Lean manufacturing culture: The role of human perceptions of standardized work

The final publication is available at IOS Press through http://dx.doi.org/10.3233/978-1-61499-902-7-523.Lean implementation and its sustainability are strongly coupled with organizational culture and consequently the culture defines success. Organizational culture is strongly linked with organizational dynamics. Work standardization is one of the lean tools whose role in terms of organizational performance improvement has been claimed in the literature; however, its implications in terms of employee's perceptions are still controversial. This study aims at investigating the effect of position on employee's perception about the standardized work. Four textile manufacturing companies in Pakistan were selected for the purpose of data collection, where the implementation level of the tool and organizational maturity towards lean adoption were initially measured. A questionnaire was administered to 326 employees from these organizations. The overall data sample was divided into two categories (white-collar and blue-collar). Data analysis was by F-tests (for identifying significance levels) and separate regression analyses (for identifying variables associated with negative perceptions of employees). A significant difference was found between white-collar employees, who were generally positive about the standardization of work, and the blue-collar employees that had negative perceptions. Moreover, the study concluded that positive perceptions about standardized work are directly linked with job satisfaction and inversely linked with job stress

Fractional extracts of Azadirachta indica leaf affect spermiogram, testosterone profile, and testis histology of rabbit bucks

The effect of fractions from a crude extract of Azadirachta indica leaves on spermatogenesis, testicular histology and testosterone concentration of New Zealand White rabbits were evaluated in this study. Twenty-five matured male New Zealand White rabbits were used for this study and were randomly assigned to five groups (A, B, C, D, and E). Group A served as the control and was administered distilled water (0.5ml); while groups B, C, D and E served as the hexane, chloroform, ethyl acetate, and butanol treated groups, respectively at the same dosage of 300 mg/kg. Semen samples were collected using an artificial vagina weekly for twelve weeks and were evaluated for volume, colour, motility, concentration, percentage live-dead ratio and morphological abnormalities. A blood sample (2ml) was also collected from each buck through venipuncture of the ear vein three times at regular intervals for the determination of testosterone concentration. Two bucks from each group were humanely sacrificed at the end of the experiment for testicular histology. Significantly lower (p<0.05) sperm motility, higher dead sperm cells, sperm abnormalities, degenerative changes, depletion and vacuolation of spermatogenic cell layers were observed in treatment group C at the end of the experiment. The present study has shown that the chloroform fraction of methanolic crude Azadirachta indica (neem) leaves extract is detrimental to sperm cells and testicular histology

Referrals for proliferative diabetic retinopathy from two UK diabetic retinopathy screening services: a 10-year analysis of visual outcomes, requirement for vitrectomy, and mortality

\ua9 The Author(s) 2024. Background/objectives: To determine long-term outcomes of patients referred with proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR) from diabetic eye screening programmes (DESP) to tertiary care centres in the United Kingdom (UK). Methods: Retrospective multicentre study of patients referred from two DESPs in the UK over a 36-month period (2007–9) and followed-up for 10 years. Critical outcomes included severe vision loss (SVL) and the need for vitrectomy. Other outcomes assessed included moderate vision loss (MVL), and patient survival time. Univariate and multiple variable Cox proportional hazards regressions were used to analyse survival outcomes. Results: 212 eyes of 150 patients were referred with a diagnosis of PDR. 109 eyes of 72 patients were confirmed to have active PDR and included in the study. 61% of patients had low-risk PDR, while 39% exhibited high-risk features in at least one eye. Eight (7.3%) eyes developed SVL and 16 (14.7%) MVL during follow up. Vitrectomy was required in 24% (95% CI: 15 to 31%) of all PDR eyes and was most commonly performed for vitreous haemorrhage (65%). The 10-year survival in all PDR patients was 76% (95% CI: 63 to 85%) with the mean time to death for all deceased patients being 5.4 \ub1 3.6 years. On multivariable analysis, only age was found to have a significant association with the survival of patients with PDR. Conclusions: During the 10 year follow up SVL was uncommon, but MVL occurred in almost one-fifth of the eyes. Approximately 1 in 4 eyes required vitrectomy, highlighting its significance in patient management

Response to the meningococcal meningitis epidemic (MME)at Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, Kano (2008-2009)

No Abstract

Development of an ELISA to distinguish between foot-and-mouth disease virus infected and vaccinated animals utilising the viral non-structural protein 3ABC

Introduction. Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is a highly contagious and economically devastating viral disease of livestock and is endemic in much of Asia, including Pakistan. Vaccination is used to control disease outbreaks and sensitive diagnostic methods which can differentiate infected animals from vaccinated animals (DIVA) are essential for monitoring the effectiveness of disease control programmes. Tests based on the detection of the non-structural protein (NSP) 3ABC are reliable indicators of virus replication in infected and vaccinated populations. Hypothesis/Gap statement. Diagnosis of FMD is expensive using commercial ELISA kits, yet is essential for controlling this economically-important disease. Aim. The development of a low-cost diagnostic ELISA, using protein made in Escherichia coli . Methodology. In this study, the viral precursor protein 3ABC (r3ABC) was expressed in E. coli , solubilised using detergent and purified using nickel affinity chromatography. The fusion protein contained an attenuating mutation in the protease and a SUMO tag. It was characterised by immunoblotting and immunoprecipitation, which revealed antigenicity against virus-specific polyclonal sera. Using r3ABC, an indirect ELISA was developed and evaluated using field sera from healthy/naïve, vaccinated and infected animals. Results. The diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of the r3ABC in-house ELISA were 95.3 and 96.3% respectively. The ELISA was validated through comparison with the commercially available ID Screen FMD NSP competition kit. Results indicated good concordance rates on tested samples and high agreement between the two tests. Conclusion. The ELISA described here can effectively differentiate between infected and vaccinated animals and represents an important low cost tool for sero-surveillance and control of FMD in endemic settings

The use of a pre-operative scoring system for the prediction of phacoemulsification case difficulty and the selection of appropriate cases to be performed by trainees

Background: To establish whether a previously validated scoring system (Habib) for the prediction of risk or likelihood of posterior capsule rupture during phacoemulsification surgery could be used to: 1. Predict the difficulty of a phacoemulsification case, and 2. Select appropriate phacoemulsification cases for trainees. Methods: The study sample was consecutive phacoemulsification cases undertaken by senior surgeons at a single ophthalmic unit over a three-week period (170 cases). Each case was scored using a potential difficulty scoring system. Immediately post-operatively, each case was given two scores by the operating surgeon (who was masked with regard to the potential complication score). The first score indicated the perceived difficulty of the case, and the second score, the degree of experience that they thought a trainee would require in order to have performed the same case without complication. Results: Using Cuzick's non-parametric test for trend, there was evidence for a trend of increasing perceived difficulty with increasing potential difficulty score (p = 0.05), and of increasing experience required with increasing potential difficulty score (p < 0.001) Conclusion: The authors advocate that Habib's potential difficulty scoring system can be used to inform the surgeon of the likely difficulty of a phacoemulsification case and to aid selection of appropriate cases for trainees prior to surgery

Exploiting the retinal vascular geometry in identifying the progression to diabetic retinopathy using penalized logistic regression and random forests

Many studies have been conducted, investigating the effects that diabetes has to the retinal vasculature. Identifying and quantifying the retinal vascular changes remains a very challenging task, due to the heterogeneity of the retina. Monitoring the progression requires follow-up studies of progressed patients, since human retina naturally adapts to many different stimuli, making it hard to associate any changes with a disease. In this novel study, data from twenty five diabetic patients, who progressed to diabetic retinopathy, were used. The progression was evaluated using multiple geometric features, like vessels widths and angles, tortuosity, central retinal artery and vein equivalent, fractal dimension, lacunarity, in addition to the corresponding descriptive statistics of them. A statistical mixed model design was used to evaluate the significance of the changes between two periods: 3 years before the onset of diabetic retinopathy and the first year of diabetic retinopathy. Moreover, the discriminative power of these features was evaluated using a random forests classifier and also a penalized logistic regression. The area under the ROC curve after running a ten-fold cross validation was 0.7925 and 0.785 respectively

Symptomatic and Asymptomatic Neurological Complications of Infective Endocarditis: Impact on Surgical Management and Prognosis

International audienceObjectives:Symptomatic neurological complications (NC) are a major cause of mortality in infective endocarditis (IE) but the impact of asymptomatic complications is unknown. We aimed to assess the impact of asymptomatic NC (AsNC) on the management and prognosis of IE.Methods: From the database of cases collected for a population-based study on IE, we selected 283 patients with definite left-sided IE who had undergone at least one neuroimaging procedure (cerebral CT scan and/or MRI) performed as part of initial evaluation.Results Among those 283 patients, 100 had symptomatic neurological complications (SNC) prior to the investigation, 35 had an asymptomatic neurological complications (AsNC), and 148 had a normal cerebral imaging (NoNC). The rate of valve surgery was 43% in the 100 patients with SNC, 77% in the 35 with AsNC, and 54% in the 148 with NoNC (p<0.001). In-hospital mortality was 42% in patients with SNC, 8.6% in patients with AsNC, and 16.9% in patients with NoNC (p<0.001). Among the 135 patients with NC, 95 had an indication for valve surgery (71%), which was performed in 70 of them (mortality 20%) and not performed in 25 (mortality 68%). In a multivariate adjusted analysis of the 135 patients with NC, age, renal failure, septic shock, and IE caused by S. aureus were independently associated with in-hospital and 1-year mortality. In addition SNC was an independent predictor of 1-year mortality.Conclusions The presence of NC was associated with a poorer prognosis when symptomatic. Patients with AsNC had the highest rate of valve surgery and the lowest mortality rate, which suggests a protective role of surgery guided by systematic neuroimaging results

Development of Photonic Crystal Fiber Based Gas/ Chemical Sensors

The development of highly-sensitive and miniaturized sensors that capable of real-time analytes detection is highly desirable. Nowadays, toxic or colorless gas detection, air pollution monitoring, harmful chemical, pressure, strain, humidity, and temperature sensors based on photonic crystal fiber (PCF) are increasing rapidly due to its compact structure, fast response and efficient light controlling capabilities. The propagating light through the PCF can be controlled by varying the structural parameters and core-cladding materials, as a result, evanescent field can be enhanced significantly which is the main component of the PCF based gas/chemical sensors. The aim of this chapter is to (1) describe the principle operation of PCF based gas/ chemical sensors, (2) discuss the important PCF properties for optical sensors, (3) extensively discuss the different types of microstructured optical fiber based gas/ chemical sensors, (4) study the effects of different core-cladding shapes, and fiber background materials on sensing performance, and (5) highlight the main challenges of PCF based gas/ chemical sensors and possible solutions

Protein crystals in adenovirus type 5-infected cells: requirements for intranuclear crystallogenesis, structural and functional analysis

Intranuclear crystalline inclusions have been observed in the nucleus of epithelial cells infected with Adenovirus serotype 5 (Ad5) at late steps of the virus life cycle. Using immuno-electron microscopy and confocal microscopy of cells infected with various Ad5 recombinants modified in their penton base or fiber domains, we found that these inclusions represented crystals of penton capsomers, the heteromeric capsid protein formed of penton base and fiber subunits. The occurrence of protein crystals within the nucleus of infected cells required the integrity of the fiber knob and part of the shaft domain. In the knob domain, the region overlapping residues 489–492 in the FG loop was found to be essential for crystal formation. In the shaft, a large deletion of repeats 4 to 16 had no detrimental effect on crystal inclusions, whereas deletion of repeats 8 to 21 abolished crystal formation without altering the level of fiber protein expression. This suggested a crucial role of the five penultimate repeats in the crystallisation process. Chimeric pentons made of Ad5 penton base and fiber domains from different serotypes were analyzed with respect to crystal formation. No crystal was found when fiber consisted of shaft (S) from Ad5 and knob (K) from Ad3 (heterotypic S5-K3 fiber), but occurred with homotypic S3K3 fiber. However, less regular crystals were observed with homotypic S35-K35 fiber. TB5, a monoclonal antibody directed against the Ad5 fiber knob was found by immunofluorescence microscopy to react with high efficiency with the intranuclear protein crystals in situ. Data obtained with Ad fiber mutants indicated that the absence of crystalline inclusions correlated with a lower infectivity and/or lower yields of virus progeny, suggesting that the protein crystals might be involved in virion assembly. Thus, we propose that TB5 staining of Ad-infected 293 cells can be used as a prognostic assay for the viability and productivity of fiber-modified Ad5 vectors