1,721,012 research outputs found
Project risk management: A deterministic quantitative technique for assessment and mitigation
No full textThe paper presents a deterministic technique for assessing and preventing project risks, by determining the risk of the Work Progress Status. Firstly, the performance of the input factors, namely the costs, quality, and time, are detected, that reflect the Iron Triangle of the Project Management. As each phase ends, the actual values of the input factors are detected and compared with that planned, and corrective actions are taken for considering the impact of the actual performances on the overall project. Thus, the current risk degree of the project is determined through the Weighted Sum Method. If it is higher than planned, preventive actions are taken, in order to mitigate the risk of the entire project. Practical applications of the technique relate to routine projects and those cases in which the schedule/costs/requirements are to be defined in the planning phase, and deviations are detected in the progress phase
An expert system for financial performance assessment of health care structures based on fuzzy sets and KPIs
No full textInterest in the field of performance assessment of health care structures has grown in recent decades. In fact, the possibility of determining overall performances of health care structures plays a key role in the optimization of resource allocation and investment planning, as it contributes to reducing the uncertainty of future performance. In this context, key performance indicator (KPI) tools have been developed to assess the performance of health care structures from process, organizational, cost, financial, and output points of view. In practice, they are periodically calculated, and the effect of several KPIs on the overall performance of health care structures is determined by management through human judgment or software that provides synthetic dashboards. Given their non-stationary nature, performance assessment and forecasting are generally tackled by employing adaptive models, but these approaches cannot reflect the holistic nature of performance itself, nor take into account the impact of KPIs on the overall performances. In order to overcome these shortcomings, this study presents an expert system whose engine relies on fuzzy sets, in which the input-output relations and correlations have been modeled through inference rules based on time-series trends. The focus is on the financial performance assessment of a health care structure, such as a hospital. The approach is of an interdisciplinary kind, as several indicators were taken as inputs that relate to output, process, and cost KPIs, and their impact on the output measure, which is of a financial kind (namely the total reimbursement). The output measure calculated by the expert system was then compared with that predicted using only adaptive forecasting models, and the error with respect to the actual value was determined. Results showed that measures determined by fuzzy inference, able to effectively model actual input-output relations, outperform those of adaptive models
Prediction Of Rapid Biomass Devolatilization Yields With An Upgraded Version Of The Bio-CPD Model
Full text linkCome monitorare e analizzare i tassi d'infezione in un centro trapianti d'organo solido
Full text linkLe infezioni rappresentano un’importante causa di mortalità e morbilità nei pazienti trapiantati d’organo solido. Per conoscere il numero e l’impatto di queste complicanze in ambiente ospedaliero è necessario implementare un sistema di monitoraggio di tutte le infezioni correlate alle pratiche assistenziali (ICPA) mettendole in relazione con altre informazioni legate al ricovero
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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