What is progress in transdisciplinary research?

In disciplinary research progress is reached and assessed by referring to the state of research in a specific field. But what is progress in transdisciplinary research, where several disciplines and further societal actors may be involved? Based on the conception of transdisciplinary research as a collaboration of academic as well as non-academic thought-styles, and based on the understanding of transdisciplinary research as research that develops a comprehensive, multi-perspective, common-good oriented and useful approach to a socially relevant issue, the question of progress is discussed for four view-points: (a) the people concerned about the issue are much less interested in the question of progress in transdisciplinary research than in a better handling of the real world problem; (b) members of a disciplinary, business, governmental or civil society's thought-style, who gain a more comprehensive understanding of an issue through the transdisciplinary research process, are more interested in further elaborating the issue within their thought-style, than in general lessons on progress; (c) progress on the level of personal experience mainly means that members of academic or non-academic thought-styles realize that they are a member of a specific thought-style among others. Progress would be made by integrating this experience in general education and special training; (d) finally a lot of general lessons can be learned and elaborated as tools, cases studies and approaches form the perspective of a thought-style interested in how to understand and manage transdisciplinary research.     

Establishing Maintenance Resource Levels Using Selective Maintenance

We address the performance of a repairable system that is required to perform a sequence of equally spaced, identical missions with breaks between missions. The system is series-parallel in structure, and component repair can only be performed during breaks between missions. Due to limitations on maintenance resources, it may be impossible to make all necessary repairs before the next mission. Such situations require the use of selective maintenance, the process of identifying the subset of maintenance actions to perform from a set of desirable maintenance actions. We build upon previous research in selective maintenance by addressing decisions related to establishing capacities for the limited maintenance resources. We model mission-to-mission changes in maintenance resource capacity, and we develop a methodology for establishing constant resource capacities for a sequence of missions. Finally, we develop a methodology for integrating redundancy allocation and maintenance resource allocation decisions.     

Project Evaluation and Uncertainty in Practice: A Statistical Analysis of Rate-of-Return Divergences of 1,015 World Bank Projects

This article analyzes the World Bank's experience with projectevaluation for a sample of 1,015 projects by comparing estimatedrates of return at appraisal with reestimated rates of returnwhen construction works are completed, usually 5 to 10 yearsafter appraisal. The analysis highlights the high degree ofuncertainty in project analysis. A wide range of variables hasbeen introduced to explain the observed divergence in appraisaland reestimated rates of return, but only a relatively smallpart of the divergence can be explained, even with the benefitof hindsight. Project analysis thus has to cope with a largedegree of uncertainty, which the traditional methods of projectevaluation and selection have not been able to reduce.     

Using FTE and RVU performance measures to assess financial viability of academic nurse-managed centers

Financial performance measures are essential to improve the fiscal management of academic nurse-managed centers (ANMCs). Measures are compared among six ANMCs in a consortium and against an external, self-sustainable, profitable ANMC and national data for family practice physicians. Performance measures help identify a center's strengths and weaknesses facilitating the development of strategies aimed at a variety of targets (business practices related to revenue and costs) to improve financial viability. Using a variety of financial performance measures to inform decision making will aid ANMCs in keeping their doors open for business.