De-qi refers to the participant's subjective sensations and objective body responses as well as the acupuncturist's perceptions while the acupuncturist needles certain acupoints in the participant's body. In recent years, De-qi is getting increasing attention of the researchers and many efforts have been made to understand its mechanism. By the broad literature survey, this paper explores the s...

Many public health departments seek to improve their capability to respond to large-scale events such as an influenza pandemic. Quality improvement (QI), a structured approach to improving performance, has not been widely applied in public health. We developed and tested a pilot QI collaborative to explore whether QI could help public health departments improve their pandemic preparedness. We d...

Let R be a real closed field and Q1, , Ql∈R[X1, ,Xk] such that for each i, 1≤ i≤ l, deg (Qi)≤di. For 1≤ i≤ l, denote by Qi= {Q1, , Qi}, Vi the real variety defined by Qi, and ki an upper bound on the real dimension of Vi (by convention V0=R and k0= k). Suppose also that 2≤ d1≤ d2≤ 1 k+1 d3≤ 1 (k+1) d4≤ ≤ 1 (k+1)l−3 dl−1≤ 1 (k+1)l−2 dl, and that l ≤ k. We prove that the number of semi-algebraica...

If n colluding oligopolists all have the cost function C(qi) = c qi, then it will not be possible to uniquely allocate among the firms the monopoly output that maximizes their joint profit. Similarly, if all plants of an n-plant firm have the cost function C(qi) = c qi, then it will not be possible to uniquely allocate the firm’s optimal output among the n plants. This paper identifies the nece...

4 Wei Wang* , Qing Mei Huang*, Feng Ping Liu, Qi Qi Mao 5 6 Nursing Education Center, The First Affiliated Hospital, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, 79 7 Qingchun Road, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310003, People’s Republic of China 8 Department of Urology, The First Affiliated Hospital, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, 79 9 Qingchun Road, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310003, People’s Republic of ...

Let’s suppose we have a set of one-dimensional ranges S = {s1, s2, ..., sN}, with each range in the form (x1, x2) and a set of queries Q = {q1, q2, ..., qN}. Batched Stabbing Query Problem (BSQP) asks to report for each element qi ∈ S, which ranges sj ∈ S contain qi. Another way to look at the problem is to view the set S as horizontal segments and Q as infinite vertical lines (as depicted in F...

BACKGROUND Healthcare quality improvement (QI) is a global priority, and understanding the perspectives of frontline healthcare workers can help guide sustainable and meaningful change. We report a qualitative investigation of emergency department (ED) staff priorities for QI at a tertiary care hospital in Ghana. The aims of the study were to educate staff about the World Health Organization's ...

BACKGROUND The identification and articulation of programme theory can support effective design, execution and evaluation of quality improvement (QI) initiatives. Programme theory includes an agreed aim, potential interventions to achieve this aim, anticipated cause/effect relationships between the interventions and the aim and measures to monitor improvement. This paper outlines the approach u...

PURPOSE To validate a measure of reflection on participation in quality improvement (QI) activities and to identify associations with characteristics of QI projects, participants, and teams. METHOD This was a prospective validation study of all Mayo Clinic team participants who submitted QI projects for maintenance of certification (MOC) credit from 2010 to 2012. The authors developed a measu...

BACKGROUND Health care has experimented with many different quality improvement (QI) approaches with greater variation in name than content. This has been dubbed pseudoinnovation. However, it could also be that the subtleties and differences are not clearly understood. To explore this further, the purpose of this study was to explore how hospital managers perceive lean in the context of QI. M...