US Postal Service Research Articles

Assessing customer satisfaction in parcel delivery industry: an empirical study among university customers

Parcel delivery companies (e.g. US Postal Service, UPS, and FedEx) are significant parts of modern transportation systems. The availability, responsiveness, reliability, completeness, and professionalism of service were identified from a literature review, as the five critical factors affecting customer satisfaction in parcel delivery industry. A model of customer satisfaction in parcel delivery service was developed. Academic departments from selected universities across the US responded to written questionnaires and these data were used for the study. The data included information on the characteristics of each above-mentioned factor and ranking of importance of the factors was determined. The research tested the hypotheses to determine the correlation coefficients between the five factors and overall customer satisfaction with respect to all customers for both outgoing and incoming parcel delivery services.

Book reviews

Book reviewed in this article:SAVING THE MAIL: HOW TO SOLVE THE PROBLEMS OF THE US POSTAL SERVICE, Rick GeddesA HISTORY OF MONEY FROM ANCIENT TIMES TO THE PRESENT DAY (3rd edn.), Glyn DaviesBARGAINING AND MARKET BEHAVIOR: ESSAYS I N EXPERIMENTAL ECONOMICS, Vernon L. SmithREORIENTING ECONOMICS, Tony Lawson

Geocoding addresses from a large population-based study: lessons learned.

Geographic information systems (GIS) and spatial statistics are useful for exploring the relation between geographic location and health. The ultimate usefulness of GIS depends on both completeness and accuracy of geocoding (the process of assigning study participants' residences latitude/longitude coordinates that closely approximate their true locations, also known as address matching). The goal of this project was to develop an iterative geocoding process that would achieve a high match rate in a large population-based health study. Data were from a study conducted in Wisconsin using mailing addresses of participants who were interviewed by telephone from 1988 to 1995. We standardized the addresses according to US Postal Service guidelines, used desktop GIS geocoding software and two versions of the Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing street maps, accessed Internet mapping engines for problematic addresses, and recontacted a small number of study participants' households. We also tabulated the project's cost, time commitment, software requirements, and brief notes for each step and their alternatives. Of the 14,804 participants, 97% were ultimately assigned latitude/longitude coordinates corresponding to their respective residences. The remaining 3% were geocoded to their zip code centroid. The multiple methods described in this work provide practical information for investigators who are considering the use of GIS in their population health research.

Inhalational anthrax and bioterrorism

Until recently, inhalational anthrax was considered an infectious disease curiosity for medical specialists and veterinarians. This attitude abruptly changed following the intentional release of Bacillus anthracis spores via the US Postal Service in October 2001. Because of its rarity, few physicians were familiar with its clinical manifestations, treatment and prophylaxis. In this report, we try to fill this informational gap by reviewing these issues based on additional data culled from this recent bioterrorism-related epidemic. Moreover, we have purposely emphasized its clinical manifestations, searching for common findings that may alert the physician to suspect and rapidly diagnose this infection. To improve survival rates, prompt diagnosis of inhalational anthrax is crucial, since even a brief delay in therapy of this fulminating infection almost uniformly results in death.

Measuring the performance of electronic government services

The World Wide Web (WWW) and the Internet have streamlined government information, products, and services. Electronic government now includes on-line filing of documents, notification of entitlements, permits, registration, and disaster relief. This paper addresses the question, can a marketing model be used by Federal and state agencies to improve the content and value of electronic services to the public? Six Federal and state e-service programs were analyzed--the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the US Mint, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the US Postal Service (USPS), and the e-State-government systems of California and New Jersey. Five marketing indicators were used--consumer awareness, popularity, contact efficiency, conversion, and retention. Awareness deals with the number of visitors to a site. Popularity refers to the rank of the site. Contact efficiency indicates site usability and content. Conversion refers to customer satisfaction, transactions and time on the site. Retention deals with customer loyalty. Web traffic reports and customer surveys were used as proxies to analyze and compare a sample of Federal and state e-service agencies. The results support the use of a marketing framework in organizing and evaluating these sites. The case studies demonstrate how statistical and survey data were combined for a robust assessment of the e-services.

Medical counterbioterrorism: The response to provide anthrax prophylaxis to New York city US postal service employees

Study objective: We describe and analyze a recent rapid deployment of disaster medical assistance teams and other government agencies to provide medical screening and anthrax prophylaxis to New York City US Postal Service employees potentially exposed to letters contaminated with anthrax spores. Methods: A description of the response effort is presented. Data were collected on standardized forms and included the numbers of postal employees screened and offered antibiotic prophylaxis, as well as the numbers of patients seen per worker hour by various medical professionals. Results: One hundred members of 5 disaster medical assistance teams and other health professionals were deployed to New York City within 18 hours of activation. Over a 68-hour period, 7,076 patients were evaluated, representing all postal employees in the 6 major postal facilities in New York believed to be at risk for anthrax exposure. Of the total, 2,452 patients were seen during the first 24 hours, 3,875 during the second 24 hours, and the remaining 749 during the last 20 hours of operations. An average of 161 employees were screened per hour. The antibiotic most commonly dispensed was ciprofloxacin, followed by doxycycline and amoxicillin. Conclusion: The deployment of disaster medical assistance teams and other agencies to New York City to provide prophylaxis against inhalation anthrax to US Postal Service employees provides lessons for a rapid, efficient, and effective response to acts of bioterrorism. This deployment might also serve as a scaleable model for future events requiring medical prophylaxis. [Ann Emerg Med. 2003;41:441-446.]

USPS and Sony struggle to create lasting organizational change

When Bill Henderson, postmaster general of US Postal Service (USPS), turned up at the Tour de France in July 1999, things could not have been better. After making loss upon loss, his organization had finally turned things around. USPS was in profit with a strategic five‐year plan that was set to see it prosper for years to come. And just to make things even greater, the athlete USPS had sponsored (the guy who was told he would never compete again after being diagnosed with testicular cancer in 1996), had just won the world’s most prestigious cycling competition. What a difference three years can make.

F UEL CELLS PROVIDE RELIABLE POWER TO U.S. P OSTAL SERVICE F ACILITY IN ANCHORAGE, A LASKA

Working together, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) and Chugach Elec-tric Association, partnering with the Department of Defense (DOD),Department of Energy (DOE), US Army Corps of Engineers ConstructionEngineering Research Laboratories (USA CERL), Electric Power ResearchInstitute (EPRI), and National Rural Electric Cooperative Association(NRECA), developed and installed one of the largest fuel cell installa-tions in the world.The 1-Megawatt fuelcell combined heat andpower plant sits behind theAnchorage U.S. Postal Ser-vice Mail Processing and Dis-tribution Facility. ChugachElectric owns, operates, and maintains the fuel cell power plant, whichprovides clean, reliable power to the USPS facility. In addition, heat re-covered from the fuel cells, in the form of hot water, is used to heat theUSPS Mail Processing and Distribution Facility. By taking a leadershiprole, the USPS will save over $800,000 in electricity and natural gas costsover the 5 1/2-year contract term with Chugach Electric.

Fuel Cells Provide Reliable Power to U.S. Postal Service Facility in Anchorage, Alaska

ABSTRACT Working together, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) and Chugach Electric Association, partnering with the Department of Defense (DOD), Department of Energy (DOE), US Army Corps of Engineers Construction Engineering Research Laboratories (USA CERL), Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), and National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA), developed and installed one of the largest fuel cell installations in the world. The 1-Megawatt fuel cell combined heat and power plant sits behind the Anchorage U.S. Postal Service Mail Processing and Distribution Facility. Chugach Electric owns, operates, and maintains the fuel cell power plant, which provides clean, reliable power to the USPS facility. In addition, heat recovered from the fuel cells, in the form of hot water, is used to heat the USPS Mail Processing and Distribution Facility. By taking a leadership role, the USPS will save over $800,000 in electricity and natural gas costs over the 5 1/2-year contract term with Chugach Electric. “Fuel cells solved a handful of problems.,” Cathe Grosshandler, Alaska District Environmental Coordinator, U.S. Postal Service

Evaluating the Use of Residential Mailing Addresses in a Metropolitan Household Survey

On-site enumeration is generally regarded as the most comprehensive method for developing sampling frames for area household surveys. However, the time and expense associated with on-site enumeration often precludes it from being a viable option for many household surveys. Residential mailing lists provide an alternative that enables in-person surveys to be done cheaper and faster than is possible with on-site enumeration. The primary drawback of mailing lists is that the completeness of the lists is unknown. In this article, we evaluate the coverage of mailing addresses that were used as a sampling frame for a probability-based survey of 15,000 households in Dallas County, TX. The addresses were obtained from the Delivery Sequence File (DSF) offered by the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) through a nonexclusive license agreement with private companies. The DSF is a computerized file that contains all delivery point addresses serviced by the USPS, with the exception of general delivery. To evaluate the coverage of the mailing addresses, we used Kish's Half-Open Interval (HOI) procedure to search for missed housing units in the interval between the selected address and the next address in delivery sequence order. A total of 46 missed addresses (1.9 percent) were found among the 2,380 HOIs randomly selected for examination. In addition, we discovered that the vast majority of persons who maintained a residential P.O. box also have mail delivered to their street address. Finally, the mailing addresses yielded a 90 percent occupancy rate, which is consistent with metropolitan household surveys that use on-site enumeration methods

Long-term follow-up of the CAD/CAM patient fitted total temporomandibular joint reconstruction system

Purpose: The purpose of this study was the assessment of the long-term safety and effectiveness of the Techmedica (Camarillo, CA) CAD/CAM Total Temporomandibular Joint Reconstruction System (now called the TMJ Concepts Patient Fitted Total Temporomandibular Joint Reconstruction System, Ventura, CA). Patients and Methods: A survey was mailed to the available addresses of 170 (79%) of the 215 patients who had been implanted with the Techmedica System devices between 1990 and 1994. Seventy-nine (46%) surveys were returned by the US Postal Service as undeliverable. Three patients (1.4%) were reported as deceased in returns from relatives. Therefore, of the remaining 91 possible responses, 60 (65.9%) were returned. Fifty-eight (58) surveys, considered complete and valid (96.7%), representing 97 (39 bilateral, 19 unilateral) devices with a mean follow-up of 107.4 ± 15.5 months (range, 60 to 120 months) were analyzed. Subjective data related to pain, mandibular function, diet consistency, and present quality of life were collected using visual analog scales. Objective measures of mandibular interincisal opening and lateral excursions were obtained from direct measurements using the Therabite (Therabite, Philadelphia, PA) measuring scale provided in the survey with instructions as to its use. Results: Analysis of the subjective data at 10 years revealed a 76% reduction in mean pain scores and a 68% increase in mean mandibular function and diet consistency scores (P <.0001). Analysis of objective data revealed a 30% improvement in mandibular range of motion after 10 years (P =.0009). Long-term quality of life improvement scores were statistically related to the number of prior temporomandibular joint operations the patients had undergone. Conclusion: These data indicate that the CAD/CAM Patient Fitted Total Temporomandibular Joint Reconstruction System has proved to be a safe and effective long-term management modality in the patient population surveyed for this study. © 2002 American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons J Oral Maxillofac Surg 60:1440-1448, 2002

Neither snow, nor rain, nor anthrax [bioterrorism counteraction

To counter bioterrorism, the US Postal Service has tried electron beam irradiation to sterilise mail, then it tried detection of germs and toxins using technology developed for the battlefield. Soon, the US Postal Service may use smart mail using upgraded mail scanning equipment to read 2D bar codes.

Responding to the threat of bioterrorism: a microbial ecology perspective--the case of anthrax.

Anthrax is a disease of herbivores caused by the gram-positive bacterium Bacillus anthracis. It can affect cattle, sheep, swine, horses and various species of wildlife. The routes for the spread among wildlife are reviewed. There are three kinds of human anthrax--inhalation, cutaneous, and intestinal anthrax--which differ in their routes of infection and outcomes. In the United States, confirmation of cases is made by the isolation of B. anthracis and by biochemical tests. Vaccination is not recommended for the general public; civilians who should be vaccinated include those who, in their work places, come in contact with products potentially contaminated with B. anthracis spores, and people engaged in research or diagnostic activities. After September 11, 2001, there were bioterrorism anthrax attacks in the United States: anthrax-laced letters sent to multiple locations were the source of infectious B. anthracis. The US Postal Service issued recommendations to prevent the danger of hazardous exposure to the bacterium. B. anthracis spores can spread easily and persist for very long times, which makes decontamination of buildings very difficult. Early detection, rapid diagnosis, and well-coordinated public health response are the key to minimizing casualties. The US Government is seeking new ways to deter bioterrorism, including a tighter control of research on infectious agents, even though pathogens such as B. anthracis are widely spread in nature and easy to grow. It is necessary to define the boundary between defensive and offensive biological weapons research. Deterring bioterrorism should not restrict critical scientific research.

On-line learning in changing environments with applications in supervised and unsupervised learning

An adaptive on-line algorithm extending the learning of learning idea is proposed and theoretically motivated. Relying only on gradient flow information it can be applied to learning continuous functions or distributions, even when no explicit loss function is given and the Hessian is not available. The framework is applied for unsupervised and supervised learning. Its efficiency is demonstrated for drifting and switching non-stationary blind separation tasks of acoustic signals. Furthermore applications to classification (US postal service data set) and time-series prediction in changing environments are presented.

DOCLINE and Freeshare

ABSTRACT The library that can fill Interlibrary Loan requests (ILLs) quickly is touted as a shining star with all library patrons. It is known throughout the institution for its ability to “get anything quickly.” This reputation can provide many benefits. Gone are the days of relying on ALA forms and the US Postal Service to deliver ILLs. Informal reciprocal lending groups such as Freeshare have been formed to help libraries contain the cost of ILL service.

Sustaining distance training: integrating learning technologies into the fabric of the enterprise

The Context of Distance Training and Education: Predicting Change (Z. Berge). From Project Management to Strategic Planning (Z. Berge). MEETING THE CHALLENGE OF UNCOMMON ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE. Attracting, Training, and Retaining Instructors for Distance Learning at the US General Accounting Office(J. Longnecker). Center for Learning at SBC Communications, Inc. (N. Friend & T. Eisma). The World is Officially Open for Business: How MCI WorldCom University Used the Corporate Intranet to Train a New Era Communications Company (C. Treanor & J. Irwin). Learning at a Distance: Surviving Implementation at the US Army Intelligence Center's Distance Learning Office (J. Ellsworth & L. Iorizzo). Making It Work: Training Short--Term Personnel at a Distance from Reseau Interaction Network (D. Larocque & N. Thomas). Distance Learning Implementation at the Internal Revenue Service: A Catalyst for Organizational Change (T. Scheer). SETTING COMPETITIVE STANDARDS. UAW DaimlerChrysler NTC (J. Codde & R. Egidio). FirstUnion: Distance Learning at Work (S. Latten, et al.).. Fordstar: Sustaining Distance Education at Ford Motor Company (J. Dessinger). Learning to Work in Web--Time--Evaluating Time--to--Market Instruction at Nortel Networks (G. Michalski). The Need for Coaching in a Distance Learning Environment: Lessons Learned at Cap Gemini (J. May & J. De Jong). Hewlett--Packard's Regional Training Center (A. Brance, et al.). ACHIEVING ORGANIZATIONAL GOALS. Building Motivation for Distance Learners in Public Health (B. Polhamus, et al.). Supporting an Enterprise Distance Learning Program at NYNEX (B. Howard).. US Postal Service's Integration of Distance Learning Initiatives to Meet Organizational Goals (M. Wankel). TeleEducation NB: A Province--Wide Distributed Distance Learning Netowrk (R. McGreal). From Training Enhancement to Organizational Learning: The Migration of Distance Learning at the American Red Cross (N. Rogers & S. Becker). Tools for Change: Linking the Organizational Perspective with Distance Training and Education Programs (Z. Berge).

National library service for the blind and physically handicapped: digital plans and progress

The National Library Service (NLS) produces about 2,000 talking books and 50 magazines per year on specially formatted cassette tape for free distribution to a readership of about 764,000. Cassettes and special players are delivered by US Postal Service from a network of 138 participating libraries. To control the cost of technical obsolescence and to meet patron and sponsor expectations, NLS will replace this analog system with a digital system over the next ten years.

Government: US Postal Service launches Internet service

Government: US Postal Service launches Internet service

Statistical Image Object Recognition using Mixture Densities

In this paper, we present a mixture density based approach to invariant image object recognition. To allow for a reliable estimation of the mixture parameters, the dimensionality of the feature space is optionally reduced by applying a robust variant of linear discriminant analysis. Invariance to affine transformations is achieved by incorporating invariant distance measures such as tangent distance. We propose an approach to estimating covariance matrices with respect to image variabilities as well as a new approach to combined classification, called the virtual test sample method. Application of the proposed classifier to the well known US Postal Service handwritten digits recognition task (USPS) yields an excellent error rate of 2.2%. We also propose a simple, but effective approach to compensate for local image transformations, which significantly increases the performance of tangent distance on a database of 1,617 medical radiographs taken from clinical daily routine.

A survey of practice patterns and the health promotion and prevention attitudes of US chiropractors, maintenance care: Part I

Objective: To investigate the primary care, health promotion activities associated with what has historically been called “maintenance care” (MC) as used in the practice of chiropractic in the United States. This includes issues such as investigating the purpose of MC, what conditions and patient populations it best serves, how frequently it is required, what therapeutic interventions constitute MC, how often it is recommended, and what percent of patient visits are for prevention and health promotion services. It also investigates the economic impact of these services.Design: Postal survey of a randomized sample of practicing US chiropractors. The questionnaire was structured with a 5-point ordinal Likert scale (28 questions) and brief fill-in questionnaire (12 questions). The 40-question survey was mailed to 1500 chiropractors selected at random from a pool of chiropractors with active practices in the United States. The National Directory of Chiropractic database was the source of actively practicing chiropractors from which doctor selection was made. The sample was derived by using the last numbers composing the zip codes assigned by the US Postal Service. This sampling method assured potential inclusion of chiropractors from all 50 states, from rural areas and large cities, and assured a sample weighting based on population density that might not have been afforded by a simple random sample.Results: Six hundred and fifty-eight (44%) of the questionnaires were completed and returned. US chiropractors agreed or strongly agreed that the purpose of MC was to optimize health (90%), prevent conditions from developing (88%), provide palliative care (86%), and minimize recurrence or exacerbations (95%). MC was viewed as helpful in preventing both musculoskeletal and visceral health problems. There was strong agreement that the therapeutic composition of MC placed virtually equal weight on exercise (96%) and adjustments/manipulation (97%) and that other interventions, including dietary recommendations (93%) and patient education about lifestyle changes (84%), shared a high level of importance. Seventy-nine percent of chiropractic patients have MC recommended to them and nearly half of those (34%) comply. The average number of recommended MC visits was 14.4 visits per year, and the total revenue represents an estimated 23% of practice income.Conclusions: Despite educational, philosophic, and political differences, US chiropractors come to a consensus about the purpose and composition of MC. Not withstanding the absence of scientific support, they believe that it is of value to all age groups and a variety of conditions from stress to musculoskeletal and visceral conditions. This strong belief in the preventive and health promotion value of MC motivates them to recommend this care to most patients. This, in turn, results in a high level of preventive services and income averaging an estimated $50,000 per chiropractic practice in 1994. The data suggest that the amount of services and income generated by preventive and health-promoting services may be second only to those from the treatment of low-back pain. The response from this survey also suggests that the level of primary care, health promotion and prevention activities of chiropractors surpasses that of other physicians.