Search results for "Models"
showing 10 items of 8211 documents
Building dynamic balanced scorecards to enhance strategy design and planning in public utilities. Key-findings from a project in a city water company
2006
Increasing complexity and uncertainty of both business internal and external variables determines a growing need for prompt and accurate information. On this concern, in the last decade, there has been an increasing effort to provide public utilities with tools aimed to support decision makers in planning and control, by taking into account not only operational but also strategic issues. Among them, for 1instance, customer satisfaction, internal business process efficiency, business image, and bargaining power against other counterparts (e.g. the municipal administration). Often, however, such an effort has been oriented to generate a large volume of data, only focused on financial indicato…
Conceptualizing and Measuring the Quality of Democracy: The Citizens' Perspective
2018
In recent years, several measurements of the quality of democracy have been developed (e.g. Democracy Barometer, Varieties of Democracy Project). These objective measurements focus on institutional and procedural characteristics of democracy. This article starts from the premise that in order to fully understand the quality of democracy such objective measurements have to be complemented by subjective measurements based on the perspective of citizens. The aim of the article is to conceptualize and measure the subjective quality of democracy. First, a conceptualization of the subjective quality of democracy is developed consisting of citizens’ support for three normative models of democracy …
Rethinking science communication in a changing landscape
2021
Science communication continues to grow, develop and change, as a practice and field of research. The boundaries between science and the rest of society are blurring. Digitalization transforms the public sphere. This JCOM special issue aims to rethink science communication in light of the changing science communication landscape. How to characterize the emerging science communication ecosystem in relation to the introduction of new media and actors involved? What new practices are emerging? How is the quality of science communication maintained or improved? We present a selection of papers that provide different perspectives on these questions and challenges.
Complementarity between human capital and public infrastructure in industrial comparative advantage
2021
The article examines the role of public capital as an infrastructure service in the acquisition of industrial comparative advantages. To achieve this in this framework, we develop a theoretical model highlighting the complementarity between public and human capital as a mechanism of industrial development, and test this idea using sectoral panel data from 1999 to 2014 across 35 advanced and less advanced countries. Our results show that the sustainable acquisition of a comparative advantage in the production of industrial goods can only be guaranteed by accumulating public capital and human capital. It shows that public infrastructure can only generate industrialization when it is made avai…
A comparison of micropore membrane inlet mass spectrometry–derived pulmonary shunt measurement with riley shunt in a porcine model
2009
The multiple inert gas elimination technique was developed to measure shunt and the ratio of alveolar ventilation to simultaneous alveolar capillary blood flow in any part of the lung (V(A)'/Q') distributions. Micropore membrane inlet mass spectrometry (MMIMS), instead of gas chromatography, has been introduced for inert gas measurement and shunt determination in a rabbit lung model. However, agreement with a frequently used and accepted method for quantifying deficits in arterial oxygenation has not been established. We compared MMIMS-derived shunt (M-S) as a fraction of total cardiac output (CO) with Riley shunt (R-S) derived from the R-S formula in a porcine lung injury model.To allow a …
New evidence in one-lung ventilation
2017
Mechanical ventilation in thoracic surgery has undergone significant changes in recent years due to the implementation of the protective ventilation. This review will analyze recent ventilatory strategies in one-lung ventilation. A MEDLINE research was performed using Mesh term "One-Lung Ventilation" including randomized clinical trials, metanalysis, reviews and systematic reviews published in the last 6 years. Search was performed on 21st March 2017. A total of 75 articles were initially found. After title and abstract review 14 articles were included. Protective ventilation is not simply synonymous of low tidal volume ventilation, but it also includes routine use of PEEP and alveolar recr…
Retrograde in situ versus antegrade pulmonary preservation in clinical lung transplantation: a single-centre experience.
2014
OBJECTIVE Experimental and clinical studies have indicated a beneficial effect of retrograde lung preservation on post-transplant results. Accordingly, we conducted a non-randomized trial. METHODS A total of 209 consecutive recipients transplanted with low-potassium dextrane (LPD)-preserved lungs were eligible for analysis. Antegrade lung preservation (AP) was performed in 173 patients and retrograde in situ perfusion (RP) in 36 patients using low-potassium dextrane solution in all cases. The prostacycline was added to preservation solution. RESULTS The main donor, graft and recipient characteristics did not differ significantly between groups. There was a beneficial trend toward improved o…
Bidirectional Glenn and antegrade pulmonary blood flow: temporary or definitive palliation?
2008
Background We sought to investigate the role of the bidirectional Glenn with antegrade pulmonary blood flow in the surgical history of children with univentricular hearts. Methods A series of 246 patients, from three joint institutions, having univentricular heart with restricted but not critical pulmonary blood flow received a bidirectional cavopulmonary shunt with additional forward pulmonary blood flow. All patients have been studied according to their progression, or not, to Fontan operation. Two hundred and eight (84.5%) patients underwent bidirectional cavopulmonary anastomosis as primary palliation. Twenty patients (8.1%) with previous pulmonary artery banding were also enrolled in t…
Blood pressure responsiveness to obstructive events during sleep after chronic CPAP
2003
The aim of this study was to investigate whether chronic continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) affects blood pressure (BP) responsiveness to obstructive events occurring on the first night of CPAP withdrawal in obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) after chronic treatment. Thirteen male subjects with severe OSA underwent nocturnal polysomnography with beatbybeat BP monitoring before treatment and after 4.9±3.4 months of home CPAP (mean daily use 5.1±1.7 h). Variations in oxyhaemoglobin saturation (Δ S a,O2), systolic (Δ P s), and diastolic (Δ P d) BP within nonrapid eye movement apnoeas and hypopnoeas were measured on a sample of pre and posttreatment events. In addition, a pretreatment s…
Maternal adiposity in pregnancy and offspring asthma in adulthood.
2018
High maternal body mass index in pregnancy was associated with an increased prevalence of offspring asthma in men in adult life