A Survey on Usage and Diffusion of Project Risk Management Techniques and Software Tools in the Construction Industry

The area of Project Risk Management (PRM) has been extensively researched, and the utilization of various tools and techniques for managing risk in several industries has been sufficiently reported. Formal and systematic PRM practices have been made available for the construction industry. Based on such body of knowledge, this paper tries to find out the global picture of PRM practices and approaches with the help of a survey to look into the usage of PRM techniques and diffusion of software tools, their level of maturity, and their usefulness in the construction sector. Results show that, despite existing techniques and tools, their usage is limited: software tools are used only by a minority of respondents and their cost is one of the largest hurdles in adoption. Finally, the paper provides some important guidelines for future research regarding quantitative risk analysis techniques and suggestions for PRM software tools development and improvemen

Control methods for Dermanyssus gallinae in systems for laying hens: results of an international seminar

This paper reports the results of a seminar on poultry red mite (PRM), Dermanyssus gallinae. Eighteen researchers from eight European countries discussed life cycle issues of the mite, effects of mites on hens and egg production, and monitoring and control methods for PRM in poultry facilities. It was determined that PRM probably causes more damage than envisaged, with the cost in The Netherlands alone reaching 11 million euro per annum. However a great deal is still unknown about PRM (e.g. reproduction, survival methods, etc.) and that PRM monitoring is an important instrument in recognising and admitting the problem and in taking timely measures. Currently, the most promising control method combines heating the hen house in combination with chemical treatments. Future areas of development which show promise include the use of entomopathogenic fungi, vaccination and predatory mites. The final aim is to solve the problem of D. gallinae in housing systems for laying hens

Nightly treatment of primary insomnia with prolonged release melatonin for 6 months: a randomized placebo controlled trial on age and endogenous melatonin as predictors of efficacy and safety

<p>Background: Melatonin is extensively used in the USA in a non-regulated manner for sleep disorders. Prolonged release melatonin (PRM) is licensed in Europe and other countries for the short term treatment of primary insomnia in patients aged 55 years and over. However, a clear definition of the target patient population and well-controlled studies of long-term efficacy and safety are lacking. It is known that melatonin production declines with age. Some young insomnia patients also may have low melatonin levels. The study investigated whether older age or low melatonin excretion is a better predictor of response to PRM, whether the efficacy observed in short-term studies is sustained during continued treatment and the long term safety of such treatment.</p> <p>Methods: Adult outpatients (791, aged 18-80 years) with primary insomnia, were treated with placebo (2 weeks) and then randomized, double-blind to 3 weeks with PRM or placebo nightly. PRM patients continued whereas placebo completers were re-randomized 1:1 to PRM or placebo for 26 weeks with 2 weeks of single-blind placebo run-out. Main outcome measures were sleep latency derived from a sleep diary, Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), Quality of Life (World Health Organzaton-5) Clinical Global Impression of Improvement (CGI-I) and adverse effects and vital signs recorded at each visit.</p> <p>Results: On the primary efficacy variable, sleep latency, the effects of PRM (3 weeks) in patients with low endogenous melatonin (6-sulphatoxymelatonin [6-SMT] ≤8 μg/night) regardless of age did not differ from the placebo, whereas PRM significantly reduced sleep latency compared to the placebo in elderly patients regardless of melatonin levels (-19.1 versus -1.7 min; P = 0.002). The effects on sleep latency and additional sleep and daytime parameters that improved with PRM were maintained or enhanced over the 6-month period with no signs of tolerance. Most adverse events were mild in severity with no clinically relevant differences between PRM and placebo for any safety outcome.</p> <p>Conclusions: The results demonstrate short- and long-term efficacy and safety of PRM in elderly insomnia patients. Low melatonin production regardless of age is not useful in predicting responses to melatonin therapy in insomnia. The age cut-off for response warrants further investigation.</p&gt

On Saaty's and Koczkodaj's inconsistencies of pairwise comparison matrices

The aim of the paper is to obtain some theoretical and numerical properties of Saaty’s and Koczkodaj’s inconsistencies of pairwise comparison matrices (PRM). In the case of 3 × 3 PRM, a differentiable one-to-one correspondence is given between Saaty’s inconsistency ratio and Koczkodaj’s inconsistency index based on the elements of PRM. In order to make a comparison of Saaty’s and Koczkodaj’s inconsistencies for 4 × 4 pairwise comparison matrices, the average value of the maximal eigenvalues of randomly generated n × n PRM is formulated, the elements aij (i < j) of which were randomly chosen from the ratio scale ... ... with equal probability 1/(2M − 1) and a ji is defined as 1/a ij . By statistical analysis, the empirical distributions of the maximal eigenvalues of the PRM depending on the dimension number are obtained. As the dimension number increases, the shape of distributions gets similar to that of the normal ones. Finally, the inconsistency of asymmetry is dealt with, showing a different type of inconsistency

Decoding of Projective Reed-Muller Codes by Dividing a Projective Space into Affine Spaces

A projective Reed-Muller (PRM) code, obtained by modifying a (classical) Reed-Muller code with respect to a projective space, is a doubly extended Reed-Solomon code when the dimension of the related projective space is equal to 1. The minimum distance and dual code of a PRM code are known, and some decoding examples have been represented for low-dimensional projective space. In this study, we construct a decoding algorithm for all PRM codes by dividing a projective space into a union of affine spaces. In addition, we determine the computational complexity and the number of errors correctable of our algorithm. Finally, we compare the codeword error rate of our algorithm with that of minimum distance decoding.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figure

Chimeric Yellow Fever/Dengue Virus as a Candidate Dengue Vaccine: Quantitation of the Dengue Virus-Specific CD8 T-Cell Response

We have constructed a chimeric yellow fever/dengue (YF/DEN) virus, which expresses the premembrane (prM) and envelope (E) genes from DEN type 2 (DEN-2) virus in a YF virus (YFV-17D) genetic background. Immunization of BALB/c mice with this chimeric virus induced a CD8 T-cell response specific for the DEN-2 virus prM and E proteins. This response protected YF/DEN virus-immunized mice against lethal dengue encephalitis. Control mice immunized with the parental YFV-17D were not protected against DEN-2 virus challenge, indicating that protection was mediated by the DEN-2 virus prM- and E-specific immune responses. YF/DEN vaccine-primed CD8 T cells expanded and were efficiently recruited into the central nervous systems of DEN-2 virus challenged mice. At 5 days after challenge, 3 to 4% of CD8 T cells in the spleen were specific for the prM and E proteins, and 34% of CD8 T cells in the central nervous system recognized these proteins. Depletion of either CD4 or CD8 T cells, or both, strongly reduced the protective efficacy of the YF/DEN virus, stressing the key role of the antiviral T-cell response

Spectrum of topics for world congresses and other activities of the International Society for Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine (ISPRM) : a first proposal

Background: One of the objectives of the International Society for Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine is to improve the continuity of World Congresses. This requires the development of an abstract topic list for use in congress announcements and abstract submissions. Methods: An abstract topic list was developed on the basis of the definitions of human functioning and rehabilitation research, which define 5 main areas of research (biosciences in rehabilitation, biomedical rehabilitation sciences and engineering, clinical Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine (PRM) sciences, integrative rehabilitation sciences, and human functioning sciences). For the abstract topic list, these research areas were grouped according to the proposals of congress streams. In a second step, the first version of the list was systematically compared with the topics of the 2003 ISPRM World Congress. Results: The resulting comprehensive abstract topic list contains 5 chapters according to the definition of human functioning and rehabilitation research. Due to the high significance of clinical research, clinical PRM sciences were placed at the top of the list, comprising all relevant health conditions treated in PRM services. For congress announcements a short topic list was derived. Discussion: The ISPRM topic list is sustainable and covers a full range of topics. It may be useful for congresses and elsewhere in structuring research in PRM

Landmark Guided Probabilistic Roadmap Queries

A landmark based heuristic is investigated for reducing query phase run-time of the probabilistic roadmap (\PRM) motion planning method. The heuristic is generated by storing minimum spanning trees from a small number of vertices within the \PRM graph and using these trees to approximate the cost of a shortest path between any two vertices of the graph. The intermediate step of preprocessing the graph increases the time and memory requirements of the classical motion planning technique in exchange for speeding up individual queries making the method advantageous in multi-query applications. This paper investigates these trade-offs on \PRM graphs constructed in randomized environments as well as a practical manipulator simulation.We conclude that the method is preferable to Dijkstra's algorithm or the ${\rm A}^*$ algorithm with conventional heuristics in multi-query applications.Comment: 7 Page