Priority Of Items Research Articles

Setting Regional Priorities for Palliative and End-of-Life Care Research Using a Delphi Technique Approach.

Identifying research priorities is very important for palliative and end-of-life care to ensure research is focused on evidence gaps. This project aimed to identify and prioritise palliative and end-of-life care research areas within the West Midlands region in United Kingdom (UK). A modified Delphi technique approach was used with palliative care stakeholders. The first round was item generation via rapid interviews. Data were analysed using content analysis and all the items were grouped into main categories. For round two, an online survey was conducted to present all the items from round one, and stakeholders were asked to rate the priority of items on a Likert-type scale (1 = not a priority to 7 = essential priority). Items that achieved consensus in round two were presented to the third round, where stakeholders ranked them in descending order. We completed and analysed 56 rapid interviews which resulted in 158 research items under 15 categories. The research items were rated by 30 stakeholders and seven items which reached consensus were subsequently ranked in order by 45 stakeholders. The highest ranked item was 'Integrated care systems to prevent crisis', followed by three research items related to 'equity' in palliative care. Our research priorities, although unique for our region, mirror previously research priorities from other regions and countries. This suggests issues of integration and equity in palliative and end-of-life care remain unresolved, despite ongoing initiatives and research to address these issues.

Limitations on flexible allocation of visual short-term memory resources with multiple levels of goal-directed attentional prioritization.

Studies suggest that visual short-term memory (VSTM) is a continuous resource that can be flexibly allocated using probabilistic cues that indicate test likelihood (i.e., goal-directed attentional priority to those items). Previous studies using simultaneous cues have not examined this flexible allocation beyond two distinct levels of priority. Moreover, previous studies have not examined whether there are individual differences in the ability to flexibly allocate VSTM resources, as well as whether this ability benefits from practice. The current study used a continuous report procedure to examine whether participants can use up to three levels of attentional priority to allocate VSTM resources via simultaneous probabilistic spatial cues. Three experiments were performed with differing priority levels, cues, and cue presentation times. Group level analysis demonstrated flexible allocation of VSTM resources; however, there was limited evidence that participants could use three goal-directed priority levels. A temporal analysis suggested that task fatigue, rather than practice effects, may interact with item priority. A Bayesian individual-differences analysis revealed that a minority of participants were using three levels of attentional priority, demonstrating that, while possible, it is not the predominant pattern of behaviour. Thus, we provided evidence that flexible allocation to three attention levels is possible under simultaneous cuing conditions for a minority of participants. Flexible allocation to three categories may be interpreted as a skill of high-performing participants akin to high memory capacity.

Modulation of similarity on the distraction resistance of visual working memory representation.

Controversy exists regarding the distraction resistance of priority items in visual working memory (VWM). The protection account proposes that high-priority items resist distraction more than low-priority items, while the vulnerability account proposes that distractors impair high-priority items more. We proposed another available resource threshold account: distraction will not impair items if available resources exceed their threshold needed for sufficient processing. Using a change-detection paradigm, we manipulated item priority by color similarity and inserted distractors during VWM retention. We investigated the effect of similarity on distraction resistance of relevant (color) and irrelevant (shape) feature representations (Experiments 1-2), and the neural mechanism of this effect using event-related potentials (ERPs; Experiment 3). Behavioral results showed distractors impaired the accuracy of dissimilar items when relevant features were memorized and of similar items when irrelevant features were memorized under simultaneous presentation of similar and dissimilar items. Moreover, distractors impaired the accuracy of dissimilar items when relevant features were memorized and of both similar and dissimilar items when irrelevant features were memorized under separate presentation of items. ERP results showed a smaller negative slow wave and P2 but larger N2 under the similar condition. Similarity protected relevant features of similar items against distraction by reducing memory load, decreasing attentional resources allocated to distractors, and strengthening inhibition of distractors. However, similarity did not protect irrelevant features of similar items. Our results support the available resource threshold account, suggesting that VWM is a flexible and intelligent system despite its limited capacity.

Dynamic scheduling in make-to-stock production systems with setup times and random breakdowns: performance analysis and improved policies

We study the scheduling of production in a multi-item, failure-prone machine with setup times, with the objective of minimising long-run average inventory and backlog costs. We make two contributions to this problem, which has received significantly less attention compared to the standard stochastic economic lot scheduling problem (with random demand and production times). First, we adapt and implement a variety of existing scheduling policies and compare their performance through a set of numerical experiments spanning a wide range of operating conditions. This analysis allows us to identify important shortcomings of the policies, including their poor performance when items have widely different priorities (as dictated by the product of their cost and production rate parameters). Second, we leverage these insights to develop and analyse a new, easy-to-implement policy. This policy tightly controls the surplus of the highest-priority items using fixed base-stock levels and, for all other items, it determines their run lengths dynamically in such a way that long production runs become decreasingly likely with decreasing item priority. Our experiments show that our new policy greatly outperforms the benchmarking policies over a large and important set of operating regimes, comprising high-utilisation systems where the machine cycles through all items at a frequency comparable to or greater than the frequency of failure events.

Attention Biases Competition for Visual Representation via Dissociable Influences from Frontal and Parietal Cortex.

What mechanisms underlie the prioritization of neural representations of visually perceived information to guide behavior? We assessed the dynamics whereby attention biases competition for representation of visual stimuli by enhancing representations of relevant information and suppressing the irrelevant. Multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) classifiers were trained to discriminate patterns of fMRI activity associated with each of three stimuli, within several predefined ROIs. Participants performed a change-detection task wherein two of three presented items flashed at 1 Hz, one to each side of central fixation. Both flashing stimuli would unpredictably change state, but participants covertly counted the number of changes only for the cued item. In the ventral occipito-temporal ROI, MVPA evidence (a proxy for representational fidelity) was dynamically enhanced for attended stimuli and suppressed for unattended stimuli, consistent with a mechanism of biased competition between stimulus representations. Frontal and parietal ROIs displayed a qualitatively distinct, more "source-like" profile, wherein MVPA evidence for only the attended stimulus could be observed above baseline levels. To assess how attentional modulation of ventral occipito-temporal representations might relate to signals originating in the frontal and/or parietal ROIs, we analyzed informational connectivity (IC), which indexes time-varying covariation between regional levels of MVPA evidence. Parietal-posterior IC was elevated during the task, but did not differ for cued versus uncued items. Frontal-posterior IC, in contrast, was sensitive to an item's priority status. Thus, although regions of frontal and parietal cortex act as sources of top-down attentional control, their precise functions likely differ.

Using AHP to Develop a Rehabilitation Room Management Model for Fire Officers at Disaster Sites

The purpose of this study was to provide an operational model of the rehabilitation room for fire officers at disaster sites to improve the safety and resilience of fire officers. Therefore, we analyzed the operation related elements of the rehabilitation room-such as overseas rehabilitation room operation cases and previous studies— and managed different factors including, but not limited to, management and human resources, equipment and facility, and accessibility and convenience factors; afterward, the relative importance and importance of sub-layers in each field were measured. The priority of items for the operation of the rehabilitation room for fire officers at disaster sites was elucidated; after expert analysis, it was found that human resources were the most crucial factor. Finally, it was found that, in descending order, accessibility and convenience, administrative, equipment, and facility factors were also essential. Based on this, we proposed a rehabilitation room operation guideline for disaster sites.

Reduced Attentional Control in Older Adults Leads to Deficits in Flexible Prioritization of Visual Working Memory.

Visual working memory (VWM) resources have been shown to be flexibly distributed according to item priority. This flexible allocation of resources may depend on attentional control, an executive function known to decline with age. In this study, we sought to determine how age differences in attentional control affect VWM performance when attention is flexibly allocated amongst targets of varying priority. Participants performed a delayed-recall task wherein item priority was varied. Error was modelled using a three-component mixture model to probe different aspects of performance (precision, guess-rate, and non-target errors). The flexible resource model offered a good fit to the data from both age groups, but older adults showed consistently lower precision and higher guess rates. Importantly, when demands on flexible resource allocation were highest, older adults showed more non-target errors, often swapping in the item that had a higher priority at encoding. Taken together, these results suggest that the ability to flexibly allocate attention in VWM is largely maintained with age, but older adults are less precise overall and sometimes swap in salient, but no longer relevant, items possibly due to their lessened ability to inhibit previously attended information.

A multistep priority-based ranking for top-N recommendation using social and tag information

Recommender system is a collection of information retrieval tools and techniques used for recommending items to users based on their choices. For improving recommendation accuracy, the use of extra information (e.g., social, trust, item tags, etc.) other than user-item rating data remains an active area of research since last one and half decade. In this paper, we propose a novel methodology for top-N item recommendation, which uses three different kinds of information: user-item rating data, social network among the users, and tags associated with the items. The proposed method has mainly five steps: (i) creation of neighbor users’ item set, (ii) construction of the user-feature matrix, (iii) computation of user priority, (iv) computation of item priority, and finally, (v) recommendation based on the item priority. We implement the proposed methodology with three recommendation dataset. We compare our results with that of the obtained from some state-of-the-art ranking methods and observe that recommendation accuracy is improved in the case of the proposed algorithm for both all users and cold-start users scenarios. The algorithm is also able to generate more cold-start items in the recommended item list.

A mixed procurement model for humanitarian relief chains

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to improve the relief procurement process as one of the most important elements of humanitarian logistics. For doing so, a novel two-round decision model is developed to capture the dynamic nature of the relief procurement process by allowing demand updating. The model accounts for the supply priority of items at response phase as well. Design/methodology/approach A mixed procurement/supply policy is developed through a mathematical model, which includes spot market procurement and a novel procurement auction mechanism combining the concepts of multi-attribute and combinatorial reverse auctions. The model is of bi-objective mixed-integer non-linear programming type, which is solved through the weighted augmented e-constraint method. A case study is also provided to illustrate the applicability of the model. Findings This study demonstrates the ability of proposed approach to model post-disaster procurement which considers the dynamic environment of the relief logistics. The sensitivity analyses provide useful managerial insights for decision makers by studying the impacts of critical parameters on the solutions. Originality/value This paper proposes a novel reverse auction framework for relief procurement in the form of a multi-attribute combinatorial auction. Also, to deal with dynamic environment in the post-disaster procurement, a novel two-period programming model with demand updating is proposed. Finally, by considering the priority of relief items and model’s applicability in the setting of relief logistics, post-disaster horizon is divided into three periods and a mixed procurement strategy is developed to determine an appropriate supply policy for each period.

Visual working memory and saliency independently influence the priority for access to visual awareness.

Both visual working memory (VWM) and visual saliency influence sensory processing, as is evident from research on visual attention and visual awareness. It is generally observed that items that are memorized or salient receive priority in visual search and in the access to awareness. Here we investigate whether these two factors interact and together boost access to visual awareness more than each factor independently. In the present experiment, we manipulated the VWM relevance and saliency of an item through a color memorization task and color uniqueness, respectively. We applied continuous flash suppression (CFS) to suppress items from visual awareness. The color of the suppressed items could either be congruent or incongruent with the memorized color, and either stood out from its surrounding distractors (salient pop out) or not. The item's priority for visual awareness was measured by measuring the time it took for an item to "break" into awareness. We first show that VWM relevance and visual saliency each shortened the time needed for an item to access awareness. More interestingly, the combined effect of VWM and visual salience was additive; that is, items that were both congruent and salient broke into visual awareness even faster. A race model further suggests that the interaction between these two mechanisms can be explained by statistical facilitation. Thus, VWM and saliency influence the priority to access visual awareness independently.

Channel dynamic adjustment in data broadcast

Data broadcasting has become the preferred method to dispense data to a large number of mobile users. Current researches on on-demand data broadcast mainly propose algorithms based on a single broadcast channel or fixed multi-channel, i.e., fixed channel model. As a result of the dynamic diversity of data characteristics and client demands, the fixed channel model faces significant challenges in parallel broadcast diverse data. Further, the dynamic adjustment of the broadcast channel (dynamic channel model) based on client requests is favorable to service quality because it determines the number and sizes of channels that adapt to client demand in real-time. However, the dynamic channel model has not yet been thoroughly investigated for on-demand wireless data broadcasts. Accordingly, in this paper, a channel dynamic adjustment method (CDAM) is proposed. The innovations behind CDAM lie in three aspects. First, a data item priority evaluation and selection algorithm (S-RxW/SL) is proposed for evaluating the priority of data items and selecting the high priority data items to be considered in a broadcast cycle. Second, a weight and size average cluster algorithm (WSAC) is proposed for mining data item characteristics and clustering them. Third, based on the clustering results of WSAC, a channel splitting and data allocation algorithm (CSDA) is proposed for dynamically splitting the channel and allocating data items to the corresponding sub-channel. We compare the proposed method with some state-of-the-art scheduling methods through simulation. The theoretical findings and simulation results reveal that significantly better request loss rate (LR) can be obtained by using our method as compared to its alternatives.

A modified Delphi process to identify clinical and research priorities in patient and family centred critical care

PurposeTo identify elements which enable patient and family centred care (PFCC) in the intensive care unit (ICU) and priorities for PFCC research. Materials and methodsWe engaged a panel of multidisciplinary stakeholders in a modified Delphi process. Items generated from a literature review and panelist suggestions were rated in 3 successive rounds on a scale from 1 to 7. Median score was used to rate each item's priority, with 5 or more indicating “essential priority,” 4 or 5 “moderate priority” and 3 or less “low priority.” Interquartile range (IQR) was used to measure consensus, with IQR of 1 indicating “high” consensus, 2 “moderate” consensus, and 3 or greater “low” consensus. ResultsSix items were rated essential elements for facilitating PFCC with high consensus (flexible visiting hours, family participation in bedside care, trained family support person, interventions to facilitate continuity of care, staff education to support families, continuity of staff assignments). Three items were rated essential research topics: interventions to facilitate continuity of care following ICU discharge (moderate consensus), family participation in bedside care (low consensus), and decision aids for end of life decision-making (low consensus). ConclusionsStakeholders identified clear and distinct priorities for PFCC in clinical care and research, though there was greater consensus for clinical care.

Priority of items in working memory affects attentional capture in visual search

Priority of items in working memory affects attentional capture in visual search

3-dimensional Single Bin-packing Heuristic under the Constraints of Priorities of Items and its Destinations

3-dimensional Single Bin-packing Heuristic under the Constraints of Priorities of Items and its Destinations

Patient-centeredness in PD care: Development and validation of a patient experience questionnaire

IntroductionPatient-centeredness is increasingly recognized as a crucial element of quality of care. A suitable instrument to assess the level of patient-centeredness for Parkinson's disease (PD) care is lacking. Here we describe the development and validation of the Patient-Centered Questionnaire for PD (PCQ-PD), and its initial application in a large patient sample. MethodsBased on the outcomes of eight focus groups we composed a questionnaire that measures patient-centeredness by assessing patients' care experiences. The questionnaire was sent to 1112 Dutch PD patients, and face-, content- and construct-validity and reliability were assessed. The level of patient-centeredness was determined by calculating scores for overall patient-centeredness [0–3], subscale experiences [0–3], item experience, item priority and quality improvement. Results895 PD patients (net response 82.0%) completed the questionnaire. After the validation procedure, the PCQ-PD addressed 46 care aspects in six different subscales of patient-centeredness. The internal consistency of the instrument, expressed in Cronbach's α per subscale, ranged from 0.62 to 0.84. The overall patient-centeredness score was 1.69 (SD 0.45). ‘Emotional support’ (1.05, SD 0.90) and ‘provision of tailored information’ (1.18, SD 0.57) subscales received the lowest experience ratings. ‘Access to medical records’ obtained the highest item quality improvement score (5.44). ConclusionsThis study produced a valid instrument to measure patient-centeredness in PD care. Psychometric properties of the instrument were good. Application of the PCQ-PD revealed the level of patient-centeredness in the care for PD patients in The Netherlands. The main outcome was a compelling call for the provision of tailored information and emotional support.

Crawlers in our life

The life blood of science is information. Information we create and build upon, apply, store, recall, teach and use to build the most objective development of our scientific field of interest. The Internet naturally has come to be an important part of this mission. This Utopian view is not without complications as we come to see with development of the Internet in orthodontics. Recently I was obliged to become acquainted with Web crawlers. Web Crawlers are automated computer programs that systematically browse the Web. They survey Web sites and index the information by links tags, key words, etc. Probably every time you use a search engine, you are using the results of somebody’s Web crawler. Many referrals to our site at Angle.org come from search engines and not directly by typing in our URL, http://angle.org. You may think so what. Well these rascals recently crawled into my life and I was surprised. It seems that many firms want to have their own search engines and one way to do this is to use a Web crawler to systematically regularly survey the sites of interest on the Web and copy what they want onto their server. Why do organizations and people do this? There are very legitimate uses of Web crawlers, but there are also less constructive applications. When their server becomes the supplier of the information to a search, they can control what is displayed including what is omitted and the priority of one item over another. This raises the question, how is the priority of items displayed determined? There is not only the potential for money to be involved here, think of the censorship possibilities and how political and other bodies could control what people see who use their servers. With this background, how does this affect orthodontic literature? If you type impacted canine into your search engine, and it goes to their server, the server determines which articles from which web sites you see and in what order they are presented to you. I always viewed this as a wonderful tool and work saver. Now I am less comfortable that I am seeing everything available without bias. The precipitating factor here for me was when I wanted to determine the number of hits on our web site. Originally, we reported the hits as reported by Counter, the agreed official measure. These clearly were real hits, but my web site operator explained to me that in recent years the development of web crawlers has grown and now many of these hits came from Web crawlers systematically and regularly searching our site. For the last 10 years, our long standing policy has been to make science freely available to everyone on the Internet. However, our Open Access gave free reign not only to you, but to the crawlers also. Last October we adopted a new platform with protection against Web crawlers. Now when I count our hits it is obvious that more recently activities such as crawlers were producing at least half of the hits on our web site. How much are these hits ultimately leading to proper use of the information is impossible to determine. It’s a sort of cold war with the people who would take our information for other purposes than we intended. They set up new approaches and these are countered by our people. Clearly the dichotomy between Open Access for the good of the patient and those who wants to control or generate revenue will continue to be out of sync. This whole world is experiencing the same thing because most journals and sites want advertising revenues to support the operation of their site. Advertisers want to know what they are buying and this is determined by the traffic at your site. This has been measured by hits with research that shows some percentage of the total traffic at your site end up as users who generate revenue for the advertiser. The problem with counting hits accurately is, therefore, critical and this makes the flow of advertising dollars from the printed pages to the Internet lower and slower. We are small potatoes in this picture. Financing the sites on the Web is at the core of the paradigm shift from printed material to the digital world.

Multiple‐buyer procurement auctions framework for humanitarian supply chain management

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to address the inefficiency in resource allocation for disaster relief procurement operations. It presents a holistic and reconfigurable procurement auctions‐based framework which includes the announcement construction, bid construction and bid evaluation phases.Design/methodology/approachThe holistic framework is developed in a way that auctioneers and bidders compete amongst each other in multiple rounds of the procurement auction. Humanitarian organization in disaster locations are considered as auctioneers (buyers) and suppliers are considered as bidders.FindingsUnique system parameters (e.g. announcement options, priority of items, bidder strategies, etc.) are introduced to represent the disaster relief environment in a practical way. The framework is verified by simulation and optimization techniques using the system characteristics of the disaster relief environment as an input. Based on the parameters and their values, behavioural changes of auctioneers and suppliers are observed.Originality/valueCombining the three phases of procurement auctions is unique both in the auction literature and in the disaster relief research, and it helps the humanitarian organizations supply the immediate and long‐term requirements in the disaster location more efficiently.

Establishment of a performance-evaluation model for service quality in the banking industry

The study addresses the problem of service quality in the banking industry by modifying an importance–satisfaction (I–S) model in order to develop an integrated performance-measurement model for the banking industry, which would enable the priority of items for improvement to be determined. An importance and satisfaction questionnaire has been provided to determine which items do not fall into the appropriate performance-control zone of the performance-control matrix of the model. The performance-control matrix index provided enables the value of certain improvement objectives to be calculated. Finally, quality loss function is then adopted to rank the improvement objectives in terms of priority. A case study of a Taiwanese bank is then presented to demonstrate the applicability of the model in practice. The study thus presents a complete assessment model that helps managers to identify items for improvement, while simultaneously promoting cost and time efficiencies in service processes.

Attention effects during visual short-term memory maintenance: Protection or prioritization?

Interactions between visual attention and visual short-term memory (VSTM) play a central role in cognitive processing. For example, attention can assist in selectively encoding items into visual memory. Attention appears to be able to influence items already stored in visual memory, as well; cues that appear long after the presentation of an array of objects can affect memory for those objects (Griffin & Nobre, 2003). In five experiments, we distinguished two possible mechanisms for the effects of cues on items currently stored in VSTM. A protection account proposes that attention protects the cued item from becoming degraded during the retention interval. By contrast, aprioritization account suggests that attention increases a cued item's priority during the comparison process that occurs when memory is tested. The results of the experiments were consistent with the first of these possibilities, suggesting that attention can serve to protect VSTM representations while they are being maintained.

A Region of Proximal Learning model of study time allocation

A Region of Proximal Learning model is proposed emphasizing two components to people’s study time allocation, controlled by different metacognitive indices. The first component is choice, which is further segmented into two stages: (1) a decision of whether to study or not and (2) the order of priority of items chosen. If the people’s Judgments of Learning (JOLs) are sufficiently high that they believe they know the items already, they will choose to not study. If they do choose to study, the order is from that which they believe is almost known to that which they believe is more difficult (high JOL to low JOL). The second component is perseverance, with emphasis on the rule for stopping studying once study has begun on an item. We propose that people use a previously unexplored process-oriented metacognitive marker: their judgments of the rate of learning (jROLs), to decide when to stop. When learning is proceeding quickly and the jROL value is high they continue studying. When the jROL approaches zero, and their subjective assessment indicates learning is at a standstill they stop. The extant literature bearing on this model is reviewed, and eight new experiments, all of which support the model, are presented.