Untangling hotel industry’s inefficiency: An SFA approach applied to a renowned Portuguese hotel chain

The present paper explores the technical efficiency of four hotels from Teixeira Duarte Group - a renowned Portuguese hotel chain. An efficiency ranking is established from these four hotel units located in Portugal using Stochastic Frontier Analysis. This methodology allows to discriminate between measurement error and systematic inefficiencies in the estimation process enabling to investigate the main inefficiency causes. Several suggestions concerning efficiency improvement are undertaken for each hotel studied.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Quantum Cosmology

Within the second half of the last century, quantum cosmology concretely became one of the main research lines within gravitational theory and cosmology. Substantial progress has been made. Furthermore, quantum cosmology can become a domain that will gradually develop further over the next handful of decades, perhaps assisted by technological developments. Indications for new physics (i.e., beyond the standard model of particle physics or general relativity) could emerge and then the observable universe would surely be seen from quite a new perspective. This motivates bringing quantum cosmology to more research groups and individuals.This Special Issue (SI) aims to provide a wide set of reviews, ranging from foundational issues to (very) recent advancing discussions. Concretely, we want to inspire new work proposing observational tests, providing an aggregated set of contributions, covering several lines, some of which are thoroughly explored, some allowing progress, and others much unexplored. The aim of this SI is motivate new researchers to employ and further develop quantum cosmology over the forthcoming decades. Textbooks and reviews exist on the present subject, and this SI will complementarily assist in offering open access to a set of wide-ranging reviews. Hopefully, this will assist new interested researchers, in having a single open access online volume, with reviews that can help. In particular, this will help in selecting what to explore, what to read in more detail, where to proceed, and what to investigate further within quantum cosmology

Advanced Computational Methods for Oncological Image Analysis

[Cancer is the second most common cause of death worldwide and encompasses highly variable clinical and biological scenarios. Some of the current clinical challenges are (i) early diagnosis of the disease and (ii) precision medicine, which allows for treatments targeted to specific clinical cases. The ultimate goal is to optimize the clinical workflow by combining accurate diagnosis with the most suitable therapies. Toward this, large-scale machine learning research can define associations among clinical, imaging, and multi-omics studies, making it possible to provide reliable diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers for precision oncology. Such reliable computer-assisted methods (i.e., artificial intelligence) together with clinicians’ unique knowledge can be used to properly handle typical issues in evaluation/quantification procedures (i.e., operator dependence and time-consuming tasks). These technical advances can significantly improve result repeatability in disease diagnosis and guide toward appropriate cancer care. Indeed, the need to apply machine learning and computational intelligence techniques has steadily increased to effectively perform image processing operations—such as segmentation, co-registration, classification, and dimensionality reduction—and multi-omics data integration.

ESSE 2017. Proceedings of the International Conference on Environmental Science and Sustainable Energy

Environmental science is an interdisciplinary academic field that integrates physical-, biological-, and information sciences to study and solve environmental problems. ESSE - The International Conference on Environmental Science and Sustainable Energy provides a platform for experts, professionals, and researchers to share updated information and stimulate the communication with each other. In 2017 it was held in Suzhou, China June 23-25, 2017

USING ULTRAFAST VIBRATIONAL SPECTROSCOPY FOR A COMPREHENSIVE UNDERSTANDING OF STRUCTURAL AND ROTATIONAL MOTIONS FOR WATER TO PROTIC IONIC LIQUIDS

In this work, two-dimensional infrared (2D-IR) spectroscopy investigates the timescale of solvent fluctuations for proton and hydride transfers. To elucidate hydride transfer dynamics, the BH stretch of \ce{BH4-} is probed in various solvents from \ce{H2O} to ionic liquids (ILs). For proton transfer dynamics, a vibrational probe (\ce{SCN-}) explores the three-dimensional hydrogen bonding environment of a protic ionic liquid (PIL). \ce{BH4-} is first investigated in increasing NaOH concentrations to develop a molecular understanding of suppressing the hydrogen evolution reaction. As the concentration increases, the timescale of frequency fluctuations decrease. Born Oppenheimer molecular dynamics (BOMD) simulations suggest that a crowding effect of ions around \ce{BH4-} inhibits the rearrangement of dihydrogen bonds between \ce{BH4-} and \ce{H2O}. To completely suppress the hydrogen evolution reaction, ILs with \ce{BH4-} as the anion are investigated. The linear and 2D-IR spectra of the antisymmetric BH stretch of \ce{BH4-} are complicated due to Fermi resonances. The narrow linear and 2D-IR linewidths of \ce{BH4-} in an IL allow a comprehensive assignment of all diagonal peaks and crosspeaks. Confirmed with a model Hamiltonian, two anharmonicities for the antisymmetric BH stretch of \ce{BH4-} are characterized. Polarization- and temperature-dependent 2D-IR is employed to investigate the hydrogen bonding network of the PIL ethyl-ammonium nitrate (EAN). \ce{SCN-} experiences two hydrogen bonding subensembles in EAN as two separate vibrational relaxation times are resolved. Furthermore, the polarization-weighted frequency fluctuation correlation function can be separated into two components: structural spectral diffusion (SSD) and reorientation-induced spectral diffusion (RISD). For \ce{SCN-} in EAN, the timescales of frequency fluctuations are in the rotational limit as the SSD is unresolved. Temperature-dependent 2D-IR extracts the enthalpy and entropy of activation for frequency fluctuations. For \ce{SCN-} in EAN, the enthalpy of activation for rotational motions are similar as to \ce{SCN-} in \ce{H2O}, and this suggests that the breaking and forming of hydrogen bonds around \ce{SCN-} undergoes a similar mechanism in EAN as in \ce{H2O}