Seamless Process Research Articles

Under Surveillance, Yet Looked After: Telehomecare as Viewed by Patients and Their Spouse/Partners

In this research project, a group of heart patients were transferred from traditional hospital settings to home hospitalisation across sectors. The project involved patients with heart failure and arrhythmia. The aim was to understand the experiences and attitudes of patients and their spouses/partners with regard to the application of telehomecare technology as an option within home hospitalisation. A phenomenological hermeneutic approach was used to collect and interpret the findings and data. A triangulation of data collection techniques was applied using participation observation and qualitative interviews with patients and spouse/partner. Data were analysed from the perspective of the sociology of everyday life. The impact of home hospitalisation on patients is described according to several themes: security, freedom, increased awareness of own symptoms, being 'looked after' but annoyed with their spouse/partner. The patients experience a seamless cross-sector patient care process. The impact on the spouse/partner includes elements of increased responsibility, nervous tension, and invasion of privacy. Patients believe that home hospitalisation speeds up the process of returning to everyday life, both physically and mentally. It is important to be aware of certain anxieties experienced by the patient's spouse/partner about home hospitalisation, and these anxieties may also affect the patient.

Mental stress is a cause of cardiovascular diseases: from scepticism to certainty

AbstractIntegrating into the clinical practice of medicine the recent evidence that psychiatric illness and mental stress contributes to the development of cardiovascular disease has not been a seamless process. The evidence for such a link, in fact, had been slow in materializing. The importance of acute mental stress as a trigger for cardiac catastrophes (acute myocardial infarction, sudden death) and of depressive illness as a cause of coronary heart disease, however, is now firmly established. But the spectre of workplace litigation still does hang over the field, clouding the arguments and polarizing medical opinion. Now that a consensus finally seems to have been reached that mental stress, including in the workplace, is an important cause of coronary heart disease and hypertension, it is hoped that the primary outcome will be the implementation of preventive measures to reduce stress in the workplace, such as worker empowerment to end the very adverse high demand/low job control scenario, rather than a rash of lawsuits. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Using the Planning and Environment Linkages Umbrella Approach to Streamline Transportation Decision Making

The planning and environment linkages (PEL) umbrella approach is designed to streamline the process of project development and environmental review by encouraging agencies to take an integrated, systems perspective to support transportation, environmental, and community goals. The PEL approach provides strategies, practices, processes, and analytical tools that encompass related federal activities including linking planning and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), ecological and context-sensitive solutions, corridor planning, and integrated planning. When successfully implemented, the PEL approach makes the entire life cycle of a project a more seamless process, from planning to NEPA and on to design, construction, and maintenance. The PEL approach is described, federal legislation and related activities are discussed, examples of effective practices are provided, lessons learned are shared, and the reader is directed to additional resources for implementation.

Informatics applied to cytology

Automation and emerging information technologies are being adopted by cytology laboratories to augment Pap test screening and improve diagnostic accuracy. As a result, informatics, the application of computers and information systems to information management, has become essential for the successful operation of the cytopathology laboratory. This review describes how laboratory information management systems can be used to achieve an automated and seamless workflow process. The utilization of software, electronic databases and spreadsheets to perform necessary quality control measures are discussed, as well as a Lean production system and Six Sigma approach, to reduce errors in the cytopathology laboratory.

Development of SILS and RCP for OSEK-OS based ECU

This paper presents the Matlab/Simulink-based Software-in-the-Loop Simulation (SILS) tool for OSEK-OS based ECU. The SILS tool has the capability for temporal and functional simulations of control systems. The temporal behavior of a control system is mainly dependent on the implemented software and hardware such as the real-time operating system (OSEK-OS), the target CPU, and the communication protocol. The SILS components with temporal attributes are specified as tasks, task executions, real-time schedulers (OSEK-OS scheduler), and real-time networks. Methods to realize these components in graphical block representations are investigated with Matlab/Simulink. Furthermore, in order to achieve a seamless development process from SILS to Rapid Control Prototyping (RCP), the SILS block set is designed to support automatic code generation in C codes without tool changes and block modifications.

О территории власти и власти территории: Заметки на полях “Сибири в составе Российской империи”

SUMMARY: Sergei Glebov reviews the volume Siberia within the Russian Empire and assesses both this volume’s contribution to existing scholarship on the history of Siberia as well as the volume’s attempt to analyze the history of Siberia with the help of new methodologies; including the new history of empire as it is explicated by the editors of the series Borderlands of the Russian Empire . Glebov contends that the premise of the new history of empire is rather conventional in that it projects the view of empire as a structure of relations between an undefined imperial center and peripheral societies. Inadvertently, this structural premise revives national narratives, insofar as in the course of historical development the legitimation of both the imperial center and peripheral societies were bound to involve the discourse of nationhood. Glebov praises the included analysis of symbolic geography and history of signification of the space of Siberia in alternating discourses. However, he notes that this aspect of the volume suffers from the exclusion of the eighteenth century from the history of “cognitive conquest” of the space of Siberia. Bringing the eighteenth century into the narrative alters the overall picture for the center of the authoritative knowledge in the eighteenth century was not in Russia but in Western Europe with whose participation Siberia was conceptually conquered while the Muscovite Tsardom was itself reframed into the Russian Empire. Furthermore, Glebov does not see any reason to reduce the symbolic geography of Siberia to administrative mapping alone and enunciates the history of confessional mapping and proselytizing activities, which offer a different dimension of the history of imperial diversity. According to Glebov, the volume’s main shortcoming is its tunnel-vision narrative of a seamless process of Siberia becoming part of the Russian space. He contrasts this tunnel vision narrative with the complex history of rule by difference directed at indigenous peoples of Siberia and criticizes the authors of the volume for simplistic comparisons with the history of colonization and the indigenous population of North America.

Route to production of suspended perforated membranes

The authors report a flexible approach to fabrication of suspended perforated membranes. Interferometric lithography is used to pattern photoresist to create an etch mask on a silicon substrate. Reactive ion etching results in the formation of a matrix of silicon pillars. The interstices of the pillar matrix are then filled with the membrane material. Subsequent removal of the silicon matrix and underlying substrate yields a suspended membrane with perforations where the pillar matrix protruded prior to removal. The method combines interferometric lithography and conventional lithography to provide both periodic and nonperiodic patterns in a seamless process flow. The use of a matrix of sacrificial pillars enables the formation of higher aspect ratio holes than standard liftoff or etched film approaches. Perforated membranes of a siloxane based silica, photocurable polymer, and evaporated Cr are presented, demonstrating the wide process latitude of this approach. Such suspended membranes have application in photonic, metamaterials, DNA translocation, and biological and chemical sensors.

Implementation of telehomecare technology: impact on chronically ill patients, healthcare professionals and the healthcare system

The findings in the study of diabetes patients showed that the use of DiasNet helped the patients gain an insight into their own disease as well as increasing their disease self-management skills. The project brought about changes in the tasks and duties performed by all professional groups in the diabetes team. Findings among the heart patients were as follows: Firstly, during the design and implementation phases of a telehomecare system, several types of controversies emerged as part of the inter-organisational and inter-professional agenda. These controversies involved competing claims of jurisdiction, controversies over knowledge technologies, or differences in network visions and network architecture. Secondly, the clinical decision-making and task-implementation became multidisciplinary and integrated with the implementation of telehomecare and was therefore complex in terms of the prescription and adjustment of patient medicine. Workflows between healthcare professionals across sectors changed from sequential to collective client flows. Pre-existing procedures for patient care, treatment, and responsibility were challenged. In addition, the number of tasks for the district nurses increased. Integration in the carrying out of clinical tasks increased fragmentation in the knowledge technologies in a network perspective. Thirdly, there was an impact on patients during home hospitalisation in terms of security, freedom, increased awareness of own symptoms, being ‘looked after’ but annoyed with their spouseypartner. The patients experienced a seamless cross-sector patient care process. The impact on the spouseypartner involved responsibility, nervous tension, and invasion of privacy. For the readers of the IJIC, it is of special interest to learn in the case of the diabetic patients that the use of a web-based Diabetes Insulin Advisory System gave the patients an insight into their own disease as well as increasing their disease self-management skills. The diabetes team experienced changes in their tasks and duties. Among the heart patients, we can discern emerging controversies in the design and implementation process when using telehomecare technology. These issues should be taken into account when initiating a

Elements and rationale for a common approach to assess and report soil disturbance

Soil disturbance from forest practices ranges from barely perceptible to very obvious, and from positive to nil to negative effects on forest productivity and / or hydrologic function. Currently, most public and private land holders and various other interested parties have different approaches to describing this soil disturbance. More uniformity is needed to describe, monitor, and report soil disturbance from forest practices. We describe required elements for attaining: (1) more uniform terms for describing soil disturbance; (2) cost-effective techniques for monitoring or assessing soil disturbance; and (3) reliable methods to rate inherent soil susceptibility to compaction, rutting, mechanical topsoil displacement, and erosion. Visual disturbance categories are practical for describing soil disturbance. Soil disturbance categories for the Pacific Northwest are described in detail to illustrate essential elements for attaining Element One. A number of potential products are listed to meet the other elements. Completion of these will facilitate collecting comparable data and sharing research and training information. Coordinated efforts will also ensure a more seamless process for assessing and reporting for sustainability protocols, and responding to third-party certification protocols. Additionally, these products will improve operational relevance of research results. Key words: soil disturbance, forest productivity, hydrologic function, monitoring, Montréal Process, risk ratings for soils, soil compaction, soil displacement, soil erosion, sustainability protocols, third-party certification

Managing process change in software organizations: Experience and reflection

AbstractManaging process change in software organizations involves many challenges. It requires an array of skills beyond the technical expertise associated with the process change. Based on the author's recent industrial working experience at Motorola's Global Software Group (GSG) as an organizational technology deployment champion, this article identifies challenges of change management through real world case studies and provides a summary of good practices and lessons learned in implementing process change in today's software organizations. Upon further reflection of the process change management experience and other relevant learning and observations, the author proposes the notion of creating a perception of freedom as a more fundamental success strategy and suggests that the strategy together with the change be built into software tools to facilitate seamless process change deployment. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Regular Paper: Interactive N-Body Simulations On the Grid: HLA Versus MPI

The grid paradigm for distributed computation provides an interesting framework for the simulation of dense stellar systems, which remains a great challenge for astrophysicists. In this work we apply a distributed simulation model to the astrophysical N-body problem: the High Level Architecture (HLA), using distributed federations on top of grid infrastructures for the communication between simulation and visualization components. To achieve this goal, we use a grid HLA Management system (G-HLAM) for HLA-based simulations running on the grid. We compare this setup with a direct parallelization of the N-body code using MPI on the grid. Our aim is to provide scientists with an interactive environment where, in contrast to traditional MPI-based parallel processing, seamless simulation process migration and rollbacks can be invoked on the fly to improve the overall computational performance. We found that MPI and HLA are complementary rather than competing technologies, as they can be used simultaneously to improve the performance of complex simulations on different fronts. On one hand, if the communication to computation ratio is small enough, the MPI parallelization proves to be a relatively easy and efficient method for taking advantage of grid technology. On the other hand, HLA provides advanced mechanisms to synchronize simulation and visualization components located on different grid nodes and can be used to add steering mechanisms to improve interaction. Finally, we found that HLA allows migration of running simulations to be easily managed, reducing overall communication times between simulation and the user, effectively improving the overall system performance.

Integrating knowledge maps in design process configurations for concurrently engineered product development

Concurrently engineered product development requires effective inter-functional communication and knowledge sharing across multidisciplinary teams and heterogeneous processes. This paper presents a semantics-enabled approach to the integration of knowledge maps with design process configurations to support more meaningful communication and seamless collaboration between cross-functional teams and concurrent workflows in new product introduction (NPI) processes. The proposed approach focuses on: explicit and formalized process description and configuration of NPI activities; process knowledge capture and reuse through knowledge maps; integration of knowledge maps into design process configurations; and ontology-based process model mapping and knowledge sharing to support seamless process collaboration. It thereby contributes to the development of the next generation concurrent engineering methodologies in order to achieve NPI process advances for meaningful inter-functional communication and collaboration. The approach has been implemented in a software prototype to provide the concurrently engineered product development with the capabilities of semantic process description and configuration, knowledge reuse, and process collaboration.

Managing product development process complexity and challenges: a state-of-the art review

Owing to the highly competitive and globalised marketplace, manufacturing industries are under tremendous pressure to reduce cost and time-to-market and yet offer a large variety of products. Consequently, the companies are compelled to operate at the lowest profit margin and shift manufacturing operations to developing countries for cost savings. Product development (PD) processes play a very significant role in achieving a competitive edge and success in new product development. However, current PD processes are not adequately upgraded nor equipped with efficient design tools and techniques to meet the challenges of the global market. This paper highlights these emerging challenges and their impact on successful product development. Specifically, the paper classifies PD literature into three key areas (design analysis activities, activity structuring and a coordination mechanism for a collaborative design framework), requiring simultaneous development and effective integration, to provide a seamless PD process structure. It further provides directions for future research intended to enhance PD process effectiveness.

Design reuse framework: a perspective for lean development

While the notion of reuse is around for a long time, its real potential is not exposed and exploited in product development. When reuse is applied through a knowledge centric process at low granularity level, it can help in reducing the development process wastes. In this article, a systematic and comprehensive reuse process framework is proposed by recycling the design knowledge and development artefacts in a seamless development process. In the proposed process framework, knowledge assets are created by decomposition, generalisation and parameterisation. These decomposed and atomised assets are used as reusable building blocks for the next level of product design. Requirements are modelled and testing is performed in virtual environment by auto generating the test cases and test vectors. Model-based development is demonstrated as an enabler of effective reuse. In this research, it is emphasised that model-based seamless development is instrumental for removing process waste and making the product development process lean.

Development of logical and technical architectures for automotive systems

This paper presents a modeling approach for the development of software for electronic control units in the automotive domain. The approach supports the development of two related architecture models in the overall development process: the logical architecture provides a graphical, quite abstract representation of a typically large set of automotive functions. On this abstraction level no design decisions are taken. The technical architecture provides a software and a hardware representation in separated views: the software architecture describes the software realization of functions as software components, whereas the hardware architecture models hardware ntities, on which the software components are deployed. Logical as well as technical architectures only model structural information, but no behavioural information. A tight integration of both architecture levels—on the conceptual and on the tool level—with related development phases such as requirements engineering, behaviour modeling, code generation as well as version and configuration management resulting in a seamless overall development process is presented. This architecture modeling approach has been developed within a safety-relevant project at BMW Group. Positive as well as negative experiences with the application of this approach are described.

Thickness and grain size monitoring in seamless tube-making process using laser ultrasonics

The seamless tube-making process often causes wall-thickness variations generally in a helical pattern along the tube length. A laser-ultrasonic system installed immediately after the final operation in tube making provides process monitoring. Tube wall thickness and temperature measurements guide the mill adjustments to achieve the desired tolerances. Using the same ultrasonic signals, additional functionality provides the ability to measure the size of austenite grains. A signal processing approach based on a single echo analysis is used for determining wall thickness and austenitic grain size in relatively thick materials. Discussions review challenges specific to on-line conditions such as limited signal-to-noise ratio. A statistical comparison with metallographic results shows that the laser-ultrasonic grain sizes determined on-line have at least the same accuracy.

An optimal brain can be composed of conflicting agents.

Many behaviors have been attributed to internal conflict within the animal and human mind. However, internal conflict has not been reconciled with evolutionary principles, in that it appears maladaptive relative to a seamless decision-making process. We study this problem through a mathematical analysis of decision-making structures. We find that, under natural physiological limitations, an optimal decision-making system can involve "selfish" agents that are in conflict with one another, even though the system is designed for a single purpose. It follows that conflict can emerge within a collective even when natural selection acts on the level of the collective only.

Demand-led e-learning and the elusive total solution

Demand-led learning offers resources to learners when they want them; total solution learning takes the learner from induction to final accreditation through a seamless process. The University of Southampton attempted to deliver basic information technology skills through the support of these processes. Steps in the seamless process were designed, developed and implemented. Face-to-face intervention was eliminated, apart from initial learner induction and online-test invigilation. Feedback loops were planned so that success (eg, in completing the accreditation) might encourage further success through collaborative and competitive peer learning. Critical dependency issues arose whilst implementing the solution. When learning delivery was disrupted by systems failure, the indirect effects on learner motivation and resourcefulness proved as damaging as system breaks themselves. This made the institutionalisation of the learning elusive, but key areas have been identified for further investigation.

Design and optimisation of one-port RF MEMS resonators and related integrated circuits using ANN-based macromodelling approach

The authors propose a modelling methodology which combines finite element method (FEM) and artificial neural networks (ANNs) techniques for the design and optimisation of integrated circuits (ICs) incorporating one-port radio frequency microelectromechanical systems (RF MEMS) resonating structures. The FEM is employed to predict the electro-mechanical performance of MEMS resonators. ANNs are utilised to model complex relationships between the physical parameters of the MEMS resonator and the corresponding electrical equivalent circuit parameters. These parameters are extracted directly from the FEM analysis and used for training the ANNs. It is shown that the relative error of the ANN model for a single MEMS device is less than 0.5% while the computational time is more than 40 times reduced compared to the FEM. To extend the capabilities of the proposed methodology, the developed ANN model is implemented into a commercially available circuit simulator, Agilent's Advanced Design System (ADS). This allows a seamless modelling process for the design and optimisation of MEMS resonators embedded ICs at both the device and circuit levels. As an example, a 30 MHz Pierce oscillator with the ANN model of a free-free beam MEMS resonator is optimised within the circuit simulator.

The Impact of the Pervasive Information Age on Healthcare Organizations

New information technologies place data on integrated information systems, and provide access via pervasive computing technologies. Pervasive computing puts computing power in the hands of all employees, available wherever it is needed. Integrated systems offer seamless data and process integration over diverse information systems. In this paper we look at the impact of these technologies on healthcare organizations in the future.