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In 2021, progress in clinical science related to Cardiac Anesthesiology continued, but at a slower rate due to the ongoing pandemic and disruptions to clinical research. Most progress was incremental and addressed persistent questions related to our field. To identify articles for this review, we completed a structured review using our previously reported methods (1). Specifically, we used the search terms: “cardiac anesthesiology and outcomes” (n = 177), “cardiothoracic anesthesiology” (n = 34), “cardiac anesthesia,” and “clinical outcomes” (n = 42) filtered on clinical trials and the year 2021 in PubMed. We also reviewed clinical trials from the most prominent clinical journals to identify additional studies for a narrative review. We then selected the most noteworthy publications for inclusion in this review and identified key themes.

The year 2020 was marred by the emergence of a deadly pandemic that disrupted every aspect of life. Despite the disruption, notable research accomplishments in the practice of cardiothoracic anesthesiology occurred in 2020 with an emphasis on optimizing care, improving outcomes, and expanding what is possible for patients undergoing cardiac surgery. This year’s edition of Noteworthy Literature Review will focus on specific themes in cardiac anesthesiology that include preoperative anemia, predictors of acute kidney injury following cardiac surgery, pain management modalities, anticoagulation strategies after transcatheter aortic valve replacement, mechanical circulatory support, and future directions in research.

We report the first case of severe respiratory failure after thyroid surgery requiring venovenous extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (vvECMO). The patient was a 41-year-old woman with metastatic thyroid cancer. She underwent thyroidectomy, including left lateral and bilateral central neck dissection. During surgery, the patient developed pneumomediastinum with bilateral pneumothoraces. Despite early treatment with bilateral chest tubes and no evidence of a tracheal perforation, the patient developed severe respiratory failure after extubation on the intensive care unit. Because pneumothorax and pneumomediastinum might be more common than reported, and considering increasing cases of thyroid surgery, staff should remain vigilant of pulmonary complications after thyroid surgery.

This paper examines the key issues associated with current and future implementations of business intelligence (BI). The authors review the literature and discover both the growing importance and emerging issues associated with BI. The issues are further examined with an exploratory, but detailed, case study of organizations from a variety of industries, yielding a series of lessons learned. The authors find that organizations are rapidly moving to an enterprise perspective on BI, but in an unsystematic way. The authors present a prescription for the future of BI called “enterprise intelligence” (EI). EI is described in a framework that combines elements of hierarchy theory, organization modeling, and intellectual capital.

The Peace Corps has over 7,800 volunteers serving in 70 countries. These volunteers bring a broad array of skills and experiences to their posts and they acquire valuable additional knowledge on the job—knowledge that is often lost when a volunteer retires after the customary two years of service. While the Peace Corps is aware of the value of this knowledge and attempts to create conditions in which it can be shared, a case study conducted by one of the authors found that there currently is no formal strategy to manage the flow of information and knowledge between different members of the organization. This is unfortunate since the ability to effectively capture and share information and knowledge could significantly ease the jobs of volunteers, increase their productivity, and improve morale. We develop a framework for knowledge management in a volunteer organization such as the Peace Corps where quick personnel turnover hampers traditional approaches to knowledge management. We articulate a set of computer and non-computer-based mechanisms in terms of procedures, policies, and IT tools to capture, share and transform data and information into usable knowledge. We conclude by proposing a knowledge management system based on these prescriptions that could be used in the Peace Corps or other similar, largely volunteer, organizations with a rapid turnover of personnel. Disclaimer: The Peace Corps had no connection with this project. The views in this report reflect only the personal views of the authors, and do not in any way describe or reflect the official views or position of the Peace Corps. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In this paper the design of flexible organizations is explored in terms of the knowledge content of their constituent systems. It is argued that flexibility embraces every dimension of the organization, from its technical systems to its strategy and culture. Borrowing from ethnography, the ideas of thin and thick are adapted to explain the visible (or explicit) and hidden (or tacit) characteristics of systems. They are further used to help construct a framework that may be used to interrelate systems in terms of their relative explicit and tacit knowledge content. Illustrative examples show how organizations (e.g., Toyota) pursue flexibility by understanding and manipulating the interaction and knowledge content within and among systems. Inspired by the work of Herbert Simon on hierarchy theory, we develop the notion of an organization molecule, an architectural construct that may be used to design and interrelate contexts, such as process, strategy, and culture. Contract theory is extended and a new contract continuum is proposed as a means to specify organizational behavior in terms of its comparative explicit and tacit knowledge content. This combination of constructs constitutes the key concepts of organization modeling, our approach to designing flexibility in systems for the 21st century organization.

A method for the analysis, ranking and selection of R&D projects from a portfolio is outlined and demonstrated. It is proposed that an objective multi-criteria decision making method, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), be used to split a portfolio of projects into accept, consider further and reject sub-groups. Next, the ‘consider further’ group is examined using a subjective method, the Value Creation Model. Such an approach allows for obvious decisions to be automated and complex decisions to be given careful consideration, an approach that is more consistent with how practising managers actually make select/reject decisions. DEA allows for comparison of variables without requiring weights or conversion factors. The relation between research strategy and consideration of categorical data is considered in relation to the research portfolio of the Advanced Technology Division of Bell Laboratories.

The twenty-first-century organization is faced with the apparent dilemma of being efficient and innovative, lean and flexible, and hierarchical and flat. The seemingly contradictory characteristics extend into every organizational system, from culture and strategy to process and technology. The flexible organization must embrace and cultivate opposites; indeed, the organization should recognize opposites as opportunities for inventiveness and synthesis and not a dilemma that requires a choice between opposites (Takeuchi and Nonaka 2004). This is in contrast to a more traditional organization that either chooses one principle over its apparent opposite or adopts an engineering perspective that optimizes something between opposites. The knowledge organization, in contrast, synthesizes opposites into something unique and new.

This paper examines the key issues associated with current and future implementations of business intelligence (BI). The authors review the literature and discover both the growing importance and emerging issues associated with BI. The issues are further examined with an exploratory, but detailed, case study of organizations from a variety of industries, yielding a series of lessons learned. The authors find that organizations are rapidly moving to an enterprise perspective on BI, but in an unsystematic way. The authors present a prescription for the future of BI called “enterprise intelligence” (EI). EI is described in a framework that combines elements of hierarchy theory, organization modeling, and intellectual capital.

A Systems Analysis for photovoltaics identifies positive reinforcements for solar development (global solar value creation). There are three high leverage points: the Solar Industry Supply Chain Consortium, the Energy Internet, and Sustainable Development.

This paper proposes a rigorous model for organizational culture. Culture has always been described rather vaguely, often with psychological jargon. It is argued that organizational success depends on the fit between culture and other organizational elements, including information technology. Understanding fit and culture requires a precise specification. Culture itself has many dimensions, each of which may be specified and integrated into a composite contract describing the cultural behavior of the organization. The utility of the proposed model is tested against current organizational research on innovative culture.

This paper describes an extension to the data envelopment analysis (DEA) support system that has been used for the assessment, rating, and ranking of diverse portfolios of research and development (R&D) projects at Lucent Technologies. The approach is illustrated through its application to a large portfolio of R&D projects considered by Lucent's Advanced Technologies Group. The method proceeds by first stratifying the portfolio into comparably efficient groups of projects through the construction of a series of efficient DEA frontiers, and then by lexicographically ranking each project within these groups relative to DEA-based contextual attractiveness measures calculated from the different partitions. The advantages to this approach are provided not only from the perspective of the specific project rankings that are produced but also from the broader managerial insights that can be derived from any resulting differences between officially sanctioned, quantitative decision-making procedures, and the quality of the decisions that have actually been made by managers.

Online analytical processing (OLAP) represents a natural extension to traditional reporting in decision support environments. Generally, decision support has followed two tracks: the first driven by the information technology (IT) professional leveraging database technology and the second by the computer scientist utilizing artificial intelligence. The associated concepts of data warehousing and OLAP are driven by business needs and the IT industry. In this chapter, we review the technology of OLAP, its utility in e-commerce applications, sample OLAP designs, and a sample information architecture for enabling clickstream analysis. We also advance a business intelligence architecture to support knowledge-based work. Keywords: clickstream analysis; data warehousing; database technology; decision support; executive information system (EIS); meta-data; multidimensional data

A method for the analysis, ranking and selection of R&D projects from a portfolio is outlined and demonstrated. It is proposed that an objective multi-criteria decision making method be used to split a portfolio of projects into accept, consider further and reject sub-groups. Next, 'the consider further' group is examined using a subjective method, the value creation model. Such an approach allows for obvious decisions to be automated and complex decisions to be given careful consideration, an approach that is more consistent with how managers commonly make select/reject decisions. The relation between research strategy and consideration of categorical data is considered in relation to the research portfolio of the Advanced Technology Division of Bell Laboratories.