A novel decision making approach for benchmarking the service quality of smart community health centers

The purpose of this research is to develop a novel approach to benchmark smart community health centers in order to achieve continuous improvement of service quality. Three methods are presented: the fuzzy DEMATEL method is used to determine the criteria weights, the fuzzy ELECTRE III method is employed to obtain the ranking of smart community health centers, and IPA (Importance-Performance Analysis) is employed to formulate improvement strategies. The proposed approach clearly identifies the strengths and weakness of each smart community health center by ranking its performance with respect to a system of five service quality criteria. In addition, IPA is able to develop the most effective improvement strategies for each smart community health center. The proposed approach was applied to five smart community health centers in Beijing and service strengths and weakness are discussed. The proposed approach has three notable advantages. First, the novel approach can address ambiguity and uncertainty in the process of decision making. Second, interdependent relationships among the evaluation criteria are analyzed by the fuzzy DEMATEL method, so that the weights obtained are more in line with reality. Third, the fuzzy ELECTRE III method considers non-compensatory behavior for service quality comparisons among smart community health centers. The novel fuzzy-based approach presented in this paper is a powerful and highly effective tool to benchmark smart community health centers and develop successful improvement strategies of service quality

Involvement of the JNK/FOXO3a/Bim Pathway in Neuronal Apoptosis after Hypoxic-Ischemic Brain Damage in Neonatal Rats.

c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) plays a key role in the regulation of neuronal apoptosis. Previous studies have revealed that forkhead transcription factor (FOXO3a) is a critical effector of JNK-mediated tumor suppression. However, it is not clear whether the JNK/FOXO3a pathway is involved in neuronal apoptosis in the developing rat brain after hypoxia-ischemia (HI). In this study, we generated an HI model using postnatal day 7 rats. Fluorescence immunolabeling and Western blot assays were used to detect the distribution and expression of total and phosphorylated JNK and FOXO3a and the pro-apoptotic proteins Bim and CC3. We found that JNK phosphorylation was accompanied by FOXO3a dephosphorylation, which induced FOXO3a translocation into the nucleus, resulting in the upregulation of levels of Bim and CC3 proteins. Furthermore, we found that JNK inhibition by AS601245, a specific JNK inhibitor, significantly increased FOXO3a phosphorylation, which attenuated FOXO3a translocation into the nucleus after HI. Moreover, JNK inhibition downregulated levels of Bim and CC3 proteins, attenuated neuronal apoptosis and reduced brain infarct volume in the developing rat brain. Our findings suggest that the JNK/FOXO3a/Bim pathway is involved in neuronal apoptosis in the developing rat brain after HI. Agents targeting JNK may offer promise for rescuing neurons from HI-induced damage

Effect of Calcination and Reduction Temperatures on the Reduction and Activity of Boron-modified Co/TiO2 Fischer-Tropsch Catalys

The effect of calcination and reduction temperatures on the reducibility, dispersion and Fischer-Tropsch activity of 10 wt% cobalt supported on titania catalyst modified by 0.1 wt% boron has been studied. The percentage reduction and percentage dispersion were found to decrease with increasing calcination temperature. The higher calcination temperatures decreased the total CO hydrogenation activity, but did not affect the turnover frequency. The decrease in CO hydrogenation rate with increasing calcination temperature is attributed to a decrease in the number of surface active sites. The higher reduction temperature also decreased the total activity. This may be due to the loss of the surface active sites, caused by blocking of the TiOc phases produced at higher reduction temperatures. The higher calcination temperature shifted the F-T product spectrum to the lower weight hydrocarbons. The reduction temperature did not affect the product selectivity. South African Journal of Chemistry Vol.57 2004: 49-5

Effect of Cobalt Source on the Catalyst Reducibility and Activity of Boron-modified Co / TiO2 Fischer-Tropsch Catalysts

The effect of cobalt precursor (nitrate, acetate and chloride salts) on the catalyst reducibility and dispersion, as well as the catalytic activity of the Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthesis, of boron-modified titania-supported cobalt catalysts (0.1%B/10%Co/TiO2) has been investigated. FT studies were performed on both calcined and uncalcined catalysts prepared from the three cobalt sources. The uncalcined nitrate catalyst showed a higher activity for FT synthesis compared to the uncalcined acetate and chloride catalysts. For the calcined catalysts, the acetate and nitrate catalysts exhibited higher FT activity. The low activity associated with the chloride catalyst related to poisoning by residual chloride ions. Calcination was found to enhance the extent of cobalt bulk reduction and FT activity for all three of the catalysts. The FT reaction rate increased with increasing percentage cobalt dispersion while the turnover frequency (TOF) was found be near independent of cobalt source. South African Journal of Chemistry Vol.56 2003: 1-

Indirect measurement of hyperon electric dipole moments using entangled hyperon-antihyperon pairs in J/ψJ/\psi decays

The electric dipole moment of elementary particles, resulting from favor-diagonal CP violation in the Standard Model, has the potential to provide novel insights in unraveling the enigma of the matter-dominated universe. In this paper, a comprehensive angular analysis focusing on entangled hyperon-antihyperon pairs in $J/\psi$ decays has been developed. Leveraging the statistics from the BESIII experiment, the upper limit of the $\Lambda$ EDM measurement can reach an impressive level of $10^{-19}$ $e$ cm, demonstrating a three-order-of-magnitude improvement over existing measurement. The measurement of the $\Sigma^+$, $\Xi^-$, and $\Xi^0$ hyperons at the same level of $10^{-19}$ $e$ cm will mark the first-ever achievement of its kind. The EDM measurements for hyperons conducted at the BESIII experiment will be a significant milestone and serve as a litmus test for new physics such as SUSY, and 2HDM models. Furthermore, at the STCF experiment, the sensitivity of hyperon EDM measurements can be enhanced by two orders of magnitude. Additionally, this angular analysis enables the determination of CP violation in hyperon decays, the weak mixing angle, and beam polarization