Six Sigma Beyond Quality: A Concept of Management

Six Sigma was developed by Motorola in the mid-1980s. The essence of Six Sigma is to stop variations in quality at the earliest possible point by attacking variation during design of products and processes and to create a culture that demands perfection. The concept of Six Sigma is as a much-needed management program that has the highest impact on the bottom-line financials. The key focus of all Six Sigma programs is to optimize overall results at the business, operations, and process level within a company. The Six Sigma Breakthrough Strategy provides the tools to achieve the goal - 3.4 defects per million opportunities, through a highly focused system of problem solving. Six Sigma has a dis ciplined approach covering five phases: define, measure, analyze, improve, and control. The work of Six Sigma is led by the right people selected and trained in the Six Sigma methodology and establishes infrastructure - Master Black Belts, Black Belts, and Green Belts. The object of these training efforts is to have every employee make improvements in their work processes. What distinguishes Six Sigma from TQM is that each Six Sigma’s work team with solving a specific problem has a clear goal tied a financial incentive. When companies embark on Six Sigma quality programs, the object of technical viewpoint is to reduce the process variance and the objective of managerial or customer viewpoint being cost-effective is to adjust the process to the target value such as employee training in statistical problem-solving methods and techniques. That is why the Six Sigma long-term process is allowed to be off centering with 1.5 sigma shift to minimize the number of setups or tool changeovers

LIS student learning styles and web-based instruction methods

This article looks at learning styles of library and information science (LIS) students. Felder and Solomon’s Index of Learning Styles was administered to 108 LIS students between 2001 and 2002. These results were analyzed with respect to results from learning style assessments administered in the 1980s. Learning style preferences were compared between students in traditional and distance education courses. Teaching suggestions are offered for maximizing LIS student learning in Web-based instruction.Post-printIncludes bibliographical references

The Internal Audit Performance: The Effectiveness of ERM and IT Environments

The purpose of this study is to examine the factors determining the performance of the internal audit (IA) in the context of internal auditors’ work environments. This includes Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) implementation, the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, the use of auditing software and the internal auditors’ IT (information technology) competence. Although a number of recent studies have reported tremendous changes in the roles of the IA, there is still little research on the influential factors of IA implementation and its effectiveness from a contextual perspective. This paper develops and tests a theoretical framework with samples from Taiwan. Data were analyzed using the structural equation model (SEM). This research confirms that the complete ERM implementation and effectiveness of ERP implementation have significant impacts on the performance of IA. It also highlights the importance of internal auditors’ IT competence in improving the performance of IA

Inhibition of gap junctional Intercellular communication in WB-F344 rat liver epithelial cells by triphenyltin chloride through MAPK and PI3-kinase pathways

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Organotin compounds (OTCs) have been widely used as stabilizers in the production of plastic, agricultural pesticides, antifoulant plaints and wood preservation. The toxicity of triphenyltin (TPT) compounds was known for their embryotoxic, neurotoxic, genotoxic and immunotoxic effects in mammals. The carcinogenicity of TPT was not well understood and few studies had discussed the effects of OTCs on gap junctional intercellular communication (GJIC) of cells.</p> <p>Method</p> <p>In the present study, the effects of triphenyltin chloride (TPTC) on GJIC in WB-F344 rat liver epithelial cells were evaluated, using the scrape-loading dye transfer technique.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>TPTC inhibited GJIC after a 30-min exposure in a concentration- and time-dependent manner. Pre-incubation of cells with the protein kinase C (PKC) inhibitor did not modify the response, but the specific MEK 1 inhibitor PD98059 and PI3K inhibitor LY294002 decreased substantially the inhibition of GJIC by TPTC. After WB-F344 cells were exposed to TPTC, phosphorylation of Cx43 increased as seen in Western blot analysis.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These results show that TPTC inhibits GJIC in WB-F344 rat liver epithelial cells by altering the Cx43 protein expression through both MAPK and PI3-kinase pathways.</p

Fusion of Diffusion Weighted MRI and Clinical Data for Predicting Functional Outcome after Acute Ischemic Stroke with Deep Contrastive Learning

Stroke is a common disabling neurological condition that affects about one-quarter of the adult population over age 25; more than half of patients still have poor outcomes, such as permanent functional dependence or even death, after the onset of acute stroke. The aim of this study is to investigate the efficacy of diffusion-weighted MRI modalities combining with structured health profile on predicting the functional outcome to facilitate early intervention. A deep fusion learning network is proposed with two-stage training: the first stage focuses on cross-modality representation learning and the second stage on classification. Supervised contrastive learning is exploited to learn discriminative features that separate the two classes of patients from embeddings of individual modalities and from the fused multimodal embedding. The network takes as the input DWI and ADC images, and structured health profile data. The outcome is the prediction of the patient needing long-term care at 3 months after the onset of stroke. Trained and evaluated with a dataset of 3297 patients, our proposed fusion model achieves 0.87, 0.80 and 80.45% for AUC, F1-score and accuracy, respectively, outperforming existing models that consolidate both imaging and structured data in the medical domain. If trained with comprehensive clinical variables, including NIHSS and comorbidities, the gain from images on making accurate prediction is not considered substantial, but significant. However, diffusion-weighted MRI can replace NIHSS to achieve comparable level of accuracy combining with other readily available clinical variables for better generalization.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, 5 table

A product-mix decision model using green manufacturing technologies under activity-based costing

Theory of constraints (TOC) Product-mix decision Mathematical programming approach a b s t r a c t The purpose of this study is to assess how the integration of activity-based costing (ABC) and the theory of constraints (TOC), as well as the application of a mixed-integer programming (MIP) model, can assist in making decisions about product-mix using green manufacturing technologies (GMTs). This study proposes a mathematical programming model to analyze the profitability of a product-mix decision based on the ABC and TOC, with the adoption of new GMTs. Using a numerical example from a metal component parts manufacturer in the automotive industry, the findings of this study provide insight into the value of mathematical programming approaches for GMTs investment and product-mix decision making based on ABC systems while simultaneously improving the value of green manufacturing technology investments

Effect of Lactobacillus plantarum

Recent studies have demonstrated beneficial effects of specific probiotics on alleviating obesity-related disorders. Here we aimed to identify probiotics with potential antiobesity activity among 88 lactic acid bacterial strains via in vitro screening assays, and a Lactobacillus plantarum strain K21 was found to harbor abilities required for hydrolyzing bile salt, reducing cholesterol, and inhibiting the accumulation of lipid in 3T3-L1 preadipocytes. Furthermore, effects of K21 on diet-induced obese (DIO) mice were examined. Male C57Bl/6J mice received a normal diet, high-fat diet (HFD), or HFD with K21 administration (109 CFU in 0.2 mL PBS/day) for eight weeks. Supplementation of K21, but not placebo, appeared to alleviate body weight gain and epididymal fat mass accumulation, reduce plasma leptin levels, decrease cholesterol and triglyceride levels, and mitigate liver damage in DIO mice. Moreover, the hepatic expression of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ (PPAR-γ) related to adipogenesis was significantly downregulated in DIO mice by K21 intervention. We also found that K21 supplementation strengthens intestinal permeability and modulates the amount of Lactobacillus spp., Bifidobacterium spp., and Clostridium perfringens in the cecal contents of DIO mice. In conclusion, our results suggest that dietary intake of K21 protects against the onset of HFD-induced obesity through multiple mechanisms of action

The Development of Spatial Attention U-Net for The Recovery of Ionospheric Measurements and The Extraction of Ionospheric Parameters

We train a deep learning artificial neural network model, Spatial Attention U-Net to recover useful ionospheric signals from noisy ionogram data measured by Hualien's Vertical Incidence Pulsed Ionospheric Radar. Our results show that the model can well identify F2 layer ordinary and extraordinary modes (F2o, F2x) and the combined signals of the E layer (ordinary and extraordinary modes and sporadic Es). The model is also capable of identifying some signals that were not labeled. The performance of the model can be significantly degraded by insufficient number of samples in the data set. From the recovered signals, we determine the critical frequencies of F2o and F2x and the intersection frequency between the two signals. The difference between the two critical frequencies is peaking at 0.63 MHz, with the uncertainty being 0.18 MHz.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures, 3 table

Correlation of virulence genes to clinical manifestations and outcome in patients with Streptococcus dysgalactiae subspecies equisimilis bacteremia

Background/PurposeStreptococcus dysgalactiae subsp. equisimilis (SDSE) is increasingly recognized as a human pathogen responsible for invasive infection and streptococcal toxic shock syndrome (STSS). The pathogen possesses virulence genes that resemble those found in Streptococcus pyogenes (GAS). We analyzed the association between these specific toxic genes, clinical presentations, and outcome in patients with SDSE infections.MethodsPatients (older than 18 years) with community-acquired invasive bacteremia caused by SDSE bacteremia who were undergoing treatment at China Medical University Hospital from June 2007 to December 2010 were included in this study. Multiplex polymerase chain reaction was performed to identify virulence genes of the SDSE isolates. Demographic data, clinical presentations, and outcome in patients with SDSE infections were reviewed and analyzed.ResultsForty patients with 41 episodes of SDSE bacteremia were reviewed. The median age of the patients with SDSE infection was 69.7 years; 55% were female and 78% had underlying diseases. Malignancy (13, 33%) and diabetes mellitus (13, 33%) were the most common comorbidities. The 30-day mortality rate was 12%. Compared with the survivors, the non-survivors had a higher rate of diabetes mellitus (80% vs. 26%), liver cirrhosis (60% vs.11%), shock (60% vs.17%), STSS (60% vs. 8%), and a high Pittsburgh bacteremia score >4 (40% vs. 6%). Most isolates had scpA, ska, saga, and slo genes, whereas speC, speG, speH, speI, speK, smez, and ssa genes were not detected. speA gene was identified only in one patient with STSS (1/6, 17%). All isolates were susceptible to penicillin, cefotaxime, levofloxacin, moxifloxacin, vancomycin, and linezolid.ConclusionIn invasive SDSE infections, most isolates carry putative virulence genes, such as scpA, ska, saga, and slo. Clinical SDSE isolates in Taiwan remain susceptible to penicillin cefotaxime, and levofloxacin

Effects of Extract from Solid-State Fermented Cordyceps sinensis on Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

Diabetes mellitus is the most common chronic disease in the world, and a wide range of drugs, including Chinese herbs, have been evaluated for the treatment of associated metabolic disorders. This study investigated the potential hypoglycemic and renoprotective effects of an extract from the solid-state fermented mycelium of Cordyceps sinensis (CS). We employed the KK/HIJ diabetic mouse model, in which the mice were provided with a high-fat diet for 8 weeks to induce hyperglycemia, followed by the administration of CS or rosiglitazone for 4 consecutive weeks. Several parameters were evaluated, including changes in body weight, plasma lipid profiles, oral glucose tolerance tests, insulin tolerance tests, and plasma insulin concentrations. Our results show that the CS extract significantly elevated HDL/LDL ratios at 4 weeks and decreased body weight gain at 8 weeks. Interestingly, CS treatment did not lead to obvious improvements in hyperglycemia or resistance to insulin, while in vitro MTT assays indicated that CS protects pancreatic beta cells against the toxic effects of STZ. CS also enhanced renal NKA activity and reduced the accumulation of mesangial matrix and collagen deposition. In conclusion, CS extract can potentially preserve β-cell function and offer renoprotection, which may afford a promising therapy for DM