Examining The Impact of Florida\u27s Non-Economic Damage Cap on Elderly Populations

In this paper, I use data from the Florida Closed Claims Database to investigate how Florida’s 2003 non-economic damage cap legislation impacted elderly malpractice claimants. More specifically, I measure whether or not non-economic damage caps adversely impact claimants in counties with high elderly densities. To measure the effect of Florida’s non-economic damage caps, I look at multiple metrics that measure both elderly claimants’ monetary gains and their access to the justice system after the reform is passed. I find mildly conclusive evidence that counties with higher elderly density, and assumedly more elderly claimants, are more likely to settle cases before reaching a jury trial and are less likely to file a medical malpractice claim. Conversely, though, I find limited evidence supporting the idea that elderly claimants receive less monetary damage payments or drop cases more. Overall, then, my findings are not consistent with the view that non-economic damage caps significantly discriminate against elderly claimants

Evaluation of a Resource Discovery Service: FindIt@Bham

In autumn 2012, the University of Birmingham launched FindIt@Bham, a Primo-based Resource Discovery Service, after a series of focus groups with students and staff to help determine its initial configuration and customisation. This paper presents the results from a large-scale online survey and focus groups that were conducted to poll users’ attitudes to the service over twelve months later, adding to a small body of research on user satisfaction with established resource discovery services. From the survey the overall level of appreciation was high with 71.13% rating FindIt@Bham to be ‘Good’ or ‘Very Good’. The level of appreciation was compared across undergraduates, postgraduates (taught and research) and academic staff which revealed that undergraduates are the group of users most happy with the service with academic staff being least satisfied. The reasons for this discrepancy are considered, along with users’ behaviour and a discussion of their perceptions of individual functional areas. The survey results led to focus group activities tailored to extract deeper information on system usage and satisfaction. From these combined activities, future customisations and developments to FindIt@Bham such as tuning of result relevancy, improved online help and additional functionality can be prioritised

X-Ray imaging for design of gas nozzles in large scale fluidized bed reactors

Satisfactory performance of fluidised bed reactors in terms of bed characteristics, chemical conversion and power requirements is influenced by the design features of gas distributors. In industrial practice single or multi-orifice types of nozzles are frequently used. When there is more than one jet in a gas nozzle, jet interaction is to be expected in most cases. Thus jet interaction is an important phenomenon to study for operation and design, especially when horizontal or downwards buoyant jets are studied. Numerous investigations have been devoted towards understanding the hydrodynamics of gas jets in fluidized beds. However, most of them address the problem in 2-D systems and/or upward jets from distributor plates, which do not reveal the true behavior in the jet region in a real industrial nozzle. The present work aims to understand the jet behavior from a more realistic level, i.e. the industrial size level. Full-scale nozzle designs were manufactured using a 3-Dimensional (3D) printer and tested to obtain data of both quantitative and qualitative nature. All nozzles tested were designed to reproduce the behavior of real industrial nozzles from a TDN reactor used in spent nuclear fuel reprocessing. Holes of different shape, size, angle, number and spatial arrangement were located on the nozzle wall as opposed to on the top face, in an attempt to eliminate powder ingress issues. Some nozzles had holes on only one side of the nozzle wall, as these were designed to be installed in an area of the reactor close to the reactor wall. This design consideration was to prevent gas from being impinged on the reactor walls, which would likely result in erosion. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract