2,104 research outputs found
The use and design of the BSC in the health care sector: a systematic literature review for Italy, Spain, and Portugal
The aim of this paper is to gain a better understanding of how the balanced scorecard (BSC) has evolved in Spain, Italy, and Portugal. It reviews all the articles on the BSC in the health care sector written between 1992 and 2015 by Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese authors and published in Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese as well as in English. Our study first shows the state of knowledge on BSC in health care for a homogeneous group of Southern European countries. Second, it uncovers the perspectives, indicators, and generation used in the countries under observation to reveal the extent to which this management tool has evolved. Third, it analyses international variations in design and use within the health care context, especially in
the United States. Moreover, it also highlights a number of important issues. The BSC is in its early stage of development in these 3 countries, which do not use it as a tool to implement strategy and align all of the elements that help integrate the organization.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Rapid brain discrimination of sounds of objects.
Electrical neuroimaging in humans identified the speed and spatiotemporal brain mechanism whereby sounds of living and man-made objects are discriminated. Subjects performed an "oddball" target detection task, selectively responding to sounds of either living or man-made objects on alternating blocks, which were controlled for in their spectrogram and harmonics-to-noise ratios between categories. Analyses were conducted on 64-channel auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) from nontarget trials. Comparing responses to sounds of living versus man-made objects, these analyses tested for modulations in local AEP waveforms, global response strength, and the topography of the electric field at the scalp. In addition, the local autoregressive average distributed linear inverse solution was applied to periods of observed modulations. Just 70 ms after stimulus onset, a common network of brain regions within the auditory "what" processing stream responded more strongly to sounds of man-made versus living objects, with differential activity within the right temporal and left inferior frontal cortices. Over the 155-257 ms period, the duration of activity of a brain network, including bilateral temporal and premotor cortices, differed between categories of sounds. Responses to sounds of living objects peaked approximately 12 ms later and the activity of the brain network active over this period was prolonged relative to that in response to sounds of man-made objects. The earliest task-related effects were observed at approximately 100 ms poststimulus onset, placing an upper limit on the speed of cortical auditory object discrimination. These results provide critical temporal constraints on human auditory object recognition and semantic discrimination processes
LES of non-Newtonian physiological blood flow in a model of arterial stenosis
Large Eddy Simulation (LES) is performed to study the physiological pulsatile transition-to-turbulent non-Newtonian blood flow through a 3D model of arterial stenosis by using five different blood viscosity models: (i) Power-law, (ii) Carreau, (iii) Quemada, (iv) Cross and (v) modified-Casson. The computational domain has been chosen is a simple channel with a biological type stenosis formed eccentrically on the top wall. The physiological pulsation is generated at the inlet of the model using the first four harmonic series of the physiological pressure pulse (Loudon and Tordesillas [1]). The effects of the various viscosity models are investigated in terms of the global maximum shear rate, post-stenotic re-circulation zone, mean shear stress, mean pressure, and turbulent kinetic energy. We find that the non-Newtonian viscosity models enlarge the length of the post-stenotic re-circulation region by moving the reattachment point of the shear layer separating from the upper wall further downstream. But the turbulent kinetic energy at the immediate post-lip of the stenosis drops due to the effects of the non-Newtonian viscosity. The importance of using LES in modelling the non-Newtonian physiological pulsatile blood flow is also assessed for the different viscosity models in terms of the results of the dynamic subgrid-scale (SGS) stress Smagorinsky model constant, C<sub>s</sub>, and the corresponding SGS normalised viscosity
Atmospheric Neutrino Oscillations and New Physics
We study the robustness of the determination of the neutrino masses and
mixing from the analysis of atmospheric and K2K data under the presence of
different forms of phenomenologically allowed new physics in the nu_mu--nu_tau
sector. We focus on vector and tensor-like new physics interactions which allow
us to treat, in a model independent way, effects due to the violation of the
equivalence principle, violations of the Lorentz invariance both CPT conserving
and CPT violating, non-universal couplings to a torsion field and non-standard
neutrino interactions with matter. We perform a global analysis of the full
atmospheric data from SKI together with long baseline K2K data in the presence
of nu_mu -> nu_tau transitions driven by neutrino masses and mixing together
with sub-dominant effects due to these forms of new physics. We show that
within the present degree of experimental precision, the extracted values of
masses and mixing are robust under those effects and we derive the upper bounds
on the possible strength of these new interactions in the nu_mu--nu_tau sector.Comment: 22 pages, LaTeX file using RevTEX4, 5 figures and 4 tables include
Approximate Solution of the effective mass Klein-Gordon Equation for the Hulthen Potential with any Angular Momentum
The radial part of the effective mass Klein-Gordon equation for the Hulthen
potential is solved by making an approximation to the centrifugal potential.
The Nikiforov-Uvarov method is used in the calculations. Energy spectra and the
corresponding eigenfunctions are computed. Results are also given for the case
of constant mass.Comment: 12 page
Epidermis foliar de trigo (Triticum aestivum L.) en relación al genotipo y al espaciamiento entre surcos
El objetivo de este trabajo fue estudiar el efecto del genotipo y del espaciamiento entre hileras sobre las características epidérmicas de la hoja bandera, en cultivares de trigo. Se sembraron cultivares comerciales, PROINTA Oasis (Oa) y Las Rosas INTA (Ri), y líneas experimentales (T7 y T24) a 2 distancias entre surcos (15 y 30 cm). Las variables consideradas fueron frecuencia estomática (FE), índice estomático (IE), frecuencia de pares sílico-suberosos (FSS), frecuencia de aguijones (FA), ancho (AE) y largo (LE) de estomas. LE fue la única variable en la que se evidenció interacción significativa distancia-cultivar. Con respecto algenotipo, se encontraron diferencias sicnificativas entre cultivares en FE, FA y AE, mientras que no afectó IE ni FSS. En relación a FA, Ri presentó mayor respuesta promedio que Oa y que T24 . Para AE, mostró O a una media significativamente mayor que la de los restantes, mientras que para FE, T7 tuvo una media significativamente menor que la de los cultivares comerciales . Coincidiendo con otros autores, se puede considerar la FE como un criterio a tener en cuenta en la selección de nuevos cultivares
Probing neutrino non-standard interactions with atmospheric neutrino data
We have reconsidered the atmospheric neutrino anomaly in light of the laetst
data from Super-Kamiokande contained events and from Super-Kamiokande and MACRO
up-going muons. We have reanalysed the proposed solution to the atmospheric
neutrino anomaly in terms of non-standard neutrino-matter interactions (NSI) as
well as the standard nu_mu -> nu_tau oscillations (OSC). Our statistical
analysis shows that a pure NSI mechanism is now ruled out at 99%, while the
standard nu_mu -> nu_tau OSC mechanism provides a quite remarkably good
description of the anomaly. We therefore study an extended mechanism of
neutrino propagation which combines both oscillation and non-standard
neutrino-matter interactions, in order to derive limits on flavour-changing
(FC) and non-universal (NU) neutrino interactions. We obtain that the
off-diagonal flavour-changing neutrino parameter epsilon and the diagonal
non-universality neutrino parameter epsilon' are confined to -0.03 < epsilon <
0.02 and |epsilon'| < 0.05 at 99.73% CL. These limits are model independent and
they are obtained from pure neutrino-physics processes. The stability of the
neutrino oscillation solution to the atmospheric neutrino anomaly against the
presence of non-standard neutrino interactions establishes the robustness of
the near-maximal atmospheric mixing and massive-neutrino hypothesis. The best
agreement with the data is obtained for Delta_m^2 = 2.3*10^{-3} eV^2,
sin^2(2*theta) = 1, epsilon = 6.7*10^{-3} and epsilon' = 1.1*10^{-3}, although
the chi^2 function is quite flat in the epsilon and epsilon' directions for
epsilon, epsilon' -> 0.Comment: 26 pages, LaTeX file using REVTeX4, 1 table and 12 figures included.
Added a revised analysis which takes into account the new 1489-day
Super-Kamiokande and final MACRO data. The bound on NSI parameters is
considerably improve
Are there anthropometric differences between children with autism and healthy children?
Anthropometric development and growth were assessed in 2 groups of 6- to 9-year-olds: children with autism spectrum disorders and typically developing children. In a case-control study conducted in Valencia, Spain, we compared the body mass index (kg/m(2)) of 40 children with autism spectrum disorders (cases) and 113 typically developing children (controls) from the same area of residence. The sex- and age-adjusted odds ratios for being underweight in cases was 2.41 compared to controls. Furthermore, the body mass index distribution of the cases was significantly offset to lower values with respect to that of the controls (P = .024). In particular, 20% of the cases had a body mass index below the fifth percentile versus just 8.85% of the controls. Our data suggest that the anthropometric development of children with autism spectrum disorders should be monitored as part of routine care
Loop Equation in Two-dimensional Noncommutative Yang-Mills Theory
The classical analysis of Kazakov and Kostov of the Makeenko-Migdal loop
equation in two-dimensional gauge theory leads to usual partial differential
equations with respect to the areas of windows formed by the loop. We extend
this treatment to the case of U(N) Yang-Mills defined on the noncommutative
plane. We deal with all the subtleties which arise in their two-dimensional
geometric procedure, using where needed results from the perturbative
computations of the noncommutative Wilson loop available in the literature. The
open Wilson line contribution present in the non-commutative version of the
loop equation drops out in the resulting usual differential equations. These
equations for all N have the same form as in the commutative case for N to
infinity. However, the additional supplementary input from factorization
properties allowing to solve the equations in the commutative case is no longer
valid.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figures, references added, small clarifications adde
General structure of the photon self-energy in non-commutative QED
We study the behavior of the photon two point function, in non-commutative
QED, in a general covariant gauge and in arbitrary space-time dimensions. We
show, to all orders, that the photon self-energy is transverse. Using an
appropriate extension of the dimensional regularization method, we evaluate the
one-loop corrections, which show that the theory is renormalizable. We also
prove, to all orders, that the poles of the photon propagator are gauge
independent and briefly discuss some other related aspects.Comment: 16 pages, revtex4. This is the final version to be published in Phys.
Rev.
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