RADtrials: Clinical Trial Startup Tracker at Radiology

Clinical study startup is one of the most time and resource-intensive parts of the clinical trials. Its impacts are long-lasting, as delays can affect the study conduct. For study startups, 85% of the industry still relies on Excel spreadsheets. But spreadsheets are passive – they don’t allow you to proactively manage activities and don’t tell you where to focus your attention. We designed, implemented, and now fully adopted a new comprehensive workflow centered around a Smartsheet-based solution with automated reports and dashboards for clinical research coordinators (CRCs), managers, faculty, and leadership. We seek to standardize the startup process across the Radiology Department and provide clarity, transparency, and accountability for all identified tasks. By extensively using our own data, we will achieve better planning with realistic completion dates and thus optimize resource allocation (e.g., accurate planning for reassigning/hiring of CRCs to facilitate subsequent study execution)

Strategic Planning and Business Performance of Micro, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

This paper deals with issues of strategic management, particularly strategic planning and its beneficial effect on the overall performance of businesses. It is based on empirical results of the original research study called Adaptability of Enterprises to Contemporary Economic Conditions in Years 2007-2012 performed via questionnaire survey in three rounds during years 2011, 2012 and 2013. The analyses presented in the paper were conducted on the second round sample of 677 organizations operating mostly in the SME sector in the Czech and Slovak Republic. The interdependence between the level of strategic planning (existence of strategy in the form of written document and its extent) and enterprise performance criteria (turnover, costs, profit, EVA, investments, period of arranged contracts) is examined with the use of four hypotheses. The results are commented and discussed. The outcome is the apparent positive impact of full strategic document on the performance criteria of the businesses

The Effect of Performance Shares on Executive Incentives

I explore the determinants of performance share awards (PSAs), focusing on the factors associated with the recent increase in PSA use, and the effects of PSA use on key characteristics of compensation, pay levels and pay-for-performance sensitivity. PSAs are equity awards for which the number of shares that vest varies based on performance compared to pre-determined goals. I find that poor Say-on-Pay voting outcomes are associated with more aggressive adoption of PSAs and that PSAs have primarily replaced stock options in equity awards. Compared to stock options, PSAs have not affected ex ante compensation levels (grant date fair value), but have resulted in ex post payouts that are less variable and no lower. Moreover, PSA payouts increase in measures of CEO power. Collectively, these results tend to support the hypothesis that PSAs are being used to disguise compensation rather than improve incentive alignment

Conservation and concealment in SpeciesBanking.com, USA: an analysis of neoliberal performance in the species offsetting industry

Market-based strategies are promoted as neoliberal governance solutions to environmental problems, from local to global scales. Tradable mitigation schemes are proliferating. These include species banking, which enables payments for the purchase of species credits awarded to conserved areas to offset development impacts on protected species elsewhere. An analysis of species banks in the USA through a survey of data from the website www.SpeciesBanking.com (established as a ‘clearing house’ for species banking information) was complemented by questionnaire material from USA bank managers. The number of USA species banks has increased rapidly, bank area ownership and management is consolidated in a small number of organizations, and public information on species credit price is limited. In interrogating the case material, the roles of specific economic policies associated with neoliberalism are considered, focusing on the extension of privatization, de- and re-regulation and marketization into the arena of environmental conservation, and commodification processes as manifested in species banking. Problematic ecological and distributive ‘concealments’ in species banking include the ‘development-led’ nature of conservation banking, tendencies towards net biodiversity loss, and an emphasis on supporting conservation-related wealth accumulation by larger landowners and investors

The Effect of Performance Shares on Executive Incentives

I explore the determinants of performance share awards (PSAs), focusing on the factors associated with the recent increase in PSA use, and the effects of PSA use on key characteristics of compensation, pay levels and pay-for-performance sensitivity. PSAs are equity awards for which the number of shares that vest varies based on performance compared to pre-determined goals. I find that poor Say-on-Pay voting outcomes are associated with more aggressive adoption of PSAs and that PSAs have primarily replaced stock options in equity awards. Compared to stock options, PSAs have not affected ex ante compensation levels (grant date fair value), but have resulted in ex post payouts that are less variable and no lower. Moreover, PSA payouts increase in measures of CEO power. Collectively, these results tend to support the hypothesis that PSAs are being used to disguise compensation rather than improve incentive alignment

On the strategic planning, innovation activities and economic performance of industrial companies

Proposed paper deals with the “in-situ” situation of strategic planning, innovation activities and consequent economic performance of Czech and Slovak industrial companies based on questionnaire research results. The relations between selected parameters were aimed and statistically tested on the sample of 254 industrial companies active in Czech and Slovak republic in years 2009-2011. Four hypotheses were evaluated, with the goal of enlightening mutual relations of strategy-innovations-performance behavioural characteristics of the studied companies. In findings, there is well apparent, that written detailed strategic document has mostly bigger companies (above 250 employees and gross annual turnover over 1 bill. CZK), who plan longer in advance (mostly 5 to 10 years or 3 to 5 years) than smaller companies that have more often concise written (a plan mostly from 1 to 3 years in advance) or not written strategic document (11 to 50 employees and gross annual turnover 11 to 100 mil. CZK). The (industrial) companies with written detailed strategic document are continually active in innovations and experienced strong positive progress in volume of production (over 30 %) and earnings - profit (over 30 %) in research period. The analyses have shown that medium-sized and big industrial companies experienced growth up to 30 % of gross annual turnover meanwhile the costs fall up to 30 % during the examined period 2009-2011. Change in volume of production in the course of the period 2009-2011, there is significant correlation to change in gross annual turnover and change in earnings (profit) in the course of the research period. These finding can be interpreted as empirical confirmation of the reasonability of thorough strategic planning with respect to dynamics and innovation necessity. Strategic and innovative industrial companies apparently passed through the period of slow growth without substantial problems, which most likely suffered above all micro enterprises.Web of Science201251

Improved Quantification of Important Beer Quality Parameters based on Non-linear Calibration Methods applied to FT-MIR Spectra

During the production process of beer, it is of utmost importance to guarantee a high consistency of the beer quality. For instance, the bitterness is an essential quality parameter which has to be controlled within the specifications already at the beginning of the production process in the unfermented beer (wort) as well as in final products such as beer and beer mix beverages. Nowadays, analytical techniques for quality control in beer production are mainly based on manual supervision, i.e. samples are taken from the process and analyzed in the laboratory. This typically requires significant lab technicians efforts for only a small fraction of samples to be analyzed, which leads to significant costs for beer breweries and companies. Fourier transform mid-infrared (FT-MIR) spectroscopy was used in combination with non-linear multivariate calibration techniques to overcome (i) the time consuming off-line analyses in beer production and (ii) already known limitations of standard linear chemometric methods , like partial least squares (PLS), for important quality parameters [1][2] such as bitterness, citric acid, total acids, free amino nitrogen, final attenuation or foam stability. The calibration models are established with enhanced non-linear techniques based (i) on a new piece-wise linear version of PLS by employing fuzzy rules for local partitioning the latent variable space and (ii) on extensions of support vector regression variants (ε-PLSSVR and ν-PLSSVR), for overcoming high computation times in high-dimensional problems and time-intensive and inappropriate settings of the kernel parameters. Furthermore, we introduce a new model selection scheme based on bagged ensembles in order to improve robustness and thus predictive quality of the final models. The approaches are tested on real-world calibration data sets for wort and beer mix beverages, and successfully compared to linear methods, as showing a clear out-performance in most cases and being able to meet the model quality requirements defined by the experts at the beer company

Modeling of the stress-strain relationship for specimens made of S355J0 steel subjected to bending block loading with mean load

The paper presents results of calculation for modelling of the stressstrain relationship in the case of block loads with mean load value. A model, based on the stable hysteresis loops, was assumed and modified to use for block loading analysis. For stress history calculation, the proposed model and two other constitutive models were used. Results of fatigue test of specimens made of S355J0 steel subjected to bending block loading with mean load value are presented and used to verify the proposed model. In the tests, the mean load was increased and decreased in subsequent blocks. The changes of strain recorded during the tests shown in the paper indicate a different behavior of the material. Damage accumulation degree for block sequence was used to compare the results of calculations. It was shown, that stress history parameters (stress amplitude and mean stress value in this case) are similar for all investigated models