The study presents an investigation of the shear behavior of segmental concrete beams with external tendons considering the effect of joint opening. Joint position and prestressing force that affect the joint opening have been examined based on the results of experimental procedure and FEM. The simplified truss model with the small number of degree of freedom has been modified for segmental concrete beams with external tendons. The formulations to predict the variable angle and the thickness of struts are suggested with considering the effect of joint opening. A satisfactory prediction for the shear carrying capacity and the failure mechanism of segmental concrete beams with external tendons has been obtained.

This paper describes the results of an experimental study and nonlinear finite element method in order to examine the shear failure mechanism of segmental prestressed concrete beams by varying the length of segment, prestressing force and loading position. It is observed that after the opening of the segmental joints, the stiffness of such beams considerably decreases and the tendon stress is caused to increase significantly. The simplified truss model and other existing prediction methods for shear carrying capacity have been applied in this study in order to examine their applicability and accuracy. The simplified truss model can provide reasonable accuracy under the limitation of applied prestressing force.

Under a deregulated environment, wind power producers are subject to many regulation costs due to the intermittence of natural resources and the accuracy limits of existing prediction tools. This paper addresses the operation (charging/discharging) problem of battery energy storage installed in a wind generation system in order to improve the value of wind power in the real-time market. Depending on the prediction of market prices and the probabilistic information of wind generation, wind power producers can schedule the battery energy storage for the next day in order to maximize the profit. In addition, by taking into account the expenses of using batteries, the proposed charging/discharging scheme is able to avoid the detrimental operation of battery energy storage which can lead to a significant reduction of battery lifetime, i.e., uneconomical operation. The problem is formulated in a dynamic programming framework and solved by a dynamic programming backward algorithm. The proposed scheme is then applied to the study cases, and the results of simulation show its effectiveness.

Patient safety culture is a vital component in ensuring high quality and safe patient care. Assessment of staff perception on existing hospital patient safety culture (PSC) is the first step to promote PSC. This paper is aimed to assess the patient safety culture in 1 big public autonomous general hospital in Hanoi, Vietnam. This cross-sectional study surveyed 638 healthcare professional utilizing the validated (Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture [HSOPSC]) in an online format. This study adhered to STROBE guidelines. The positive response rate was high, with a percentage of 74.2. The strongest areas are teamwork within units (91.3%) and organizational learning/continuous improvement (88.4%). The areas for improvement are staffing (49.4%) and non-punitive response to error (53.1%). Hospital administrators should strengthen the culture of patient safety by formulating strategies and implementing interventions with emphasis on adequate staffing and promoting blame-free working environment.

-Wind power producers face many regulation costs in deregulated environment, which remarkably lowers the value of wind power in comparison with conventional sources. One of these costs is associated with the real-time variation of power output and being paid in frequency control market according to the variation band. This paper presents a new approach to coordination of battery energy storage in wind generation system for reducing the payment in frequency control market. The approach depends on the statistic data of wind generation and the prediction of frequency control market price to determine the optimal variation band which is then kept by the real-time charging and discharging of batteries, ultimately the minimum cost of frequency regulation can be obtained. The optimization problem is formulated as trade-off between the decrease in the regulation payment and the increase in the cost of using battery, and vice versus. The approach is applied to a study case and the results of simulation show its effectiveness.