ANALYSIS OF THE PERSONNEL’S CONSISTENT READINESS FOR CHANGES AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE EXAMPLE OF AN EXPORT-ORIENTED BIOTECHNOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE

The biotechnology industry is currently one of the most dynamically developing sectors of the pharmaceutical industry, that is why it requires improvement in the personnel management system aimed at increasing the flexibility and adaptability of the organization.The aim of the research is to determine the degree of readiness of the organization’s employees for innovations as illustrated by the example of an export-oriented enterprise.Materials and methods. The source information was collected from the employees of the biotechnological enterprise through a questionnaire survey. The representative sample included 588 respondents. The statistical processing of data was carried out using the specialized software IBM SPSS STATISTICS (IBM, USA, 2017). The consistent readiness of the organization’s employees for innovations was determined using I.O. Zagashev’s methods. To assess the reliability of the psychological test, an internal consistency model with Cronbach’s alpha was applied. Statistical hypotheses were tested by comparing the central tendencies of two independent samples using Student’s t-test and the Mann–Whitney nonparametric test.Results. The distribution results of key motivating factors for personnel showed that motivating factors such as an adequate salary and sustainable employment took the leading positions. However, the assessment of the employees’ consistent readiness for innovations according to I.O. Zagashev’s methods shows a high degree of the personnel’s readiness for changes due to positive emotional perception of any innovations.Conclusion. The results obtained make it possible to arrive at the conclusion that the established team favorably responds to all innovations, and is ready to support them in the future being aware of the organization’s desire for innovations. In the future, the results will be used to determine the required management functions and goals and to develop the personnel management strategy in the context of the knowledge transfer, technology and export policy of the pharmaceutical enterprise.

Research On Roundness Error Consistency Model For Crank Journal Cylindrical grinding

Cylindrical grinding is an important way to form the external shape error of the crank journal, and the accuracy consistency directly affects the interchangeability of products. To study the accuracy consistency of crank journal，a dynamic model of the grinding wheel-crankshaft grinding system based on Timoshenko beam is established, and the grinding transition process simulation algorithm with iterative convergence of grinding force-transient grinding amount cycle adapted to the model is proposed, which realizes the simulation of the roundness of the crank journal coupled with the process parameters of the grinding system. Aiming at the grinding position of each crank journal, the grinding roundness of five crank journals is simulated respectively. On this basis, the crank journal roundness consistency prediction model is established, and the effectiveness of the prediction model is verified by field experiments. Finally, the influence of grinding parameters on the consistency of the roundness of crank journal is studied. The research conclusion can provide a reference for the grinding accuracy consistency design of this type of crank journal.

Prevalence of evidence of inconsistency and its association with network structural characteristics in 201 published networks of interventions

Background Network meta-analysis (NMA) has attracted growing interest in evidence-based medicine. Consistency between different sources of evidence is fundamental to the reliability of the NMA results. The purpose of the present study was to estimate the prevalence of evidence of inconsistency and describe its association with different NMA characteristics. Methods We updated our collection of NMAs with articles published up to July 2018. We included networks with randomised clinical trials, at least four treatment nodes, at least one closed loop, a dichotomous primary outcome, and available arm-level data. We assessed consistency using the design-by-treatment interaction (DBT) model and testing all the inconsistency parameters globally through the Wald-type chi-squared test statistic. We estimated the prevalence of evidence of inconsistency and its association with different network characteristics (e.g., number of studies, interventions, intervention comparisons, loops). We evaluated the influence of the network characteristics on the DBT p-value via a multivariable regression analysis and the estimated Pearson correlation coefficients. We also evaluated heterogeneity in NMA (consistency) and DBT (inconsistency) random-effects models. Results We included 201 published NMAs. The p-value of the design-by-treatment interaction (DBT) model was lower than 0.05 in 14% of the networks and lower than 0.10 in 20% of the networks. Networks including many studies and comparing few interventions were more likely to have small DBT p-values (less than 0.10), which is probably because they yielded more precise estimates and power to detect differences between designs was higher. In the presence of inconsistency (DBT p-value lower than 0.10), the consistency model displayed higher heterogeneity than the DBT model. Conclusions Our findings show that inconsistency was more frequent than what would be expected by chance, suggesting that researchers should devote more resources to exploring how to mitigate inconsistency. The results of this study highlight the need to develop strategies to detect inconsistency (because of the relatively high prevalence of evidence of inconsistency in published networks), and particularly in cases where the existing tests have low power.

Examining Associations between Knowledge and Vaccine Uptake Using the Human Papillomavirus Knowledge Questionnaire (HPV-KQ)

Objectives: Understanding the relationship between human papillomavirus (HPV) knowledge and vaccination behavior is important to inform public health interventions, yet few validated HPV knowledge scales exist. This study describes development of the Human Papillomavirus Knowledge Questionnaire (HPV-KQ) and its validation with parents residing in the southern United States (US). Methods: Drawing on previously published measures, we developed the 13-item HPV-KQ and administered the scale via Web-based survey to parents (N=1105) of adolescents ages 9 to 17 years. Dimensionality, internal consistency, model fit, and predictive validity were assessed. Results: The scale was bidimensional. One factor captured general HPV knowledge, and the second factor captured perceptions of gender differences in HPV infection and vaccine recommendations. The 13-item scale and 2-factor solution displayed strong internal consistency and good model fit. Parents of vaccinated adolescents scored higher on the 13-item HPV-KQ (Mean = 8.56) than parents of unvaccinated adolescents (Mean = 6.43) (p < .001). In regression models, controlling for key covariates, parents' performance on the HPV-KQ predicted adolescent HPV vaccination (p < .001). Conclusions: Evaluation indicates the HPV-KQ is a reliable and valid tool for measuring knowledge of HPV and the HPV vaccine among parents residing in the southern US. We recommend further efforts to validate the scale with other populations.

Shared Memory Verification for Multicore Chip Designs

A multicore chip usually provides a shared memory abstraction implemented by a cache coherence protocol. On-chip coherence can scale gracefully as the number of cores grows, and it plays a major role for general purpose applications. Besides, multicore architectures are likely to relax constraints on store atomicity and on the ordering between loads and stores. As a result, the validation of shared memory faces two main challenges: the higher number of valid execution behaviors and the larger coherence protocol's state space. This dissertation faces those challenges and targets an important design automation phase: the (pre-silicon) functional verification of the shared memory subsystem of a multicore chip, whose behavior is specified by a memory consistency model (MCM). The main scientific contribution is a novel approach to the building of MCM checkers, along with technical contributions on random test generation and directed test generation. The contributions were reported by two papers in a premier IEEE/ACM conference and two articles in the most prestigious IEEE journal on Computer Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems.

Armed Cats

We report on the process for formal concurrency modelling at Arm. An initial formal consistency model of the Arm achitecture, written in the cat language, was published and upstreamed to the herd+diy tool suite in 2017. Since then, we have extended the original model with extra features, for example, mixed-size accesses, and produced two provably equivalent alternative formulations. In this article, we present a comprehensive review of work done at Arm on the consistency model. Along the way, we also show that our principle for handling mixed-size accesses applies to x86: We confirm this via vast experimental campaigns. We also show that our alternative formulations are applicable to any model phrased in a style similar to the one chosen by Arm.

SkePU 3: Portable High-Level Programming of Heterogeneous Systems and HPC Clusters

We present the third generation of the C++-based open-source skeleton programming framework SkePU. Its main new features include new skeletons, new data container types, support for returning multiple objects from skeleton instances and user functions, support for specifying alternative platform-specific user functions to exploit e.g. custom SIMD instructions, generalized scheduling variants for the multicore CPU backends, and a new cluster-backend targeting the custom MPI interface provided by the StarPU task-based runtime system. We have also revised the smart data containers’ memory consistency model for automatic data sharing between main and device memory. The new features are the result of a two-year co-design effort collecting feedback from HPC application partners in the EU H2020 project EXA2PRO, and target especially the HPC application domain and HPC platforms. We evaluate the performance effects of the new features on high-end multicore CPU and GPU systems and on HPC clusters.

Prevalence of Inconsistency and Its Association With Network Structural Characteristics in 201 Published Networks of Interventions

Background: Network meta-analysis (NMA) has attracted growing interest in evidence-based medicine. Consistency between different sources of evidence is fundamental to the reliability of the NMA results. The purpose of the present study was to estimate the prevalence of inconsistency and describe its association with different NMA characteristics. Methods: We updated our collection of NMAs with articles published up to July 2018. We included networks with randomised clinical trials, at least four treatment nodes, at least one closed loop, a dichotomous primary outcome, and available arm-level data. We assessed consistency using the design-by-treatment interaction (DBT) model. We estimated the prevalence of inconsistency and its association with different network characteristics (e.g., number of studies, treatments, treatment comparisons, loops), and evaluated heterogeneity in NMA and DBT models.Results: We included 201 published NMAs. The p-value of the design-by-treatment interaction (DBT) model was lower than 0.05 in 14% of the networks and lower than 0.10 in 20% of the networks. Networks comparing few interventions in many studies were more likely to have small DBT p-values (less than 0.10), which is probably because they yielded more precise estimates and power to detect differences between designs was higher. In the presence of inconsistency (DBT p-value lower than 0.10), the consistency model displayed higher heterogeneity than the DBT model. Conclusions: Our findings show that inconsistency was more frequent than what would be expected by chance, suggesting that researchers should devote more resources to exploring how to mitigate inconsistency. The results of this study highlight the need to develop strategies to detect inconsistency (because of the relatively high prevalence of inconsistency in published networks), and particularly in cases where the existing tests have low power.