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Article
Publication date: 1 February 1998

A.D. Millard, S. MacArthur and D. McLackland

The aims were to evaluate the impact of clinical audit on health professionals' clinical practice by measuring baseline participation levels for comparison with future studies of…

Abstract

The aims were to evaluate the impact of clinical audit on health professionals' clinical practice by measuring baseline participation levels for comparison with future studies of audit activity in Scottish health service trusts. A survey questionnaire on audit participation in the last year was distributed to a random sample of health professionals from an acute trust in central Scotland. The response rate was 73%. • Overall, 28.8% of respondents had some participation in uniprofessional audit and 23.1%. had some participation in multiprofessional audit. • A greater percentage of doctors participated compared with other professions. • The lowest levels of participation were among professions allied to medicine. • Participants are not normally involved in all the audit stages of a project. • The most usual type of involvement was in collecting data. • The most commonly mentioned benefits of audit were the educational ones. • Educational benefits were most highly valued by health professionals. • Participation in clinical audit projects in this 12‐month period was higher for uniprofessional than for multiprofessional audit. However 70‐80% of health professionals did not participate.

Details

Journal of Clinical Effectiveness, vol. 3 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1361-5874

Article
Publication date: 1 April 2006

Jae Sun Kim, Sooyong Park and Vijayan Sugumaran

From the point of view of computing environments, the paper aims to present a goal‐based contextual problem detection and management (GCPDM) method whose core benefit in its…

424

Abstract

Purpose

From the point of view of computing environments, the paper aims to present a goal‐based contextual problem detection and management (GCPDM) method whose core benefit in its extendability of detection capability to deal with unpredicted problems.

Design/methodology/approach

Approaches the subject by designing a goal graph, designing actions, designing achievable relations between actions and goals, defining contextual factors of each action, defining CCGs and implementing the GCPD engine.

Findings

That self‐managed, as opposed to traditional, software is designed to avoid runtime failures by adapting to unpredictable situations.

Originality/value

This paper presents a GCPDM method.

Details

Industrial Management & Data Systems, vol. 106 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0263-5577

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 19 May 2012

Panayiotis Papandreopoulos, Maria Koui, Dimitrios Yfantis and Theophilos Theophanides

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the surface corrosion products of copper alloys by non‐destructive techniques (NDT) and correlate them with their bulk composition.

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the surface corrosion products of copper alloys by non‐destructive techniques (NDT) and correlate them with their bulk composition.

Design/methodology/approach

Specimens of copper alloys, whose compositions were close to those of ancient copper‐based artefacts, were left to be corroded in simulated soil solution containing ammoniacal buffering solution of pH =10 in 1:1 ratio, in order to accelerate the corrosion rate. The elemental compositions of the surface corrosion products were determined versus time using X‐Ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy, and the surface morphology by Scanning Electron Microscopy with Energy Dispersive X‐Ray Micro‐detector methods, and the results were compared to the bulk composition, as measured by Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy and Inductively Coupled Plasma Atomic Emission Spectroscopy.

Findings

During the corrosion evolution of the copper alloys in the corrosive solution, transitional phenomena were observed such as an initial decrease of the copper concentration with a simultaneous increase of the concentrations of the secondary alloying metals (Sn, Zn and Pb). After 30‐60 immersion days, the alloy concentrations were stabilised.

Originality/value

The results of this research could contribute to the non‐destructive characterisation of copper‐based ancient artefacts (from which the taking of samples is not allowed).

Article
Publication date: 1 April 2009

Jane Pritchard, Jane MacKenzie and Maggie Cusack

Training in both employability and discipline‐specific skills has been provided and expanded over a number of years for post‐graduate research students, (PGRs) in the Faculty of…

Abstract

Training in both employability and discipline‐specific skills has been provided and expanded over a number of years for post‐graduate research students, (PGRs) in the Faculty of Physical Sciences administered by the Physical Sciences Graduate School (PSGS) at the University of Glasgow. This project explored the training provided in 2005/06 with a view to further developing a programme that students and faculty alike consider appropriate, timely and developmental for the needs of research students. The training provided by the PSGS had grown over a number of years in response to suggestions from academic staff in the Faculty of Physical Sciences. Data were collected from Postgraduate Research students (PGRs) from all the stages of the 3 year PhD process to enable a complete map of views to emerge. In particular, the way PGR students perceive the training they undergo in relation to their core PhD research and career progression was examined. The students in our study also identified clearly where they perceived they were developing such transferable skills, and training sessions are not seen as the sole or even major source; the research group itself would appear to play a major role. The authors believe the finding could inform the provision of PGR training in other UK institutions.

Details

International Journal for Researcher Development, vol. 1 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2048-8696

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 25 July 2008

Patrick Doreian

The arguments in this chapter address all three of the questions motivating this volume on network strategy. First, they focus on the issue of network evolution and show how…

Abstract

The arguments in this chapter address all three of the questions motivating this volume on network strategy. First, they focus on the issue of network evolution and show how networks can emerge and change over time. Second, the chapter tackles the issue of endogeneity and shows that, under certain conditions, some structural advantages do precede rather than follow network positions. Networks evolve over trajectories and the trajectories matter. Third, the arguments respond to the core question of network entrepreneurship: does the awareness of structural advantages available to network positions inspire managers, acting on behalf of organizations, to seek these advantages? In responding, this chapter challenges the idea that filling structural holes necessarily confers advantages on the actors filling them. It follows that the advantages of bridging are dependent not only on the network structure, when decisions regarding tie formation or deletion are made, but also on the costs of forming and maintaining ties relative to the benefits obtained from doing so.

Details

Network Strategy
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-7623-1442-3

Article
Publication date: 1 June 1992

L. JENDELE, A.H.C. CHAN and D.V. PHILLIPS

This paper deals with the well known degenerated shell element of Ahmad. The main concern focuses on the rank of the element stiffness matrix and the zero energy modes. Element…

Abstract

This paper deals with the well known degenerated shell element of Ahmad. The main concern focuses on the rank of the element stiffness matrix and the zero energy modes. Element formulation includes geometrical and material non‐linearities. The Lagrangian, heterosis and serendipity variants of displacement approximation are studied using full, selective or reduced in‐plane numerical integration. In the third direction the layered concept is adopted. The obtained results do not fully coincide with those published in References 2 and 3. The Figures presented in this paper, showing the displacement modes, clarify in a convenient form some of the element properties associated with particular element formulations. The work also shows the influence of the plastic and cracked material conditions on the stiffness matrix of the element.

Details

Engineering Computations, vol. 9 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0264-4401

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 January 1996

K.J. Badcock, I.C. Glover and B.E. Richards

The approximate factorisation‐conjugate gradient squared (AF‐CGS) methodhas been successfully demonstrated for unsteady turbulent aerofoil flows andtransonic inviscid flows in two…

Abstract

The approximate factorisation‐conjugate gradient squared (AF‐CGS) method has been successfully demonstrated for unsteady turbulent aerofoil flows and transonic inviscid flows in two and three dimensions. The method consists of a conjugate gradient solution of the linear system at each step with the ADI approximate factorisation as a preconditioner. In the present paper the method is adapted to obtain rapid convergence for steady aerofoil flows when compared to the basic explicit method. Modifications to the original method are described, convergence criteria are examined and the method is demonstrated for transonic flow including AGARD test case 9 for the RAE2822 aerofoil.

Details

International Journal of Numerical Methods for Heat & Fluid Flow, vol. 6 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0961-5539

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 28 January 2014

Ognjan Luzanin and Miroslav Plancak

Main purpose is to present methodology which allows efficient hand gesture recognition using low-budget, 5-sensor data glove. To allow widespread use of low-budget data gloves in…

Abstract

Purpose

Main purpose is to present methodology which allows efficient hand gesture recognition using low-budget, 5-sensor data glove. To allow widespread use of low-budget data gloves in engineering virtual reality (VR) applications, gesture dictionaries must be enhanced with more ergonomic and symbolically meaningful hand gestures, while providing high gesture recognition rates when used by different seen and unseen users.

Design/methodology/approach

The simple boundary-value gesture recognition methodology was replaced by a probabilistic neural network (PNN)-based gesture recognition system able to process simple and complex static gestures. In order to overcome problems inherent to PNN – primarily, slow execution with large training data sets – the proposed gesture recognition system uses clustering ensemble to reduce the training data set without significant deterioration of the quality of training. The reduction of training data set is efficiently performed using three types of clustering algorithms, yielding small number of input vectors that represent the original population very well.

Findings

The proposed methodology is capable of providing efficient recognition of simple and complex static gestures and was also successfully tested with gestures of an unseen user, i.e. person who took no part in the training phase.

Practical implications

The hand gesture recognition system based on the proposed methodology enables the use of affordable data gloves with a small number of sensors in VR engineering applications which require complex static gestures, including assembly and maintenance simulations.

Originality/value

According to literature, there are no similar solutions that allow efficient recognition of simple and complex static hand gestures, based on a 5-sensor data glove.

Details

Assembly Automation, vol. 34 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-5154

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 February 1989

Mark Bendig

Describes 13 utility programs written in BASIC, with a summary ofwhat each does. Classifies the programs – COPYDEL, DSPLINES,PRINTOUT, LINECT, CUTLINES, PRTASCII, DSPCHARS…

Abstract

Describes 13 utility programs written in BASIC, with a summary of what each does. Classifies the programs – COPYDEL, DSPLINES, PRINTOUT, LINECT, CUTLINES, PRTASCII, DSPCHARS, DELFILES, CYCLER, MESSAGE, STARS, and SOUNDS – by utility category. States how to use the programs as‐is, or how to make modifications to them in BASIC.

Details

OCLC Micro, vol. 5 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 8756-5196

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 February 1988

The first Scottish Young Persons National Video Competition 1988, arranged by the Scottish Council for Educational Technology and the Scottish Community Education Council, will

Abstract

The first Scottish Young Persons National Video Competition 1988, arranged by the Scottish Council for Educational Technology and the Scottish Community Education Council, will include as prizes a trip to London, use of professional video editing equipment, and visits to the BBC and STV studios in Glasgow. There are also cash prizes of up to £100 for earch of the competition categories: primary schools, secondary schools, colleges and community groups. Winning videos will be selected for their technical quality, entertainment value, creativity and imagination, appropriateness to target audience and evidence that the video‐makers have learnt something in the process. Details are available from SCET, 74 Victoria Crescent Road, Glasgow G12 9JN. Tel: 041–334 9314.

Details

Education + Training, vol. 30 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0040-0912

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