295,137 research outputs found
Q&A with Barb Best … and Barb Best
No full textBarb Best is the author of the new humor book The Misery Manifesto: A Self-Help Parody for the Self-Absorbed with cartoons by Roz Chast, Liza Donnelly and Andrew Genn. Published by Wise Ink
Best relays selection method for error-resilient 3-D video transmission
No full textIn color-plus-depth map three-dimensional (3-D) video representation, color and depth map sequences exhibit different error sensitivities to the overall quality. Recognizing that, in this paper, we propose to exploit the relay cooperation benefits to achieve unequal error protection (UEP) for better quality 3-D video transmission. Specifically, we propose to apply the first best amplify-and-forward (AF) relay for transmitting color information with high priority (HP) while the second best AF relay is employed for the depth information with low priority (LP). In particular, we drive closed-form expressions for the bit error probability (BEP). Simulation results of the BEP are
presented to demonstrate the proposed UEP scheme in terms of
the received 3-D video quality
Best of practices?
No full textIn this brief critique of the idea of 'best practice', the author argues that good practice is not replicable or uniform; it cannot be reduced to its component parts for replication elsewhere. Furthermore, the criteria for what constitutes 'best practice' are at best unscientific and tend to discourage diversity and local experimentation.This article is hosted by our co-publisher Taylor & Francis.</p
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Best Practices in Wireless Emergency Alerts
No full textThis material is based on work funded and supported by Department of Homeland Security and is also available at FirstResponder.gov in the Technology Documents Library. This report presents four best practices for the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) program. These best practices were identified through interviews with emergency management agencies across the United States. The WEA "Go Live" Checklist identifies key steps that an emergency management agency should perform when implementing WEA in a local jurisdiction and provides guidance for completing each action. The WEA Training and Drilling Guide identifies the steps for preparing staff to use WEA and includes suggestions shared by alerting authorities that have implemented WEA. The WEA Governance Guide identifies steps for using or preparing to use WEA to ensure coordination between participating alerting agencies. The WEA Cybersecurity Risk Management (CSRM) Strategy describes a strategy that alert originators can use throughout WEA adoption, operations, and sustainment, as well as a set of governance activities for developing a plan to execute the CSRM. Because best practices will evolve as WEA matures and becomes more widely used, an appendix provides information on how a best practice–driven organization can search for best practices, adapt them to the local context, and adopt them for everyday use
Best-value in Korean public building construction
No full textAlthough the low-bid system has played a major role in public building construction sector for a long time, this system has arguably delivered work of low quality, an continued and rising number of claims within the industry. With these challenges in mind, the Korean government has sought to examine and possibly adopt best-value procurement as an alternative approach to delivering public building construction projects within Korea. The reality however is that although delivering arguably a number of advantages, best-value does present the government with its own peculiar challenges because of a lack of a precise understanding of what ‘best-value’ means. Hence, in this study, the author seeks to examine the concept of best-value and its application to Korean public building construction. To achieve the stated objectives, the author draws upon extant literature in ‘value’ procurement to critically examine the impact of ‘best-value’ concepts in Korean public building procurement. Data is obtained from a survey of 180 managers involved in the procurement and management of public buildings in Korea. Utilising ‘best-value’ criteria drawn from literature, the author employs Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to weight ‘best-value’ criteria identified through the survey. Based on the results of the AHP exercise, the following are found; (i) value depends on the state of each individual building which can be defined from a ‘need’ perspective, (ii) the primary criteria for ‘best-value’ in Korea public construction projects were ‘serviceability’, ‘safety’, ‘comfort’, ‘environmental friendliness’, ‘economical feasibility’, and ‘artistry’ and finally that (?) the importance of each primary criteria was dependent on the building type
Food for nought
No full textThe short story, "Food for nought", is written by the listed author above, Shashi Bhat. Now in its 48th year, Best Canadian Stories has long championed the short story form and highlighted the work of many of the writers, throughout their respective careers, who have gone on to shape the Canadian literary canon. Caroline Adderson, Margaret Atwood, Clark Blaise, Lynn Coady, Mavis Gallant, Zsuzsi Gartner, Douglas Glover, Steven Heighton, Isabel Huggan, Mark Anthony Jarman, Norman Levine, Rohinton Mistry, Alice Munro, Leon Rooke, Diane Schoemperlen, Russell Smith, Linda Svendsen, Kathleen Winter, and many others have appeared in its pages over the years and decades, making Best Canadian Stories the go-to source for what’s new in Canadian fiction writing for close to five decades. A continuation of not only a series, but a legacy in Canadian letters. --From publisher description.Published
Evaluating firms’ R&D performance using best worst method
No full textSince research and development (R&D) is the most critical determinant of the productivity, growth and competitive advantage of firms, measuring R&D performance has become the core of attention of R&D managers, and an extensive body of literature has examined and identified different R&D measurements and determinants of R&D performance. However, measuring R&D performance and assigning the same level of importance to different R&D measures, which is the common approach in existing studies, can oversimplify the R&D measuring process, which may result in misinterpretation of the performance and consequently fallacy R&D strategies. The aim of this study is to measure R&D performance taking into account the different levels of importance of R&D measures, using a multi-criteria decision-making method called Best Worst Method (BWM) to identify the weights (importance) of R&D measures and measure the R&D performance of 50 high-tech SMEs in the Netherlands using the data gathered in a survey among SMEs and from R&D experts. The results show how assigning different weights to different R&D measures (in contrast to simple mean) results in a different ranking of the firms and allow R&D managers to formulate more effective strategies to improve their firm's R&D performance by applying knowledge regarding the importance of different R&D measures.Transport and Logistic
Best-subset Selection for Complex Systems using Agent-based Simulation
No full textIt is difficult to analyze and determine strategies to control complex systems due to their inherent complexity. The complex interactions among elements make it difficult to develop and test decision makers' intuition of how the system will behave under different policies. Computer models are often used to simulate the system and to observe both direct and indirect effects of alternative interventions. However, many decision makers are unwilling to concede complete control to a computer model because of the abstractions in the model, and the other factors that cannot be modeled, such as physical, human, social and organizational relationship constraints. This dissertation develops an agent-based simulation (ABS) model to analyze a complex system and its policy alternatives, and contributes a best-subset selection (BSS) procedure that provides a group of good performing alternatives to which decision makers can then apply their subject and context knowledge in making a final decision for implementation.
As a specific example of a complex system, a mass casualty incident (MCI) response system was simulated using an ABS model consisting of three interrelated sub-systems. The model was then validated by a series of sensitivity analysis experiments.
The model provides a good test bed to evaluate various evacuation policies. In order to find the best policy that minimizes the overall mortality, two ranking-and-selection (R&S) procedures from the literature (Rinott (1978) and Kim and Nelson (2001)) were implemented and compared. Then a new best-subset selection (BSS) procedure was developed to efficiently select a statistically guaranteed best-subset containing all alternatives that are close enough to the best one for a pre-specified probability. Extensive numerical experiments were organized to prove the effectiveness and demonstrate the performance of the BSS procedure.
The BSS procedure was then implemented in conjunction with the MCI ABS model to select the best evacuation policies. The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of our agent-based optimization methodology for complex system policy evaluation and selection
Best-scoring Maximum Likelihood RAxML Tree
No full textSupplemental Data: Data File D. Best-scoring Maximum Likelihood tree (newick format) resulting from the RAxML phylogenetic analysis of matK DNA sequences for 3,744 legume sequences and 100 outgroup taxa
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