Acceptance Policy Research Articles

100% Renewable Energy Supply for Brazil—The Role of Sector Coupling and Regional Development

With its abundance of renewable energy potentials, not only for hydropower and bioenergy, but also for wind and solar, Brazil provides good prospects for a carbon neutral energy system. The role of an enhanced coupling of the power, heat and transport sectors in such systems is not yet fully understood. This paper analyses the least-cost composition and operation of a fully renewable power supply system as part of a carbon neutral energy supply in Brazil. It relies on the application of the high-resolution energy system model REMix. Our analysis reveals that the expansion of wind and solar power is more cost-efficient than the construction of additional hydroelectric plants. This is favoured because the existing hydroelectric plants offer large capacity of dispatchable power to compensate for fluctuations, and thus no additional storage is necessary. Furthermore, the REMix analysis indicates that varying shares of solar and wind power technologies as well as the spatial distribution of power generation have only a small influence on supply costs. This implies that the transformation strategy in Brazil can be primarily based on other criteria such as regional development, public acceptance, environmental impact or industrial policy without major impacts on system costs.

The administration of blood components: a British Society for Haematology Guideline.

The administration of blood components: a British Society for Haematology Guideline.

Application Scheduling, Placement, and Routing for Power Efficiency in Cloud Data Centers

Increased power usage and network performance degradation due to best-effort bandwidth sharing significantly affect tenancy cost, cloud adoption, and data center efficiencies. In this article, we propose a novel Sliding-Scheduled Tenant request model which enables tenants to specify the required duration of their application within a certain window, in addition to its resource requirement graph. We investigate the sliding-scheduled application placement and routing problem, which selects the start-time of requests within their specified time-window to reserve both server and network resources for their required duration, and therefore provide resource guarantees with predictable performance. Using the multi-component utilization-based power model, we formulate the problem as an optimization problem that maximizes the acceptance rate while consuming as low power as possible. We develop fast online heuristics that adopt power, acceptance and adaptive spread-based scheduling policies while allocating the resources with the consideration of request duration and current shutdown-time of the devices. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms in terms of power saving and acceptance rate, 1) for small data centers, by comparing their performance with the numerical results obtained from solving the optimization problem using CPLEX and 2) for large data centers using comprehensive simulation results.

Efficient Computational Analysis of Stationary Probabilities for the Queueing System BMAP/G/1/N With or Without Vacation(s)

We consider a finite-buffer single-server queue with batch Markovian arrival process. In the case of finite-buffer batch arrival queue, there are different customer rejection/acceptance strategies such as partial batch rejection, total batch rejection, and total batch acceptance policy. We consider partial batch rejection strategy throughout our paper. We obtain queue length distributions at various epochs such as pre-arrival, arbitrary, and post-departure as well as some important performance measures, like probability of loss for the first, an arbitrary, and the last customer of a batch, mean queue lengths, and mean waiting times. The corresponding queueing model under single and multiple vacation policy has also been investigated. Some numerical results have been presented in the form of tables by considering phase-type and Pareto service time distributions. The proposed analysis is based on the successive substitutions in the Markov chain equations of the queue-length distribution at an embedded post-departure epoch of a customer. We also establish relationships among the queue-length distributions at post-departure, arbitrary, and pre-arrival epochs using the classical argument based on Markov renewal theory and semi-Markov processes. Such queueing systems find applications in the performance evaluation of teletraffic part in 4G A11-IP networks.

Optimal Load Acceptance Policies for Intermodal Freight Transportation

Optimal Load Acceptance Policies for Intermodal Freight Transportation

Medical Student Beliefs and Attitudes Toward Mental Illness Across Five Nations.

Negative attitudes toward people with mental illness are a widespread concern and may vary across countries. This study used a 36-item questionnaire to compare attitudes toward people with mental illness and beliefs about the causes of mental illness among medical students from the United States, Brazil, Ghana, Nigeria, and China (N = 1131). Exploratory factor analysis identified the underlying factor structure of the questionnaire, and analysis of covariance was then used to compare factors representing four nonstigmatized attitudes across students from the five countries. US Medical students scored highest on all four factors, followed by those from Brazil. Nigerian and Ghanaian students scored lowest on nonsupernatural etiology of mental illness, and Chinese students showed the lowest score on personal social acceptance and public policy acceptance of people with mental illness. Differences in medical student attitudes between these five countries suggest underlying sociocultural differences in attitudes with the more stigmatized attitudes in developing countries.

Shared Socio-Economic Pathways of the Energy Sector – Quantifying the Narratives

Energy is crucial for supporting basic human needs, development and well-being. The future evolution of the scale and character of the energy system will be fundamentally shaped by socioeconomic conditions and drivers, available energy resources, technologies of energy supply and transformation, and end-use energy demand. However, because energy-related activities are significant sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and other environmental and social externalities, energy system development will also be influenced by social acceptance and strategic policy choices. All of these uncertainties have important implications for many aspects of economic and environmental sustainability, and climate change in particular. In the Shared-Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) framework these uncertainties are structured into five narratives, arranged according to the challenges to climate change mitigation and adaptation. In this study we explore future energy sector developments across the five SSPs using Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), and we also provide summary output and analysis for selected scenarios of global emissions mitigation policies. The mitigation challenge strongly corresponds with global baseline energy sector growth over the 21st century, which varies between 40% and 230% depending on final energy consumer behavior, technological improvements, resource availability and policies. The future baseline CO2-emission range is even larger, as the most energy-intensive SSP also incorporates a comparatively high share of carbon-intensive fossil fuels, and vice versa. Inter-regional disparities in the SSPs are consistent with the underlying socioeconomic assumptions; these differences are particularly strong in the SSPs with large adaptation challenges, which have little inter-regional convergence in long-term income and final energy demand levels. The scenarios presented do not include feedbacks of climate change on energy sector development. The energy sector SSPs with and without emissions mitigation policies are introduced and analyzed here in order to contribute to future research in climate sciences, mitigation analysis, and studies on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability.

Reduction in Hospital-Wide Clinical Laboratory Specimen Identification Errors following Process Interventions: A 10-Year Retrospective Observational Study.

BackgroundAccurate patient identification and specimen labeling at the time of collection are crucial steps in the prevention of medical errors, thereby improving patient safety.MethodsAll patient specimen identification errors that occurred in the outpatient department (OPD), emergency department (ED), and inpatient department (IPD) of a 3,800-bed academic medical center in Taiwan were documented and analyzed retrospectively from 2005 to 2014. To reduce such errors, the following series of strategies were implemented: a restrictive specimen acceptance policy for the ED and IPD in 2006; a computer-assisted barcode positive patient identification system for the ED and IPD in 2007 and 2010, and automated sample labeling combined with electronic identification systems introduced to the OPD in 2009.ResultsOf the 2000345 specimens collected in 2005, 1023 (0.0511%) were identified as having patient identification errors, compared with 58 errors (0.0015%) among 3761238 specimens collected in 2014, after serial interventions; this represents a 97% relative reduction. The total number (rate) of institutional identification errors contributed from the ED, IPD, and OPD over a 10-year period were 423 (0.1058%), 556 (0.0587%), and 44 (0.0067%) errors before the interventions, and 3 (0.0007%), 52 (0.0045%) and 3 (0.0001%) after interventions, representing relative 99%, 92% and 98% reductions, respectively.ConclusionsAccurate patient identification is a challenge of patient safety in different health settings. The data collected in our study indicate that a restrictive specimen acceptance policy, computer-generated positive identification systems, and interdisciplinary cooperation can significantly reduce patient identification errors.

Evaluating order acceptance policies for divergent production systems with co-production

The impacts of using different order acceptance policies in manufacturing sectors are usually well known and documented in the literature. However, for industries facing divergent processes with co-production (i.e. several products produced at the same time from a common raw material), the evaluation, comparison and selection of policies are not trivial tasks. This paper proposes a framework to enable this evaluation. Using a simulation model that integrates a custom-built ERP, we compare and evaluate different order acceptance policies in various market conditions. Experiments are carried out using a case from the forest products industry. Results illustrate how and when different market conditions related to divergent/co-production industries may call for available-to-promise (ATP), capable-to-promise (CTP), and other known strategies. Especially, we show that advanced order acceptance policies like CTP may generate a better income for certain types of market and, conversely to typical manufacturing industries, ATP performs better than other strategies for a specific demand patterns.

Take Time to Review Your Gift Acceptance Policy

Take Time to Review Your Gift Acceptance Policy

The ecosystem service assessment challenge: Reflections from Flanders-REA

This paper aims to improve ecosystem assessment practice by sharing the lessons learned from the Flanders Regional Ecosystem Assessment. The ‘EU biodiversity strategy to 2020’, requests the EU member states ‘to map and assess the state of ecosystems and their services by 2014’. However, a large number of member states have yet to start this assessment, and depend on assistance from the European Commission and on experiences from ongoing national assessments. In the region of Flanders (Belgium), several ecosystem service projects have since 2009 led the way to the ‘Flanders Regional Ecosystem Assessment’ (Flanders-REA), led by the governments’ leading research institute on biodiversity. To attain high regional requirements on scientific quality, acceptance and effective local policy impact, this assessment has tackled a number of challenges. The challenges discussed in this paper are obtaining conceptual clarity and consensus across disciplines and partners, the integration of multiple sources of information, critical handling of maps and the inclusion of experts and stakeholders. This paper also critically reflects on the definition of EU targets, their implementation, the current EU assistance to the member states, and the alignment with actual local and global policy needs.

Determining the Optimal Donation Acceptance Policy for Nonprofit Stores

Many nonprofits derive a considerable amount of their financial support from the resale of donated items. Given the razor‐thin margins at which many of these organizations operate, it is critical that they maximize the proceeds that come from the sale of these items. To do so, nonprofits require policies that guide their donation acceptance decisions so as to optimize revenue generation. This article presents research about how to determine the optimal donation acceptance policy for Habitat for Humanity. Habitat affiliates sell donated material at their ReStores, or discount home improvement centers, and the revenue from the ReStores directly supports the building of new homes. Several constraints limit the revenue that the ReStores derive from the donated items, including the supply rate of items from donors, the demand rate of items from customers, and the space limitations of the ReStores. We developed a two‐step method to determine the optimal acceptance policy—the daily amount of donations to accept to maximize revenue. This approach increases revenue by up to 20 percent and additionally provides insights into pricing options, marketing strategy, and optimal store size.

Entrepreneurial Development Deficiencies in Developing Economies – Nigeria in Focus

Government and private sector agencies have made quality investments in entrepreneurial development in Nigeria. This is inclusive of providing enabling environments. In the presence of these, the rate and level of growth and development in entrepreneurship as factors for social economic macro societal development is still poor. This work with the aid of well structured sets of questionnaires, structured interviews and observations generated and analyzed data based on ‘z’ statistic that show deficiencies in entrepreneurial strive which are development traceable to inadequacy in strategic alliances between existing institutions involved in the development of entrepreneurship in Nigeria. In addition, is absence of quality network for the maximization of economy scale in resource utilization among others? This work thus recommends the establishment of functional institutions based on acceptance policies that encourage education of and among entrepreneurs for specialization and project execution, quality growth in networking among natural and artificial persons involved in the programmes of entrepreneurial development among others. These as recommendations have the capacity of stimulating entrepreneur behaviours for the discovering and satisfying unsatisfied markets even in the face of risks and uncertainties and for entrepreneurial development.

Quantitative analysis of genomic DNA degradation in whole blood under various storage conditions for molecular diagnostic testing

Proper storage of whole blood is crucial for isolating nucleic acids from leukocytes and to ensure adequate performance of downstream assays in the molecular diagnostic laboratory. Short-term and long-term storage recommendations are lacking for successful isolation of genomic DNA (gDNA). Container type (EDTA or heparin), temperature (4 °C and room temperature) and time (1–130 days) were assessed as criterion for sample acceptance policies. The percentage of integrated area (%Ti) between 150 and 10,000 bp from the 2200 TapeStation electropherogram was calculated to measure gDNA degradation. Refrigerated EDTA samples yielded gDNA with low %Ti (high quality). Heparinized samples stored at room temperature yielded gDNA of worst quality. Downstream analysis demonstrated that the quality of the gDNA correlated with the quality of the data; samples with high %Ti generated significantly lower levels of high molecular weight amplicons. Recommendations from these analyses include storing blood samples intended for nucleic acid isolation in EDTA tubes at 4 °C for long term storage (>10 days). gDNA should be extracted within 3 days when blood is stored at room temperature regardless of the container. Finally, refrigerated heparinized samples should not be stored longer than 9 days if expecting high quality gDNA isolates. Laboratories should consider many factors, in addition to the results obtained herein, to update their policies for sample acceptance for gDNA extraction intended for molecular genetic testing.

New APA Logo Unifies Image of Psychiatry

Back to table of contents Next article Association NewsFull AccessNew APA Logo Unifies Image of PsychiatryMark MoranMark MoranSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:28 May 2015https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.pn.2015.6a14AbstractThe new design symbolizes contemporary psychiatry as a science of mind, brain, and body and will help to unify the image of APA and the profession for patients, families, and the wider public.A new APA logo signifying the leadership of the modern psychiatrist as a physician of mind, brain, and body was unveiled last month during the Opening Session of APA’s 2015 annual meeting in Toronto. The logo depicts the ancient serpent entwined–Rod of Asclepius—wielded in Greek mythology by the god Asclepius and associated with medicine and healing—superimposed over the image of two hemispheres of a human brain. The trademarked logo appears next to the words “American Psychiatric Association,” with the word “Psychiatric” in bold type; the tagline “Medical leadership for mind, brain and body” appears below the logo. The new logo graphically updates the image of psychiatry to express its expertise in biopsychosocial and integrated care in treating mind, brain, and body and provides a unifying “brand” to the Association by appearing on all of APA’s products.The logo and rebranding were approved by APA’s Board of Trustees at its March meeting at the recommendation of APA CEO and Medical Director Saul Levin, M.D., M.P.A., and APA Chief Communications Officer Jason Young. At that meeting, Young told Trustees that many of APA’s departments, programs, and publications were using their own logos rather than the Benjamin Rush seal, which has served as APA’s de facto logo since 1921. The result has been a jumble of unrelated graphics that have led to confusion among members and the public about the identity of APA products and its advocacy achievements, he said. The seal features the profile of Benjamin Rush, M.D., who is considered the father of American psychiatry and was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. The seal will continue to be used for ceremonial purposes and some internal documents. To help the APA administration, district branches, and state associations adopt the new logo and the related material that support it (such as a color palette and type fonts), APA’s Office of Corporate Communications and Public Affairs has produced the document “APA Brand Guidelines.” The preface outlines the purpose of the new branding: “It’s an exciting time for our organization as we shape the future of mental health treatment. This means a change in our priorities as well as our visual brand. The American Psychiatric Association is leading the charge for better treatments, more acceptance, and stronger policies to improve the lives of those with mental illness.”“This guide contains everything you need to understand and use our brand system. By consistently adhering to our brand architecture, you will strengthen our collective presence and thus the cause.”Levin said the new branding will help to present a cohesive, consistent image of APA and psychiatry to members and the public. “I am confident the logo and rebranding will be a valuable service to our district branches and individual members by providing a unifying image for all of APA’s products,” Levin told Psychiatric News. “The APA Board of Trustees and leadership deliberated carefully with our consultants to come up with an image and tagline that convey to patients, families, and the wider public the expertise of the contemporary psychiatrist as a physician and healer of mind, brain, and body.” ■To view a video that reflects the values of modern psychiatry and their translation into the new logo, click here. ISSUES NewArchived

Agent-based load balancing in Cloud data centers

Cloud data centers are generally composed of heterogeneous commodity servers hosting multiple virtual machines (VMs) with potentially different specifications and fluctuating resource usages. This may cause a resource usage imbalance within servers that may result in performance degradation and violations to service level agreements. This work proposes a collaborative agent-based problem solving technique capable of balancing workloads across commodity, heterogeneous servers by making use of VM live migration. The agents are endowed with (i) migration heuristics to determine which VMs should be migrated and their destination hosts, (ii) migration policies to decide when VMs should be migrated, (iii) VM acceptance policies to determine which VMs should be hosted, and (iv) front-end load balancing heuristics. The results show that agents, through autonomous and dynamic collaboration, can efficiently balance loads in a distributed manner outperforming centralized approaches with a performance comparable to commercial solutions, namely Red Hat, while migrating fewer VMs.

Drafting a Gift Acceptance Policy

The Major Gifts ReportVolume 17, Issue 4 p. 3-3 Articles Drafting a Gift Acceptance Policy First published: 13 March 2015 https://doi.org/10.1002/mgr.30083Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume17, Issue4April 2015Pages 3-3 RelatedInformation

Order Admission and Optimal Pricing for Regular Jobs and Big Deals at a Service Company

This paper studies optimal pricing and demand management policies for a firm that faces two streams of order types: one is composed of recurring regular jobs with pre-determined prices (exogenous prices) and the other involves big deals that require pricing proposals (endogenous prices). The probability to secure the big deals diminishes with the quoted price. The authors develop and compare optimization models for different demand management settings. Specifically, we consider two distinct strategies: a pure strategy in which the firm commits to bid for deals only and a mixed strategy where the firm switches its allocation of capacity between regular jobs and deals. The authors compare optimal pricing strategies under two demand management strategies that differ in how they allocate capacity across regular jobs and deals, and order acceptance policies that they adopt. The authors observe that the differences between two strategies in terms of pricing and average gain are in accord. Under any given set of systems parameters, one of the strategies leads to both higher prices and average gains. Typically, the preferable strategy depends on the exogenous price of regular orders and the price sensitivity of the deals. The authors conclude that the threshold values for these two parameters are determined primarily by the demand rate of the deals and the service rate of the standard jobs.

Influence of order acceptance policies on optimal capacity investment with stochastic customer required lead times

Abstract The influence of applying queue state dependent order acceptance policies, where either decision is with customer or with manufacturer, on optimal capacity investment is discussed. Therefore, three order acceptance policies are developed where either the customer has a certain service level threshold for each order or the manufacturer has an overall service level threshold. The third policy, modeling queue state independent order acceptance, is used to identify performance gains of including queue state knowledge into this decision. Equations for state probabilities, order acceptance rate, work-in-process, finished-goods-inventory, backorders and service level are developed for a system with stochastic customer-required lead times applying queuing methodology. An optimization problem minimizing capacity, work-in-process, finished-goods-inventory, backorder and lost sales cost (for rejected orders) in a single stage MTO production system is presented. The system is modeled as an M/M/1 queue with input rates depending on queue length and random customer required lead time. For the optimization problem, which cannot be solved explicitly, a solution heuristic is developed and a broad numerical study is conducted. The numerical study shows that allowing the customer to know the expected production lead time and—based on this knowledge—decide whether or not to place an order can have positive or negative influences on the overall costs, depending on the customer's service level target. Furthermore, the study shows that a high cost reduction potential exists for simultaneously optimizing capacity investment and order acceptance policy if the production system can decide whether or not to accept an order.

Revenue management for operations with urgent orders

This article is motivated by the case of a company manufacturing industrial equipment that faces two types of demand: on the one hand there are the so-called regular orders for installations or refurbishing of existing facilities, these orders have a relatively long lead time; on the other hand there are urgent orders mostly related to spare parts when a facility has a breakdown, the delay in such case is much shorter but higher margins can be obtained. We study the order acceptance problem for a firm that serves two classes of demand over an infinite horizon. The firm has to decide whether to accept a regular order (or equivalently how much capacity to set aside for urgent orders) in order to maximize its profit. We formulate this problem as a multi-dimensional Markovian Decision Process (MDP). We propose a family of approximate formulations to reduce the dimension of the state space via aggregation. We show how our approach can be used to compute bounds on the profit associated with the optimal order acceptance policy. Finally, we show that the value of revenue management is commensurate with the operational flexibility of the firm.