Search results

Reinforced concrete (R/C) hyperbolic cooling towers are the largest thin‐shell structures ever constructed. These towers stand more than 150m tall and have wall thicknesses of 0.20‐0.25m. Therefore, these can be classified as thin‐shell structures. Analyses the influences of both the reinforcing ratio and the tensile strength of the concrete on the strength of the R/C cooling tower shells. In the numerical analysis Port Gibson tower is adopted for the numerical model and the finite element method is applied to examine the non‐linear behaviour of the cooling tower shells. From the load displacement curves the initial crack strength and the ultimate strength are determined. Also presents the stress redistribution processes and demonstrates the influences of these problems on the strength of the cooling tower shells.

The purpose of this paper is to examine from the viewpoint of resource utilization the Japanese surgical payment system which was revised in April 2016.

The authors collected data from surgical records in the Teikyo University electronic medical record system from April 1 till September 30, 2016. The authors defined the decision-making unit as a surgeon with the highest academic rank in the surgery. Inputs were defined as the number of medical doctors who assisted surgery, and the time of operation from skin incision to closure. An output was defined as the surgical fee. The authors calculated each surgeon’s efficiency score using output-oriented Charnes–Cooper–Rhodes model of data envelopment analysis. The authors compared the efficiency scores of each surgical specialty using the Kruskal–Wallis and the Steel method.

The authors analyzed 2,558 surgical procedures performed by 109 surgeons. The difference in efficiency scores was significant (p = 0.000). The efficiency score of neurosurgery was significantly greater than obstetrics and gynecology, general surgery, orthopedics, emergency surgery, urology, otolaryngology and plastic surgery (p<0.05).

The authors demonstrated that the surgeons’ efficiency was significantly different among their specialties. This suggests that the Japanese surgical reimbursement scales fail to reflect resource utilization despite the revision in 2016.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the development and progression of the International Journal of Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Marketing and include comments on its future direction.

The paper takes the approach of an essay format.

The journal has published key papers in pharmaceutical and healthcare research and continues to develop an interdisciplinary character with contributions from scholarly and practice‐oriented sources.

The paper provides a contemporary appraisal of the status and positioning of the journal.

Image‐based localisation has been widely investigated in mobile robotics. However, traditional image‐based localisation approaches do not work when the environment appearance changes. The purpose of this paper is to propose a new system for image‐based localisation, which enables the approach to work also in highly dynamic environments.

The proposed technique is based on the use of a distributed vision system (DVS) composed of a set of cameras installed in the environment and of a camera mounted on a mobile robot. The localisation of the robot is achieved by comparing the current image grabbed by the robot with the images grabbed, at the same time, by the DVS. Finding the DVS's image, most similar to the robot's image, gives a topological localisation of the robot.

Experiments reported in the paper proved the system to be effective, even exploiting a pre‐existent DVS not designed for this application.

Whilst, aware that DVSs, as the one used in this work, are not diffuse nowadays, this work is significant because a novel idea is proposed for dealing with dynamic environments in the image‐based localisation approach and the idea is validated with experiments. Camera Sensor networks currently are an emerging technology and they may be introduced in several daily environments in the future.