791 research outputs found
A control chart procedure for student grade monitoring
This article reports an application of the control chart procedure for monitoring award of grades to
students by the teaching staff in a large university. The chart procedure signals the presence of special
cause variations if any in the award of grades. Implementation of the grade monitoring procedure saved
considerable time and effort while ensuring that the reported special cause situations are justified. The
mathematical derivations for the new control chart scheme are also presented
Monitoring osteoarthritis: a cross-sectional survey in general practice
<b>Background</b> Despite being a highly prevalent chronic condition managed predominantly in primary care and unlike other chronic conditions, osteoarthritis (OA) care is delivered on an ad hoc basis rather than through routine structured review. Evidence suggests current levels of OA care are suboptimal, but little is known about what general practitioners' (GPs) consider important in OA care, and, thus, the scope to improve inconsistency or poor practice is, at present, limited.<p></p>
<b>Objectives</b> We investigated GPs' views on and practice of monitoring OA. <p></p>
<b>Methods</b> This was a cross-sectional postal survey of 2500 practicing UK GPs randomly selected from the Binley's database. Respondents were asked if monitoring OA patients was important and how monitoring should be undertaken.<p></p>
<b>Results</b> Responses were received from 768 GPs of whom 70.8% were male and 89.5% were principals within their practices. Despite 55.4% (n = 405) indicating monitoring patients with OA was important and 78.3% (n = 596) considering GPs the appropriate professionals to monitor OA, only 15.2% (n = 114) did so routinely, and 45% (n = 337) did not monitor any OA patients at all. In total, 61.4% (n = 463) reported that patients should self-monitor. Respondents favored monitoring physical function, pain, and analgesia use over monitoring measures of BMI, self management plans, and exercise advice.<p></p>
<b>Conclusions</b> The majority of respondents felt that monitoring OA was important, but this was not reflected in their reported current practice. Much of what they favored for monitoring was in line with published guidance, suggesting provision of suboptimal care does not result from lack of knowledge and interventions to improve OA care must address barriers to GPs engaging in optimal care provision
Concerning the quark condensate
A continuum expression for the trace of the massive dressed-quark propagator
is used to explicate a connection between the infrared limit of the QCD Dirac
operator's spectrum and the quark condensate appearing in the operator product
expansion, and the connection is verified via comparison with a lattice-QCD
simulation. The pseudoscalar vacuum polarisation provides a good approximation
to the condensate over a larger range of current-quark masses.Comment: 7 pages, LaTeX2e, revtex
Magazine and reader constructions of 'metrosexuality' and masculinity: a membership categorisation analysis
Since the launch of men's lifestyle magazines in the 1980s, academic literature has predominantly focused on them as a cultural phenomenon arising from entrepreneurial and commercial initiatives and/or as cultural texts that proffer representations of masculinity such as 'new lad' and 'new dad'. This paper steps aside from the focus on culture and, instead, treats magazine content as a discursive space in which gender and sexuality are oriented to, negotiated, and accomplished within and beyond the magazine itself (i.e. through readers' responses). Specifically, membership categorisation analysis is deployed to explore how the relatively new (and perhaps alternative) category for men - 'metrosexual' - is presented and received. Our analysis suggests that masculinity concerns are central in debates about 'metrosexuality', with self-identified 'metrosexuals' invoking heterosexual prowess and self-respect on the one hand, and critics (e.g. selfidentified 'real men') lamenting 'metrosexuality' for its perceived effeminacy and lack of authenticity on the other. Implications for understanding contemporary masculinities are discussed
Contestable adulthood: variability and disparity in markers for negotiating the transition to adulthood
Recent research has identified a discreet set of subjective markers that are seen as characterizing the transition to adulthood. The current study challenges this coherence by examining the disparity and variability in young peopleâs selection of such criteria. Four sentence-completion cues corresponding to four differentcontexts in which adult status might be contested were given to 156 British 16- to 17-year-olds. Their qualitative responses were analyzed to
explore patterns whilst capturing some of their richness and diversity. An astonishing amount of variability emerged, both within and between cued contexts.The implications of this variability for how the transition to adulthood is experienced are explored. The argument is made that markers of the transition to adulthood are not merely reflective of the bioâpsychoâsocial development of
young people. Rather, adulthood here is seen as an essentially contested concept,located within the discursive interactional environment in which young people participate
Reconstruction of the palaeoâsea level of Britain and Ireland arising from empirical constraints of ice extent: implications for regional sea level forecasts and North American ice sheet volume
Reconstructions of palaeo-sea level are vital for predicting future sea level change and constraining palaeo-ice sheet reconstructions, as well as being useful for a wide array of applications across Quaternary Science. Previous reconstructions of the palaeo-sea level of Britain and Ireland relied on a circular tuning of glacio-isostatic models: input ice sheet thicknesses and extents were iteratively altered to fit relative sea level data. Here we break that circularity by utilizing new data from the BRITICE-CHRONO project, which constrains the position of the BritishâIrish ice sheet margin through time, and we compare derived glacio-isostatic modelling to the rich relative sea level record. We test a combination of plausible ice thickness scenarios which account for the uncertainty of ice margin position over the North Sea, demonstrating the region where regional sea level data could distinguish between different glaciation scenarios. Our optimal reconstruction is then combined with several global-scale reconstructions. As the signal of the BritishâIrish Ice Sheet is constrained, we demonstrate how the relative sea level record of Britain and Ireland can be used to test reconstructions of far-field ice sheets (e.g. Antarctica, Eurasia and the Laurentide). The derived palaeo-topography data are likely to be useful for multiple disciplines. Finally, our improved method of sea level reconstruction impacts predictions of contemporary vertical land motion
Bonding in MgSi and AlMgSi Compounds Relevant to AlMgSi Alloys
The bonding and stability of MgSi and AlMgSi compounds relevant to AlMgSi
alloys is investigated with the use of (L)APW+(lo) DFT calculations. We show
that the and phases found in the precipitation sequence are
characterised by the presence of covalent bonds between Si-Si nearest neighbour
pairs and covalent/ionic bonds between Mg-Si nearest neighbour pairs. We then
investigate the stability of two recently discovered precipitate phases, U1 and
U2, both containing Al in addition to Mg and Si. We show that both phases are
characterised by tightly bound Al-Si networks, made possible by a transfer of
charge from the Mg atoms.Comment: 11 pages, 30 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Scaling behavior of the overlap quark propagator in Landau gauge
The properties of the momentum space quark propagator in Landau gauge are
examined for the overlap quark action in quenched lattice QCD. Numerical
calculations are done on three lattices with different lattice spacings and
similar physical volumes to explore the approach of the quark propagator toward
the continuum limit. We have calculated the nonperturbative momentum-dependent
wave function renormalization function Z(p) and the nonperturbative mass
function M(p) for a variety of bare quark masses and perform an extrapolation
to the chiral limit. We find the behavior of Z(p) and M(p) are in reasonable
agreement between the two finer lattices in the chiral limit, however the data
suggest that an even finer lattice is desirable. The large momentum behavior is
examined to determine the quark condensate.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, Revtex 4. Streamlined presentation, additional
data. Final versio
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