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This paper aims to examine the prevalence and reasons for delayed discharge from two regional assessment and treatment units (ATUs) for people with learning disabilities, in line with the transforming care agenda.

This is a retrospective evaluation of 44 admissions and discharges from two ATUs from February 2019 to March 2022.

Of 44 admissions who were discharged during the included period, 20 experienced delays in their discharge. Delayed discharges occurred despite the two ATUs meeting standards for length of assessment and treatment as specified by the Learning Disability Professional Senate. The most prevalent reasons for discharge delays were identification of a new placement, recruitment of care staff and building work.

This paper offers an in-depth evaluation of recent delayed discharges from two regional ATUs, highlighting the most common reasons for delays and offering suggestion for reducing delays in future.

The present paper presents the major causes of delays in the construction industry in Lebanon and the relative importance of these postponements. A survey of a randomly selected sample of 11 owners, 15 contractors and 10 architectural/engineering (A/E) firms from Lebanon was undertaken. The survey included 64 causes of delay, grouped into 10 major groups, in which the participants were asked to indicate their level of importance of each delay. The level of importance of the causes and the groups were measured and ranked by the importance index for owners, contractors and A/E firms. It was found that all three parties generally agreed on the ranking of the major categories of delay factors. Owners had more concerns with regard to financial issues, while contractors ranked contractual relationships highest, and finally, A/E firms ranked project management highest.

The purpose of this paper is with delay-independent stabilization of nonlinear systems with multiple time-delays and its application in chaos synchronization of Rössler system.

Based on linear matrix inequality and algebra Riccati matrix equation, the stabilization result is derived to guarantee asymptotically stable and applicated in chaos synchronization of Rössler chaotic system with multiple time-delays.

A controller is designed and added to the nonlinear system with multiple time-delays. The stability of the nonlinear system at its zero equilibrium point is guaranteed by applying the appropriate controller signal based on linear matrix inequality and algebra Riccati matrix equation scheme. Another effective controller is also designed for the global asymptotic synchronization on the Rössler system based on the structure of delay-independent stabilization of nonlinear systems with multiple time-delays. Numerical simulations are demonstrated to verify the effectiveness of the proposed controller scheme.

The introduced approach is interesting for delay-independent stabilization of nonlinear systems with multiple time-delays and its application in chaos synchronization of Rössler system.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the factors associated with patient delay among tuberculosis patients in border hospitals, Chiang Rai province, Thailand.

A cross-sectional study was conducted in the four biggest border hospitals in Chiang Rai province, Thailand during May to July 2018 among 103 identified TB cases. Data were collected by a face-to-face interview with structured questionnaire on patients’ general characteristics, HIV status and patient delay status. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the patients’ general characteristics, HIV and patient delay status. The association among variables and patient delay was analyzed by χ²-test. The variables with p-value<0.20 obtained in bivariate analysis were further analyzed by binary logistic regression and considered significant with p-value<0.05.

All patients enrolled, most were reported with patient delay (65.0 percent). Bivariate analysis demonstrated that level of education, nationality and HIV status were associated factors for patient delay. Among these factors, binary logistic regression revealed that HIV negative TB patients were increased 6.806-fold odds of being patient delay (OR = 6.806; 95% CI: 1.174–39.462), while non-Thai TB patients were also increased 2.824-fold odds of being patient delay (OR = 2.824; 95% CI: 1.041–7.660).

Patient delay among TB patients in Chiang Rai province was high. This study further supports the requirement on promoting of TB knowledge and awareness emphasized on non-Thai population and general public along the border areas of Chiang Rai province.

Patients undergoing emergency appendicectomy incur various delays from the time of symptom onset to the time of discharge from hospital. The centralisation of hospital services over recent years has resulted in some patients who attend hospital as an emergency requiring transfer to a different site. An additional delay by way of transfer is thus incurred. The aim of this study was to test for association between various characterised delays with disease and patient outcomes.

Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) data were used to identify all patients admitted over a one‐year period undergoing appendicectomy. Demographic and time data were extracted from hospital databases and case notes.

A total of 247 patients were identified from HES data; 25 per cent of patients presented to hospital E necessitating transfer to hospital H. There was no evidence of an association between patient delays, surgeon delays or theatre delays with advanced pathology and complicated appendicitis was not associated with a longer post‐operative hospital stay. The delay to be seen by the surgeons was significantly longer if transferred from one hospital to another, but this did not contribute to a significant difference between the overall delay from admission to operation, overall length of stay or advanced pathology.

The individual delays along the clinical pathway in a patient presenting to hospital with acute appendicitis have been characterised. Patients with acute appendicitis can be safely assessed at one hospital‐site and transferred to another with emergency surgery provision without affecting the delay to operation.

The paper describes four methods of dealing with delay claims that effectively sum up the main approaches to this problem that have been offered in the literature. This is then followed by a description and discussion of results from a new survey aimed at finding out exactly how professionals in the UK construction industry approach these difficult issues. It appears that those who deal with delay claims in the UK are likely to use a critical path method network to do this and generally approve of a methodology that attempts to understand how well the contractor would have fared ‘but for’ the existence of employer‐responsible delays. There is less agreement about who should be said to own the float, but as is explained in the paper, it is possible for this matter to be dealt with by the insertion of a clause in the contract documents.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the existence and global exponential stability of periodic solution of memristor-based recurrent neural networks with time-varying delays and leakage delays.

The differential inequality theory and some novel mathematical analysis techniques are applied.

A set of sufficient conditions which guarantee the existence and global exponential stability of periodic solution of involved model is derived.

It plays an important role in designing the neural networks.

The obtained results of this paper are new and complement some previous studies. The innovation of this paper concludes two aspects: the analysis on the existence and global exponential stability of periodic solution of memristor-based recurrent neural networks with time-varying delays and leakage delays is first proposed; and it is first time to establish the sufficient criterion which ensures the existence and global exponential stability of periodic solution of memristor-based recurrent neural networks with time-varying delays and leakage delays.

This paper aims to use a new design approach based on a Lagrange mean value theorem for the stabilization of multivariable input‐delayed system by linear controller.

The delay‐dependent asymptotical stability conditions are derived by using augmented Lyapunov‐Krasovskii functionals and formulated in terms of conventional Lyapunov matrix equations and some simple matrix inequalities. Proposed design approach is extended to robust stabilization of multi‐variable input‐delayed systems with unmatched parameter uncertainties. The maximum upper bound of delay size is computed by using a simple optimization algorithm.

A liquid monopropellant rocket motor with a pressure feeding system is considered as a numerical design example. Design example shows the effectiveness of the proposed design approach.

The proposed approach can be used in the analysis and design of the uncertain multivariable time‐delay systems.

The paper has a great potential in the stability analysis of time‐delay systems and design of time‐delay controllers and may openup a new direction in this area.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the applicability of Global Positioning System (GPS) ionospheric delay correction models. Ionospheric delay is the most influential error source in GPS positioning, and ionospheric refraction is difficult to be corrected by dual frequency measurement for the common single frequency GPS receivers. Generally, ionospheric models are employed to correct errors. In order to analyze the ionospheric influence to GPS signals and the accuracy and adaptability of GPS ionospheric error correction models a quantificational analysis for ionospheric error correction models is absolutely necessary.

On the base of the mechanism of ionospheric error, the Klobuchar model that is widely used and actual measured correction model (including local and global ionospheric error correction models) are analyzed in detail. With the data about ionosphere obtained from GPS authority Crustal Dynamics Data Information System, the precision and adaptability of two kinds of ionospheric error correction model are validated, and a predigested method of investigating precision of local ionospheric error correction model is presented.

Klobuchar model has higher precision in middle or low latitude than in high latitude, and ionospheric delay fluctuates acutely in a day with a day‐cycle. Ionospheric delay varies as the latitude changes: ionospheric delay is largest around equator and smallest in the areas of two poles, which shows symmetry. The relationship between ionospheric delay and longitude is similar to the relationship between ionospheric delay and latitude. The fitting model has better effect than Klobuchar model.

This paper thoroughly researches GPS ionospheric error correction models. The conclusions are presented for the selection of GPS correction models, that it is useful for practical engineering application and will be the theoretic foundation for the improvement of the GPS accurate positioning.

The objective of this paper is to evaluate whether the data from consignors, logistics service providers (LSPs) and consignees contribute to the prediction of air transport shipment delays in a machine learning application.

The research database contained 2,244 air freight intercontinental shipments to 4 automotive production plants in Latin America. Different algorithm classes were tested in the knowledge discovery in databases (KDD) process: support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF), artificial neural networks (ANN) and k-nearest neighbors (KNN).

Shipper, consignee and LSP data attribute selection achieved 86% accuracy through the RF algorithm in a cross-validation scenario after a combined class balancing procedure.

These findings expand the current literature on machine learning applied to air freight delay management, which has mostly focused on weather, airport structure, flight schedule, ground delay and congestion as explanatory attributes.