Rating system in Food delivery

A small business in food delivery has much competition. The organisation delivers food in food trucks at local markets. The aim of this research is to examine how a rating system will impact on the quality of goods and services and customer satisfaction levels. This research will accomplish the aim in three steps: examine the current state of food trucks, investigate the potential of a rating system, and identify further avenues to use rating systems efficiently. A survey of customers will be used to gather quantitative data and an interview to gather qualitative data

A Bayesian space–time model for clustering areal units based on their disease trends

Population-level disease risk across a set of non-overlapping areal units varies in space and time, and a large research literature has developed methodology for identifying clusters of areal units exhibiting elevated risks. However, almost no research has extended the clustering paradigm to identify groups of areal units exhibiting similar temporal disease trends. We present a novel Bayesian hierarchical mixture model for achieving this goal, with inference based on a Metropolis-coupled Markov chain Monte Carlo ((MC) 3 ) algorithm. The effectiveness of the (MC) 3 algorithm compared to a standard Markov chain Monte Carlo implementation is demonstrated in a simulation study, and the methodology is motivated by two important case studies in the United Kingdom. The first concerns the impact on measles susceptibility of the discredited paper linking the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination to an increased risk of Autism and investigates whether all areas in the Scotland were equally affected. The second concerns respiratory hospitalizations and investigates over a 10 year period which parts of Glasgow have shown increased, decreased, and no change in risk

The Decisions and Ideal Points of British Law Lords

Policy-sensitive models of judicial behaviour, whether attitudinal or strategic, have largely passed Britain by. This article argues that this neglect has been benign, because explanations of judicial decisions in terms of the positions of individual judges fare poorly in the British case. To support this argument, the non-unanimous opinions of British Law Lords between 1969 and 2009 are analysed. A hierarchical item-response model of individual judges’ votes is estimated in order to identify judges’ locations along a one-dimensional policy space. Such a model is found to be no better than a null model that predicts that every judge will vote with the majority with the same probability. Locations generated by the model do not represent judges’ political attitudes, only their propensity to dissent. Consequently, judges’ individual votes should not be used to describe them in political terms

Pregabalin and gabapentin for the management of chronic sciatica: determining utility, effect on functioning capacity, quality of life and clinical outcome

Background: Pain is a major clinical problem, the true prevalence of which is difficult to estimate as it encompasses a variety of disorders. Sciatica is considered a type of neuropathic pain (NP) characterised by severe low back pain radiating down the leg to below the knee. Chronic sciatica (CS) is sciatica lasting longer than three months. There are few clinical guidelines for treating of CS, reflecting a gap in quality evidence for effective therapies. Recently, two medications gabapentin (GBP) and pregabalin (PGB) have been used in the management of CS. Evidence for their usage is limited with no direct, high quality research to determine if one is superior to the other. This research answers that question and helps guide clinicians as to the best treatment option for CS. Methods: The thesis includes a literature review to gauge current management of CS with PGB and GBP. The work uses a mixed-methods approach to gain evidence on efficacy, disability and personality traits which will guide clinician's choice of either GBP or PGB. A mix of methods was chosen, to capture patient's treatment experiences more broadly and not simply being restricted to symptom relief. Anecdotal evidence suggests a variable response to either drug, both in terms of efficacy and adverse events (AEs). However, we are unsure at what point the balance of benefits against AEs tips and patients make the decision to abandon treatment. To gather this information and draw conclusions regarding the optimal treatment for patients with CS, this project collects background information on patient's perceptions related to treatment, and conducts a novel randomised controlled trial to determine head to head which treatment is more efficacious. We set out to establish whether one drug has a superior profile to the other and if there are any other differences in treatment outcomes. Hypothesis: We hypothesise that there are differences between the drugs, where (1) one drug (PGB) has a superior profile in pain and disability reduction, as well as (2) frequency and severity of adverse events. Results: Retrospective data showed AEs to be a limiting factor for treatment outcomes and compliance when GBP was added to a first line agent. The clinical trial reported here showed that, while PGB and GBP were both significantly efficacious in reducing pain intensity in patients with CS, GBP was superior when compared 'head-to-head'. Moreover, GBP was associated with fewer and less severe AEs. Neither drug was superior when compared 'head-to-head' for reducing disability in our study group. Our exploratory study on personality traits showed that patients with a predominantly external self-control had worse outcomes. Specifically, an external self-control resulted in lower pain severity reductions especially with PGB. Moreover, PGB alone demonstrated a high, and statistically significant, positive correlation with external self-control resulting in higher pain values for patients displaying this personality trait. There were no notable differences between drugs when personality and disability severity were compared. Conclusion: This research makes a significant original contribution to the literature by addressing a key gap regarding the utilisation of pain medication for CS, namely with PGB and GBP. We found that GBP was superior to PGB for reducing pain severity and for being associated with fewer and less severe AEs. Moreover, our results show having a personality trait of external locus of self-control, negatively effects treatment outcomes with PGB. Our findings provide a body of evidence which can formally guide treatment decisions for patients with CS considering pain severity, disability severity, AEs and personality

The Illusion of Recovery in New Orleans: Displaced, Misplaced, and Replaced

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College

Crystallization of calcite from amorphous calcium carbonate: earthworms show the way

No abstract available

Lagrangian Statistics of Dark Halos in a LCDM Cosmology

New statistical properties of dark matter halos in Lagrangian space are presented. Tracing back the dark matter particles constituting bound halos resolved in a series of N-body simulations, we measure quantitatively the correlations of the proto-halo's inertia tensors with the local tidal tensors and investigate how the correlation strength depends on the proto-halo's sphericity, local density and filtering scale. It is shown that the majority of the proto-halos exhibit strong correlations between the two tensors provided that the tidal field is smoothed on the proto-halo's mass scale. The correlation strength is found to increase as the proto-halo's sphericity increases, as the proto-halo's mass increases, and as the local density becomes close to the critical value, delta_{ec}. It is also found that those peculiar proto-halos which exhibit exceptionally weak correlations between the two tensors tend to acquire higher specific angular momentum in Eulerian space, which is consistent with the linear tidal torque theory. In the light of our results, it is intriguing to speculate a hypothesis that the low surface brightness galaxies observed at present epoch correspond to the peculiar proto-halos with extreme low-sphericity whose inertia tensors are weakly correlated with the local tidal tensors.Comment: ApJ in press, accepted version, 20 pages, 8 figures, discussion on LSBGs improved, particle distribution of dark halos in Lagrangian space show

Space shuttle contamination due to backflow from control motor exhaust

Spacecraft contamination of the space shuttle orbiter and accompanying Spacelab payloads is studied. The scattering of molecules from the vernier engines and flash evaporator nozzle after impingement on the orbiter wing surfaces, and the backflow of molecules out of the flash evaporator nozzle plume flow field due to intermolecular collisions in the plume are the problems discussed. A method was formulated for dealing with these problems, and detailed results are given

How a rating system impacts on the quality of goods and services and satisfaction level of customers.

This research report is starting with presenting about the aim of examining ways to satisfy food truck customers with rating system by examining the current status of food truck businesses, investigating the potential of a rating system and generate further revenue to use a rating system. This report is presenting in order of organisation context, literature review, methods, results, discussion, conclusion, and recommendations. Mixed method is used for this research. For quantitative research, both online and offline survey were used. Result and discussion from them are presented by three topics: the popularity of food trucks, perception about food trucks and opinions about ‘Rating system’. For qualitative research, an interview was used. Result and discussion from it also presented by three topics: status of ‘Rating system’, perception about ‘Rating system’ and intention of showing ratings off to customers. Lastly, there are three recommendations covered in this research: collaborating with Ministry of Primary Industries, application of ‘Rating system’ and use of social media