Efficiency

The need for greater efficiency in legal process is an undisputed premise of modern policy, and efficiency’s virtues hardly merit debate, notably by the U.S. Supreme Court.  A central part of the story of modern adjudication is the steady gains in case processing efficiency.  This, above all else, explains the “vanishing trial” and its replacement by civil settlement and, in criminal courts, by plea bar-gaining.
Defining efficiency in any context, however, is a more complicated en-deavor than courts, policymakers, and many commentators commonly acknowledge.  It requires first defining ends and means, and even whether a given practice is an end or a mean.  Jury decision making, for example, was once an end of trial process that served public interests beyond rendering verdicts.  Over time it has become merely a means; case resolution became the overriding dominant goal.  Making a process more efficient can thus change both its nature and purposes.  Moreover, efficiency’s consequences are more ambiguous than is often recognized.  Producing any product more cheaply—including criminal convictions—can have a range of effects.  It can reduce production costs if demand is constant; it can help to meet rising demand without a rise in production costs; it can also generate greater demand for the good.
This Essay develops these ideas in criminal adjudication and links adjudication’s efficiency-driven transformation to the expansion of criminal law enforcement and punishment in recent decades.  By lowering the unit-cost of convictions, efficient adjudication can encourage more prosecutions and marginally subsidize more incarceration.  In the process, efficiency has redefined adjudication’s aims and reordered its priorities, valuing clear, measurable aspects such as numbers of convictions and devaluing qualitative components related to juries, participation, the substantive nature of judgments, and perhaps factual accuracy.

In Italia, vasti fenomeni di riforma hanno interessato, in anni recenti, l’organizzazione e la gestione delle pubbliche amministrazioni, introducendo strategici modelli organizzativi di riferimento, idonei meccanismi in grado di operare accurate valutazioni, nonché automatismi previsti per intervenire mediante specifici correttivi, tutti funzionali ad assicurare che la risposta della Pubblica Amministrazione ai bisogni della collettività sociale potesse risultare sempre più improntata a criteri di efficienza. I processi di riforma cui ci si riferisce sono da doversi inserire in quella più ampia fase di sviluppo e di cambiamento che ha rappresentato ragione sostanziale d’avvio a radicali modifiche degli organismi istituzionali, nell’ambito dello Stato, delle Regioni e degli altri enti locali, oltre che nel quadro complessivo
in cui si muove l’Unione Europea.Questo percorso evolutivo assume un ruolo primario nella crescita della competitività e della capacità potenziale dell’economia italiana; trattasi di una riforma ormai necessitata alla luce della attuale situazione di congiuntura economica
al fine di uscirne cogliendo le opportunità di ripresa che attenti economisti hanno individuato. Il saggio ricostruisce il percorso evolutivo della digitalizzazione della Pubblica Amministrazione in Italia, delineando i principali interventi pubblici nel settore dell'innovazione tecnologica e mettendo in rilievo la  necessità di nuove logiche produttive e nuovi modelli comportamentali per realizzare una amministrazione efficiente e flessibile. In tale prospettiva viene messo in rilievo l'ambito (e, soprattutto, le peculiarità) del concetto di managerialità tra pubblico e privato e la  trasformazione degli enti locali e delle Regioni in luoghi di programmazione controllata.

The researchers document the individual and workplace characteristics associated with decreased work productivity and intent to stay in nursing for nurses employed in direct patient care in the hospital setting. Factors associated with decreased work productivity were age, total years worked as a RN, quality of care provided, job stress score, having had a job injury, and having a health problem. Nurse leaders must place additional efforts on changes needed to improve the hospital workplace environment to decrease job stress, improve RNs' ability to provide quality care, and to assure the health and safety of nurses. Reducing job stress and providing adequate staffing so quality of care can be provided will enhance job satisfaction which will also encourage RNs to stay at the bedside. Improved work environments may delay older RNs' retirement from the workforce.

The performance of a hollow fibre artificial lung ('Capiox E') was analysed by measurement of the 'parallel deadspace' of the device under varying conditions in 21 patients. The efficiency with which carbon dioxide was exchanged was determined by the time available for equilibration between the blood and gas phases. When this equilibration coefficient was less than 12 seconds per litre of blood flow per litre of gas flow, there was a marked reduction in the efficiency of gas exchange. Under certain conditions, the 'counter-current' design of the device apparently permitted the clearance of carbon dioxide at a partial pressure greater than that which was found in the mixed venous blood. This anomalous behaviour may represent in vivo confirmation of the Haldane effect.

Complementary treatments are often used by HIV-infected individuals. Yet little is known about their effectiveness. The aim of this systematic review was therefore to summarize the published evidence for or against the effectiveness of complementary therapies in HIV-positive people. A comprehensive literature search was conducted to locate all randomized clinical trials (RCTs) of complementary therapies. Data were extracted in a standardized fashion and evaluated critically. Fourteen studies met our pre-de® ned inclusion/exclusion criteria; 2 of herbal treatments, 5 of vitamins and other supplements, 5 of stress management, one of massage therapy, and one of acupuncture. They fall into 2 broad categories of ‘cure’ and ‘care’. While the former category yields few encouraging results, the latter group of studies is more promising. In particular, stress management may prove to be an effective way to increase the quality of life. It is concluded that few rigorous trials of complementary...

This paper presents the implementation of the recent methodology called Adaptable Time Warping (ATW) for the automatic identification of mixture of crystallographic phases from powder X-ray diffraction data, inside the framework of a new integrative platform named hITeQ. The methodology is encapsulated into a so-called workflow, and we explore the benefits of such an environment for streamlining discovery in R&D.

RESUMEN: Introducción: La necesidad de considerar el uso eficiente de los recursos es un objetivo explícitamente establecido por todos los servicios de salud. Objetivo: Determinar la eficiencia técnica y las áreas de mejoramiento potencial de los servicios de Estomatología General Integral en la provincia Artemisa en el año 2016. Método: Se realizó un estudio observacional, descriptivo, transversal en los 16 servicios de Estomatología General Integral de la provincia Artemisa en el año 2016. Se aplicó el algoritmo propuesto por García A y colaboradores, basado en la técnica del Análisis Envolvente de Datos. Se seleccionaron seis variables de resultados y dos de recursos. Resultados: Se logró distinguir los 6 servicios eficientes y 10 ineficientes, se determinó las áreas de mejoramiento potencial. Los resultados encontrados en términos de áreas susceptibles de mejora permiten afirmar que en la actividad de estomatología en Artemisa, el incremento en los niveles de eficiencia está centrado en mejorar los resultados con la utilización de los recursos asignados. Conclusiones: Se evidenciaron diferencias en materia de eficiencia entre los servicios de Estomatología General Integral de la provincia Artemisa lo que ratifica la necesidad de continuar y profundizar en el estudio de este aspecto. La identificación de al menos una unidad de entre las eficientes como referencia para cada unidad ineficiente podrá contribuir al mejoramiento de los procesos gerenciales y/o productivos de las entidades ineficientes. ABSTRACT Introduction: The need to consider the efficient use of resources is an objective explicitly established by all health services. Objectives: To determine the technical efficiency and areas of potential improvement of the General Comprehensive Dentistry services in Artemisa province in 2016.

System on programmable chip for the performance estimation of loom machine, which calculates the efficiency and meter count for weaved cloth automatically. Also it calculates the efficiency of loom machine. Previously the same was done using manual process which was not efficient. This article is intended for loom machines which are not modern.

For the data center industry, efficiency is an imperative and a struggle. Machines require constant power and cooling, yet often have very low utilization rates, where jobs are actually being computed. To improve efficiencies, Alibaba began co-allocating jobs on the same array of machines and released datasets from this production cluster. This article explores this dataset via a series of data visualization. These images show, even on its own narrow terms, the dataset fails to achieve the vision of efficiency. The high diversity of job lengths and types create unevenness and conflict in the data center—work itself disrupts optimal efficiency. For the industry, efficiency should best be handled by machines, with automation freeing up operators for higher-level, higher-impact tasks. However, the logic of efficiency may itself be questioned. Efficiency introduces a particular framing, defining a problem, establishing a goal, and offering a compelling road map forward. If efficiency is clarifying, it is also obfuscating, bracketing out alternative ways of understanding these sociotechnical systems. As hyperscale technology companies dominate data centers, often what is becoming more efficient are exploitative or extractive operations. Efficiency should then be challenged, but without falling back to a familiar valorization of inefficiency. As the data center grows in significance while decentering human labor, it becomes important to develop a critical theorization of efficiency attuned to the new conditions of this machine-centric future.

Slit-check dams are widely employed in mountain river control. However an analysis of their performance in the field is still lacking. In the present work a field verification to evaluate the interaction between solid discharge regime and four slit-check dams built in two subcatchments of ...

Günümüzde teknolojinin hızla gelişmesi, ihtiyaçların ve hizmet türlerinin artması, uluslararası rekabeti artırmış; ürün ve hizmet sektörlerinin performanslarını sürekli iyileştirmelerini zorunlu hale getirmiştir. Bu süreçte, firmaların performans ölçüm kriterlerinden "etkinlik kavramı" önem kazanmıştır. Firmalar, ellerindeki kaynaklarından en etkin ve verimli bir şekilde yararlanarak müşteri gereksinimlerini en iyi şekilde karşılama çabası içindedirler. Bu çalışmada da etkinlik kavramından ve hizmet sektörlerinde etkinliğin nasıl kullanıldığından bahsedilerek, etkinlik ölçüm yöntemlerinden Veri Zarflama Analizi (VZA) üzerinde durulacaktır. Doğrusal programlamanın özel bir uygulama biçimi olan (VZA), benzer hedef ve amaçlara sahip işletmelerin göreceli olarak etkinliğini ölçmede kullanılan bir yöntemdir. Bu açıdan, VZA işletmeler arası göreli etkinlik ölçümünde, çeşitli mağazaların performans ölçümünde, hastanelerin veya illerin göreli etkinliklerinin karşılaştırılmasında, eğitim sektöründe, sigortacılık sektöründe ve bankacılık sektöründe yaygın olarak kullanılmaktadır. Türkiye'deki bankacılık sektörünün işleyişine de ışık tutacak olan bu çalışmanın amacı, bankacılık sektöründe etkinlik kavramının detaylandırılması, konuya ilişkin literatür çalışmalarının taranması ve Türkiye'deki kamu, özel ve yabancı sermayeli bankaların Türkiye Bankalar Birliği'nin internet sitesinden alınan belirli veriler kullanılarak; 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 ve 2015 yıllarına ilişkin bankaların etkinliklerini ölçmek suretiyle; bankalar arasında karşılaştırma yapmaktır. Çalışmanın uygulama bölümünde, Türk bankacılık sistemi bünyesinde faaliyet gösteren kamu, özel ve yabancı sermayeli bankalarının etkinlikleri ölçülerek yıllar içerisinde bankaların etkinliklerinde ne tür farklılıklar ortaya çıktığı gözlemlenmiştir. Ayrıca kamu, özel ve yabancı sermayeli bankalar arasında en etkin banka grubu tespit edilmiş, etkin olmayan bankalar için ise iyileştirme önerilerinde bulunulmuştur. Yapılan analizlerden elde edilen sonuçlara göre Türk bankacılık sektöründe etkin olmayan çıktıların mevcut olduğu ve ticari bankaların aynı miktarda girdi ile daha fazla çıktı üretme imkanına sahip oldukları söylenebilir.

La transferencia de conocimiento de la investigación pública a la sociedad se ha convertido en un elemento estratégico y fundamental por varios aspectos. La transferencia representa una fuente de financiación para la actividad investigadora, una fuente de innovación para las empresas y una fuente de desarrollo económico. Además, es parte fundamental del objetivo de construir una economía basada en el conocimiento y constituye el tercer eje de la Estrategia española de ciencia y tecnología y de innovación. A este respecto, resulta fundamental evaluar la actividad de transferencia para conocer la situación actual y proponer acciones de mejora. En este trabajo proponemos un modelo de evaluación de la eficiencia de los hospitales españoles en producción científica, dato que podría utilizarse como indicador de transferencia de conocimiento.