Technology-Based Service Encounters Using Self-Service Technologies in the Healthcare Industry

Although there have been studies discussing the influence of technology-based services on the overall service efficiency and quality of organizations in various industries, very little effort has been devoted to investigating this issue in the healthcare industry. Hospital image is considered to be a crucial factor influencing patients' choice of hospitals, but few studies specifically examine its association with technology-based services. By consulting the model of the European Customer Satisfaction Index, a research model for evaluating the impact of the use of technology-based services on hospital image, patient satisfaction, and patient loyalty in the healthcare industry is developed and examined in this study using survey data collected from 738 patients at two medical centers with an online appointment system. The research results confirm the importance of providing quality, technology-based services in enhancing hospital image, patient satisfaction, and patient loyalty. The implications of this research and suggestions for future work are also discussed.     

Ergonomic Analysis of Head‐Mounted Night Vision Goggle Systems in Simulated Ground Operations

This study compared the mounting time and strain on the head‐neck while using an old model (forehead and cheek supported) and a new model (head harness supported) of head‐mounted night vision goggle systems in the postures of standing, sitting, and lying prone. The results showed that effectively reducing the mounting time was attributed to the ease and less time required for length adjustments of the head harness in the new model. The novel device received higher positive subjective ratings for convenience and comfort while wearing than did the old model. Although the weight of the new model was decreased to 0.794 kg and the length was reduced to 0.155 m, the loads on the head‐neck complex remained high. These findings suggest that a rifle should be fitted with the night vision goggle or handheld model to decrease neck‐shoulder workload if the prone position is the most frequent and important posture for soldiers. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Bounded parallel-batching scheduling with two competing agents

We consider a scheduling problem in which two agents, each with a set of non-preemptive jobs, compete to perform their jobs on a common bounded parallel-batching machine. Each of the agents wants to minimize an objective function that depends on the completion times of its own jobs. The goal is to schedule the jobs such that the overall schedule performs well with respect to the objective functions of both agents. We focus on minimizing the makespan or the total completion time of one agent, subject to an upper bound on the makespan of the other agent. We distinguish two categories of batch processing according to the compatibility of the agents. In the case where the agents are incompatible, their jobs cannot be processed in the same batch, whereas all the jobs can be processed in the same batch when the agents are compatible. We show that the makespan problem can be solved in polynomial time for the incompatible case and is NP-hard in the ordinary sense for the compatible case. Furthermore, we show that the latter admits a fully polynomial-time approximation scheme. We prove that the total completion time problem is NP-hard and is polynomially solvable for the incompatible case with a fixed number of job types.     

Dynamic changes of the ecological environment quality in a river basin: a case study of the main stream of Songhua river basin

This paper reports the investigation and analysis of the status and dynamic changes of ecological environment quality in the main stream of Songhua river basin. The evaluation index system was established and the eco-environment quality in the year of 2000 and 2008 was studied in depth. Based on our research, the trend of dynamic changes of the eco-environment quality and its origins have been further discussed: In the year of 2000, the range of evaluation index covered from 0.31 to 0.47. Harbin and Yichun was relatively better than the rest of study areas. In the year of 2008, except districts of Daqing and Qitaihe, the environmental quality of Songhua river basin has entirely improved, wherein the evaluation index of the eco-environment covered from 0.31 to 0.57. Particularly, the eco-environment quality of Hegang and Shuangyashan has obtained significant improvement, whereas the improvement of Jiamusi was not obvious. According to the evaluation results, the environmental quality in the study area has an upward trend with the average growth rate 0.13% per year.     

广州市疏浚淤泥固化技术与工艺探讨

就疏浚淤泥的固化处置方法进行了论述,并结合广州市疏浚淤泥固化处置项目,主要探讨了广州市疏浚淤泥固化技术原理、固化剂以及工艺和设备,并对淤泥固化技术工程应用和固化效果进行了研究.     

曲线坐标系下考虑植被影响的三维水沙数学模型

建立曲线坐标系下的三维水流泥沙湍流运动模型模拟弯曲渠道内布置水生植被后的水流结构和河床变形分布,计算了试验室60o弯道内流经植被的水流流速平面结构和断面分布以及不同植被布置情况对水流泥沙运动和床面变形的影响。数值结果较好地再现了试验规律。计算结果表明在弯道内布置植被会改变水流流速分布情况:植被覆盖区域的水流流速降低、弯道内二次流减弱和泥沙运动减弱,而非植被覆盖区域的水流流速增大、断面二次流依然存在且泥沙运动加剧。通过比较两种水生植被布置条件下的床面变形情况,发现合理布置植被可以减缓凹岸的泥沙侵蚀,但也会加剧凸岸的泥沙淤积。     

云南省干旱及演变趋势分析

在收集云南省历史旱情、灾情资料以及1949—2009年的旱灾统计资料的基础上,分析云南省干旱周期的年际变化规律,空间分布规律以及干旱演变趋势,提出工程和非工程的抗旱措施,为云南省的抗旱减灾、制定抗旱调度方案提供科学依据。     

验前信息在反舰导弹靶场试验中的应用研究

针对反舰导弹靶场试验时如何把验前积累大量的先验信息科学合理利用,根据反舰导弹不同种类的验前信息,确定其分布类型并采用参数和非参数检验方法进行相容性检验,使经过预处理的验前信息能够为试验所用,并通过实例验证了该方法的科学可行性。该方法对验前信息在反舰导弹靶场试验及结果评定中的应用具有一定意义。     

Skeleton-based intrinsic symmetry detection on point clouds

We present a skeleton-based algorithm for intrinsic symmetry detection on imperfect 3D point cloud data. The data imperfections such as noise and incompleteness make it difficult to reliably compute geodesic distances, which play essential roles in existing intrinsic symmetry detection algorithms. In this paper, we leverage recent advances in curve skeleton extraction from point clouds for symmetry detection. Our method exploits the properties of curve skeletons, such as homotopy to the input shape, approximate isometry-invariance, and skeleton-to-surface mapping, for the detection task. Starting from a curve skeleton extracted from an input point cloud, we first compute symmetry electors, each of which is composed of a set of skeleton node pairs pruned with a cascade of symmetry filters. The electors are used to vote for symmetric node pairs indicating the symmetry map on the skeleton. A symmetry correspondence matrix (SCM) is constructed for the input point cloud through transferring the symmetry map from skeleton to point cloud. The final symmetry regions on the point cloud are detected via spectral analysis over the SCM. Experiments on raw point clouds, captured by a 3D scanner or the Microsoft Kinect, demonstrate the robustness of our algorithm. We also apply our method to repair incomplete scans based on the detected intrinsic symmetries.