The role of human factors in flexibility management: A survey

Flexibility can be defined as the ability to respond effectively to the ever‐changing and increasing needs of the customer. For this demand to be satisfied, flexibility should be built into the total chain of acquisition, processing, and distribution stages. As a result, there is an increasing interest in flexibility and flexibility enabling mechanisms/parameters to achieve the best strategy for obtaining the right and desired output. Although quite a number of flexibility definitions and mechanisms can be found in the literature, flexibility remains poorly understood and utilized in practice. That is due to the lack of standardization in the terminology about the flexibility definitions and mechanisms. This article presents the finding of an extensive literature survey to determine the Intra flexibility mechanisms/parameters. These mechanisms/parameters are then classified, according to their contribution to the supply chain stages and their interaction with Inter Flexibility mechanisms (e.g., Organizational structure flexibility, Technology flexibility, Information system flexibility, and Human resource flexibility). In addition, the crucial role of human factors and its relationship with flexibility mechanisms are investigated, and related flexibility mechanisms are identified. © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Port Placement Planning in Robot-Assisted Coronary Artery Bypass

Properly selected port sites for robot-assisted coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) improve the efficiency and quality of these procedures. In clinical practice, surgeons select port locations using external anatomic landmarks to estimate a patient's internal anatomy. This paper proposes an automated approach to port selection based on a preoperative image of the patient, thus avoiding the need to estimate internal anatomy. Using this image as input, port sites are chosen from a grid of surgeon-approved options by defining a performance measure for each possible port triad. This measure seeks to minimize the weighted squared deviation of the instrument and endoscope angles from their optimal orientations at each internal surgical site. This performance measure proves insensitive to perturbations in both its weighting factors and moderate intraoperative displacements of the patient's internal anatomy. A validation study of this port site selection was performed. cardiac algorithm also Six surgeons dissected model vessels using the port triad selected by this algorithm with performance compared to dissection using a surgeon-selected port triad and a port triad template described by Tabaie et al., 1999. With the algorithm-selected ports, dissection speed increased by up to 43% (p = 0.046) with less overall vessel trauma. Thus, this algorithmic approach to port site selection has important clinical implications for robot-assisted CABG which warrant further investigation.     

Fluid Biomarkers in HPV and Non-HPV Related Oropharyngeal Carcinomas: From Diagnosis and Monitoring to Prognostication—A Systematic Review

Biomarkers are crucial in oncology, from detection and monitoring to guiding management and predicting treatment outcomes. Histological assessment of tissue biopsies is currently the gold standard for oropharyngeal cancers, but is technically demanding, invasive, and expensive. This systematic review aims to review current markers that are detectable in biofluids, which offer promising non-invasive alternatives in oropharyngeal carcinomas (OPCs). A total of 174 clinical trials from the PubMed search engine in the last 5 years were identified and screened by 4 independent reviewers. From these, 38 eligible clinical trials were found and subsequently reviewed. The biomarkers involved, categorized by human papillomavirus (HPV)-status, were further divided according to molecular and cellular levels. Recent trials investigating biomarkers for both HPV-positive and HPV-negative OPCs have approaches from various levels and different biofluids including plasma, oropharyngeal swabs, and oral rinse. Promising candidates have been found to aid in detection, staging, and predicting prognosis, in addition to well-established factors including HPV-status, drinking and smoking status. These studies also emphasize the possibility of enhancing prediction results and increasing statistical significance by multivariate analyses. Liquid biopsies offer promising assistance in enhancing personalized medicine for cancer treatment, from lowering barriers towards early screening, to facilitating de-escalation of treatment. However, further research is needed, and the combination of liquid biopsies with pre-existing methods, including in vivo imaging and invasive techniques such as neck dissections, could also be explored in future trials.     

The Structure of Goal Contents Across 15 Cultures.

The authors investigated the structure of goal contents in a group of 1,854 undergraduates from 15 cultures around the world. Results suggested that the 11 types of goals the authors assessed were consistently organized in a circumplex fashion across the 15 cultures. The circumplex was well described by positing 2 primary dimensions underlying the goals: intrinsic (e.g., self-acceptance, affiliation) versus extrinsic (e.g., financial success, image) and self-transcendent (e.g., spirituality) versus physical (e.g., hedonism). The circumplex model of goal contents was also quite similar in both wealthier and poorer nations, although there were some slight cross-cultural variations. The relevance of these results for several theories of motivation and personality are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dissociated overt and covert recognition as an emergent property of a lesioned neural network.

Covert recognition of faces in prosopagnosia, in which patients cannot overtly recognize faces but nevertheless manifest recognition when tested in certain indirect ways, has been interpreted as the functioning of an intact visual face recognition system deprived of access to other brain systems necessary for consciousness. The authors propose an alternative hypothesis: that the visual face recognition system is damaged but not obliterated in these patients and that damaged neural networks will manifest their residual knowledge in just the kinds of tasks used to measure covert recognition. To test this, a simple model of face recognition is lesioned in the parts of the model corresponding to visual processing. The model demonstrates covert recognition in 3 qualitatively different tasks. Implications for the nature of prosopagnosia, and for other types of dissociations between conscious and unconscious perception, are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of river flooding on PCDD/F and PCB levels in cows' milk, soil, and grass

This paper presents the results of a study examining whether the flooding of pasture by rivers gives rise to higher PCDD/F and PCB concentrations in cows' milk. Over 180 milk, soil, and grass samples, taken from 38 farms across 3 different river systems (River Dee, Trent, and Doe Lea/Rother/Don) in the United Kingdom, were analyzed for PCDD/Fs and PCBs. The concentrations were compared between flood-prone farms, where the animals had access to pasture that is often flooded, and control farms where the land does not flood. The results indicated that concentrations of PCDD/Fs and PCBs in cows' milk were higher in samples taken from farms prone to flooding, but only from the river systems flowing through industrial and urban areas. Raised levels of PCDD/F and PCBs were also found in soil and grass from farms prone to flooding providing strong corroborative evidence that the higher concentrations in cows' milk from such areas is likely to be due to the ingestion of contaminated grass and soil. Overall, the results provide strong evidence that flooding of pastureland can indeed result in elevated concentrations of PCDD/Fs and PCBs in milk from the farms so affected.     

Pb isotopes as an indicator of the Asian contribution to particulate air pollution in urban California

During the last two decades, expanding industrial activity in east Asia has led to increased production of airborne pollutants that can be transported to North America. Previous efforts to detect this trans-Pacific pollution have relied upon remote sensing and remote sample locations. We tested whether Pb isotope ratios in airborne particles can be used to directly evaluate the Asian contribution to airborne particles of anthropogenic origin in western North America, using a time series of samples from a pair of sites upwind and downwind of the San Francisco Bay Area. Our results for airborne Pb at these sites indicate a median value of 29% Asian origin, based on mixing relations between distinct regional sample groups. This trans-Pacific Pb is present in small quantities but serves as a tracer for airborne particles within the growing Asian industrial plume. We then applied this analysis to archived samples from urban sites in central California. Taken together, our results suggest that the analysis of Pb isotopes can reveal the distribution of airborne particles affected by Asian industrial pollution at urban sites in northern California. Under suitable circumstances, this analysis can improve understanding of the global transport of pollution, independent of transport models.