Fitting Restaurant Service Style to Brand Image for Greater Customer Satisfaction

Supported by academic researchers, the restaurant industry has devoted enormous effort to the task of conceptualizing and developing measures of “service quality,” 1 based on the reasonable proposition that restaurant guests’ satisfaction relies on quality of service. However, it has become clear to us that quality alone is not the full measure of how restaurant guests gauge or react to their servers’ actions. Consequently, in this CHR report, we measure the effects of “service style,” which we conceptualize as a manner of delivering guest service that is specifically identifiable on some dimension other than quality. We feel that this issue of service style has largely been overlooked, and we believe it’s important to assess the effectiveness of different service styles in a particular restaurant context

Bayesian time-varying quantile forecasting for Value-at-Risk in financial markets

Recently, Bayesian solutions to the quantile regression problem, via the likelihood of a Skewed-Laplace distribution, have been proposed. These approaches are extended and applied to a family of dynamic conditional autoregressive quantile models. Popular Value at Risk models, used for risk management in finance, are extended to this fully nonlinear family. An adaptive Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling scheme is adapted for estimation and inference. Simulation studies illustrate favourable performance, compared to the standard numerical optimization of the usual nonparametric quantile criterion function, in finite samples. An empirical study generating Value at Risk forecasts for ten major financial stock indices finds significant nonlinearity in dynamic quantiles and evidence favoring the proposed model family, for lower level quantiles, compared to a range of standard parametric volatility models, a semi-parametric smoothly mixing regression and some nonparametric risk measures, in the literature

Performance of an IEEE 802.16 Wireless Backhaul in the Presence of a Node Failure

A wireless backhaul network is used to interconnect intermediate nodes to gateway nodes. As it is designed to serve a large population of broadband users, failure sustainability becomes an essential requirement to ensure uninterrupted telecommunication services even in the presence of occasional node or link failures. In this paper, the performance of a failure sustainable wireless backhaul, based on IEEE 802.16 radio technology, is analysed in the presence of a node failure. Furthermore, it is shown that the network performance is significantly improved by incorporating two proposed modifications, namely request-resend and dynamic mini-slot allocation, in IEEE 802.16 standard coordinated distributed scheduling

NASA advanced design program: Analysis, design, and construction of a solar powered aircraft

Increase in energy demands coupled with rapid depletion of natural energy resources have deemed solar energy as the most logical alternative source of power. The major objective of this project was to build a solar powered remotely controlled aircraft to demonstrate the feasibility of solar energy as an effective, alternate source of power. The final design was optimized for minimum weight and maximum strength of the structure. These design constraints necessitated a carbon fiber composite structure. Surya is a lightweight, durable aircraft capable of achieving level flight powered entirely by solar cells

TP63-mutation as a cause of prenatal lethal multicystic dysplastic kidneys

BACKGROUND: Ectrodactyly-ectodermal dysplasia-clefting syndrome 3 (EEC) is one of the six overlapping syndromes caused by mutations in the tumor protein p63 gene (TP63). EEC is suspected when patients have cleft hands or feet, polydactyly, and syndactyly, abnormal development of the ectodermally derived structures, and orofacial clefting. Genitourinary (GU) anomalies have been identified in patients with EEC, yet these are often under-recognized and under-reported. The available literature on sonographic prenatal findings is sparse, especially when considering GU anomalies. METHODS: We present the case of a male stillborn fetus, who was found antenatally to have multicystic dysplastic kidneys and anhydramnios. Following the termination of pregnancy, examination and autopsy further revealed unilateral polydactyly and bilateral syndactyly which had not been previously identified on antenatal ultrasound. RESULTS: Whole-exome sequencing (WES) revealed a de novo heterozygous pathogenic variant in exon 5 of the TP63 gene: p.His247Arg: c.740A\u3eG (NM_003722.4) which has been reported in the literature. The His247Arg variant has been published as a pathogenic variant in association with EEC, both with and without orofacial clefting. CONCLUSION: Our prenatal case expands the phenotypic spectrum of TP63-related disorders in general. In addition, it adds to the phenotype associated with the His247Arg pathogenic variant responsible for EEC. Further, we highlight the importance of WES as a postnatal tool to help clarify unexpected findings, and as a way to add to the spectrum of existing phenotypes of known single-gene disorders

Importance Sampling of Word Patterns in DNA and Protein Sequences

The use of Monte Carlo evaluation to compute p-values of pattern counting test statistics is especially attractive when an asymptotic theory is absent or when the search sequence or the word pattern is too short for an asymptotic formula to be accurate. The drawback of applying Monte Carlo simulations directly is its inefficiency when p-values are small, which precisely is the situation of importance. In this paper, we provide a general importance sampling algorithm for efficient Monte Carlo evaluation of small p-values of pattern counting test statistics and apply it on word patterns of biological interest, in particular palindromes and inverted repeats, patterns arising from position specific weight matrices, as well as co-occurrences of pairs of motifs. We also show that our importance sampling technique satisfies a log efficient criterion

Failure Sustainable Wireless Backhaul

Backhaul network plays a significant role to interconnect access points and further connect them to gateway nodes. A failure sustainable wireless backhaul topology is proposed to ensure undisrupted telecommunication services even in the presence of occasional node or link failures. Furthermore, a new control message, called reverse notification, is proposed to improve the performance of coordinated distributed scheduling in the ladder topology. Computer simulation results show that the reverse notification scheme has improved the network throughput and reduced the packet transmission delay

Indirect Traumatic Optic Neuropathy in Mild Chronic Traumatic Brain Injury

PURPOSE. To analyze the clinical presentation and optical coherence tomography (OCT) findings in indirect traumatic optic neuropathy (ITON) in veterans with chronic mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). METHODS. This retrospective study is the first to describe the OCT pattern of subclinical to mild ITON in veterans with chronic mTBI. The thicknesses of the macular ganglion cell layer (mGCL), peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer (pRNFL), and subfoveal choroidal layer were analyzed in young veterans who had mTBI of >6 months' duration and either blunt head injury or improvised explosive device (IED) concussions. RESULTS. Three major OCT findings were demonstrated: (1) temporal pRNFL thinning was associated with subclinical TON in the eyes of chronic mTBI patients compared with controls; within mTBI subjects, nasal mGCL thinning at the 3-mm modified Early Treatment Diabetic Retinopathy Study circle diameter distance from the fovea correlated with the corresponding temporal retinal nerve fiber layer thinning; (2) inner (1 mm) superior thinning was greater than that of the temporal mGCL in blunt head injury and could potentially distinguish it from IED concussive head trauma; and (3) subfoveal choroidal thinning was significantly worse in eyes of mTBI patients compared with those of controls. CONCLUSIONS. These OCT findings may contribute to the understanding of the spectrum of visual injuries resulting from head trauma.Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute grant at University of California, San Francisco; Kuen Lau Research FoundationOpen access journalThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]