Comparison of three rewarming methods in a postanesthesia care unit

Postoperative hypothermia is problematic because patients in postanesthesia care units (PACUs) often feel very cold, and unrecognized or prolonged postoperative hypothermia can aggravate patients' underlying cardiovascular disorders. The researchers compared three methods of rewarming PACU patients who had undergone laparotomy procedures. Patients were assigned randomly to three groups. Each patient in group one received the standard PACU rewarming intervention (ie, two warmed thermal blankets and a hospital bedspread). Each patient in group two received the standard PACU rewarming intervention plus a reflective blanket. Each patient in group three received the standard PACU rewarming intervention plus a reflective blanket and a reflective head covering. Nurses measured patients' vital signs on admission to the PACU and every 15 minutes thereafter until patients' sublingual temperatures reached 36 degrees C (96.8 degrees F). No significant temperature differences occurred among patients in the three groups, but an inverse relationship existed between patients' PACU admission temperatures and the time they required to reach normothermia.     

The role of office industries in development planning

Industrial Development has tended to be oriented to the attraction of manufacturing facilities. This paper discusses the trend towards service industries in the North American Economy, and the potential impact of developing office industries on a local economy. The literature on office location theory is reviewed and the results of the literature review are related to decentralization of offices to a planned new town near Metropolitan Toronto. The results of a survey of Toronto offices is presented and the results compared to that of the literature. Policy recommendations are proposed for the new town to attract office developments.     

Lane selection in an AGV-based asynchronous parallel assembly line

Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) have the flexibility to meet the material handling requirements of asynchronous assembly lines. Furthermore, AGVs can select from among alternative paths in accordance with a prescribed lane selection rule, thereby facilitating the use of parallel server workstations.

In this paper, motivated by our work in the automotive industry, several new lane selection rules are proposed. One of these, First Available Server/First Available Buffer/Balanced Work Content (FAS/FAB/BWC), is compared to two existing rules: Alternating Server, and First Available Server/First Available Buffer/Expected Completion Time (FAS/FAB/EC). Three performance measures — job throughput, workload balance among servers, and alteration of input job sequence — are employed. A SIMAN simulation model of a small, asynchronous parallel assembly line is used to study the impact on system performance of both the lane selection rule and the number of parallel servers. Interaction between these two factors is studied through ANOVA. A number of interesting findings are reported for results of the lane selection rules with respect to the three performance measures. Their interpretation is used to motivate further research.     

A Division of Psychotherapy.

Discusses the consideration of forming a Division of Psychotherapy within the American Psychological Association. The author provides the percentage of total members that are interested in psychotherapy and feels that despite the pros and cons of forming a Division of Psychotherapy, the sheer magnitude of these numbers warrants serious consideration. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Calculating the benefits of vendor managed inventory in a manufacturer-retailer system

Firms such as Wal-Mart and Campbell's Soup have successfully implemented vendor managed inventory (VMI). Articles in the trade press and academic literature often begin with the premise that VMI is ‘beneficial’; but beneficial to which party and under what conditions? We consider in this paper a vendor V that manufactures a particular product at a unique location. That item is sold to a single retailer, the customer C. Three cases are treated in detail: independent decision making (no agreement between the parties); VMI, whereby the supplier V initiates orders on behalf of C; and central decision making (both vendor and customer are controlled by the same corporate entity). Values of some cost parameters may vary between the three cases and each case may cause a different actor to be responsible for particular expenses. Under a constant demand rate, optimal solutions are obtained analytically for the customer's order quantity, the vendor's production quantity, hence the parties’ individual and total costs in the three cases. Inequalities are obtained to delineate those situations in which VMI is beneficial.     

Introversion-extraversion and kinesthetic aftereffects.

"Eysenck's hypothesis that extraverts show greater figural aftereffects than introverts was investigated by comparing the kinesthetic aftereffects of 37 subjects with high scores on Guilford's Rhathymia scale (extraverts) with those of 37 subjects with low scores on the scale (introverts). The personality groups did not differ significantly in amount of aftereffect. Several differences remain between the present study and Eysenck's earlier one, but the generality of the hypothesis that extraverts develop greater aftereffects than introverts is seriously questioned." From Psyc Abstracts 36:02:2HE95R. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

PIAP psychotherapy questionnaire.

PIAP (Psychologists Interested in the Advancement of Psychotherapy) in July 1962 sent questionnaires to all American Psychological Association Directory listed psychologists expressing interest in psychotherapy (N = 4494); 38% were returned. Results of the 12 item questionnaire are summarized. 17% of the respondents (N = 286) provided comments or offered suggestions which are discussed under the headings of Training, Private Practice, Organizational Issues, Problems of Subdoctoral Therapists, Research and New Directions, and Journal on Psychotherapy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

NAFTA supply chains: facilities location and logistics

North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the free‐trade agreement between Canada, Mexico and the United States, has caused North American companies to consider inclusion of Mexico in their supply chain. The lower Mexican wages may offset the additional transportation costs; capital‐intensive operations are preferably still done in the United States or Canada. With a consumer base focused in the United States, can an organisation leverage the benefits of NAFTA to their individual advantage? This paper aims to show how, through a real‐world example, overall supply chain costs (total system costs of inventory, transportation and facilities) can be minimised under those circumstances. We formulate and solve a mixed‐integer programming model to find the optimal supply chain for Tectrol Inc., a manufacturer of power supplies. In the first case, components produced in Canada undergo final assembly in the United States, followed by distribution there. The second case is a ‘NAFTA’ supply chain: the Canadian components are converted to sub‐assemblies in Mexico, processed in finishing plants across the US border, then shipped through distribution centres to the final customer. Model solutions indicate in each instance where to locate finishing plants and distribution centres, and how many of each there should be. Results provide Tectrol (hence other manufacturers) some general guidelines on distribution and supply chain decisions in the NAFTA context.     

A hybrid Benders approach for coordinated capacitated lot-sizing of multiple product families with set-up times

We examine a coordinated capacitated lot-sizing problem for multiple product families, where demand is deterministic and time-varying. The problem considers set-up and holding costs, where capacity constraints limit the number of individual item and family set-up times and the amount of production in each period. Using a strong reformulation and relaxing the demand constraints, we improve both the upper and lower bounds using a combination of Benders decomposition and an evolutionary algorithm, followed by subgradient optimisation. Through computational experiments, we show that our method consistently achieves better bounds, reducing the duality gap compared to other single-family methods studied in the literature.