bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Risk evaluation of real‐time accident scenarios in the transport of hazardous material on road
Authors: Tomasoni Angela Maria , Garbolino Emmanuel , Rovatti Massimo , Sacile Roberto 
Published: August 2010

PurposeThis paper seeks to tackle the complex problem of integrating real‐time data information about the tracking of a hazardous material (hazmat) vehicle with classical risk evaluation methodologies in order to describe possible accident scenarios. The application deals with the transport of hydrocarbon dangerous goods, where the accident consequences may involve the population exposed along the infrastructure used for transportation.Design/methodology/approachThe approach taken consists of three phases. First, the acquisition of real‐time data about the travel and the carried hazmat; second, the evaluation of the risk area; and finally, a Geographic Information System (GIS) are taken into account.FindingsThe findings of this analysis constitute the methodological basis to implement a decision support system as regards hazmat transport risk analysis, also in real time, with important evaluations for planning criteria. Using TIP (Transport Integrated Platform), the data collection is received in real time and the scenario construction and visualization may represent a user‐friendly tool for prompt risk evaluation.Research limitations/implicationsThe information displayed by the GIS interface is easy to use, and gives prompt information about the accident consequences.Originality/valueIn terms of the total impact from the hazmat transport system to the whole environment (humans, goods, infrastructures, services and natural elements), the paper focuses on the importance of creating a historical real‐time database implemented from a real time information, that represents a standard set of information necessary to define an accident scenarios, for hazmat transport.
Internationalization and organizational resources of Chinese firms
Authors: Lau Chung‐Ming , Ngo Hang‐Yue , Yiu Daphne W. 
Published: August 2010

PurposeThe internationalization of Chinese firms has been gaining importance in recent years. Informed by Dunning's eclectic paradigm, this paper examines the factors leading to the “going international” decisions of Chinese firms in the very early days of the “go global” call, before the central government offered substantial support.Design/methodology/approachIt is suggested that two types of organizational factors are relevant to these decisions: the firm's management capability and core competencies. A survey of data of chief executives from over 3,000 firms in the year 2000 was analyzed.FindingsEmpirical results indicate that different resources endowments have different relationships with internationalization decisions. The intention of going international is affected by organizational competencies of R&D and manufacturing. Two capabilities (production and sales, and operation and finance) have significant impacts on outward direct investment, while manufacturing and marketing competencies have positive effects on exports, together with production capability. In addition, manufacturing competencies also have a negative effect on the acquisition and use of international capital.Originality/valueBy using firm‐level data collected in China, a better understanding of the nature of internationalization and the foreign direct investment characteristics of firms has been obtained. The empirical results show that the impacts of the organizational resources are different for different internationalization decisions, and the effects of core competencies of a firm vary across different paths of internationalization.
Assessing foreign/second language writing ability
Authors: Coombe Christine 
Published: August 2010

PurposeHaving a certain degree of assessment literacy is crucial for today's language teachers. The main aim of this paper is to provide that knowledge as it pertains to the writing skill. More specifically, the purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the main practical issues that teachers often face when evaluating the written work of their students. It will consider issues and solutions in five major areas: test design; test administration; ways to assess writing; feedback to students; and the effects on pedagogy.Design/methodology/approachThe author took a very practical and principled approach to the complete process of assessing the written work of our students in a foreign or second language.FindingsThe cyclical relationship between teaching and assessment can be made entirely positive provided that the assessment is based on sound principles and procedures. Both teaching and assessment should relate to the learners' goals and very frequently to institutional goals.Practical implicationsGood teachers spend a lot of time ensuring that their writing assessment practices are valid and reliable. The author deals with the fundamental issues that underlie good test design in a very practical and understandable way and later suggests practical steps to ensure smooth and reliable test administration before dealing with ways to assess a range of different writing tasks. Then, the crucial issue of how best to provide useful developmental feedback to students is considered. She concludes by discussing how best testing practice should seek to accommodate the requirements of test takers.Originality/valueThis topic is significant as assessing foreign/second language writing skills is one of the most problematic areas in language testing. It is made even more important because good writing ability is very much sought after by higher education institutions and employers.
Perception‐based image classification
Authors: Henry Christopher , Peters James F. 
Published: August 2010

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present near set theory using the perceptual indiscernibility and tolerance relations, to demonstrate the practical application of near set theory to the image correspondence problem, and to compare this method with existing image similarity measures.Design/methodology/approachImage‐correspondence methodologies are present in many systems that are depended on daily. In these systems, the discovery of sets of similar objects (aka, tolerance classes) stems from human perception of the objects being classified. This view of perception of image‐correspondence springs directly from Poincaré's work on visual spaces during 1890s and Zeeman's work on tolerance spaces and visual acuity during 1960s. Thus, in solving the image‐correspondence problem, it is important to have systems that accurately model human perception. Near set theory provides a framework for measuring the similarity of digital images (and perceptual objects, in general) based on features that describe them in much the same way that humans perceive objects.FindingsThe contribution of this paper is a perception‐based classification of images using near sets.Originality/valueThe method presented in this paper represents a new approach to solving problems in which the goal is to match human perceptual groupings. While the results presented in the paper are based on measuring the resemblance between images, the approach can be applied to any application that can be formulated in terms of sets such that the objects in the sets can be described by feature vectors.
Process cost prediction: a soft computing approach
Authors: Ray Amitava , Sarkar Bijan , Sanyal Subir Kumar 
Published: August 2010

PurposeCost estimation based on expert's judgment is not an ideal approach, since human decisions are usually determined according to general attributes of limited and unstructured experience. The purpose of this paper is to develop a generic model of intelligence and cognitive science‐based method that can play an active role in process cost prediction within the shortest possible time.Design/methodology/approachIn this paper, an intelligent system was conceived for prediction of total process cost of the product. The system is based on the concept of case‐based reasoning. It is a method for solving problems by making use of previous (source cases), similar situations and reusing information and knowledge about such situations. The source case data are generated by Taguchi technique and the cost function calculates the corresponding cost of each experiment in the economic time scale. The target case consists of the process variables whose cost needs to be determined. The cost for the source cases, consisting of the process variables of the already manufactured products are known in priori. The system calculates the similarities between the source cases and target cases and calculates the optimum cost. The fuzzy‐C‐means clustering method provides the model connecting the process parameters with total costs searched for.FindingsThe results show that the quality of predictions made by the intelligent system is comparable to the quality assured by the experienced expert. The proposed expert system is superior to traditional cost accounting system and assists inexperienced users in predicting the optimum process cost within the shortest possible time.Research limitations/implicationsThe research was limited to the traditional machining process.Practical implicationsThe paper can be applied to any process industry and will have immense practical value.Originality/valueThis is the first time an expert system has been developed for the process industry that can calculate the process cost within a few days or a few hours before making an offer to a buyer.
The selection method for hyper‐parameters of support vector classification by adaptive chaotic cultural algorithm
Authors: Guo Yi‐nan , Yang Mei , Xiao Da‐wei 
Published: August 2010

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to find a novel optimization selection method for hyper‐parameter of support vector classification (SVC), responsible for the classification of datasets from the UCI machine learning database repository.Design/methodology/approachA novel two‐stage optimization selection method for hyper‐parameters is proposed. It makes use of explicit information derived from issues and implicit knowledge extracted from the evolution process so as to improve the performance of classifier. In the first stage, the search extent of each hyper‐parameter is determined according to the requirements of issues. In the second stage, optimal hyper‐parameters are obtained by adaptive chaotic culture algorithm in the above search extent. Adaptive chaotic cultural algorithm uses implicit knowledge extracted from the evolution process to control mutation scale of chaotic mutation operator. This algorithm can ensure the diversity of population and exploitation in the latter evolution.FindingsThe rationality of the above optimization selection method is proved by the binary classification problem. Final confirmation of this approach is the classification results compared with other methods.Originality/valueThis optimization selection method can effectively avoid premature convergence and lead to better computation stability and precision. It is not related on the structure of functions. SVC model corresponding to optimal hyper‐parameters by this method has better generalization.
Clinical trial: endoscopic evaluation of naproxen etemesil, a naproxen prodrug, vs. naproxen – a proof‐of‐concept, randomized, double‐blind, active‐comparator study
Authors: Goldstein J. L. , Jungwirthová A. , David J. , Spindel E. , Bouchner L. , Pešek F. , Searle S. , Škopek J. , Grim J. , Ulč I. , Sewell K. L. 
Published: August 2010

Aliment Pharmacol Ther 2010; 32: 1091–1101SummaryBackground  Nonsteroidal anti‐inflammatory drugs are associated with upper gastrointestinal mucosal injury. Naproxen etemesil is a lipophilic, non‐acidic, inactive prodrug of naproxen that is hydrolysed to pharmacologically active naproxen once absorbed. We hypothesized that with lesser topical exposure to naproxen from the prodrug, there would be reduced gastroduodenal mucosal injury compared with naproxen.Aim  To compare the degree of endoscopic mucosal damage of naproxen etemesil vs. naproxen.Methods  This multicentre, randomized, double‐blind, double‐dummy trial compared oral naproxen etemesil 1200 mg twice daily (n = 61) with naproxen 500 mg twice daily (n = 59) for 7.5 days in 120 healthy subjects (45–70 years; mean 51 years; 58% female) with baseline total modified gastroduodenal Lanza score ≤2 (no erosions/ulcers) on endoscopy. The primary endpoint was mean total modified gastroduodenal Lanza score on day 7. A secondary endpoint was incidence of gastric ulcers.Results  The day 7 mean total modified gastroduodenal Lanza score was 2.8 ± 1.7 for naproxen etemesil vs. 3.5 ± 2.0 for naproxen (P = 0.03), and significantly fewer naproxen etemesil‐treated subjects (3.3%) developed gastric ulcers compared with naproxen‐treated subjects (15.8%) (P = 0.02).Conclusion  In this first proof‐of‐concept study, naproxen etemesil was associated with significantly lower gastroduodenal mucosal injury compared with naproxen after 7 days of exposure (Clinical trial number: NCT00750243).
Metformin for olanzapine‐induced weight gain: a systematic review and meta‐analysis
Authors: Praharaj Samir Kumar , Jana Amlan Kusum , Goyal Nishant , Sinha Vinod Kumar 
Published: August 2010

WHAT IS ALREADY KNOWN ABOUT THIS SUBJECT • Olanzapine in an atypical antipsychotic agent which is associated with significant weight gain.• Metformin, an anti‐hyperglycaemic agent, has been used to treat or prevent weight gain associated with olanzapine.• Meta‐analyses on studies that have examined the use of metformin for treatment of antipsychotic‐induced weight gain report significant heterogeneity. WHAT THIS STUDY ADDS • Systematic review and meta‐analysis showed that metformin is useful for the short‐term treatment of olanzapine‐induced weight gain.Olanzapine is an atypical antipsychotic that is useful in schizophrenia and bipolar affective disorder, but its use is associated with troublesome weight gain and metabolic syndrome. A variety of pharmacological agents has been studied in the efforts to reverse weight gain induced by olanzapine, but current evidence is insufficient to support any particular pharmacological approach. We conducted a systematic review and meta‐analysis of randomized controlled trials of metformin for the treatment of olanzapine‐induced weight gain. Systematic review of the literature revealed 12 studies that had assessed metformin for antipsychotic‐induced weight gain. Of these, four studies (n= 105) met the review inclusion criteria and were included in the final analysis. Meta‐analysis was performed to see the effect size of the treatment on body weight, waist circumference and body‐mass index (BMI). Weighted mean difference (WMD) for body weight was 5.02 (95% CI 3.93, 6.10) kg lower with metformin as compared with placebo at 12 weeks. For waist circumference, the test for heterogeneity was significant (P= 0.00002, I2= 85.1%). Therefore, a random effects model was used to calculate WMD, which was 1.42 (95% CI 0.29, 3.13) cm lower with metformin as compared with placebo at 12 weeks. For BMI, WMD was 1.82 (95% CI 1.44, 2.19) kg m−2 lower with metformin as compared with placebo at 12 weeks. Existing data suggest that short term modest weight loss is possible with metformin in patients with olanzapine‐induced weight gain.
The use of antidepressants and the risk of haemorrhagic stroke: a nested case control study
Authors: Douglas Ian , Smeeth Liam , Irvine David 
Published: September 2010

WHAT IS ALREADY KNOWN ABOUT THIS SUBJECT • Selective serotonin re‐uptake inhibitors (SSRI) are associated with an increased risk of bleeding disorders at a number of sites.• It is currently unclear whether they increase the risk of haemorrhagic stroke, with conflicting results reported. WHAT THIS STUDY ADDS • We found no association between SSRI use and haemorrhagic stroke.• The large number of patients involved in the study allowed us to rule out any substantial effect.• The results were similar in people with and without a previous history of cerebrovascular events.AIM To investigate whether selective serotonin re‐uptake inhibitor (SSRI) use is associated with an increased risk of haemorrhagic stroke in a cohort of antidepressant users.METHODS We conducted a case control study, nested within a cohort of antidepressant users in the United Kingdom General Practice Research Database. A cohort of 365 195 patients prescribed either an SSRI or tricyclic antidepressant between 1992 and 2006 was identified. Three hundred and fifty‐seven cases of haemorrhagic stroke were observed and 1631 control patients without haemorrhagic stroke were selected.RESULTS The primary analysis showed no evidence of an association between current SSRI or TCA use and haemorrhagic stroke. Current use of an SSRI compared with no use at the time of haemorrhagic stroke was associated with an adjusted odds ratio of 1.11 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.82, 1.50). For current tricyclic use the equivalent odds ratio was 0.73 (0.52, 1.02). There was no evidence that prior cerebrovascular events modified the effect of either SSRIs or TCAs.CONCLUSIONS We found no evidence that SSRIs are associated with an increased risk of haemorrhagic stroke, regardless of prior history of cerebrovascular events.
Advances in the timing of spring cleaning by the honeybee Apis mellifera in Poland
Authors: SPARKS TIM H. , LANGOWSKA ALEKSANDRA , GŁAZACZOW ADAM , WILKANIEC ZDZISŁAW , BIEŃKOWSKA MAŁGORZATA , TRYJANOWSKI PIOTR 
Published: September 2010

1. The honeybee Apis mellifera is of huge worldwide economic importance in the pollination of crops for human consumption. In recent years, honeybee populations have declined under pressure from diseases and pests. Climate change is increasingly being viewed as an additional threat to honeybees and yet only limited research has been carried out in this area.2. This paper reports the advance of the first cleansing flight (‘spring cleaning’) of the honeybee in Poznań, Poland, i.e. flights to excrete faeces, over a month in the period 1985–2009. The timing of this flight is advanced not only by higher late winter/spring temperatures but also by higher temperatures in the previous summer and autumn.3. This earlier activity gives hope that the reported earlier flowering of many native and cultivated species will not cause a pollination synchrony crisis.
Quality of life, dyspnea and ventricular function in patients with hypertension
Authors: Palhares Luciana C. , Gallani Maria‐Cecilia B.J. , Gemignani Tiago , Matos‐Souza José R. , Ubaid‐Girioli Samira , Moreno Jr Heitor , Franchini Kleber G. , Nadruz Jr Wilson , Rodrigues Roberta C.M. 
Published: August 2010

palhares l.c., gallani m.‐c.b.j., gemignani t., matos‐souza j.r., ubaid‐girioli s., moreno h. jr, franchini k.g., nadruz w. jr & rodrigues r.c.m. (2010) Quality of life, dyspnea and ventricular function in patients with hypertension. Journal of Advanced Nursing 66(10), 2287–2296.AbstractAim.  This paper is a report of an investigation of the relationship between health‐related quality of life and left ventricular function among patients with hypertension who did not fulfil the criteria for heart failure.Background.  Heart failure is a common consequence of hypertension, with Doppler echocardiography being the gold‐standard tool to evaluate left ventricular function, mainly hypertension‐induced left ventricular damage. Echocardiographic data indicating poorer ventricular function have been related to lower levels of health‐related quality of life in patients with systolic and/or diastolic heart failure. However, data are still lacking regarding the correlation between health‐related quality of life and left ventricular function and structure in patients with hypertension who do not fulfil the criteria for heart failure.Method.  Between September 2005 and February 2007, 98 patients with hypertension without systolic or diastolic heart failure were evaluated. Health‐related quality of life was assessed using the Medical Outcomes Study Short Form‐36. Left ventricular function was evaluated through Tissue Doppler echocardiography.Results.  Statistically significant but weak correlations (varying from r = −0·22 to 0·35) were observed between some of the Short Form‐36 domains and echo data. To consider the potential effect of dyspnoea in this relationship, patients were split according to the presence or absence of the symptom. In the subgroup without dyspnoea, similar patterns of correlation were observed (varying from r = 0·26 to 0·32). In the subgroup with dyspnoea, however, more and stronger correlations were observed between echo data and health‐related quality of life domains, varying from r = −0·40 to 0·50.Conclusion.  Nurses should be aware of the relevance of evaluating the functional echocardiographic data of patients who not fulfil heart failure criteria, but who experience dyspnoea in order to implement appropriate action plans.
Motivation for entry, occupational commitment and intent to remain: a survey regarding Registered Nurse retention
Authors: Gambino Kathleen M. 
Published: August 2010

gambino k.m. (2010) Motivation for entry, occupational commitment and intent to remain: a survey regarding Registered Nurse retention. Journal of Advanced Nursing 66(11), 2532–2541.AbstractAim.  This paper is a report of a study of the relationships between Registered Nurses’ motivation for entering the profession, occupational commitment and intent to remain with an employer until retirement.Background.  Identifying and supporting nurses who are strongly committed to their profession may be the single most influential intervention in combating the nursing shortage. An understanding of the characteristics these individuals possess could lead to a decline in the high attrition rates plaguing the profession.Method.  Using a survey design, Registered Nurses enrolled at the school of nursing and/or employed at the associated university medical centre of a large, not‐for‐profit state university were polled in 2008. Logistic regression analysis was used to determine how the variables of motivation for entry and occupational commitment could indicate intent to remain.Results.  The strongest indicators of intent to remain were normative commitment and age, with a 70% average rate of correctly estimating retention. Exp(B) values for normative commitment (1·09) and age (1·07) indicated that for each one‐point increase on the normative commitment scale or one‐point increase in age, the odds of remaining with an employer until retirement increased by 1·1%.Conclusion.  Transformational changes in healthcare environments and nursing schools must be made to encourage loyalty and obligation, the hallmarks of normative commitment. Retention strategies should accommodate mature nurses as well as promote normative commitment in younger nurses.