A multidisciplinary team approach is essential for assessment and management because combined medical and oral problems are the most frequent cause of pediatric feeding problems. A significant relationship was found between the type of feeding problem and age. Infants born preterm and/or with a birthweight below the tenth percentile for gestational age are at greater risk for developing feeding disorders.

Performance measurement is a fundamental instrument of management. For maintenance management, one of the key issues is to ensure the maintenance activities planned and executed have given the expected results. This can be facilitated by effective use of rigorously defined key performance indicators (KPI) that are able to measure important aspects of maintenance function. In this paper, an industrial survey was carried out to explore the use of performance measurement in maintenance management. Based on survey responses, analyses were performed on popularly used KPI's, how these KPI's are sourced or chosen; the influence of manufacturing environment and maintenance objectives on KPI choice and effective use of these KPI's in decision support and performance improvement. It was found that maintenance performance measurement is dominated by lagging indicators (equipment, maintenance cost and safety performance). There is lesser use of leading (maintenance work process) indicators. The results showed no direct correlations between the maintenance objectives pursued and the KPI used. Further analysis showed that only a minority of the companies have high percentage of decisions and changes triggered by KPI use and only a few are satisfied with their performance measurement systems. Correlation analysis showed a strong positive linear relationship between degree of satisfaction and process changes/decisions triggered by KPI use, with the least satisfied people having the least decisions and changes triggered by KPI use. The results indicates some ineffectiveness of performance measurement systems in driving performance improvement in industries.

Background: Previous studies have shown an inverse gradient in socioeconomic status for disability after stroke. However, no distinction has been made between the period in the stroke rehabilitation unit (SRU) and the period after discharge. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of education and equivalent income on motor and functional recovery for both periods. Methods: 419 consecutive patients were recruited from six SRUs across Europe. The Barthel Index (BI) and Rivermead Motor Assessment (RMA) were measured on admission, at discharge and 6 months after stroke.Ordinal logistic regression models were used, adjusting for case mix. Cumulative odds ratios (OR) were calculated to measure differences in recovery between educational levels and income groups with adjustments for case mix. Results: Patients with a low educational level were less likely to improve on the BI (OR 0.53; 95% CI 0.32 to 0.87) and the RMA arm during inpatient stay (OR 0.54; 95% CI 0.31 to 0.94). For this period, no differences in recovery were found between income groups. After discharge, patients with a low equivalent income were less likely to improve on all three sections of the RMA: gross function (OR 0.20; 95% CI 0.06 to 0.66), leg and trunk (OR 0.22; 95% CI 0.09 to 0.55) and arm (OR 0.30; 95% CI 0.10 to 0.87). No differences were found for education. Conclusions: During inpatient rehabilitation, educational level was a determinant of recovery, while after discharge, equivalent income played an important role. This study suggests that it is important to develop a better understanding of how socioeconomic factors affect the recovery of stroke patients.

For the distribution function of the busy period in the M/G/l queueing system with traffic intensity less than one it is shown that the tail varies regularly at infinity iff the tail of the service time varies regularly at infinity.

For the distribution function of the busy period in the M/G/l queueing system with traffic intensity less than one it is shown that the tail varies regularly at infinity iff the tail of the service time varies regularly at infinity.

The meaning of a sign is the most important factor regarding its functionality (i.e., whether a sign is used in everyday communication). Phonological characteristics seem only of minor importance.

The failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) is a widely applied technique for prioritizing equipment failures in the maintenance decision‐making domain. Recent improvements on the FMEA have largely focussed on addressing the shortcomings of the conventional FMEA of which the risk priority number is incorporated as a measure for prioritizing failure modes. In this regard, considerable research effort has been directed towards addressing uncertainties associated with the risk priority number metrics, that is occurrence, severity and detection. Despite these improvements, assigning these metrics remains largely subjective and mostly relies on expert elicitations, more so in instances where empirical data are sparse. Moreover, the FMEA results remain static and are seldom updated with the availability of new failure information. In this paper, a dynamic risk assessment methodology is proposed and based on the hierarchical Bayes theory. In the methodology, posterior distribution functions are derived for risk metrics associated with equipment failure of which the posterior function combines both prior functions elicited from experts and observed evidences based on empirical data. Thereafter, the posterior functions are incorporated as input to a Monte Carlo simulation model from which the expected cost of failure is generated and failure modes prioritized on this basis. A decision scheme for selecting appropriate maintenance strategy is proposed, and its applicability is demonstrated in the case study of thermal power plant equipment failures. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

SummaryA series of dithienophenazines with different lengths of the oligomeric thiophene units (quaterthiophenes and sexithiophenes) was synthesized. The thiophene and phenazine units act as electron donors and acceptors, respectively, resulting in characteristic absorption spectra. The optical spectra were calculated using time-dependent density functional theory at the B3LYP/TZVP level and verify the experimental data. Adsorption of the dithienophenazines on highly ordered pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) was investigated by scanning tunneling microscopy, showing that one of the compounds forms highly organized self-assembled monolayers.