Protocol: Triple Diamond method for problem solving and design thinking. Rubric validation

[EN] There is a set of tools that we can use to improve the results of each of the phases that continuous improvement projects must go through (8D, PDCA, DMAIC, Double diamond, etc.). These methods use divergent techniques, which help generate multiple alternatives, and convergent techniques that help analyze and filter the generated options. However, the tools used in all those frameworks are often very similar. Our goal, in this research, is to develop a comprehensive model that allows it to be used both for problem-solving and for taking advantage of opportunities. This protocol defines the main terms related to our research, makes a framework proposal, proposes a rubric that identifies observable milestones at each stage of the model and proposes the action plan to validate this rubric and the model in a given context. The action plan will be implemented in a future research.Marin-Garcia, JA.; Garcia-Sabater, JJ.; Garcia-Sabater, JP.; Maheut, J. (2020). Protocol: Triple Diamond method for problem solving and design thinking. Rubric validation. WPOM-Working Papers on Operations Management. 11(2):49-68. https://doi.org/10.4995/wpom.v11i2.14776OJS496811

Immobilization of Pyrene-Tagged Palladium and Ruthenium Complexes onto Reduced Graphene Oxide: An Efficient and Highly Recyclable Catalyst for Hydrodefluorinatio

The co-immobilization of palladium and ruthenium complexes with pyrene-tagged Nheterocyclic carbene ligands onto reduced grahene oxide allows the formation of a highly efficient catalyst for the hydrodefluorination of a series of fluoroarenes. This procedure constitutes an easy one-pot preparation of materials with homogeneously distributed polymetallic catalysts. The catalytic system can be recycled for up to twelve times without measurable loss of activity. The activity of the catalyst is attributed to the synergistic action of the two metals.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación of Spain (CTQ2011- 24055/BQU)

Testing transpiration rates of juvenile Aleppo pine trees using the heat ratio method under laboratory conditions

Tree transpiration considerably contributes to evaporative fluxes to the atmosphere in terrestrial ecosystems. Accurate transpiration quantification provides relevant information about forest water use and may benefit adaptive forest management, especially in a global change context. Tree transpiration can be measured by several methods, and sap flow measurements are one of the most valued. However, species-specific validations of these techniques are required to avoid undesirable bias. This is especially relevant in species with low transpiration rates where errors may be relevant, such as Aleppo pine trees (Pinus halepensis Mill.). Moreover, another significant source of uncertainty in sap flow measurements is probe misalignment. Hence, the aim of this study was to correlate transpiration rates estimated by sap flow probes using the heat ratio method (THRM) and load cells to independently monitor water transpiration in juvenile Aleppo pine trees. The corrections to improve transpiration measures, including misalignment correction, were applied to THRM results to test if the accuracy of results improved. These measurements were recorded in greenhouse under controlled conditions to implement different environmental conditions. The environmental variables that ruled the experiment, mainly vapour pressure deficit and soil water availability, spanned in a wide range of values. The results showed an accurate linear correspondence between TOBS and THRM for low and medium values, but moderate underestimations at high transpiration rates were observed. These underestimations were partly removed when applying probe misalignment correction. This study supports the notion that HRM offers accurate Aleppo pine transpiration estimations with low and medium values under a variety of abiotic conditions, which also has implications for HRM application in other isohydric species. The results also support the interest in the use of probe misalignment correction to estimate transpiration, mainly when high transpiration values are recorded. The results of this study can be considered as a preliminary approach for future research in order to improve the estimates of the transpiration rates of the Aleppo pine under the limiting conditions of the Mediterranean.This study was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities and the European Regional Development Fund through research projects “BLUEWATER-HYDROMED” (PID2019-111332RB-C21 MICINN/FEDER), “INERTIA_HYDROMED” (PID2019-111332RB-C22 MICINN/FEDER) and “VERSUS” (CGL2015-67466-R MICINN/FEDER), “IMAGINA– PROMETEOII/2019/110” funded by the Generalitat Valenciana. A.M. Sabater was supported by a European Social Fund and the Generalitat Valenciana with a PhD contract (ACIF/2018/279). The CEAM Foundation is supported by the Generalitat Valenciana (Spain)

Enhancement of gold catalytic activity and stability by immobilization on the surface of graphene

The catalytic performance of gold complexes is evaluated at the molecular level and when supported onto reduced graphene oxide (rGO). Gold complexes of general formula [(NHC)AuX] catalyse the synthesis of indoles via intramolecular hydroamination reaction of alkynes. The catalytic properties of the molecular gold complexes are highly improved when supported onto graphene. Faster reaction rates and higher catalyst stability are observed for the immobilized gold complexes. The use of graphene as support of molecular complexes has a positive benefit in the catalytic gold properties in terms of activity and stabilityThe authors thank the financial support from MINECO (CTQ2015-69153-C2-2-R), Generalitat Valenciana (AICO/2015/039) and Universitat Jaume I (P1.1B2015-09). D. V-E thanks MINECO for a FPU grant (FPU15/03011

A data generator for covid-19 patients’ care requirements inside hospitals

[EN] A Spanish version of the article is provided (see section before references). This paper presents the generation of a plausible data set related to the needs of COVID-19 patients with severe or critical symptoms. Possible illness’ stages were proposed within the context of medical knowledge as of January 2021. The parameters chosen in this data set were customized to fit the population data of the Valencia region (Spain) with approximately 2.5 million inhabitants. They were based on the evolution of the pandemic between September 2020 and March 2021, a period that included two complete waves of the pandemic. Contrary to expectation and despite the European and national transparency laws (BOE-A2013-12887, 2013; European Parliament and Council of the European Union, 2019), the actual COVID-19 pandemic-related data, at least in Spain, took considerable time to be updated and made available (usually a week or more). Moreover, some relevant data necessary to develop and validate hospital bed management models were not publicly accessible. This was either because these data were not collected, because public agencies failed to make them public (despite having them indexed in their databases), the data were processed within indicators and not shown as raw data, or they simply published the data in a format that was difficult to process (e.g., PDF image documents versus CSV tables). Despite the potential of hospital information systems, there were still data that were not adequately captured within these systems. Moreover, the data collected in a hospital depends on the strategies and practices specific to that hospital or health system. This limits the generalization of "real" data, and it encourages working with "realistic" or plausible data that are clean of interactions with local variables or decisions (Gunal, 2012; Marin-Garcia et al., 2020). Besides, one can parameterize the model and define the data structure that would be necessary to run the model without delaying till the real data become available. Conversely, plausible data sets can be generated from publicly available information and, later, when real data become available, the accuracy of the model can be evaluated (Garcia-Sabater and Maheut, 2021). This work opens lines of future research, both theoretical and practical. From a theoretical point of view, it would be interesting to develop machine learning tools that, by analyzing specific data samples in real hospitals, can identify the parameters necessary for the automatic prototyping of generators adapted to each hospital. Regarding the lines of research applied, it is evident that the formalism proposed for the generation of sound patients is not limited to patients affected by SARS-CoV-2 infection. The generation of heterogeneous patients can represent the needs of a specific population and serve as a basis for studying complex health service delivery systems.[ES] En este trabajo se presenta cómo se ha generado un conjunto de datos verosímiles relacionados con las necesidades de pacientes covid-19 con síntomas severe or critical. Se considerarán las etapas posibles con los conocimientos médicos a fecha de enero de 2021. Los parámetros elegidos en este data set están personalizados para adecuarse a los valores poblacionales de la región de Valencia (Spain), unos 2.5 Millones de habitantes y la evolución de la pandemia entre los meses de septiembre 2020 y marzo 2021, un periodo de tiempo que contemple dos olas completas de pandemia.En contra de lo que cabría esperar, a pesar de la ley de transparencia europea y nacional (BOE-A-2013-12887, 2013; Parlamento Europeo y del Consejo de la Unión Europea, 2019), los datos reales relacionados con la pandemia covid-19, al menos en España, tardan mucho en actualizarse y estar disponibles (normalmente una semana o más días). Además, algunos datos relevantes para trabajar los modelos de gestión de camas de hospital no están accesibles públicamente. Bien porque no se hayan recogido esos datos, o porque los organismos públicos no los ofrecen (a pesar de tenerlos indexados en sus bases de datos), o los ofrecen camuflados en indicadores procesados y no muestran los datos en bruto, o simplemente los publican en un formato de difícil reutilización (por ejemplo, en documentos PDF en lugar de en tablas CSV). A pesar de que los sistemas de información de los hospitales son bastante potentes, siguen existiendo datos que ni siquiera están recogidos adecuadamente en el sistema de información de salud.Por otra parte, los datos recogidos en un hospital dependen de las estrategias y practicas propias de ese hospital o sistema de salud. Este efecto limita la generalización de los datos “reales” y es necesario trabajar con datos “realistas” o verosímiles que están limpios de interacciones con variables o decisiones locales (Gunal, 2012; Marin-Garcia et al., 2020). Por un lado, se puede parametrizar el modelo y definir la estructura de datos que sería necesaria para ejecutar el modelo con datos reales. Por otro lado, se pueden generar conjuntos de datos verosímiles a partir de la información pública disponible y, posteriormente, cuando se disponga de los datos reales evaluar la bondad del modelo (Garcia-Sabater & Maheut, 2021).Marin-Garcia, JA.; Ruiz, A.; Julien, M.; Garcia-Sabater, JP. (2021). A data generator for covid-19 patients’ care requirements inside hospitals. WPOM-Working Papers on Operations Management. 12(1):76-115. https://doi.org/10.4995/wpom.1533276115121Alexander, G. L. (2007). The nurse-patient trajectory framework. Medinfo. MEDINFO, 12(Pt 2), 910- 914.Belciug, S., Bejinariu, S. I., & Costin, H. (2020). An artificial immune system approach for a multicompartment queuing model for improving medical resources and inpatient bed occupancy in pandemics. 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(2019). Memoria de gestión conselleria de sanitat universal i salut pública 2019. 14493-14496.Generalitat Valenciana. (2018). Memoria de Gestión de la Conselleria de Sanitat Universal i Salut Pública.Guan, W., Ni, Z., Hu, Y., Liang, W., Ou, C., He, J., Liu, L., Shan, H., Lei, C., Hui, D. S. C., Du, B., Li, L., Zeng, G., Yuen, K.-Y., Chen, R., Tang, C., Wang, T., Chen, P., Xiang, J., … Zhong, N. (2020). Clinical Characteristics of Coronavirus Disease 2019 in China. New England Journal of Medicine, 382(18), 1708-1720. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2002032Gunal, M. M. (2012). A guide for building hospital simulation models. Health Systems, 1(1), 17-25. https://doi.org/10.1057/hs.2012.8Hair, J. F., Black, W. C., Babin, B., & Anderson, R. E. (2009). Multivariate data analysis (7th edition). Prentice Hall. Huang, C., Wang, Y., Li, X., Ren, L., Zhao, J., Hu, Y., Zhang, L., Fan, G., Xu, J., Gu, X., Cheng, Z., Yu, T., Xia, J., Wei, Y., Wu, W., Xie, X., Yin, W., Li, H., Liu, M., … Cao, B. (2020). Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China. The Lancet, 395(10223), 497- 506. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30183-5Lagarda-Leyva, E. A., & Ruiz, A. (2019). A Systems Thinking Model to Support Long-Term Bearability of the Healthcare System: The Case of the Province of Quebec. Sustainability, 11(24), 7028. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11247028Manninen, K. (2020). Typical progress of covid-19. Marin-Garcia, J. A. (2015). Publishing in two phases for focused research by means of "research collaborations." WPOM-Working Papers on Operations Management, 6(2), 76. https://doi.org/10.4995/wpom.v6i2.4459Marin-Garcia, J. A., Bonavia, T., & Losilla, J.-M. (2020). Changes in the Association between European Workers' Employment Conditions and Employee Well-Being in 2005, 2010 and 2015. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(3), 1048. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17031048Marin-Garcia, J. A., Garcia-Sabater, J. P., Ruiz, A., Maheut, J., & Garcia-Sabater, J. J. (2020). Operations Management at the service of health care management: Example of a proposal for action research to plan and schedule health resources in scenarios derived from the COVID-19 outbreak. Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management, 13(2), 213. https://doi.org/10.3926/jiem.3190Marin-Garcia, J. A., Vidal-Carreras, P. I., Garcia Sabater, J. J., & Escribano-Martinez, J. (2019). Protocol: Value Stream Maping in Healthcare. A systematic literature review. WPOM-Working Papers on Operations Management, 10(2), 36. https://doi.org/10.4995/wpom.v10i2.12297Ministerio De Sanidad, Servicios Sociales e Igualdad. (2017). Hábitos de Vida Informe Anual del Sistema Nacional de salud 2016 (INFORMES,). MINISTERIO DE SANIDAD, SERVICIOS SOCIALES E IGUALDAD.Mun, J. (2008). Appendix C. Understanding and Choosing the Right Probability Distributions. Advanced Analytical Models: Over 800 Models and 300 Applications from the Basel II Accord to Wall Street and Beyond, 899-917. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119197096.app03Nino, V., Gomez, K., Martinez, K., & Claudio, D. (2021). Improving the registration process in a healthcare facility with lean principles. Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management, 14, in press. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/jiem.3432Olivieri, A., Palù, G., & Sebastiani, G. (2021). COVID-19 cumulative incidence, intensive care, and mortality in Italian regions compared to selected European countries. International Journal of Infectious Diseases, 102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijid.2020.10.070Parlamento Europeo y del Consejo de la Unión Europea. (2019). 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Catalytic applications of magnetic nanoparticles functionalized using iridium N-heterocyclic carbene complexes

synthetic modular methodology allows the preparation of catalytic materials based on magnetic nanoparticles with iridium N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) complexes. Imidazolium salts containing a ketone/aldehyde as a pendant functional group are the key species prepared. The condensation reaction of the Cp*IrNHC–CHO compound with magnetic nanoparticles containing amine groups on the surface yields the covalent anchoring of the iridium complex to the surface of the magnetite. The catalytic properties have been evaluated in transfer hydrogenation. The iridium complexes and the material are active in the reduction of ketones using isopropanol as the solvent and hydrogen donor. The catalytic results reveal that the catalytic activity of the material and the molecular complex are equivalent. We have not observed any change in activity due to the support. The recyclability properties of the magnetic material have been evaluated. The results show that the catalyst activity is maintained for two runs. This work describes a simple methodology for anchoring molecular complexes on the surface of magnetic nanoparticles.We thank the financial support from the Ministerio de Cienciave Innovación of Spain (CTQ2011-24055/BQU). We thank the ‘Generalitat Valenciana’ for a fellowship (S. Sabater). The authors are grateful to the ‘Serveis Centrals d’Instrumentació Científica (SCIC)’ of the Universitat Jaume I

Lagrangian relaxation of the generic materials and operations planning model

The supply chain management requires increasingly proposals for the production programming planning that brings together its special singularities. Solving coexisting products and alternative processes or by-products must be allowed by the mathematical programming models. The generic materials and operations planning (GMOP) formulation allows operating with different materials and process lists. The paper presents a procedure to solve the versatile GMOP model by the Lagrange Relaxation. The subgradient update method of the lagrangian multiplier is compared with a linear update method. Obtaining lower bound faster compared to the linear method is allowed by the subgradient method, but the linear method provides better solutions after certain iterations

Robust and Cooperative Image-Based Visual Servoing System Using a Redundant Architecture

The reliability and robustness of image-based visual servoing systems is still unsolved by the moment. In order to address this issue, a redundant and cooperative 2D visual servoing system based on the information provided by two cameras in eye-in-hand/eye-to-hand configurations is proposed. Its control law has been defined to assure that the whole system is stable if each subsystem is stable and to allow avoiding typical problems of image-based visual servoing systems like task singularities, features extraction errors, disappearance of image features, local minima, etc. Experimental results with an industrial robot manipulator based on Schunk modular motors to demonstrate the stability, performance and robustness of the proposed system are presented

Future changes in the Dominant Source Layer of riparian lateral water fluxes in a subhumid Mediterranean catchment

The 'Dominant Source Layer' (DSL) is defined as the riparian zone (RZ) depth stratum that contributes the most to water and solute fluxes to streams. The concept can be used to explain timing and amount of matter transferred from RZs to streams in forest headwaters. Here, we investigated the potential impact of future climate changes on the long-term position of the DSL in a subhumid Mediterranean headwater catchment. We used the rainfall-runoff model PERSiST to simulate reference (1981-2000) and future (2081-2100) stream runoff. The latter were simulated using synthetic temperature, precipitation, and inter-event length scenarios in order to simulate possible effects of changes in temperature, rainfall amount, and rainfall event frequency and intensity. Simulated stream runoff was then used to estimate RZ groundwater tables and the proportion of lateral water flux at every depth in the riparian profile; and hence the DSL. Our simulations indicated that future changes in temperature and precipitation will have a similar impact on the long-term DSL position. Nearly all scenarios projected that, together with reductions in stream runoff and water exports, the DSL will move down in the future, by as much as ca. 30 cm. Shallow organic-rich layers in the RZ will only be hydrologically activated during sporadic, large rainfall episodes predicted for the most extreme inter-event length scenarios. Consequently, terrestrial organic matter inputs to streams will decrease, likely reducing catchment organic matter exports and stream dissolved organic carbon concentrations. This study highlights the importance of identifying vertical, hydrologically active layers in the RZ for a better understanding of the potential impact of future climate on lateral water transfer and their relationship with surface water quality and carbon cycling