Visual Methods: Using Photographs to Capture Customers’ Experience with Design

Traditional guest feedback methods such as surveys or mystery shopping are not ideal for collecting information about customers\u27 reactions to a hotel\u27s physical design. Because design is a visual medium, survey questions may not capture the whole of a guest\u27s reaction to the design. By the same token, the reaction of mystery shoppers to design is not necessarily representative of all guests. Instead, a photography-based approach allows guests to show managers and researchers what they consider to be the hotel\u27s design highlights and failures. A pilot study indicated that guests took notice of design elements that signified that the hotel was being considerate of their needs, as well as providing a functional, high-quality environment

Electrostatic interactions in host-guest complexes 2

In this article the quantum chemically calculated charge density distribution of 18-crown-6 and the K+ 18-crown-6 complex are compared with the charge density distribution of smaller molecules and corresponding complexes which can be considered as fragments of the 18-crown-6 molecule. An analysis of the charge density distribution in terms of atomic charge distribution according to the stockholder recipe gives accurate rules for the transferability of the charge density distribution. This gives us the possibility to construct the charge density distribution of large molecules out of accurate large basis set results on small molecules

Fundamental building blocks of eumelanins: electronic properties of indolequinone-dimers

We present results from the theoretical INDO calculations of the electronic structure for stacked eumelanins' monomers. As basic indolic components of the eumelanin structure 5,6-dihydroxyindole (DHI or HQ) and its oxidized forms (SQ and IQ) were chosen. The results reveal dependency of electronic properties of such aggregates on monomers' redox states. They point out also a tendency to localize an extra charge on one of dimer's subunits that could be suggestive of an electron hopping as a model mechanism forthe electron transfer in eumelanins.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure

Effects of deployment on health behaviours in military forces: a review of longitudinal studies

Background: Earlier studies indicating that operational deployment affects health behaviours among military personnel and veterans generally lacked final conclusiveness due to cross-sectional or retrospective design.Aim: The aim of this study is to review longitudinal studies investigating whether military service, in particular operational deployment, affects health behaviours, specifically alcohol misuse, smoking, eating disorders and obesity.Methods: A MEDLINE database search was performed, using relevant keywords and MESH terms. The US Millennium Cohort study website was used to obtain the list of relevant publications. Only studies with prospective longitudinal cohort design, conducted on military or veteran populations of developed countries serving after the Vietnam War and investigating health behaviours and health markers such as excessive drinking, smoking, disordered eating and body weight were included.Results: Six studies fulfilled the inclusion criteria, three that resulted from the US Millennium Cohort study and three that investigated other military populations.Deployment with combat exposure was the most significant factor affecting health behaviours of military personnel.Excessive drinking among US military personnel increased significantly in those deployed that were exposed to combat, especially among Reserve and National Guard members and in the youngest age groups, but was not affected by deployment without combat exposure. Among British military personnel, total alcohol consumption increased with time, was higher for those deployed compared to non-deployed, and highest in those who experienced war related stress.Smoking in the US military increased among those deployed, particularly among those with prolonged and multiple deployments or with combat exposure. Among British military personnel, smoking rates declined.Body weight increased for the majority of US military personnel, but disordered eating was reported only among deployed women with combat exposure. An increase in body weight was also reported in the Belgian military.Conclusions: Generally, it was combat exposure, not deployment in general, that had affected health behaviours. As hazardous health behaviours may affect negatively on physical readiness and re-deployability of military personnel, preventive measures should concentrate on those subgroups that are most vulnerable

A Market Utility-Based Model for Capacity Scheduling in Mass Services

Only a small set of employee scheduling articles have considered an objective of profit or contribution maximization, as opposed to the traditional objective of cost (including opportunity costs) minimization. In this article, we present one such formulation that is a market utility-based model for planning and scheduling in mass services (mums), mums is a holistic approach to market-based service capacity scheduling. The mums framework provides the structure for modeling the consequences of aligning competitive priorities and service attributes with an element of the firm’s service infrastructure. We developed a new linear programming formulation for the shifts-scheduling problem that uses market share information generated by customer preferences for service attributes. The shift-scheduling formulation within the framework of mums provides a business-level model that predicts the economic impact of the employee schedule. We illustrated the shift-scheduling model with empirical data, and then compared its results with models using service standard and productivity standard approaches. The result of the empirical analysis provides further justification for the development of the market-based approach. Last, we discuss implications of this methodology for future research

Using a market-utility-based approach to designing public services: A case illustration from United States Forest Service

Government and public services have to not only enforce the requirements of the regulatory policies, but also have to satisfy the needs of preferences of their clients and customers. In this paper, we summarize the results of a multi-year case study conducted to assess the choices of campground users at the Shawnee National Forest (Illinois), which is managed by United States Forest Service. The results show how users' tradeoff between location, capacity-related and pricing attributes when choosing a campground. The case study provides guidance for design and development of new services and more effective management of effective resources within the national forest. © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Effective Product and Process Development Using Quality Function Deployment

[Excerpt] Even though a number of publications stress the usefulness of the house of quality, none of the well-cited articles shows an example of the complete QFD process. To successfully integrate the voice of the customer into the product design and development process, it is critical that the house of quality information is translated downstream to the other three matrices. Both new and existing products are made of several components, which are manufactured by multiple processes. Completing all four matrices will allow managers to identify and control the critical process parameters and will therefore lead to effective product and process development. Therefore, this chapter explains the main ideas behind the QFD process and presents an extended example of the use of QFD in manufacturing electrical transformers. This example will show how customer preferences can be deployed throughout product design and process development using quality function deployment

Detection of Hail Storms in Radar Imagery Using Deep Learning

In 2016, hail was responsible for 3.5 billion and 23 million dollars in damage to property and crops, respectively, making it the second costliest weather phenomenon in the United States. In an effort to improve hail-prediction techniques and reduce the societal impacts associated with hail storms, we propose a deep learning technique that leverages radar imagery for automatic detection of hail storms. The technique is applied to radar imagery from 2011 to 2016 for the contiguous United States and achieved a precision of 0.848. Hail storms are primarily detected through the visual interpretation of radar imagery (Mrozet al., 2017). With radars providing data every two minutes, the detection of hail storms has become a big data task. As a result, scientists have turned to neural networks that employ computer vision to identify hail-bearing storms (Marzbanet al., 2001). In this study, we propose a deep Convolutional Neural Network (ConvNet) to understand the spatial features and patterns of radar echoes for detecting hailstorms

5,6-dihydroxyindole-2-carboxylic acid (DHICA): a First Principles Density-Functional Study

We report first principles density functional calculations for 5,6-dihydroxyindole-2-carboxylic acid (DHICA) and several reduced forms. DHICA and 5,6-dihydroxyindole (DHI) are believed to be the basic building blocks of the eumelanins. Our results show that carboxylation has a significant effect on the physical properties of the molecules. In particular, the relative stabilities and the HOMO-LUMO gaps (calculated with the $\Delta$SCF method) of the various redox forms are strongly affected. We predict that, in contrast to DHI, the density of unpaired electrons, and hence the ESR signal, in DHICA is negligibly small.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Country Natural Beef: A Maturing Co-op at the Crossroads

A Business Base Study of a Group of Northwest Cattle Ranchers that Formed a Co-op to Market Natural Beef Products, in the Face of economic uncertainty and the rise of corporate farms and ranches. Provides an overview of the cattle ranching industry, the history of the co-op, its economic outlook, and future challenges