EQUINE CLIENT SATISFACTION AT THE VETERINARY TEACHING HOSPITAL, MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY--JULY 1, 1999 THROUGH JUNE 30, 2000

Understanding clients' wants and needs is vital to the sustained success of any service business, and veterinary medicine offers no exception. The Veterinary Teaching Hospital (VTH) at the Michigan State University College of Veterinary Medicine (MSU-CVM) has successfully maintained a position at the forefront of the veterinary profession throughout most of its history. The staff has consistently been composed of clinicians who have been chosen because of their excellence and expertise. However, the assumption that emphasis on clinical excellence will, by itself, provide the foundation for sustained success in the client flow and business at the hospital has been unchallenged to date. In order to provide the best possible customer service, our clients' likes, dislikes, wants, and needs must be fully characterized and quantified. To assess client satisfaction with the VTH, a study was designed whose objective was to identify the areas in the VTH that are most valued and highly regarded versus those that need improvement in order to sustain the current success of the equine hospital. The results of this study can be used as an outline for the development of a plan to maintain and improve customer satisfaction and, ultimately, to sustain the teaching caseload and business of the hospital. In addition, this endeavor will serve to set a good example for our students by modeling the best management practices and establishing a critical blend of quality medicine/surgery and customer service.Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

EQUINE REFERRING VETERINARIAN SATISFACTION WITH THE VETERINARY TEACHING HOSPITAL, MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY - JULY 1, 1999 THROUGH JUNE 30, 2000

Understanding clients' wants and needs is vital to the sustained success of any service business, and veterinary medicine offers no exception. The Veterinary Teaching Hospital (VTH) at the Michigan State University College of Veterinary Medicine (MSU-CVM) has successfully maintained a position at the forefront of the veterinary profession throughout most of its history. The staff has consistently been composed of clinicians who have been chosen because of their excellence and expertise. However, the assumption that emphasis on clinical excellence will, by itself, provide the foundation for sustained success in the client flow and business at the hospital has been unchallenged to date. Additionally, there are many areas in veterinary medicine that are becoming increasingly popular (e.g. oncology). Addition of, or attention to, these services is crucial in retaining our leadership role within the veterinary community. The results of a previous study indicated that 75.4% of equine clients chose MSU-VTH because they were referred by their primary veterinarian. One of the objectives of this study was to determine which factors influenced referring veterinarians in determining whether they refer their patients to MSU-VTH. Additionally, this study was designed to identify areas for possible expansion/contraction of our current service offerings in order to better serve the needs of our clients and referring veterinarians. The results of this study can be used as an outline for the development of a plan to maintain and improve referring veterinarian satisfaction and, ultimately, to sustain the teaching caseload and business of the hospital. In addition, this endeavor will serve to set a good example for our students by modeling the best management practices and establishing a critical blend of quality medicine/surgery and customer service.Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

PRICES AND PRICING POLICIES FOR SMALL ANIMAL AND EQUINE VETERINARY SERVICES: A STUDY OF TEACHING HOSPITALS AND MICHIGAN PRIVATE PRACTICES DURING 2000

Prices are a key determinant of financial performance for virtually any business in either the public or private sector, and the Veterinary Teaching Hospital at Michigan State University (MSU-VTH) offers no exception. To achieve consistent success, it is critical that a business understands the prevailing conditions in the marketplace when setting prices for its goods and services. Important issues to address include: 1. What are the prices of similar goods and services produced by other firms? 2. How important is price as a choice factor when customers select a source of these goods and services? 3. How do staff members view prices at the point-of-sale? 4. How are prices determined? These questions are especially crucial in small businesses such as those typical of the veterinary profession, where the decision-makers tend to be technical experts rather than trained business managers. Without this information, these decision-makers often have very little basis on which to develop a pricing policy.Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Recruitment strategies and rates of a multi-site behavioral intervention for adolescents and young adults with cancer

INTRODUCTION: To provide an overview of factors related to recruitment of adolescents and young adults (AYA) into research and recruitment rates and reasons for refusal from a multicenter study entitled "Stories and Music for Adolescent/Young Adult Resilience during Transplant" (SMART). METHODS: A randomized clinical trial study design was used. The settings included 9 hospitals. The sample included AYAs (aged 11-24 years) who were undergoing a stem cell transplant. Several instruments were used to measure symptom distress, coping, resilience, and quality of life in AYA with cancer. RESULTS: A total of 113 AYA were recruited (50%) for this study. Strategies were refined as the study continued to address challenges related to recruitment. We provide a description of recruitment strategies and an evaluation of our planning, implementing, and monitoring of recruitment rates for the SMART study. DISCUSSION: When designing a study, careful consideration must be given to factors influencing recruitment as well as special considerations for unique populations. Dissemination of strategies specific to unique populations will be helpful to the design of future research studies

GW170104: Observation of a 50-Solar-Mass Binary Black Hole Coalescence at Redshift 0.2

We describe the observation of GW170104, a gravitational-wave signal produced by the coalescence of a pair of stellar-mass black holes. The signal was measured on January 4, 2017 at 10 11:58.6 UTC by the twin advanced detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory during their second observing run, with a network signal-to-noise ratio of 13 and a false alarm rate less than 1 in 70 000 years. The inferred component black hole masses are 31.2-6.0+8.4M\u27 and 19.4-5.9+5.3M (at the 90% credible level). The black hole spins are best constrained through measurement of the effective inspiral spin parameter, a mass-weighted combination of the spin components perpendicular to the orbital plane, χeff=-0.12-0.30+0.21. This result implies that spin configurations with both component spins positively aligned with the orbital angular momentum are disfavored. The source luminosity distance is 880-390+450 Mpc corresponding to a redshift of z=0.18-0.07+0.08. We constrain the magnitude of modifications to the gravitational-wave dispersion relation and perform null tests of general relativity. Assuming that gravitons are dispersed in vacuum like massive particles, we bound the graviton mass to mg≤7.7×10-23 eV/c2. In all cases, we find that GW170104 is consistent with general relativity

All-sky LIGO Search for Periodic Gravitational Waves in the Early S5 Data

We report on an all-sky search with the LIGO detectors for periodic gravitational waves in the frequency range 50--1100 Hz and with the frequency's time derivative in the range -5.0E-9 Hz/s to zero. Data from the first eight months of the fifth LIGO science run (S5) have been used in this search, which is based on a semi-coherent method (PowerFlux) of summing strain power. Observing no evidence of periodic gravitational radiation, we report 95% confidence-level upper limits on radiation emitted by any unknown isolated rotating neutron stars within the search range. Strain limits below 1.E-24 are obtained over a 200-Hz band, and the sensitivity improvement over previous searches increases the spatial volume sampled by an average factor of about 100 over the entire search band. For a neutron star with nominal equatorial ellipticity of 1.0E-6, the search is sensitive to distances as great as 500 pc--a range that could encompass many undiscovered neutron stars, albeit only a tiny fraction of which would likely be rotating fast enough to be accessible to LIGO. This ellipticity is at the upper range thought to be sustainable by conventional neutron stars and well below the maximum sustainable by a strange quark star.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figur

Search for Gravitational Wave Bursts from Soft Gamma Repeaters

We present the results of a LIGO search for short-duration gravitational waves (GWs) associated with Soft Gamma Repeater (SGR) bursts. This is the first search sensitive to neutron star f-modes, usually considered the most efficient GW emitting modes. We find no evidence of GWs associated with any SGR burst in a sample consisting of the 27 Dec. 2004 giant flare from SGR 1806-20 and 190 lesser events from SGR 1806-20 and SGR 1900+14 which occurred during the first year of LIGO's fifth science run. GW strain upper limits and model-dependent GW emission energy upper limits are estimated for individual bursts using a variety of simulated waveforms. The unprecedented sensitivity of the detectors allows us to set the most stringent limits on transient GW amplitudes published to date. We find upper limit estimates on the model-dependent isotropic GW emission energies (at a nominal distance of 10 kpc) between 3x10^45 and 9x10^52 erg depending on waveform type, detector antenna factors and noise characteristics at the time of the burst. These upper limits are within the theoretically predicted range of some SGR models.Comment: 6 pages, 1 Postscript figur

Quantum state preparation and macroscopic entanglement in gravitational-wave detectors

Long-baseline laser-interferometer gravitational-wave detectors are operating at a factor of 10 (in amplitude) above the standard quantum limit (SQL) within a broad frequency band. Such a low classical noise budget has already allowed the creation of a controlled 2.7 kg macroscopic oscillator with an effective eigenfrequency of 150 Hz and an occupation number of 200. This result, along with the prospect for further improvements, heralds the new possibility of experimentally probing macroscopic quantum mechanics (MQM) - quantum mechanical behavior of objects in the realm of everyday experience - using gravitational-wave detectors. In this paper, we provide the mathematical foundation for the first step of a MQM experiment: the preparation of a macroscopic test mass into a nearly minimum-Heisenberg-limited Gaussian quantum state, which is possible if the interferometer's classical noise beats the SQL in a broad frequency band. Our formalism, based on Wiener filtering, allows a straightforward conversion from the classical noise budget of a laser interferometer, in terms of noise spectra, into the strategy for quantum state preparation, and the quality of the prepared state. Using this formalism, we consider how Gaussian entanglement can be built among two macroscopic test masses, and the performance of the planned Advanced LIGO interferometers in quantum-state preparation

First LIGO search for gravitational wave bursts from cosmic (super)strings

We report on a matched-filter search for gravitational wave bursts from cosmic string cusps using LIGO data from the fourth science run (S4) which took place in February and March 2005. No gravitational waves were detected in 14.9 days of data from times when all three LIGO detectors were operating. We interpret the result in terms of a frequentist upper limit on the rate of gravitational wave bursts and use the limits on the rate to constrain the parameter space (string tension, reconnection probability, and loop sizes) of cosmic string models.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures. Replaced with version submitted to PR

Astrophysically Triggered Searches for Gravitational Waves: Status and Prospects

In gravitational-wave detection, special emphasis is put onto searches that focus on cosmic events detected by other types of astrophysical observatories. The astrophysical triggers, e.g. from gamma-ray and X-ray satellites, optical telescopes and neutrino observatories, provide a trigger time for analyzing gravitational wave data coincident with the event. In certain cases the expected frequency range, source energetics, directional and progenitor information is also available. Beyond allowing the recognition of gravitational waveforms with amplitudes closer to the noise floor of the detector, these triggered searches should also lead to rich science results even before the onset of Advanced LIGO. In this paper we provide a broad review of LIGO's astrophysically triggered searches and the sources they target