We analyze the cost of quality improvement in hospitals, dealing with two challenges. Hospital quality is multidimensional and hard to measure, while unobserved productivity may influence quality supply. We infer the quality of hospitals in Los Angeles from patient choices. We then incorporate ‘revealed quality’ into a cost function, instrumenting with hospital demand. We find that revealed qua...

Demand for business intelligence solutions continues to grow in the industry at record rates to combat competitive pressures and to attain business agility. Still organizations continue to struggle on how to implement successful business intelligence solutions. Despite its growing popularity and maturity as a field, it appears that organizations follow key guidelines that ensure the failure of ...

A pilot scale wastewater treatment plant was designed, constructed and operated on site to treat wastewater from a combined effluent drain. The activated sludge process (ASP) was used at three different hydraulic retention times (HRT) of 12, 10 and 8 hrs at an average MLSS concentration of 3500 mg/L. Under each HRT, the pilot plant was operated for a period of 10-12 weeks. Chemical oxygen deman...

The efforts of modern civilization to create an environment to meet human aspirations have successfully resulted in constant improvements of our lifestyle, but it has increased risks to human and ecological health. This situation has motivated many scientists throughout the world to analyze the environmental factors that can affect our health or ecology and to calculate the levels of risk. In B...

We develop a competition index for differentiated products oligopoly and apply it to assessing the impact of concentration on price in hospital markets in California. Our index, which we term LOCI, is bounded between zero and one and increases with the competitiveness of a market. We use 1992-1995 hospital data from California to estimate the impact of concentration on price using our new conce...

Without significant intervention, demand for crude oil could rise by a further 25% by 2035, stemming from its use for transportation, particularly road transport. Many technologies for alternative fuels and substitute transport energy carriers are being researched, but successful implementation of these technologies at scale will require attention to consumer-behavioural and policy challenges a...

OBJECTIVE to evaluate the association between psychological demands, control over the work and the reduction of work ability of nursing professionals. METHOD this cross-sectional study involved 498 nursing professionals of a university hospital in the State of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Data collection was carried out in 2009 using the Brazilian versions of the Work Ability Index and Job Stre...

Effluent discharge from septic tanks is affecting the environment in developing countries. The most challenging issue facing these countries is the cost of inadequate sanitation, which includes significant economic, social, and environmental burdens. Although most sanitation facilities are evaluated based on their immediate costs and benefits, their long-term performance should also be investig...