The quality of medical services provided to patients affects hospital performance under severe competition amongst large-sized hospitals and increases the rights of patients. A hospital, specifically a large-sized one, can demonstrate successful performance when it satisfies the factors of quality a customer expects, enhances the value of care and invests its resources to improve the factors of quality. This study explores the factors of quality affecting the value of care and patient satisfaction, and tests the correlations among the value of care, patient satisfaction and intention to re-visit. Large-sized hospitals that increase the value of care and patient satisfaction ensure patients will re-visit and also increase revenue by taking the above factors into consideration. This study uses interview data obtained from outpatients in a large-sized university hospital located in Seoul, Korea with approximately 1000 hospital beds. In addition, this study uses the causal relationship model for the analysis. The purposes of this study are to: (i) to analyse the utility of established factors of service quality discovered in the studies of service quality when measuring the quality of medical services in large-sized hospitals, (ii) to examine systematically the correlations amongst the quality of medical services, value of care, satisfaction level and re-visit intention, and (iii) to suggest marketing implications for large-sized hospitals to offer patients effective medical services based upon the results of this study.

This article presents a dual-tuned (DT) radiofrequency (RF) coil for signal acquisition of 2 nuclei, namely, hydrogen ( 1 H) and sodium ( 23 Na), in the ultra-high magnetic field of a 7-T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system. The doublelayered dual-tuned (DLDT) coil comprises a 2-loop coil configuration per singlepair geometry, with the 1 H and 23 Na coils being located on the outside and inside, respectively. The 1 H and 23 Na single-pair elements are tuned to resonance frequencies of 297.20 and 78.61 MHz, respectively. The single-pair geometry of the DLDT coil is extended to an 8-pair configuration to cover the human head, and the operation mode is transmission/reception (Tx/Rx). The 8-pair DLDT Tx/Rx coil array is designed with a non-overlapped single pair between the 1 H coil elements for geometric decoupling, and capacitive decoupling is implemented to minimize the mutual inductance coupling. The 2 resonance frequencies are fed through a single RF port to a common matching board, and each frequency is selected using the voltages at both ends of a PIN diode. Through use of the PIN diode in the DLDT coil configuration, with a voltage drop at both ends, different resonance frequencies can be selected for each coil element in accordance with the diode ON/OFF state. The experiments conducted showed that the proposed DLDT coil is effective in acquiring signals of 1 H and 23 Na in the MRI system. K E Y W O R D Sdouble-layered dual-tuned (DLDT) coil, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), multinuclear, PIN diode

No abstract

This study proposes a novel procedure for estimating aircraft fuel burn during ground operations using aircraft trajectory data acquired from an airport surface surveillance system. A fundamental assumption employed throughout the study is that aircraft fuel burn on the ground depends on taxi phases and corresponding thrust settings. The computational process is split into three steps: (1) define a taxi phase for each data point by analyzing the trajectory data; (2) find the fuel flow index appropriate for each taxi phase of each engine type from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Engine Emissions Databank which contains fuel flow indices for four flight status of every commercial engine; and (3) estimate the total fuel burn on the ground for each flight by multiplying the time duration at each taxi phase by the corresponding fuel flow rate. Using 24-hour surface trajectory data collected from the Airport Surface Detection Equipment (ASDE) system at Seoul/Incheon International Airport, all flights operated on the day were analyzed applying this procedure. The results indicate that suggested taxi fuel burn rates are estimated to be about 17% lower than the ICAO values. The proposed procedure is expected to be used as an alternative method for ground fuel burn estimation.

No abstract