The monitoring of the road safety level in Brazil and particularly in its member states traditionally focuses on the available traffic fatality rates. However, this approach does not offer practical suggestions on how to improve road safety. In this context, the usage of Road Safety Performance Indicators (SPIs) is a growing and promising tendency. This research deals with the construction of a...

In this paper, we develop a decision model of a firm’s optimal strategy for investment in security process innovations (SPIs) when confronted with a sequence of malicious attacks. The model incorporates real options as a methodology to capture the flexibility embed ded in such investment decisions. SPIs, when seamlessly integrated with the organization’s overall business dynamics, induce organi...

This study is to apply fuzzy quality function deployment (QFD) model with interdependence relations of environmental production requirements (EPRs) aspects and sustainable production indicators (SPIs) criteria for original equipment manufacturing (OEM) firm in Taiwan. At first, to facilitate the main issue of the QFD problem, however, the ‘‘Whats” question of EPRs and ‘‘Hows” problem of the SPI...

In the present study, in vitro digestibility and structure of soybean protein isolates (SPIs) prepared from five soybean varieties were investigated in simulated gastric fluid (SGF), using FT-IR microspectroscopy and SDS-PAGE. The result indicated that β-conformations were prone to be hydrolyzed by pepsin preferentially and transformed to unordered structure during in vitro digestion, followed ...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the influence of blood derivatives on the acquisition of severe postoperative infection (SPI) in patients undergoing heart surgery. SETTING The postoperative ICUs of a tertiary-level university hospital. DESIGN A cohort study. METHODS During a 4-year period, 738 patients, classified as patients with SPIs and patients without SPIs (non-SPI patients), were included ...

In the road traffic safety domain there is a need for using proactive (non-crash-based) indicators, known as performance indicators (SPIs). Traffic speed based on big data (floating car [FCD]) could help develop network-wide SPIs, but related knowledge and experience are insufficient so far. The authors attempted to fill this gap by nationwide Italian FCD speed-related SPIs validating their rel...

INTRODUCTION This study was done to ascertain the effect of race on medical student-patient communication. The primary hypothesis was that interviewing performance scores would be higher when race of student and race of simulated patient instructor (SPI) were concordant than when they were discordant. METHODS Data obtained from student interactions with four Caucasian and four African America...

Mormyrid electric fish rely on the waveform of their electric organ discharges (EODs) for communicating species, sex, and social status, while they use the sequences of pulse intervals (SPIs) for communicating rapidly changing behavioral states and motivation. Little is known of electric signaling during courtship behavior because of two major difficulties: (1) the fish are not easily bred in c...