95 research outputs found
Cultural differences in applying Kansei Engineering to services
It is imperative for companies to provide competitive
products and services at a competitive price. Products and
services need to offer features and properties which can makethem distinguishable and attractive to customers. Emotions and feelings are prominent during product interaction and service encounter. Kansei Engineering (KE) enables interpretation and translation of customer emotions into design parameters. The application of KE covers both products and services design. Besides dealing with attractive exterior appearances, KE has an ability to optimize properties that are not directly detectable or
visible, such as the comfort of hospital and concert hall. There are few empirical studies. Kansei management should recognize cultural differences in Kansei. However, for analysis of cultural values we need to understand the different needs of different customers. A study of luxury hotel services for Indonesian, Japanese and Singaporean tourists, was conducted using interviews and a tri-lingual face-to-face questionnaire. 425 responses were collected. Japanese tourists were found to be the most Kansei-oriented. They tended to value luxury hotels as âcleanâ and âquietâ places to stay. Indonesian and Singaporean
tourists shared a common response to the Kansei word âelegantâ which correlates with their common cultural dimension of âpower distanceâ. Incorporation of cultural issues into Kansei studies can provide marketing strategies for customers of different cultural backgrounds
Applying Kansei Engineering, the Kano model and QFD to services
This paper aims to present an integrative framework of Kansei
Engineering (KE), the Kano model and quality function deployment (QFD)
applied to services. An empirical study involving Indonesian and Singaporean
tourists was conducted to showcase the frameworkâs applicability. The
study utilises a sample of 100 Indonesian and 125 Singaporean tourists who
stayed in luxury hotels and covers only services in luxury hotels. Interviews
and face-to-face questionnaire surveys were carried out. Using stepwise linear regression analysis, this research models the effect of perceived hotel service performance on customer emotional needs (Kansei). House of quality (HOQ) is then used to formulate managerial strategies. We present the fruitfulness of integrating the Kano model, KE and QFD. Perceived attractive qualities have a direct significant impact on Kansei response. There is no analysis of the impact of cultural differences on Kansei. We provide insight on which service attributes deserve more attention with regard to their significant impact on customer emotions. It may guide service managers to provide and implement improvement strategies in satisfying customer emotional needs. The study proposes a unique methodology of integrative three concepts commonly used in manufacturing and service quality research to measure and model customer emotional needs
Incorporating Kanoâs Model and Markov Chain into Kansei Engineering in Services
Nowadays, customers concern themselves more on fulfilling their emotional needs/Kansei instead of focusing only on functionality and usability. Products and services need to be attractive, delightful and appealing to consumersâ emotions. In dealing with this, Kansei Engineering (KE) has been applied extensively. KE is useful in several regards. The first is its ability to translate customer emotions into concrete product/service design parameters. The second is its capacity to optimize properties that are not directly detectable or visible. The third is its flexibility to grasp and accommodate 21st centuryâs trends including hedonism, pleasure and individuality.
This study focused on attractive attributes of service quality as the drivers of customer delight and loyalty. Kanoâs model is used to exhibit the relationship between service attribute performance and emotional response. Customer preferences change over time. This study developed a means to respond to these changing needs. Markov chain can be applied towards this end.
This study provides an integrative framework. It has two objectives. The first is to conduct a survey of luxury hotel services. Singaporean and Indonesian tourists served as the subjects. The second it is to enable service designers to prioritize their customer service improvement programs. A comprehensive interview and survey involving 181 Indonesian and 170 Singaporean tourists who stayed at luxury 4- and 5-star hotels was carried out. Luxury hotels were chosen since they focus much on delighting customers.
A finding of this study shows the following three service attributes to be important: i) âthe outdoor environment is visually cleanâ, ii) âthe employees are never too busy to respond to your requestsâ and iii) âthe employees are consistently courteous with youâ. Subjects rated the attribute âthe employees are never too busy to respond to your requestsâ as the most important. A house of quality (HOQ) was used to illustrate this. This study determined that the proposed improvements in response to this attribute are related to personnel management, general affair management, employee training, complaint responses and information services.
This study offers several contributions. First, the results can be used as a prioritization tool in service quality improvement efforts where resources are limited (e.g., limited budget and time). Second, guideline for practitioners can be constructed to determine service attributes that are significantly sensitive to customer delight. Third, with the use of Markov chain, practitioners can be provided with information to understand the dynamics of customer needs over time and to prepare appropriate response strategies early
The Case for the Dual Halo of the Milky Way
Carollo et al. have recently resolved the stellar population of the Milky Way
halo into at least two distinct components, an inner halo and an outer halo.
This result has been criticized by Schoenrich et al., who claim that the
retrograde signature associated with the outer halo is due to the adoption of
faulty distances. We refute this claim, and demonstrate that the Schoenrich et
al. photometric distances are themselves flawed because they adopted an
incorrect main-sequence absolute magnitude relationship from the work of
Ivezi\'c et al. When compared to the recommended relation from Ivezi\'c et al.,
which is tied to a Milky Way globular cluster distance scale and accounts for
age and metallicity effects, the relation adopted by Schoenrich et al. yields
up to 18% shorter distances for stars near the main-sequence turnoff (TO). Use
of the correct relationship yields agreement between the distances assigned by
Carollo et al. and Ivezi\'{c} et al. for low-metallicity dwarfs to within
6-10%. Schoenrich et al. also point out that intermediate-gravity stars (3.5 <=
log g <= 4.0) with colors redder than the TO region are likely misclassified,
with which we concur. We implement a new procedure to reassign luminosity
classifications for the TO stars that require it. New derivations of the
rotational behavior demonstrate that the retrograde signature and high velocity
dispersion of the outer-halo population remains. We summarize additional lines
of evidence for a dual halo, including a test of the retrograde signature based
on proper motions alone, and conclude that the preponderance of evidence
strongly rejects the single-halo interpretation.Comment: 46 pages, 2 tables, 15 figures, Accepted for publication in the
Astrophysical Journa
Utility of COVID-19 antigen testing in the emergency department
Background: The BinaxNOW coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) Ag Card test (Abbott Diagnostics Scarborough, Inc.) is a lateral flow immunochromatographic point-of-care test for the qualitative detection of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) nucleocapsid protein antigen. It provides results from nasal swabs in 15 minutes. Our purpose was to determine its sensitivity and specificity for a COVID-19 diagnosis.
Methods: Eligible patients had symptoms of COVID-19 or suspected exposure. After consent, 2 nasal swabs were collected; 1 was tested using the Abbott RealTime SARS-CoV-2 (ie, the gold standard polymerase chain reaction test) and the second run on the BinaxNOW point of care platform by emergency department staff.
Results: From July 20 to October 28, 2020, 767 patients were enrolled, of which 735 had evaluable samples. Their mean (SD) age was 46.8 (16.6) years, and 422 (57.4%) were women. A total of 623 (84.8%) patients had COVID-19 symptoms, most commonly shortness of breath (n = 404; 55.0%), cough (n = 314; 42.7%), and fever (n = 253; 34.4%). Although 460 (62.6%) had symptoms â€7 days, the mean (SD) time since symptom onset was 8.1 (14.0) days. Positive tests occurred in 173 (23.5%) and 141 (19.2%) with the gold standard versus BinaxNOW test, respectively. Those with symptoms \u3e2 weeks had a positive test rate roughly half of those with earlier presentations. In patients with symptoms â€7 days, the sensitivity, specificity, and negative and positive predictive values for the BinaxNOW test were 84.6%, 98.5%, 94.9%, and 95.2%, respectively.
Conclusions: The BinaxNOW point-of-care test has good sensitivity and excellent specificity for the detection of COVID-19. We recommend using the BinasNOW for patients with symptoms up to 2 weeks
Different paths to the modern state in Europe: the interaction between domestic political economy and interstate competition
Theoretical work on state formation and capacity has focused mostly on early modern Europe and on the experience of western European states during this period. While a number of European states monopolized domestic tax collection and achieved gains in state capacity during the early modern era, for others revenues stagnated or even declined, and these variations motivated alternative hypotheses for determinants of fiscal and state capacity. In this study we test the basic hypotheses in the existing literature making use of the large date set we have compiled for all of the leading states across the continent. We find strong empirical support for two prevailing threads in the literature, arguing respectively that interstate wars and changes in economic structure towards an urbanized economy had positive fiscal impact. Regarding the main point of contention in the theoretical literature, whether it was representative or authoritarian political regimes that facilitated the gains in fiscal capacity, we do not find conclusive evidence that one performed better than the other. Instead, the empirical evidence we have gathered lends supports to the hypothesis that when under pressure of war, the fiscal performance of representative regimes was better in the more urbanized-commercial economies and the fiscal performance of authoritarian regimes was better in rural-agrarian economie
Analysis of Systematic Effects and Statistical Uncertainties in Angular Clustering of Galaxies from Early SDSS Data
The angular distribution of galaxies encodes a wealth of information about
large scale structure. Ultimately, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) will
record the angular positions of order 10^8 galaxies in five bands, adding
significantly to the cosmological constraints. This is the first in a series of
papers analyzing a rectangular stripe 2.5x90 degrees from early SDSS data. We
present the angular correlation function for galaxies in four separate
magnitude bins on angular scales ranging from 0.003 degrees to 15 degrees. Much
of the focus of this paper is on potential systematic effects. We show that the
final galaxy catalog -- with the mask accounting for regions of poor seeing,
reddening, bright stars, etc. -- is free from external and internal systematic
effects for galaxies brighter than r* = 22. Our estimator of the angular
correlation function includes the effects of the integral constraint and the
mask. The full covariance matrix of errors in these estimates is derived using
mock catalogs with further estimates using a number of other methods.Comment: 64 pages, 31 figures, new version to match that accepted by Ap
Cosmological Constraints from the SDSS Luminous Red Galaxies
We measure the large-scale real-space power spectrum P(k) using luminous red
galaxies (LRGs) in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and use this measurement
to sharpen constraints on cosmological parameters from the Wilkinson Microwave
Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). We employ a matrix-based power spectrum estimation
method using Pseudo-Karhunen-Loeve eigenmodes, producing uncorrelated
minimum-variance measurements in 20 k-bands of both the clustering power and
its anisotropy due to redshift-space distortions, with narrow and well-behaved
window functions in the range 0.01h/Mpc < k < 0.2h/Mpc. Results from the LRG
and main galaxy samples are consistent, with the former providing higher
signal-to-noise. Our results are robust to omitting angular and radial density
fluctuations and are consistent between different parts of the sky. They
provide a striking confirmation of the predicted large-scale LCDM power
spectrum.
Combining only SDSS LRG and WMAP data places robust constraints on many
cosmological parameters that complement prior analyses of multiple data sets.
The LRGs provide independent cross-checks on Om and the baryon fraction in good
agreement with WMAP. Within the context of flat LCDM models, our LRG
measurements complement WMAP by sharpening the constraints on the matter
density, the neutrino density and the tensor amplitude by about a factor of
two, giving Omega_m=0.24+-0.02 (1 sigma), sum m_nu < 0.9 eV (95%) and r<0.3
(95%). Baryon oscillations are clearly detected and provide a robust
measurement of the comoving distance to the median survey redshift z=0.35
independent of curvature and dark energy properties. Within the LCDM framework,
our power spectrum measurement improves the evidence for spatial flatness,
sharpening the curvature constraint Omega_tot=1.05+-0.05 from WMAP alone to
Omega_tot=1.003+-0.010. Assuming Omega_tot=1, the equation of state parameter
is constrained to w=-0.94+-0.09, indicating the potential for more ambitious
future LRG measurements to provide precision tests of the nature of dark
energy. All these constraints are essentially independent of scales k>0.1h/Mpc
and associated nonlinear complications, yet agree well with more aggressive
published analyses where nonlinear modeling is crucial.Comment: Matches accepted PRD version. SDSS data, likelihood code, Markov
chains and ppt figures available at
http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/sdss.html 36 journal pages, 25 figs.
CosmoMC plugin at http://cosmologist.info/cosmomc
TriTrypDB: a functional genomic resource for the Trypanosomatidae
TriTrypDB (http://tritrypdb.org) is an integrated database providing access to genome-scale datasets for kinetoplastid parasites, and supporting a variety of complex queries driven by research and development needs. TriTrypDB is a collaborative project, utilizing the GUS/WDK computational infrastructure developed by the Eukaryotic Pathogen Bioinformatics Resource Center (EuPathDB.org) to integrate genome annotation and analyses from GeneDB and elsewhere with a wide variety of functional genomics datasets made available by members of the global research community, often pre-publication. Currently, TriTrypDB integrates datasets from Leishmania braziliensis, L. infantum, L. major, L. tarentolae, Trypanosoma brucei and T. cruzi. Users may examine individual genes or chromosomal spans in their genomic context, including syntenic alignments with other kinetoplastid organisms. Data within TriTrypDB can be interrogated utilizing a sophisticated search strategy system that enables a user to construct complex queries combining multiple data types. All search strategies are stored, allowing future access and integrated searches. âUser Commentsâ may be added to any gene page, enhancing available annotation; such comments become immediately searchable via the text search, and are forwarded to curators for incorporation into the reference annotation when appropriate
Finding acute coronary syndrome with serial troponin testing for rapid assessment of cardiac ischemic symptoms (FAST-TRAC): a study protocol.
ObjectiveTo determine the utility of a highly sensitive troponin assay when utilized in the emergency department.MethodsThe FAST-TRAC study prospectively enrolled >1,500 emergency department patients with suspected acute coronary syndrome within 6 hours of symptom onset and 2 hours of emergency department presentation. It has several unique features that are not found in the majority of studies evaluating troponin. These include a very early presenting population in whom prospective data collection of risk score parameters and the physician's clinical impression of the probability of acute coronary syndrome before any troponin data were available. Furthermore, two gold standard diagnostic definitions were determined by a pair of cardiologists reviewing two separate data sets; one that included all local troponin testing results and a second that excluded troponin testing so that diagnosis was based solely on clinical grounds. By this method, a statistically valid head-to-head comparison of contemporary and high sensitivity troponin testing is obtainable. Finally, because of a significant delay in sample processing, a unique ability to define the molecular stability of various troponin assays is possible.Trial registrationClinicalTrials.gov Identifier NCT00880802
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