Assisted Active Learning for Model-Based Method Development in Liquid Chromatography.

In recent decades, there has been a growing interest in fully automated methods for tackling complex optimization problems across various fields. Active learning (AL) and its variant, assisted active learning (AAL), incorporating guidance or assistance from external sources into the learning process, play key roles in this automation by enabling the autonomous selection of optimal experimental conditions to efficiently explore the problem space. These approaches are particularly valuable in situations wherein experimentation is costly or time-consuming.

Do non-profit nursing homes separate governance roles? The impact of size and ownership characteristics.

Separation between operational responsibilities and those of oversight is an important point of discussion in governance. Novel to the literature, this paper not only offers direct evidence on the degree of separation, but also shows its relationship with size (ceteris paribus efficiency prescribes that large organizations implement more separation) and ownership characteristics of non-profit institutions. Using a sample of Belgian (Flemish) nursing homes, we find that in private nursing homes this separation increases with size while this is not the case in public homes.

Drivers of cost system development in hospitals: results of a survey.

While many hospitals are under pressure to become more cost efficient, new costing systems such as activity-based costing (ABC) may form a solution. However, the factors that may facilitate (or inhibit) cost system changes towards ABC have not yet been disentangled in a specific hospital context. Via a survey study of hospitals, we discovered that cost system development in hospitals could largely be explained by hospital specific factors.

From corporate governance to hospital governance. Authority, transparency and accountability of Belgian non-profit hospitals' board and management.

As a result of multiple developments in health care and health care policy, hospital administrators, policy makers and researchers are increasingly challenged to reflect on the meaning of good hospital governance and how they can implement it in the hospital organisations. The question arises whether and to what extent governance models that have been developed within the corporate world can be valuable for these reflections. Due to the unique societal position of hospitals--which involves a large diversity of stakeholders--the claim for autonomy of various highly professional groups and the lack of clear business objectives, principles of corporate governance cannot be translated into the hospital sector without specific adjustments.

Case report 814: Fibrolipoma of the median nerve.

A case of fibrolipoma of the median nerve was described. Peripheral nerve tumors of the upper extremity are very rare. Within this group of tumors, the fibrolipoma is an exceedingly uncommon entity.