An improvement plan to enhance employee engagement using a needs assessment method: A case study of a company in Thailand

This research employed needs assessment research aims to co-create a development plan to enhance employee engagement. Five variables have been assessed: leadership, communication, collaboration, career advancement, and empowerment. The instrument employed is a structured 25-questions survey. The samples consist of full-time employees of the company (n=60) who are front-line workers and top-level managers. The research site is in Bangkok, Thailand. Key findings showed a significant gap between the current and expected situation on all five variables. According to the PNIModified value, the top three variables indicated the priority needs for improvement: 1). Leadership,2). Career Advancement, and 3). Communication. An improvement plan comprised five short-term and five long-term actions whereby the common focus is on reinforcing the participatory work environment and systems to strengthen connectedness and engagement between the organization, managers and subordinates

Spatial-Assistant Encoder-Decoder Network for Real Time Semantic Segmentation

Semantic segmentation is an essential technology for self-driving cars to comprehend their surroundings. Currently, real-time semantic segmentation networks commonly employ either encoder-decoder architecture or two-pathway architecture. Generally speaking, encoder-decoder models tend to be quicker,whereas two-pathway models exhibit higher accuracy. To leverage both strengths, we present the Spatial-Assistant Encoder-Decoder Network (SANet) to fuse the two architectures. In the overall architecture, we uphold the encoder-decoder design while maintaining the feature maps in the middle section of the encoder and utilizing atrous convolution branches for same-resolution feature extraction. Toward the end of the encoder, we integrate the asymmetric pooling pyramid pooling module (APPPM) to optimize the semantic extraction of the feature maps. This module incorporates asymmetric pooling layers that extract features at multiple resolutions. In the decoder, we present a hybrid attention module, SAD, that integrates horizontal and vertical attention to facilitate the combination of various branches. To ascertain the effectiveness of our approach, our SANet model achieved competitive results on the real-time CamVid and cityscape datasets. By employing a single 2080Ti GPU, SANet achieved a 78.4 % mIOU at 65.1 FPS on the Cityscape test dataset and 78.8 % mIOU at 147 FPS on the CamVid test dataset. The training code and model for SANet are available at https://github.com/CuZaoo/SANet-mai

Construction and analysis of a survival-associated competing endogenous RNA network in breast cancer

BackgroundRecently, increasing studies have shown that non-coding RNAs are closely associated with the progression and metastasis of cancer by participating in competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) networks. However, the role of survival-associated ceRNAs in breast cancer (BC) remains unknown.MethodsThe Gene Expression Omnibus database and The Cancer Genome Atlas BRCA_dataset were used to identify differentially expressed RNAs. Furthermore, circRNA-miRNA interactions were predicted based on CircInteractome, while miRNA-mRNA interactions were predicted based on TargetScan, miRDB, and miRTarBase. The survival-associated ceRNA networks were constructed based on the predicted circRNA-miRNA and miRNA-mRNA pairs. Finally, the mechanism of miRNA-mRNA pairs was determined. Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analyses of survival-related mRNAs were performed using the hypergeometric distribution formula in R software.The prognosis of hub genes was confirmed using gene set enrichment analysis.ResultsBased on the DE-circRNAs of the top 10 initial candidates, 162 DE-miRNAsand 34 DE-miRNAs associated with significant overall survival were obtained. The miRNA target genes were then identified using online tools and verified using the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. Overall, 46 survival-associated DE-mRNAs were obtained. The results of GO and KEGG pathway enrichment analyses implied that up-regulated survival-related DE-mRNAs were mostly enriched in the “regulation of cell cycle” and “chromatin” pathways, while down-regulated survival-related DE-mRNAs were mostly enriched in “negative regulation of neurotrophin TRK receptor signaling” and “interleukin-6 receptor complex” pathways. Finally, the survival-associated circRNA-miRNA-mRNA ceRNA network was constructed using 34 miRNAs, 46 mRNAs, and 10 circRNAs. Based on the PPI network, two ceRNA axes were identified. These ceRNA axescould be considered biomarkers for BC.GSEA results revealed that the hub genes were correlated with “VANTVEER_BREAST_CANCER_POOR_PROGNOSIS”, and the hub genes were verified using BC patients' tissues.ConclusionsIn this study, we constructed a circRNA-mediated ceRNA network related to BC. This network provides new insight into discovering potential biomarkers for diagnosing and treating BC

Doing housework and having regular daily routine standing out as factors associate with physical function in the older people

Background and objectivesNationwide data were used to explore factors associated with physical function in order to identify interventions that could improve and maintain physical function in the older people.MethodsThe physical function was assessed by gait speed (GS). We selected 2,677 male and 2,668 female older adults (aged ≥60) who could perform the GS test as study subjects. GS was measured by having subjects walk across and back a 10-m course. A gait speed less than 20% that of a reference population (<0.7 m/s) was used as the definition of slow gait speed (SGS). Co-morbidity, polypharmacy, medical expenses, need for care, and hospitalization were used to evaluate health status. A stepwise logistic regression model was used to determine factors associated with SGS.ResultsSGS was associated with poorer health status, higher medical cost, lower ranking on the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) and decreased Mini-mental State Examination (MMSE). Co-morbidity (OR = 1.81, 1.58–2.07), polypharmacy (OR = 1.47, 1.25–1.74), MMSE <24 (OR = 1.85, 1.54–2.22), and GDS ≥ 11 (OR = 1.40, 1.18–1.65) were associated with SGS. In contrast, doing housework (DHW, OR = 0.43, 0.38–0.49), having a regular daily routine (RDR, OR = 0.64, 0.45–0.91), and current alcohol consumption (OR = 0.74, 0.62–0.90) were inversely associated with SGS. DHW plus having RDR could greatly reduce the risk of SGS (OR = 0.29, 0.19–0.43).ConclusionPoor physical function is associated with poorer health status in Chinese older people. Maintaining a regular daily routine and doing some housework may be important factors that can help older people preserve their physical function

Relationships between Serum Albumin and Urea Level and the Clinical Pathological Characteristics and Survival Time in Patients with Lung Cancer

Background and objective Lung cancer is the most common malignancy and is the leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. Thus, this disease severely threatens human health. This study aims to identify the relationships between serum albumin and urea level and the clinical pathological characteristics and survival time in patients with lung cancer. Methods A total of 1,098 patients with lung cancer were diagnosed by pathology and tested the serum albumin and urea level in West China Hospital of Sichuan University during January 2008 to December 2013. According to the levels of albumin and urea, patients were divided into the normal level group (negative group) and abnormal level group (positive group). The differences of patients' clinical pathological characteristics and survival time in the two groups were analyzed. Results Differences in age, sex, histological classification, liver metastasis and pleural metastasis were statistically significant between the two groups of serum albumin (P<0.05). Differences in age, intrapulmonary metastasis of 312 patients of squamous cell carcinoma and differences in age, sex, stages, pleural metastasis of 612 patients of adenocarcinoma between the two groups of serum albumin (P<0.05). There were no significant differences between the two groups of urea. In different histological classification between the two groups of serum albumin, the median survival period of squamous cell carcinoma was 36 months and 19 monthes, adenocarcinoma was 35 months and 15 monthes, the abnormal group were all significantly lower than those in the normal group. The median survival period was no significant difference between the two groups of urea. Conclusion The level of serum albumin is an important indicator for prognosis

Addition and Subtraction but Not Multiplication and Division Cause Shifts of Spatial Attention

Many studies have shown that solving addition and subtraction problems can induce overt shifts of spatial attention. In particular, right-side targets are detected faster than left-side targets when preceded by an addition operation, while left-side targets are detected faster than right-side targets when preceded by a subtraction operation. However, the interaction between space and arithmetic in multiplication or division is hardly studied and remains controversial. In order to make a strong case for the interaction between space and mental arithmetic, we attempted to replicate the spatial-arithmetic association in addition and subtraction (Experiment 1), and at the same time investigated whether shift of spatial attention would also be induced by multiplication or division operations (Experiment 2). We found that solving addition problems facilitated the detection of right-side targets, whereas left-side targets were detected faster after solving subtraction problems. However, no interaction between space and arithmetic operation was observed in multiplication or division. The implication of these findings is discussed