Search Results (4)

Background: Smart healthcare is increasingly promoted to strengthen primary care services; however, adoption challenges are amplified on remote islands due to geographic isolation and resource constraints. Objectives: This study aimed to identify and prioritize key success factors (KSFs) for smart healthcare adoption in remote-island primary care clinics and to examine whether priorities differ across physician subgroups. Methods: A hybrid framework combining the Modified Delphi Method (MDM) and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was applied. MDM (two rounds) refined a literature-based indicator pool to five dimensions and 20 criteria. AHP pairwise comparisons were collected from 21 physicians in Kinmen to derive weights and rankings. Results: System Quality (0.308) was the most critical dimension, followed by Organization (0.221), System Functionality (0.212), Environment (0.165), and Resource Investment (0.094). At the criterion level, Competitive Advantage and Security and Privacy were the two highest-ranked factors, followed by Accuracy and Data Integrity. Subgroup profiles varied across medical specialties and age groups. Conclusions: For remote-island primary care, adoption strategies should prioritize system quality and information assurance, while implementation support and resource considerations should be tailored to specialty- and cohort-specific needs. Full article

Sphingan is a crucial exopolysaccharide (EPS) produced by Sphingomonas genus bacteria with wide-ranging applications in fields such as food, medicine, and petroleum. In this study, a novel sphingan, named MT gum, was overproduced from the wild-type strain Sphingomonas sp. MT01 at a yield of 25.6 g/L in a 5 L fermenter for 52 h at 35 °C. The MT gum was mainly composed of D-glucose (65.91%) and L-guluronic acid (30.69%), as confirmed by RP-HPLC, with Mw 7.24 × 10⁵ Da. The MT gum exhibited excellent rheology and pseudoplasticity characteristics while maintaining function in high-temperature and high-salinity environments. The viscosity retention rates of MT gum (0.1%, w/v) were 54.06% (80 °C, 50,000 mg/L salinity) and 34.78% (90 °C, 50,000 mg/L salinity), respectively. The apparent viscosity of MT solutions (0.1%, w/v) was much higher than that of welan solutions under the same conditions. The MT gum also had the property of instant dissolution and completely swelled in 40 min. Meanwhile, the MT gum was resistant to 3–10 mg/L Fe²⁺ in the reservoir conditions, ensuring its application in offshore oil fields. These findings suggested that the biopolymer MT gum produced by the strain MT01 had significant potential in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) of high-temperature and high-salinity oil reservoirs. Full article

Korean offshore oil and gas (O&G) mega project contractors have recently suffered massive deficits due to the challenges and risks inherent to the offshore engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) of megaprojects. This has resulted in frequent prolonged projects, schedule delay, and consequently significant cost overruns. Existing literature has identified one of the major causes of project delays to be the lack of adequate tools or techniques to diagnose the appropriateness and sufficiency of the contract deadline proposed by project owners prior to signing the contract in the bid. As such, this paper seeks to propose appropriate or correct project durations using the research methodology of text mining for bid documents. With the emergence of ‘big data’ research, text mining has become an acceptable research strategy, having already been utilized in various industries including medicine, legal, and securities. In this study the scope of work (SOW), as a main part of EPC contracts is analyzed using text mining processes in a sequence of pre-processing, structuring, and normalizing. Lessons learned, collected from 13 executed off shore EPC projects, are then used to reinforce the findings from said process. For this study, critical terms (CT), representing the root of past problems, are selected from the reports of lessons learned. The occurrence of the CT in the SOW are then counted and converted to a schedule delay risk index (SDRI) for the sample projects. The measured SDRI of each sample project are then correlated to the project’s actual schedule delay via regression analysis. The resultant regression model is entitled the schedule delay estimate model (SDEM) for this paper based on the case studies. Finally, the developed SDEM’s accuracy is validated through its use to predict schedule delays on recently executed projects with the findings being compared with actual schedule performance. This study found the relationship between the SDRI, frequency of CTs in the SOW, and delays to be represented by the regression formula. Through assessing its performance with respect to the 13th project, said formula was found to have an accuracy of 81%. As can be seen, this study found that more CTs in the SOW leads to a higher tendency for a schedule delay. Therefore, a higher project SDRI implies that there are more issues on projects which required more time to resolve them. While the low number of projects used to develop the model reduces its generalizability, the text mining research methodology used to quantitatively estimate project schedule delay can be generalized and applied to other industries where contractual documents and information regarding lessons learned are available. Full article

While island biogeography and modern economics portray Pacific island nations as isolated, ecologically fragile, resource poor and barely viable economies forever dependent on foreign aid, Pacific island history and culture conceives of their islands as intimately inter-linked to the surrounding ocean and of that ocean as an avenue to expanded resource bases, both terrestrial and aquatic. Pacific Islanders live in the most aquatic human zone on Earth, with the highest territorial ratios of sea to land. Recent studies are revealing the continuity and success of traditional near-shore guardianship of maritime resources in a number of Pacific islands. Sustainable development of seabed minerals and pelagic fisheries may offer enhanced income potential for small island nations with limited terrestrial resources. As offshore ecosystems are poorly policed, sustainable development is best realized through comprehensive planning centred on partnerships between local communities, their governments, marine scientists and commercial enterprises. The success or failure of Pacific Islanders in reasserting their maritime guardianship is now a matter of global significance given the decimation of most fisheries beyond the Pacific and the vast, but uncertain, medicinal, mineral and food resource potential of this huge area of the planet. Full article