Aggregation of Hospital Business Processes

There are estimates that up to 30% of hospital costs are due to inefficiently coordinated hospital processes. As a result many hospitals have tried to model and to reengineer their business processes. These efforts have very often been abandoned, because the normally constructed total models of hospital processes could hardly cope with the rapid technological and medical progress as well as with changing staff. We discuss approaches for a qualitative and quantitative process modularization which improve the understanding of processes and enables better planned simulations. Various methods are discussed which allow a qualitative modularization on the basis of a disaggregated process graph. To cope with this modularization numerically simple semi-stochastic formulas are developed for the calculation of expected values and variances of cycle times and costs from micro-data up to the modular level. Thus a qualitative as well as quantitative discussion of hospital business processes on the modular level become possible.OR in health care service, graph theory, business process reengineering, stochastic processes, simulation

Datos para el diagnóstico psicológico del alcoholismo

Del grupo de profesionales que actuan o pueden actuar alrededor del enfermo alcohólico todavia no diagnosticado como tal -médico internista, psiquiatra, psicólogo, asistente social-, es al psicólogo a quien compete dicho diagnóstico por tratarse, ante todo, de un trastorno de la conducta. La labor de diagnóstico consta de una serie de pruebas escalonadas que van desde la entrevista, exhaustiva y estructurada, hasta las pruebas psicométricas y proyectivas. La elección de las pruebas mas adecuadas para un diagnóstico de alcoholismo, el correcto manejo de 10s resultados de las mismas, y el conocimiento de la psicopatologia del alcoholisrno, por parte del psicólogo, es de esperar que redunden -además- en un diagnóstico precoz del mismo, del que se beneficiaran el propio paciente y la sociedad

The Audio Degradation Toolbox and its Application to Robustness Evaluation

We introduce the Audio Degradation Toolbox (ADT) for the controlled degradation of audio signals, and propose its usage as a means of evaluating and comparing the robustness of audio processing algorithms. Music recordings encountered in practical applications are subject to varied, sometimes unpredictable degradation. For example, audio is degraded by low-quality microphones, noisy recording environments, MP3 compression, dynamic compression in broadcasting or vinyl decay. In spite of this, no standard software for the degradation of audio exists, and music processing methods are usually evaluated against clean data. The ADT fills this gap by providing Matlab scripts that emulate a wide range of degradation types. We describe 14 degradation units, and how they can be chained to create more complex, `real-world' degradations. The ADT also provides functionality to adjust existing ground-truth, correcting for temporal distortions introduced by degradation. Using four different music informatics tasks, we show that performance strongly depends on the combination of method and degradation applied. We demonstrate that specific degradations can reduce or even reverse the performance difference between two competing methods. ADT source code, sounds, impulse responses and definitions are freely available for download

James McGowan

James McGowan, Professor of English Emeritus, joined IWU\u27s faculty in 1969 and retired in 2000. He and Anne (Class of 1976) remain active in the community. Dr. McGowan read his original poem commemorating the inauguration of IWU\u27s 15th President Richard F. Wilson may be found at http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/wilson_inauguration/1

Exploiting color-depth image correlation to improve depth map compression

The multimedia signal processing community has recently identified the need to design depth map compression algorithms which preserve depth discontinuities in order to improve the rendering quality of virtual views for Free Viewpoint Video (FVV) services. This paper adopts contour detection with surround suppression on the color video to approximate the foreground edges present in the depth image. Displacement estimation and compensation is then used to improve this prediction and reduce the amount of side information required by the decoder. Simulation results indicate that the proposed method manages to accurately predict around 64% of the blocks. Moreover, the proposed scheme achieves a Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) gain of around 4.9-6.6 dB relative to the JPEG standard and manages to outperform other state of the art depth map compression algorithms found in literature.peer-reviewe

Sobre la lengua de Luis Chamizo

He realizado un análisis de los distintos niveles lingüísticos de la obra de Chamizo —fonética, morfosintaxis y léxico— señalando los rasgos que se pueden considerar dia¬lectales —los menos— y los que son meramente vulgarismos —los más—.This article studies different linguistic aspects of Chamizo’s works —phonetic, morphosyntactic and lexical— in order to identify which features can be regarded as dialectal and which simply popular. It is found that the latter are far more numerous than the former.peerReviewe

Responsible research and innovation: A manifesto for empirical ethics?

In 2013 the Nuffield Council on Bioethics launched their report Novel Neurotechnologies: Intervening in the Brain. The report, which adopts the European Commission's notion of Responsible Research and Innovation, puts forward a set of priorities to guide ethical research into, and the development of, new therapeutic neurotechnologies. In this paper, we critically engage with these priorities. We argue that the Nuffield Council's priorities, and the Responsible Research and Innovation initiative as a whole, are laudable and should guide research and innovation in all areas of healthcare. However, we argue that operationalising Responsible Research and Innovation requires an in-depth understanding of the research and clinical contexts. Providing such an understanding is an important task for empirical ethics. Drawing on examples from sociology, science and technology studies, and related disciplines, we propose four avenues of social science research which can provide such an understanding. We suggest that these avenues can provide a manifesto for empirical ethics.The paper derives from a project that was funded by Wellcome Trust (Wellcome Trust Biomedical Strategic Award 086034)

Urban Design of Bristol Waterfront, Lower Thames Street

Collaboration with the Town of Bristol in the fall of 2013 when students in ARCH 415, Advanced Design Studio – Urban, under the guidance of Professor Ulker Copur, studied the waterfront area along the west side of Thames Street, from State Street south to the armory in Bristol, Rhode Island, including the continuation of a public boardwalk through the area linking up with the adjacent properties. The designs created by students would be used to guide the town in developing a master plan for the area and the new Bristol Maritime Welcome Center

09:03 a dozen years to make a state go virtual : LIDAR data use for 3D visualisation of the Maltese Islands

Creating a new modus operandi for 3D data analysis that covers an entire state is a endearing task which required considerable funding and the integration of various thematic domains that lent an operational hand to spatial analysis in the Maltese state. An ERDF project taken up in Malta saw the integration of various environmental themes together with the creation of baseline surveys that serve the state as a launching pad for strategic analytical processes. The Malta study comprises the 3D component of the project which enabled the seamless integration of Terrestrial LiDAR, bathymetric LiDAR and bathymetric acoustic scans up to one nautical mile from the baseline coast, The aim of this process was to ensure that the integration of the datasets conformed to the requirements of the EEA (European Environment Agency) dataflow process (2012), the INSPIRE Directive (OJ, 2007), the Aarhus Convention (OJ, 2003a), the Freedom of Information Act (OJ, 2003b) and the Public Sector Information Directive (2003c). In addition, this project aimed to be the first to test the Shared Environment Information System (FORMOSA, SCIBERRAS, FORMOSA PACE, 2013; BORG, FARRUGIA, 2010).peer-reviewe

Marsha Guenzler-Stevens

Dr. Guenzler-Stevens discusses her family\u27s history at IWU, her student activities, her continued contributions to IWU, and her path from Biology Major to her current role as Director of the student union at the University of Maryland