Evaluation of outpatient service quality using SERVQUAL model: A case study of a Chinese public hospital

Understanding patient satisfaction is not only a need of medical marketing, but also an important content of quality management. In this study, SERVQUAL (SQ) model previously studied by another researcher was used as a tool to evaluate outpatient satisfaction. This study focuses on patients' evaluation of outpatient service quality and targeted improvement to improve outpatient satisfaction. Through the analysis of the results of regression analysis and SQ analysis, it is found that the tangible impact on the improvement of satisfaction is relatively important, with obvious differences. In addition, the gaps in "convenient appointment system", "examination time" and "comfortable room" is the largest. Therefore, we can conclude that to improve outpatient satisfaction, hospital management should pay more attention to these dimensions and projects

Mobile Formation Coordination and Tracking Control for Multiple Non-holonomic Vehicles

This paper addresses forward motion control for trajectory tracking and mobile formation coordination for a group of non-holonomic vehicles on SE(2). Firstly, by constructing an intermediate attitude variable which involves vehicles' position information and desired attitude, the translational and rotational control inputs are designed in two stages to solve the trajectory tracking problem. Secondly, the coordination relationships of relative positions and headings are explored thoroughly for a group of non-holonomic vehicles to maintain a mobile formation with rigid body motion constraints. We prove that, except for the cases of parallel formation and translational straight line formation, a mobile formation with strict rigid-body motion can be achieved if and only if the ratios of linear speed to angular speed for each individual vehicle are constants. Motion properties for mobile formation with weak rigid-body motion are also demonstrated. Thereafter, based on the proposed trajectory tracking approach, a distributed mobile formation control law is designed under a directed tree graph. The performance of the proposed controllers is validated by both numerical simulations and experiments

Anomalous thermo-osmotic conversion performance of ionic covalent-organic-framework membranes in response to charge variations

Authors of the article systematically investigated how the membrane charge populations affect permselectivity by decoupling their effects from the impact of the pore structure using a multivariate strategy for constructing covalent-organic-framework membranes. The complex interplay between pore-pore interactions in response to charge variations for ion transport across the upscaled nanoporous membranes helps explain the obtained results. This study has far-reaching implications for the rational design of ionic membranes to augment energy extraction rather than intuitively focusing on achieving high densities

Guanidinium-based covalent organic framework membrane for single-acid recovery

Article discusses how, although acids are extensively used in contemporary industries, time-consuming and environmentally unfriendly processes hinder single-acid recovery from wastes containing various iconic species. The authors rationally designed a membrane with uniform angstrom-sized pore channels and built-in charge-assisted hydrogen bond donors that preferentially conducted HCl while exhibiting negligible conductance for other compounds

POSITIVITY-PRESERVING LOCAL DISCONTINUOUS GALERKIN METHOD FOR PATTERN FORMATION DYNAMICAL MODEL IN POLYMERIZING ACTIN FLOCKS\u3csup\u3e*\u3c/sup\u3e

In this paper, we apply local discontinuous Galerkin (LDG) methods for pattern formation dynamical model in polymerizing actin flocks. There are two main difficulties in designing effective numerical solvers. First of all, the density function is non-negative, and zero is an unstable equilibrium solution. Therefore, negative density values may yield blow-up solutions. To obtain positive numerical approximations, we apply the positivity-preserving (PP) techniques. Secondly, the model may contain stiff source. The most commonly used time integration for the PP technique is the strong-stability-preserving Runge-Kutta method. However, for problems with stiff source, such time discretizations may require strictly limited time step sizes, leading to large computational cost. Moreover, the stiff source any trigger spurious filament polarization, leading to wrong numerical approximations on coarse meshes. In this paper, we combine the PP LDG methods with the semi-implicit Runge-Kutta methods. Numerical experiments demonstrate that the proposed method can yield accurate numerical approximations with relatively large time steps

Full state tracking and formation control for under-actuated VTOL UAVs

In this paper, a coupled-attitude based trajectory tracking scheme is proposed to track both the position and attitude of under-actuated unmanned aerial vehicles, and its application on formation control is further demonstrated. An intermediate attitude which is composed of the desired attitude and position information is designed in a two-stage framework, wherein the first stage is the controller design of a translational subsystem and the second stage is that of an attitude subsystem. By virtue of the intermediate attitude, trajectory tracking which includes both attitude and position is realized. The proposed intermediate attitude can be viewed as a bridge connecting the position and attitude motion, and it is a new approach for both single and multiple under-actuated rigid bodies’ control. Based on the approach of coupled-attitude-based trajectory tracking, both the set point stabilization and formation tracking tasks for under-actuated vertical takeoff and landing vehicles over a directed acyclic graph can be achieved. The performances of the proposed control laws are illustrated through numerical simulations.Published versio

Mobile Formation Coordination and Tracking Control for Multiple Nonholonomic Vehicles

This article addresses forward motion control for trajectory tracking and mobile formation coordination for a group of nonholonomic vehicles on SE(2). First, by constructing an intermediate attitude variable which involves vehicles' position information and desired attitude, the translational and rotational control inputs are designed in two stages to solve the trajectory tracking problem. Second, the coordination relationships of relative positions and headings are explored thoroughly for a group of nonholonomic vehicles to maintain a mobile formation with rigid-body motion constraints. We prove that, except for the cases of parallel formation and translational straight line formation, a mobile formation with strict rigid-body motion can be achieved if and only if the ratios of linear speed to angular speed for each individual vehicle are constants. Motion properties for mobile formation with weak rigid-body motion are also demonstrated. Thereafter, based on the proposed trajectory tracking approach, a distributed mobile formation control law is designed under a directed tree graph. The performance of the proposed controllers is validated by both numerical simulations and experiments

New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) : Day-of-the-week effect and bid-ask spreads

In this project, we investigate the presence of the Day-of-the-Week (DOW) effect in transaction costs measured by various types of bid-ask spreads (BAS). The analysis of 2,270 companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) indicate that the DOW effect is only present for percentage BAS and not for the other three spreads. It is observed that the percentage BAS is higher on Mondays compared to Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. However, the percentage BAS on Mondays is not significantly different from Fridays. In the second part of our study, a number of factors including market capitalization, stock price, number of quotes, trading volume and types of industry sectors were evaluated to determine if they affect the transaction costs. The evidence indicates that the number of quotes and trading volume are inversely related to all four types of transaction costs. We also find a significant negative relationship between the stock price and both percentage and time-weighted percentage BAS. We find that the technology sector is associated with higher transaction cost. Last but not least, our results in the last section present the absence of DOW effect in all three types of classifications by trading volume

A local discontinuous Galerkin method for pattern formation dynamical model in polymerizing action flocks

In this paper, we apply local discontinuous Galerkin methods to the pattern formation dynamical model in polymerizing action flocks. Optimal error estimates for the density and filament polarization in different norms are established. We use a semi-implicit spectral deferred correction time method for time discretization, which allows a relative large time step and avoids computation of a Jacobian matrix. Numerical experiments are presented to verify the theoretical analysis and to show the capability for simulations of action wave formation