From Fan Blogs to Fruits Basket: Documenting the Resources of Anime and Manga Studies LibGuides

Anime and manga have seen exponential growth in market value, and popularity, over the last decade. This boom of popularity for anime has been matched in recent years by an increased interest from fans in anime and manga studies. This project seeks to document the contents of anime studies research guides, with the goal of seeing what specific resources, popular media, and fan media like blogs, are listed within these guides and recommended to fans seeking to explore this budding area of scholarship

Plant Location-allocation Problems with Price Sensitive Stochastic Demands

This study is concerned with the transportation plant location allocation problem in the presence of price sensitive stochastic demands. The purpose of this study is to develop a quantitative model for this problem and to establish solution methodologies that can provide decisions on location and allocation. Both capacitated and uncapacitated problems are analyzed for normal and uniform distribution of demands.Industrial Engineering and Managemen

Glycemic Control Differences between Individuals with Accurately and Inaccurately Provider-Perceived Literacy and Numeracy

Little is known about provider accuracy in assessing health literacy and numeracy of individuals with diabetes and the effect of incorrect assessment on patient outcomes. We conducted a clinic-based study (126 patients, 13 providers) to explore whether there was a discrepancy between patient-actual and provider-perceived literacy and numeracy levels among those (≥18yrs) with type 1 (n=59) and type 2 (n=59 ), diabetes, and to test whether this discrepancy was associated with worse HbA1c. We used multiple linear regression to compare mean HbA1c of patients whose providers overestimated and correctly estimated literacy and numeracy using a grade-level and dichotomous literacy and a dichotomous numeracy assessment. Literacy was assessed by The Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine-Short Form numeracy by the Diabetes Numeracy Test-5. Based on a directed acyclic graph and comparison of precision and bias of multiple models, the final models were adjusted for insurance (public/private), race (caucasian/other), and education (≤high school/≥some undergraduate/≥some postgraduate). Providers incorrectly identified 17.8% of patients’ literacy using a dichotomous assessment, 24.6% using grade-level assessment, and 54.2% of numeracy. Providers overestimated 16.1% of patients’ dichotomous literacy, 11.9% of patient’s grade-level literacy, and 46.6% of numeracy. Mean HbA1c was 8.1%. Incorrectly perceived literacy, both dichotomous and grade-level assessed, was not associated with a change in HbA1c. Patients whose provider incorrectly perceived their numeracy score had, respectively, an HbA1c that was on average 0.66% (p=0.03) higher than those whose scores were correctly perceived. Further, patients with overestimated numeracy had a 0.68% (p=0.03) higher HbA1c than those who had correctly estimated or underestimated literacy. These numeracy results were amplified for those with Type 1 diabetes where discordantly perceived numeracy was associated with an HbA1c increase of 1.03% (p=0.02) compared to correctly perceived numeracy and numeracy overestimation was associated with an increase in a1c of 1.15% (p=0.00092) when compared to concordantly perceived and underestimated numeracy . These findings suggest providers might benefit from accurate knowledge of patients’ numeracy and literacy so that appropriate information can be communicated. Future research is needed to test effects of changing provider communication to minimize overestimation of patient numeracy and literacy levels.Bachelor of Science in Public Healt

The relationship between safety specific transformational leadership, psychosocial mentoring and safety citizenship behaviour

Safety specific transformational leadership and safety citizenship behaviour acts as vital role in the prevention process of workplace accidents by promoting safety culture. This study was done to understand the relationship between safety specific transformational leadership and psychosocial mentoring with safety citizenship behaviour in Major Turnaround Project at oil and gas refinery in Negeri Sembilan. Questionnaire consisting of four sections were used to collect sample among 200 oil and gas employees. The results revealed that safety specific transformational leadership and psychosocial mentoring has positive correlation with safety citizenship behaviours among the oil and gas employees. The multiple regression analysis showed the significant p value was lesser than 0.05, hence proving both independent variables were significant predictors of the dependent variable. The findings from this study proved to guide future researchers and occupational safety practitioners to improve the overall safety and health practices at place of work

Low Birth Weight Status Combined with Socioeconomic Factors Influences Future Diagnosis of Learning Disability

Objective: To determine if there is correlation between low birth weight and the development of learning disabilities in later stages of life. Methods: Data from the National Child Health Survey from 2018-2020 was used with data from 59,963 U.S. households looking at children aged six to eleven years. A multiple linear regression model was used to assess the relationship between low birth weight (\u3c2500g) and learning disabilities and developmental delays when controlling for ethnicity, family structure, and household income. Results: The results indicate 7.2% of those surveyed reported a child with a diagnosed learning disability. In response to the low birth weight category, 8.2% of the children involved were in the category below 2500g. Conclusion: Pediatric health practitioners should be aware of this relationship and use low birth weight status as a screening criterion for potential to develop learning disabilities. Policy Implications: More screening programs should be implemented to ensure that children with low birth weight status are assessed for signs of learning disabilities

Non-permutation flowshop scheduling in a supply chain with sequence-dependent setup times

In this paper, we consider a flowshop scheduling problem with sequence-dependent setup times and a bicriteria objective to minimize the work-in-process inventory for the producer and to maximize the customers' service level. The use of a bicriteria objective is motivated by the fact that successful companies in today's environment not only try to minimize their own cost but also try to fulfill their customers' need. Two main approaches, permutation and non-permutation schedules, are considered in finding the optimal schedule for a flowshop. In permutation schedules the sequence of jobs remains the same on all machines whereas in non-permutation schedule, jobs can have different sequence on different machines. A linear mathematical model for solving the non-permutation flowshop is developed to comply with all of the operational constraints commonly encountered in the industry, including dynamic machine availabilities, dynamic job releases, and the possibility of jobs skipping one or more machines, should their operational requirements deem that it was necessary. As the model is shown to be NP-hard, a metasearch heuristic, employing a newly developed concept known as the Tabu search with embedded progressive perturbation (TSEPP) is developed to solve, in particular, industry-size problems efficiently. The effectiveness and efficiency of the search algorithm are assessed by comparing the search algorithmic solutions with that of the optimal solutions obtained from CPLEX in solvable small problem instances.Keywords: Sequence-dependent setup time, Mixed-integer linear programming, Non-permutation scheduling, Flowshop, Tabu search with embedded progressive perturbations, Bicriteri

Sequence-dependent group scheduling problem on unrelated-parallel machines

In this research we address a sequence-dependent group scheduling problem on a set of unrelated-parallel machines where the run time of each job differs on different machines. To benefit both producer and customers we attempt to minimize a linear combination of total weighted completion time and total weighted tardiness. Since the problem is shown to be NP-hard, meta-heuristic algorithms based on tabu search are developed to find the optimal/near optimal solution. For some small size yet complex problems, the results from these algorithms are compared to the optimal solutions found by CPLEX. The result obtained in all of these problems is that the tabu search algorithms could find solutions at least as good as CPLEX but in drastically shorter computational time, thus signifying the high degree of efficiency and efficacy attained by the former.Keywords: Bi-criteria, Group scheduling, Sequence-dependent setup time, Mixed-integer linear programming, Unrelated-parallel machines, Tabu searc

A high gain pifa at 2.45 GHz and 5.8 GHz using wireless power transfer techniques for pacemaker application

The design of a high gain Planar Inverted F Antenna (PIFA) with two different frequencies for medical pacemaker is presented. Two PIFA designs have been optimized to be operated at ISM band of 2.45 GHz and 5.8 GHz respectively, under tolerable reflection coefficient of less than -10dB. Both of the proposed antennas are developed from copper plate with a simple structure of rectangular patch. All design and simulation has been carried out using Computer Simulation Technology (CST) Microwave Studio Suite. The simulated and measured results of the fabricated antenna on reflection coefficient, bandwidth radiation pattern, and gain are presented to validate the usefulness of the presented design. The 2D Anechoic Chamber and Agilent Technologies Network Analyzer have been used for the measurement. Both 2.45 GHz and 5.8 GHz antennas have successfully manage to achieve high gain of 6dB and 8.2dB respectively with a directional beam pattern. The presented ISM PIFAs could be potential for point-to-point communication using wireless power transfer technique for medical pacemaker application

An agent-based genetic algorithm for hybrid flowshops with sequence dependent setup times to minimise makespan

This paper deals with a variant of flowshop scheduling, namely, the hybrid or flexible flowshop with sequence dependent setup times. This type of flowshop is frequently used in the batch production industry and helps reduce the gap between research and operational use. This scheduling problem is NP-hard and solutions for large problems are based on non-exact methods. An improved genetic algorithm (GA) based on software agent design to minimise the makespan is presented. The paper proposes using an inherent characteristic of software agents to create a new perspective in GA design. To verify the developed metaheuristic, computational experiments are conducted on a well-known benchmark problem dataset. The experimental results show that the proposed metaheuristic outperforms some of the well-known methods and the state-of-art algorithms on the same benchmark problem dataset.The translation of this paper was funded by Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, Spain.Gómez Gasquet, P.; Andrés Romano, C.; Lario Esteban, FC. (2012). An agent-based genetic algorithm for hybrid flowshops with sequence dependent setup times to minimise makespan. Expert Systems with Applications. 39(9):8095-8107. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2012.01.158S8095810739