BACKGROUND Pneumonia is a primary cause of morbidity and mortality in infectious disease, and increasing antimicrobial resistance has raised concerns of treatment failure. Therefore, we evaluated the value of a blood culture bottle for bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) samples on pathogen identification and on treatment modification in patients with pneumonia. METHODS We conducted a prospective st...

Nowadays competition between port container terminals, especially between geographically close ones, is rapidly increasing. How to improve the competitiveness of port container terminals is, therefore, an immediate challenge, with which port operators are confronted. In terms of port competitiveness, the makespan of a container vessel, which is the latest completion time among all handling task...

Increasing fuel costs, post-911 security concerns, and economic globalization provide a strong incentive for container carriers to use available container space more efficiently, thereby minimizing the number of container trips and reducing socio-economic vulnerability. A heuristic algorithm based on a tertiary tree model is proposed to handle the container loading problem (CLP) with weakly het...

Containerized applications are becoming increasingly popular, but unfortunately, current containerdeployment methods are very slow. We develop a new container benchmark, HelloBench, to evaluate the startup times of 57 different containerized applications. We use HelloBench to analyze workloads in detail, studying the block I/O patterns exhibited during startup and compressibility of container i...

Globally, container terminals are trying to expand capacity and increase performance at a minimum of investments. Often the container terminal operations are changing to meet increased customer demands as well as to adapt to new technologies. This paper proposes a simulation model for container terminal system analysis. A simulation model is developed, called SIMPORT, which uses a Multi-Agents ...

Three hardwall container types, one styroblock container type, and two mesh-covered plugs were used to grow longleaf pine (Pinus palustris Mill.) seedlings at a nursery in Louisiana. In 2001, these container types, along with bare-root seedlings (from a different seed source), were outplanted on two old-field sites and two cutover sites. There were significant site by treatment interactions. Se...

This paper presents a dynamic-economic model analyzing the fluctuation of container freight rate due to the interactions between the demand for container transportation services and the container fleet capacity. The demand for container transportation services is derived from international trade and is assumed exogenous. The container fleet capacity increases with new orders made two years ago,...

in this paper, we are going to investigate the growth of the iranian maritime transport with a focus mainly on the north - south transit corridor, review of dry ports in order to support the iranian container terminals at the south ports in order to increase the volume of container storages at the terminals. for the purpose of assessing the outcome of port operational management, the balanced s...

This paper presents a description of new global monitoring system for containers, with its layer-modular structure, as a solution for enhance security and efficiency of container transport with particular emphasis on the practical implementation of that system for maritime container terminals. Especially the Smart Container Module (SCM) architecture and its operation as a part of the Self-Organ...