Vendor Site Research Articles

Multipathogen Outbreak of Bacillus cereus and Clostridium perfringens Among Hospital Workers in Alaska, August 2021.

Clostridium perfringens and Bacillus cereus are common causes of reported foodborne illness. On August 6, 2021, the Alaska Division of Public Health identified a multipathogen gastrointestinal outbreak among hospital staff in Homer, Alaska. The objectives of this study were to identify the outbreak source and prevent future illness. We conducted a retrospective cohort study of hospital staff who participated in luncheon events during August 5-7, 2021, and used an online survey to identify hospital staff with gastrointestinal illness. We defined case patients as people who reported new-onset gastrointestinal illness (diarrhea or abdominal cramping) after food consumption during the luncheon events. We calculated adjusted odds ratios of gastrointestinal illness associated with reported food exposures. We tested available food samples for C perfringens and B cereus and tested case patient stool specimens for C perfringens. We conducted an environmental investigation at the implicated vendor site. Of 202 survey responses, 66 (32.7%) people reported acute gastrointestinal illness: 64 (97.0%) reported diarrhea, 62 (94.9%) reported abdominal cramps, and none were hospitalized. Of 79 people who consumed ham and pulled pork sandwiches, 64 (81.0%) met the case definition; this food item was significantly associated with increased odds of gastrointestinal illness (adjusted odds ratio = 296.4; 95% CI, 76.7-2019.1). C perfringens and B cereus were isolated at confirmatory levels from sandwich samples. C perfringens enterotoxin was detected in all 5 stool specimens tested. Environmental investigators observed other food items at the sandwich vendor that were refrigerated outside the required temperature range (>41 °F); no clear handling deficiencies for the implicated food were identified. Quick notification and effective collaboration can help detect an outbreak, identify the responsible food vehicle, and mitigate further risk.

A Study on Opinion Spamming: Fake Consumer Review Detection

Online audits are the most important wellsprings of data about client feelings and are considered the columns on which the standing of an association is assembled. From a client's viewpoint, audit data is vital to settle on an appropriate choice with respect to an online buy. Surveys are for the most part thought to be a fair-minded assessment of a person's very own involvement in an item, however, the fundamental truth about these audits recounts an alternate story. Spammers abuse these audit stages unlawfully on account of impetuses engaged with composing counterfeit surveys, subsequently attempting to acquire a bit of leeway over contenders bringing about an unstable development of assessment spamming. This training is known as Opinion (Review) Spam, where spammers control and toxic substance surveys (i.e., making phony, untruthful, or misleading audits) for benefit or gain. It has become a typical practice for individuals to discover and to understand assessments/surveys on the Web for some reason. For instance, in the event that one needs to purchase an item, one commonly goes to a vendor or audit site (e.g., amazon.com) to peruse a few surveys of existing clients of the item. In the event that one sees numerous positive audits of the item, one is probably going to purchase the item. Notwithstanding, in the event that one sees many negative surveys, he/she will in all probability pick another item. Positive suppositions can bring about huge monetary benefits and additionally popularities for associations and people. This, sadly, offers great motivating forces for input spam. Most of the momentum research has zeroed in on regulated learning strategies, which require named information, a shortage with regards to online survey spam. Examination of techniques for Big Data is of revenue, since there are a huge number of online audits, with a lot seriously being produced every day. Until now, we have not discovered any papers that review the impacts of Big Data examination for survey spam identification. The essential objective of this paper is to give a solid and far-reaching similar investigation of flow research on identifying audit spam utilizing different AI procedures and to devise a strategy for directing further examination.

Overcoming challenges to support us resumption of high specific activity cobalt-60

Domestic production of high specific activity 60Co was halted after a target rupture in 2012 at the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR). The Isotope Program (IP) within the US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science tasked a multilaboratory team of researchers and managers from Oak Ridge and Idaho National Laboratories with the redesign the radioisotope capsule. The objective of this effort was to create a more robust and reliable design, compared to the pre-2012 target. The team successfully completed this task to produce the DOE-IP cobalt (Co) production capsule design. Furthermore, 66 capsules were successfully fabricated by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and delivered to Idaho National Laboratory (INL) for irradiation in the ATR between January 2014 and October 2016. This paper describes the efforts of the team to prepare and disposition the two initial DOE-IP Co production capsules that were processed in March 2020. These efforts include performing accurate production predictions, experimentally validating predictions with assay measurements, shipping with the Orano-furnished Battelle Energy Alliance Research Reactor shipping package, and disassembling capsules at the isotope vendor site.

HYDRA

A core requirement of database engine testing is the ability to create synthetic versions of the customer's data warehouse at the vendor site. Prior work on synthetic data regeneration suffers from critical limitations with regard to (a) scaling to large data volumes, (b) handling complex query workloads, and (c) producing data on demand. In this demo, we present HYDRA , a workload-dependent dynamic data regenerator, that materially addresses these limitations. It introduces the concept of dynamic regeneration by constructing a minuscule memory-resident database summary that can on-the-fly regenerate databases of arbitrary size during query execution. Further, since the data is generated in memory, the velocity of generation can be closely regulated. Finally, to complement dynamic regeneration, Hydra also ensures that the process of summary construction is data-scale-free.

The role of rules-based compliance systems in the new EU regulatory landscape

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to understand how institutional changes to the European Union regulatory landscape may affect corresponding institutionalized operational practices within financial organizations. Design/methodology/approach – The study adopts an Investment Management System as its case and investigates different implementations of this system within eight financial organizations, predominantly focused on investment banking and asset management activities within capital markets. At the systems vendor site, senior systems consultants and client relationship managers were interviewed. Within the financial organizations, compliance, risk and systems experts were interviewed. Findings – The study empirically tests modes of institutional change. Displacement and Layering were found to be the most prevalent modes. However, the study highlights how the outcomes of Displacement and Drift may be similar in effect as both modes may cause compliance gaps. The research highlights how changes in regulations may create gaps in systems and processes which, in the short term, need to be plugged by manual processes. Practical implications – Vendors abilities to manage institutional change caused by Drift, Displacement, Layering and Conversion and their ability to efficiently and quickly translate institutional variables into structured systems has the power to ease the pain and cost of compliance as well as reducing the risk of breeches by reducing the need for interim manual systems. Originality/value – The study makes a contribution by applying recent theoretical concepts of institutional change to the topic of regulatory change uses this analysis to provide insight into the effects of this new environment.

On contracts for VMI program with continuous review ( r, Q) policy

Based on continuous review ( r, Q) policy, this paper deals with contracts for vendor managed inventory (VMI) program in a system comprising a single vendor and a single retailer. Two business scenarios that are popular in VMI program are “vendor with ownership” and “retailer with ownership”. Taking the system performance in centralized control as benchmark, we define a contract “perfect” if the contract can enable the system to be coordinated and can guarantee the program to be trusted. A revenue sharing contract is designed for vendor with ownership, and a franchising contract is designed for retailer with ownership. Without consideration of order policy and related costs at the vendor site, it is shown that one contract can perform satisfactorily and the other one is a perfect contract. With consideration of order policy and related costs at the vendor site, it is shown that one contract can perform satisfactorily and the performance of the other one depends on system parameters.

Flexible Global Software Development (GSD)

Globalization of software development has resulted in a rapid shift away from the traditional collocated, on-site development model, to the offshoring model. Emerging trends indicate an increasing interest in offshoring even in early phases like requirements analysis. Additionally, the flexibility offered by the agile development approach makes it attractive for adaptation in globally distributed software work. A question of significance then is what impacts the success of offshoring earlier phases, like requirements analysis, in a flexible and globally distributed environment? This article incorporates the stance of control theory to posit a research model that examines antecedent factors such as requirements change, facilitation by vendor and client site-coordinators, control, and computer-mediated communication. The impact of these factors on success of requirements analysis projects in a “flexible” global setting is tested using two quasi-experiments involving students from Management Development Institute, India and Marquette University, USA. Results indicate that formal modes of control significantly influence project success during requirements analysis. Further, facilitation by both client and vendor site coordinators positively impacts requirements analysis success.

Experience from long-term monitoring of RAKR ratios in 192Ir brachytherapy

Background Ratios of values of brachytherapy source strengths, as measured by hospitals and vendors, comprise constant differences as, e.g., systematic errors in ion chamber calibration factors and measurement setup. Such ratios therefore have the potential to reveal the systematic changes in routines or calibration services at either the hospital or the vendor laboratory, which could otherwise be hidden by the uncertainty in the source strength values. Methods The RAKR of each new source in 13 afterloading units at five hospitals were measured by well-type ion chambers and compared to values for the same source stated on vendor certificates. Results Differences from unity in the ratios of RAKR values determined by hospitals and vendors are most often small and stable around their mean values to within ±1.5%. Larger deviations are rare but occur. A decreasing ratio, seen at two hospitals for the same source, was useful in detecting an erroneous pressure gauge at the vendor’s site. Conclusions Establishing a mean ratio of RAKR values, as measured at the hospital and supplied on the vendor certificate, and monitoring this as a function of time are an easy way for the early detection of problems with equipment or routines at either the hospital or the vendor site.

Focusing Strength Measurements of the Main Quadrupoles for the LHC

More than 1100 quadrupole magnets of different types are needed for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) which is in the construction stage at CERN. The most challenging parameter to measure on these quadrupoles is the integrated gradient (Gdl). An absolute accuracy of 0.1% is needed to control the beta beating. In this paper we briefly describe the whole set of equipment used for Gdl measurements: Automated Scanner system, Single Stretched Wire system and Twin Coils system, concentrating mostly on their absolute accuracies. Most of the possible inherent effects that can introduce systematic errors are discussed along with their preventive methods. In the frame of this qualification some of the magnets were tested with two systems. The results of the intersystem cross-calibrations are presented. In addition, the qualification of the measurement system used at the magnet manufacturer's is based on results of more than 40 quadrupole assemblies tested in cold conditions at CERN and in warm conditions at the vendor site

Agent-based service selection

The current infrastructure for Web services supports service discovery based on a common repository. However, the key challenge is not discovery but selection: ultimately, the service user must select one good provider. Whereas service descriptions are given from the perspective of providers, service selection must take the perspective of users. In this way, service selection involves pragmatics, which builds on but is deeper than semantics. Current approaches provide no support for this challenge. Importantly, service selection differs significantly from product selection, which is the problem addressed by traditional product recommender approaches. The assumptions underlying product recommender approaches do not hold for services. For example a vendor site knows of all product purchases made at it, whereas a service registry does not know of the service episodes that may involve services discovered from it. Also, traditional approaches assume that users are willing to reveal their evaluations to each vendor site. This paper formulates the problem of service selection. It reformulates two traditional recommender approaches for service selection and proposes a new agent-based approach in which agents cooperate to evaluate service providers. In this approach, the agents rate each other, and autonomously decide how much to weigh each other’s recommendations. The underlying algorithm with which the agents reason is developed in the context of a concept lattice, which enables finding relevant agents. Since large service selection datasets do not yet exist, for the purposes of evaluation, we reformulate the well-known product evaluations dataset MovieLens as a services dataset. We use it to compare the various approaches. Despite limiting the flow of information, the proposed approach compares well with the existing approaches in terms of some accuracy metrics defined within.

Validating automated analytical instruments to meet regulatory and quality standard requirements

Analytical laboratories are more and more faced to meet official regulatory requirements as described in FDA and EPA good laboratory practice, good automated laboratory practice and good manufacturing practice regulations or to officially establish quality systems, such as specified in the ISO 9000 Series quality standards, in the ISO Guide 25 or in the EN 45001 guidelines. The impact on analytical instrumentation will be the requirement for stringent validation of analytical equipment and methods which increase the overall analysis costs. An overview is presented on the validation requirements using e.g. gas chromatography, high performance liquid chromatography, capillary electrophoresis and UV-visible spectroscopy and on the strategy to meet such needs at minimal extra costs with the help of an instrument vendor. It is recommended to use instrument hardware that has already built-in tools for self-verification and which is to be validated at the vendor's site. Performance testing in the user's laboratory is done using standard operating procedures as supplied with the instrument. If resources in the user's laboratory are limited, the performance verification is done by the vendor. Software and the entire computer system is validated prior to shipment at the vendor's site. Acceptance testing is done in the user's environment following the vendor recommendations. Analytical methods are validated automatically at the end of method development using a dedicated software. The software can be customized such that it can also be used for daily automated system suitability testing. Security and integrity of analytical data are ensured by saving the raw data together with instrument conditions and instrument log-books in check-sum protected binary register files for long-term archiving.

Establishing priorities and distributing the request for proposal

The process of establishing priorities for a prospective hospital pharmacy computer system and distributing the Request for Proposal (RFP) to computer vendors is described. Priorities are established through the creation of three documents: (1) a priority list, (2) a categorized RFP, and (3) a categorized RFP extension. The priority list outlines important elements in the selection of a vendor; quality of software, reliability of software and hardware, vendor stability, costs, site requirements, expansion capability, vendor support, and system performance. The categorized RFP ranks each specific RFP item as mandatory, highly important, important, or "luxury." The categorized RFP extension ranks the nonimplementation items and is used to grade vendors on items not addressed by the RFP. Each potential vendor should be called and asked the same set of questions in order to quickly eliminate those with unacceptable products. The RFP is then distributed to vendors that qualify. This process helps determine if the system being considered has all the required functions, has reliable software and hardware, and whether the vendor is stable and capable of providing assistance during implementation and throughout the life of the product.