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Making processes transparent is a prerequisite for sustainable and cost reduction. The purpose of process transparency is to let the processes speak to capture the ‘‘voice of the process.” This chapter discusses what that means, and two steps are recommended for achieving that goal. Company must use a supplier‐input‐process‐output‐customer (SIPOC) map to help scope the effort and create a value stream map (VSM) to capture the workflow in detail, along with relevant process data. The chapter focuses on the use of VSMs in the context of an identified project. Creating a value stream map will allow the company and top managements to understand which activities are happening, in what order, and at what levels of performance from end to end. Data monitoring will help to evaluate process performance in terms of throughput, cycle time, setup time, wait time, WIP waiting to be worked on, process downtime/uptime, defect/rework rates, and so on.

In this article, we consider how to make data more meaningful to students through the choice of data and the activities we use them in drawing upon students lived experiences more in the teaching of statistics and data science courses. In translating scholarship around culturally relevant pedagogy from the fields of education and mathematics education we develop the idea of culturally relevant data. We see this development as a key ingredient to implementing culturally relevant pedagogy in teaching data-intensive courses leveraging the centrality of context through data in both statistics and data science to engage students particularly from historically marginalized groups in STEM. We provide suggestions as to ways of finding or creating culturally relevant data and using them in implementing culturally relevant pedagogy to support the learning and flourishing of students in statistics and data science courses. We also present findings from pilot work we have done in implementing these data in statistics courses. Finally, we discuss lingering questions and possible next steps for research in this area. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.

Background Concepts for the nursing and care of cancer patients through a “navigation service” have attracted much interest. However, there is still room for improvement in terms of their funding and coverage. The Saxon Cancer Society designed a prospective, randomized, multicenter, longitudinal study with a view to determining the positive effects of a cancer patient navigator program. The objective of this ongoing study is to evaluate the impact of the cancer patient navigation program on cancer patients and cost bearers in Germany. Methods The study population in this evaluation comprises cancer patients with gastric carcinoma, pancreatic carcinoma, colorectal cancer, melanoma or gynecological cancer who have been hospitalized at least once at one of the study centers as well as their relatives, outpatient and inpatient physicians, and cancer nurses. It is planned to randomize 340 cancer patients (stomach, colonic/rectal cancer, gynecological cancer, melanoma) at five centers to an intervention group (care by patient navigators based on standardized operating procedures) or a control group in a one-to-one ratio. The primary target parameter is the number of hospitalizations within the 12-month intervention period. The participants are asked to complete various questionnaires on patient-related outcomes at baseline and at 3 and 12 months (SF 36, HADS, PAM 13, and others). Data on drug therapy, utilization of health services, and medical expenses will also be analyzed. Discussion For the first time, the study will provide data on the effectiveness of a patient support program in cancer care in Germany from a randomized trial with a high level of evidence. Trial registration The study has been registered under DRKS00013199 in the German Clinical Trials Register.

This study assessed the psychometric properties of the culturally inclusive instructional design (CIID) scale with 31 items on a 7-point Likert scale. The data were collected from the training (N = 55) and validating samples (N = 80) of K-20 educators. Data analysis employed exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). EFA results revealed a clear five-factor structure, and the CFA results indicated good factor loadings. The reliability indices were .95 and .94 for the training and validation samples, respectively. The significant correlations among the factors indicated the five subscales measuring on the same CIID construct. In contrast, a non-perfect correlation presented a discriminating power for each subscale measuring the unique dimension of the construct. The study results established the validity and reliability of the instrument to measure culturally inclusive instructional design with implications for the design and development of online learning for cultural inclusivity.

A contaminant bacterial strain was found to exhibit an antagonistic activity against Legionella pneumophila, the causative agent of Legionnaires’ disease. The bacterial strain was identified as a Bacillus subtilis and named B. subtilis AM1. PCR analysis revealed the presence of the sfp gene, involved in the biosynthesis of surfactin, a lipopeptide with versatile bioactive properties. The bioactive substances were extracted from AM1 cell-free supernatant with ethyl acetate and purified using reversed phase HPLC (RP-HPLC). Subsequent ESI-MS analyses indicated the presence of two active substances with protonated molecular ions at m/z 1008 and 1036 Da, corresponding to surfactin isoforms. Structures of lipopeptides were further determined by tandem mass spectrometry and compared to the spectra of a commercially available surfactin mixture. Surfactin displays an antibacterial spectrum almost restricted to the Legionella genus (MICs range 1–4 μg/mL) and also exhibits a weak activity toward the amoeba Acanthamoeba castellanii, known to be the natural reservoir of L. pneumophila. Anti-biofilm assays demonstrated that 66 μg/mL of surfactin successfully eliminated 90 % of a 6-day-old biofilm. In conclusion, this study reveals for the first time the potent activity of surfactin against Legionella sp. and preformed biofilms thus providing new directions toward the use and the development of lipopeptides for the control of Legionella spread in the environment.

Improving the health beneficial fatty acid content of meat and milk is a major challenge requiring an increased understanding of rumen lipid metabolism. In this study, we isolated and characterized rumen bacterial lipases/esterases using functional metagenomics. Metagenomic libraries were constructed from DNA extracted from strained rumen fluid (SRF), solid-attached bacteria (SAB) and liquid-associated rumen bacteria (LAB), ligated into a fosmid vector and subsequently transformed into an Escherichia coli host. Fosmid libraries consisted of 7,744; 8,448; and 7,680 clones with an average insert size of 30 to 35 kbp for SRF, SAB and LAB, respectively. Transformants were screened on spirit blue agar plates containing tributyrin for lipase/esterase activity. Five SAB and four LAB clones exhibited lipolytic activity, and no positive clones were found in the SRF library. Fosmids from positive clones were pyrosequenced and twelve putative lipase/esterase genes and two phospholipase genes retrieved. Although the derived proteins clustered into diverse esterase and lipase families, a degree of novelty was seen, with homology ranging from 40 to 78 % following BlastP searches. Isolated lipases/esterases exhibited activity against mostly short- to medium-chain substrates across a range of temperatures and pH. The function of these novel enzymes recovered in ruminal metabolism needs further investigation, alongside their potential industrial uses.

This study aimed to evaluate Finnish educators’ perceptions of their current level of continuing professional development and to identify distinct profiles in their competence development. The current health and social care system faces multiple challenges, including aging populations, cultural diversity and increasingly complex client needs. To implement new digital and interprofessional working methods, professionals must be highly competent and innovative. Educators’ professional development is crucial for delivering high-quality education. The study used secondary analysis of a cross-sectional survey. The initial study developed the EduProDe scale and the study sample comprised 422 educators in health and social education. IBM SPSS Statistics version 25.0 was used for secondary statistical analysis. Descriptive statistics were calculated and the different groups among educators were based on the subdimensions of the EduProDe scale. The continuing professional development profiles were described using groups identified by K-means clustering. Based on educators´ responses to the EduProDe scale, they were clustered into three significantly different profiles: Experiencing Support for Continuous Learning (A), Needing Support for Continuous Learning (B) and Self-Directed Learners (C). The results show that health and social care educators are diverse learners. It’s important to consider their individual characteristics, like education and work field, when planning professional development. In addition, the findings enhance the support for continuous learning from educators’ superiors. Through this knowledge, organizations can consider factors beyond learning needs when planning professional development.

Utilizing a complex theory of teacher learning and practice, this chapter analyzes ~120 empirical studies of content teacher development (both preservice and inservice) for working with multilingual learners as well as research on content teaching for multilingual students. Our analysis identified three dimensions of quality content teaching for multilingual learners that are complex and intricately connected: context, orientations, and pedagogy. This chapter explores the results of our literature analysis and argues for improving content teaching for multilingual students through improved theoretically grounded research that embraces, exphres, and accounts for the expansive complexities inherent in teacher learning and practice.

Quality-relevant fault detection aims to reveal whether quality variables are affected when a fault is detected. For current industrial processes, kernel-based methods focus on the nonlinearity within process variables, which is insufficient for obtaining nonlinearities of quality variables. Alternatively, neural network is an option for nonlinear prediction. However, these models are driven by predictive errors on samples. For quality-relevant tasks, the key is to capture the trends of quality variables. Therefore, this study proposes a new model, namely, maximizing correlation neural network (MCNN), to predict the quality-relevant information intuitively. The MCNN is trained to maximize the linear correlation between quality variables and the combinations of nonlinear representations mapped by a multilayer feedforward network. As such, fault detection can be implemented in the quality-relevant and irrelevant subspaces on the basis of the deep most correlated representations of process variables. Considering that different variables have different sensitivities to quality at various locations due to their nonlinear relationship, fault backpropagation is designed in the MCNN to isolate the faulty variables on the basis of real-time faulty information. Finally, numerical example and Tennessee Eastman process are used to evaluate the proposed method, which exhibits a competitive performance.

The white-rot fungus Phanerochaete chrysosporium secretes extracellular oxidative enzymes during secondary metabolism, but lacks versatile peroxidase, an enzyme important in ligninolysis and diverse biotechnology processes. In this study, we report the genetic modification of a P. chrysosporium strain capable of co-expressing two endogenous genes constitutively, manganese peroxidase (mnp1) and lignin peroxidase (lipH8), and the codon-optimized vpl2 gene from Pleurotus eryngii. For this purpose, we employed a highly efficient transformation method based on the use of shock waves developed by our group. The expression of recombinant genes was verified by PCR, Southern blot, quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR), and assays of enzymatic activity. The production yield of ligninolytic enzymes was up to four times higher in comparison to previously published reports. These results may represent significant progress toward the stable production of ligninolytic enzymes and the development of an effective fungal strain with promising biotechnological applications.