Physical activity education in the undergraduate curricula of all UK medical schools: are tomorrow's doctors equipped to follow clinical guidelines?

Physical activity (PA) is a cornerstone of disease prevention and treatment. There is, however, a considerable disparity between public health policy, clinical guidelines and the delivery of physical activity promotion within the National Health Service in the UK. If this is to be addressed in the battle against non-communicable diseases, it is vital that tomorrow's doctors understand the basic science and health benefits of physical activity. The aim of this study was to assess the provision of physical activity teaching content in the curricula of all medical schools in the UK. Our results, with responses from all UK medical schools, uncovered some alarming findings, showing that there is widespread omission of basic teaching elements, such as the Chief Medical Officer recommendations and guidance on physical activity. There is an urgent need for physical activity teaching to have dedicated time at medical schools, to equip tomorrow's doctors with the basic knowledge, confidence and skills to promote physical activity and follow numerous clinical guidelines that support physical activity promotion

Combined Field Integral Equation Based Theory of Characteristic Mode

Conventional electric field integral equation based theory is susceptible to the spurious internal resonance problem when the characteristic modes of closed perfectly conducting objects are computed iteratively. In this paper, we present a combined field integral equation based theory to remove the difficulty of internal resonances in characteristic mode analysis. The electric and magnetic field integral operators are shown to share a common set of non-trivial characteristic pairs (values and modes), leading to a generalized eigenvalue problem which is immune to the internal resonance corruption. Numerical results are presented to validate the proposed formulation. This work may offer efficient solutions to characteristic mode analysis which involves electrically large closed surfaces

Haemodynamic Monitoring Using Echocardiography in the Critically Ill: A Review

Physicians caring for the critically ill are now expected to acquire competence in echocardiography. It has become an indispensable diagnostic and monitoring tool in acute care settings where it is generally accepted to have therapeutic impact. There are a number of indications for a critical care echocardiographic study, and the most important queries include those pertaining left and right ventricular function and filling status. Focused examinations are increasing in popularity and provide a means for systematic study, and can be easily learned and practiced by novices. This paper addresses the indications, therapeutic impact, and some of the most common questions that can be answered using echocardiography the in critically ill patient

Truncation error analysis of multipole expansion

The multilevel fast multipole algorithm is based on the multipole expansion, which has numerical error sources such as truncation of the addition theorem, numerical integration, and interpolation/anterpolation. Of these, we focus on the truncation error and discuss its control precisely. The conventional selection rule fails when the buffer size is small compared to the desired numerical accuracy. We propose a new approach and show that the truncation error can be controlled and predicted regardless of the number of buffer sizes.published_or_final_versio

Error minimization of multipole expansion

In this paper, we focus on the truncation error of the multipole expansion for the fast multipole method and the multilevel fast multipole algorithm. When the buffer size is large enough, the error can be controlled and minimized by using the conventional selection rules. On the other hand, if the buffer size is small, the conventional selection rules no longer hold, and the new approach which we have recently proposed is needed. However, this method is still not sufficient to minimize the error for small buffer cases. We clarify this fact and show that the information about the placement of true worst-case interaction is needed. A novel algorithm to minimize the truncation error is proposed. © 2005 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.published_or_final_versio

Developing Business Architecture for SMEs: A Strategic Tool for Capability Orchestration and Managing Dynamisms

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are increasingly faced with competitive pressure due to swift and constant change to the dynamic and highly interconnected environment in which they operate. Competing in this dynamic ecosystem, SMEs need a strategic tool for managing co-evolution with the dynamic environment in order to create sustained value. Drawing from the specific SME characteristics operating in a collaborative network ecosystem of firms, this paper elicits the specific strategic management requirements that need to be satisfied by a Business Architecture. Extensive exploratory literature review and semi-structured interviews are used to explicate the underlying drivers of SME’s requirements for business architecture that need to be addressed by the requisite BA practice. The paper finds that, the BA practice must possess the capabilities to guide and assist the SMEs to adapt with the dynamic collaborative ecosystem of firms and sense, leverage and orchestrate the network of resources and ICT capabilities to create sustained value. This paper concludes with some guidelines for developing the business architecture-enabled journey toward creating sustained value within the said dynamic ecosystem

The scattering of a cylindrical invisibility cloak: reduced parameters and optimization

We investigate the scattering of 2D cylindrical invisibility cloaks with simplified constitutive parameters with the assistance of scattering coefficients. We show that the scattering of the cloaks originates not only from the boundary conditions but also from the spatial variation of the component of permittivity/permeability. According to our formulation, we propose some restrictions to the invisibility cloak in order to minimize its scattering after the simplification has taken place. With our theoretical analysis, it is possible to design a simplified cloak by using some peculiar composites like photonic crystals (PCs) which mimic an effective refractive index landscape rather than offering effective constitutives, meanwhile canceling the scattering from the inner and outer boundaries.Comment: Accepted for J. Phys.

Convergence of low-frequency EFIE-based systems with weighted right-hand-side effect

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Enhanced A-EFIE with Calderon multiplicative preconditioner

Session: Well-Conditioned Integral Equation Formulations: paper 106.9In this work, a Calderón multiplicative preconditioner (CMP) is proposed for the augmented electric field integral equation (A-EFIE) to improve the convergence. To avoid the imbalance between the vector potential and the scalar potential in the traditional EFIE, A-EFIE considers both the charge and the current as unknowns. After implementing the appropriate frequency scaling and the enforcement of charge neutrality, its formulation is also stable in the low-frequency regime and applicable for large-scale and complex problems. Instead of using other preconditioners, Calderón preconditioning converts the first kind integral equations into the second kind, thus improving the spectrum of the original A-EFIE system. The numerical results show that the resultant system with the combined methods is more stable at low frequencies and converges faster in the calculation of far-field scattering fields.published_or_final_versio

Recent development of surface integral equation solvers for multiscale interconnects and circuits

This paper presents a brief review and recent development of surface integral equation solvers for multiscale interconnects and circuits modeling. As the future production processes down to 5 nm and the operating frequency increases, both multi-scale and large-scale natures should be taken into account in the electromagnetic simulations. Fast, efficient, stable, and broadband integral equation based solvers become indispensable when millions or ten s of millions of unknowns might be involved in the simulation of the integrated circuit. Recent progress and our latest researches in the development of broadband fast electromagnetic solvers will be demonstrated.published_or_final_versio