Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product.

Polyphasic taxonomy, a consensus approach to bacterial systematics.

Brucellosis remains a major zoonosis worldwide Although many countries have eradicated Brucella abortus from cattle, in some areas Brucella melitensis has emerged as a cause of infection in this species as well as in sheep and goats Despite vaccination campaigns with the Rev 1 strain, B melitensis remains the principal cause of human brucellosis Brucella suis is also emerging as an agent of infection in cattle, thus extending its opportunities to infect humans The recent isolation of distinctive strains of Brucella from marine mammals has extended its ecologic range Molecular genetic studies have demonstrated phylogenetic affiliation to Agrobacterium, Phyllobacterium, Ochrobactrum, and Rhizobium Polymerase chain reaction and gene probe development may provide more effective typing methods Pathogenicity is related to production of lipopolysaccharides containing a poly N-formyl perosamine O chain, CuZn superoxide dismutase, erythrlose phosphate dehydrogenase, stress-induced proteins related to intracellular survival, and adenine and guanine monophosphate inhibitors of phagocyte functions Protective immunity is conferred by antibody to lipopolysaccharide and T-cell-mediated macrophage activation triggered by protein antigens Diagnosis still centers on isolation of the organism and serologic test results, especially enzyme immunoassay, which is replacing other methods Polymerase chain reaction is also under evaluation Therapy is based on tetracyclines with or without rifampicin, aminoglycosides, or quinolones No satisfactory vaccines against human brucellosis are available, although attenuated purE mutants appear promising

/pdf/brucellosis-an-overview-14k0fkto7f.pdf

Brucellosis: an overview.

Project scheduling under uncertainty: survey and research potentials

http://web.nchu.edu.tw/pweb/users/arborfish/lesson/8682.pdf

A survey of variants and extensions of the resource-constrained project scheduling problem

In the past few years, the genetic programming approach (GP) has been successfully used by researchers to design priority rules for the resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP) thanks to its high generalization ability and superior performance. However, one of the main drawbacks of the GP is that the fitness evaluation in the training process often requires a very high computational effort. In order to reduce the runtime of the training process, this research proposed four different surrogate models for the RCPSP. The experiment results have verified the effectiveness and the performance of the proposed surrogate models. It is shown that they achieve similar performance as the original model with the same number of evaluations and better performance with the same runtime. We have also tested the performance of one of our surrogate models with seven different population sizes to show that the selected surrogate model achieves similar performance for each population size as the original model, even when the searching space is sufficiently explored. Furthermore, we have investigated the accuracy of our proposed surrogate models and the size of the rules they designed. The result reveals that all the proposed surrogate models have high accuracy, and sometimes the rules found by them have a smaller size compared with the original model. 

Automated design of priority rules for resource-constrained project scheduling problem using surrogate-assisted genetic programming

This manuscript gives a brief overview of three sets of experiments in the classroom with students following a Project Management (PM) course module using a blended learning approach. The impact of communication on the student performance using business games as well as the advantages of the use of integrative case studies and their impact on
the learning experience of these students are tested. The performance of students is measured by their quantitative output on the business game or case exercise, while their learning experience is measured by the student
evaluations. The experiments have been carried out on a sample of students with a different background, ranging from university students with or without a strong quantitative background but no practical experience, to MBA students at business schools and PM professionals participating in a PM training. The results have been presented at an international workshop on computer supported education in Lisbon (Portugal) in 2015 and details have been published in Vanhoucke and Wauters (2015).

https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/8509383/file/8509384.pdf

Classroom experiments on project management communication

The  yearly  award for the  best  thesis  in  Project  Management  as well  as the university contest award for the best group assignment of master’s students in the Project Management course module at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration  of Ghent  University  (Belgium)  are two  ways to  get  young master’s students involved in the professional PM world. The Belgian chapter of the Project Management Institute (PMI) wants to collaborate with Ghent University to show the relevance of their activities to the most promising group of project managers, our youngsters and future professionals. This collaboration is highly appreciated by both the professionals and the students, and increases the awareness of the importance on the Project Management discipline for their future career

Praise youth and it will prosper! PMI Belgium’s recognition of young PM potential

Managing, recruiting, keeping the right staff, and deploying resources efficiently are key challenges for the healthcare industry in the coming decennia due to the increasing elder population and the corresponding increasing demand for care and caring personnel ([16]). Since the quality of care ultimately depends on the quality and motivation of health human resources, personnel problems should be appropriately addressed since staff shortages or unmotivated health workforce are likely to have adverse effects on the delivery of health services and outcome of care. A key factor is the organizational support to employees which is especially revealed in the personnel staffing policies and scheduling practices conducted by the health organizations. On the one hand, it is of critical importance to deploy efficiently the available personnel since this is a large determinant of service organization efficiency and customers’ requirements satisfaction in providing the continuity of care. On the other hand, [7] identify unattractive schedules and high workloads as two important factors leading to discontentment and a high nursing turnover.

A branch-and-price procedure for nurse staffing incorporating roster preferences

This paper presents new simulation results on the forecast accuracy of earned value based metrics to predict a project's final duration. This is the sec- ond paper in a series of papers based on the simulation study initially proposed by Vanhoucke and Vandevoorde (2007a). In a previous manuscript published in the Measurable News (Vanhoucke and Vandevoorde, 2007b), it has been shown that the earned schedule method outperforms, on average, the more traditional earned value based meth- ods to predict the final duration of a project, both for early and late projects. In the current manuscript, the simulation study is extended to new simulation scenarios that measure the influence of inaccuracies in the planned duration estimates for critical and non-critical activities on the accuracy of forecasting methods.

https://www.pmknowledgecenter.com/sites/default/files/files/Vanhoucke%20and%20Vandevoorde,%20TMN,%202008.pdf

Mario Vanhoucke

Papers

Automated design of priority rules for resource-constrained project scheduling problem using surrogate-assisted genetic programming

Classroom experiments on project management communication

Praise youth and it will prosper! PMI Belgium’s recognition of young PM potential

A branch-and-price procedure for nurse staffing incorporating roster preferences

Earned Value Forecast Accuracy and