Characterization of the Japanese Management Technique 5S. Polytechnic Dining Room Case

This research aimed to characterize the Japanese 5S management technique, using a case study of the Polytechnic Dining Room, given that in this unit you can apply the 5S technique without any problem, and improve quality, productivity and competitiveness. Several elements were examined including the existence of work material, procedures for eliminating unnecessary materials, location of work materials, cleaning of work areas, standardization of processes, use of uniforms, and protective equipment, among others. Qualitative and quantitative approaches were used. A documentary research instrument was applied, using a Likert scale with ordinal variables. According to the results, those that obtained the highest rating of 7 were as follows: Seiris (classification) 25%, Seiton (Order) 36%, Seiso (Cleaning) 32%, Seiketsu (Standardization) 36%, and Shitsuke (Maintenance) 57%. Therefore, we conclude that in Shitsuke there was greater employee commitment, and Seiri obtained the lowest qualification. Keywords: 5S, quality improvement, productivity, competitiveness. Resumen Con la finalidad de conocer los elementos innecesarios, existencia de material de trabajo, procedimientos de eliminación de materiales innecesarios, ubicación de materiales de trabajo, limpieza de áreas de trabajo, estandarización de procesos, utilización de uniformes, equipo de protección entre otros, la presente investigación tienen el objetivo de caracterizar la técnica de gestión japonesa 5S, caso Comedor Politécnico, considerando que en esta dependencia puede aplicar sin ninguna problema la técnica 5S, mejorar la calidad, su productividad y competitividad; la investigación tiene un enfoque cualicuantitativo, con un método analítico sintético con un nivel de investigación exploratorio, descriptivo, se aplica un instrumento de investigación documental, de escala con variables ordinales, utilizando la escala Likert, método inductivo empírico de información primaria, en la cual se obtiene la siguientes conclusiones obteniendo la calificación más alta de 7, en lo referente Seiri (clasificación) 25%, Seiton ( Orden)36%, Seiso (Limpieza) 32%, Seiketsu (Estandarización) 36%, Shitsuke ( Mantenimiento) 57%, de esta manera de concluye que en Shitsuke donde existe mayor compromiso de los empleados, y en Seiri es la que menor calificación se obtiene. Palabras clave: 5S, mejora de la calidad, productividad, competitividad

Symplectic connections and Fedosov's quantization on supermanifolds

A (biased and incomplete) review of the status of the theory of symplectic connections on supermanifolds is presented. Also, some comments regarding Fedosov's technique of quantization are made.Comment: Submitted to J. of Phys. Conf. Se

Dry rainfed conditions are key drivers of the effect of conservation tillage and a nitrification inhibitor on N fate and N2O emissions: A field 15N tracing study

The sustainability of rainfed crops under semiarid conditions is threatened by low plant nitrogen (N) recovery as well as the potential loss of reactive N to the environment. A field 15N tracing experiment on barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) under rainfed conditions was carried out to study how different tillage management practices and the use of the nitrification inhibitor DMPSA affected the fate of N. The experiment consisted of a factorial combination of tillage (i.e., no tillage, NT, and conventional tillage, T) and fertilizer treatments (unfertilized control and ammonium nitrate, AN, with or without DMPSA). Single-labelled ammonium nitrate (15NH4NO3, 15AN, or NH415NO3, A15N) was applied at top-dressing to microplots at a rate of 80 kg N ha−1. Our results show out that DMPSA modulates the nitrification process from both fertilizer-N and endogenous soil-N (which was the main contributor to plant N uptake and N2O emissions), affecting soil residual N at the end of the cropping period (i.e., higher topsoil retention of 15AN in DMPSA-amended plots). Generally, cumulative N2O emissions from fertilizer were derived from 15AN rather than from A15N, thus confirming the site-specific choice of the source of synthetic N as an effective N2O mitigation strategy. Two months after harvest, a rewetting event produced a remarkable N2O emission peak that drove total cumulative N2O emissions and was also mainly derived from endogenous N. These results suggest that dry seasons could decrease N2O losses after fertilization while causing critical peaks after rewetting, thus potentially limiting the effectiveness of mitigation strategies. The average plant N recovery from the synthetic fertilizer was 22.6%, while the use of DMPSA combined with NT enhanced plant N uptake from endogenous soil-N. This could be a result of the improved crop development and plant N acquisition under NT, consistent with the decrease of soil N retention for A15N in the deeper layer at the end of the experiment in the nontilled plots. This study contributes to the mechanistic understanding of the effect of nitrification inhibitors and tillage on N2O emissions, soil N dynamics and N plant recovery, revealing relevant effects of both management strategies and a critical role of endogenous soil-N under dry rainfed conditions. It can be concluded that, under the conditions of our study, combining DMPSA with NT could help to improve plant N recovery, thus resulting in positive impacts on reactive N loss and climate change mitigation and adaptation

Contrastación de hipótesis en diseños multivariados split-plot con matrices de dispersión arbitrarias

El presente trabajo examina diversos procedimientos para contrastar hipótesis nulas globales, correspondientes a datos obtenidos mediante diseños multivariados split-plot cuando se incumple el supuesto de homogeneidad de las matrices de dispersión. Un examen de estos procedimientos para un amplio número de variables confirma, por un lado, la robustez del procedimiento multivariado de Welch-James dado por Johansen (1980) para probar el efecto principal de los ensayos y, por otro, la robustez de la generalización multivariada del procedimiento de Brown-Forsythe (1974) para probar la interacción de los grupos x los ensayos. Nuestros resultados también ponen de relieve que las diferencias de potencia eran pequeñas en aquellas condiciones en que tanto el procedimiento de Welch-James como de Brown-Forsythe controlaban las tasas de error de Tipo I

Expression of apoptosis-related markers and clinical outcome in patients with advanced colorectal cancer

The clinical relevance of bax and bcl-2 protein expression has been investigated in 84 patients with recurrent or metastatic colorectal cancer submitted to a chemotherapy regimen including methotrexate and fluorouracil/leucovorin. Cytoplasmic immunostaining of bax and bcl-2 was present in 65.5% and 38%, respectively, of the tumours. No association was found between bax and bcl-2 or between p53 and bax or bcl-2 protein expression. Moreover, the biomarkers were unrelated to patient and tumour characteristics known to affect the clinical outcome of colorectal cancer patients. In general, the apoptosis-related markers did not appear indicative of short- and long-term clinical response nor of prognosis. Bcl-2-negative lesions were more frequent among patients who reached an objective clinical response, which is in agreement with previously reported data regarding other tumour types. When the interrelationship between p53 and bax expression was examined, a better response rate (40%) was found for patients whose tumours did not express p53 and bax, and a better prognosis (2-year probability of overall survival 75%) for patients with p53-positive and bax-negative tumours. In the present series of patients with advanced colorectal cancer submitted to systemic chemotherapy we did not find a clear association between expression of apoptosis-related markers and clinical outcome, even in the subset of patients in which the apoptotic index as determined by the TUNEL approach was investigated. © 2001 Cancer Research Campaign http://www.bjcancer.co

Influence of nutritional and environmental factors on ethanol and endopolygalacturonase co-production by Kluyveromyces marxianus CCEBI 2011

Ethanol and endopolygalacturonase (endoPG) are simultaneously produced by the yeast Kluyveromyces marxianusCCEBI 2011. The aim of this study was to determine the optimal combination of seven environmental and nutritional variables, as well as the influence of each one, with respect to the fermentation process in yeast cultures in which sugarcanejuice was the substrate. Simplex sequential optimization showed that after 15 runs the optimal conditions were: pH, 4.6; temperature, 31ºC; total reducing sugars (TRS), 125 g/l; (NH4)2SO4, 2.48 g/l; (NH4)2HPO4, 2.73 g/l; CaCl2, 0.33 g/l andMgSO4·7H2O, 0.54 g/l. Under these conditions, the ethanol concentration was 47.6 g/l and endoPG concentration was 9.8 U/ml, which represented increases of 22% and 10%, respectively, over the concentrations obtained under suboptimal conditions. Temperature and (NH4)2SO4 supplementation were the most significant factors influencing the co-production process. [Int Microbiol 2011; 14(1):41-49

A Guide to Noxious Plants as an Educational Resource of Veterinary Medicine Students

The School of Veterinary UNRN is located in the town of Choele Choel (39° 17\u27S, 65° 39\u27W), in Northern Patagonia, Argentina. The climate is semi-arid with a historical average annual continental rainfall of 303 mm, with marked daily and seasonal temperature ranges. However, the type of vegetation that can be found in the area ranges fromxerophytic shrubs to hydrophytic vegetation because the arid plateau is crossed by the broad valley of Río Negro. Due to the topographic distribution of agricultural and livestock farms, the toxic plants for livestock may be found in the irrigated valleys or arid shrubby camps

Topological Characterization of Hamming and Dragonfly Networks and its Implications on Routing

Current HPC and datacenter networks rely on large-radix routers. Hamming graphs (Cartesian products of complete graphs) and dragonflies (two-level direct networks with nodes organized in groups) are some direct topologies proposed for such networks. The original definition of the dragonfly topology is very loose, with several degrees of freedom such as the inter- and intra-group topology, the specific global connectivity and the number of parallel links between groups (or trunking level). This work provides a comprehensive analysis of the topological properties of the dragonfly network, providing balancing conditions for network dimensioning, as well as introducing and classifying several alternatives for the global connectivity and trunking level. From a topological study of the network, it is noted that a Hamming graph can be seen as a canonical dragonfly topology with a large level of trunking. Based on this observation and by carefully selecting the global connectivity, the Dimension Order Routing (DOR) mechanism safely used in Hamming graphs is adapted to dragonfly networks with trunking. The resulting routing algorithms approximate the performance of minimal, non-minimal and adaptive routings typically used in dragonflies, but without requiring virtual channels to avoid packet deadlock, thus allowing for lower-cost router implementations. This is obtained by selecting properly the link to route between groups, based on a graph coloring of the network routers. Evaluations show that the proposed mechanisms are competitive to traditional solutions when using the same number of virtual channels, and enable for simpler implementations with lower cost. Finally, multilevel dragonflies are discussed, considering how the proposed mechanisms could be adapted to them