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Low Performance (low + performance)
Selected AbstractsExpertise Research Methodology: Identifying Differences and Factors Influencing High and Low PerformancePERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2001Michael A. Horst ABSTRACT Expertise research methodologies have focused upon the identification of differences and factors influencing high and low performance at the individual, process, and organizational level. The goal of this review is to use the results to facilitate performance improvement through the investigation of high and low performing entities. Various approaches are reported in the literature to investigate expertise and quantify factors relating to development of this expertise at the individual, group, and organizational level. This review of research literature focuses upon studies utilizing expertise methodologies outside of the laboratory for identification of differences and factors influencing high and low performance. Studies cited emphasize performance at the individual, process, or organizational level. Statistical methods and techniques for identifying high and low performance are identified. Results have implications for use in performance improvement initiatives in assessing differences or factors influencing performance as well as identification of interventions and outcome measures. [source] Decision-making in Parkinson's disease patients with and without pathological gamblingEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF NEUROLOGY, Issue 1 2010M. Rossi Background and purpose:, Pathological gambling (PG) in Parkinson's disease (PD) is a frequent impulse control disorder associated mainly with dopamine replacement therapy. As impairments in decision-making were described independently in PG and PD, the objective of this study was to assess decision-making processes in PD patients with and without PG. Methods:, Seven PD patients with PG and 13 age, sex, education and disease severity matched PD patients without gambling behavior were enrolled in the study. All patients were assessed with a comprehensive neuropsychiatric and cognitive evaluation, including tasks used to assess decision-making abilities under ambiguous or risky situations, like the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), the Game of Dice Task and the Investment Task. Results:, Compared to PD patients without gambling behavior, those with PG obtained poorer scores in the IGT and in a rating scale of social behavior, but not in other decision-making and cognitive tasks. Conclusions:, Low performance in decision-making under ambiguity and abnormal social behavior distinguished PD patients with PG from those without this disorder. Dopamine replacement therapy may induce dysfunction of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and amygdala-ventral striatum system, thus increasing the risk for developing PG. [source] Normative data on Benton Visual Form Discrimination Test for older adults and impaired scores in Clinical Dementia Rating 0.5 participants: Community-based study.PSYCHIATRY AND CLINICAL NEUROSCIENCES, Issue 1 2009Tajiri Project, The Osaki Aims:, The Benton Visual Form Discrimination test (VFD) is one of the non-verbal tests to assess the capacity for complex visual form discrimination. The purposes of the present study were to investigate the effects of age and education level of the VFD in healthy elderly subjects, rigorously excluding participants with Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) 0.5, and the characteristics of VFD patterns in CDR 0.5 participants. Methods:, The 597 participants included CDR 0 (healthy elderly, n = 405), CDR 0.5 (mild cognitive impairment, n = 161), and CDR 1 and 2 (dementia, n = 31). The VFD, Digit Forwards, Digit Backwards and Rey,Osterrieth Complex Figure Test (RCFT) copying were used for neuropsychological assessment. Results:, There were significant effects of age and education level on the VFD in healthy participants, and the CDR 0.5 group had a lower score on the VFD than the healthy group. Low performance on the VFD was associated with Digit Backward and RCFT copying in both healthy and CDR 0.5 participants. Conclusions:, CDR 0.5 participants exhibit deficits of visual form discrimination related to attention, visual construction and organization. [source] Memory and prefrontal functions in earthquake survivors: differences between current and past post-traumatic stress disorder patientsACTA PSYCHIATRICA SCANDINAVICA, Issue 1 2009E. Eren-Koçak Objective:, Many studies reported deficits in cognitive functions in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Most were, however, conducted on man-made trauma survivors. The high comorbidity of alcohol use and depression with PTSD in these studies further complicated the interpretation of their results. We compared prefrontal lobe functions and memory in three earthquake survivor groups: current PTSD, past PTSD and no PTSD. We hypothesized that prefrontal performances of the current and past PTSD groups would be worse than that of control group. Method:, Survivors of the 1999 earthquakes in Turkey were evaluated for current and lifetime PTSD. Memory and prefrontal functions were assessed by a neuropsychological test battery. Results:, Current PTSD patients performed worse on attention, verbal memory, verbal fluency, and psychomotor speed. Past PTSD group was similar to the controls on most cognitive measures, except for their vulnerability to proactive interference and low performance in verbal fluency for animal names. Conclusion:, Our findings indicate that the prefrontal organization and monitorization of verbally processed information are defective in earthquake-related PTSD patients, more so in the current PTSD group. [source] Clinical Practice Guideline Implementation Strategy Patterns in Veterans Affairs Primary Care ClinicsHEALTH SERVICES RESEARCH, Issue 1p1 2007Sylvia J. Hysong Background. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) mandated the system-wide implementation of clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) in the mid-1990s, arming all facilities with basic resources to facilitate implementation; despite this resource allocation, significant variability still exists across VA facilities in implementation success. Objective. This study compares CPG implementation strategy patterns used by high and low performing primary care clinics in the VA. Research Design. Descriptive, cross-sectional study of a purposeful sample of six Veterans Affairs Medical Centers (VAMCs) with high and low performance on six CPGs. Subjects. One hundred and two employees (management, quality improvement, clinic personnel) involved with guideline implementation at each VAMC primary care clinic. Measures. Participants reported specific strategies used by their facility to implement guidelines in 1-hour semi-structured interviews. Facilities were classified as high or low performers based on their guideline adherence scores calculated through independently conducted chart reviews. Findings. High performing facilities (HPFs) (a) invested significantly in the implementation of the electronic medical record and locally adapting it to provider needs, (b) invested dedicated resources to guideline-related initiatives, and (c) exhibited a clear direction in their strategy choices. Low performing facilities exhibited (a) earlier stages of development for their electronic medical record, (b) reliance on preexisting resources for guideline implementation, with little local adaptation, and (c) no clear direction in their strategy choices. Conclusion. A multifaceted, yet targeted, strategic approach to guideline implementation emphasizing dedicated resources and local adaptation may result in more successful implementation and higher guideline adherence than relying on standardized resources and taxing preexisting channels. [source] Clustering-based scheduling: A new class of scheduling algorithms for single-hop lightwave networksINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, Issue 8 2008Sophia G. Petridou Abstract In wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) star networks, the construction of the transmission schedule is a key issue, which essentially affects the network performance. Up to now, classic scheduling techniques consider the nodes' requests in a sequential service order. However, these approaches are static and do not take into account the individual traffic pattern of each node. Owing to this major drawback, they suffer from low performance, especially when operating under asymmetric traffic. In this paper, a new class of scheduling algorithms for WDM star networks, which is based on the use of clustering techniques, is introduced. According to the proposed Clustering-Based Scheduling Algorithm (CBSA), the network's nodes are organized into clusters, based on the number of their requests per channel. Then, their transmission priority is defined beginning from the nodes belonging to clusters with higher demands and ending to the nodes of clusters with fewer requests. The main objective of the proposed scheme is to minimize the length of the schedule by rearranging the nodes' service order. Furthermore, the proposed CBSA scheme adopts a prediction mechanism to minimize the computational complexity of the scheduling algorithm. Extensive simulation results are presented, which clearly indicate that the proposed approach leads to a significantly higher throughput-delay performance when compared with conventional scheduling algorithms. We believe that the proposed clustering-based approach can be the base of a new generation of high-performance scheduling algorithms for WDM star networks. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Expertise Research Methodology: Identifying Differences and Factors Influencing High and Low PerformancePERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2001Michael A. Horst ABSTRACT Expertise research methodologies have focused upon the identification of differences and factors influencing high and low performance at the individual, process, and organizational level. The goal of this review is to use the results to facilitate performance improvement through the investigation of high and low performing entities. Various approaches are reported in the literature to investigate expertise and quantify factors relating to development of this expertise at the individual, group, and organizational level. This review of research literature focuses upon studies utilizing expertise methodologies outside of the laboratory for identification of differences and factors influencing high and low performance. Studies cited emphasize performance at the individual, process, or organizational level. Statistical methods and techniques for identifying high and low performance are identified. Results have implications for use in performance improvement initiatives in assessing differences or factors influencing performance as well as identification of interventions and outcome measures. [source] Long-term transient and metastable effects in cadmium telluride photovoltaic modulesPROGRESS IN PHOTOVOLTAICS: RESEARCH & APPLICATIONS, Issue 7 2006J. A. del Cueto Abstract Thin-film cadmium telluride (CdTe) photovoltaic (PV) technology is poised to begin making significant contributions and impact on terrestrial, electric power generation. However, some outstanding issues such as stability and transient behavior, and their impact on reliability and assessment of performance, remain to be thoroughly addressed, which has prompted some unease among PV industry integrators toward deploying this technology. We explore the issues of long-term stability and transient behavior in the performance of CdTe modules herein, using data acquired from indoor light-soaking studies. We find that measurement of current-voltage parameters and their temperature coefficients are entangled with transient effects. Changes in module power depend on recent operating history, such as electrical bias, and can result in either artificially high or low performance. Both the open-circuit voltage (VOC) and fill factor (FF) are significantly impacted by metastable behavior that appears to linger for up to tens of hours, and we observe such increased transient effects after modules have undergone several hundred hours of light exposure. We present and analyze data measured under standard reporting conditions and actual operating conditions for six CdTe modules light-exposed and stressed at 65°C nominal temperatures. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Popitam: Towards new heuristic strategies to improve protein identification from tandem mass spectrometry dataPROTEINS: STRUCTURE, FUNCTION AND BIOINFORMATICS, Issue 6 2003Patricia Hernandez Abstract In recent years, proteomics research has gained importance due to increasingly powerful techniques in protein purification, mass spectrometry and identification, and due to the development of extensive protein and DNA databases from various organisms. Nevertheless, current identification methods from spectrometric data have difficulties in handling modifications or mutations in the source peptide. Moreover, they have low performance when run on large databases (such as genomic databases), or with low quality data, for example due to bad calibration or low fragmentation of the source peptide. We present a new algorithm dedicated to automated protein identification from tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) data by searching a peptide sequence database. Our identification approach shows promising properties for solving the specific difficulties enumerated above. It consists of matching theoretical peptide sequences issued from a database with a structured representation of the source MS/MS spectrum. The representation is similar to the spectrum graphs commonly used by de novo sequencing software. The identification process involves the parsing of the graph in order to emphazise relevant sections for each theoretical sequence, and leads to a list of peptides ranked by a correlation score. The parsing of the graph, which can be a highly combinatorial task, is performed by a bio-inspired algorithm called Ant Colony Optimization algorithm. [source] DOES POLITICAL CHANGE AFFECT SENIOR MANAGEMENT TURNOVER?PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 1 2010AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF TOP-TIER LOCAL AUTHORITIES IN ENGLAND In many political systems the political neutrality of senior managers' tenure is often cherished as a key part of the politics-administration dichotomy and is subject to formal safeguards. We test hypotheses about the impact of political change on senior management turnover drawn from political science, public administration and private sector management theory. Using panel data to control for unobserved heterogeneity between authorities, we find that changes in political party control and low organizational performance have both separate and joint positive effects on the turnover rate of senior managers. By contrast, the most senior manager, the chief executive, is more sheltered: the likelihood of a chief executive succession is higher only when party change and low performance occur together. Thus the arrival of a new ruling party reduces the tenure of senior managers, but chief executives are vulnerable to political change only when performance is perceived as weak. [source] Understanding fire fighting in new product development,THE JOURNAL OF PRODUCT INNOVATION MANAGEMENT, Issue 5 2001Nelson P. Repenning Despite documented benefits, the processes described in the new product development literature often prove difficult to follow in practice. A principal source of such difficulties is the phenomenon of fire fighting-the unplanned allocation of resources to fix problems discovered late in a product's development cycle. While it has been widely criticized, fire fighting is a common occurrence in many product development organizations. To understand both its existence and persistence, in this article I develop a formal model of fire fighting in a multiproject development environment. The major contributions of this analysis are to suggest that: (1) fire fighting can be a self-reinforeing phenomenon; and (2) multiproject development systems are far more susceptible to this dynamic than is currently appreciated. These insights suggest that many of the current methods for aggregate resource and product portfolio planning, while necessary, are not sufficient to prevent fire fighting and the consequent low performance. [source] The problem of meeting dietary protein requirements in intensive aquaculture of marine fish larvae, with emphasis on Atlantic halibut (Hippoglossus hippoglossus L.)AQUACULTURE NUTRITION, Issue 3 2007A. KVÅLE Abstract Atlantic halibut (Hippoglossus hippoglossus) achieve a mature gastrointestinal tract approximately 2 months after first feeding (12 °C). The immature digestion may be the reason that compound diets fail to sustain growth and survival in first feeding halibut larvae and in larvae of other marine fish species. On the other hand, larvae fed with live feeds are capable of extraction of sufficient quantities of nutrients to sustain high growth rates. A lower availability of the protein in formulated diets compared with live prey is considered to be an important reason for the low performance of formulated diets. One approach to increase dietary protein availability is supplementation of pre-digested proteins. Experiments using tube fed individual larvae show that halibut larvae are able to utilize hydrolysed protein more efficiently than intact protein. However, Atlantic halibut in culture did not respond well to dietary supplementation of hydrolysed protein, in contrast to some other species. One reason may be extensive leaching of pre-hydrolysed proteins from the microparticulate feed. Atlantic halibut are slow feeders and may thus suffer more from nutrient leaching than species eating more rapidly. Feed formulation techniques affect dietary protein leaching, and in this paper, different techniques and their impact on feed properties are described. Microbound diets are most widely used in larval rearing, but show high rates of nutrient leaching. Lipid-based capsules seem to have the best potential to prevent leaching, however, they are not able to deliver a complete diet. The high need for improvements in larval feed formulation techniques are clearly stated, and some suggestions are given. Among these are production of complex particles, where small lipid-based capsules or liposomes containing the low molecular weight water-soluble nutrients are embedded. In such feed particles the water-soluble molecules are protected from leaching. Techniques for delivery of water-soluble nutrients that are needed in large quantities, i.e. free amino acids or hydrolysed and water-soluble protein, remain to be developed. [source] | ||||||||||||||||