observations for older events. In the present study, 20th Century Reanalysis Project initial and boundary condition data in ensemble mode are used to address the feasibility of performing cloud-resolving simulations with 1 km horizontal grid spacing of a historic extreme event that occurred over Liguria (Italy): The San Fruttuoso case of 1915. The proposed approach focuses on the ensemble Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model runs, as they are the ones most likely to best simulate the event. It is found that these WRF runs generally do show wind and precipitation fields that are consistent with the occurrence of highly localized and persistent back-building mesoscale convective systems, although precipitation peak amounts are underestimated. Systematic small north-westward position errors with regard to the heaviest rain and strongest convergence areas imply that the Reanalysis members may not be adequately representing the amount of cool air over the Po Plain outflowing into the Liguria Sea through the Apennines gap. Regarding the role of historical data sources, this study shows that in addition to Reanalysis products, unconventional data, such as historical meteorological bulletins, newspapers and even photographs can be very valuable sources of knowledge in the reconstruction of past extreme events.

Preliminary safety analysis of unscrammed events for KLFR

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kim, S.J.; Ha, G.S.

2005-01-01

The report presents the design features of KLFR; Safety Analysis Code; steady-state calculation results and analysis results of unscrammed events. The calculations of the steady-state and unscrammed events have been performed for the conceptual design of KLFR using SSC-K code. UTOP event results in no fuel damage and no centre-line melting. The inherent safety features are demonstrated through the analysis of ULOHS event. Although the analysis of ULOF has much uncertainties in the pump design, the analysis results show the inherent safety characteristics. 6% flow of rated flow of natural circulation is formed in the case of ULOF. In the metallic fuel rod, the cladding temperature is somewhat high due to the low heat transfer coefficient of lead. ULOHS event should be considered in design of RVACS for long-term cooling

The demands and benefits of ergonomics in Sri Lankan apparel industry: A case study at MAS holdings.

Science.gov (United States)

Abeysekera, John; Illankoon, Prasanna

2016-10-17

Apparel exports bring in sizeable foreign income to Sri Lanka. To protect and promote this industry is a paramount need. This can be carried out by applying Human Factors/Ergonomics (HFE) which has proved to control negative effects at work places. This paper reports a case study which describes the demands and benefits of HFE in MAS Holdings which owns a large share of the apparel industry in Sri Lanka. The study consisted of walk through observation survey, a questionnaire survey and ergonomic work place analysis followed by a training programme to selected employees in three companies. Positive responses to questionnaires revealed good ergonomic practices in the work places surveyed. Ergonomically unfit chairs and potential hazards e.g. exposure to noise and hot environment were detected. It is seen that MAS have introduced strategies originated by Toyota Production System viz. 5S, Kaizen, six sigma etc., which are in fact ergonomic methods. A progressive project MAS boast of viz. 'MAS Operating System' (MOS) empowers training and development to employees. MAS Holdings has adequately realized the benefits of applying HFE as evident by the number of awards received. Relevant companies were advised to take appropriate corrective measures to control the potential hazards.

Flood modelling with a distributed event-based parsimonious rainfall-runoff model: case of the karstic Lez river catchment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

M. Coustau

2012-04-01

Full Text Available Rainfall-runoff models are crucial tools for the statistical prediction of flash floods and real-time forecasting. This paper focuses on a karstic basin in the South of France and proposes a distributed parsimonious event-based rainfall-runoff model, coherent with the poor knowledge of both evaporative and underground fluxes. The model combines a SCS runoff model and a Lag and Route routing model for each cell of a regular grid mesh. The efficiency of the model is discussed not only to satisfactorily simulate floods but also to get powerful relationships between the initial condition of the model and various predictors of the initial wetness state of the basin, such as the base flow, the Hu2 index from the Meteo-France SIM model and the piezometric levels of the aquifer. The advantage of using meteorological radar rainfall in flood modelling is also assessed. Model calibration proved to be satisfactory by using an hourly time step with Nash criterion values, ranging between 0.66 and 0.94 for eighteen of the twenty-one selected events. The radar rainfall inputs significantly improved the simulations or the assessment of the initial condition of the model for 5 events at the beginning of autumn, mostly in September–October (mean improvement of Nash is 0.09; correction in the initial condition ranges from −205 to 124 mm, but were less efficient for the events at the end of autumn. In this period, the weak vertical extension of the precipitation system and the low altitude of the 0 °C isotherm could affect the efficiency of radar measurements due to the distance between the basin and the radar (~60 km. The model initial condition S is correlated with the three tested predictors (R² > 0.6. The interpretation of the model suggests that groundwater does not affect the first peaks of the flood, but can strongly impact subsequent peaks in the case of a multi-storm event. Because this kind of model is based on a limited

Event-by-event jet quenching

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Fries, R.J.; Rodriguez, R.; Ramirez, E.

2010-08-14

High momentum jets and hadrons can be used as probes for the quark gluon plasma (QGP) formed in nuclear collisions at high energies. We investigate the influence of fluctuations in the fireball on jet quenching observables by comparing propagation of light quarks and gluons through averaged, smooth QGP fireballs with event-by-event jet quenching using realistic inhomogeneous fireballs. We find that the transverse momentum and impact parameter dependence of the nuclear modification factor R{sub AA} can be fit well in an event-by-event quenching scenario within experimental errors. However the transport coefficient {cflx q} extracted from fits to the measured nuclear modification factor R{sub AA} in averaged fireballs underestimates the value from event-by-event calculations by up to 50%. On the other hand, after adjusting {cflx q} to fit R{sub AA} in the event-by-event analysis we find residual deviations in the azimuthal asymmetry v{sub 2} and in two-particle correlations, that provide a possible faint signature for a spatial tomography of the fireball. We discuss a correlation function that is a measure for spatial inhomogeneities in a collision and can be constrained from data.

Event-by-event jet quenching

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Rodriguez, R. [Cyclotron Institute and Physics Department, Texas A and M University, College Station, TX 77843 (United States); Fries, R.J., E-mail: rjfries@comp.tamu.ed [Cyclotron Institute and Physics Department, Texas A and M University, College Station, TX 77843 (United States); RIKEN/BNL Research Center, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY 11973 (United States); Ramirez, E. [Physics Department, University of Texas El Paso, El Paso, TX 79968 (United States)

2010-09-27

High momentum jets and hadrons can be used as probes for the quark gluon plasma (QGP) formed in nuclear collisions at high energies. We investigate the influence of fluctuations in the fireball on jet quenching observables by comparing propagation of light quarks and gluons through averaged, smooth QGP fireballs with event-by-event jet quenching using realistic inhomogeneous fireballs. We find that the transverse momentum and impact parameter dependence of the nuclear modification factor R{sub AA} can be fit well in an event-by-event quenching scenario within experimental errors. However the transport coefficient q extracted from fits to the measured nuclear modification factor R{sub AA} in averaged fireballs underestimates the value from event-by-event calculations by up to 50%. On the other hand, after adjusting q to fit R{sub AA} in the event-by-event analysis we find residual deviations in the azimuthal asymmetry v{sub 2} and in two-particle correlations, that provide a possible faint signature for a spatial tomography of the fireball. We discuss a correlation function that is a measure for spatial inhomogeneities in a collision and can be constrained from data.

Deliverable 6.2 - Software: upgraded MC simulation tools capable of simulating a complete in-beam ET experiment, from the beam to the detected events. Report with the description of one (or few) reference clinical case(s), including the complete patient model and beam characteristics

CERN Document Server

The ENVISION Collaboration

2014-01-01

Deliverable 6.2 - Software: upgraded MC simulation tools capable of simulating a complete in-beam ET experiment, from the beam to the detected events. Report with the description of one (or few) reference clinical case(s), including the complete patient model and beam characteristics

Root cause analysis of critical events in neurosurgery, New South Wales.

Science.gov (United States)

Perotti, Vanessa; Sheridan, Mark M P

2015-09-01

Adverse events reportedly occur in 5% to 10% of health care episodes. Not all adverse events are the result of error; they may arise from systemic faults in the delivery of health care. Catastrophic events are not only physically devastating to patients, but they also attract medical liability and increase health care costs. Root cause analysis (RCA) has become a key tool for health care services to understand those adverse events. This study is a review of all the RCA case reports involving neurosurgical patients in New South Wales between 2008 and 2013. The case reports and data were obtained from the Clinical Excellence Commission database. The data was then categorized by the root causes identified and the recommendations suggested by the RCA committees. Thirty-two case reports were identified in the RCA database. Breaches in policy account for the majority of root causes identified, for example, delays in transfer of patients or wrong-site surgery, which always involved poor adherence to correct patient and site identification procedures. The RCA committees' recommendations included education for staff, and improvements in rostering and procedural guidelines. RCAs have improved the patient safety profile; however, the RCA committees have no power to enforce any recommendation or ensure compliance. A single RCA may provide little learning beyond the unit and staff involved. However, through aggregation of RCA data and dissemination strategies, health care workers can learn from adverse events and prevent future events from occurring. © 2015 Royal Australasian College of Surgeons.

Major life events as potential triggers of sudden cardiac arrest.

Science.gov (United States)

Wicks, April F; Lumley, Thomas; Lemaitre, Rozenn N; Sotoodehnia, Nona; Rea, Thomas D; McKnight, Barbara; Strogatz, David S; Bovbjerg, Viktor E; Siscovick, David S

2012-05-01

We investigated the risk of sudden cardiac arrest in association with the recent loss of, or separation from, a family member or friend. Our case-crossover study included 490 apparently healthy married residents of King County, Washington, who suffered sudden cardiac arrest between 1988 and 2005. We compared exposure to spouse-reported family/friend events occurring ≤ 1 month before sudden cardiac arrest with events occurring in the previous 5 months. We evaluated potential effect modification by habitual vigorous physical activity. Recent family/friend events were associated with a higher risk of sudden cardiac arrest (odds ratio [OR] = 1.6; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.1-2.4). ORs for cases with and without habitual vigorous physical activity were 1.1 (0.6-2.2) and 2.0 (1.2-3.1), respectively (interaction P = 0.02). These results suggest family/friend events may trigger sudden cardiac arrest and raise the hypothesis that habitual vigorous physical activity may lower susceptibility to these potential triggers.

Sampled-data consensus in switching networks of integrators based on edge events

Science.gov (United States)

Xiao, Feng; Meng, Xiangyu; Chen, Tongwen

2015-02-01

This paper investigates the event-driven sampled-data consensus in switching networks of multiple integrators and studies both the bidirectional interaction and leader-following passive reaction topologies in a unified framework. In these topologies, each information link is modelled by an edge of the information graph and assigned a sequence of edge events, which activate the mutual data sampling and controller updates of the two linked agents. Two kinds of edge-event-detecting rules are proposed for the general asynchronous data-sampling case and the synchronous periodic event-detecting case. They are implemented in a distributed fashion, and their effectiveness in reducing communication costs and solving consensus problems under a jointly connected topology condition is shown by both theoretical analysis and simulation examples.

A Synoptic Climatology of Combined Severe/Weather/Flash Flood Events

Science.gov (United States)

Pallozzi, Kyle J.

Classical forms of severe weather such as tornadoes, damaging convective wind gusts, and large hail, as well as flash flooding events, all have potentially large societal impacts. This impact is further magnified when these hazards occur simultaneously in time and space. A major challenge for operational forecasters is how to accurately predict the occurrence of combined storm hazards, and how to communicate the associated multiple threat hazards to the public. A seven-year climatology (2009-2015) of combined severe weather/flash flooding (SVR/FF) events across the contiguous United States was developed in attempt to study the combined SVR/FF event hazards further. A total of 211 total cases were identified and sub-divided into seven subcategories based on their convective morphology and meteorological characteristics. Heatmaps of event report frequency were created to extract spatial, seasonal and interannual patterns in SVR/FF event activity. Diurnal trends were examined from time series plots of tornado, hail, wind and flash flood/flood reports. Event-centered composites of environmental variables were created for each subcategory from 13 km RUC/RAP analyses. Representative cases studies were conducted for each subcategory. A "ring of fire" with the highest levels of SVR/FF event activity was noted across the central United States. SVR/FF events were least common in the Southeast, High Plains, and Northern Plains. Enhanced SVR/FF activity reflected contributions from synoptic events during the cool and shoulder seasons over the Lower Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee Valleys, and MCS activity during the warm season over the lower Great Plains, and the Upper Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio River Valleys. Results from the composite analyses indicated that relatively high values of CAPE, surface-500 hPa shear and precipitable water were observed for all subcategories. Case studies show that many high-end SVR/FF events featured slow-moving, or quasi

Sustainable Cultural Events Based on Marketing Segmentation: The Case of Faro Capital of Culture

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Patricia Oom do Valle

2010-04-01

Full Text Available The city of Faro was designated by the Portuguese government as the 2005 National Capital of Culture. The Faro 2005 National Capital of Culture took place between May and December in several cities of the Algarve region, with most events occurring in Faro. The programme consisted of 185 different performances represented through music, cinema, theatre, ballet and plastic arts. The paper analysessegments of the population that participated in the Faro 2005 event and discusses the relation between the event’s success and the degree of satisfaction of the participants. The contribution of the paper lies in pointing to the importance of an adequate marketing approach of large-scale events, such as cultural events, in order to achieve greater audience appeal/impact, in order to ensure sustainability.

Regression analysis of mixed recurrent-event and panel-count data.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhu, Liang; Tong, Xinwei; Sun, Jianguo; Chen, Manhua; Srivastava, Deo Kumar; Leisenring, Wendy; Robison, Leslie L

2014-07-01

In event history studies concerning recurrent events, two types of data have been extensively discussed. One is recurrent-event data (Cook and Lawless, 2007. The Analysis of Recurrent Event Data. New York: Springer), and the other is panel-count data (Zhao and others, 2010. Nonparametric inference based on panel-count data. Test 20: , 1-42). In the former case, all study subjects are monitored continuously; thus, complete information is available for the underlying recurrent-event processes of interest. In the latter case, study subjects are monitored periodically; thus, only incomplete information is available for the processes of interest. In reality, however, a third type of data could occur in which some study subjects are monitored continuously, but others are monitored periodically. When this occurs, we have mixed recurrent-event and panel-count data. This paper discusses regression analysis of such mixed data and presents two estimation procedures for the problem. One is a maximum likelihood estimation procedure, and the other is an estimating equation procedure. The asymptotic properties of both resulting estimators of regression parameters are established. Also, the methods are applied to a set of mixed recurrent-event and panel-count data that arose from a Childhood Cancer Survivor Study and motivated this investigation. © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Event horizon and scalar potential

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Duruisseau, J.P.; Tonnelat, M.A.

1977-01-01

The introduction of a scalar potential with a more general scheme than General Relativity eliminates the event horizon. Among possible solutions, the Schwarzschild one represents a singular case. A study of the geodesic properties of the matching with an approximated interior solution are given. A new definition of the gravitational mass and chi function is deduced. (author)

Cannabis and stroke: systematic appraisal of case reports.

Science.gov (United States)

Hackam, Daniel G

2015-03-01

An increasing number of case reports link cannabis consumption to cerebrovascular events. Yet these case reports have not been scrutinized using criteria for causal inference. All case reports on cannabis and cerebrovascular events were retrieved. Four causality criteria were addressed: temporality, adequacy of stroke work-up, effects of rechallenge, and concomitant risk factors that could account for the cerebrovascular event. There were 34 case reports on 64 patients. Most cases (81%) exhibited a temporal relationship between cannabis exposure and the index event. In 70%, the evaluation was sufficiently comprehensive to exclude other sources for stroke. About a quarter (22%) of patients had another stroke after subsequent re-exposure to cannabis. Finally, half of patients (50%) had concomitant stroke risk factors, most commonly tobacco (34%) and alcohol (11%) consumption. Many case reports support a causal link between cannabis and cerebrovascular events. This accords well with epidemiological and mechanistic research on the cerebrovascular effects of cannabis. © 2015 American Heart Association, Inc.

Improving sport brands’ reputation through marketing events

OpenAIRE

Vlad ROȘCA

2011-01-01

The rationale of this paper is to highlight how a marketing event can be used as a promotional tool by a sporting organization. A case study approach has been chosen for the demonstration. The major findings of the research are that integrating a marketing event in the promotional mix can help a football league to better identify itself with its target consumers and to increase its brand value, while also offering an unforgettable experience for the participants. There are two important impli...

Medical intervention in case of nuclear or radiation event

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Blanc, J.; Bourguignon, M.; Carli, P.; Carosella, E.; Challeton de Vathaire, C.; Court, L.; Ducousso, R.; Facon, A.; Fleutot, J.B.; Goldstein, P.; Gourmelon, P.; Herbelet, G.; Kolodie, H.; Lallemand, J.; Martin, J.C.; Menthonnex, P.; Masse, R.; Origny, S.; Pasnon, J.; Peton Klein, D.; Rougy, C.; Schoulz, D.; Romet, G.; Telion, C.; Vrousos, C.

2002-01-01

This guide aims to be a practical tool for intervenors in case of nuclear or radiation accident. It proposes many sheets to favor the reactivity and the implementing of adapted measures. It concerns the course of action to take in case of irradiation accident or contamination and the reception in medical structure or a hospital. (A.L.B.)

ATLAS EventIndex General Dataflow and Monitoring Infrastructure

CERN Document Server

Fernandez Casani, Alvaro; The ATLAS collaboration

2016-01-01

The ATLAS EventIndex has been running in production since mid-2015, reliably collecting information worldwide about all produced events and storing them in a central Hadoop infrastructure at CERN. A subset of this information is copied to an Oracle relational database for fast access. The system design and its optimization is serving event picking from requests of a few events up to scales of tens of thousand of events, and in addition, data consistency checks are performed for large production campaigns. Detecting duplicate events with a scope of physics collections has recently arisen as an important use case. This paper describes the general architecture of the project and the data flow and operation issues, which are addressed by recent developments to improve the throughput of the overall system. In this direction, the data collection system is reducing the usage of the messaging infrastructure to overcome the performance shortcomings detected during production peaks; an object storage approach is instea...

TECHNOLOGY OF EDUCATIONAL EVENTS DESIGNING

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

N. V. Volkova

2017-01-01

Full Text Available The aim of the article is to prove and disclose the essence of the author’s technology of educational events designing.Methodology and methods of research. Methodological basis of work is humanitarian approach. The method of pedagogical modeling was used for the model development of educational events influence on pedagogical activity formation. The content analysis of texts descriptions, case-study method, expert estimations of event projects were applied as the main methods of efficiency confirmation of the technology of educational events design.Results and scientific novelty. The characteristics of an educational event are emphasized by means of an empirical way: opening (what a person opens for himself; generation (a result of a personal action; and participation in creation of something "new" (new communications, relations and experience. The structure of technology of educational events design including work with concepts (an educational event, substantial and procedural components is presented. The technology of educational events designing is considered as the process of the well-grounded choice of designing technologies, mutual activity, pedagogical communication, components of educational activity: contents, methods, means, and organizational forms depending on educational aims due to age-specific peculiarities of participants of the educational event. The main conditions providing successful use of the technology are the involvement into joint cognitive activity of all its participants and importance of the events for each of them that qualitatively change the nature of a cognitive process and generate real transformations of the reality.Practical significance. The author’s experience in teaching testifies to introduction of the module «Technology of Design of Educational Events» into the basic educational subject-module «Design Competence of the Teacher» (degree program «Pedagogical Education», considering this module as

The influence of the importance of event factors on meeting planner ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

The influence of the importance of event factors on meeting planner satisfaction: A case study of a theme park event business. ... future business. This was done by sending an online survey to 25 regularly visiting meeting planners. This survey ...

Upgrading Probability via Fractions of Events

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Frič Roman

2016-08-01

Full Text Available The influence of “Grundbegriffe” by A. N. Kolmogorov (published in 1933 on education in the area of probability and its impact on research in stochastics cannot be overestimated. We would like to point out three aspects of the classical probability theory “calling for” an upgrade: (i classical random events are black-and-white (Boolean; (ii classical random variables do not model quantum phenomena; (iii basic maps (probability measures and observables { dual maps to random variables have very different “mathematical nature”. Accordingly, we propose an upgraded probability theory based on Łukasiewicz operations (multivalued logic on events, elementary category theory, and covering the classical probability theory as a special case. The upgrade can be compared to replacing calculations with integers by calculations with rational (and real numbers. Namely, to avoid the three objections, we embed the classical (Boolean random events (represented by the f0; 1g-valued indicator functions of sets into upgraded random events (represented by measurable {0; 1}-valued functions, the minimal domain of probability containing “fractions” of classical random events, and we upgrade the notions of probability measure and random variable.

Yellow fever vaccine-associated adverse events following extensive immunization in Argentina.

Science.gov (United States)

Biscayart, Cristián; Carrega, María Eugenia Pérez; Sagradini, Sandra; Gentile, Angela; Stecher, Daniel; Orduna, Tomás; Bentancourt, Silvia; Jiménez, Salvador García; Flynn, Luis Pedro; Arce, Gabriel Pirán; Uboldi, María Andrea; Bugna, Laura; Morales, María Alejandra; Digilio, Clara; Fabbri, Cintia; Enría, Delia; Diosque, Máximo; Vizzotti, Carla

2014-03-05

As a consequence of YF outbreaks that hit Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay in 2008-2009, a significant demand for YF vaccination was subsequently observed in Argentina, a country where the usual vaccine recommendations are restricted to provinces that border Brazil, Paraguay, and Bolivia. The goal of this paper is to describe the adverse events following immunization (AEFI) against YF in Argentina during the outbreak in the northeastern province of Misiones, which occurred from January 2008 to January 2009. During this time, a total of nine cases were reported, almost two million doses of vaccine were administered, and a total of 165 AEFI were reported from different provinces. Case study analyses were performed using two AEFI classifications. Forty-nine events were classified as related to the YF vaccine (24 serious and 1 fatal case), and 12 events were classified as inconclusive. As the use of the YF 17D vaccine can be a challenge to health systems of countries with different endemicity patterns, a careful clinical and epidemiological evaluation should be performed before its prescription to minimize serious adverse events. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Triangulating case-finding tools for patient safety surveillance: a cross-sectional case study of puncture/laceration.

Science.gov (United States)

Taylor, Jennifer A; Gerwin, Daniel; Morlock, Laura; Miller, Marlene R

2011-12-01

To evaluate the need for triangulating case-finding tools in patient safety surveillance. This study applied four case-finding tools to error-associated patient safety events to identify and characterise the spectrum of events captured by these tools, using puncture or laceration as an example for in-depth analysis. Retrospective hospital discharge data were collected for calendar year 2005 (n=48,418) from a large, urban medical centre in the USA. The study design was cross-sectional and used data linkage to identify the cases captured by each of four case-finding tools. Three case-finding tools (International Classification of Diseases external (E) and nature (N) of injury codes, Patient Safety Indicators (PSI)) were applied to the administrative discharge data to identify potential patient safety events. The fourth tool was Patient Safety Net, a web-based voluntary patient safety event reporting system. The degree of mutual exclusion among detection methods was substantial. For example, when linking puncture or laceration on unique identifiers, out of 447 potential events, 118 were identical between PSI and E-codes, 152 were identical between N-codes and E-codes and 188 were identical between PSI and N-codes. Only 100 events that were identified by PSI, E-codes and N-codes were identical. Triangulation of multiple tools through data linkage captures potential patient safety events most comprehensively. Existing detection tools target patient safety domains differently, and consequently capture different occurrences, necessitating the integration of data from a combination of tools to fully estimate the total burden.

Event Index - a LHCb Event Search System

CERN Document Server

INSPIRE-00392208; Kazeev, Nikita; Redkin, Artem

2015-12-23

LHC experiments generate up to $10^{12}$ events per year. This paper describes Event Index - an event search system. Event Index's primary function is quickly selecting subsets of events from a combination of conditions, such as the estimated decay channel or stripping lines output. Event Index is essentially Apache Lucene optimized for read-only indexes distributed over independent shards on independent nodes.

RANTES/CCL5 and risk for coronary events: Results from the MONICA/KORA Augsburg case-cohort, Athero-express and CARDIoGRAM studies

OpenAIRE

Kathiresan, Sekar; Reilly, Muredach; Samani, Nilesh; Schunkert, Heribert; Erdmann, Jeanette; Moll, Frans; Boerwinkle, Eric; Hall, Anne; Hengstenberg, Christian; König, Inke; Laaksonen, Reijo; McPherson, Ruth; Thompson, John; Thorsteinsdottir, Unnur; Ziegler, Andreas

2011-01-01

textabstractBackground: The chemokine RANTES (regulated on activation, normal T-cell expressed and secreted)/CCL5 is involved in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease in mice, whereas less is known in humans. We hypothesised that its relevance for atherosclerosis should be reflected by associations between CCL5 gene variants, RANTES serum concentrations and protein levels in atherosclerotic plaques and risk for coronary events. Methods and Findings: We conducted a case-cohort study withi...

Physical activity habits in a European sports event: A case study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Leonor Gallardo

2014-12-01

Full Text Available The aim of this study is to learn more about the physical activity habits of participants in a popular sporting event such as European Sports Day, which is held simultaneously in five European countries (Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Ireland, and Hungary, and to measure the influence of socio-demographic variables on these habits. This is a cross-sectional study conducted with a sample of 856 participants, stratified by gender, age, and nationality. We statistically analyzed five variables related to physical activity habits: frequency of physical activity practice, places of practice, motives of practice, perceived fitness level, and popular event attendance. Of the participants, 76.8% said they perform physical activity weekly. Fitness/health improvement (34.63% and entertainment/leisure (26.52% are the main reasons for the practice of physical activity. Age and nationality are differentiating factors on physical activity habits.

Event segmentation ability uniquely predicts event memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Sargent, Jesse Q; Zacks, Jeffrey M; Hambrick, David Z; Zacks, Rose T; Kurby, Christopher A; Bailey, Heather R; Eisenberg, Michelle L; Beck, Taylor M

2013-11-01

Memory for everyday events plays a central role in tasks of daily living, autobiographical memory, and planning. Event memory depends in part on segmenting ongoing activity into meaningful units. This study examined the relationship between event segmentation and memory in a lifespan sample to answer the following question: Is the ability to segment activity into meaningful events a unique predictor of subsequent memory, or is the relationship between event perception and memory accounted for by general cognitive abilities? Two hundred and eight adults ranging from 20 to 79years old segmented movies of everyday events and attempted to remember the events afterwards. They also completed psychometric ability tests and tests measuring script knowledge for everyday events. Event segmentation and script knowledge both explained unique variance in event memory above and beyond the psychometric measures, and did so as strongly in older as in younger adults. These results suggest that event segmentation is a basic cognitive mechanism, important for memory across the lifespan. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Hepatic adverse events during highly active antiretroviral therapy containing nevirapine: a case report

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yamazhan Tansu

2002-09-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Hepatotoxicity is one of the most serious complications of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART. The aim of this report is to analyse an HIV infected patient on HAART including nevirapine and taking antidepressive agents, with acute toxic hepatitis. Case presentation A 39 year old patient diagnosed as HIV positive one month ago administered to the clinical ward of the Department of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology in Ege University Medical School with high fever, malaise, nausea, diarrheae and elevated liver enzymes (ALT 1558 U/L, AST 4288 U/L. He has been using HAART including zidovudine+lamivudine (2 × 1/day and nevirapine (2 × 200 mg/day, following dose escalation for 22 days, sertralin and diazepam for 12 days and lithium for 10 days. The patient was hospitalized. Antiretroviral and antidepressant treatments were stopped. The day after admission, his fever dropped and his symptoms improved. Clinical improvement continued on the following days. The patient was discharged upon his request on the 14th day of hospitalization. The liver function tests returned to normal levels in two weeks following discharge. Conclusion Close monitoring of liver enzymes during the first 12 weeks of nevirapine therapy is critical to prevent life threatening events.

Application of traditional indexes and adverse events in the ophthalmologic perioperative medical quality evaluation during 2010-2012

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yong-Na Bian

2015-10-01

Full Text Available AIM: To evaluate the medical quality of ophthalmologic perioperative period during 2010-2012 in our hospital.METHODS:The relevant data of perioperative period were collected in our hospital during 2010-2012, and the medical quality of perioperative period was evaluated by using the traditional evaluation indexes and adverse events. Whereby, the traditional indicators include vision changes, improving of intraocular pressure, diagnostic accordance rate before and after operation, cure improvement rate, successful rescue rate, and incidence of surgical complications, etc. Adverse events are associated with ophthalmologic perioperative events including pressure sores, postoperative wound infection, drug adverse events, and equipment related adverse events.RESULTS:There were 1483, 1662 and 1931 ophthalmic operations in our hospital in the year 2010, 2011 and 2012, respectively. From traditional index analysis, the proportions of vision improvement for each year were 96.43%, 96.76% and 97.32%, respectively; the rates of intraocular pressure improvement were 87.50%, 85.72% and 90.17%, respectively (P <0.05; the diagnostic accordance rates before and after operation were 99.86%, 99.94% and 99.90%, respectively; cure improvement rates were 99.73%, 99.93% and 99.84%, respectively; the successful rescue rates were 82.98%, 81.46% and 76.66%, respectively; the complications incidence rates were 18.44%, 17.52% and 17.97%, respectively. The negative factor analysis results showed that:among all the patients of ophthalmic surgeries in our hospital during 2010 and 2012, only one case of postoperative wound infection was found in 2011, and also only one case of tumbling in 2010. The adverse drug events for each year were 1 case (0.07%, 2 cases (0.12%, and 4 cases (0.21%, respectively; the medical device adverse events for each year were 3 cases (0.20%, 5 cases (0.30%, and 6 cases (0.31%, respectively. Noticeably, only one case with postoperative infection of

Tool to assess causality of direct and indirect adverse events associated with therapeutic interventions.

Science.gov (United States)

Zorzela, Liliane; Mior, Silvano; Boon, Heather; Gross, Anita; Yager, Jeromy; Carter, Rose; Vohra, Sunita

2018-03-01

To develop and test a tool to assess the causality of direct and indirect adverse events associated with therapeutic interventions. The intervention was one or more drugs and/or natural health products, a device, or practice (professional delivering the intervention). Through the assessment of causality of adverse events, we can learn about factors contributing to the harm and consider what modification may prevent its reoccurrence. Existing scales (WHO-UMC, Naranjo and Horn) were adapted to develop a tool (algorithm and table) to evaluate cases of serious harmful events reported through a national surveillance study. We also incorporated a novel approach that assesses indirect harm (caused by the delay in diagnosis/treatment) and the health provider delivering the intervention (practice). The tool was tested, revised and then implemented to assess all reported cases of serious events resulting from use of complementary therapies. The use of complementary therapies was the trigger to report the event. Each case was evaluated by two assessors, out of a panel of five, representing different health care professionals. The tool was used in assessment of eight serious adverse events. Each event was independently evaluated by two assessors. The algorithm facilitated assessment of a serious direct or indirect harm. Assessors agreed in the final score on seven of eight cases (weighted kappa coefficient of 0.75). A tool to support the assessment of causality of adverse events was developed and tested. We propose a novel method to assess direct and indirect harms related to product(s), device(s), practice or a combination of the previous. Further research will probably help evaluate this approach across different settings and interventions.

Hepatotoxicity associated with sulfasalazine in inflammatory arthritis: A case series from a local surveillance of serious adverse events

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rankin Elizabeth

2008-04-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Spontaneous reporting systems for adverse drug reactions (ADRs are handicapped by under-reporting and limited detail on individual cases. We report an investigation from a local surveillance for serious adverse drug reactions associated with disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs that was triggered by the occurrence of liver failure in two of our patients. Methods Serious ADR reports have been solicited from local clinicians by regular postcards over the past seven years. Patients', who had hepatotoxicity on sulfasalazine and met a definition of a serious ADR, were identified. Two clinicians reviewed structured case reports and assessed causality by consensus and by using a causality assessment instrument. The likely frequency of hepatotoxicity with sulfasalazine was estimated by making a series of conservative assumptions. Results Ten cases were identified: eight occurred during surveillance. Eight patients were hospitalised, two in hepatic failure – one died after a liver transplant. All but one event occurred within 6 weeks of treatment. Seven patients had a skin rash, three eosinophilia and one interstitial nephritis. Five patients were of Black British of African or Caribbean descent. Liver enzymes showed a hepatocellular pattern in four cases and a mixed pattern in six. Drug-related hepatotoxicity was judged probable or highly probable in 8 patients. The likely frequency of serious hepatotoxicity with sulfasalazine was estimated at 0.4% of treated patients. Conclusion Serious hepatotoxicity associated with sulfasalazine appears to be under-appreciated and intensive monitoring and vigilance in the first 6 weeks of treatment is especially important.

Study of Rare Events at the Split Field Magnet

CERN Multimedia

2002-01-01

The aim of the experiment is the study of full events associated with special, rare triggers using the almost 4 @p geometry of the improved Split Field Magnet (SFM) detector. Two triggers are used: a) a trigger on an electron produced around 90|0 with a transverse momentum p^t @$>$ 0.5 GeV/c; b) a trigger on very high p^t hadrons (p^t $>$ 5 GeV/c) at @Q @C 45|0, using the SFM chambers to define roads pointing to the interaction region. In the first case, the associated event will be studied to determine the origin of direct electron production in charmed particle production. In the second case, the production of jets or jet-like objects when a high p^t particle is produced in pp collisions will be investigated. To carry out this program, the detection system consists of : \\item a) An improved SFM detector chamber system and layout to detect more of the produced particles and to simplify the pattern recognition problem in multiparticle events. \\item b) An improved program chain for the analysis of SFM events, ...

Tests of Event Filter Configuration Software

CERN Multimedia

Wickens, F.J.

TDAQ - Tests of Event Filter configuration software Within Trigger/DAQ a major consideration is how well the performance of the system components scale in going from the small set-ups used for development work to the final system with many hundreds of processors and links. In the case of the Event Filter, which makes the final stage of on-line event selection, plus on-line calibrations and monitoring, more than a thousand processors are envisaged. These processors will be divided into sub-farms, most will be remote from the detector and some could even be at institutes far from CERN. As part of the on-line system it is important that the software in the sub-farms can be reconfigured rapidly as runs start and stop, and that the system be fault tolerant. The flow of data inside a sub-farm involves many processes, for distribution and collection of results in addition to those for event processing itself. Supervision code written in Java has been developed to manage the processes within a cluster, with XML f...

Higher Moments of Underlying Event Distributions

CERN Document Server

Xu, Zhen

2017-01-01

We perform an Underlying Event analysis for real data sets from pp collisions at center of mass energy $ \\sqrt{s}=5 $ and 13 TeV and pPb collisions at $ \\sqrt{s}=7 $ TeV at the LHC, together with the Monte Carlo data sets generated with Pythia8 and EPOS in the same conditions. The analysis is focused on the transverse region which is more sensitive to the Underlying Event, and performed as a function of the leading track transverse - momentum $p_t$ in each event. In our work, not only the average underlying event activity but also its fluctuation, namely its root mean square (RMS), Skewness and Kurtosis, are analyzed. We find that the particle density, energy density and their fluctuation magnitude (RMS) are suppressed at leading $p_t\\approx$ 5 GeV/c for all these cases, with EPOS having evident deviation of 10\\%-25\\%. The higher moments skewness and kurtosis decrease rapidly in low leading $p_t$ region, and follow an interesting Gaussian-like peak centered at leading $p_t\\approx$ 15 GeV/c.

Foundations for Streaming Model Transformations by Complex Event Processing.

Science.gov (United States)

Dávid, István; Ráth, István; Varró, Dániel

2018-01-01

Streaming model transformations represent a novel class of transformations to manipulate models whose elements are continuously produced or modified in high volume and with rapid rate of change. Executing streaming transformations requires efficient techniques to recognize activated transformation rules over a live model and a potentially infinite stream of events. In this paper, we propose foundations of streaming model transformations by innovatively integrating incremental model query, complex event processing (CEP) and reactive (event-driven) transformation techniques. Complex event processing allows to identify relevant patterns and sequences of events over an event stream. Our approach enables event streams to include model change events which are automatically and continuously populated by incremental model queries. Furthermore, a reactive rule engine carries out transformations on identified complex event patterns. We provide an integrated domain-specific language with precise semantics for capturing complex event patterns and streaming transformations together with an execution engine, all of which is now part of the Viatra reactive transformation framework. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach with two case studies: one in an advanced model engineering workflow; and one in the context of on-the-fly gesture recognition.

Determinants of performance in rare strategic events

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Andersen, Kristina Vaarst; Beukel, Karin

The paper develops and tests a theoretical framework explaining how emotions and learning affect outcomes of rare strategic events, namely Intellectual Property litigations. We investigate how organizations? negative emotions influence performance outcome in IP litigations negatively. Though...... cumulative learning in rare strategic events is scarce, and cannot be understood through the standard framework of routines and capability development, we argue that firms may learn from rare events, and propose that learning moderates the negative effect of emotions. We test this utilizing data on all...... publically available IP litigation cases in China from 2001 to 2009 (n=13,030). We find that when organizations undergo emotional negative stress they lose IP litigations more often, but development of roadmaps though past successes moderate the negative effects from emotional distress....

Temporal variation of extreme precipitation events in Lithuania

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Egidijus Rimkus

2011-05-01

Full Text Available Heavy precipitation events in Lithuania for the period 1961-2008 were analysed. The spatial distribution and dynamics of precipitation extremes were investigated. Positive tendencies and in some cases statistically significant trends were determined for the whole of Lithuania. Atmospheric circulation processes were derived using Hess & Brezowski's classification of macrocirculation forms. More than one third of heavy precipitation events (37% were observed when the atmospheric circulation was zonal. The location of the central part of a cyclone (WZ weather condition subtype over Lithuania is the most common synoptic situation (27% during heavy precipitation events. Climatic projections according to outputs of the CCLM model are also presented in this research. The analysis shows that the recurrence of heavy precipitation events in the 21st century will increase significantly (by up to 22% in Lithuania.

Inter-ethnic Cooperation Revisited: Why mobile phones can help prevent discrete events of violence, using the Kenyan case study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Charles Patrick Martin-Shields

2013-11-01

Full Text Available This paper will critically explore why mobile phones have drawn so much interest from the conflict management community in Kenya, and develop a general set of factors to explain why mobile phones can have a positive effect on conflict prevention efforts generally. Focusing on theories of information asymmetry and security dilemmas, collective action problems, and the role of third party actors in conflict prevention, it aims to continue the discussion around Pierskalla and Hollenbach’s recent research on mobile phones and conflict risk. Given the successful, high profile uses of mobile phone-based violence prevention in Kenya I will identify a set of political and social factors that contribute to the success of crowdsourcing programs that use mobile phones, and explain what makes them transferable across cases for conflict prevention in other countries. The primary findings are that a population must prefer non-violence since technology is a magnifier of human intent, that the events of violence start and stop relative to specific events, the population knows to use their phones to share information about potential violence, and that there are third party actors involved in collecting and validating the crowdsourced data.

Vision-based Detection of Acoustic Timed Events: a Case Study on Clarinet Note Onsets

Science.gov (United States)

Bazzica, A.; van Gemert, J. C.; Liem, C. C. S.; Hanjalic, A.

2017-05-01

Acoustic events often have a visual counterpart. Knowledge of visual information can aid the understanding of complex auditory scenes, even when only a stereo mixdown is available in the audio domain, \\eg identifying which musicians are playing in large musical ensembles. In this paper, we consider a vision-based approach to note onset detection. As a case study we focus on challenging, real-world clarinetist videos and carry out preliminary experiments on a 3D convolutional neural network based on multiple streams and purposely avoiding temporal pooling. We release an audiovisual dataset with 4.5 hours of clarinetist videos together with cleaned annotations which include about 36,000 onsets and the coordinates for a number of salient points and regions of interest. By performing several training trials on our dataset, we learned that the problem is challenging. We found that the CNN model is highly sensitive to the optimization algorithm and hyper-parameters, and that treating the problem as binary classification may prevent the joint optimization of precision and recall. To encourage further research, we publicly share our dataset, annotations and all models and detail which issues we came across during our preliminary experiments.

The Association of Sever Stressful Life Events and Multiple Sclerosis

OpenAIRE

Rozita Naeeni; Zlbar Soltanzadeh; Homan Salimipour; Zahra Vahhabi; Samira Yadegari

2015-01-01

Background: Stressful life events have suggested as one of etiologic cause of the disease from the middle of last century, but controversies still is going on. Materials and Methods: This study is a case- control study conducted on 100 MS patients in neurology clinic of Shariati Hospital during one year. History of stressful life events one year before beginning of the disease was questioned. These events, according to Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale, were severe and affected the disease progres...

Synthesis of public authorities organisation in case of emergency and in a post-event situation (following a nuclear accident or a radiological attack) in France and abroad

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kayser, O.

2010-01-01

After having briefly recalled how an emergency situation (notably in case of nuclear accident or radiological attack) is taken into account in the organisation of public authorities through specific plans (PPI or plans particuliers d'intervention, intervention specific plans), this report also describes how the situation is handled by these authorities after the end of the emergency situation (i.e. when the risk of new radioactive releases is over). This post-event stage is split into two phases: a transition phase which lasts several weeks or months, and a long term consequence management phase (over months or years). The author first describes the specificities of a nuclear or radiological event (accident or attack). He recalls the global public organisation and the involved actors. For the post-event period, he indicates the various actions, describes the interdepartmental coordination and the various aspects of the program designed to manage accident consequences on the long term. He also describes the roles of permanent bodies, agencies and institutes (ASN, ASND, MSNR, IRSN, INVS, ADEME, AFSSA, Meteo France, CEA, ANDRA, AREVA, EDF, ministries). The last part describes the action of public authorities in case of a nuclear accident occurring abroad. This includes relationship with European and international bodies

Mitigation Measures Following a Loss-of-Residual-Heat-Removal Event During Shutdown

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Seul, Kwang Won; Bang, Young Seok; Kim, Hho Jung

2000-01-01

The transient following a loss-of-residual-heat-removal event during shutdown was analyzed to determine the containment closure time (CCT) to prevent uncontrolled release of fission products and the gravity-injection path and rate (GIPR) for effective core cooling using the RELAP5/MOD3.2 code. The plant conditions of Yonggwang Units 3 and 4, a pressurized water reactor (PWR) of 2815-MW(thermal) power in Korea, were reviewed, and possible event sequences were identified. From the CCT analysis for the five cases of typical plant configurations, it was estimated for the earliest CCT to be 40 min after the event in a case with a large cold-leg opening and emptied steam generators (SGs). However, the case with water-filled SGs significantly delayed the CCT through the heat removal to the secondary side. From the GIPR analysis for the six possible gravity-injection paths from the refueling water storage tank (RWST), the case with the injection point and opening on the other leg side was estimated to be the most suitable path to avoid core boiling. In addition, from the sensitivity study, it was evaluated for the plant to be capable of providing the core cooling for the long-term transient if nominal RWST water is available. As a result, these analysis methods and results will provide useful information in understanding the plant behavior and preparing the mitigation measures after the event, especially for Combustion Engineering-type PWR plants. However, to directly apply the analysis results to the emergency procedure for such an event, additional case studies are needed for a wide range of operating conditions such as reactor coolant inventory, RWST water temperature, and core decay heat rate

The ATLAS EventIndex: data flow and inclusion of other metadata

CERN Document Server

Prokoshin, Fedor; The ATLAS collaboration; Cardenas Zarate, Simon Ernesto; Favareto, Andrea; Fernandez Casani, Alvaro; Gallas, Elizabeth; Garcia Montoro, Carlos; Gonzalez de la Hoz, Santiago; Hrivnac, Julius; Malon, David; Salt, Jose; Sanchez, Javier; Toebbicke, Rainer; Yuan, Ruijun

2016-01-01

The ATLAS EventIndex is the catalogue of the event-related metadata for the information obtained from the ATLAS detector. The basic unit of this information is event record, containing the event identification parameters, pointers to the files containing this event as well as trigger decision information. The main use case for the EventIndex are the event picking, providing information for the Event Service and data consistency checks for large production campaigns. The EventIndex employs the Hadoop platform for data storage and handling, as well as a messaging system for the collection of information. The information for the EventIndex is collected both at Tier-0, when the data are first produced, and from the GRID, when various types of derived data are produced. The EventIndex uses various types of auxiliary information from other ATLAS sources for data collection and processing: trigger tables from the condition metadata database (COMA), dataset information from the data catalog AMI and the Rucio data man...

Rare Events and Conditional Events on Random Strings

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mireille Régnier

2004-12-01

Full Text Available Some strings -the texts- are assumed to be randomly generated, according to a probability model that is either a Bernoulli model or a Markov model. A rare event is the over or under-representation of a word or a set of words. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, a single word is given. One studies the tail distribution of the number of its occurrences. Sharp large deviation estimates are derived. Second, one assumes that a given word is overrepresented. The distribution of a second word is studied; formulae for the expectation and the variance are derived. In both cases, the formulae are accurate and actually computable. These results have applications in computational biology, where a genome is viewed as a text.

Sport events and climate for visitors—the case of FIFA World Cup in Qatar 2022

Science.gov (United States)

Matzarakis, Andreas; Fröhlich, Dominik

2015-04-01

The effect of weather on sport events is not well studied. It requires special attention if the event is taking place at a time and place with extreme weather situations. For the world soccer championship in Qatar (Doha 2022), human biometeorological analysis has been performed in order to identify the time of the year that is most suitable in terms of thermal comfort for visitors attending the event. The analysis is based on thermal indices like Physiologically Equivalent Temperature (PET). The results show that this kind of event may be not appropriate for visitors, if it is placed during months with extreme conditions. For Doha, this is the period from May to September, when conditions during a large majority of hours of the day cause strong heat stress for the visitors. A more appropriate time would be the months November to February, when thermally comfortable conditions are much more frequent. The methods applied here can quantify the thermal conditions and show limitations and possibilities for specific events and locations.

A Process for Predicting Manhole Events in Manhattan

OpenAIRE

Isaac, Delfina F.; Ierome, Steve; Dutta, Haimonti; Radeva, Axinia; Passonneau, Rebecca J.; Rudin, Cynthia

2009-01-01

We present a knowledge discovery and data mining process developed as part of the Columbia/Con Edison project on manhole event prediction. This process can assist with real-world prioritization problems that involve raw data in the form of noisy documents requiring significant amounts of pre-processing. The documents are linked to a set of instances to be ranked according to prediction criteria. In the case of manhole event prediction, which is a new application for machine learning, the goal...

Association between respiratory events and nocturnal gastroesophageal reflux events in patients with coexisting obstructive sleep apnea and gastroesophageal reflux disease.

Science.gov (United States)

Jaimchariyatam, Nattapong; Tantipornsinchai, Warangkana; Desudchit, Tayard; Gonlachanvit, Sutep

2016-06-01

Literature has addressed the increased prevalence of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) in obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). Significant improvement of GERD has been found after OSA treatment. However, precise mechanisms underlying this correlation remain unclear. We examined the association between nocturnal gastroesophageal reflux (GER) and sleep events in patients with coexisting OSA and GERD. A case-crossover study among 12 patients with coexisting moderate-severe OSA and GERD was conducted. Participants underwent simultaneous polysomnography and esophageal impedance and pH monitoring. GER subtypes (ie, acid reflux, non-acid reflux) were defined as outcomes. Respective control time points were selected in all eligible control periods. Each sleep event was assessed individually. Estimated odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were analyzed. A p-value of reflux and 28 non-acid reflux. Arousals and awakenings were significantly associated with subsequent GER events. The OR for GER following an arousal was 2.31 (95% CI 1.39-3.68; p  0.05). Both awakening and arousal appear to precipitate any subtype of GER events in patients with coexisting GERD and moderate to severe OSA. However, GER events were significantly less likely to occur after other respiratory events and did not appear to cause sleep-related events. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Cultural Mega-Events as an International, Cultural, and Political Tool

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Julia Nikolaeva

2017-12-01

Full Text Available This article is an attempt to offer a conceptual understanding of various kinds of mega-events and to determine their significance as an instrument of the official international cultural policy. The article examines scientific approaches to understanding and classification of mega-events. The case studies focus on such mega-events as international cross-cultural years and cultural forums. The fact that the official foreign policy of¬ten defines and shapes the goals of mega-events proves their value in establishing and promoting a positive international image of the country. Recent Russian experience in organizing cross-cultural years is examined to discuss positive and negative socio-cultural impact.

The ATLAS EventIndex: data flow and inclusion of other metadata

CERN Document Server

AUTHOR|(INSPIRE)INSPIRE-00064378; Cardenas Zarate, Simon Ernesto; Favareto, Andrea; Fernandez Casani, Alvaro; Gallas, Elizabeth; Garcia Montoro, Carlos; Gonzalez de la Hoz, Santiago; Hrivnac, Julius; Malon, David; Prokoshin, Fedor; Salt, Jose; Sanchez, Javier; Toebbicke, Rainer; Yuan, Ruijun

2016-01-01

The ATLAS EventIndex is the catalogue of the event-related metadata for the information collected from the ATLAS detector. The basic unit of this information is the event record, containing the event identification parameters, pointers to the files containing this event as well as trigger decision information. The main use case for the EventIndex is event picking, as well as data consistency checks for large production campaigns. The EventIndex employs the Hadoop platform for data storage and handling, as well as a messaging system for the collection of information. The information for the EventIndex is collected both at Tier-0, when the data are first produced, and from the Grid, when various types of derived data are produced. The EventIndex uses various types of auxiliary information from other ATLAS sources for data collection and processing: trigger tables from the condition metadata database (COMA), dataset information from the data catalogue AMI and the Rucio data management system and information on p...

Developing an Event-Tree Probabilistic Tsunami Inundation Model for NE Atlantic Coasts: Application to a Case Study

Science.gov (United States)

Omira, R.; Matias, L.; Baptista, M. A.

2016-12-01

This study constitutes a preliminary assessment of probabilistic tsunami inundation in the NE Atlantic region. We developed an event-tree approach to calculate the likelihood of tsunami flood occurrence and exceedance of a specific near-shore wave height for a given exposure time. Only tsunamis of tectonic origin are considered here, taking into account local, regional, and far-field sources. The approach used here consists of an event-tree method that gathers probability models for seismic sources, tsunami numerical modeling, and statistical methods. It also includes a treatment of aleatoric uncertainties related to source location and tidal stage. Epistemic uncertainties are not addressed in this study. The methodology is applied to the coastal test-site of Sines located in the NE Atlantic coast of Portugal. We derive probabilistic high-resolution maximum wave amplitudes and flood distributions for the study test-site considering 100- and 500-year exposure times. We find that the probability that maximum wave amplitude exceeds 1 m somewhere along the Sines coasts reaches about 60 % for an exposure time of 100 years and is up to 97 % for an exposure time of 500 years. The probability of inundation occurrence (flow depth >0 m) varies between 10 % and 57 %, and from 20 % up to 95 % for 100- and 500-year exposure times, respectively. No validation has been performed here with historical tsunamis. This paper illustrates a methodology through a case study, which is not an operational assessment.

Risk factors and antecedent life events in the development of anorexia nervosa: a Portuguese case-control study.

Science.gov (United States)

Machado, Bárbara C; Gonçalves, Sónia F; Martins, Carla; Hoek, Hans W; Machado, Paulo P

2014-07-01

The aetiology of anorexia nervosa (AN) is considered to be multifactorial. This study aims to identify potential risk factors for AN and whether these factors are specific to AN or precede the development of psychiatric disorders in general and to identify specific life events in the 12 months immediately preceding the onset of eating disorder (ED) symptoms. A case-control design was used to compare a group of women who meet Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition criteria for AN (N = 86) with healthy controls (N = 86) and with a group of controls with other psychiatric disorders (N = 68), each group matched to the AN patients by age and parental socioeconomic status bands. Risk factors were assessed by interviewing each person with the Oxford Risk Factor Interview. Women with AN reported significantly higher rates of perfectionism, negative attitudes toward parents' shape and weight, significant concern about feeling fat and a family history of AN or bulimia nervosa. Critical comments about weight, shape or eating was the most notable event in the year preceding AN onset. Perfectionism and a family history of ED emerged as the most convergent findings in the development of AN, along with being critical toward parents' shape and weight, and feeling fat. Critical comments about appearance and eating seem to be an important precipitating factor in AN onset. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association.

Performance improvement of standard turbo-compressor; Han`yo turbo asshukuki no seino kaizen

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Hokari, T.; Hasegawa, K.; Ozaki, S.; Majima, K. [Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries Co. Ltd., Tokyo (Japan)

1999-05-01

Abradable materials are soft and cause no contact damage to the impeller of the turbo-compressor. Using such materials for the inlet casing facing to the impeller allows very small clearances between the impeller and inlet casing, thus improving the compressor efficiency by 10% over conventional types. Changing the area of abradable material applied to the inlet casing identified the optimum area in which decrease of the compressor surge margin is minimized and efficiency is improved by 10%. As a result, turbo-compressors have the best performance when the abradable materials are applied from the impeller outlet to two-thirds of the forward location of the inlet casing. (author)

[Endemic and epidemic bovine neosporosis: description of two events in beef cattle].

Science.gov (United States)

Calandra, Patricio M; Di Matía, José M; Cano, Dora B; Odriozola, Ernesto R; García, Juan A; Späth, Ernesto J A; Odeón, Anselmo C; Paolicchi, Fernando A; Morrell, Eleonora L; Campero, Carlos M; Moore, Dadín P

2014-01-01

The aim of this study was to describe two events in which Neospora caninum was involved in bovine abortions in beef cattle. In the first event, 11 abortions in 57 heifers were recorded in 45 days. One aborted heifer was 5 times more likely to be seropositive than a non-aborted heifer (OR=4.9; IC 1.2-19.9) (p0.05). Neither antibodies nor isolation of other pathogens were achieved in any case. On the contrary, antibodies and pathognomonic histopathological lesions were observed in the four fetuses from both cases. Interestingly, the findings in the first event suggest the epidemic behavior of the disease. In contrast, in the second event it appears that few abortions were due to N. caninum, suggesting the presence of endemic neosporosis. Copyright © 2014 Asociación Argentina de Microbiología. Publicado por Elsevier España. All rights reserved.

Forecasting with quantitative methods the impact of special events in time series

OpenAIRE

Nikolopoulos, Konstantinos

2010-01-01

Abstract Quantitative methods are very successful for producing baseline forecasts of time series; however these models fail to forecast neither the timing nor the impact of special events such as promotions or strikes. In most of the cases the timing of such events is not known so they are usually referred as shocks (economics) or special events (forecasting). Sometimes the timing of such events is known a priori (i.e. a future promotion); but even then the impact of the forthcom...

Dependencies in event trees analyzed by Petri nets

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Nývlt, Ondřej; Rausand, Marvin

2012-01-01

This paper discusses how non-marked Petri nets can be used to model and analyze event trees where the pivotal (branching) events are dependent and modeled by fault trees. The dependencies may, for example, be caused by shared utilities, shared components, or general common cause failures that are modeled by beta-factor models. These dependencies are cumbersome to take into account when using standard event-/fault tree modeling techniques, and may lead to significant errors in the calculated end-state probabilities of the event tree if they are not properly analyzed. A new approach is proposed in this paper, where the whole event tree is modeled by a non-marked Petri net and where P-invariants, representing the structural properties of the Petri net, are used to obtain the frequency of each end-state of the event tree with dependencies. The new approach is applied to a real example of an event tree analysis of the Strahov highway tunnel in Prague, Czech Republic, including two types of dependencies (shared Programmable Logic Controllers and Common Cause Failures). - Highlights: ► In this paper, we model and analyze event trees (ET) using Petri nets. ► The pivotal events of the modeled event trees are dependent (e.g., shared PLCs, CCF). ► A new method based on P-invariants to obtain probabilities of end states is proposed. ► Method is shown in the case study of the Stahov tunnel in the Czech Republic.

Hydro-geomorphologic events in Portugal and its association with Circulation weather types

Science.gov (United States)

Pereira, Susana; Ramos, Alexandre M.; Rebelo, Luís; Trigo, Ricardo M.; Zêzere, José L.

2017-04-01

Floods and landslides correspond to the most hazardous weather driven natural disasters in Portugal. A recent improvement on their characterization has been achieved with the gathering of basic information on past floods and landslides that caused social consequences in Portugal for the period 1865-2015 through the DISASTER database (Zêzere et al., 2014). This database was built under the assumption that strong social impacts of floods and landslides are sufficient relevant to be reported consistently by national and regional newspapers. The DISASTER database contains detailed information on the location, date of occurrence and social impacts (fatalities, injuries, missing people, evacuated and homeless people) of each individual hydro-geomorphologic case (1677 flood cases and 292 landslide cases). These hydro-geomorphologic disaster cases are grouped in a restrict number of DISASTER events that were selected according to the following criteria: a set of at least 3 DISASTER cases sharing the same trigger in time (with no more than 3 days without cases), which have a widespread spatial extension related to the triggering mechanism and a certain magnitude. In total, the DISASTER database includes 134 events (3.7 average days of duration) that generated high social impacts in Portugal (962 fatalities and 40878 homeless people). Each DISASTER event was characterized with the following attributes: hydro-geomorphologic event type (e.g landslides, floods, flash floods, urban floods); date of occurrence (year, month and days); duration in days; spatial location in GIS; number of fatalities, injured, evacuated and homeless people; and weather type responsible for triggering the event. The atmospheric forcing at different time scales is the main trigger for the hydro-meteorological DISASTER events occurred in Portugal. In this regard there is an urge for a more systematic assessment of the weather types associated to flood and landslide damaging events to correctly

Obsidian hydration dating of volcanic events

Science.gov (United States)

Friedman, I.; Obradovich, J.

1981-01-01

Obsidian hydration dating of volcanic events had been compared with ages of the same events determined by the 14C and KAr methods at several localities. The localities, ranging in age from 1200 to over 1 million yr, include Newberry Craters, Oregon; Coso Hot Springs, California; Salton Sea, California; Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming; and Mineral Range, Utah. In most cases the agreement is quite good. A number of factors including volcanic glass composition and exposuretemperature history must be known in order to relate hydration thickness to age. The effect of composition can be determined from chemical analysis or the refractive index of the glass. Exposure-temperature history requires a number of considerations enumerated in this paper. ?? 1981.

Operational early warning platform for extreme meteorological events

Science.gov (United States)

Mühr, Bernhard; Kunz, Michael

2015-04-01

Operational early warning platform for extreme meteorological events Most natural disasters are related to extreme weather events (e.g. typhoons); weather conditions, however, are also highly relevant for humanitarian and disaster relief operations during and after other natural disaster like earthquakes. The internet service "Wettergefahren-Frühwarnung" (WF) provides various information on extreme weather events, especially when these events are associated with a high potential for large damage. The main focus of the platform is on Central Europe, but major events are also monitored worldwide on a daily routine. WF provides high-resolution forecast maps for many weather parameters which allow detailed and reliable predictions about weather conditions during the next days in the affected areas. The WF service became operational in February 2004 and is part of the Center for Disaster Management and Risk Reduction Technology (CEDIM) since 2007. At the end of 2011, CEDIM embarked a new type of interdisciplinary disaster research termed as forensic disaster analysis (FDA) in near real time. In case of an imminent extreme weather event WF plays an important role in CEDIM's FDA group. It provides early and precise information which are always available and updated several times during a day and gives advice and assists with articles and reports on extreme events.

Risk and sensitivity analysis in relation to external events

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Alzbutas, R.; Urbonas, R.; Augutis, J.

2001-01-01

This paper presents risk and sensitivity analysis of external events impacts on the safe operation in general and in particular the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant safety systems. Analysis is based on the deterministic and probabilistic assumptions and assessment of the external hazards. The real statistic data are used as well as initial external event simulation. The preliminary screening criteria are applied. The analysis of external event impact on the NPP safe operation, assessment of the event occurrence, sensitivity analysis, and recommendations for safety improvements are performed for investigated external hazards. Such events as aircraft crash, extreme rains and winds, forest fire and flying parts of the turbine are analysed. The models are developed and probabilities are calculated. As an example for sensitivity analysis the model of aircraft impact is presented. The sensitivity analysis takes into account the uncertainty features raised by external event and its model. Even in case when the external events analysis show rather limited danger, the sensitivity analysis can determine the highest influence causes. These possible variations in future can be significant for safety level and risk based decisions. Calculations show that external events cannot significantly influence the safety level of the Ignalina NPP operation, however the events occurrence and propagation can be sufficiently uncertain.(author)

Major life events and risk of Parkinson's disease

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Rod, Naja Hulvej; Hansen, Johnni; Schernhammer, Eva

2010-01-01

major life events are risk factors for Parkinson's disease. Between 1986 and 2006, we identified 13,695 patients with a (PD) primary diagnosis of PD in the Danish National Hospital Register. Each case was frequency matched by age and gender to five population controls. Information on major life events...... before onset of PD was ascertained from national registries. Among men, number of life events was associated with risk of Parkinson's disease in an inverse dose-response manner (P ....34-0.99). Life events were not associated with PD in women. In contrast, a higher risk of PD was observed among women who had never been married (1.16; 1.04-1.29) and among men (1.47; 1.18-1.82) and women (1.30; 1.05-1.61) who have never been employees. The lower risk of Parkinson's disease among men who had...

Countermeasures and vaccination against terrorism using smallpox: pre-event and post-event smallpox vaccination and its contraindications.

Science.gov (United States)

Sato, Hajime

2011-09-01

Smallpox, when used as a biological weapon, presents a serious threat to civilian populations. Core components of the public health management of a terrorism attack using smallpox are: vaccination (ring vaccination and mass vaccination), adverse event monitoring, confirmed and suspected smallpox case management, contact management, identifying, tracing, monitoring contacts, and quarantine. Above all, pre-event and post-event vaccination is an indispensable part of the strategies. Since smallpox patients are most infectious from onset of the rash through the first 7-10 days of the rash, vaccination should be administered promptly within a limited time frame. However, vaccination can accompany complications, such as postvaccinial encephalitis, progressive vaccinia, eczema vaccinatum, and generalized vaccinia. Therefore, vaccination is not recommended for certain groups. Public health professionals, as well as physicians and government officials, should also be well equipped with all information necessary for appropriate and effective smallpox management in the face of such a bioterrorism attack.

A Case History of the Science and Management Collaboration in Understanding Hypoxia Events in Long Bay, South Carolina, USA

Science.gov (United States)

Sanger, Denise; Hernandez, Debra; Libes, Susan; Voulgaris, George; Davis, Braxton; Smith, Erik; Shuford, Rebecca; Porter, Dwayne; Koepfler, Eric; Bennett, Joseph

2010-09-01

Communication of knowledge between the scientific and management communities is a difficult process complicated by the distinctive nature of professional career goals of scientists and decision-makers. This article provides a case history highlighting a collaboration between the science and management communities that resulted from a response to a 2004 hypoxia, or low dissolved oxygen, event in Long Bay, off Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. A working group of scientists and decision-makers was established at the time of the event and has continued to interact to develop a firm understanding of the drivers responsible for hypoxia formation in Long Bay. Several factors were found to be important to ensure that these collaborative efforts were productive: (1) genuine interest in collaboratively working across disciplines to examine a problem; (2) commitment by agency leadership, decision-makers, and researchers to create successful communication mechanisms; (3) respect for each others’ perspectives and an understanding how science and management are performed and that they are not mutually exclusive; (4) networking among researchers and decision-makers to ensure appropriate team members are involved in the process; (5) use of decision-maker input in the formulation of research and monitoring projects; and (6) commitment of resources for facilitation to ensure that researchers and decision-makers are communicating effectively.

Event Shape Sorting: selecting events with similar evolution

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tomášik Boris

2017-01-01

Full Text Available We present novel method for the organisation of events. The method is based on comparing event-by-event histograms of a chosen quantity Q that is measured for each particle in every event. The events are organised in such a way that those with similar shape of the Q-histograms end-up placed close to each other. We apply the method on histograms of azimuthal angle of the produced hadrons in ultrarelativsitic nuclear collisions. By selecting events with similar azimuthal shape of their hadron distribution one chooses events which are likely that they underwent similar evolution from the initial state to the freeze-out. Such events can more easily be compared to theoretical simulations where all conditions can be controlled. We illustrate the method on data simulated by the AMPT model.

Probabilistic attribution of individual unprecedented extreme events

Science.gov (United States)

Diffenbaugh, N. S.

2016-12-01

The last decade has seen a rapid increase in efforts to understand the influence of global warming on individual extreme climate events. Although trends in the distributions of climate observations have been thoroughly analyzed, rigorously quantifying the contribution of global-scale warming to individual events that are unprecedented in the observed record presents a particular challenge. This paper describes a method for leveraging observations and climate model ensembles to quantify the influence of historical global warming on the severity and probability of unprecedented events. This approach uses formal inferential techniques to quantify four metrics: (1) the contribution of the observed trend to the event magnitude, (2) the contribution of the observed trend to the event probability, (3) the probability of the observed trend in the current climate and a climate without human influence, and (4) the probability of the event magnitude in the current climate and a climate without human influence. Illustrative examples are presented, spanning a range of climate variables, timescales, and regions. These examples illustrate that global warming can influence the severity and probability of unprecedented extremes. In some cases - particularly high temperatures - this change is indicated by changes in the mean. However, changes in probability do not always arise from changes in the mean, suggesting that global warming can alter the frequency with which complex physical conditions co-occur. Because our framework is transparent and highly generalized, it can be readily applied to a range of climate events, regions, and levels of climate forcing.

The Economic Effects of the Mega Sport Events on Tourism in the BRICS Countries Case

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Iuliana Pop

2016-11-01

Full Text Available At the beginning of the 21st century, events tourism witnessed an impressive development in a series of countries due to the increase of the spare time and of the people’s income, to the cheaper and more diversified world transport, especially the air transport and due to the emergence of new destinations. Emergent countries, such as China and Russia, recorded not only an increase in the number of tourists but also in the revenues from tourism activities. One of the reasons is the opening of these countries frontiers in order to reaffirm their power on international level (Golubchikov, 2016. Besides the relaxation, business and religious tourism, the sport tourism becomes more and more important. It also comprises the tourism for mega sport events, such as the Summer and Winter Olympics or the World Championships in different sports. For the organising countries, there is a real challenge to ensure the investments for the infrastructure, although it supports their economic development, being used after the sport events conclusion. Considering the available data from the World Bank and the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO, the authors make a quantitative investigation regarding the impact of the mega sport events on the tourism phenomenon in the BRICS countries. The article also researches a small and specific group of countries (BRICS, considering a niche tourism phenomenon. The article aims to emphasize the role of the mega sport events in the BRICS countries, directly connected with their capacity to economically support the organization of these events and also with the desire to internationally promote their national values.

LCG MCDB - a Knowledgebase of Monte Carlo Simulated Events

CERN Document Server

Belov, S; Galkin, E; Gusev, A; Pokorski, Witold; Sherstnev, A V

2008-01-01

In this paper we report on LCG Monte Carlo Data Base (MCDB) and software which has been developed to operate MCDB. The main purpose of the LCG MCDB project is to provide a storage and documentation system for sophisticated event samples simulated for the LHC collaborations by experts. In many cases, the modern Monte Carlo simulation of physical processes requires expert knowledge in Monte Carlo generators or significant amount of CPU time to produce the events. MCDB is a knowledgebase mainly to accumulate simulated events of this type. The main motivation behind LCG MCDB is to make the sophisticated MC event samples available for various physical groups. All the data from MCDB is accessible in several convenient ways. LCG MCDB is being developed within the CERN LCG Application Area Simulation project.

Extreme event statistics in a drifting Markov chain

Science.gov (United States)

Kindermann, Farina; Hohmann, Michael; Lausch, Tobias; Mayer, Daniel; Schmidt, Felix; Widera, Artur

2017-07-01

We analyze extreme event statistics of experimentally realized Markov chains with various drifts. Our Markov chains are individual trajectories of a single atom diffusing in a one-dimensional periodic potential. Based on more than 500 individual atomic traces we verify the applicability of the Sparre Andersen theorem to our system despite the presence of a drift. We present detailed analysis of four different rare-event statistics for our system: the distributions of extreme values, of record values, of extreme value occurrence in the chain, and of the number of records in the chain. We observe that, for our data, the shape of the extreme event distributions is dominated by the underlying exponential distance distribution extracted from the atomic traces. Furthermore, we find that even small drifts influence the statistics of extreme events and record values, which is supported by numerical simulations, and we identify cases in which the drift can be determined without information about the underlying random variable distributions. Our results facilitate the use of extreme event statistics as a signal for small drifts in correlated trajectories.

[Analysis on the adverse events of cupping therapy in the application].

Science.gov (United States)

Zhou, Xin; Ruan, Jing-wen; Xing, Bing-feng

2014-10-01

The deep analysis has been done on the cases of adverse events and common injury of cupping therapy encountered in recent years in terms of manipulation and patient's constitution. The adverse events of cupping therapy are commonly caused by improper manipulation of medical practitioners, ignoring contraindication and patient's constitution. Clinical practitioners should use cupping therapy cautiously, follow strictly the rules of standard manipulation and medical core system, pay attention to the contraindication and take strict precautions against the occurrence of adverse events.

Dietary supplement adverse events: report of a one-year poison center surveillance project.

Science.gov (United States)

Haller, Christine; Kearney, Tom; Bent, Stephen; Ko, Richard; Benowitz, Neal; Olson, Kent

2008-06-01

The safety and efficacy of dietary supplements is of growing concern to regulators, health-care providers and consumers. Few scientific data exist on clinical effects and potential toxicities of marketed products. Harmful supplements may not be identified for months or years with existing adverse event monitoring mechanisms. Retrospective review of poison center statistics to capture supplement-associated toxicity also has limitations. We collaborated with the FDA Center for Food Safety and Nutrition (CFSAN) to conduct a 1-year prospective surveillance study of dietary supplement-related poison control center calls in 2006. Prompt follow-up of symptomatic cases, laboratory analysis of implicated dietary supplements, and causality assessment by a case review expert panel were performed. Of 275 dietary supplements calls, 41% involved symptomatic exposures; and two-thirds were rated as probably or possibly related to supplement use. Eight adverse events required hospital admission. Sympathomimetic toxicity was most common, with caffeine products accounting for 47%, and yohimbe products accounting for 18% of supplement-related symptomatic cases. Suspected drug-herb interactions occurred in 6 cases, including yohimbe co-ingested with buproprion (1) and methamphetamine (3), and additive anticoagulant/antiplatelet effects of NSAIDs taken with fish oils (1) and ginkgo (1). Laboratory analysis identified a pharmacologically active substance in 4 cases; supplement toxicity was ruled unlikely when analytical testing was negative in 5 cases. Most supplement-related adverse events were minor. Clinically significant toxic effects were most frequently reported with caffeine and yohimbe-containing products. Active surveillance of poison control center reports of dietary supplement adverse events enables rapid detection of potentially harmful products, which may facilitate regulatory oversight.

Solar energetic particle events during the rise phases of solar cycles 23 and 24

Science.gov (United States)

Chandra, R.; Gopalswamy, N.; Mäkelä, P.; Xie, H.; Yashiro, S.; Akiyama, S.; Uddin, W.; Srivastava, A. K.; Joshi, N. C.; Jain, R.; Awasthi, A. K.; Manoharan, P. K.; Mahalakshmi, K.; Dwivedi, V. C.; Choudhary, D. P.; Nitta, N. V.

2013-12-01

We present a comparative study of the properties of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and flares associated with the solar energetic particle (SEP) events in the rising phases of solar cycles (SC) 23 (1996-1998) (22 events) and 24 (2009-2011) (20 events), which are associated with type II radio bursts. Based on the SEP intensity, we divided the events into three categories, i.e. weak (intensity pfu), minor (1 pfu pfu) and major (intensity ⩾ 10 pfu) events. We used the GOES data for the minor and major SEP events and SOHO/ERNE data for the weak SEP event. We examine the correlation of SEP intensity with flare size and CME properties. We find that most of the major SEP events are associated with halo or partial halo CMEs originating close to the sun center and western-hemisphere. The fraction of halo CMEs in SC 24 is larger than the SC 23. For the minor SEP events one event in SC23 and one event in SC24 have widths < 120° and all other events are associated with halo or partial halo CMEs as in the case of major SEP events. In case of weak SEP events, majority (more than 60%) of events are associated with CME width < 120°. For both the SC the average CMEs speeds are similar. For major SEP events, average CME speeds are higher in comparison to minor and weak events. The SEP event intensity and GOES X-ray flare size are poorly correlated. During the rise phase of solar cycle 23 and 24, we find north-south asymmetry in the SEP event source locations: in cycle 23 most sources are located in the south, whereas during cycle 24 most sources are located in the north. This result is consistent with the asymmetry found with sunspot area and intense flares.

Development and first application of an operating events ranking tool

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Šimić, Zdenko; Zerger, Benoit; Banov, Reni

2015-01-01

Highlights: • A method using analitycal hierarchy process for ranking operating events is developed and tested. • The method is applied for 5 years of U.S. NRC Licensee Event Reports (1453 events). • Uncertainty and sensitivity of the ranking results are evaluated. • Real events assessment shows potential of the method for operating experience feedback. - Abstract: The operating experience feedback is important for maintaining and improving safety and availability in nuclear power plants. Detailed investigation of all events is challenging since it requires excessive resources, especially in case of large event databases. This paper presents an event groups ranking method to complement the analysis of individual operating events. The basis for the method is the use of an internationally accepted events characterization scheme that allows different ways of events grouping and ranking. The ranking method itself consists of implementing the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) by means of a custom developed tool which allows events ranking based on ranking indexes pre-determined by expert judgment. Following the development phase, the tool was applied to analyze a complete set of 5 years of real nuclear power plants operating events (1453 events). The paper presents the potential of this ranking method to identify possible patterns throughout the event database and therefore to give additional insights into the events as well as to give quantitative input for the prioritization of further more detailed investigation of selected event groups

A real-time assessment of factors influencing medication events.

Science.gov (United States)

Dollarhide, Adrian W; Rutledge, Thomas; Weinger, Matthew B; Fisher, Erin Stucky; Jain, Sonia; Wolfson, Tanya; Dresselhaus, Timothy R

2014-01-01

Reducing medical error is critical to improving the safety and quality of healthcare. Physician stress, fatigue, and excessive workload are performance-shaping factors (PSFs) that may influence medical events (actual administration errors and near misses), but direct relationships between these factors and patient safety have not been clearly defined. This study assessed the real-time influence of emotional stress, workload, and sleep deprivation on self-reported medication events by physicians in academic hospitals. During an 18-month study period, 185 physician participants working at four university-affiliated teaching hospitals reported medication events using a confidential reporting application on handheld computers. Emotional stress scores, perceived workload, patient case volume, clinical experience, total sleep, and demographic variables were also captured via the handheld computers. Medication event reports (n = 11) were then correlated with these demographic and PSFs. Medication events were associated with 36.1% higher perceived workload (p sleep (p = .10). These results confirm the effect of factors influencing medication events, and support attention to both provider and hospital environmental characteristics for improving patient safety. © 2013 National Association for Healthcare Quality.

Simple probabilistic method for relative risk evaluation of nuclear terrorism events

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zhang Songbai; Wu Jun

2006-01-01

On the basis of the event-tree and probability analysis methods, a probabilistic method of nuclear terrorism risk was built, and the risk of terrorism events was analyzed. With the statistical data for and hypothetical data for relative events, the relative probabilities of the four kinds of nuclear terrorism events were obtained, as well as the relative risks of these four kinds of nuclear terrorism events were calculated by using this probabilistic method. The illustrated case show that the descending sequence of damages from the four kinds of nuclear terrorism events for single event is as following: nuclear explosive and improvised nuclear explosive, nuclear facility attacked, and 'dirty bomb'. Under the hypothetical condition, the descending sequence of possibilities for the four kinds of nuclear terrorism events is as following: 'dirty bomb', nuclear facility attacked, improvised nuclear explosive and nuclear explosive, but the descending sequence of risks is as following: 'dirty bomb', improvised nuclear explosive, nuclear facility attacked, and nuclear explosive . (authors)

Japanese management in the XXI century: analysis and problems of adaptation

OpenAIRE

Pashkus, V.

2014-01-01

The article deals with the fundamental principles of the Japanese management system, including the main aspects of the philosophy of kaizen and kanban. Also study socio-cultural problems of the Japanese management system.

Analysis of brand personality to involve event involvement and loyalty: A case study of Jakarta Fashion Week 2017

Science.gov (United States)

Nasution, A. H.; Rachmawan, Y. A.

2018-04-01

Fashion trend in the world changed extremely fast. Fashion has become the one of people’s lifestyle in the world. Fashion week events in several areas can be a measurement of fahion trend nowadays. There was a fashion week event in Indonesia called Jakarta Fashion Week (JFW) aims to show fashion trend to people who want to improve their fashion style. People will join some events if the event has involvement to them, hence they will come to that event again and again. Annually and continuously event is really important to create loyalty among people who are involved in it, in order to increase positive development towards the organizer in organizing the next event. Saving a huge amount from the marketing budget, and creating a higher quality event. This study aims to know the effect of 5 brand personality dimension to event involvement and loyalty in Jakarta Fashion Week (JFW). This study use quantitative confirmative method with Structural Equation Model (SEM) analysis technique. The sample of this study is 150 respondents who became a participant of Jakarta Fashion Week 2017. Result show that there was significant effect of 5 brand personality dimension to 3 dimension of event involvement and loyalty. Meanwhile, there was one dimension of event involvement called personal self-expression that has not effect to loyalty.

Aberrant intermediate filament and synaptophysin expression is a frequent event in malignant melanoma: an immunohistochemical study of 73 cases.

Science.gov (United States)

Romano, Ryan C; Carter, Jodi M; Folpe, Andrew L

2015-08-01

Malignant melanomas are known to express vimentin, among other intermediate filaments. Though anomalous keratin expression by malignant melanoma has been reported, its frequency is not well-established and this phenomenon is not well-known. We have seen in consultation a number of malignant melanomas with anomalous expression of keratin, other intermediate filaments, or synaptophysin, and therefore studied a large group of primary and metastatic melanomas to determine the frequency of these events. About 73 cases of malignant melanoma (22 primaries and 51 metastases) from 71 patients (51 male, 20 female; mean 59 years, range 17-87 years) were retrieved from our archives. Prior diagnoses were confirmed by re-review of hematoxylin and eosin sections and relevant (e.g., S100 protein, HMB45, Melan-A, and tyrosinase) immunohistochemical studies. Available sections were immunostained for keratin (OSCAR and AE1/AE3 antibodies), desmin, neurofilament protein, glial fibrillary acidic protein, synaptophysin, and chromogranin A. Not all cases could be tested for all markers. Cases were predominantly epithelioid (48/73, 66%) or spindle cell/desmoplastic (25/73, 34%). S100 protein, Melan-A, HMB45, and tyrosinase were positive in 60/65 (92%), 34/64 (53%), 30/60 (50%), 25/48 (52%) of cases, respectively. All five S100-protein-negative cases expressed at least one of the other melanocytic markers: Melan-A (two of four, 50%), HMB45 (two of three, 67%), and tyrosinase (one of two, 50%). All cases expressed at least one melanocytic marker. Cases were positive for keratin (OSCAR, 17/61, 28%; AE1/AE3, 16/40, 40%), desmin (11/47, 24%), neurofilament protein (5/31, 16%), glial fibrillary acidic protein (3/32, 9%), and synaptophysin (10/34, 29%), typically only in a minority of cells. Chromogranin was negative (0/32, 0%). Altogether 9/73 cases (12%) showed expression of >1 intermediate filament. All S100-protein-negative melanomas showed anomalous intermediate filament expression (keratin

Event generators for address event representation transmitters

Science.gov (United States)

Serrano-Gotarredona, Rafael; Serrano-Gotarredona, Teresa; Linares Barranco, Bernabe

2005-06-01

Address Event Representation (AER) is an emergent neuromorphic interchip communication protocol that allows for real-time virtual massive connectivity between huge number neurons located on different chips. By exploiting high speed digital communication circuits (with nano-seconds timings), synaptic neural connections can be time multiplexed, while neural activity signals (with mili-seconds timings) are sampled at low frequencies. Also, neurons generate 'events' according to their activity levels. More active neurons generate more events per unit time, and access the interchip communication channel more frequently, while neurons with low activity consume less communication bandwidth. In a typical AER transmitter chip, there is an array of neurons that generate events. They send events to a peripheral circuitry (let's call it "AER Generator") that transforms those events to neurons coordinates (addresses) which are put sequentially on an interchip high speed digital bus. This bus includes a parallel multi-bit address word plus a Rqst (request) and Ack (acknowledge) handshaking signals for asynchronous data exchange. There have been two main approaches published in the literature for implementing such "AER Generator" circuits. They differ on the way of handling event collisions coming from the array of neurons. One approach is based on detecting and discarding collisions, while the other incorporates arbitration for sequencing colliding events . The first approach is supposed to be simpler and faster, while the second is able to handle much higher event traffic. In this article we will concentrate on the second arbiter-based approach. Boahen has been publishing several techniques for implementing and improving the arbiter based approach. Originally, he proposed an arbitration squeme by rows, followed by a column arbitration. In this scheme, while one neuron was selected by the arbiters to transmit his event out of the chip, the rest of neurons in the array were

From event to impact: International Exhibition and urban mobility

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rosa Anna La Rocca

2008-08-01

Full Text Available The realization of a mega event mainly affects the city life. On the one hand, the exceptional event represents a factor which speeds up urban transformations, that could not be realized otherwise. This characteristic has been defined as “pulsar effect” to explicate the impulse given to normal course of urban living by the mega events. On the other hand, mega events ask for actions aimed at managing the intense displacements due to their organizations and attractive capacity. Among the different types of events, this study considers the Universal Expositions, as they have been defined by the Bureau International des Expositions (the non-governmental organization having the decision power about great exposition. Universal or International Expo’s realization affects specific urban areas, interested by important transformations, especially referred to realization of infrastructure (mobility or dedicated to the event. While the management of urban mobility requires to define specific actions aimed at traffic congestion minimization. Increasing transport demand (visitors and tourists + residents and city-users is one of mega event effects. This work deals with individuations of mega event effects on city organization by analysing some case studies of Expos cities. Particularly referred to transformations occurred in transport infrastructures this articles sketches out the contemporary Expos profile and theirs effects on city.

Analysis of unprotected overcooling events in the Integral Fast Reactor

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Vilim, R.B.

1989-01-01

Simple analytic models are developed for predicting the response of a metal fueled, liquid-metal cooled reactor to unprotected overcooling events in the balance of plant. All overcooling initiators are shown to fall into two categories. The first category contains these events for which there is no final equilibrium state of constant overcooling, as in the case for a large steam leak. These events are analyzed using a non-flow control mass approach. The second category contains those events which will eventually equilibrate, such as a loss of feedwater heaters. A steady flow control volume analysis shows that these latter events ultimately affect the plant through the feedwater inlet to the steam generator. The models developed for analyzing these two categories provide upper bounds for the reactor's passive response to overcooling accident initiators. Calculation of these bounds for a prototypic plant indicate that failure limits -- eutectic melting, sodium boiling, fuel pin failure -- are not exceeded in any overcooling event. 2 refs

Landfast sea ice break-out events in the Chukchi Sea: Two case studies illuminating long-term observations at Barrow, Alaska

Science.gov (United States)

Jones, J.; Eicken, H.; Mahoney, A. R.; Mv, R.; Kambhamettu, C.; Fukamachi, Y.; Ohshima, K. I.

2012-12-01

Landfast sea ice in northern Alaska is an important coastal feature. It protects coasts from the impacts of storms, acts as a platform for travel and subsistence activities by native communities, and can be an obstacle to near-shore maritime enterprise. These services provided by landfast ice depend upon its presence and extent, as well as the ice cover's capacity to remain stably in place for long periods of time during the ice season. Along the eastern Chukchi coast and specifically at Barrow, Alaska, the near-shore ice conditions are highly dynamic. In recent years, break-outs of the landfast ice have been observed at Barrow, removing larger stretches of previously immobile landfast ice from shore and potentially threatening people and equipment. Indigenous knowledge by local Iñupiaq ice experts extending back several decades indicates that such events were rare or absent until the 1990s. Using imagery from a land-based marine radar, a component of the Barrow Sea Ice Observatory of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, landfast ice formation at Barrow, AK, has been tracked each season since 2005, and a number of break-out events have been identified. A detailed analysis of atmospheric, oceanic and sea ice conditions associated with such events can shed light on local knowledge and understanding of such events, and help develop approaches to predict and respond to break-outs. Here, two break-out events (on February 27, 2009 and March 24, 2010) are the subjects of case studies aimed at determining primary causes of break-outs. The radar imagery is used to track near-shore ice deformation prior to the break-out and to estimate the extent of grounded sea ice ridges. Oceanic and atmospheric data are used to estimate current and wind stress on the landfast ice cover. Sea level measurements provide insight as to whether or not a grounded ridge's keel could be lifted out of its bed, a potential precondition for a break-out to occur. Preliminary results suggest different

Microprocessor event analysis in parallel with Camac data acquisition

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Cords, D.; Eichler, R.; Riege, H.

1981-01-01

The Plessey MIPROC-16 microprocessor (16 bits, 250 ns execution time) has been connected to a Camac System (GEC-ELLIOTT System Crate) and shares the Camac access with a Nord-1OS computer. Interfaces have been designed and tested for execution of Camac cycles, communication with the Nord-1OS computer and DMA-transfer from Camac to the MIPROC-16 memory. The system is used in the JADE data-acquisition-system at PETRA where it receives the data from the detector in parallel with the Nord-1OS computer via DMA through the indirect-data-channel mode. The microprocessor performs an on-line analysis of events and the result of various checks is appended to the event. In case of spurious triggers or clear beam gas events, the Nord-1OS buffer will be reset and the event omitted from further processing. (orig.)

Event-by-event simulation of quantum phenomena

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Raedt, H. De; Raedt, K. De; Michielsen, K.; Landau, DP; Lewis, SP; Schuttler, HB

2006-01-01

In various basic experiments in quantum physics, observations are recorded event-by-event. The final outcome of such experiments can be computed according to the rules of quantum theory but quantum theory does not describe single events. In this paper, we describe a stimulation approach that does

Discrete Events as Units of Perceived Time

Science.gov (United States)

Liverence, Brandon M.; Scholl, Brian J.

2012-01-01

In visual images, we perceive both space (as a continuous visual medium) and objects (that inhabit space). Similarly, in dynamic visual experience, we perceive both continuous time and discrete events. What is the relationship between these units of experience? The most intuitive answer may be similar to the spatial case: time is perceived as an…

Radionuclide data analysis in connection of DPRK event in May 2009

Science.gov (United States)

Nikkinen, Mika; Becker, Andreas; Zähringer, Matthias; Polphong, Pornsri; Pires, Carla; Assef, Thierry; Han, Dongmei

2010-05-01

The seismic event detected in DPRK on 25.5.2009 was triggering a series of actions within CTBTO/PTS to ensure its preparedness to detect any radionuclide emissions possibly linked with the event. Despite meticulous work to detect and verify, traces linked to the DPRK event were not found. After three weeks of high alert the PTS resumed back to normal operational routine. This case illuminates the importance of objectivity and procedural approach in the data evaluation. All the data coming from particulate and noble gas stations were evaluated daily, some of the samples even outside of office hours and during the weekends. Standard procedures were used to determine the network detection thresholds of the key (CTBT relevant) radionuclides achieved across the DPRK event area and for the assessment of radionuclides typically occurring at IMS stations (background history). Noble gas system has sometimes detections that are typical for the sites due to legitimate non-nuclear test related activities. Therefore, set of hypothesis were used to see if the detection is consistent with event time and location through atmospheric transport modelling. Also the consistency of event timing and isotopic ratios was used in the evaluation work. As a result it was concluded that if even 1/1000 of noble gasses from a nuclear detonation would had leaked, the IMS system would not had problems to detect it. This case also showed the importance of on-site inspections to verify the nuclear traces of possible tests.

Age differences in autobiographical memories of negative events.

Science.gov (United States)

Boals, Adriel; Hayslip, Bert; Banks, Jonathan B

2014-01-01

This study examined whether older adults recollect autobiographical memories of negative events so as to minimize unpleasant emotions to a greater extent than do younger adults. A sample of healthy older adults (N = 126) and younger adults (N = 119) completed the Autobiographical Memory Questionnaire and a measure of PTSD symptoms in response to their most negative recalled event. Results supported the hypothesis that older adults rated their negative memories as having: 1) less of a sense of traveling back to the time the event occurred, 2) less associated visceral emotional reactions, 3) fewer associated negative emotions, and 4) fewer PTSD symptoms, all relative to younger adults. In addition, older adults exhibited higher ratings of belief in accuracy, higher ratings that the memory comes as a coherent story, and more associated positive emotions, again all relative to younger adults. After controlling for differences between the types of events younger and older adults reported and how long ago the event occurred, the above age differences remained statistically significant, though the effect sizes were attenuated in some cases. These results are consistent in their support for the positivity effect, and suggest that older adults modify their recollections of negative events in a manner that is emotionally adaptive for them.

Towards cross-lingual alerting for bursty epidemic events.

Science.gov (United States)

Collier, Nigel

2011-10-06

Online news reports are increasingly becoming a source for event-based early warning systems that detect natural disasters. Harnessing the massive volume of information available from multilingual newswire presents as many challanges as opportunities due to the patterns of reporting complex spatio-temporal events. In this article we study the problem of utilising correlated event reports across languages. We track the evolution of 16 disease outbreaks using 5 temporal aberration detection algorithms on text-mined events classified according to disease and outbreak country. Using ProMED reports as a silver standard, comparative analysis of news data for 13 languages over a 129 day trial period showed improved sensitivity, F1 and timeliness across most models using cross-lingual events. We report a detailed case study analysis for Cholera in Angola 2010 which highlights the challenges faced in correlating news events with the silver standard. The results show that automated health surveillance using multilingual text mining has the potential to turn low value news into high value alerts if informed choices are used to govern the selection of models and data sources. An implementation of the C2 alerting algorithm using multilingual news is available at the BioCaster portal http://born.nii.ac.jp/?page=globalroundup.

Towards cross-lingual alerting for bursty epidemic events

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Collier Nigel

2011-10-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Online news reports are increasingly becoming a source for event-based early warning systems that detect natural disasters. Harnessing the massive volume of information available from multilingual newswire presents as many challanges as opportunities due to the patterns of reporting complex spatio-temporal events. Results In this article we study the problem of utilising correlated event reports across languages. We track the evolution of 16 disease outbreaks using 5 temporal aberration detection algorithms on text-mined events classified according to disease and outbreak country. Using ProMED reports as a silver standard, comparative analysis of news data for 13 languages over a 129 day trial period showed improved sensitivity, F1 and timeliness across most models using cross-lingual events. We report a detailed case study analysis for Cholera in Angola 2010 which highlights the challenges faced in correlating news events with the silver standard. Conclusions The results show that automated health surveillance using multilingual text mining has the potential to turn low value news into high value alerts if informed choices are used to govern the selection of models and data sources. An implementation of the C2 alerting algorithm using multilingual news is available at the BioCaster portal http://born.nii.ac.jp/?page=globalroundup.

Inferences from a community study about non-epileptic events

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Gomes Marleide da Mota

2002-01-01

Full Text Available OBJECTIVE: To demonstrate the epidemiological importance of the different types of non-epileptic events (NEE in a low-income urban community. METHOD: The patients suspected of having epilepsy, who were detected in the first phase (screening one of this prevalence study, were interviewed by a neurologist in a non-structured neurological interview. These NEE were classified as physiological and psychogenic, subdivided by various types. The psychogenic NEE were classified according to the DSM-IV criteria. RESULTS: We compared the cases suspected of having epilepsy (n=176 with those not suspected (n=806 and discovered that those cases suspected of having epilepsy had a greater median age (<0.01 and female predominance (p<0.01. Among the cases suspected of having epilepsy there were different diagnosis: epileptic events without identifiable cause (n=20 or with identifiable causes (e.g., febrile convulsions and eclampsia. The most prevalent diagnosis for those suspected of having epilepsy was syncope (n=63; 35.8%. In terms of physiological events, the most frequent were: epileptic seizures, paroxysmal toxic phenomena (including alcoholism and brain trauma, besides syncope; in terms of psychogenic events the most frequent were: dissociative and anxiety disorders. Regarding gender differences, paroxysmal toxic problems were significantly more prevalent in men (p= 0.02, and dissociative disorders (p=0.01 in women. CONCLUSION: This survey confirms the epidemiological importance of syncope in a populational sample with NEE. However, among the psychogenic disorders of this NEE sample, the most frequent were dissociative and anxiety phenomena. This finding contrasts with the literature based on samples from tertiary epileptic centers with video-EEG resources, which found somatoform disorders to be more prevalent than dissociative and anxiety phenomena.

The Impact of the Financial Crisis on Business Events at Natural Spas – The Slovenian Case

OpenAIRE

Janez Mekinc; Maša Budnar Radilovic; Boštjan Bizjak

2012-01-01

To determine the impact of the economic downturn that officially hit Slovenia in 2009 on the number, purpose, type and budgets of business events held at Slovenian natural spas. The study’s aim is to develop guidelines in the field of business events management at Slovenian natural spas. The research was carried out among key representatives from Slovenian natural spas who play an active role in managing events. Data were via a questionnaire that collected information about the purpose, numbe...

7. april 2005 inter-departmental directive on the actions of public authority in case of event leading to an emergency radiological situation (1)

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

2005-01-01

This directive concerns the management of a nuclear crisis. A correct information of Public Authorities is necessary at every level in order that actions to be lead can be in agreement with the situation. The protection of person, possessions and environment is the priority objective of Publics Authorities. This imperative is taken into account by the modalities exposed in the present directive, that determines the frame of the Public Authorities organization as well as the arrangements to take by Authorities in case of nuclear event. (N.C.)

Removing cosmic rays and other randomly positioned spurious events from CCD images by taking the lesser image -statistical theory for the general case

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kay, L.

1992-01-01

If two optical images of the same scene are obtained using a charged-coupled device (CCD), a third image (called the lesser image) may be formed in computer memory by taking the lesser of the two counts in each pixel. The process may be used to remove, or greatly reduce, the effect of spurious events such as cosmic rays. A complete statistical theory of the lesser image is given for the general case, thereby facilitating recovery of the true image from the lesser image. (author)

Adverse drug events associated with vitamin K antagonists: factors of therapeutic imbalance

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

El-Helou N

2013-03-01

Full Text Available Nancy El-Helou, Amal Al-Hajje, Rola Ajrouche, Sanaa Awada, Samar Rachidi, Salam Zein, Pascale SalamehClinical and Epidemiological Research Laboratory, Faculty of Pharmacy, Lebanese University, Beirut, LebanonBackground: Adverse drug events (ADE occur frequently during treatment with vitamin K antagonists (AVK and contribute to increase hemorrhagic risks.Methods: A retrospective study was conducted over a period of 2 years. Patients treated with AVK and admitted to the emergency room of a tertiary care hospital in Beirut were included. The aim of the study was to identify ADE characterized by a high international normalized ratio (INR and to determine the predictive factors responsible for these events. Statistical analysis was performed with the SPSS statistical package.Results: We included 148 patients. Sixty-seven patients (47.3% with an INR above the therapeutic range were identified as cases. The control group consisted of 81 patients (54.7% with an INR within the therapeutic range. Hemorrhagic complications were observed in 53.7% of cases versus 6.2% of controls (P < 0.0001. No significant difference was noticed between cases and controls regarding the indication and the dose of AVK. Patients aged over 75 years were more likely to present an INR above the therapeutic range (58.2%, P = 0.049. Recent infection was present in 40.3% of cases versus 6.2% of controls (P < 0.0001 and hypoalbuminemia in 37.3% of cases versus 6.1% of controls (P < 0.0001. Treatment with antibiotics, amiodarone, and anti-inflammatory drugs were also factors of imbalance (P < 0.0001.Conclusion: Many factors may be associated with ADE related to AVK. Monitoring of INR and its stabilization in the therapeutic range are important for preventing these events.Keywords: adverse drug events, vitamin K antagonists, bleeding risks, therapeutic imbalance

Estimate of neutrons event-by-event in DREAM

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hauptman, John

2009-01-01

We have measured the contribution of neutrons to hadronic showers in the DREAM module event-by-event as a means to estimate the event-by-event fluctuations in binding energy losses by hadrons as they break up nuclei of the Cu absorber. We make a preliminary assessment of the consequences for hadronic energy resolution in dual-readout calorimeters.

Cosmological event horizons, thermodynamics, and particle creation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Gibbons, G.W.; Hawking, S.W.

1977-01-01

It is shown that the close connection between event horizons and thermodynamics which has been found in the case of black holes can be extended to cosmological models with a repulsive cosmological constant. An observer in these models will have an event horizon whose area can be interpreted as the entropy or lack of information of the observer about the regions which he cannot see. Associated with the event horizon is a surface gravity kappa which enters a classical ''first law of event horizons'' in a manner similar to that in which temperature occurs in the first law of thermodynamics. It is shown that this similarity is more than an analogy: An observer with a particle detector will indeed observe a background of thermal radiation coming apparently from the cosmological event horizon. If the observer absorbs some of this radiation, he will gain energy and entropy at the expense of the region beyond his ken and the event horizon will shrink. The derivation of these results involves abandoning the idea that particles should be defined in an observer-independent manner. They also suggest that one has to use something like the Everett-Wheeler interpretation of quantum mechanics because the back reaction and hence the spacetime metric itself appear to be observer-dependent, if one assumes, as seems reasonable, that the detection of a particle is accompanied by a change in the gravitational field

Flash floods and debris flow: how the risk could can be better managed? The case of the events in Sicily on October 2009

Science.gov (United States)

Aronica, Giuseppe T.; Brigandi', Giuseppina

2010-05-01

Flash floods are phenomena in which the important hydrologic processes are occurring on the same spatial and temporal scales as the intense precipitation. Most of the catchments of the Messina area in the North-East part of Sicily (Italy), are prone to flash flood formation. They are, in fact, small, with a steep slope, and characterised by short concentration times. Moreover, those catchments are predominantly rural in the upper mountainous part, while the areas next to the outlet are highly urbanized with areas that cover not only the floodplain but also the river bed itself as the main roads were previously part of the torrent. This situation involve an high risk of economic losses and human life in case of flash flood in these areas. In the last years the area around Messina has been interested by severe flash floods and debris flow. The events occurred on 25th October 2007 in the Mastroguglielmo torrent and 1st October 2009 on Racinazzi and Gianpilieri torrents are an example of flash floods and debris flow events that caused not only significant economic damages to property, buildings, roads and bridges but also, for this that concern the 1st October 2009 flash flood, loss of human life. The main focus of this work is, basing on the post event analysis of the 2009 flash flood event, to try to understand which could be the better preventive measures and mitigation strategies that can be provided for a better risk management in these areas too many times affected by devastating events. Flood management can be controlled by either structural or non-structural measures. Adoption of a certain measure depends critically on the hydrological and hydraulic characteristics of the river system and the region. Flash flood management includes a number of phases that should be included in any management strategy like prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery. Forecasting based on hydrological precursors based on the soil moisture condition at the

Manufacturing plant performance evaluation by discrete event simulation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Rosli Darmawan; Mohd Rasid Osman; Rosnah Mohd Yusuff; Napsiah Ismail; Zulkiflie Leman

2002-01-01

A case study was conducted to evaluate the performance of a manufacturing plant using discrete event simulation technique. The study was carried out on animal feed production plant. Sterifeed plant at Malaysian Institute for Nuclear Technology Research (MINT), Selangor, Malaysia. The plant was modelled base on the actual manufacturing activities recorded by the operators. The simulation was carried out using a discrete event simulation software. The model was validated by comparing the simulation results with the actual operational data of the plant. The simulation results show some weaknesses with the current plant design and proposals were made to improve the plant performance. (Author)

Immunological and cardiometabolic risk factors in the prediction of type 2 diabetes and coronary events: MONICA/KORA Augsburg case-cohort study.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Christian Herder

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: This study compares inflammation-related biomarkers with established cardiometabolic risk factors in the prediction of incident type 2 diabetes and incident coronary events in a prospective case-cohort study within the population-based MONICA/KORA Augsburg cohort. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Analyses for type 2 diabetes are based on 436 individuals with and 1410 individuals without incident diabetes. Analyses for coronary events are based on 314 individuals with and 1659 individuals without incident coronary events. Mean follow-up times were almost 11 years. Areas under the receiver-operating characteristic curve (AUC, changes in Akaike's information criterion (ΔAIC, integrated discrimination improvement (IDI and net reclassification index (NRI were calculated for different models. A basic model consisting of age, sex and survey predicted type 2 diabetes with an AUC of 0.690. Addition of 13 inflammation-related biomarkers (CRP, IL-6, IL-18, MIF, MCP-1/CCL2, IL-8/CXCL8, IP-10/CXCL10, adiponectin, leptin, RANTES/CCL5, TGF-β1, sE-selectin, sICAM-1; all measured in nonfasting serum increased the AUC to 0.801, whereas addition of cardiometabolic risk factors (BMI, systolic blood pressure, ratio total/HDL-cholesterol, smoking, alcohol, physical activity, parental diabetes increased the AUC to 0.803 (ΔAUC [95% CI] 0.111 [0.092-0.149] and 0.113 [0.093-0.149], respectively, compared to the basic model. The combination of all inflammation-related biomarkers and cardiometabolic risk factors yielded a further increase in AUC to 0.847 (ΔAUC [95% CI] 0.044 [0.028-0.066] compared to the cardiometabolic risk model. Corresponding AUCs for incident coronary events were 0.807, 0.825 (ΔAUC [95% CI] 0.018 [0.013-0.038] compared to the basic model, 0.845 (ΔAUC [95% CI] 0.038 [0.028-0.059] compared to the basic model and 0.851 (ΔAUC [95% CI] 0.006 [0.003-0.021] compared to the cardiometabolic risk model, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Inclusion of multiple

Control Rod Withdrawal Events Analyses for the Prototype Gen-IV SFR

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Choi, Chiwoong; Ha, Kwiseo; Jeong, Taekyeong; Jeong, Jaeho; Chang, Wonpyo; Lee, Seungwon; An, Sangjun; Lee, Kwilim [Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, Daejeon (Korea, Republic of)

2016-10-15

To confirm the limiting condition, based on the maximum allowable reactivity insertion of 0.3 $, three cases from the end of cycle (EOC) are selected. In addition, assuming the failure of CRSS by earthquake, additional cases is defined at beginning of cycle (BOC). When the CRW occurs, the reactor can be protected by plant protection system (PPS). In this study, PPS mechanism is sequentially studied for all initiating events. For design basis accidents (DBA), the reactor can be scrammed by reactor protection system (RPS). The first and seconds RPS signals are checked during transients. When RPS is failed, so called as anticipated transient without scram (ATWS), the reactor will be protected by diverse protection system (DPS). In this study, in order to analyze various initiating events related control rod withdrawal, four kinds of operating condition is defined. TOP events are analyzed using MARS-LMR. The influence of various plant protection system such as RPS and DPS are investigated.

On the Role of Ionospheric Ions in Sawtooth Events

Science.gov (United States)

Lund, E. J.; Nowrouzi, N.; Kistler, L. M.; Cai, X.; Frey, H. U.

2018-01-01

Simulations have suggested that feedback of heavy ions originating in the ionosphere is an important mechanism for driving sawtooth injections. However, this feedback may only be necessary for events driven by coronal mass ejections (CMEs), whereas in events driven by streaming interaction regions (SIRs), solar wind variability may suffice to drive these injections. Here we present case studies of two sawtooth events for which in situ data are available in both the magnetotail (Cluster) and the nightside auroral region (FAST), as well as global auroral images (IMAGE). One event, on 1 October 2001, was driven by a CME; the other, on 24 October 2002, was driven by an SIR. The available data do not support the hypothesis that heavy ion feedback is necessary to drive either event. This result is consistent with simulations of the SIR-driven event but disagrees with simulation results for a different CME-driven event. We also find that in an overwhelming majority of the sawtooth injections for which Cluster tail data are available, the O+ observed in the tail comes from the cusp rather than the nightside auroral region, which further casts doubt on the hypothesis that ionospheric heavy ion feedback is the cause of sawtooth injections.

Event Investigation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Korosec, D.

2000-01-01

The events in the nuclear industry are investigated from the license point of view and from the regulatory side too. It is well known the importance of the event investigation. One of the main goals of such investigation is to prevent the circumstances leading to the event and the consequences of the event. The protection of the nuclear workers against nuclear hazard, and the protection of general public against dangerous effects of an event could be achieved by systematic approach to the event investigation. Both, the nuclear safety regulatory body and the licensee shall ensure that operational significant events are investigated in a systematic and technically sound manner to gather information pertaining to the probable causes of the event. One of the results should be appropriate feedback regarding the lessons of the experience to the regulatory body, nuclear industry and general public. In the present paper a general description of systematic approach to the event investigation is presented. The systematic approach to the event investigation works best where cooperation is present among the different divisions of the nuclear facility or regulatory body. By involving management and supervisors the safety office can usually improve their efforts in the whole process. The end result shall be a program which serves to prevent events and reduce the time and efforts solving the root cause which initiated each event. Selection of the proper method for the investigation and an adequate review of the findings and conclusions lead to the higher level of the overall nuclear safety. (author)

Implementing a structured triage system at a community health ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Implementing a structured triage system at a community health centre using Kaizen. ... and a resultant increased workload for doctors; management is concerned ... Aim: We set out to standardise the triage process and to manage unbooked ...

Microprocessor event analysis in parallel with CAMAC data acquisition

CERN Document Server

Cords, D; Riege, H

1981-01-01

The Plessey MIPROC-16 microprocessor (16 bits, 250 ns execution time) has been connected to a CAMAC System (GEC-ELLIOTT System Crate) and shares the CAMAC access with a Nord-10S computer. Interfaces have been designed and tested for execution of CAMAC cycles, communication with the Nord-10S computer and DMA-transfer from CAMAC to the MIPROC-16 memory. The system is used in the JADE data-acquisition-system at PETRA where it receives the data from the detector in parallel with the Nord-10S computer via DMA through the indirect-data-channel mode. The microprocessor performs an on-line analysis of events and the results of various checks is appended to the event. In case of spurious triggers or clear beam gas events, the Nord-10S buffer will be reset and the event omitted from further processing. (5 refs).

Recurring events, and the Possible Need to Reinforce Operating Experience Feedback Programs

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ross, Denwood

1999-09-01

A nuclear power plant is designed for a spectrum of incidents and accidents, ranging from a reactor trip without other complications to more serious events such as pipe ruptures. Certain portions of the plant are designed for even more significant events such as severe accidents. Several thousand reactor years of experience have been recorded and many postulated events have in fact occurred. In some instances the same or similar event has occurred more than once within a single country or among several nations. Such cases are referred to as recurring events. One way to reduce the likelihood, or severity (or both) of recurrence is to maintain and utilize a system for reporting of events, both at the national and the international levels. The international system is referred as the Incident Reporting System. Events to be reported to IRS include: - The event itself is serious or important in terms of safety due to an actual or potential reduction in the plant's defense in depth; - The event reveals important lessons learned that will help the international community to prevent its recurrence as a safety significant event under aggravated conditions or to avoid the occurrence of a serious or important event in terms of safety; - The event is a repetition of a similar event previously reported to IRS, but highlights new important lessons learned for the international community. National systems for reporting of events vary in scope; there is guidance on systems for feedback of experience from events in nuclear power plants. Further, the Nuclear Safety Convention, Article 19 - Operation - provides (section vii) that each Contracting Party shall take the appropriate steps to ensure that 'programmes to collect and analyse operating experience are established, the results obtained and the conclusions drawn are acted upon and that existing mechanisms are used to share important experience with international bodies and with other operating organizations and regulatory bodies

How to Take HRMS Process Management to the Next Level with Workflow Business Event System

Science.gov (United States)

Rajeshuni, Sarala; Yagubian, Aram; Kunamaneni, Krishna

2006-01-01

Oracle Workflow with the Business Event System offers a complete process management solution for enterprises to manage business processes cost-effectively. Using Workflow event messaging, event subscriptions, AQ Servlet and advanced queuing technologies, this presentation will demonstrate the step-by-step design and implementation of system solutions in order to integrate two dissimilar systems and establish communication remotely. As a case study, the presentation walks you through the process of propagating organization name changes in other applications that originated from the HRMS module without changing applications code. The solution can be applied to your particular business cases for streamlining or modifying business processes across Oracle and non-Oracle applications.

SLOW SLIP EVENTS: PARAMETERS, CONDITIONS OF OCCURRENCE, AND FUTURE RESEARCH PROSPECTS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

G. G. Kocharyan

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Slow slip events along faults and fractures are reviewed. Such inter-block displacements can be recorded at various scale levels and considered as transitional from quasi-stable (creep to dynamic slip (earthquake. Such events include seismogenic slip along faults at velocities by one to three orders lower than those in case of 'normal' earthquakes, as well as aseismic slip cases. Discovering such events facilitates better understanding of how energy accumulated during deformation of the crust is released.Studying conditions and the evolution of transitional regimes can provide new important information on the structure and regularities of deformation in fault zones.Data from latest publications by different authors are consolidated, and the data analysis results are presented. Over 170 slow slip events are reviewed. Based on the consolidated data and modelling results obtained by the authors, relationships between parameters of the reviewed process are established, scale relations between the events are considered, and a first-approximation analysis is conducted for impacts of geomaterial characteristics on various deformation regimes.Low-frequency earthquake foci and slow slip sites are most typically located in zones of transition from stable creep areas to seismogenic segments of the discontinuity (Fig. 3 It can be logically supposed that in such transitional zones, the interface has specific frictional properties providing for a regime that can be termed as 'conditionally stable slip'.The duration of slow deformation events is roughly proportional to the released seismic moment, while such a ratio is close to self-similarity in case of 'normal' earthquakes (Fig. 4. In case of slow slip, an area of the displaced section is larger by many factors than the corresponding value for an earthquake with the same seismic moment, while an average displacement amplitude along the fault is significantly smaller (Figures 5 and 6. Velocities of slip

An Examination of Three Spatial Event Cluster Detection Methods

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hensley H. Mariathas

2015-03-01

Full Text Available In spatial disease surveillance, geographic areas with large numbers of disease cases are to be identified, so that targeted investigations can be pursued. Geographic areas with high disease rates are called disease clusters and statistical cluster detection tests are used to identify geographic areas with higher disease rates than expected by chance alone. In some situations, disease-related events rather than individuals are of interest for geographical surveillance, and methods to detect clusters of disease-related events are called event cluster detection methods. In this paper, we examine three distributional assumptions for the events in cluster detection: compound Poisson, approximate normal and multiple hypergeometric (exact. The methods differ on the choice of distributional assumption for the potentially multiple correlated events per individual. The methods are illustrated on emergency department (ED presentations by children and youth (age < 18 years because of substance use in the province of Alberta, Canada, during 1 April 2007, to 31 March 2008. Simulation studies are conducted to investigate Type I error and the power of the clustering methods.

Insight into 144 patients with ocular vascular events during VEGF antagonist injections

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Shami M

2012-03-01

Full Text Available Ahmad M Mansour1, Maha Shahin2, Peter K Kofoed3, Maurizio B Parodi4, Michel Shami5, Stephen G Schwartz6, Collaborative Anti-VEGF Ocular Vascular Complications GroupDepartment of Ophthalmology, 1American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon, Rafic Hariri University Hospital, Beirut, Lebanon; 2Mansoura University, Mansoura City, Egypt; 3Glostrup Hospital, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, National Eye Clinic, Kennedy Center, Glostrup, Denmark; 4University Vita-Salute, Scientific Institute San Raffaele, Milan, Italy; 5Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, Lubbock, TX, USA; 6Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Naples and Miami, FL, USAAim: To record ocular vascular events following injections of vascular endothelium growth factor (VEGF antagonists.Methods: Collaborative multicenter case series (48 cases, literature reviews (32 cases, and reports to the FDA (64 cases of patients that had vascular occlusions during anti-VEGF therapy were collected and analyzed.Results: A total of 144 cases of ocular vascular events were identified, with these diagnosed a median of 15 days after anti-VEGF injection. The majority of patients had pre-existing risk factors for cardiovascular events and nine patients had a prior history of glaucoma. Mean visual acuity dropped by 6.4 lines with severe visual loss after injection to NLP (five eyes, LP (six eyes, and HM (two eyes. The overall risk of ocular vascular events following a VEGF antagonist injection was 0.108% in the general population and 2.61% in the diabetic population. Mean retinal arterial constriction after intravitreal bevacizumab in 13 eyes was 21% (standard deviation = 27%, and mean retinal venous constriction was 8% (standard deviation = 30%.Conclusion: Ocular vascular events are rare during anti-VEGF therapy, but can lead to severe visual loss and may be caused by a number of factors including the vasoconstrictor effect of the drug, a post-injection rise

Logistic Regression for Extremely Rare Events: The Case of School Shootings

OpenAIRE

Christian Westphal

2013-01-01

School shootings are often used in public policy debate as a justification for increased regulation, based on qualitative arguments. However, to date, no effort has been made to find valid quantitative evidence for the claims bolstering the regulation recommendations. In defense of this absence of evidence, it is usually argued that the rarity of such events does not allow the employment of quantitative methods. This paper, using a simulation study, shows that, based on the number of shool sh...

Statin-associated muscular and renal adverse events: data mining of the public version of the FDA adverse event reporting system.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Toshiyuki Sakaeda

Full Text Available OBJECTIVE: Adverse event reports (AERs submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA were reviewed to assess the muscular and renal adverse events induced by the administration of 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A (HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors (statins and to attempt to determine the rank-order of the association. METHODS: After a revision of arbitrary drug names and the deletion of duplicated submissions, AERs involving pravastatin, simvastatin, atorvastatin, or rosuvastatin were analyzed. Authorized pharmacovigilance tools were used for quantitative detection of signals, i.e., drug-associated adverse events, including the proportional reporting ratio, the reporting odds ratio, the information component given by a Bayesian confidence propagation neural network, and the empirical Bayes geometric mean. Myalgia, rhabdomyolysis and an increase in creatine phosphokinase level were focused on as the muscular adverse events, and acute renal failure, non-acute renal failure, and an increase in blood creatinine level as the renal adverse events. RESULTS: Based on 1,644,220 AERs from 2004 to 2009, signals were detected for 4 statins with respect to myalgia, rhabdomyolysis, and an increase in creatine phosphokinase level, but these signals were stronger for rosuvastatin than pravastatin and atorvastatin. Signals were also detected for acute renal failure, though in the case of atorvastatin, the association was marginal, and furthermore, a signal was not detected for non-acute renal failure or for an increase in blood creatinine level. CONCLUSIONS: Data mining of the FDA's adverse event reporting system, AERS, is useful for examining statin-associated muscular and renal adverse events. The data strongly suggest the necessity of well-organized clinical studies with respect to statin-associated adverse events.

Statin-associated muscular and renal adverse events: data mining of the public version of the FDA adverse event reporting system.

Science.gov (United States)

Sakaeda, Toshiyuki; Kadoyama, Kaori; Okuno, Yasushi

2011-01-01

Adverse event reports (AERs) submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) were reviewed to assess the muscular and renal adverse events induced by the administration of 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A (HMG-CoA) reductase inhibitors (statins) and to attempt to determine the rank-order of the association. After a revision of arbitrary drug names and the deletion of duplicated submissions, AERs involving pravastatin, simvastatin, atorvastatin, or rosuvastatin were analyzed. Authorized pharmacovigilance tools were used for quantitative detection of signals, i.e., drug-associated adverse events, including the proportional reporting ratio, the reporting odds ratio, the information component given by a Bayesian confidence propagation neural network, and the empirical Bayes geometric mean. Myalgia, rhabdomyolysis and an increase in creatine phosphokinase level were focused on as the muscular adverse events, and acute renal failure, non-acute renal failure, and an increase in blood creatinine level as the renal adverse events. Based on 1,644,220 AERs from 2004 to 2009, signals were detected for 4 statins with respect to myalgia, rhabdomyolysis, and an increase in creatine phosphokinase level, but these signals were stronger for rosuvastatin than pravastatin and atorvastatin. Signals were also detected for acute renal failure, though in the case of atorvastatin, the association was marginal, and furthermore, a signal was not detected for non-acute renal failure or for an increase in blood creatinine level. Data mining of the FDA's adverse event reporting system, AERS, is useful for examining statin-associated muscular and renal adverse events. The data strongly suggest the necessity of well-organized clinical studies with respect to statin-associated adverse events.

Improving the transition of care in patients transferred through the ochsner medical center transfer center.

Science.gov (United States)

Amedee, Ronald G; Maronge, Genevieve F; Pinsky, William W

2012-01-01

Patient transfers from other hospitals within the Ochsner Health System to the main campus are coordinated through a Transfer Center that was established in fall 2008. We analyzed the transfer process to assess distinct opportunities to enhance the overall transition of patient care. We surveyed internal medicine residents and nocturnists to determine their satisfaction with transfers in terms of safety, efficiency, and usefulness of information provided at the time of transfer. After a kaizen event at which complementary goals for the institution and members of the study team were recognized and implemented, we resurveyed the group to evaluate improvement in the transfer process. The preintervention average satisfaction score was 1.18 (SD=0.46), while the postintervention score was 3.7 (SD=1.01). A t test showed a significant difference in the average scores between the preintervention and postintervention surveys (Pkaizen event), data were collected that facilitated fewer and higher quality handoffs that were performed in less time. In addition, the process resulted in increased awareness of the value of resident participation in institutional quality improvement projects.

Využití event marketingu v marketingovém programu

OpenAIRE

Vančurová, Vendula

2009-01-01

The aim of bachelor work is to introduce the event marketing, defining its objectives and understanding of the substance. The first part deals with the theoretical perspectives on event marketing, its importance, role in the communications mix and its place among the four P. The second part looks at the experience of event marketing. As a case study presentation was chosen by INTERNET CZ, as, and its participation in the Forum Invex Forum in Brno. Part of this work are the results of a questi...

Serenoa repens (saw palmetto): a systematic review of adverse events.

Science.gov (United States)

Agbabiaka, Taofikat B; Pittler, Max H; Wider, Barbara; Ernst, Edzard

2009-01-01

Serenoa repens (W. Bartram) Small, also known as saw palmetto, is one of the most widely used herbal preparations for the treatment of lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) and benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). Although a number of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and systematic reviews of the efficacy of S. repens for the treatment of LUTS and BPH have been published, no systematic review on its drug interactions or adverse events currently exists. This review assesses all available human safety data of S. repens monopreparations. Systematic literature searches were conducted from date of inception to February 2008 in five electronic databases; reference lists and our departmental files were checked for further relevant publications. Information was requested from spontaneous reporting schemes of the WHO and national safety bodies. Twenty-four manufacturers/distributors of S. repens preparations and four herbalist organizations were contacted for additional information. No language restrictions were imposed. Only reports of adverse events in humans from monopreparations of S. repens were included. Data from all articles, regardless of study design, reporting adverse events or interactions were independently extracted by the first author and validated by the second. Forty articles (26 randomized controlled trials, 4 non-randomized controlled trials, 6 uncontrolled trials and 4 case reports/series) were included. They suggest that adverse events associated with the use of S. repens are mild and similar to those with placebo. The most frequently reported adverse events are abdominal pain, diarrhoea, nausea, fatigue, headache, decreased libido and rhinitis. More serious adverse events such as death and cerebral haemorrhage are reported in isolated case reports and data from spontaneous reporting schemes, but causality is questionable. No drug interactions were reported. Currently available data suggest that S. repens is well tolerated by most users and is not

External man-induced events on nuclear power plants

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Paganini, C.E.

1982-01-01

These notes for the postgraduate course on Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety deal with the effects produced by some human activities on the siting and design of a nuclear installation. The existing activities, as well as the foreseen or foreseeable future ones are evaluated. In the first place, the potential sources of events are identified and classified in two categories: stationary and mobile, and the events are classified in five groups: 1) Aircraft crash; 2) Chemical explosions; 3) Discharge of dangerous fluids (explosive, toxic or corrosive); 4) Fire, and 5) Sabotage, terrorism, guerrillas. Then, the effects which may result from these events and affect the nuclear installation are studied: 1) pressure waves; 2) Impact of missiles; 3) Heat, fire; 4) Smoke and dust; 5) Gas or inflammable and/or explosive dust clouds; 6) Toxic and/or corrosive gases and liquids; 7) Ground shaking; 8) Flooding or lack of water; 9) Foundations failure or collapse. Next, the methods for making a deterministic and/or a probabilistic study (or both) are indicated for each event considered, and from these studies the ''screening'' values which allow to determine if an event can be rejected or must be considered are established. For this second case, the method for obtaining the ''design event'' that shall serve as a basis for the design of the plant is indicated. (M.E.L.) [es

Cost–benefit analysis of sport events: The case of World Paddle Tour

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Héctor V. Jiménez-Naranjo

2016-09-01

Full Text Available Nowadays tourism is one of the most important sectors of our country, and no one has any doubt about importance of sport for the economy. Both concepts create “sports tourism”, and “sporting events” are its greatest exponent that is having special importance both at academic and at the economic and social levels. Taking into account the above, this research aims to analyze socioeconomic impact of the paddle tournament “Caceres International Open 2013”. The CBA methodology will be used; its main objective is to calculate a benefit/cost ratio analyzing the contribution made by two groups of respondents (attendees and participants. Among final conclusions of this study we establish different groups of stakeholders, and this methodology can be applied to these groups to value the impact of sporting events. It has also been found out that the contribution made by public institutions has economic effects in other sectors of the city; so sporting events can be considered a complement of the tourism sector.

Extended charged events and Chern-Simons couplings

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bunster, Claudio; Gomberoff, Andres; Henneaux, Marc

2011-01-01

In three spacetime dimensions, the world volume of a magnetic source is a single point, a magnetically charged event. It has been shown long ago that in three-dimensional spacetime, the Chern-Simons coupling is quantized, because the magnetic event emits an electric charge which must be quantized according to the standard Dirac rule. Recently, the concept of dynamical extended charged events has been introduced, and it has been argued that they should play as central a role as that played by particles or ordinary branes. In this article, we show that in the presence of a Chern-Simons coupling, a magnetically charged extended event emits an extended object, which geometrically is just like a Dirac string, but it is observable, obeys equations of motion, and may be electrically charged. We write a complete action principle which accounts for this effect. The action involves two Chern-Simons terms, one integrated over spacetime and the other integrated over the world volume of the submanifold that is the union of the Dirac world sheet and the history of the emitted physical object. By demanding that the total charge emitted by a composite extended magnetic event be quantized according to Dirac's rule, we find a quantization condition for the Chern-Simons coupling. For a 1-form electric potential in D=2n+1 spacetime dimensions, the composite event is formed by n elementary extended magnetic events separated in time such that the product of their transverse spaces, together with the time axis, is the entire spacetime. We show that the emitted electric charge is given by the integral of the (n-1)-th exterior power of the electromagnetic field strength over the last elementary event, or, equivalently, over an appropriate closed surface. The extension to more general p-form potentials and higher dimensions is also discussed. For the case D=11, p=3, our result for the quantization of the Chern-Simons coupling was obtained previously in the context of M theory, an agreement

Event-by-event fluctuations at SPS

CERN Document Server

Appelshauser, Harald; Adamova, D.; Agakichiev, G.; Belaga, V.; Braun-Munzinger, P.; Castillo, A.; Cherlin, A.; Damjanovic, S.; Dietel, T.; Dietrich, L.; Drees, A.; Esumi, S.I.; Filimonov, K.; Fomenko, K.; Fraenkel, Z.; Garabatos, C.; Glassel, P.; Hering, G.; Holeczek, J.; Kushpil, V.; Lenkeit, B.; Ludolphs, W.; Maas, A.; Marn, A.; Milosevic, J.; Milov, A.; Miskowiec, D.; Panebrattsev, Yu.; Petchenova, O.; Petracek, V.; Pfeiffer, A.; Rak, J.; Ravinovich, I.; Rehak, P.; Schmitz, W.; Schukraft, J.; Sedykh, S.; Shimansky, S.; Slvova, J.; Stachel, J.; Sumbera, M.; Tilsner, H.; Tserruya, Itzhak; Wessels, J.P.; Wienold, T.; Windelband, B.; Wurm, J.P.; Xie, W.; Yurevich, S.; Yurevich, V.; Appelshauser, Harald; Sako, Hiro

2005-01-01

Results on event-by-event fluctuations of the mean transverse momentum and net charge in Pb-Au collisions, measured by the CERES Collaboration at CERN-SPS, are presented. We discuss the centrality and beam energy dependence and compare our data to cascade calculations.

Trends in flash flood events versus convective precipitation in the Mediterranean region: The case of Catalonia

Science.gov (United States)

Llasat, Maria Carmen; Marcos, Raul; Turco, Marco; Gilabert, Joan; Llasat-Botija, Montserrat

2016-10-01

The aim of this paper is to analyse the potential relationship between flash flood events and convective precipitation in Catalonia, as well as any related trends. The paper starts with an overview of flash floods and their trends in the Mediterranean region, along with their associated factors, followed by the definition of, identification of, and trends in convective precipitation. After this introduction the paper focuses on the north-eastern Iberian Peninsula, for which there is a long-term precipitation series (since 1928) of 1-min precipitation from the Fabra Observatory, as well as a shorter (1996-2011) but more extensive precipitation series (43 rain gauges) of 5-min precipitation. Both series have been used to characterise the degree of convective contribution to rainfall, introducing the β parameter as the ratio between convective precipitation versus total precipitation in any period. Information about flood events was obtained from the INUNGAMA database (a flood database created by the GAMA team), with the aim of finding any potential links to convective precipitation. These flood data were gathered using information on damage where flood is treated as a multifactorial risk, and where any trend or anomaly might have been caused by one or more factors affecting hazard, vulnerability or exposure. Trend analysis has shown an increase in flash flood events. The fact that no trends were detected in terms of extreme values of precipitation on a daily scale, nor on the associated ETCCDI (Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices) extreme index, could point to an increase in vulnerability, an increase in exposure, or changes in land use. However, the summer increase in convective precipitation was concentrated in less torrential events, which could partially explain this positive trend in flash flood events. The β parameter has been also used to characterise the type of flood event according to the features of the precipitation. The highest values

The preventing recurrent vascular events and neurological worsening through intensive organized case-management (PREVENTION trial protocol [clinicaltrials.gov identifier: NCT00931788

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tsuyuki Ross

2010-04-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Survivors of transient ischemic attack (TIA or stroke are at high risk for recurrent vascular events and aggressive treatment of vascular risk factors can reduce this risk. However, vascular risk factors, especially hypertension and high cholesterol, are not managed optimally even in those patients seen in specialized clinics. This gap between the evidence for secondary prevention of stroke and the clinical reality leads to suboptimal patient outcomes. In this study, we will be testing a pharmacist case manager for delivery of stroke prevention services. We hypothesize this new structure will improve processes of care which in turn should lead to improved outcomes. Methods We will conduct a prospective, randomized, controlled open-label with blinded ascertainment of outcomes (PROBE trial. Treatment allocation will be concealed from the study personnel, and all outcomes will be collected in an independent and blinded manner by observers who have not been involved in the patient's clinical care or trial participation and who are masked to baseline measurements. Patients will be randomized to control or a pharmacist case manager treating vascular risk factors to guideline-recommended target levels. Eligible patients will include all adult patients seen at stroke prevention clinics in Edmonton, Alberta after an ischemic stroke or TIA who have uncontrolled hypertension (defined as systolic blood pressure (BP > 140 mm Hg or dyslipidemia (fasting LDL-cholesterol > 2.00 mmol/L and who are not cognitively impaired or institutionalized. The primary outcome will be the proportion of subjects who attain 'optimal BP and lipid control'(defined as systolic BP Conclusions Nearly one-quarter of those who survive a TIA or minor stroke suffer another vascular event within a year. If our intervention improves the provision of secondary prevention therapies in these patients, the clinical (and financial implications will be enormous.

Forecasting severe ice storms using numerical weather prediction: the March 2010 Newfoundland event

OpenAIRE

J. Hosek; P. Musilek; E. Lozowski; P. Pytlak

2011-01-01

The northeast coast of North America is frequently hit by severe ice storms. These freezing rain events can produce large ice accretions that damage structures, frequently power transmission and distribution infrastructure. For this reason, it is highly desirable to model and forecast such icing events, so that the consequent damages can be prevented or mitigated. The case study presented in this paper focuses on the March 2010 ice storm event that took place in eastern Newfoundland. We apply...

University Response to Crisis Events Involving International Populations: The Case of Seven Directors of International Offices

Science.gov (United States)

Andrews, James P.

2012-01-01

This qualitative research study focuses on crisis events affecting university international populations. It explores how seven directors of university international offices at seven different geographical locations in Texas respond to those events. The study findings shed light on the current state of crisis preparedness in higher education from…

Containment closure time following the loss of shutdown cooling event of YGN Units 3 and 4

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Seul, Kwang Won; Bang, Young Seok; Kim, Hho Jung

1999-01-01

The YGN Units 3 and 4 plant conditions during shutdown operation were reviewed to identify the possible event scenarios following the loss of shutdown cooling (SDC) event. For the five cases of typical reactor coolant system (RCS) configurations under the worst event sequence, such as unavailable secondary cooling and no RCS inventory makeup, the thermal hydraulic analyses were performed using the RELAP5/MOS3.2 code to investigate the plant behavior following the event. The thermal hydraulic analyses include the estimation of time to boil, time to core uncovery, and time to core heat up to determine the containment closure time to prevent the uncontrolled release of fission products to atmosphere. The result indicates that the containment closure is recommended to be achieved within 42 minutes after the loss of SDC for the steam generator (SG) inlet plenum manway open case or the large cold leg open case under the worst event sequence. The containment closure time is significantly dependent on the elevation and size of the opening and the SG secondary water level condition. It is also found that the containment closure needs to be initiated before the boiling time to ensure the survivability of the workers in the containment. These results will provide using information to operators to cope with the loss of SDC event. (Author). 15 refs., 3 tabs., 7 figs

Event Displays for the Visualization of CMS Events

CERN Document Server

Jones, Christopher Duncan

2010-01-01

During the last year the CMS experiment engaged in consolidation of its existing event display programs. The core of the new system is based on the Fireworks event display program which was by-design directly integrated with the CMS Event Data Model (EDM) and the light version of the software framework (FWLite). The Event Visualization Environment (EVE) of the ROOT framework is used to manage a consistent set of 3D and 2D views, selection, user-feedback and user-interaction with the graphics windows; several EVE components were developed by CMS in collaboration with the ROOT project. In event display operation simple plugins are registered into the system to perform conversion from EDM collections into their visual representations which are then managed by the application. Full event navigation and filtering as well as collection-level filtering is supported. The same data-extraction principle can also be applied when Fireworks will eventually operate as a service within the full software framework.

Event Display for the Visualization of CMS Events

Science.gov (United States)

Bauerdick, L. A. T.; Eulisse, G.; Jones, C. D.; Kovalskyi, D.; McCauley, T.; Mrak Tadel, A.; Muelmenstaedt, J.; Osborne, I.; Tadel, M.; Tu, Y.; Yagil, A.

2011-12-01

During the last year the CMS experiment engaged in consolidation of its existing event display programs. The core of the new system is based on the Fireworks event display program which was by-design directly integrated with the CMS Event Data Model (EDM) and the light version of the software framework (FWLite). The Event Visualization Environment (EVE) of the ROOT framework is used to manage a consistent set of 3D and 2D views, selection, user-feedback and user-interaction with the graphics windows; several EVE components were developed by CMS in collaboration with the ROOT project. In event display operation simple plugins are registered into the system to perform conversion from EDM collections into their visual representations which are then managed by the application. Full event navigation and filtering as well as collection-level filtering is supported. The same data-extraction principle can also be applied when Fireworks will eventually operate as a service within the full software framework.

Event Display for the Visualization of CMS Events

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bauerdick, L A T; Eulisse, G; Jones, C D; McCauley, T; Osborne, I; Kovalskyi, D; Tadel, A Mrak; Muelmenstaedt, J; Tadel, M; Tu, Y; Yagil, A

2011-01-01

During the last year the CMS experiment engaged in consolidation of its existing event display programs. The core of the new system is based on the Fireworks event display program which was by-design directly integrated with the CMS Event Data Model (EDM) and the light version of the software framework (FWLite). The Event Visualization Environment (EVE) of the ROOT framework is used to manage a consistent set of 3D and 2D views, selection, user-feedback and user-interaction with the graphics windows; several EVE components were developed by CMS in collaboration with the ROOT project. In event display operation simple plugins are registered into the system to perform conversion from EDM collections into their visual representations which are then managed by the application. Full event navigation and filtering as well as collection-level filtering is supported. The same data-extraction principle can also be applied when Fireworks will eventually operate as a service within the full software framework.

A challenging case of invasive pulmonary aspergillosis after near-drowning: a case report and literature review.

Science.gov (United States)

Jenks, Jeffrey D; Preziosi, Michael

2015-09-01

Near-drowning, a relatively common event, is often complicated by subsequent pneumonia. While endogenous and exogenous bacteria are typical pathogens, rarely fungi are as well. We report a complicated case of invasive pulmonary aspergillosis in a 30-year-old man after a near-drowning event. We also review the medical literature for similar cases. All cases of invasive pulmonary aspergillosis after near-drowning reported in the literature involve Aspergillus fumigatus . The majority of cases involved submersion in stagnant water after a motor vehicle accident (MVA). Treatment varied considerably, with amphotericin B used in the majority of cases. Morbidity was considerable with prolonged hospitalization occurring in every case, and mortality occurring in fifty percent of the reported cases. Although a rare complication of near-drowning, invasive pulmonary aspergillosis can occur and lead to significant morbidity and mortality. After near-drowning A. fumigatus isolated from the respiratory tract should be assumed to be a true pathogen and treated accordingly.

Events and mega events: leisure and business in tourism

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ricardo Alexandre Paiva

2015-12-01

Full Text Available The promotion of events and mega events mobilizes at the same time, in a concatenated way or not, leisure and business practices, which are captured by the tourism industry as a stimulus for the reproduction of capitalism, by the amount of other activities which raise (primary, secondary and tertiary , placing the architecture and the city as protagonists in contemporary urban development. In this sense, the article analyzes the articulation of events and mega events to the provision of architecture and urban infrastructure, as well as the construction of the tourist image of the places, motivated by leisure and business activities. The methodological procedures have theoretical and exploratory character and have multidisciplinary intentions. This will be discussed, in a historical perspective, the concepts of leisure and business activities that raise as moving or traveling; next it will be delimited similarities and differences between tourism events and business tourism, entering after the analysis of the distinctions between events and mega events, highlighting the complexity and the role of mega-events as a major symptom of globalization; finally it will be presented the spatial scale developments in architecture and the city in the realization of (mega events, as well as its impact on the city's image. As a synthesis, it is important to notice that spatial developments business tourism, events and mega events are manifested in various scales and with different levels of complexity, revealing the strengths and / or weaknesses of the places. The urban planning, architecture and urbanism are important objects of knowledge and spatial intervention to ensure infrastructure and urban and architectural structures appropriate for events, which should be sensitive to the demands of tourists and host communities.

Stressful Life Events in Children With Functional Defecation Disorders

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Philips, Elise M.; Peeters, Babette; Teeuw, Arianne H.; Leenders, Arnold G. E.; Boluyt, Nicole; Brilleslijper-Kater, Sonja N.; Benninga, Marc A.

2015-01-01

The aim of the study was to determine the prevalence of stressful life events including (sexual) abuse in children with functional defecation disorders by performing a systematic review. We searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, and PsycINFO for cohort, case-control and cross-sectional studies investigating the

Promoting employee health by integrating health protection, health promotion, and continuous improvement: a longitudinal quasi-experimental intervention study.

Science.gov (United States)

von Thiele Schwarz, Ulrica; Augustsson, Hanna; Hasson, Henna; Stenfors-Hayes, Terese

2015-02-01

To test the effects of integrating health protection and health promotion with a continuous improvement system (Kaizen) on proximal employee outcomes (health promotion, integration, and Kaizen) and distal outcomes (workability, productivity, self-rated health and self-rated sickness absence). Twelve units in a county hospital in Sweden were randomized to control or intervention groups using a quasiexperimental study design. All staff (approximately 500) provided self-ratings in questionnaires at baseline, and a 12- and 24-month follow-up (response rate, 79% to 87.5%). There was a significant increase in the proximal outcomes over time in the intervention group compared with the control group, and a trend toward improvement in the distal outcomes workability and productivity. Integration seems to promote staff engagement in health protection and promotion, as well as to improve their understanding of the link between work and health.

Sequence Synopsis: Optimize Visual Summary of Temporal Event Data.