Many marketing strategies focus on the personal and psychological factors that support consumer spending. One particular marketing strategy known as VALS (Values And Life Styles) based its customer groupings initially according to an analysis of lifestyles but later shifted to the use of psychological profiles. The current system has defined eight different groups. They are; innovators, achievers, thinkers, believers, strivers, experiencers, makers and survivors. The purpose of this short paper is to explore whether the application of VALS to the healthcare setting can assist healthcare professionals not only in providing targeted focused care but also a way to identify the different types of communication and financial needs of patients.
Understanding the effect of new CMS rules regarding hospital readmission in pneumonia patients: A comprehensive review of the CMS Readmissions Reduction Program on Intermountain Healthcare's Pneumonia patient population.
Many organizations in both public and private sectors are striving to find new tools and strategies to streamline their project execution. Among such tools is the Project Management Office (PMO), which is defined by the Project Management Institute (PMI, 2008) as "An organizational body or entity assigned various responsibilities related to the centralized and coordinated management of those projects under its domain".This study focuses on promoting the key roles of the PMO in the execution of the strategic plans of organizations in the public sector, which are chosen as target cases for investigating the potential practices of the existing PMO entities.
This paper investigates the challenges of transition to innovation-based economy in UAE, from strategic, innovation, and entrepreneurship perspectives. Based on global innovation index and literature reviews conducted in UAE, we have examined the innovation`s stakeholders to understand the country's status in term of innovation practices. Researchers revealed that generating innovation is considered as the main challenge for this transition. In order to address transition challenges, researchers proposed building innovation ecosystem that integrates all efforts of innovation`s stakeholders and stimulate innovation practices. We argue that the country needs to develop mechanisms, which should be grounded on industry analysis, priorities, and constraints. Additionally, government organizations that are directly related to innovation should update their mandate and operations in accordance with national innovation strategy. Finally, developing technical capabilities and entrepreneurs towards the targeted economic sectors are crucial for economy transition. However, valuable insights related to the study could be generated through empirical research.
Poly (vinyl) Alcohol's (PVA) inherent hydrophilicity makes it a valuable membrane material to be used for water treatment applications such as reverse osmosis (RO). However, the same property renders PVA inapplicable to be used on its own as it tends to swell when in water. Recently, PVA's swelling was controlled by networked cellulose (NC). PVA-NC membranes of 15, 20 and 30 wt.% NC showed promising results and have also been reported with high salt rejection rates. In this work, our objective was to make these aforementioned membranes on a thinner scale to see if they can retain the salt rejection rates with higher flux. When tested for RO using thicknesses 90?m-100?m, salt rejection of about 98.9% was obtained. These membranes open new doors to the membrane technology where a considerable increase in flux, greater than the commercial ones may be achieved if they are fabricated on a much thinner scale.
Graphene being semi-metallic to semiconducting in nature with a finite resistance, the 3D structures of graphene change resistance when perturbed by an inside or outside stimuli. We have reported a facile technique of creating graphene foams (GF) and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) infused GF composites for pressure and strain sensing application. GF were developed by a vacuum assisted dip-coating of Nickel metal foam (Ni-F) with GO and subsequent reduction of GO to rGO and etching out of Nickel completely from the GF scaffold resulting in a pure free-standing GF. The GF-PDMS composites were tested for their ability to sense compressive strains and pressures in the form of change in resistance.
Olivine lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) exhibits a wide range of inherent merits making it a promising cathode material for high power-density lithium ion batteries. Moreover, the theoretical capacity of LiFePO4 is up to 170 mAh/g at the stable voltage plateau of 3.5V vs. Li/Li+. Nevertheless, its limited commercial availability compared to other cathode materials is referred to its poor rate performance, resulting from the low lithium ion diffusion rate and poor electronic conductivity. This work aims to ? in depth - investigate the properties of LiFePO4 as a potential cathode material. It also summarizes the reported techniques in which its rate performance could be enhanced including elements coating, carbon coating, and preparation of porous materials and composites. The advantages and disadvantages of the above methods are also presented.
The unique properties of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) such as their extraordinary mechanical strength, low density, high electrical and thermal conductivity make them attractive for use in polymer matrices and more recently, for developing conductive membranes. However, challenges in CNT dispersion and health issues related to shedding of individual CNTs have caused much concern. Carbon Nanostructures (CNS) constitute a highly entangled network of CNTs, which can be readily combined with polymers to yield stable advanced membranes for many applications including batteries, filtration, and medicine. In this work, we combined the properties of CNT with networked cellulose (NC) to yield highly porous membranes with tunable morphology. We found that the addition of NC at 50 wt.% enhances the mechanical properties and hydrophilicity of CNS membranes, without significantly degrading their electrical conductivity.
The main challenge facing Wi-Fi Cooperative Localization in indoor/urban environments is the multipath and non-line of sight problems that can degrade received signal strength (RSS) and Time of Arrival (TOA) based distance estimation techniques. The second major challenge is the design and development of robust algorithms to combine inaccurate range/distance measurements to localize Access Points (APs) in a network through centralized or distributed cooperative localization algorithms. Cooperative localization research has been investigated for wireless sensor networks over the last decade. However the study, implementation and analysis of cooperative localization algorithms for Wi- Fi based networks has not received similar attention. The objective of this paper is to study existing wireless sensor network cooperative localization algorithms and assess their performance under the constraints of Wi-Fi signaling and indoor propagation environments.
The error probability is one of the important metrics used to measure the performance of cooperative relay-based systems. Conventionally, the error probability analysis assumes no information about the condition of the Source-Relay link. In this paper, we show that this assumption could result in over or under estimation of the error probability and therefore affects the accuracy of the analysis which is essential to design optimum relay-based system. Therefore, we propose the mathematical model of conditional error probability, in which relay decision information is considered in the performance analysis of cooperative relay-based systems. The accuracy of the derived analytical expressions are validated via Monte Carlo simulations. Results show that, there is substantial difference between the conventional and the conditional error probability, which depends on relay decision information. Finally, the derived expressions provide accurate analytical tool to analyze and design relay-based cooperative systems for various Source- Relay channel conditions.
