ESTRO-HERO survey: Guidelines for equipment and staffing of radiotherapy facilities in the European countries: Final results of the ESTRO-HERO survey

Background and purpose: In planning to meet evidence based needs for radiotherapy, guidelines for the provision of capital and human resources are central if access, quality and safety are not to be compromised. A component of the ESTRO-HERO (Health Economics in Radiation Oncology) project is to document the current availability and content of guidelines for radiotherapy in Europe. Materials and methods: An 84 part questionnaire was distributed to the European countries through their national scientific and professional radiotherapy societies with 30 items relating to the availability of guidelines for equipment and staffing and selected operational issues. Twenty-nine countries provided full or partial evaluable responses. Results: The availability of guidelines across Europe is far from uniform. The metrics used for capital and human resources are variable. There seem to have been no major changes in the availability or specifics of guidelines over the ten-year period since the QUARTS study with the exception of the recent expansion of RTT staffing models. Where comparison is possible it appears that staffing for radiation oncologists, medical physicists and particularly RTTs tend to exceed guidelines suggesting developments in clinical radiotherapy are moving faster than guideline updating. Conclusion: The efficient provision of safe, high quality radiotherapy services would benefit from the availability of well-structured guidelines for capital and human resources, based on agreed upon metrics, which could be linked to detailed estimates of need

Asiakaslupausmittariston rakentaminen

Tässä diplomityössä tarkastellaan teollisuusyrityksen suorituskykyä asiakkaiden näkökulmasta. Työn tavoitteena on rakentaa kohdeyritykselle yrityksen suorituskykyä asiakkaan näkökulmasta kuvaava mittaristo. Työn kirjallisuustutkimuksen perusteella tunnistetaan olennaiset menetelmät asiakaspalvelutarpeiden mittaamiseen ja analysointiin. Lisäksi työssä esitellään suorituskyvyn mittariston rakentamisen mallit ja periaatteet, sekä mittariston implementointiin vaikuttavat tekijät. Empiirisessä osassa toteutetaan avainasiakkaiden palvelutarpeiden ja yrityksen suoritustason kartoitus ja analysointi. Kohdeyritykselle rakennetaan mittariston asiakaspalvelutarpeiden perusteella, soveltuen yrityksen toimintaympäristöön ja strategisiin päämääriin. Mittaristo rakennetaa Balanced Scorecardin asiakasnäkökulman asiakaslupausmittareiden pohjalle. Työn tuloksena kohdeyritys saa kuvan palvelutasostaan. Työssä esitetyn asiakaslupausmittariston avulla kohdeyritys voi seurata ja kehittää suorituskykyään. Lisäksi työssä tuodaan ilmi tärkeitä tekijöitä, jotka vaikuttavat mittariston implementointiin ja esitetään suositusten muodossa toimintaperiaatteita implementointiprosessissa.

Métricas de productividad del software para la gestión de proyectos

En la preparación de todo proyecto existe una estimación de costes de los diferentes puntos a realizar. Las métricas del software pueden ser de: productividad, calidad, técnicas, orientadas al tamaño, orientadas a la función u orientadas a la persona. Este documento tratará sobre las métricas del software, que se centran en el rendimiento del proceso de la ingeniería del software.

Capital Structure of Finnish SMEs and Financial Constraints

This thesis studies capital structure of Finnish small and medium sized enterprises. The specific object of the study is to test whether financial constraints have an effect on capital structure. In addition influences of several other factors were studied. Capital structure determinants are formulated based on three capital structure theories. The tradeoff theory and the agency theory concentrate on the search of optimal capital structure. The pecking order theory concerns favouring on financing source over another. The data of this study consists of financial statement data and results of corporate questionnaire. Regression analysis was used to find out the effects of several determinants. Regression models were formed based on the presented theories. Short and long term debt ratios were considered separately. The metrics of financially constrained firms was included in all models. It was found that financial constrains have a negative and significant effect to short term debt ratios. The effect was negative also to long term debt ratio but not statistically significant. Other considerable factors that influenced debt ratios were fixed assets, age, profitability, single owner and sufficiency of internal financing.

Innovaatiokyvykkyyden mittaaminen suorituskyvyn johtamisen näkökulmasta

Tavoitteena oli tutkia, miten voidaan osoittaa innovaatiopohjaisten tutkimus- ja kehittämismenetelmien hyödyt organisaatioiden innovaatiokyvykkyyteen. Tutkimuksen tarkoitus oli kehittää suorituskyvyn johtamisen näkökulmasta viitekehys innovaatiokyvykkyyden ja sen vaikutusten mittaamiseen. Empiirinen aineisto kerättiin workshoppien, haastattelujen ja ryhmätyösessioiden avulla. Innovaatiokyvykkyyden kehittäminen on nykyisin keskeisessä asemassa, kun organisaatiot toimivat hyvin haasteellisissa toimintaympäristöissä. Kuitenkin innovaatiokyvykkyyden mittaaminen organisaatioissa on hyvin harvinaista muun muassa mittaamisen haasteellisuuden ja abstraktin luonteen vuoksi. Mittaaminen on kuitenkin oleellinen osa innovaatiokyvykkyyden kehittämistä ja siten tärkeää organisaatioiden tulevaisuuden menestyksen kannalta. Tutkimuksen tuloksena syntyi viitekehys innovaatiomenetelmien vaikutusten arviointiin. Viitekehys koostuu viidestä näkökulmasta. Innovatiivisen suorituskyvyn näkökulmassa mitataan innovaatiokyvykkyyden taustatekijöitä ja innovaatiotoiminnan tuloksia. Lisäksi talous-, asiakas-, sisäisten prosessien ja henkilöstön näkökulmasta mitataan innovaatiokyvykkyyden kehityksen vaikutuksia organisaation toimintaan. Mittariston tavoitteet asetetaan innovaatiomenetelmien soveltamisen aikana, joten menestystekijät ja mittarit määritetään tapauskohtaisesti. Työssä annetaan kuitenkin ohjeita menestystekijöiden ja mittarien määrittämiseen. Näkökulmat pysyvät samoina tapauksesta riippumatta.

Defining a Performance Measurement System for Technology Marketing Team by Using the Balanced Scorecard Method

This thesis was produced for the Technology Marketing unit at the Nokia Research Center. Technology marketing was a new function at Nokia Research Center, and needed an established framework with the capacity to take into account multiple aspects for measuring the team performance. Technology marketing functions had existed in other parts of Nokia, yet no single method had been agreed upon for measuring their performance. The purpose of this study was to develop a performance measurement system for Nokia Research Center Technology Marketing. The target was that Nokia Research Center Technology Marketing had a framework for separate metrics; including benchmarking for starting level and target values in the future planning (numeric values were kept confidential within the company). As a result of this research, the Balanced Scorecard model of Kaplan and Norton, was chosen for the performance measurement system for Nokia Research Center Technology Marketing. This research selected the indicators, which were utilized in the chosen performance measurement system. Furthermore, performance measurement system was defined to guide the Head of Marketing in managing Nokia Research Center Technology Marketing team. During the research process the team mission, vision, strategy and critical success factors were outlined.

Assigning and combining probabilities in single-case designs: A second study

The present study builds on a previous proposal for assigning probabilities to the outcomes computed using different primary indicators in single-case studies. These probabilities are obtained comparing the outcome to previously tabulated reference values and reflect the likelihood of the results in case there was no intervention effect. The current study explores how well different metrics are translated into p values in the context of simulation data. Furthermore, two published multiple baseline data sets are used to illustrate how well the probabilities could reflect the intervention effectiveness as assessed by the original authors. Finally, the importance of which primary indicator is used in each data set to be integrated is explored; two ways of combining probabilities are used: a weighted average and a binomial test. The results indicate that the translation into p values works well for the two nonoverlap procedures, with the results for the regression-based procedure diverging due to some undesirable features of its performance. These p values, both when taken individually and when combined, were well-aligned with the effectiveness for the real-life data. The results suggest that assigning probabilities can be useful for translating the primary measure into the same metric, using these probabilities as additional evidence on the importance of behavioral change, complementing visual analysis and professional's judgments.

Measuring Customer Experience in Mobile Internet

Problems in the mobile services are complex where the lack of the user analysis is not the modest issue. User centered design has increasingly become as a basis for the design of mobile services. The concept of user centered design gives end-user extensive attention at each stage of the design process. Mobile service providers want to offer experiences for users and clearly the users look for services that can provide pleasant experiences. In this thesis, the elements of user experience in mobile internet were studied as well as user experience measuring methods were researched. This study was looking for user experience measuring metrics and methods to specify new factors to measure user experience. During this thesis research project an application called CEM4Mobile was designed and implemented. CEM4Mobile is an application for observing and analysing user experience based on the user activity and behaviour. As a result of this thesis, a collection of user experience elements and measuring metrics were found. The elements and metrics were designed and implemented to CEM4Mobile product, which measures user experience. It was found out that the user experience measuring methods were based on interaction between two people but CEM4Mobile makes user observation programmatic.

Formal Power Analysis of Systems-on-Chip

The design methods and languages targeted to modern System-on-Chip designs are facing tremendous pressure of the ever-increasing complexity, power, and speed requirements. To estimate any of these three metrics, there is a trade-off between accuracy and abstraction level of detail in which a system under design is analyzed. The more detailed the description, the more accurate the simulation will be, but, on the other hand, the more time consuming it will be. Moreover, a designer wants to make decisions as early as possible in the design flow to avoid costly design backtracking. To answer the challenges posed upon System-on-chip designs, this thesis introduces a formal, power aware framework, its development methods, and methods to constraint and analyze power consumption of the system under design. This thesis discusses on power analysis of synchronous and asynchronous systems not forgetting the communication aspects of these systems. The presented framework is built upon the Timed Action System formalism, which offer an environment to analyze and constraint the functional and temporal behavior of the system at high abstraction level. Furthermore, due to the complexity of System-on-Chip designs, the possibility to abstract unnecessary implementation details at higher abstraction levels is an essential part of the introduced design framework. With the encapsulation and abstraction techniques incorporated with the procedure based communication allows a designer to use the presented power aware framework in modeling these large scale systems. The introduced techniques also enable one to subdivide the development of communication and computation into own tasks. This property is taken into account in the power analysis part as well. Furthermore, the presented framework is developed in a way that it can be used throughout the design project. In other words, a designer is able to model and analyze systems from an abstract specification down to an implementable specification.

Sales and Operations Planning Implementation

The master’s thesis focused on implementing a sales and operations planning process. The main objectives were to create planning methods and tools for the implementation. The ultimate goal of the process, beyond this master’s thesis, is to balance the supply of products with customer demand, with optimized profitability. The theoretical part focused on giving a thorough view on the sales and operations planning process. The basis for a monthly planning cycle was identified. Methods, tools, and metrics for demand forecasting and operations planning were also introduced. Based on the theoretical part, a method for forecasting, a forecast spreadsheet, and a forecast accuracy metric were designed. A spreadsheet tool and methods were also designed for the monthly planning of production volumes, capacity, and inventory. The implementation progress was reviewed for two product families for three months. The sales and operations planning process was able to successfully identify a demand peak for the product families. Suggestions for the future of sales and operations planning were also made.

Uma métrica gráfica para avaliação holística da verdura de reacções laboratoriais - "Estrela Verde"

A new semi-quantitative metrics, Green Star (GS), for evaluation of the global greenishness of chemical reactions used in teaching laboratories has been developed. Its aim is to help choosing the more acceptable reactions for implementing Green Chemistry (GC) and to identify suitable modifications of reaction protocols to improve the greenishness of chemistry. GS considers globally all the Twelve Principles of GC. To illustrate its construction, the tetraamminecopper(II) sulfate monohydrate laboratory synthesis, performed under several sets of conditions to pursue greenishness, is presented. A comparative study with other GC metrics showed the advantages of GS and that it accomplishes its purpose.

Importância da logística da via de síntese em Química Verde

The role of the logistics in the design of synthetic pathways aimed at greenish is discussed. The influence on costs (of reagents, solvents and total), as well as on atomic productivity green metrics (atomic economy and E factor), of the position along the pathway of a step with low yield, or involving high dilution of the reagents or expensive reagents, has been evaluated by calculations on a linear pathway model. The results show the economic importance of Green Chemistry and provide useful information for pathway design or improvement.

Redes de colaboração científica na área de química no Brasil: um estudo baseado nas coautorias dos artigos da revista Química Nova

In this paper we built three co-authorship networks displaying the acquaintances between countries, universities and authors that have published papers in Quimica Nova from 1995 to 2008. Our research was conducted applying a bibliometric approach to 1782 papers and over 4200 authors. Centrality measures were used and the most significant actors of each network were pointed out. The results using the centrality metrics and the network structures indicated that Quimica Nova resembles a typical scientific community.

Novas métricas holísticas para avaliação da verdura de reações de síntese em laboratório

New semi-quantitative metrics for simple evaluation of global greenness of chemical reactions used in teaching laboratories, namely, the Green Circle (GC) and Green Matrix (GM), were developed. These metrics globally consider all Twelve Principles of Green Chemistry. To illustrate their construction, the greenness of several syntheses performed in the laboratory under different sets of conditions was assessed. The tools were validated by comparing the results with another metric, the Green Star (GS), developed in our previous study. Results showed these new metrics were useful for the intended purpose, having the advantage of being simpler than the GS.

Avaliação da "microverdura" de sínteses com a estrela verde

This article reports a study to increase the overall greenness of chemical syntheses for first-year university laboratories. The separate evaluation of the micro-greenness of the three stages of synthesis (reaction, isolation and purification) using the Green Star (GS) was implemented and their respective contribution to overall greenness was investigated for two examples: syntheses of cobalt (III) tris(acetylacetonate) and potassium nitrilosulfonate. Results showed that the post-reaction (work-up) steps are the most problematic for overall greenness. Greenness optimization can be achieved by combining the greenest procedures for each step obtained from different protocols available in the literature.