Pre-determined Order Research Articles

Handheld Ultrasound Bladder Volume Assessment Compared to Standard Technique.

Urinary retention is a common complaint encountered in the emergency department (ED).Current tools for the assessment of urinary retention are either bladder volume estimation with a bladder scanner performed by nursing staff or direct visualization and measurement via bedside ultrasound performed by an emergency physician. Newer handheld ultrasound devices such as the Butterfly iQ have been brought to the market to bring ultrasound more conveniently to the bedside.A recently released handheld auto-calculation tool produces a 3D image of the bladder and instant bladder volume measurement in milliliters. However, there is a paucity of data assessing the validity of the new Butterfly iQ at the bedside. This study sought to compare the diagnostic accuracy and rated user convenience of the nursing bladder scanner, the cart-based ultrasound machine, and the Butterfly iQ auto-bladder volume tool. ED patients were prospectively enrolled and underwent bladder measurements in a randomized, pre-determined order with each modality. Measurements were subsequently compared to the gold standard of catheterization. Cart-based ultrasound had the highest agreement to catheterization when compared to the RN scanner and the Butterfly iQ.However, the Butterfly iQ and RN scanner were both considered more convenient measurement modalities than the cart-based ultrasound. The Butterfly iQ serves as a cost-effective alternative to cart-based ultrasound while providing greater general utility compared to bladder scanners.

The Ethics of Monadic Identity in Leibniz's Thought

The system of pre-established harmony proposed by Leibnizian ontology gives perspective to a Universe thought of as a perfect machine, or as a "perfect kingdom, governed by an absolute Prince". In this „best of all possible worlds”, the occurrence of evil requires an extremely thorough justification. With regard to the prospective motivation and argument in favor of existence of evil in the world, the ethical positioning of the human soul, conceived of as a superior monad, capable of true understanding and a reflection of divine grace, can also be outlined. What place, therefore, does evil occupy in the Leibnizian universal equation and how is it possible to embody it from the perspective of free will? In a system of such predetermined order, what possibility is there for the existence of freedom? In this universal order, what place does absolute necessity, hypothetical necessity and moral necessity occupy? And what is their connection with the essential cosmic logical, geometrical and metaphysical principles? Do reason, will, and power, as absolute features of the Godhead, contribute to guaranteeing the ethical responsibility of higher monads? How does Leibniz bring together the predetermination and typology of fatality expressed through the paradigms: fatum mahometanum, fatum stoicum and fatum christianum? "Divinity as the first agent and man as the patient and second agent" - is a Leibnizian interpretation of the relation of predetermination. Evil and free will are recognized only in the framework of hypothetical necessity. So, therefore, in the present work we will analyze, among other things, the Leibnizian interpretation of the ratio of predetermination, recalling the difference between being inclined and being forced in making a decision.

Internet-based self-scheduling is associated with a high degree of physician satisfaction in an academic emergency medicine group.

There are various methods for scheduling emergency physicians ranging from a schedule created by hand by a physician scheduler, fixed templates, to computer-assisted scheduling. The authors describe a novel method adopted by an academic emergency department using remote asynchronous physician self-scheduling. The physician group follows a pre-determined order in which each physician chooses where to place his or her assigned proportion of day/evening/weekend/night shifts on the shared calendar that is hosted in a cloud-based spreadsheet. This process gives physicians a high degree of control over their schedules, and the participants related a high degree of satisfaction regarding this process. This method of physician scheduling is a low-cost successful alternative to conventional emergency physician scheduling practices.

Production Process Interoperability for Cyber-Physical Production Systems

Abstract Operating/maintaining a shop-floor and planning for the efficient utilization of said shop floor, are typically two different sides of a coin. While the operation side is focused on making the interaction between humans, machines and software run flawlessly (e.g. by utilizing orchestration software), the planning side is focused on finding the right order of doing things for good utilization of resources. Planning is mostly done according to a regular schedule (once a day, once a week). The production of individual products is intended to happen in the regularly pre-determined order, including some slack to account for minor problems. During production, shop-floor workers (or smart machinery) can deal with problems, but they are nonetheless intended to follow the pre-determined plan. The contribution of this paper is a case-study that explores the integration and interoperability problems that occur, when a flexible shop-floor orchestration software centurio.work is coupled with a high-performance scheduling software (NgMPSS) in order to allow for ad-hoc planning and re-planning of a production schedule. The idea behind this integration is, (1) to allow for a system that is more robust when dealing with problems, but also (2) allows for reaping additional overall time savings, because dynamic re-planning allows for minimal slack between tasks. This research has been conducted on the interface between the Center for Digital Production (CDP) and the Pro2Future (P2F) as part of a common research project.

Robotic additive manufacturing with toy blocks

We develop and study a block-type three-dimensional (3D) printer that can assemble toy blocks based on 3D CAD models. Our system automatically converts a 3D CAD model into a block model consisting of toy blocks in basic shapes. Next, it automatically generates a feasible assembly plan for the block model. An industrial robot then assembles the block sculpture layer-by-layer, from bottom to top, using this assembly plan. This approach has advantages including the ease of combining multiple types of materials and reusing them which is difficult for conventional 3D printers to accomplish. We also introduce a technique to reliably determine the order of block placement to assemble block models from various patterns. This technique includes converting unassemblable shapes in the models to assemblable ones with support blocks and/or decomposing them into subassemblies. In addition, we implement a robot control system that automatically generates a stable sculpture according to a predetermined placement order. We also demonstrate the assembly of various toy block models using our system.

Bring Back Harmony in Philosophical Discourse: a Confucian Perspective

As both Chinese philosophy and Indian philosophy have been largely marginalized on the world stage of philosophy in contemporary times, there is a pressing need to bring these voices into the discourse of world philosophy. This essay explores the value of taking into account the Confucian idea of harmony for postcolonial solitary and for a more equitable polycentric global academy. I explicate the concept and the value of harmony as exemplified in Confucian philosophy. I examine reasons of the disappearance of harmony in dominant Western philosophical discourse by comparing various conceptions of harmony in the West. Greek philosophers Heraclitus, Pythagoras, and Plato presented competing conceptions of harmony; whereas Heraclitian processive harmony presupposes opposites, tension and conflict, Pythagorean harmony and Platonic harmony are founded on a pre-determined order. In the contemporary West, from Karl Popper to Martha Nussbaum, harmony has been treated with disdain while it is taken in a Platonic sense. In East Asia, both Confucianism and Daoism take harmony/harmonization as an effective way to accommodate diversity and difference. I will then focus on the Confucian dynamic notion of “harmony with difference” and argue that such a conception is far from naivete and it has important implications if it is taken seriously in contemporary philosophical discourse.

Exploratory Hand Movements Enhance the Liking Effect in Haptics.

When people choose between two items, they usually look at them alternately before deciding. The frequency and duration of contact are usually determined unconsciously. However, in a previous study, looking at one item for longer than the other increased participants’ preference for the former, but only when they had to move their eyes to look at each item. This result implies that eye movements not only gather information but are also closely related to decision-making. By analogy, this study examines the relation between hand movements and haptic preference. When participants touched two handkerchiefs in a pre-determined order before choosing the one they preferred, the likelihood of choosing the more frequently touched handkerchief was greater than chance. Bias in the choice was greater with increased difference in the frequency of touching between the two handkerchiefs. It was also greater when participants moved their arm to touch the handkerchiefs, compared with when a machine carried the handkerchiefs to their hand. These results indicate that both the reaching movement for touching and the frequency of touching affect the preference judgment using haptics.

Stepwise debugging of answer-set programs

AbstractWe introduce astepping methodologyfor answer-set programming (ASP) that allows for debugging answer-set programs and is based on the stepwise application of rules. Similar to debugging in imperative languages, where the behaviour of a program is observed during a step-by-step execution, stepping for ASP allows for observing the effects that rule applications have in the computation of an answer set. While the approach is inspired from debugging in imperative programming, it is conceptually different to stepping in other paradigms due to non-determinism and declarativity that are inherent to ASP. In particular, unlike statements in an imperative program that are executed following a strict control flow, there is no predetermined order in which to consider rules in ASP during a computation. In our approach, the user is free to decide which rule to consider active in the next step following his or her intuition. This way, one can focus on interesting parts of the debugging search space. Bugs are detected during stepping by revealing differences between the actual semantics of the program and the expectations of the user. As a solid formal basis for stepping, we develop a framework of computations for answer-set programs. For fully supporting different solver languages, we build our framework on an abstract ASP language that is sufficiently general to capture different solver languages. To this end, we make use of abstract constraints as an established abstraction for popular language constructs such as aggregates. Stepping has been implemented inSeaLion, an integrated development environment for ASP. We illustrate stepping using an example scenario and discuss the stepping plugin ofSeaLion. Moreover, we elaborate on methodological aspects and the embedding of stepping in the ASP development process.

공학영어 어휘 목록 개발

This paper is intended to develop a word list that helps engineering students with engineering vocabulary frequently used across different disciplines. For this goal, an Engineering English Corpus (EEC) including around 4,000,000 running words was compiled and constructed from 40 textbooks commonly used in 8 engineering disciplines: chemical, computer, electrical, electronics, environmental, industrial, materials science and mechanical. This paper identified a total of 1,170 word families comprised of General Service List (GSL), Academic Word List (AWL) and Technical Word List (TWL) through two criteria such as frequency and range. In detail, the cut-off frequency of GSL and AWL was more than 100 times and the range was at least 10 times in all 8 disciplines exclusive of TWL. The result of the analysis showed that 1) not all words in GSL and AWL were used frequently in the EEC; 2) GSL, AWL and TWL could be learned and taught regardless of the pre-determined order; 3) the created engineering English word list could meet the basic need of engineering students.

The truncated conjugate gradient (TCG), a non-iterative/fixed-cost strategy for computing polarization in molecular dynamics: Fast evaluation of analytical forces.

In a recent paper [F. Aviat et al., J. Chem. Theory Comput. 13, 180-190 (2017)], we proposed the Truncated Conjugate Gradient (TCG) approach to compute the polarization energy and forces in polarizable molecular simulations. The method consists in truncating the conjugate gradient algorithm at a fixed predetermined order leading to a fixed computational cost and can thus be considered "non-iterative." This gives the possibility to derive analytical forces avoiding the usual energy conservation (i.e., drifts) issues occurring with iterative approaches. A key point concerns the evaluation of the analytical gradients, which is more complex than that with a usual solver. In this paper, after reviewing the present state of the art of polarization solvers, we detail a viable strategy for the efficient implementation of the TCG calculation. The complete cost of the approach is then measured as it is tested using a multi-time step scheme and compared to timings using usual iterative approaches. We show that the TCG methods are more efficient than traditional techniques, making it a method of choice for future long molecular dynamics simulations using polarizable force fields where energy conservation matters. We detail the various steps required for the implementation of the complete method by software developers.

A Human Intervention Trial: Effects of Fine Concentrated Ambient Particles on Cardiac Autonomic Dysfunction and Inflammation Are Mitigated by B Vitamin Supplementation

Background: Ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5) pollution is a trigger of acute cardiovascular events. Individual-level preventions have been proposed to complement regulation in reducing the global burden of PM2.5–related cardiovascular diseases. We investigated whether B vitamins mitigate the acute effects of PM2.5 on cardiac autonomic dysfunction and inflammation. Methods: In a single-blind crossover intervention trial, we administrated placebo and then four-week B vitamin supplement (5 mg/d folic acid, 100 mg/d vitamin B6, and 1 mg/d vitamin B12) to ten healthy volunteers. Each volunteer received three two-hour controlled exposure experiments to medical air or PM2.5 (250μg/m3), in pre-determined order. We used electrocardiogram to measure resting heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV), and hematology analyzer to determine white blood cell (WBC) counts (pre-, post-, 24 h post-exposure). Results: Compared to medical air, PM2.5 exposure was associated with 3.8 bpm (95% CI, 0.3, 7.4; P=0.04) higher resting HR and 57.5% (95% CI, 2.5%, 81.5%; P=0.04) lower low-frequency power following exposure. PM2.5 exposure was associated with 11.5% (95% CI, 0.3%, 24.0%; P=0.04) higher total WBC count and 12.9% (95% CI, 4.4%, 22.1%; P=0.005) higher lymphocyte count 24 h post-exposure. These effects were mitigated by B vitamin supplementation – which attenuated the effect of PM2.5 on HR by 150% (P=0.003), low-frequency power by 90% (P=0.01), total WBC count by 139% (P=0.006), and lymphocyte count by 106% (P=0.02). Conclusions: In healthy adults, two-hour PM2.5 exposure substantially increases HR, reduces HRV, and increases WBC. These effects are reduced by four-week B vitamin supplementation.

DETERMINING THE STUDENTS’ VIEWS TOWARDS THE LEARNING STATIONS DEVELOPED FOR THE ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

This study aims to increase awareness in students in relation to environmental consciousness. Therefore, the prepared presentations and the adapted learning stations were used to create awareness of students in the out-of-the-school learning environment supported by the municipality of a county in Ankara the capital city of Turkey. Learning stations serve to people’s individual study. The basic goal here is to develop higher order skills and to make sure that students work in stations according to their abilities in a pre-determined order. The study group was composed of volunteering 15 fifth graders of a private school in Ankara. Firstly, the content to be applied in the study was developed. Prior to the application, a readiness presentation was made so as to raise students’ interest and awareness in terms of the importance of waste and recycling the waste. As a conclusion of the current study, it may be said that students’ interest in and awareness of the environment and collecting the waste developed. Enlarging this pilot project and applying it to bigger groups is important in terms of the success of the educational activities for separating the waste and in terms of the durability of the relevant behavior. Key words: recycling, learning station, out of school learning, environment education.

Adaptive Livelihood Strategies in Conservation-Induced Displacement: The Case of the Baka of East Cameroon

Abstract:This article utilizes the Actor‒Network Theory (ANT) to guide thinking about the relationship between nature and society and how this relationship is severed by conservation-induced displacement. ANT’s view of interconnectivity between networks is used to argue that a network is only stable as long as actors remain faithful to it. In the case of the displaced Baka people of the Dja Reserve area in East Cameroon, resistance to conservation through adaptive practices following displacement can reverse or disrupt the socially predetermined order of a network, which in this case would be marginalization of the displaced. However, the marginal scale of their adaptation to change raises doubts over the sustainability of adaptation to post-displacement livelihoods.

Choosing to exercise more: Small choices increase exercise engagement

ObjectivesThe purpose of the study was to examine whether individuals' motivation to exercise could be increased by providing them with an incidental choice. DesignExperimental design with two groups. MethodTwo groups of participants were asked to perform four exercises (i.e., lunges, jumping jacks, bear crawls, medicine-ball throws). After a demonstration of each exercise, a choice group was given the opportunity to choose the order of exercises, while a control group performed them in a pre-determined order. Subsequently, all participants decided how many sets and repetitions of each exercise they wanted to complete. ResultsChoice group participants performed a significant greater number of total repetitions (sets × repetitions) of all exercises than did control group participants. ConclusionsThe finding suggests that individuals' need for autonomy can be supported by giving them small choices, which can positively affect exercise engagement.

Insincere voting under the successive procedure

Most European parliaments use the successive procedure to reach decisions. This means that a parliament votes feasible alternatives one-by-one in a pre-determined order until one of them obtains a majority of votes. The paper has two objectives. First, I sketch a simple method making it easy to uncover instances of successful insincere voting under the successive procedure. Second, by focusing on data from one national assembly consistently using this procedure, I demonstrate that insincere or strategic voting is very rare. The finding does not indicate that politicians necessarily behave in a non-strategic or unsophisticated manner. It means only that strategic maneuvers may take place at earlier stages of the decision-making process, for example, in designing the voting agenda.

Sincere versus sophisticated voting when legislators vote sequentially

Elsewhere (Groseclose and Milyo 2010), we examine a game where each legislator has preferences over (i) the resulting policy and (ii) how he or she votes. The latter preferences are especially important when the legislator is not pivotal. We show that when the game follows the normal rules of legislatures—most important, that legislators can change their vote after seeing how their fellow legislators have voted—then the only possible equilibrium is one where all legislators ignore their policy preferences. That is, each legislator votes as if he or she is not pivotal. The result, consistent with empirical studies of Congress, suggests that legislators should tend to vote sincerely, rather than sophisticatedly. In this paper we examine how outcomes change if we change the rules for voting. Namely, instead of a simultaneous game, we consider a game where legislators vote sequentially in a pre-determined order. We show that, opposite to the simultaneous game, an alternative wins if and only if a majority of legislators’ policy preferences favor that alternative. Our results suggest that if Congress adopted this change in rules, then sophisticated voting would become frequent instead of rare.

Optimal policy with a total order quantity commitment contract in the presence of a spot market

In this paper, the optimal policy is considered when the buyer faces two supply sources: one is the contract supplier from which the buyer orders over a specific contract period (say, a year) at a pre-agreed price, and the other is the spot market. However, when ordering from the contract supplier, the buyer must fulfill a pre-determined total order quantity, or the so-called definite total order quantity commitment, over the whole contract period. In other words, the commitment secures the buyer a fixed price but obliges him/her a total order quantity over the contract period. Although the spot market gives the buyer more flexibility in terms of order quantities, its prices are volatile. Such a combination of contract and spot procurements is often observed in practice. Within the contract period, there are multiple sub-periods, during each of which the buyer reviews the inventory, issues an individual order, and uses the on-hand inventory to meet the random demand. Thus, in each (ordering) period, the buyer will weigh between the current known spot price (by procuring from the spot market) and a lower future price (by waiting while consuming the remaining commitment). An optimal dual ordering policy is characterized for each period, depending on the on-hand inventory level, the spot price, and the remaining commitment quantity. The optimal policy in each period is also shown to be independent of the contract price. Through a numerical study, the inventory cost is demonstrated to be (1) insensitive to the contract price when the total commitment quantity is lower than the total expected demand over the contract period and (2) non-increasing in the variability of spot prices.

P<span class="small-caps">ärt's</span> E<span class="small-caps">volving</span> <em>T<span class="small-caps">intinnabuli</span></em> S<span class="small-caps">tyle</span>

PÄRT’S EVOLVING TINTINNABULI STYLE1 MICHAEL CHIKINDA CURIOUS PARALLEL is found in the compositional development of Arvo Pärt and Arnold Schoenberg; both composers experienced a creative hiatus followed by a period in which they fervently explored a new compositional technique. For Schoenberg, the pan-tonal works of the pre-war years were followed by the pre-determined order of the twelve-tone technique. For Pärt, the twelve-tone technique served as a point of departure before his hiatus, which was followed by the beginning of the tintinnabuli compositions. While Pärt is certainly not the first composer to have abandoned the twelve-tone technique in favor of a new form of expression, his reason for doing so is unique. For instance, Steve Reich had reservations about a compositional process that was not immediately perceptible to the listener.2 Could the row be heard by even the most attentive listener? Thus, his response in his early compositions was the use of the phasing technique, which he felt A Pärt’s Evolving Tintinnabuli Style 183 would be immediately perceptible to his audience.3 By contrast, Pärt’s concern was not about transparency; rather, his departure from the twelve-tone technique in favor of the tintinnabuli style was to find a method that more fully expressed spiritual considerations.4 A brief review of the tintinnabuli style will prove helpful before discussing these considerations and their evolution in later compositions. There are two elements that work in tandem in the tintinnabuli style: the M-voice, which represents a melodic line (typically using conjunct motion) and the T-voice, which represents the note of a triad (typically a major or minor triad).5 Traditionally, the T-voice has been understood to stand in relation to the M-voice; that is to say, as the scalar pattern of the M-voice unfolds in the music, the presence of the T-voice is gauged by whether it is articulated above or below the Mvoice and by the intervallic distance between the two. For example, if the M-voice articulates the following scalar pattern: C4 – D4 – E4 – F4 – G4 and the T-voice articulates, in a first-species counterpoint style, E4 – E4 – G4 – G4 – C5, it would be considered a 1st-postion, superior tintinnabuli voice: superior, because it is always placed above the M-voice, and 1st-position, because each member of the C major triad that it articulates is in ‘closed’ position. By contrast, had the Tvoice articulated instead G4 – G4 – C5 – C5 – E5, then it would be considered a 2nd -position, superior tintinnabuli voice because there is another member of the C major triad that could be inserted between the M-voice and the T-voice.6 Using this schema, it is also possible to construct a 1st- and 2nd -position inferior T-voice and an alternating pattern that switches between superior and inferior positions.7 Hillier privileges, in both his book and in his Grove Music Online article, the M-voice by suggesting that the T-voice is to be understood as something that is placed in reference to the M-voice, which assumes a compositional process whereby one starts with a cantus firmus and then writes a T-voice counterpoint; however, considering the relationship of these two elements in a different way, one could privilege the T-voice by suggesting that the conjunct motion of the M-voice is the result of ‘filling in the spaces’ between the members of the T-voice. I will return to this idea later. It will be helpful now to turn to an example from an early work from Pärt’s oeuvre that demonstrates the schema just outlined. Example 1 shows a brief passage from his Cantus in Memory of Benamin Britten (1977), which isolates the divisi violin II part and the campana for the purpose of clarity.8 The campana, throughout the entirety of this work, plays A4, which acts as a center of gravity. The upper part of the divisi violin II is an M-voice that articulates a scalar pattern over a 184 Perspectives of New Music two-octave span (in this context the A aeolian scale), while the...

A simulation-supported approach for man-machine configuration in manufacturing

In addition to the traditional consideration of technical and economical issues, staffing aspects are gaining in importance in the planning of production systems. The usual approach is to determine the manufacturing equipment according to the applied technology and then to define the necessary staff. However, this approach may lead to problems after the technical issues have been determined. On the other hand, a reversed approach, namely planning the technical resources based on the personnel to be implemented, is hardly practical. The following article deals with the topic of an integrated, simulation-supported procedure for the planning of personnel and technical resources based on a pre-determined order programme and the corresponding production logistical conditions.

A flexible fixed-sequence testing method for hierarchically ordered correlated multiple endpoints in clinical trials

Statistical approaches for addressing multiplicity in clinical trials range from the very conservative (the Bonferroni method) to the least conservative the fixed sequence approach. Recently, several authors proposed methods that combine merits of the two extreme approaches. Wiens [2003. A fixed sequence Bonferroni procedure for testing multiple endpoints. Pharmaceutical Statist. 2003, 2, 211–215], for example, considered an extension of the Bonferroni approach where the type I error rate ( α ) is allocated among the endpoints, however, testing proceeds in a pre-determined order allowing the type I error rate to be saved for later use as long as the null hypotheses are rejected. This leads to a higher power of the test in testing later null hypotheses. In this paper, we consider an extension of Wiens’ approach by taking into account correlations among endpoints for achieving higher flexibility in testing. We show strong control of the family-wise type I error rate for this extension and provide critical values and significance levels for testing up to three endpoints with equal correlations and show how to calculate them for other correlation structures. We also present results of a simulation experiment for comparing the power of the proposed method with those of Wiens’ and others. The results of this experiment show that the magnitude of the gain in power of the proposed method depends on the prospective ordering of testing of the endpoints, the magnitude of the treatment effects of the endpoints and the magnitude of correlation between endpoints. Finally, we consider applications of the proposed method for clinical trials with multiple time points and multiple doses, where correlations among endpoints frequently arise.