Communications biophysics - The temporal structural of electrophysiological data, 16 March 1970 Quarterly status report, 1 Dec. 1969 - 28 Feb. 1970

Data acquisition instrumentation for heartbeat display in electrocardiogra

Development and characterisation of a fibre-optic acoustic emission sensor

A requirement for online monitoring has emerged owing to the susceptibility of fibre reinforced composite materials to sub-surface damage. Acoustic emission (AE) monitoring is understood to detect damage well before catastrophic failure; research in AE sensing therefore continues to attract significant attention. The research presented herein provides a review of a fibre-optic-based AE sensor design. Developmental work was performed to evaluate both sensor fabrication and packaging-related issues. The characteristics of the sensor were found to be influenced by: (i) the type of optical fibre used for fabrication; and (ii) preparation of optical fibres prior to sensor fabrication. The use of a small-diameter packaging substrate revealed improvements in sensor performance. The fibre-optic AE sensor was successfully embedded in a uni-directional composite laminate that was fabricated using autoclave processing. The embedded fibre-optic sensor was found to provide higher sensitivity to simulated AE compared with a surface-mounted sensor. Sensor characterisation trials were performed using simulated AE; a low directional sensitivity was observed. Modal analysis revealed a preferential sensitivity to the A0 wavemode; this sensor design may therefore be suited to the detection of delamination in FRCs. Finally, the sensor was shown to successfully detect interlaminar crack propagation under Mode-I loading

The association between life events, social support, and antibody status following thymus-dependent and thymus-independent vaccinations in healthy young adults

This study determined whether stressful life events and social support were related to antibody status following both thymus-dependent and thymus-independent vaccinations. Life events in the previous year and customary social support were measured in 57 healthy students at baseline. Antibody status was also assessed at baseline and at five weeks and five months following vaccination with the trivalent influenza vaccine and the meningococcal A+C polysaccharide vaccine. Taking into account baseline antibody titre, high life events scores prior to vaccination were associated with lower responses to the B/Shangdong influenza strain at both five weeks and five months and meningococcal C at five weeks. Life events scores were not associated with response to the other two influenza viral strains nor response to meningococcal A. Those with high social support scores had stronger 5-week and 5-month antibody responses to the A/Panama influenza strain, but not to any of the other strains. These associations could not be accounted for by demographic or health behaviour factors, and also emerged from analyses comparing those who exhibited a four-fold increase in antibody titre from baseline with those who did not. Life events and social support were related to antibody status following influenza vaccination in distinctive ways that may be partly determined by vaccine novelty and prior naturalistic exposure. Life events also predicted poor antibody response to meningococcal C polysaccharide vaccination after previous meningococcal C conjugate vaccination. Neither psychosocial factor was associated with response to primary meningococcal A polysaccharide vaccination

Detecting BS in Health Care 2.0

In our initial report “Detecting BS in Health Care,” we identified our top ten BS concepts and trends within the health care industry, and encouraged our readers to hone their “BS detection skills.” Many of you have let us know that we “left some BS on the table.” For example, there are more Old English terms for BS that we missed—such as babble, bafflegab, bilge, blather, blarney, bosh—and these are just from the b’s. This time around we make bolder assertions about other possible forms of BS—including some sacred cows—that might make some readers uncomfortable

Accountable Care Organizations: Back to the Future?

Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are networks of providers that assume risk for the quality and total cost of the care they deliver. Public policymakers and private insurers hope that ACOs will achieve the elusive “triple aim” of improving quality of care, improving population health, and reducing costs. The model is still evolving, but the premise is that ACOs will accomplish these aims by coordinating care, managing chronic disease, and aligning financial incentives for hospitals and physicians. If this sounds familiar, it may be because the integrated care networks of the 1990s tried some of the same things, and mostly failed in their attempts. This Issue Brief summarizes the similarities and differences between the new ACOs and the integrated delivery networks of the 1990s, and presents the authors’ analysis of the likely success of these new organizations in affecting the costs and quality of health care

Responsible tourism that creates shared value among stakeholders

This paper maintains that responsible tourism practices can be re-conceived strategically to confer competitive advantage. It looks at the extant literature surrounding the notions of “responsible tourism” and “shared value”. A qualitative research involved in-depth, semi-structured interview questions to discover the tourism and hospitality owner–managers’ ethos for responsible tourism. Secondly, telephone interviews were carried out with tourism regulatory officials. The findings have revealed that discretionary spending in socially and environmentally sound, responsible policies and initiatives can create shared value among tourism enterprises and their stakeholders. In a nutshell, this paper indicates that responsible tourism led to improved relationships with social and regulatory stakeholders, effective human resources management, better market standing, operational efficiencies and cost savings, along with other benefits.peer-reviewe

Advancing the sustainable tourism agenda through strategic CSR perspectives

This paper links the corporate social responsibility (CSR) paradigms to the sustainability agenda. The objective is to sharpen the strategic base of responsible behaviour in tourism enterprises. The design follows a comprehensive literature review about sustainable tourism from a hospitality industry perspective. Theoretical underpinnings suggest that the tourism and hospitality industries are continuously witnessing changing attitudes on the part of both the consumers and the enterprises. This contribution provides some details about the sustainability agenda as it explains how it emerged following Brundtland's report. Afterwards, it identifies key contributors who raised the issue of sustainable tourism as well as CSR policies, including inter-governmental committees and non-governmental organisations. It is believed that synergistic and shared value approaches are relatively straightforward and uncomplicated. Therefore, such notions are more easily taken up by academics or by tourism and hospitality stakeholders. There is continuous discourse in many international fora, conferences, seminars and colloquia about sustainable tourism, responsible behaviour and the related subjects. However, the discussions are usually characterised by presentation of theories which define the concepts, rather than being practical workshops which identify the business case and how to trigger active participation in the tourism industry. Relevant literature indicates that value-driven approaches focus on improving tourism and hospitality business performance through effective and efficient practices in their workplace environments. This contribution suggests that long-term sustainability can be reached if industry practitioners successfully address their societal and community deficits.peer-reviewe

Comparison Of Scattered Energy Using Point Scatterers Versus Full 3D Finite Difference Modeling

We present results of 3D numerical modeling using a series of simple point scatterers to create synthetic seismic shot records collected over regular, discrete, vertical fracture systems. The background medium is taken to be constant velocity. The model contains a series of point scatterers delineating the top tip and bottom tip of each vertical fracture. We use these results to gain an understanding of some of the features seen in full 3D elastic modeling of vertical fractures. We compare our results to those of Willis et al (2003) and Willis et al (2004) for their 5 layer model with 50m spacing between discrete, vertical fractures. Our modeling shows that a series of back scattered events with both positive and negative moveouts are observed when the shot record is oriented normal to the direction of fracturing. When the shot record is both located in the middle of the fractured zone and is oriented normal to the direction of fracturing, a complicated series of beating is observed in the back scattered energy. When the shot record is oriented parallel to the fracturing, ringing wavetrains are observed which moveouts similar to reflections from many horizontal layers. The point scattering models are, in general, very consistent with the full 3D elastic modeling results.Eni S.p.A. (Firm)United States. Dept. of Energy (Grant number DE-FC26-02NT15346)Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Earth Resources Laborator