The impact of perceived service quality on patient satisfaction and behavioral intention: The case of a private dental hospital in China

To explore the impact of perceived service quality on patient satisfaction and behavioral intention in the field of oral health, this research put forth a model of the relationship between perceived service quality, perceived value, patient satisfaction, and their behavioral intentions based on the European Customer Satisfaction Index (ECSI model). The five dimensions of SERVQUAL model are integrated into the three variables, namely enterprise image, medical facilities and medical personnel. Meanwhile, patient participation is introduced as a moderator to explore its moderating effect on perceived value and patient satisfaction. A total of 245 valid questionnaires were collected from patients receiving treatment in the surveyed hospital. Data analysis was carried out using statistical methods including confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), descriptive statistics, Cluster analysis, structural equation modeling (SEM), and three-level regression analysis. Results show that service personnel of dental institutions have a positive impact on patients' behavioral intention and perceived value, and perceived value positively correlates with patient satisfaction; service facilities also have a positive correlation with patient satisfaction; patient satisfaction positively impacts patients’ behavior intention. Moreover, patient satisfaction and perceived value act as mediators when corporate image and service personnel exert influence on patients' behavioral intentions. Based on above research results, the research proposed improvement solutions to the hospital from the perspective of patient satisfaction and behavior intention, and gave policy suggestions on upgrading the overall service level of the dental care industry in China.Para estudar o impacto da perceção de qualidade de serviço na satisfação do paciente e na intenção comportamental na área da saúde oral, esta investigação explora um modelo da relação entre a perceção da qualidade do serviço, o valor percebido, a satisfação do paciente, e as suas intenções comportamentais baseadas no Índice Europeu de Satisfação do Cliente (modelo ECSI). A investigação integrou cinco dimensões do modelo SERVQUAL e três variáveis relacionadas com a imagem corporativa, facilidade de serviço, e pessoal de serviço em organizações de medicina dentárias. Utilizou-se igualmente a "participação do paciente" como variável moderadora para verificar o efeito moderador da participação do paciente no valor percebido e na satisfação do paciente. A amostra envolveu 245 pacientes de um hospital de medicina dentária que responderam a um questionário. A análise de dados foi realizada utilizando métodos estatísticos tais como a análise fatorial confirmatória (CFA), estatística descritiva, análise de Cluster, equações estruturais (SEM), e análise de regressão a três níveis. Os resultados revelam que o pessoal de serviço nas instituições dentárias tem um impacto positivo na intenção comportamental e no valor percebido dos pacientes; o valor percebido correlaciona-se positivamente com a satisfação do paciente; as instalações também têm uma correlação positiva com a satisfação do paciente; a satisfação do paciente tem um impacto positivo na intenção comportamental do paciente. Além disso, a satisfação do paciente e o valor percebido atuam como mediadores quando a imagem corporativa e o pessoal de serviços exercem influência sobre as intenções comportamentais dos pacientes. Com base nos resultados, são propostas ao hospital algumas soluções de melhoria que visam aumentar a satisfação do paciente e da intenção comportamental. São também apresentadas e discutidas algumas sugestões para melhorar o nível global de serviços da indústria de cuidados dentários na China

Prediction of solvent accessibility and sites of deleterious mutations from protein sequence

Residues that form the hydrophobic core of a protein are critical for its stability. A number of approaches have been developed to classify residues as buried or exposed. In order to optimize the classification, we have refined a suite of five methods over a large dataset and proposed a metamethod based on an ensemble average of the individual methods, leading to a two-state classification accuracy of 80%. Many studies have suggested that hydrophobic core residues are likely sites of deleterious mutations, so we wanted to see to what extent these sites can be predicted from the putative buried residues. Residues that were most confidently classified as buried were proposed as sites of deleterious mutations. This proposition was tested on six proteins for which sites of deleterious mutations have previously been identified by stability measurement or functional assay. Of the total of 130 residues predicted as sites of deleterious mutations, 104 (or 80%) were correct

GASdb: a large-scale and comparative exploration database of glycosyl hydrolysis systems

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The genomes of numerous cellulolytic organisms have been recently sequenced or in the pipeline of being sequenced. Analyses of these genomes as well as the recently sequenced metagenomes in a systematic manner could possibly lead to discoveries of novel biomass-degradation systems in nature.</p> <p>Description</p> <p>We have identified 4,679 and 49,099 free acting glycosyl hydrolases with or without carbohydrate binding domains, respectively, by scanning through all the proteins in the UniProt Knowledgebase and the JGI Metagenome database. Cellulosome components were observed only in bacterial genomes, and 166 cellulosome-dependent glycosyl hydrolases were identified. We observed, from our analysis data, unexpected wide distributions of two less well-studied bacterial glycosyl hydrolysis systems in which glycosyl hydrolases may bind to the cell surface directly rather than through linking to surface anchoring proteins, or cellulosome complexes may bind to the cell surface by novel mechanisms other than the other used SLH domains. In addition, we found that animal-gut metagenomes are substantially enriched with novel glycosyl hydrolases.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The identified biomass degradation systems through our large-scale search are organized into an easy-to-use database GASdb at <url>http://csbl.bmb.uga.edu/~ffzhou/GASdb/</url>, which should be useful to both experimental and computational biofuel researchers.</p

Towards a muon scattering tomography system for both low-Z and high-Z materials

Muon scattering tomography (MST) is a non-destructive technique to image various materials by utilizing cosmic ray muons as probes. A typical MST system with a two-fold track detectors is particularly effective in detecting high-$Z$ materials (e.g. nuclear materials), but difficult to recognize low-$Z$ materials (e.g. explosive materials). In this work, we present a concept of MST system to discriminate both low-$Z$ and high-$Z$ materials by extra measuring momentum of low-energy muons with a Cherenkov detector. A toy Monte Carlo simulation to describe detector responses and multiple scatterings of a muon tracking through materials is developed for statistical tests. Based on momentum-dependent track reconstruction and image reconstruction algorithm, we evaluate separation powers of different materials in the system. The results show that momentum measurement of low-energy muons and accurate track reconstruction can improve separation power of low-$Z$ materials significantly. This may enable the MST system to detect both low-$Z$ and high-$Z$ materials with cosmic ray muons in the whole energy range.Comment: 17 pages with 13 figures and 1 tabl

Effect of Recession on the Re-entry Capsule Aerodynamic Characteristic

AbstractNumerical simulation and analysis of aerodynamic characteristics of Soyuz ablation shape is carried out in this paper for the adverse influence coming from recession. The result indicates that the shape change caused by the recession will increase absolute value of trim angle of attack and trim lift-drag ratio. The conclusion offers reference for the aerodynamic layout design and improve of the Soyuz re-entry capsule

Experimental investigation of dielectric barrier impact on breakdown voltage enhancement of copper wire-plane electrode systems

Non-pressurized air is extensively used as basic insulation media in medium / high voltage equipments. An inherent property of air-insulated designs is that the systems tend to become physically large. Application of Dielectric barrier can increase the breakdown voltage and therefore decrease the size of the equipments. In this paper, the impact of dielectric barrier on breakdown voltage enhancement of a copper wire-plane system is investigated. For this purpose, the copper wire is covered with different dielectric materials. Depending on the air gap and dielectric strength of the barrier the breakdown can be initiated in the solid or gas dielectric. Theoretically, free charges are affected by the electric field between the electrodes and accumulated at the dielectric surface, this leads to the reduction of electric field in air gap and enhancement of the ifield in the dielectric layer. Therefore, with appropriate selection of the barrier thickness and material, it is possible to increase the breakdown voltage of the insulation system. The influence of different parameters like inter-electrode spacing, and dielectric material on the break-down voltage is investigated for applied 50 Hz AC and DC voltages. The results indicate that up to 240% increase of the breakdown voltage can be achieved

MiR-103a targeting Piezo1 is involved in acute myocardial infarction through regulating endothelium function

Background: Acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is commonly known as the heart attack. The molecular events involved in the development of AMI remain unclear. This study was to investigate the expression of miR-103a in patients with high blood pressure (HBP) and AMI patients with and without HBP, as well as its effect on endothelial cell functions. Methods: MiR-103a expression in plasma and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) was measured by real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The regulatory effect of miR-103a on Piezo1 gene was identified by a luciferase reporter system. The role of miR-103a in endothelial cells was evaluated by the capillary tube formation ability and cell viability of human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs). Results: The plasma miR-103a concentration was significantly elevated in patients with HBP alone, AMI alone, and comorbidity of AMI and HBP. The miR-103a expression in PBMCs in patients with AMI and HBP was significantly higher than the one in healthy controls (p &lt; 0.05), however miR-103a expression in PBMCs was not significantly different among patients with HBP alone, patients with AMI alone, and healthy controls. MiR-103a targeted Piezo1 and inhibited Piezo1 protein expression, which subsequently reduced capillary tube formation ability and cell viability of HUVECs. Conclusions: MiR-103a might be a potential biomarker of myocardium infarction and could be used as an index for the diagnosis of AMI. It may be involved in the development of HBP and onset of AMI through regulating the Piezo1 expression.

Effective Room-Temperature Ammonia-Sensitive Composite Sensor Based on Graphene Nanoplates and PANI

The graphene nanoplate (GN)-polyaniline (PANI) composite was developed via in-situ polymerization method and simultaneously assembled on interdigital electrodes (IDEs) at low temperature for ammonia (NH3) detection. The assembled composite sensor showed excellent sensing performance toward different concentrations of NH3, 1.5 of response value and 123 s/204 s for the response/recovery time to 15 ppm NH3. Meanwhile, an interesting supersaturation phenomenon was observed at high concentration of NH3. A reasonable speculation was proposed for this special sensing behavior and the mechanism for enhanced sensing properties was also analyzed