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With organisations facing significant challenges to remain competitive, Business Process Improvement (BPI) initiatives are often conducted to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their business processes, focussing on time, cost, and quality improvements. Event logs which contain a detailed record of business operations over a certain time period, recorded by an organisation’s information systems, are the first step towards initiating evidence-based BPI activities. Given an (original) event log as a starting point, an approach to explore better ways to execute a business process was developed, resulting in an improved (perturbed) event log. Identifying the differences between the original event log and the perturbed event log can provide valuable insights, helping organisations to improve their processes. However, there is a lack of automated techniques and appropriate visualisations to detect the differences between two event logs. Therefore, this research aims to develop visualisation techniques to provide targeted analysis of resource reallocation and activity rescheduling. The differences between two event logs are first identified. The changes between the two event logs are conceptualised and realised with a number of visualisations. With the proposed visualisations, analysts are able to identify resource- and time-related changes that resulted in a cost reduction, and subsequently investigate and translate them into actionable items for BPI in practice. Ultimately, analysts can make use of this comparative information to initiate evidence-based BPI activities. publisher: Elsevier articletitle: Change visualisation: Analysing the resource and timing differences between two event logs journaltitle: Information Systems articlelink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.is.2016.10.005 content_type: article copyright: © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. ispartof: Information Systems vol:65 pages:106-123 status: published

UNLABELLED Perinatal exposure to Dutch background dioxin levels is rather high. Studies of calamities have shown that dioxins negatively influence the respiratory system. It was hypothesized that perinatal exposure to background dioxin levels leads to lung suboptimality, probably through developmental interference. This study aimed to assess lung function in relation to perinatal dioxin exposure. Spirometry was performed in 41 healthy children (aged 7-12 y. mean 8.2 y) with known perinatal dioxin exposure. The ratio of forced expiratory volume in I s to forced vital capacity (FEV1/FVC ratio) was determined. A complete medical history was taken. The prenatal exposure ranged from 8.74 to 88.8 (mean 34.6) ng TEQ dioxin kg fat(-1), measured in breast milk. The postnatal exposure ranged from 4.34 to 384.51 (mean 75.4) ng TEQ dioxin. Twelve children had to be excluded. A significant decrease in lung function in relation to both prenatal (p = 0.045) and postnatal (p = 0.0002) dioxin exposure was seen in the 29 non-excluded children. A clinical association between chest congestion and perinatal dioxin exposure was seen. CONCLUSION Perinatal background dioxin exposure may be inversely associated with the FEV1/ FVC ratio.

The objective is to design an alternative production process for Methyl Diphenyl Diisocyanate (MDI) in which no toxic phosgene is used. The plant should use 4,4′-Methylenedianiline (MDA) as a raw material. Seven routes found in the open literature were investigated and compared on process conditions (yield, conversion, and thermodynamics), technical and economical feasibility, and safety. Three routes remained which all involved the reaction of MDA to a carbamate intermediate and the successive thermal decomposition of this intermediate to MDI and side-products. For these routes, a systematic design procedure was applied. The design for the promising route using urea and 3-methyl-1-butanol was completed to mass and heat balances, heat integration and a preliminary design of the reactors. Uncertainties in the design were indicated. In the process design it was demonstrated that a non-phosgene route for MDI is technically feasible and economical attractive for the design of a new plant (ROI 33%, estimated margin from 20% to 50%).

Quantitative assessment of patient data is a pertinent part of controlled clinical studies. When several centers are involved, the degree of agreement between different observers becomes important. Therefore, in addition to developing a multicenter study on acute ischemic stroke, we have estimated the interobserver agreement expressed in terms of kappa statistics. Twelve patients suffering from neurologic deficits due to acute ischemic stroke were examined by four investigators, and the results were assessed using the Mathew scale. Considerable interobserver variability was found. Agreement on items based on subjective information from the patient was low, and it is also possible that this information changes with time. It is advised that in the development of assessment scales, items with low interobserver agreement should be avoided.

Current research suggests that cerebral ischemia induces a cascade of pathophysiological reactions, with a massive influx of calcium into the neuron as the “final common pathway”, resulting in catabolism and cell necrosis due to calcium overload. Treatment with calcium entry blockers, therefore, may be a new approach to arresting, and possibly preventing, destruction of cerebral tissue in stroke patients. The calcium entry blocker nimodipine was found to inhibit selectively spasms of the isolated cerebral arteries, produced either by depolarization or by receptor stimulation. In vivo experiments demonstrated that postischemic impairment of cerebral blood flow, which may be a major contributor to neuronal damage, is prevented.

Vasomotor function in the lower limbs was tested by means of thermography in 48 patients with and without residual complaints after surgery for a prolapsed intervertebral disc. There is a definite correlation between the severity of the complaints and the thermographic responses which corresponds well with the evidence for a sympathetic reflex dystrophy of the legs (causalgia). © 1987 Springer-Verlag.