The patent landscape for developing scientometric library services (as exemplified by the discipline of Microbiology)

The author discusses the modern research tools in various domains of science and industry based on integrated assessment of scientometric indicators and patent analysis. Excerpts of microbiological research papers published in Russia and worldwide are included. The data on researchers’ inventive work and publication activities are cited. The possibility for using patent landscapes in assessing research and industrial domains is examined. The author argues that building patent landscapes is a quality tool to identify the most promising vectors of development. He demonstrates that the most research and development activities are concentrated in the countries with the largest numbers of patent applications. In Russia, the government-funded organizations make the key driving force in the scientific studies and technologies in the national microbiology. In analyzing vast data volumes, patent landscapes enable to improve the quality of analysis visualization and get reliable data on the subject of research owing to multidimensional analytical representations. The author insists that building patent landscape services might become one of science libraries’ key functions.

Fourier transform infra-red spectroscopy to determine formaldehyde to phenol ratio of phenol formaldehyde resole

A model has been proposed to determine the formaldehyde (F) to phenol (P) ratio [F/P] of resole with the help of Fourier transform infra-red spectroscopy. The study is based on the comparison of IR absorbance of the dominant peaks corresponding to the formaldehyde and phenol contents in the resin. This study can be of much use in adhesive coating industries to employ the F/P ratio as a quality tool as well as for competition resin benchmarking. It can also be utilized for understanding the kinetics of the reactions between phenol and formaldehyde. Detailed qualitative analyses of various resoles with different formulations have been discussed in this paper, which can be of potential help for the standard analysis of the commercial resins. The validation of results confirms that the most fitting model offers an error less than 7%. Interestingly, this model can also be applied with blends of different Phenol formaldehyde resoles.

Mobile pre-hospital care reorganization during the COVID-19 pandemic: experience report

ABSTRACT Objective: To describe the reorganization of Belo Horizonte’s Mobile Emergency Care Service during the new coronavirus pandemic using the Plan Do-Check-Act quality tool. Methods: Descriptive study, of the experience report type, on the reorganization of care in a mobile pre-hospital care service during the new coronavirus pandemic, from March to July 2020. The Plan-Do-Check-Act quality tool was applied for the process. Results: Preparation of care protocol, meetings, training, addition of ambulances, hiring of professionals, and other actions were carried out, with subsequent evaluation and monitoring. When failures or new needs were identified, actions and changes were implemented while keeping monitoring and evaluation during the work routine. Final considerations: The reorganization of the service through the construction of a protocol and using the Plan-Do-Check-Act as a management tool was essential to promote safe care for professionals and patients.

Large-scale quality assessment of prokaryotic genomes with metashot/prok-quality

Metagenomic sequencing allows large-scale identification and genomic characterization. Binning is the process of recovering genomes from complex mixtures of sequence fragments (metagenome contigs) of unknown bacteria and archaeal species. Assessing the quality of genomes recovered from metagenomes requires the use of complex pipelines involving many independent steps, often difficult to reproduce and maintain. A comprehensive, automated and easy-to-use computational workflow for the quality assessment of draft prokaryotic genomes, based on container technology, would greatly improve reproducibility and reusability of published results. We present metashot/prok-quality, a container-enabled Nextflow pipeline for quality assessment and genome dereplication. The metashot/prok-quality tool produces genome quality reports that are compliant with the Minimum Information about a Metagenome-Assembled Genome (MIMAG) standard, and can run out-of-the-box on any platform that supports Nextflow, Docker or Singularity, including computing clusters or batch infrastructures in the cloud. metashot/prok-quality is part of the metashot collection of analysis pipelines. Workflow and documentation are available under GPL3 licence on GitHub.

PSS-FMEA: TOWARDS AN INTEGRATED FMEA METHOD TO SUPPORT THE DEVELOPMENT OF PRODUCT-SERVICE SYSTEMS IN SMES

In industry, Failure Mode and Effects Analysis is an established quality tool for minimizing development risks in systems, products and processes. Nevertheless, the presented use case shows that the application of the FMEA method in the development of Product-Service Systems in a SME requires modifications to ensure that the special character of PSS is appropriately included and that risks can be adequately assessed and prioritized.

Country-related future research agenda of Lean Manufacturing–A systematic literature review

PurposeMany future research proposals of Lean Manufacturing (LM) are presented in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to determine these future research proposals of LM which are country-related and classify them.Design/methodology/approachA systematic literature review (SLR) of peer-reviewed journal articles in LM was conducted. A total of 145 articles published in 34 journals during 2010–2020 were collected from four major management science publishers namely, Emerald Online, Elsevier/Science Direct, Springer Link and Taylor and Francis. The country-related future research proposals of LM identified in the literature were classified according to, firstly, the continent of the country of reference, and secondly, some form of natural affinity of these proposals creating meaningful themes. The quality tool “affinity diagram” was applied to classify the country-related future research proposals of LM.FindingsThe country-related future research proposals of LM, which are increasing in the literature over time, refer mostly to studies to be conducted in several continents/countries and to multinational studies. Conducting studies specifically in Asia, Europe, South and North America, Africa and Australia–New Zealand is also suggested. The plethora of the country-related future research proposals of LM were classified, based on the affinity of their content, into 18 meaningful themes. These themes were also classified based on their affinity into two broad categories, namely “themes concerning the LM approach itself” and “themes concerning factors outside the LM approach”.Research limitations/implicationsThe restricted number of the databases searched and the subjectivity of classifying the large number of the country-related future research proposals into themes are the main limitations of the present SLR. Based on these limitations, future literature review studies can be carried out.Practical implicationsUseful proposals are provided to researchers of several countries for conducting original and country-specific research studies which can enrich the knowledge of the implementation of LM under the specific circumstances of a country for the benefit of practitioners.Originality/valueThis study goes beyond previous literature review studies on LM by focusing exclusively on the LM future research agenda which is country related. The analytical presentation of the country-related future research proposals as well as the formulation of clusters of these proposals make the present SLR study substantially different from those carried out worldwide so far.

Whatever can go wrong, need not go wrong: Open Quality approach for epidemiology

Quality assurance is one of the most important aspects of an epidemiological study, as its validity is largely determined by data quality. The mounting success of quality management in the industrial sector caused a rapid spread throughout manufacturing industries and beyond. Yet, little has been published so far on quality assurance in epidemiology. In this article we review three models for quality assurance (Juran, Donabedian and ISO 9000) and showcase how these can be brought together in one intuitive, systematic and flexible approach to quality assurance in epidemiology. The resulting Open Quality approach refers back to the three processes identified by Juran (planning, control and verification). During the planning stage, we propose a subdivision of the study process in a set of steps and a definition of quality attributes corresponding to activities in that step as suggested by the ISO approach. We refer to the Donabedian model to determine the level at which the control/monitoring should take place—structure, processes or outcomes. Along with an overview of the Open Quality approach we propose an Open Quality tool to support the definition of quality attributes, failure modes, preventive strategies, verification activities, and corrective actions, which form the backbone of the Open Quality approach.

Classification of residual recoverable and non-recoverable oil reserves by the reservoir complexity index (RCI)

The paper considers a new engineering analytical tool for express oil reserves assessment. Proposed method is based on classifying oil reserves by complexity – reservoir complexity index (RCI). It allows to optimize the development system and form a well interventions program. The method is suggested to use three main parameters for development complexity estimation: reservoir permeability, start watercut (which contains the parameters of the curve of relative permeability, saturation and viscosity) and geological heterogeneity (pattern efficiency). An economic estimation of the well profitability is carried out by calculating PV UDC indicator (unit development cost, CAPEX / total oil production). The advantages of this indicator is that it allows to determine the economic attractiveness and does not require macro parameters and costs for the building well pads Due to the economic assessment and well ranking, it is possible to obtain profitable well pads and select candidates for sidetracking. The novelty of the work lies in the use of an updated methodology for the reservoir complexity index estimation for the remaining recoverable reserves classification. As a result, high-quality tool is created that integrates RCI and economic model. It is aimed for solving reservoir engineering problems and increasing the project cost The proposed method can be applied to other fields with minor modifications.

The assessment of parents’ knowledge, attitudes and concerns about febrile seizures in children at tertiary hospitals in Rwanda—a descriptive study

Background Febrile seizures (FSs) are the most common seizure disorder in childhood. No previous research has been performed to assess caregiver attitudes, knowledge and concerns of FSs in Rwanda or East Africa. Objectives This study sought to assess knowledge, attitudes and concerns regarding FS among caregivers of children presenting to tertiary hospitals in Rwanda using a previously validated questionnaire. The secondary objective was to assess the reliability of a translated version of the Huang Febrile Seizures Questionnaire (HFSQ). Methods A multi-centre observational study was conducted at four tertiary teaching hospitals in Rwanda. The admitting doctor determined that children met the definition of FSs. A translated version, of a validated questionnaire, the HFSQ, employing yes/no and five-point Likert questions, was used for this study, after minor adjustments. Results Eighty-six caregivers were recruited. Caregivers had low levels of pre-existing knowledge regarding FSs. The most significant caregiver concern was that ‘siblings will have FSs too’(mean = 3.62 ± 0.7). Caregivers felt that children with FSs do not need more attention and care and that FSs can be outgrown (mean = 3.4 ± 1.0). Discussion The findings support the need for locally relevant educational materials to be shared with caregivers after a FS event. The HFSQ is a good quality tool for assessing parental knowledge and concerns and has the potential to be used in clinical practice as a benchmarking tool for education.