Fiscal and economic stability in the eurozone.

yesEvery day the news is filled with increasingly depressing news about the economy. The recent Autumn Statement (29 November 2011) to the House of Commons by UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, confirmed that the cause of a potential ?double dip? recession in the British economy lay largely at the doors of the European Union and, in particular, the eurozone. It is easy to understand why some commentators feel that perhaps the European single currency is in its death-throes, and that the European Union itself needs major structural revisions. But for the sake of perspective it is important to remember the underlying rationale behind the ?European project? which remains as relevant today as it did in the 1950s

Illusion or delusion - Lean management in the health sector

yesPurpose: There has been considerable interest in implementing practices imported from manufacturing into healthcare as a solution to rising healthcare spending and disappointing patient safety indicators. One approach attracting particular interest is Lean management, which is explored in this article. Design/methodology/approach: The exploratory research focuses on Lean management in the health sector. It is based on extensive secondary data and it is a practical in implication. Data provided both background and context. Findings: Despite widespread enthusiasm about Lean management’s potential, evidence about its contribution to higher performance is inconsistent. Research limitations/implications: Major Lean operations management and human resource management concepts, including just-in-time (JIT), total quality management (TQM) and total productive maintenance (TPM) are explored. Practical implications: This article contributes to the healthcare organizational management literature by showing that although Lean management seems to have the potential to improve organizational performance; it is far from a panacea for underperforming hospitals. The article informs policy-making by suggesting that a progressive managerial philosophy has a stronger impact on healthcare performance than adopting practices from any particular managerial approach. Originality/value: A critical evaluation on Lean’s impact on informing healthcare policy is presented, which contributes to healthcare organisational management literature by showing that even though Lean management in healthcare appears to have the potential to improve performance; there remain problems with its application

Dynamics of barrier penetration in thermal medium: exact result for inverted harmonic oscillator

Time evolution of quantum tunneling is studied when the tunneling system is immersed in thermal medium. We analyze in detail the behavior of the system after integrating out the environment. Exact result for the inverted harmonic oscillator of the tunneling potential is derived and the barrier penetration factor is explicitly worked out as a function of time. Quantum mechanical formula without environment is modifed both by the potential renormalization effect and by a dynamical factor which may appreciably differ from the previously obtained one in the time range of 1/(curvature at the top of potential barrier).Comment: 30 pages, LATEX file with 11 PS figure

Feasibility of velocity-selective arterial spin labeling in breast cancer patients for noncontrast-enhanced perfusion imaging

Background Dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) MRI is the most sensitive method for detection of breast cancer. However, due to high costs and retention of intravenously injected gadolinium-based contrast agent, screening with DCE-MRI is only recommended for patients who are at high risk for developing breast cancer. Thus, a noncontrast-enhanced alternative to DCE is desirable.Purpose To investigate whether velocity selective arterial spin labeling (VS-ASL) can be used to identify increased perfusion and vascularity within breast lesions compared to surrounding tissue.Study Type Prospective.Population Eight breast cancer patients.Field Strength/Sequence A 3 T; VS-ASL with multislice single-shot gradient-echo echo-planar-imaging readout.Assessment VS-ASL scans were independently assessed by three radiologists, with 3-25 years of experience in breast radiology. Scans were scored on lesion visibility and artifacts, based on a 3-point Likert scale. A score of 1 corresponded to "lesions being distinguishable from background" (lesion visibility), and "no or few artifacts visible, artifacts can be distinguished from blood signal" (artifact score). A distinction was made between mass and nonmass lesions (based on BI-RADS lexicon), as assessed in the standard clinical exam.Statistical Tests Intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) for interobserver agreement.Results The ICC was 0.77 for lesion visibility and 0.84 for the artifact score. Overall, mass lesions had a mean score of 1.27 on lesion visibility and 1.53 on the artifact score. Nonmass lesions had a mean score of 2.11 on lesion visibility and 2.11 on the artifact score.Data Conclusion We have demonstrated the technical feasibility of bilateral whole-breast perfusion imaging using VS-ASL in breast cancer patients.Evidence Level 1Technical Efficacy Stage 1Imaging- and therapeutic targets in neoplastic and musculoskeletal inflammatory diseas

In situ x-ray diffraction study of epitaxial growth of ordered Fe3Si films

Molecular beam epitaxy of Fe3Si on GaAs(001) is studied in situ by grazing incidence x-ray diffraction. Layer-by-layer growth of Fe3Si films is observed at a low growth rate and substrate temperatures near 200 degrees Celsius. A damping of x-ray intensity oscillations due to a gradual surface roughening during growth is found. The corresponding sequence of coverages of the different terrace levels is obtained. The after-deposition surface recovery is very slow. Annealing at 310 degrees Celsius combined with the deposition of one monolayer of Fe3Si restores the surface to high perfection and minimal roughness. Our stoichiometric films possess long-range order and a high quality heteroepitaxial interface.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

ENIGMA and global neuroscience: A decade of large-scale studies of the brain in health and disease across more than 40 countries

This review summarizes the last decade of work by the ENIGMA (Enhancing NeuroImaging Genetics through Meta Analysis) Consortium, a global alliance of over 1400 scientists across 43 countries, studying the human brain in health and disease. Building on large-scale genetic studies that discovered the first robustly replicated genetic loci associated with brain metrics, ENIGMA has diversified into over 50 working groups (WGs), pooling worldwide data and expertise to answer fundamental questions in neuroscience, psychiatry, neurology, and genetics. Most ENIGMA WGs focus on specific psychiatric and neurological conditions, other WGs study normal variation due to sex and gender differences, or development and aging; still other WGs develop methodological pipelines and tools to facilitate harmonized analyses of "big data" (i.e., genetic and epigenetic data, multimodal MRI, and electroencephalography data). These international efforts have yielded the largest neuroimaging studies to date in schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance use disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism spectrum disorders, epilepsy, and 22q11.2 deletion syndrome. More recent ENIGMA WGs have formed to study anxiety disorders, suicidal thoughts and behavior, sleep and insomnia, eating disorders, irritability, brain injury, antisocial personality and conduct disorder, and dissociative identity disorder. Here, we summarize the first decade of ENIGMA's activities and ongoing projects, and describe the successes and challenges encountered along the way. We highlight the advantages of collaborative large-scale coordinated data analyses for testing reproducibility and robustness of findings, offering the opportunity to identify brain systems involved in clinical syndromes across diverse samples and associated genetic, environmental, demographic, cognitive, and psychosocial factors

Highly-parallelized simulation of a pixelated LArTPC on a GPU

The rapid development of general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU) is allowing the implementation of highly-parallelized Monte Carlo simulation chains for particle physics experiments. This technique is particularly suitable for the simulation of a pixelated charge readout for time projection chambers, given the large number of channels that this technology employs. Here we present the first implementation of a full microphysical simulator of a liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) equipped with light readout and pixelated charge readout, developed for the DUNE Near Detector. The software is implemented with an end-to-end set of GPU-optimized algorithms. The algorithms have been written in Python and translated into CUDA kernels using Numba, a just-in-time compiler for a subset of Python and NumPy instructions. The GPU implementation achieves a speed up of four orders of magnitude compared with the equivalent CPU version. The simulation of the current induced on 10^3 pixels takes around 1 ms on the GPU, compared with approximately 10 s on the CPU. The results of the simulation are compared against data from a pixel-readout LArTPC prototype

Search for the Zγ decay mode of new high-mass resonances in pp collisions at √s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This letter presents a search for narrow, high-mass resonances in the Zγ final state with the Z boson decaying into a pair of electrons or muons. The √s = 13 TeV pp collision data were recorded by the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider and have an integrated luminosity of 140 fb−1. The data are found to be in agreement with the Standard Model background expectation. Upper limits are set on the resonance production cross section times the decay branching ratio into Zγ. For spin-0 resonances produced via gluon–gluon fusion, the observed limits at 95% confidence level vary between 65.5 fb and 0.6 fb, while for spin-2 resonances produced via gluon–gluon fusion (or quark–antiquark initial states) limits vary between 77.4 (76.1) fb and 0.6 (0.5) fb, for the mass range from 220 GeV to 3400 GeV