Massachusetts Offshore Wind Future Cost Study

The Special Initiative on Offshore Wind is an independent project at the University of Delaware's College of Earth, Ocean and Environment that supports the advancement of offshore wind as part of a comprehensive solution to the most pressing energy problems facing the United States.  The Special Initiative on Offshore Wind provides expertise, analysis, information sharing, and strategic partnership with industry, advocacy and government stakeholders to build understanding and drive the deployment of offshore wind

Relationship Between Job Satisfaction and Business Excellence: Empirical Evidence from Hospital Nursing Departments

Business excellence is important in terms of encouraging successful quality implementations, disseminating the result of such implementations to society, making quality culture widespread, creating a basis for comparison of quality implementations, and directing the quality implementer to continuous improvement. Excellence models affect performance and help organizations achieve organizational excellence. Furthermore, employee satisfaction is another concern of organizational excellence. The measurement of job satisfaction has become an important issue in TQM. In this respect, the extent to which employees are satisfied with what they are responsible for may directly influence the level of customer satisfaction with their services and products. The main purpose of the study is to determine the relationship between business excellence and job satisfaction. In order to reach this goal, a survey that contains Job Descriptive Index with 5 factors and EFQM Criteria with 6 factors is applied to different nursing departments of two research hospitals. Both hospitals are in the business excellence process. Data obtained in the study has been analyzed at the base of multivariate data analysis and the results show that the canonical correlation between job satisfaction and business excellence model is significant. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are also discussed in the paper

Bibliometric analysis of the transformation in air logistics operations in terms of digitalization and sustainability

Digitalization and sustainability are essential in today’s globalized business environment. Within the logistics sector, aviation plays a critical role in this dynamic environment by enabling rapid, safe transportation worldwide. While applying new approaches, air logistics processes should incorporate the tech-nologies and applications enabled by digitalization, and consider environmental, social, and economic sustainability impacts. These can be mutually beneficial in that new digital technologies can reduce environmental impacts, make a social contribution, and increase economic gains. While there is rapidly expanding literature about integrating these concepts for various purposes in different sectors, applications in air logistics are particularly promising. Accordingly, this study contributes to digital and sustainable air logistics research by iden-tifying current trends, revealing gaps in knowledge, and proposing future research directions. To do so, a literature review and a bibliometric analysis were conducted using VosViewer software. As a result, five potential research areas were proposed

Supersymmetric Backgrounds and Black Holes in N=(1,1){\cal N}=(1,1) Cosmological New Massive Supergravity

Using an off-shell Killing spinor analysis we perform a systematic investigation of the supersymmetric background and black hole solutions of the ${\cal N}=(1,1)$ Cosmological New Massive Gravity model. The solutions with a null Killing vector are the same pp-wave solutions that one finds in the ${\cal N}=1$ model but we find new solutions with a time-like Killing vector that are absent in the ${\cal N}=1$ case. An example of such a solution is a Lifshitz spacetime. We also consider the supersymmetry properties of the so-called rotating hairy BTZ black holes and logarithmic black holes in an $AdS_3$ background. Furthermore, we show that under certain assumptions there is no supersymmetric Lifshitz black hole solution.Comment: 27 pages, v2: Typos Corrected, Version appeared in JHE

Source Free Domain Adaptation of a DNN for SSVEP-based Brain-Computer Interfaces

This paper presents a source free domain adaptation method for steady-state visually evoked potential (SSVEP) based brain-computer interface (BCI) spellers. SSVEP-based BCI spellers help individuals experiencing speech difficulties, enabling them to communicate at a fast rate. However, achieving a high information transfer rate (ITR) in the current methods requires an extensive calibration period before using the system, leading to discomfort for new users. We address this issue by proposing a method that adapts the deep neural network (DNN) pre-trained on data from source domains (participants of previous experiments conducted for labeled data collection), using only the unlabeled data of the new user (target domain). This adaptation is achieved by minimizing our proposed custom loss function composed of self-adaptation and local-regularity loss terms. The self-adaptation term uses the pseudo-label strategy, while the novel local-regularity term exploits the data structure and forces the DNN to assign the same labels to adjacent instances. Our method achieves striking 201.15 bits/min and 145.02 bits/min ITRs on the benchmark and BETA datasets, respectively, and outperforms the state-of-the-art alternative techniques. Our approach alleviates user discomfort and shows excellent identification performance, so it would potentially contribute to the broader application of SSVEP-based BCI systems in everyday life.Comment: 11 pages (including one page appendix), 5 figure

Construction and Demolition Waste Management in Urban Transformation: A Case Study for Performance Evaluation

 Due to the decreasing resources in the world, different recycling applications in different sectors are gaining more importance. Urban transformations initiated especially for earthquake remnants and old buildings provide many advantages for the construction sector. Recycling of valuable materials from the wastes from each demolished construction site is very important in terms of costs. It is also important to analyse the effectiveness of both public and private companies to compare different approaches and illustrate best practices. From this point of view, this research has been carried out on the recycling of construction and demolition wastes in Turkey and the performance of companies dealing with this business. Analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and gray relations analysis (GRA) will be applied for the evaluation phase. The criteria will be analysed through AHP and the connection between companies will be determined with the GRA method. According to the results, potential improvement opportunities will be identified to increase the performance and competitiveness of construction excavation companies. This will also allow the findings to serve as a potential model for other construction companies operating under different contingency factors, as well as presenting the list of criteria that construction companies should pay attention for performance evaluation

Ultrasound versus computed tomography scan findings in pediatric blunt abdominal traumas

Objective: We aimed to evaluate the performance of ultrasonography (US) versus computed tomography (CT) scan in detecting intra-abdominal injury among pediatric patients with blunt abdominal trauma. Methods: Pediatric patients aged<18, who were admitted to the emergency department (ED) due to abdominal trauma and underwent both US and CT scan were evaluated retrospectively. Results: A total of 732 pediatric patients were included in this study. Pathology was detected on US of 418 (57.1%) cases, whereas, intra-abdominal pathology was detected in CT scan of 359 (48.7%) cases. The sensitivity of US in detecting pathology (fluid and/or organ injury) was 95.3%, and its specificity was 79.6%. The sensitivity of US in detecting free fluid was 94.9%, and its specificity was 80.5%. In patients with unstable and stable hemodynamic, the sensitivities of US in detection of pathology (fluid and/or organ injury) were 97.6% and 91.6%, and its specificities were 74.3% and 80.9%, respectively. Conclusions: In our study, the sensitivity of US in terms of detecting pathology in pediatrics with blunt abdominal trauma was high, whereas the specificity of US was low

Volume CXIV, Number 4, November 7, 1996

Objective: Turner syndrome (TS) is a chromosomal disorder caused by complete or partial X chromosome monosomy that manifests various clinical features depending on the karyotype and on the genetic background of affected girls. This study aimed to systematically investigate the key clinical features of TS in relationship to karyotype in a large pediatric Turkish patient population.Methods: Our retrospective study included 842 karyotype-proven TS patients aged 0-18 years who were evaluated in 35 different centers in Turkey in the years 2013-2014.Results: The most common karyotype was 45,X (50.7%), followed by 45,X/46,XX (10.8%), 46,X,i(Xq) (10.1%) and 45,X/46,X,i(Xq) (9.5%). Mean age at diagnosis was 10.2±4.4 years. The most common presenting complaints were short stature and delayed puberty. Among patients diagnosed before age one year, the ratio of karyotype 45,X was significantly higher than that of other karyotype groups. Cardiac defects (bicuspid aortic valve, coarctation of the aorta and aortic stenosis) were the most common congenital anomalies, occurring in 25% of the TS cases. This was followed by urinary system anomalies (horseshoe kidney, double collector duct system and renal rotation) detected in 16.3%. Hashimoto's thyroiditis was found in 11.1% of patients, gastrointestinal abnormalities in 8.9%, ear nose and throat problems in 22.6%, dermatologic problems in 21.8% and osteoporosis in 15.3%. Learning difficulties and/or psychosocial problems were encountered in 39.1%. Insulin resistance and impaired fasting glucose were detected in 3.4% and 2.2%, respectively. Dyslipidemia prevalence was 11.4%.Conclusion: This comprehensive study systematically evaluated the largest group of karyotype-proven TS girls to date. The karyotype distribution, congenital anomaly and comorbidity profile closely parallel that from other countries and support the need for close medical surveillance of these complex patients throughout their lifespa