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To provide an overview of how the solid‐to‐solid contact force equation in MSC.ADAMS can be used to reduce contact model development, minimize the probability of introducing an error and reduce simulation run time by citing the example of the International Space Station (ISS).Design/methodology/approach – In early 2000, a redesign of the ISS required a more thorough representation of the contacting geometry. The MSC.ADAMS solid to solid contact force statement became available in time to solve this problem. This allowed simulation of the segment to segment attachment, including various combinations of contact feature misalignment.Findings – A structural failure of a “Zip” nut during qualification testing resulted in a NASA request for a force balance on the nut housing, internal nut segments and bolt. Using MSC.ADAMS solid to solid contact simulation, the desired force balance was obtained. The analysis showed the coarse guide to fine guide handoff did not bind and fine guide seating engaged, allowing the four motorized bolts to connect the segment‐to‐segment interface.Originality/value – MSC.ADAMS solid to solid contact algorithms decreased simulation time, allowing this very complicated contact problem to be completed in less than 30 min. Using CAD model solid geometry greatly reduced model development time. Solid to solid contact simulation eliminated the need for tedious derivation vector algebra contact equations and greatly advanced the level of geometric complexity that could be modeled as contacting interfaces. This also minimizes the probably of errors.

Vertical handover has been grown rapidly due to the mobility model improvements. These improvements are limited to certain circumstances and do not provide the support in the generic mobility, but offering vertical handover management in HetNets is very crucial and challenging. Therefore, this paper presents a vertical handoff management method using the effective network identification method.

This paper presents a vertical handoff management method using the effective network identification method. The handover triggering schemes are initially modeled to find the suitable position for starting handover using computed coverage area of the WLAN access point or cellular base station. Consequently, inappropriate networks are removed to determine the optimal network for performing the handover process. Accordingly, the network identification approach is introduced based on an adaptive particle-based Sailfish optimizer (APBSO). The APBSO is newly designed by incorporating self-adaptive particle swarm optimization (APSO) in Sailfish optimizer (SFO) and hence, modifying the update rule of the APBSO algorithm based on the location of the solutions in the past iterations. Also, the proposed APBSO is utilized for training deep-stacked autoencoder to choose the optimal weights. Several parameters, like end to end (E2E) delay, jitter, signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR), packet loss, handover probability (HOP) are considered to find the best network.

The developed APBSO-based deep stacked autoencoder outperformed than other methods with a minimal delay of 11.37 ms, minimal HOP of 0.312, maximal stay time of 7.793 s and maximal throughput of 12.726 Mbps, respectively.

The network identification approach is introduced based on an APBSO. The APBSO is newly designed by incorporating self-APSO in SFO and hence, modifying the update rule of the APBSO algorithm based on the location of the solutions in the past iterations. Also, the proposed APBSO is used for training deep-stacked autoencoder to choose the optimal weights. Several parameters, like E2E delay, jitter, SINR, packet loss and HOP are considered to find the best network. The developed APBSO-based deep stacked autoencoder outperformed than other methods with minimal delay minimal HOP, maximal stay time and maximal throughput.

The Sexton et al.’s (2006) safety attitudes questionnaire (SAQ) has been widely used to assess staff’s attitudes towards patient safety in healthcare organizations. However, to date there have been few studies that discuss the perceptions of patient safety both from hospital staff and upper management. The purpose of this paper is to improve and to develop better strategies regarding patient safety in healthcare organizations.

The Chinese version of SAQ based on the Taiwan Joint Commission on Hospital Accreditation is used to evaluate the perceptions of hospital staff. The current study then lies in applying importance-performance analysis technique to identify the major strengths and weaknesses of the safety culture.

The results show that teamwork climate, safety climate, job satisfaction, stress recognition and working conditions are major strengths and should be maintained in order to provide a better patient safety culture. On the contrary, perceptions of management and hospital handoffs and transitions are important weaknesses and should be improved immediately.

The research is restricted in generalizability. The assessment of hospital staff in patient safety culture is physicians and registered nurses. It would be interesting to further evaluate other staff’s (e.g. technicians, pharmacists and others) opinions regarding patient safety culture in the hospital.

Few studies have clearly evaluated the perceptions of healthcare organization management regarding patient safety culture. Healthcare managers enable to take more effective actions to improve the level of patient safety by investigating key characteristics (either strengths or weaknesses) that healthcare organizations should focus on.

There is a need for a realistic simulator to model real mobile networks users. The purpose of this paper is to present a practical approach for simulating mobile networks. It aims to develop a platform that enables researchers to study different mobility scenarios.

The platform is built by using an initial set of real world data which is made richer by adding more complex movement patterns for users. Such an environment will aid researchers that are studying different problems related to users' behavior in a mobile computing setup.

It was found that the illustrative histograms of the generated network are used as an effective tool to modify and qualify the generated network, before actually using it, to have a network as close as possible to a real world one.

The authors were unable to access real data from real networks because of privacy issues.

The paper describes the first fully integrated simulator for mobile networks.

New organization theory posits that coordination mechanisms work by generating three integrating conditions: accountability (clarity about task responsibilities), predictability (clarity about which, when, and how tasks will be accomplished), and common understanding (shared perspectives about tasks). We apply this new theory to health care to improve understanding of how accountable care organizations (ACOs) are attempting to reduce the fragmentation that characterizes the US health care system. Drawing on four organizational case studies, we find that ACOs rely on a wide variety of coordination mechanisms that have been designed to leverage existing organizational capabilities, accommodate local contingencies. and, in some instances, interact strategically. We conclude that producing integrating conditions across the care continuum requires suites of interacting coordination mechanisms. Our findings provide a conceptual foundation for future research and improvements.

Mobility management for single‐hop cellular networks has received much research attention in the last few years. One of the research challenges for 4G wireless systems is the design of mobility management techniques that integrate cellular and ad‐hoc networks. Currently, there are no structured mobility management schemes for these heterogeneous multi‐hop networks. This paper aims to address these issues.

This paper describes techniques for tracking a mobile node (MN) in an integrated architecture with minimum overhead. This paper proposes group rerouting concept.

The paper implements and evaluates the proposed protocol by using the network simulator (NS‐2). The proposed protocol increases performance compared to broadcasting schemes.

This scheme considers devices with two interfaces only.

The paper proposes a scheme to extend the coverage of cellular base stations by using ad‐hoc devices.

This paper describes techniques for tracking an MN in an integrated architecture with minimum overhead. This scheme is independent of the routing protocol used in a multi‐hop network.

Although it is widely acknowledged that health care delivery systems are complex adaptive systems, there are gaps in understanding the application of systems engineering approaches to systems analysis and redesign in the health care domain. Commonly employed methods, such as statistical analysis of risk factors and outcomes, are simply not adequate to robustly characterize all system requirements and facilitate reliable design of complex care delivery systems. This is especially apparent in institutional-level systems, such as patient safety programs that must mitigate the risk of infections and other complications that can occur in virtually any setting providing direct and indirect patient care. The case example presented here illustrates the application of various system engineering methods to identify requirements and intervention candidates for a critical patient safety problem known as failure to rescue. Detailed descriptions of the analysis methods and their application are presented along with specific analysis artifacts related to the failure to rescue case study. Given the prevalence of complex systems in health care, this practical and effective approach provides an important example of how systems engineering methods can effectively address the shortcomings in current health care analysis and design, where complex systems are increasingly prevalent.

John D. Blair examines, in systematic detail, the challenges and opportunities that arise from the significantly different perspectives of context-specific versus context-free researchers and the literatures to which they contribute. He argues that reviews of one type or the other or both types of literatures may provide different understandings of the state of the art in a particular area of health care management. He also provides some detailed suggestions for writing quality reviews along with suggested topics for future reviews.

Information technology provides important support for on-site decision-making of field personnel. Most literature focuses on the technological aspects of decision-support systems, without fully understanding the information required for effective decision-making. This study aimed to formalize decision-makers’ requirements in terms of the major goals, decisions and information.

The situation awareness (SA) approach was applied through the goal-directed task analysis (GDTA) method, narrowing the scope to field managers’ decision-making during indoor construction activities. This method was based on a series of interviews to define, revise and validate the decision-making requirements for the given scope.

The study yielded 1,056 highly interrelated elements. The results indicate that the field manager’s overall goal is to execute and handoff work within the established deadlines, with the required quality, maximizing profits, within a safe work environment. The overall goal construes into five main goals regarding work progress, quality, costs, safety and communication. These goals include subgoals, decisions, and the information necessary to attain them, depicted in diagrams.

The findings allow enhancing the design of decision-support solutions by identifying information required for future developments and showing the interrelations between goals and information requirements that need to be addressed to present interfaces for effectively assisting on-site decision-making. Moreover, the results allow for the assessment of solutions regarding the sufficiency of information.

This is the first effort to fully understand the information required by field managers for on-site decision-making during indoor construction activities.

The purpose of this paper is to determine what patient and family stories can tell us about patient safety culture within health care organizations and how patients experience patient safety culture.

A total of 11 patient and family stories of adverse event experiences were examined in September 2013 using publicly available videos on the Canadian Patient Safety Insitute web site. Videos were transcribed verbatim and collated as one complete data set. Thematic analysis was used to perform qualitative inquiry. All qualitative analysis was done using NVivo 10 software.

A total of three themes were identified: first, Being Passed Around; second, Not Having the Conversation; and third, the Person Behind the Patient. Results from this research also suggest that while health care organizations and providers might expect patients to play a larger role in managing their health, there may be underlying reasons as to why patients are not doing so.

The findings indicate that patient experiences and narratives are useful sources of information to better understand organizational safety culture and patient experiences of safety while hospitalized. Greater inclusion and analysis of patient safety narratives is important in understanding the needs of patients and how patient safety culture interventions can be improved to ensure translation of patient safety strategies at the frontlines of care.

Greater acknowledgement of the patient and family experience provides organizations with an integral perspective to assist in defining and addressing deficiencies within their patient safety culture and to identify opportunities for improvement.