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Abstract Introduction Chronic ocular surface pain (COSP) is described as a persistent, moderate-to-severe pain at the ocular surface lasting more than 3 months. Symptoms of COSP have a significant impact on patients’ vision-dependent activities of daily living (ADL) and distal health-related quality of life (HRQoL). To adequately capture patient perspectives in clinical trials, patient-reported outcome (PRO) measures must demonstrate sufficient evidence of content validity in the target population. This study aimed to explore the patient experience of living with COSP and evaluate content validity of the newly developed Chronic Ocular Pain Questionnaire (COP-Q) for use in COSP clinical trials. Methods Qualitative, combined concept elicitation (CE) and cognitive debriefing (CD) interviews were conducted with 24 patients experiencing COSP symptoms in the USA. Interviews were supplemented with real-time data collection via a daily diary app task in a subset of patients (n = 15) to explore the day-to-day patient experience. Three healthcare professionals (HCPs) from the USA, Canada, and France were also interviewed to provide a clinical perspective. CE results were used to further inform development of a conceptual model and to refine PRO items/response options. CD interviews assessed relevance and understanding of the COP-Q. Interviews were conducted across multiple rounds to allow item modifications and subsequent testing. Results Eye pain, eye itch, burning sensation, eye dryness, eye irritation, foreign body sensation, eye fatigue, and eye grittiness were the most frequently reported symptoms impacting vision-dependent ADL (e.g., reading, using digital devices, driving) and wider HRQoL (e.g., emotional wellbeing, social functioning, work). COP-Q instructions, items, and response scales were understood, and concepts were considered relevant. Feedback supported modifications to instruction/item wording and confirmed the most appropriate recall periods. Conclusions Findings support content validity of the COP-Q for use in COSP populations. Ongoing research to evaluate psychometric validity of the COP-Q will support future use of the instrument in clinical trial efficacy endpoints.

Many retailers invest in artificial intelligence (AI) to improve operational efficiency or enhance customer experience. However, AI often disrupts employees' ways of working causing them to resist change, thus threatening the successful embedding and sustained usage of the technology. Using a longitudinal, multi-site ethnographic approach combining 74 stakeholder interviews and 14 on-site retail observations over a 5-year period, this article examines how employees' practices change when retailers invest in AI. Practice co-evolution is identified as the process that undergirds successful AI integration and enables retail employees' sustained usage of AI. Unlike product or practice diffusion, which may be organic or fortuitous, practice co-evolution is an orchestrated, collaborative process in which a practice is co-envisioned, co-adapted, and co-(re)aligned. To be sustained, practice co-evolution must be recursive and enabled via intentional knowledge transfers. This empirically-derived recursive phasic model provides a roadmap for successful retail AI embedding, and fruitful future research avenues., Author(s): Francesca Bonetti [sup.1] , Matteo Montecchi [sup.2] , Kirk Plangger [sup.2] , Hope Jensen Schau [sup.3] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.20364.33, 0000 0000 8517 0017, Fashion Business Research Centre, Fashion [...]

Abstract It is hard to establish whether a company supports internal sustainability efforts (ISEs) like gender equality, diversity, and general staff welfare, not least because of a lack of methodologies operationalizing these internal sustainability practices, and of data honestly documenting such efforts. We developed and validated a six-dimension framework reflecting Internal Sustainability Efforts (ISEs), gathered more than 350K employee reviews of 104 major companies across the whole US for the (2008-2020) years, and developed a deep-learning framework scoring these reviews in terms of the six ISEs. Commitment to ISEs manifested itself at the micro-level—companies scoring high in ISEs enjoyed high stock growth. This new conceptualization of ISEs offers both theoretical implications for the literature on corporate sustainability and practical implications for companies and policy makers. To further explore these implications, researchers need to add potentially missing ISEs, to do so for more companies, and establish the causal relationship between company success and ISEs.

Abstract Many candidate drugs for dry eye disease (DED) have been assessed over the years in pursuit of demonstrating efficacy in both signs and symptoms. However, patients with DED have very limited treatment options for management of both signs and symptoms of DED. There are several potential reasons behind this including the placebo or vehicle response, which is a frequent issue observed in DED trials. A high magnitude of vehicle response interferes with the estimation of a drug’s treatment effect and may lead to failure of a clinical trial. To address these concerns, Tear Film and Ocular Surface Society International Dry Eye Workshop II taskforce has recommended a few study design strategies to minimize vehicle response observed in DED trials. This review briefly describes the factors that lead to placebo/vehicle response in DED trials and focuses on the aspects of clinical trial design that can be improved to mitigate vehicle response. In addition, it presents the observations from a recent ECF843 phase 2b study, wherein the study design approach consisted of a vehicle run-in phase, withdrawal phase, and masked treatment transition, and led to consistent data for DED signs and symptoms and reduced vehicle response post randomization.

In Concentrating Solar Power plants, reflective panels are used to redirect solar radiation towards a receiver. Because the panel shape drives the radiation distribution around the focus where the receiver is placed, the 3D measurement is fundamental to assess the panel shape quality. The VISproPT instrument is the advanced version of the prototype VISprofile; these instruments are designed for indoor measuring of the 3D shape of parabolic-trough reflective panels. The VISproPT hardware has been manufactured by MARPOSS Italia Spa and funded by EU project ’Solar Facilities for the European Research Area - Third Phase’ (SFERA-III), while the image processing software as well as the calibration procedure, based on the measurement of a perfectly flat surface like that of a calm body of water, have been developed by the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA). The instrument precision is better than 0.1 mrad and 0.3 mm (root mean square value over an area 1.2×0.8 m2) for slope and height of the surface, respectively. Technical details of experimental set up and calibration-procedure are here reported. The instrument effectiveness is shown by reporting the results obtained on a set of 10 parabolic-trough specimens (5 inner + 5 outer) adopted to run the SFERA-III WP10 Task3 round-robin on 3D shape measurements among the different instruments used by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE (F-ISE), Deutsches Zentrum Fuer Luft - und Raumfahrt EV (DLR), the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Sandia National Laboratories (SANDIA).

In Concentrating Solar Power plants, reflective panels are used to redirect solar radiation towards a receiver. Because the panel shape drives the radiation distribution around the focus where the receiver is placed, the 3D measurement is fundamental to assess the panel shape quality. The VISproPT instrument is the advanced version of the prototype VISprofile; these instruments are designed for indoor measuring of the 3D shape of parabolic-trough reflective panels. The VIS proPT hardware has been manufactured by MARPOSS Italia Spa and funded by EU project ’Solar Facilities for the European Research Area - Third Phase’ (SFERA-III), while the image processing software as well as the calibration procedure, based on the measurement of a perfectly flat surface as that of a calm body of water, have been developed by Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA). The instrument precision is better than 0.1 mrad and 0.3 mm (root mean square value over an area 1.2 × 0.8 m2), for slope and height of the surface respectively. Technical details of experimental set up and calibration-procedure are here reported. The instrument effectiveness is shown by reporting the results obtained on a set of 10 specimen (5 inner + 5 outer) adopted to run the SFERA-III WP10 Task3 round-robin on 3D shape measurements among the different instruments used by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE (F-ISE), Deutsches Zentrum Fuer Luft - und Raumfahrt EV (DLR), the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Sandia National Laboratories (SANDIA).

Author(s): Ko de Ruyter [sup.1] , Debbie Isobel Keeling [sup.2] , Kirk Plangger [sup.1] , Matteo Montecchi [sup.1] , Maura L. Scott [sup.3] , Darren W. Dahl [sup.4] Author Affiliations: [...]

The optical behavior of devices based on thin films is determined by complex refractive index and thickness of each slab composing the stack; these important parameters are usually evaluated from photometric and/or ellipsometric spectral measurements, given a model of the stack, by means of dedicated software. In the case of complex multilayer devices, generally a number of simpler specimens (like single-film on substrate) must be preliminarily characterized. This paper introduces the reader to a new open source software for thin film characterization finally released after about 30 years of development. The software has already been used in various fields of physics, such as thin film optical filters, architectural glazing, detectors for high energy physics, solar energy, and, last but not least, photovoltaic devices. Code source files, MS Windows executable, user manual as well as a sample of working directories populated with assorted files can be freely downloaded from the kSEMAW GitHub repository.