Crafting organization

The recent shift in attention away from organization studies as science has allowed for consideration of new ways of thinking about both organization and organizing and has led to several recent attempts to \u27bring down\u27 organizational theorizing. In this paper, we extend calls for organization to be represented as a creative process by considering organization as craft. Organizational craft, we argue, is attractive, accessible, malleable, reproducible, and marketable. It is also a tangible way of considering organization studies with irreverence. We draw on the hierarchy of distinctions among fine art, decorative art, and craft to suggest that understanding the organization of craft assists in complicating our understanding of marginality. We illustrate our argument by drawing on the case of a contemporary Australian craftworks and marketplace known initially as the Meat Market Craft Centre (\u27MMCC\u27) and then, until its recent closure, as Metro! &Dagger; Stella Minahan was a board member and then the Chief Executive Officer of the Metro! Craft Centre.<br /

Healthcare Engineering Defined: A White Paper

Engineering has been playing an important role in serving and advancing healthcare. The term "Healthcare Engineering" has been used by professional societies, universities, scientific authors, and the healthcare industry for decades. However, the definition of "Healthcare Engineering" remains ambiguous. The purpose of this position paper is to present a definition of Healthcare Engineering as an academic discipline, an area of research, a field of specialty, and a profession. Healthcare Engineering is defined in terms of what it is, who performs it, where it is performed, and how it is performed, including its purpose, scope, topics, synergy, education/training, contributions, and prospects

Impact of COVID-19 on cardiovascular testing in the United States versus the rest of the world

Objectives: This study sought to quantify and compare the decline in volumes of cardiovascular procedures between the United States and non-US institutions during the early phase of the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the care of many non-COVID-19 illnesses. Reductions in diagnostic cardiovascular testing around the world have led to concerns over the implications of reduced testing for cardiovascular disease (CVD) morbidity and mortality. Methods: Data were submitted to the INCAPS-COVID (International Atomic Energy Agency Non-Invasive Cardiology Protocols Study of COVID-19), a multinational registry comprising 909 institutions in 108 countries (including 155 facilities in 40 U.S. states), assessing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on volumes of diagnostic cardiovascular procedures. Data were obtained for April 2020 and compared with volumes of baseline procedures from March 2019. We compared laboratory characteristics, practices, and procedure volumes between U.S. and non-U.S. facilities and between U.S. geographic regions and identified factors associated with volume reduction in the United States. Results: Reductions in the volumes of procedures in the United States were similar to those in non-U.S. facilities (68% vs. 63%, respectively; p = 0.237), although U.S. facilities reported greater reductions in invasive coronary angiography (69% vs. 53%, respectively; p < 0.001). Significantly more U.S. facilities reported increased use of telehealth and patient screening measures than non-U.S. facilities, such as temperature checks, symptom screenings, and COVID-19 testing. Reductions in volumes of procedures differed between U.S. regions, with larger declines observed in the Northeast (76%) and Midwest (74%) than in the South (62%) and West (44%). Prevalence of COVID-19, staff redeployments, outpatient centers, and urban centers were associated with greater reductions in volume in U.S. facilities in a multivariable analysis. Conclusions: We observed marked reductions in U.S. cardiovascular testing in the early phase of the pandemic and significant variability between U.S. regions. The association between reductions of volumes and COVID-19 prevalence in the United States highlighted the need for proactive efforts to maintain access to cardiovascular testing in areas most affected by outbreaks of COVID-19 infection

Queueing systems subject to random server failures: an approximation

Due to the character of the original source materials and the nature of batch digitization, quality control issues may be present in this document. Please report any quality issues you encounter to [email protected], referencing the URI of the item.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 43-44).In the traditional study of queueing theory, a typical ics. assumption is that the server is not subject to failures. This assumption, however, is not realistic for modeling many queueing systems in practice. Since the late 1950's, there has been research into finding exact or approximate methods that adjust key performance measures of a system to reflect server failures. Many of the methods that have been developed suffer either from a high degree of computational complexity or from tight restrictions on possible system structures feasible for the particular method. In this thesis, an approximation method is formulated which allows for a general system structure (i.e. the distributions for arrival, service, failure, and repair times are arbitrary), and yet maintains computational simplicity and efficiency. This method will be obtained through the implementation of a stationary delayed renewal process and simple modifications of common approximation formulas for a G/G/m queue. Through experimentation, approximated values are compared to exact values, and system structures that tend to induce error are identified

Cornish–Fisher-Based Control Charts Inclusive of Skewness and Kurtosis Measures for Monitoring the Mean of a Process

In this paper, we propose control limits for monitoring the mean of a process variable based on a first and second order Cornish–Fisher expansion, which limits are inclusive of its skewness and kurtosis measures, respectively. These are shown to have better in-control error performance than other limits that were similarly derived from this expansion with smoothing functions, both when these measures are assumed to be known and estimated from sample data. The range of measure specifications where the underlying Cornish–Fisher function is monotonic is derived. Operating characteristic curves for select cases demonstrate the associated out-of-control error performance. The Cornish–Fisher limits are applied to a real-life dataset in developing a control chart for monitoring the mean lifetime of car brake pads, wherein they are compared to other limit approximations

Fast-Fading, an Additional Mistaken Axiom of Wireless-Network Research

The perplexity of designing an effective underlying communication protocol for Mobile Wireless Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) is quite prevalent. In recent years, many protocols have been designed and evaluated through discrete event simulators. The lack of fidelity in these simulations, however, often yields results that support the incremental addition of control overhead to increase end-to-end performance measures of the protocol. It is argued herein that this additional overhead is largely ineffective when a fast-fading model is incorporated into the simulation. In particular, a comparison of the well established Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) protocol and its simplified version, known as the (AODVjr) protocol, under Ricean and Rayleigh fading models is presented. It is shown that the end-to-end performance ofAODV is negligible in comparison to the AODVjr protocol, which possess minimal control overhead, when fast-fading models are incorporated into the simulation environment

A Statistical Viewpoint on the Use of GPS Information in Wireless Ad Hoc Protocols

In this paper, we consider the impact of fast fading effects on the discovery and maintenance of routes in a MANET.We provide a statistical interpretation of link quality-based on the instantaneous received power under a mulitpath fading model, for which associated types one and two errors are defined. Based on this viewpoint, we propose embedding GPS information into the AODVjr protocol to block the discovery of routes with unreliable links and thereby enhance end-to-end performance of the system