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Nowadays, with the expansion of terrorist operations around the world and also the dangers of accidental explosions, the need to design structures resistant to this phenomenon for the protection and safety of its citizens is inevitable. Tall buildings are one of the most important issues because of which those behavior should be investigated against the blast loading.

In this paper, the authors used a simple method for investigating the dynamic response of tall buildings with the combined system of framed tube, shear core and outrigger-belt truss located at different heights of the building’s that were subjected to blast loading. This proposed model is based on the development of a continuum model and the ruling equations that have been obtained using the energy principle predict the whole structure idealized as a shear and flexural cantilever beam with rotational springs at the belt truss location.

The mathematical procedure shows a good understanding of the structural behavior and is suitable for a quick evaluation during the preliminary design stage, which requires less time. Moreover, it was concluded that the present blast load idealization can be used to reasonably assess the response of tall buildings subjected to blast load.

The comparative analysis in this paper could give other engineers a simple analysis method for the preliminary analysis and design of tall building analysis. Numerical example is given to illustrate the ease of application and the accuracy of the suggested model.

One of the main causes of long-term prosthetic abandonment is the lack of ownership over the prosthesis, which was caused mainly by the absence of sensory information regarding the lost limb. The period where the patient learns how to interact with a prosthetic device is critical in rehabilitation. This ideally happens within the first months after amputation, which is also a period associated with the consolidation of brain changes. Different studies have shown that the introduction of feedback mechanisms can be crucial to bypass the lack of sensorial information. To develop a biofeedback system for the rehabilitation of transfemoral amputees – controlled via electromyographic (EMG) activity from the leg muscles – that can provide real-time visual and/or vibratory feedback for the user.

The system uses surface EMG to control two feedback mechanisms, which are the knee joint of a prosthetic leg of a humanoid avatar in a virtual reality (VR) environment (visual feedback) and a matrix of 16 vibrotactile actuators placed in the back of the user (vibratory feedback). Data acquisition was inside a Faraday Cage using an OpenEphys® acquisition board for the surface EMG recordings. The tasks were performed on able-bodied participants, with no amputation, and for this, the dominant leg of the user was immobilized using an orthopedic boot fixed on the chair, allowing only isometric contractions of target muscles, according to the Surface EMG for Non-Invasive Assessment of Muscles (SENIAM) standard. The authors test the effectiveness of combining vibratory and visual feedback and how task difficulty affects overall performance.

The authors' results show no negative interference combining both feedback modalities and that performance peaked at the intermediate difficulty. These results provide powerful insights of what can be accomplished with the population of amputee people. By using this biofeedback system, the authors expect to engage another sensory modality in the process of spatial representation of a virtual leg, bypassing the lack of information associated with the disruption of afferent pathways following amputation.

The authors developed a showcase with a new protocol and feedback mechanisms showing the protocol's safety, efficiency and reliability. However, since this system is designed for patients with leg amputation, the full extent of the effects of the biofeedback training can only be assessed after the evaluation with the amputees, and the results obtained so far establish a safe and operational protocol to accomplish this.

In this study, the authors proposed a new biofeedback device intended to be used in the preprosthetic rehabilitation phase for people with transfemoral amputation. With this new system, the authors propose a mechanism to bypass the lack of sensory information from a virtual prosthesis and help to assimilate visual and vibrotactile stimuli as a cue for movement representation.

With this new system, the authors propose a mechanism to bypass the lack of sensory information from a virtual prosthesis and help to assimilate visual and vibrotactile stimuli as a cue for movement representation.

The authors' results show that all users were capable of recognizing both feedback modalities, both separate and combined, being able to respond accordingly throughout the tasks. The authors also show that for a one-session protocol, the last difficulty level imposed a greater challenge for most users, explained by the significant drop in performance disregarding the feedback modality. Lastly, the authors believe this paradigm can provide a better process for the embodiment of prosthetic devices, fulfilling the lack of sensory information for the users.

The purpose of this paper is to describe standardized clinical process of care and quality performance metrics at Roane Medical Center (RMC) and compare data from 2005 to 2015.

Information was extracted from a nationwide sample of short-term acute care hospitals using the Hospital Quality Alliance (HQA) database, evaluating multiple parameters measured at RMC. HQA data from RMC were matched against state and national benchmarks; findings were also compared with similar reports from the same facility in 2005.

Information collected by HQA expanded substantially in ten years and queried different parameters over time, thus exact comparisons between 2005 and 2015 cannot be easily calculated. Nevertheless, analysis of process of care data for 2015 placed RMC at or above state- and national-average performance in 64.9 percent (24 of 37) and 56.5 percent (26 of 46) categories, respectively. RMC registered superior process of care scores in heart failure care, pneumonia care, thrombus prevention and care, as well as stroke care. While RMC continues to perform favorably against state and national reference groups, the differences between RMC vs state and RMC vs national averages using current reporting metrics were both statistically smaller in 2015 compared to 2005 (p<0.05).

Perhaps the most significant interval health event for the RMC service area since 2005 was a coal ash spill at the nearby Tennessee Valley Authority facility in December 2008. Although reports on environmental and health effects following one of the largest domestic industrial toxin releases reached a number of important conclusions, the consequences for RMC in terms of potential added clinical burden on emergency services and impact on chronic health conditions have not been specifically studied. This could explain data reported on emergency department services at RMC but additional research will be needed to establish causality.

While tracking of care processes at all US hospitals will be facilitated by refinements in HQA tools, longitudinal evaluations for any specific unit will be more meaningful if the assessment instrument undergoes limited change over time.

Appalachia remains one of several regions in the USA often identified as medically underserved. Hospitals here have confronted the challenge of diminished reimbursement, high expenses, limited staffing and other financial hardships in a variety of ways. Since the last published report on RMC, a particularly severe global recession has placed additional stress on organizations offering crucial health services in the region.

As a follow-up study to track potential changes which have been registered in the decade 2005-2015, this is the first report to provide original, longitudinal analysis on RMC, an institution operating in a rural and underserved area.

Although the Net Promoter Score (NPS) index is simple, NPS has weaknesses that make NPS's interpretation misleading. The main criticism is that identical index values can correspond to different levels of customer loyalty. This makes difficult to determine whether the company is improving/deteriorating in two different years. The authors describe the application of statistical tools to establish whether identical values may/may not be considered similar under statistical hypotheses.

Equal NPSs with a “similar” component composition should have a two-way table satisfying marginal homogeneity hypothesis. The authors compare the marginals using a cumulative marginal logit model that assumes a proportional odds structure: the model has the same effect for each logit. Marginal homogeneity corresponds to null effect. If the marginal homogeneity hypothesis is rejected, the cumulative odds ratio becomes a tool for measuring the proportionality between the odds.

The authors propose an algorithm that helps managers in their decision-making process. The authors' methodology provides a statistical tool to recognize customer base compositions. The authors suggest a statistical test of the marginal distribution homogeneity of the table representing the index compositions at two times. Through the calculation of cumulative odds ratios, the authors discriminate against the hypothesis of equality of the NPS.

The authors' contribution provides a statistical alternative that can be easily implemented by business operators to fill the known shortcomings of the index in the customer satisfaction's context. This paper confirms that although a single number summarizes and communicates a complex situation very quickly, the number is ambiguous and unreliable if not accompanied by other tools.

This paper aims to propose that firms located in science and technology parks (STP) developing corporate social responsibility practices can attract talented workers as an effective knowledge management spillover mechanism.

A longitudinal study has been carried out from the Spanish Panel of Technological Innovation database (PITEC). The statistical method used for data treatment has been a logistic regression for panel data.

Empirical results show a positive moderating effect of corporate social responsibility practices on the relationship between the firm’s belonging to a STP and talent attraction.

This research follows previous claim for additional research on the phenomenon of talent management and clusters and STP. In that sense, and to the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no previous empirical research about the complementarily effect of corporate social responsibility practices and the belonging to a STP in talent attraction.

Offers an appraisal of the corporate experience and prospects of J. Sainsbury plc in the USA, ten years after its market entry. Part 1 focused on Sainsbury’s New England subsidiary, Shaw’s. Heavy capital investment, and the determined export of a British model of food retailing, is shown to have produced a chain of 119 stores enjoying rapid growth and impressive improvements in profitability. Part 2 focuses on Sainsbury’s acquisition of 50 per cent of the voting stock (20 per cent of total equity) of Giant Food Inc., the market leader in the Washington DC‐Baltimore area. Shows Sainsbury is poised to purchase full control of Giant (at an estimated cost of approximately $2 billion), is promoting a major expansion of Giant northwards into Philadelphia and is on the verge of becoming one of the top ten firms in a US industry worth $410 billion per annum by 1995.

The paper describes an approximate method for the direct stress analysis of anisotropic swept cantilever plates, without the usual need for intermediate deflection calculations. The method of analysis employs the Principle of Least Work, in conjunction with the assumption that the load and stress components may be represented with sufficient accuracy by a power series in the chordwise co‐ordinate, the coefficients of this series being functions of the spanwise position only. The validity is thus limited to these loadings for which the series involved are convergent. A system of oblique co‐ordinates is used to simplify the analysis. Particular attention is focused on the parallelogram cantilever plate, subjected to a uniform normal loading and to a system of tip bending moments, twisting moments and shear forces. Theoretical predictions are compared with the results of an experimental investigation.

This paper aims to propose an efficient method to conduct the preliminary analyses of medium or high-rise wall-frame structural systems with vertically varying properties. To this end, a finite element is formulated to take the shear deformation of the shear wall and the constrained moment of the link beam.

The differential equation of the structure is derived from the total potential energy. Its homogenous solutions are functions of initial parameters (deflections and inner forces). To solve the structure with vertically non-uniform properties, the authors first use the classical Timoshenko beam element and then heuristically propose a finite element that uses the initial parameter solutions as shape functions and is easier to implement. A post-processing method to compute the shear force in the frame and shear wall is developed. Modal analysis using the consistent mass matrix is also incorporated. Numerical examples demonstrate the accuracy and mesh independency of the proposed element.

The shear deformation of the shear wall and the constrained moment of the link beam significantly influence the static response of the structure. Taking into account the shear deformation can eliminate the misleading result of zero-base shear force of the frame and give much better predictions of the system natural frequencies.

The proposed method achieves higher accuracy than the classical approach most often used. The finite element formulation derived from transformations of the initial parameter solutions is simple and has superior numerical performance. The post-processing method allows for a fast determination of the shear force distributions in the shear wall and frame.

This paper reviews definitions and frameworks for sustainability in higher education by examining a set of major national and international declarations and institutional policies related to environmental sustainability in universities. It identifies emerging themes and priorities, and discusses how these declarations and policies are affecting various institutions in how they frame the central task of becoming sustainable and how they perceive their own commitment to sustainability.

In the US, a growing number of organizations and industries are seeking to affirm their commitment to and efforts around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as recent events have increased attention to social inequities. As health care organizations are considering new ways to incorporate DEI initiatives within their workforce, the anticipated result of these efforts is a reduction in health inequities that have plagued our country for centuries. Unfortunately, there are few frameworks to guide these efforts because few successfully link organizational DEI initiatives with health equity outcomes. The purpose of this chapter is to review existing scholarship and evidence using an organizational lens to examine how health care organizations can advance DEI initiatives in the pursuit of reducing or eliminating health inequities. First, this chapter defines important terms of DEI and health equity in health care. Next, we describe the methods for our narrative review. We propose a model for understanding health care organizational activity and its impact on health inequities based in organizational learning that includes four interrelated parts: intention, action, outcomes, and learning. We summarize the existing scholarship in each of these areas and provide recommendations for enhancing future research. Across the body of knowledge in these areas, disciplinary and other silos may be the biggest barrier to knowledge creation and knowledge transfer. Moving forward, scholars and practitioners should seek to collaborate further in their respective efforts to achieve health equity by creating formalized initiatives with linkages between practice and research communities.