Performance Data Management Research Articles

Common Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms and Keratoconus in the Han Chinese Population

ABSTRACTObjective: To investigate whether the tag single nucleotide polymorphisms (tSNPs) in VSX1, COL4A3, COL4A4, IL1A and IL1B genes were associated with keratoconus (KTCN) in the Han Chinese population.Methods: Ninety-seven KTCN patients and 101 healthy controls were enrolled in this study. All cases were diagnosed on the basis of clinical examination. Twenty-one tSNPs were selected for association study in five genes. SNP genotyping was performed by Sequenom MassARRAY RS1000. Sequenom Typer 4.0 Software, PLINK, Haploview and SHEsis software platform were used to perform data management and analyses.Results: Three tSNPs in the VSX1 gene were observed to be associated with KTCN risk at a 5% level by χ2 test (rs56157240 and rs12480307, p = 0.0499, OR: 6.42, 95% CI: 0.77–53.78; rs6050307, p = 1.22 × 10−7, OR: 0.05, 95% CI: 0.01–0.23). Rs2071376 in the IL1A gene was also associated with KTCN (p = 0.0487, OR: 1.51, 95% CI: 1.00–2.26). Three haplotypes in the VSX1 gene were found to be associated with risk of KTCN (p < 0.05).Conclusions: Our findings confirmed previous reports that polymorphisms of VSX1 and IL1A genes were associated with risk of KTCN in the Chinese population, suggesting an important determinant of KTCN development by VSX1 and IL1A genes.

Operational and accreditation issues with RSV POCT

Clinicians use urgent virology results to guide decisions on isolation and empiric antiviral treatment, so they focus on timeliness and efficiency. Testing is only one component of patient management and is prioritised among many competing demands and interruptions. Manual point of care testing processes, which require inflexible timing steps and exacting data entry, can fail in such a workplace and do not serve the patient well. The pathology department’s role is to provide support on issues of analytical test performance, quality control and reliable data management. We found that traditional laboratory approaches, such as determining a detailed test process, intensive training and formal documentation, were largely ineffective in the emergency department, and this was unacceptable to our accreditation authorities. We then offered the same respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) rapid antigen assay, performed as a stat test in our microbiology department from 09:00 to 23:00 h. The testing process, quality assurance and data integrity were straightforward in the laboratory environment and turnaround time was acceptable to the emergency department. The sensitivity of only 60% was perceived as suboptimal by laboratory staff, yet clinicians were pleased with it. High positive predictive value, to direct cohorting and free up single bed rooms, was the clinically important issue.

Quality oversight for specialized cancer services.

103 Background: Cancer Care Ontario (CCO), a provincial agency responsible for continually improving cancer services in Ontario, Canada, reviews selected services with a view to understanding and resolving issues of access, quality, innovation, and funding. Specialized cancer services are low-volume, high-complexity, high-cost, and are not available in every region. They tend to be high-risk, involve a rapidly evolving scientific knowledge base, and a high degree of specialization. A specialized services oversight (SSO) approach has been implemented to address the challenge for optimization of service delivery while providing equitable access to safe, high-quality, best practice care. Methods: The SSO approach involves 1) establishing a provincial forum for expert clinical advice; 2) A regular and systematic process for literature and jurisdictional reviews; 3) provincial-level demand and capacity forecasting; 4) provincial funding linked to evidenced-based eligibility/quality criteria; 5) communication/awareness strategies for appropriate and equitable access. Enablers are CCO structures for performance management, stakeholder engagement, service planning, data management, and CCO’s guiding principles of "transparency, equity, evidence, performance-oriented, active engagement, and value for money." Results: The SSO approach has been implemented in full for PET scanning services, and in part for stem cell transplant (SCT), sarcoma, molecular oncology, prostate brachytherapy, and selected neuroendocrine cancer care. Stakeholder acceptance of the approach has been high. Outputs include provincial guidelines on indications for SCT, performance metrics and benchmarks, multicentre sharing of information, and inter-regional referral processes. Conclusions: Implementation of the SSO approach has introduced provincial-level system planning, formal evidence scanning, sharing of best practices, and performance measurement for high-complexity services where there was no such oversight in the past. The approach is anticipated to avoid access crises and support timely and equitable access to services of high quality, which make optimal use of resources.

Material Performance Data Acquisition and Management System for Welded Pipe Used in the 2nd West-East Gas Pipeline

To improve the performance data management efficiency of welded pipe used in the 2nd west to east gas pipeline, a distributed performance data acquiring and management system for welded pipe was developed. The system was established by using two-level three-tier Client/Server model. Performance data for welded pipe from different factories was acquired at clients and input to local database. The data then can be analyzed at local, or be transferred to the server through networks for unified storage and analysis. The System has functions as data management, file transferring, standard technology condition management, statistical analysis, figure displaying and statistical analysis report generation, etc. The system was implemented using VC++. Oracle and Access is adopted as database for server and client respectively, XML is as the data encapsulation for transferring file. The developed system plays a significant role in analyzing and evaluating the whole quality of welded pipe, and is useful for pipeline quality control.

A computational framework for spatially explicit agroecosystem modeling: Application to regional simulation

Site-based agroecosystem model has been applied at regional and state level to enable comprehensive analyses of environmental sustainability of food and biofuel production. However, spatially explicit ecosystem simulations over large landscape present computational challenges. This paper presents a framework to support spatially explicit agroecosystem modeling and data analysis over large landscape, which includes four major phases of agroecosystem simulation: simulation data preparation, site-based simulation on high performance computers, data management and data analysis. Then, a case study on a regional intensive modeling area (RIMA) was presented as an application to demonstrate the system implementation and capability.

Exploring the mediating role of trust on the relationship between guanxi and knowledge sharing: a social network perspective

The current study adopts the social network perspective to propose a conceptual model and examine how guanxi influences knowledge sharing via trust. This paper addresses the concept of interpersonal relationships in the context of Chinese culture and applies it as a guanxi. This research gathers data from 213 employees from 100 high‐technology firms in Taiwan and performs data management and analysis using hierarchical regression analyses to test the hypotheses. The findings reveal that guanxi has a positive effect on both trust and knowledge sharing on an individual level. Trust has a positive effect on knowledge sharing, and it partially mediates the effects of guanxi on knowledge sharing. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed, for example, the designs of teamwork and incentives.

Design of the Software System of a Digital Axle Detector

Axle detection is an important way to ensure the safety of rail transport. To meet the requirements of the Ministry of Railways, ZTY-1 type digital ultrasonic flaw detector is developed. It is designed based on VC++ 6.0 and runs on the PC system. The detector consists of five functional parts, which are flaw detecting, daily performance checking, quarterly performance checking, probe test and data management. In this paper, design of the detector’s software system is introduced, as well as solutions to some problems such as waveform flicker, double detection, waveform playback and document print.

The assessment of military logistic engineering projects for Taiwan’s navy

This paper proposes a new “Vote-Ranking” method to “Balanced Scorecard (BSC)” analytic process to assess “Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM)” issues. By means of literature review and questionnaires using “Customer (military capability), Internal Business Processes (logistic support and maintenance effectiveness), Learning and Growth (technology and innovation), and Financial (life cycle cost)”, more detailed and quantifiable performance management data are provided for decision-maker. The quantitative BSC method adopts the concept of MCDM, which uses a multi-hierarchy scheme to simply complicate problems. The 46 senior military experts and managers will be selected to form a task force. And then, from top to down, the indices of BSC will be voted, weighted and quantitative to assess the competitive alternatives. The cost-effectiveness analysis of military engineering project investment between dry dock and slipway for Taiwan’s Navy is taken as a case study in the paper. We use the total weighted scores method to get the best competitive alternatives. Finally, the results suggest “slipway military engineering project” is the adoptable alternative in this study.

Scalable SPARQL querying of large RDF graphs

The generation of RDF data has accelerated to the point where many data sets need to be partitioned across multiple machines in order to achieve reasonable performance when querying the data. Although tremendous progress has been made in the Semantic Web community for achieving high performance data management on a single node, current solutions that allow the data to be partitioned across multiple machines are highly inefficient. In this paper, we introduce a scalable RDF data management system that is up to three orders of magnitude more efficient than popular multi-node RDF data management systems. In so doing, we introduce techniques for (1) leveraging state-of-the-art single node RDF-store technology (2) partitioning the data across nodes in a manner that helps accelerate query processing through locality optimizations and (3) decomposing SPARQL queries into high performance fragments that take advantage of how data is partitioned in a cluster.

Multi-dimensional building performance data management for continuous commissioning

Current buildings’ performance assessment tools are deficient in their ability to integrate and process building monitoring data to generate actionable information that can assist in achieving a higher level of building performance. Therefore, this paper addresses this problem by proposing the design and implementation of a multi-dimensional data analysis concept for building monitoring data. Firstly, the development of the multi-dimensional performance data model is described based on data warehouse technology. Secondly, a dedicated graphical user interface is introduced bringing the benefits of the multi-dimensional model to different stakeholders. Finally, the advantages of multi-dimensional performance data management is demonstrated in a real life case study for on-site and e-service performance management.

Technology and Education Change

This study examined technology implementation practices associated with student learning gains. Interviews and observations were conducted with staff at schools where teachers using reading or mathematics software with their students attained above-average achievement gains and at schools where software-using teachers had below-average gains. The findings highlight the importance of school practices in the areas of principal support and teacher collaboration around software use and of teacher practices concerning classroom management and use of software-generated student performance data. The issues of instructional coherence and competition for instructional time are highlighted as challenges to software implementation.

Obstacles to supply chain integration of the performance management process in buyer‐supplier dyads

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explain to what degree supplier relationship obstacles and operational tool obstacles hinder supply chain integration of the performance management (PM) process.Design/methodology/approachThis is a hypothetical‐deductive study, where the results are based on a survey of 257 purchasing managers in nine manufacturing industries in Sweden.FindingsSupplier relationship obstacles (lack of trust, different goals and priorities and lack of parallel communication structure) were found to significantly hinder PM process integration the most, which is in accordance with previous studies. The operational tool obstacles (manual performance data management and non‐standardized performance metrics) were seen on an overall level to hinder PM process integration. However, the hypothesis that non‐standardized performance metrics hinder PM process integration was not verified, which does not accord with previous studies.Research limitations/implicationsThe use of single informants in data collection presents a limitation of the study.Practical implicationsContrary to previous studies, the paper has applied a broader, quantitative survey methodology, and hence provides deeper knowledge about the impact of obstacles on PM process integration. It identifies critical obstacles which are important for industry to overcome.Originality/valueMost previous studies of supply chain PM are either case‐ or experience‐based. Here, hypotheses are tested on empirical data and general results presented regarding lack of supplier relationships and operational tools as obstacles for supply chain integration of PM.

A Conceptual Framework for Server-Based GNSS Operations

The diversification of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (e.g. the current and modernized GPS, the revitalized GLONASS, the planned Galileo and Compass), is an opportunity for engineers, surveyors and geodesists because of expected improvements in positioning accuracy, operational flexibility, redundancy, and quality assurance. Recent research activities include new algorithms for multiple frequency ambiguity resolution, software-based receivers for reconfigurability, network-wide corrections for utilising redundancy, reversed real-time kinematic schemes for quality/accuracy improvement, and a wide range of rover-side applications. This paper discusses the integration of these “pieces” of work into a new framework and facilitates information and communication technologies in order to derive benefits from network infrastructure such as continuously operating reference stations and local/regional GPS networks. Operational models are proposed for precise point positioning and real-time kinematic services including “near real-time” applications, which require an optimal design to balance the computational overhead with data communication latency. The proposed framework is designed to be a comprehensive, serverbased, and thin-client platform. It provides end-users with “out-of-the-box” services. End-users should be able to obtain extensive GNSS capabilities and high productivity without conventional constraints such as an expensive set of receivers, proprietary data formats, user-installed carrier phase processing software, incomplete interoperability, limited communication links, etc. The framework also adopts up-to-date database technologies and web technologies that enable servers to perform data management and spatial analysis, while end-users are able to syndicate data and create their own business models. The framework has been applied to Sydney Network (SydNET), a network of continuously operating reference stations located in Sydney, Australia. It is expected that the new framework will be versatile enough to cope with a diverse range of user performance requirements and the operational requirements for communications and positioning computations.

Towards a Wireless Sensor Platform for Energy Efficient Building Operation

Currently, the IT-support for energy performance rating of buildings is insufficient. So-called IT-platforms often “built” of an ad-hoc, inconsistent combination of off-the-shelf building management components, distributed data metering equipment and several monitoring software tools. A promising approach to achieve consistent, holistic performance data management is the implementation of an integrated, modular wireless sensor platform. This paper presents an approach of how wireless sensors can be seamlessly integrated into existing and future intelligent building management systems supporting improved building performance and diagnostics with an emphasis on energy management.

A land surface data assimilation framework using the land information system: Description and applications

The Land Information System (LIS) is an established land surface modeling framework that integrates various community land surface models, ground measurements, satellite-based observations, high performance computing and data management tools. The use of advanced software engineering principles in LIS allows interoperability of individual system components and thus enables assessment and prediction of hydrologic conditions at various spatial and temporal scales. In this work, we describe a sequential data assimilation extension of LIS that incorporates multiple observational sources, land surface models and assimilation algorithms. These capabilities are demonstrated here in a suite of experiments that use the ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) and assimilation through direct insertion. In a soil moisture experiment, we discuss the impact of differences in modeling approaches on assimilation performance. Provided careful choice of model error parameters, we find that two entirely different hydrological modeling approaches offer comparable assimilation results. In a snow assimilation experiment, we investigate the relative merits of assimilating different types of observations (snow cover area and snow water equivalent). The experiments show that data assimilation enhancements in LIS are uniquely suited to compare the assimilation of various data types into different land surface models within a single framework. The high performance infrastructure provides adequate support for efficient data assimilation integrations of high computational granularity.

A Distributed Multi-Agent Framework for Simulating the Diffusion of Innovations

In this paper we report on the newly developed framework MADS (Multi-Agent Diffusion Simulation), designed for simulating the diffusion of innovations. Created for but not limited to the simulation of the diffusion of emergent technologies, MADS is both close to the diffusion theory and, by using a distributed agent infrastructure, performs data management and streamlines the simulation process. After presenting the framework, we show how it was applied to the simulation of the diffusion of fuel cell vehicles. Unlike the traditional simulation methods usually employed in this case, real consumer preferences are included and a sensitivity analysis is performed.

Sprint

Sprint is a middleware infrastructure for high performance and high availability data management. It extends the functionality of a standalone in-memory database (IMDB) server to a cluster of commodity shared-nothing servers. Applications accessing an IMDB are typically limited by the memory capacity of the machine running the IMDB. Sprint partitions and replicates the database into segments and stores them in several data servers. Applications are then limited by the aggregated memory of the machines in the cluster. Transaction synchronization and commitment rely on total-order multicast. Differently from previous approaches, Sprint does not require accurate failure detection to ensure strong consistency, allowing fast reaction to failures. Experiments conducted on a cluster with 32 data servers using TPC-C and a micro-benchmark showed that Sprint can provide very good performance and scalability.

Architecture for the Management and Presentation of Communication Network Performance Data

Packet-based data networks such as British Telecommunications (BT) plc's switched multimegabit data service (SMOS) have performance that varies with customer behavior, network design, and network provision. This paper describes a system researched to monitor such networks from the customer's perspective, but on behalf of the operator. The information generated allows the operator to determine whether the network is performing correctly or whether changes or customer load will require the network to be changed in some way. Such networks are increasingly important as many parts of the Internet are built on similar technologies. The paper specifically considers an architecture that encompasses all the main functionality involved in performance management of networks. Consideration is given to the management and dissemination of the data collected. A database to enhance network data mining performance is described. A method to identify the periods of significance in the measurement data based on a statistical test and a neural network is incorporated into a realization of the architecture. In addition, a novel mechanism for the real-time presentation of the network performance data in an operator-friendly manner is given.

Land information system: An interoperable framework for high resolution land surface modeling

Knowledge of land surface water, energy, and carbon conditions are of critical importance due to their impact on many real world applications such as agricultural production, water resource management, and flood, weather, and climate prediction. Land Information System (LIS) is a software framework that integrates the use of satellite and ground-based observational data along with advanced land surface models and computing tools to accurately characterize land surface states and fluxes. LIS employs the use of scalable, high performance computing and data management technologies to deal with the computational challenges of high resolution land surface modeling. To make the LIS products transparently available to the end users, LIS includes a number of highly interactive visualization components as well. The LIS components are designed using object-oriented principles, with flexible, adaptable interfaces and modular structures for rapid prototyping and development. In addition, the interoperable features in LIS enable the definition, intercomparison, and validation of land surface modeling standards and the reuse of a high quality land surface modeling and computing system.

Considerations in Developing a Network Pavement Inventory Friction Test Program for a State Highway Agency

Abstract A network pavement inventory friction test program should consist of three parts: testing system calibration and performance verification, friction testing, and data management. The friction testing system must be calibrated and its performance must be verified before test seasons and whenever significant changes have occurred. Friction testing should be conducted annually on interstates. Test frequency for other routes may be reduced. Also, friction testing should be conducted consistently in the driving lane. Test intervals should be large enough for the operator to adjust test speed. Differences exist between the friction numbers measured by smooth and ribbed tires. For grooved concrete surfaces, the difference is negligible. For others with low or medium friction, the average difference is about 17 or 12. Different surface features may result in different speed gradient curves. Seasonal variation is not significant. A minimum friction requirement of 20 to 23 was identified for the smooth tire. Friction data management is an important part for the network inventory friction test program. Geographical information system (GIS) technology can be utilized to monitor network pavement friction condition efficiently.