Various tools for safety performance measurement have been introduced in order to fulfil the need for safety monitoring in organisations, which is tightly related to their overall performance and achievement of their business goals. Such tools include accident rates, benchmarking, safety culture and climate assessments, cost-effectiveness studies, etc. The current work reviews the most representative methods for safety performance evaluation that have been suggested and applied by a variety of organisations, safety authorities and agencies. This paper discusses several viewpoints of the applicability, feasibility and appropriateness of such tools, based on the viewpoints of managers and safety experts involved in a relevant research that was conducted in a large aviation organisation. The extensive literature cited, the discussion topics, along with the conclusions and recommendations derived, might be considered by any organisation that seeks a realistic safety performance assessment and establishment of effective measurement tools.
This article describes the relation between mental health and academic performance during the start of college and how AI-enhanced chatbot interventions could prevent both study problems and mental health problems.
From the article: With increasing investments in business rules management (BRM), organizations are searching for ways to value and benchmark their processes to elicitate, design, accept, deploy and execute business rules. To realize valuation and benchmarking of previously mentioned processes, organizations must be aware that performance measurement is essential, and of equal importance, which performance indicators to apply to the performance measurement processes. However, scientific research on BRM, in general, is limited and research that focuses on BRM in combination with performance indicators is nascent. The purpose of this paper is to define performance indicators for previously mentioned BRM processes. We conducted a three round focus group and three round Delphi Study which led to the identification of 14 performance indicators. Presented results provide a grounded basis from which further, empirical, research on performance indicators for BRM can be explored.
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Het lopen van een marathon wordt steeds populairder. Naast de vele positieve gezondheidseffecten van duurinspanning, kan duurinspanning ook gepaard gaan met maagdarmklachten. Zo’n 30-90% van de hardlopers heeft last van maagdarmklachten tijdens of in de uren na het hardlopen. Het ontstaan van maagdarmklachten heeft waarschijnlijk te maken met de herverdeling van het bloedvolume, resulterend in minder bloedtoevoer naar het spijsverteringskanaal en een minder goed functionerende darmbarrière. Doordat de darmbarrière minder goed functioneert kunnen er ongewenste stoffen (endotoxinen) de bloedbaan intreden en voor ontstekingsreacties zorgen. De vele micro-organismen in onze darm, gezamenlijk onze darmmicrobiota genoemd, zijn van invloed op de voedselvertering, maar ook op het functioneren van de cellen die de darmwand bekleden en de verbindingen tussen deze cellen. Mogelijk hebben hardlopers met maagdarmklachten tijdens duurinspanning te maken met een afwijkende samenstelling van de darmmicrobiota en/of metabolieten ten opzichte van hardlopers zonder klachten, waardoor de darmbarrière minder goed functioneert en er problemen kunnen optreden. Vandaar dat het voornaamste doel van ons onderzoeksproject is om te onderzoeken of er een relatie bestaat tussen de samenstelling van de darmmicrobiota en/of metabolieten en het ontstaan van maagdarmklachten tijdens duurinspanning. De onderzoeksvragen die zullen worden bestudeerd zijn: 1) Verschilt de samenstelling van de darmmicrobiota en/of metabolieten van hardlopers die wel en niet last krijgen van maagdarmklachten tijdens het lopen van een marathon? En zo ja, hoe? 2) Kan de samenstelling van de darmmicrobiota en/of metabolieten van getrainde sporters die maagdarmklachten ervaren tijdens duurinspanning positief beïnvloed worden door probiotica-suppletie, zodat de kans op en/of intensiteit van maagdarmklachten tijdens duurinspanning wordt verminderd en de sportprestatie verbeterd? Het onderzoeksproject richt zich op de identificatie van sporters die last hebben van maagdarmklachten tijdens duurinspanning. We hopen met de beoogde resultaten bij te kunnen dragen aan op de persoon gerichte preventie van maagdarmklachten door het aanpassen van de darmmicrobiota.
Recycling of plastics plays an important role to reach a climate neutral industry. To come to a sustainable circular use of materials, it is important that recycled plastics can be used for comparable (or ugraded) applications as their original use. QuinLyte innovated a material that can reach this goal. SmartAgain® is a material that is obtained by recycling of high-barrier multilayer films and which maintains its properties after mechanical recycling. It opens the door for many applications, of which the production of a scoliosis brace is a typical example from the medical field. Scoliosis is a sideways curvature of the spine and wearing an orthopedic brace is the common non-invasive treatment to reduce the likelihood of spinal fusion surgery later. The traditional way to make such brace is inaccurate, messy, time- and money-consuming. Because of its nearly unlimited design freedom, 3D FDM-printing is regarded as the ultimate sustainable technique for producing such brace. From a materials point of view, SmartAgain® has the good fit with the mechanical property requirements of scoliosis braces. However, its fast crystallization rate often plays against the FDM-printing process, for example can cause poor layer-layer adhesion. Only when this problem is solved, a reliable brace which is strong, tough, and light weight could be printed via FDM-printing. Zuyd University of Applied Science has, in close collaboration with Maastricht University, built thorough knowledge on tuning crystallization kinetics with the temperature development during printing, resulting in printed products with improved layer-layer adhesion. Because of this knowledge and experience on developing materials for 3D printing, QuinLyte contacted Zuyd to develop a strategy for printing a wearable scoliosis brace of SmartAgain®. In the future a range of other tailor-made products can be envisioned. Thus, the project is in line with the GoChem-themes: raw materials from recycling, 3D printing and upcycling.
Students in Higher Music Education (HME) are not facilitated to develop both their artistic and academic musical competences. Conservatoires (professional education, or ‘HBO’) traditionally foster the development of musical craftsmanship, while university musicology departments (academic education, or ‘WO’) promote broader perspectives on music’s place in society. All the while, music professionals are increasingly required to combine musical and scholarly knowledge. Indeed, musicianship is more than performance, and musicology more than reflection—a robust musical practice requires people who are versed in both domains. It’s time our education mirrors this blended profession. This proposal entails collaborative projects between a conservatory and a university in two cities where musical performance and musicology equally thrive: Amsterdam (Conservatory and University of Amsterdam) and Utrecht (HKU Utrechts Conservatorium and Utrecht University). Each project will pilot a joint program of study, combining existing modules with newly developed ones. The feasibility of joint degrees will be explored: a combined bachelor’s degree in Amsterdam; and a combined master’s degree in Utrecht. The full innovation process will be translated to a transferable infrastructural model. For 125 students it will fuse praxis-based musical knowledge and skills, practice-led research and academic training. Beyond this, the partners will also use the Comenius funds as a springboard for collaboration between the two cities to enrich their respective BA and MA programs. In the end, the programme will diversify the educational possibilities for students of music in the Netherlands, and thereby increase their professional opportunities in today’s job market.
