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Practices Used (practice + used)
Selected AbstractsMatched interface and boundary (MIB) method for the vibration analysis of platesINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR NUMERICAL METHODS IN BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING, Issue 9 2009S. N. Yu Abstract This paper proposes a novel approach, the matched interface and boundary (MIB) method, for the vibration analysis of rectangular plates with simply supported, clamped and free edges, and their arbitrary combinations. In previous work, the MIB method was developed for three-dimensional elliptic equations with arbitrarily complex material interfaces and geometric shapes. The present work generalizes the MIB method for eigenvalue problems in structural analysis with complex boundary conditions. The MIB method utilizes both uniform and non-uniform Cartesian grids. Fictitious values are utilized to facilitate the central finite difference schemes throughout the entire computational domain. Boundary conditions are enforced with fictitious values,a common practice used in the previous discrete singular convolution algorithm. An essential idea of the MIB method is to repeatedly use the boundary conditions to achieve arbitrarily high-order accuracy. A new feature in the proposed approach is the implementation of the cross derivatives in the free boundary conditions. The proposed method has a banded matrix. Nine different plates, particularly those with free edges and free corners, are employed to validate the proposed method. The performance of the proposed method is compared with that of other established methods. Convergence and comparison studies indicate that the proposed MIB method works very well for the vibration analysis of plates. In particular, modal bending moments and shear forces predicted by the proposed method vanish at boundaries for free edges. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] European best practice in blood transfusion: improvement of quality-related processes in blood establishmentsISBT SCIENCE SERIES: THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTRACELLULAR TRANSPORT, Issue 1 2007Christian Seidl Transfusion medicine is an expanding field comprising the interaction between several medical disciplines. Looking at the ,vein to vein process' covering the donation of blood by the voluntary donor up to the application of blood components to patients, modern blood transfusion services comprise a large variety of sociomedical functions. The production of standard cellular blood components, such as erythrocyte and thrombocyte concentrates, plasmatic blood components as well as special cellular components such as blood stem cells, mesenchymal cells or granulocytes will require an extensive laboratory testing repertoire to monitor product quality and safety. The European blood legislation has defined several key quality elements to achieve good manufacturing practice in the field of blood transfusion. In addition, GMP/GLP and ISO standards are used inter alia by blood establishments. Following the call for proposal in the field of public health by the European Commission, a consortium of blood establishments from 16 European member, acceding and EFTA states has been established in order to survey the individual quality management systems used by the participants and to developed guidelines for quality systems. These guidelines are aimed at assisting blood establishments in preparing for government inspections as required by Directive 2002/98/EC. They could also be used to adapt existing procedures to comply with current EU requirements and/or to prepare for accreditation and certification of these institutions. Major benefits from those quality management systems are (1) the definition of an overall quality policy, (2) improved personnel responsibility, qualification and training, (3) error and risk assessment system, (4) continuous improvement, (5) improved resource management, (6) performance improvement. The definition of cost,benefit relation between certification and accreditation of blood establishments will depend on the individual institution itself and the amount of processes covered. With the release of the new EU Directive 2005/62/EC, there are currently EU requirements available that describe in detail relevant processes to be covered by quality system following good practice used in blood establishments. A future challenge for transfusion medicine would be optimizing the synergetic effects expressed by the EU directive, GMP and ISO standards. [source] Case study: a maintenance practice used with real-time telecommunications softwareJOURNAL OF SOFTWARE MAINTENANCE AND EVOLUTION: RESEARCH AND PRACTICE, Issue 2 2001Miroslav Popovi Abstract In this paper we present a case study of the software maintenance practice that has been successfully applied to real-time distributed systems, which are installed and fully operational in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other cities across Russia. In this paper we concentrate on the software maintenance process, including customer request servicing, in-field error logging, role of information system, software deployment, and software quality policy, and especially the software quality prediction process. In this case study, the prediction process is shown to be integral and one of the most important parts of the software maintenance process. We include a software quality prediction procedure overview and an example of the actual practice. The quality of the new software update is predicted on the basis of the current update's quantity metrics data and quality data, and new update's quantity metrics data. For management, this forecast aids software maintenance efficiency, and cost reduction. For practitioners, the most useful result presented is the process for determining the value for the break point. We end this case study with five lessons learned. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Towards a New Logic for Front End Management: From Drug Discovery to Drug Design in Pharmaceutical R&DCREATIVITY AND INNOVATION MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2007Maria Elmquist Under pressure to innovate and be cost-effective at the same time, R&D departments are being challenged to develop new organizations and processes for Front End activities. This is especially true in the pharmaceutical industry. As drug development becomes more risky and costly, the discovery departments of pharmaceutical companies are increasingly being compelled to provide strong drug candidates for efficient development processes and quick market launches. It is argued that the Fuzzy Front End consists less of the discovery or recognition of opportunities than of the building of expanded concepts: the notion of concept generation is revisited, suggesting the need for a new logic for organizing Front End activities in order to support sustainable innovative product development. Based on an in-depth empirical study at a European pharmaceutical company, this paper contributes to improved understanding of the actual management practices used in the Front End. Using a design reasoning model (the C-K model), it also adds to the growing body of literature on the management of Front End activities in new product development processes. [source] Understanding and beliefs of diabetes in the UK Bangladeshi populationDIABETIC MEDICINE, Issue 6 2009S. M. Choudhury Abstract Aims, To examine the understanding and beliefs of people with diabetes from the Bangladeshi community living in the UK. Methods, Structured interviews were carried out with 14 people invited to a peer educational programme. All interviews were on a one-to-one basis and were in Sylheti or in English. Interviews were transcribed and analysed by two independent researchers. Results, The majority of participants did not know what caused diabetes. Knowledge of the management of diabetes was linked to controlling sugar intake and a number of participants reported eating bitter foods such as bitter gourd to control their diabetes. There was little access to information as many participants did not speak English and did not have a Bengali-speaking doctor. The majority of participants felt that education classes should teach them what the doctor thought was important and that these classes would best be advertised by word of mouth. Therefore, participants were quite passive about their own self management and relied very strongly on the doctor's views and recommendations. Conclusions, Findings from this study can be used to help health professionals working with Bangladeshi people. There is a need for improved information for Bangladeshi people and much of this information might need to come from health professionals. In addition, there is a need for increased awareness by health professionals of practices used by Bangladeshi people, such as eating bitter gourd (which may enhance the effects of rosiglitazone), and the influence these practices could have on the individual's diabetes management. [source] Metrics: HRM's Holy Grail?HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, Issue 4 2009A New Zealand case study What gets measured in business is noticed and acted on. The importance of human resource management (HRM) to be noticed as a vital key to business success has been argued profusely by the HRM profession over the last three decades. While the importance of human resource (HR) measurement is not disputed by business managers, the search for meaningful generic HR metrics is like HRM's Holy Grail. The purpose of this research is to investigate the issues confronting a sample of business organisations concerning measurement issues. It examines the current measurement practices used and their HR measurement needs. Developing appropriate HR measures, in terms of adding value, allows organisations to refocus their resources for leverage. Inappropriate measures simply encourage inappropriate behaviours not in the long-term interests of the business. We know that HRM is less prepared than other business functions (like finance or management information systems) to quantify its impact on business performance. Our results suggest that HR metrics as the Holy Grail of HRM remain elusive. This research signals the importance of developing relevant and meaningful HR measurement models, while acknowledging that the actual metrics used (unlike accounting measures) may vary from business to business. [source] ICOADS release 2.1 data and productsINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATOLOGY, Issue 7 2005Steven J. Worley Abstract The International Comprehensive Ocean,Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS), release 2.1 (1784,2002), is the largest available set of in situ marine observations. Observations from ships include instrument measurements and visual estimates, and data from moored and drifting buoys are exclusively instrumental. The ICOADS collection is constructed from many diverse data sources, and made inhomogeneous by the changes in observing systems and recording practices used throughout the period of record, which is over two centuries. Nevertheless, it is a key reference data set that documents the long-term environmental state, provides input to a variety of critical climate and other research applications, and serves as a basis for many associated products and analyses. The observational database is augmented with higher level ICOADS data products. The observed data are synthesized to products by computing statistical summaries, on a monthly basis, for samples within 2° latitude × 2° longitude and 1° × 1° boxes beginning in 1800 and 1960 respectively. For each resolution the summaries are computed using two different data mixtures and quality control criteria. This partially controls and contrasts the effects of changing observing systems and accounts for periods with greater climate variability. The ICOADS observations and products are freely distributed worldwide. The standard ICOADS release is supplemented in several ways; additional summaries are produced using experimental quality control, additional observations are made available in advance of their formal blending into a release, and metadata that define recent ships' physical characteristics and instruments are available. Copyright © 2005 Royal Meteorological Society [source] Graduate Recruitment and Selection in AustraliaINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SELECTION AND ASSESSMENT, Issue 2 2007Sally A. Carless Through a national survey of graduate recruitment coordinators, this study identified current recruitment and selection practices in Australia. Respondents (n=50) were mostly from private industry with about a third from the government sector, the full range of industry sectors was represented. Respondents were asked about the management of recruitment activities, methods used to communicate recruiting information, and the perceived accuracy of recruitment information. Information was also sought about the extent that job analyses were used, type of selection practices used, how applicant information was verified, the training and selection of interviewers and the effectiveness of recruitment activities. Descriptive statistics were used to provide a summary of the findings. A regression analysis was used to examine predictors of (a) recruiting effectiveness, (b) acceptance rates, and (c) unfilled vacancies. The results were compared with other studies of recruitment and selection. Future research and practical applications were discussed. [source] Training evaluation based on cases of Taiwanese benchmarked high-tech companiesINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT, Issue 1 2007Bella Ya Hui Lien Although the influence of workplace practices and employees' experiences with training effectiveness has received considerable attention, less is known of the influence of workplace practices on training evaluation methods. The purposes of this study were to: (1) explore and understand the training evaluation methods used by seven Taiwanese companies benchmarked for their excellence; and (2) compare Kirkpatrick's and Swanson's training evaluation models with practices used by the benchmarked Taiwanese organizations from a cross-cultural perspective. Five themes emerged from in-depth interviews, extending our understanding of training evaluation in the benchmarked Taiwanese organizations. [source] The European Union and e-learning: an examination of rhetoric, theory and practiceJOURNAL OF COMPUTER ASSISTED LEARNING, Issue 3 2002V.E. Hodgson Abstract The paper examines the impact that new technology has had upon the rhetoric, theory and practice of trans-national educational collaboration within Europe. The paper first looks very generally at the way e-learning has become a strong part of the educational rhetoric of the EU. Some of the different models found in the literature for describing online courses and teaching and learning approaches used within distance education are then described. These models, however, for the most part apply to courses that are offered by single generally specialist distance education providers. In contrast, the ODL/Minerva projects supported by the European Commission's Socrates programme are relatively unusual in that they have as a starting point a consortium of trans-national partners engaged in a common educational venture. Consequently, the second part of the looks at some of the models generated within the ODL action. This is followed by descriptions of the work of three ODL projects, each of which differ in orientation and approach. It is argued that the dimensions on which the three projects most significantly differ are not so much according to the models already described in the first part of the paper but is more related to their assumptions about how comparative knowledge is viewed and the kind of discourse from which knowledge and learning is generated and the dialogical practices used to support this. [source] Adult Generativity and the Socialization of Adolescents: Relations to Mothers' and Fathers' Parenting Beliefs, Styles, and PracticesJOURNAL OF PERSONALITY, Issue 1 2001Michael W. Pratt Mothers, fathers, and their adolescent children participated in two studies investigating the relations between Erikson's concept of generativity in adulthood and patterns of parenting. Study 1 involved 77 mothers and 48 fathers of 1st-year university students; Study 2 was part of an investigation of socialization processes in 35 families with an adolescent, aged 14,18. Parental generative concern was assessed by the Loyola Generativity Scale (LGS) of McAdams and de St. Aubin (1992) in each study. In both studies, mothers demonstrated positive relations between scores on the LGS and an authoritative style of parenting, as well as between generativity and more positive, optimistic views of adolescent developments. In Study 2, these more positive views in turn mediated some aspects of autonomy-fostering practices used with the adolescent. Variations in fathers' levels of generative concern were less consistently related to these indices of parenting, however. [source] Using software trails to reconstruct the evolution of softwareJOURNAL OF SOFTWARE MAINTENANCE AND EVOLUTION: RESEARCH AND PRACTICE, Issue 6 2004Daniel M. German Abstract This paper describes a method to recover the evolution of a software system using its software trails: information left behind by the contributors to the development process of the product, such as mailing lists, Web sites, version control logs, software releases, documentation, and the source code. This paper demonstrates the use of this method by recovering the evolution of Ximian Evolution, a mail client for Unix. By extracting useful facts stored in these software trails and correlating them, it was possible to provide a detailed view of the history of this project. This view provides interesting insight into how an open source software project evolves and some of the practices used by its software developers. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Preparing Professionals to Face Ethical Challenges in Today's Workplace: Review of the Literature, Implications for PI, and a Proposed Research AgendaPERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2004Deloise A. Frisque ABSTRACT Ethics is very much in the news today and on the minds of those who teach and/or train current and future professionals to work successfully in today's workplaces. While there seems to be agreement that organizations need to address the topic of ethics, there is also a concern about how best to proceed. Ethics and compliance offices, professional codes, ethics conferences, institutes, and centers, formal and informal ethics courses, and ethics hotlines are only some of the ways in which organizations have responded to the need for ethics preparedness. The diversity of our organizations and the global nature of our economy demands attention to multicultural/international issues as well. In this review, we examine the diverse body of literature research that explores teaching and training practices used to address ethical issues in corporations and institutions of higher education and include a special focus on multicultural environments. We discuss implications for PI professionals and propose a research agenda. [source] Survey on small animal anaesthesiaAUSTRALIAN VETERINARY JOURNAL, Issue 9 2001A NICHOLSON Objective To ascertain anaesthetic practices used currently for dogs and cats in Australia. Methods A questionnaire was distributed to 4800 veterinarians throughout Australia, seeking data on numbers of dogs and cats anaesthetised per week; drug preferences for anaesthetic premedication, induction and maintenance; use of tracheal intubation, supplemental O2, nitrous oxide and anaesthetic antagonists; and types of vaporisers, breathing systems and anaesthetic monitoring devices used or available. Additional questions concerned proportions of different animal types seen in the practice, and the respondent's university and year of graduation. Results The response rate was 19%; 95% of respondents graduated from Australian universities, about half since 1985. Most responses (79%) came from mainly small animal practices. On average 16 dogs and 12 cats were anaesthetised each week. Premedication was used more often in dogs than cats, with acepromazine and atropine most favoured in both species. For anaesthetic induction, thiopentone was most preferred in dogs and alphaxalone/alphadolone in cats. Inhaled agents, especially halothane, were preferred for maintenance in both species. Most respondents usually employed tracheal intubation when using inhalational anaesthetic maintenance, but intubation rates were lower during injectable anaesthetic maintenance and a minority of respondents provided supplemental O2. Nitrous oxide was administered regularly by 13% of respondents. The agents most frequently used to speed recovery from anaesthesia were doxapram and yohimbine. The most widely used vaporisers were the Fluotec Mark III and the Stephens machine. Most (95%) respondents used a rebreathing circuit for large dogs and a non-rebreathing system was used for small dogs by 68% of respondents. Most respondents (93%) indicated some form of aid was available to monitor general anaesthesia: the three most mentioned were an apnoea alarm, oesophageal stethoscope and electrocardiogram. Conclusion Diverse approaches were evident, but there appeared to be less variation in anaesthetising dogs: premedication was more frequent and less varied in type, while thiobarbituates dominated for induction and inhalants for maintenance. Injectable maintenance techniques had substantial use in cats, but little in dogs. Evident disparity between vaporisers available and circuits used suggested either confusion in terminology or incorrect use of some vaporisers in-circuit. While most respondents used monitoring equipment or a dedicated observer to invigilate anaesthesia, the common reliance on apnoea alarms is of concern, because of unproven reliability and accuracy. [source] Early Contact versus Separation: Effects on Mother,Infant Interaction One Year LaterBIRTH, Issue 2 2009Ksenia Bystrova MD ABSTRACT: Background: A tradition of separation of the mother and baby after birth still persists in many parts of the world, including some parts of Russia, and often is combined with swaddling of the baby. The aim of this study was to evaluate and compare possible long-term effects on mother-infant interaction of practices used in the delivery and maternity wards, including practices relating to mother-infant closeness versus separation.Methods:A total of 176 mother-infant pairs were randomized into four experimental groups: Group I infants were placed skin-to-skin with their mothers after birth, and had rooming-in while in the maternity ward. Group II infants were dressed and placed in their mothers' arms after birth, and roomed-in with their mothers in the maternity ward. Group III infants were kept in the nursery both after birth and while their mothers were in the maternity ward. Group IV infants were kept in the nursery after birth, but roomed-in with their mothers in the maternity ward. Equal numbers of infants were either swaddled or dressed in baby clothes. Episodes of early suckling in the delivery ward were noted. The mother-infant interaction was videotaped according to the Parent-Child Early Relational Assessment (PCERA) 1 year after birth.Results:The practice of skin-to-skin contact, early suckling, or both during the first 2 hours after birth when compared with separation between the mothers and their infants positively affected the PCERA variables maternal sensitivity, infant's self-regulation, and dyadic mutuality and reciprocity at 1 year after birth. The negative effect of a 2-hour separation after birth was not compensated for by the practice of rooming-in. These findings support the presence of a period after birth (the early "sensitive period") during which close contact between mother and infant may induce long-term positive effect on mother-infant interaction. In addition, swaddling of the infant was found to decrease the mother's responsiveness to the infant, her ability for positive affective involvement with the infant, and the mutuality and reciprocity in the dyad.Conclusions:Skin-to-skin contact, for 25 to 120 minutes after birth, early suckling, or both positively influenced mother-infant interaction 1 year later when compared with routines involving separation of mother and infant. [source] | |||||||||||||