Development of a high capacity toroidal Ni/Cd cell

A nickel cadmium battery design which can offer better thermal management, higher energy density and much lower cost than the state-of-the-art is emphasized. A toroidal Ni/Cd cell concept is described. It was critically reviewed and used to develop two cell designs for practical implementation. One is a double swaged and the other a swaged welded configuration

How non-partisan campaigns can rally the troops when the political stakes are high

In their large-scale field experiment, Denise Baron, Florian Foos, Joshua Townsley, and Stuart Turnbull-Dugarte find that advocacy organisations can successfully mobilise their supporters to put pressure on legislators, but it’s the email itself and not necessarily the message that has the greatest effect

The influence of emotional cues on prospective memory: A systematic review with meta-analyses

Remembering to perform a behaviour in the future, prospective memory, is essential to ensuring that people fulfil their intentions. Prospective memory involves committing to memory a cue to action (encoding), and later recognising and acting upon the cue in the environment (retrieval). Prospective memory performance is believed to be influenced by the emotionality of the cues, however the literature is fragmented and inconsistent. We conducted a systematic search to synthesise research on the influence of emotion on prospective memory. Sixty-seven effect sizes were extracted from 17 articles and hypothesised effects tested using three meta-analyses. Overall, prospective memory was enhanced when positively-valenced rather than neutral cues were presented (d = 0.32). In contrast, negatively-valenced cues did not enhance prospective memory overall (d = 0.07), but this effect was moderated by the timing of the emotional manipulation. Prospective memory performance was improved when negatively-valenced cues were presented during both encoding and retrieval (d = 0.40), but undermined when presented only during encoding (d = -0.25). Moderating effects were also found for cue-focality and whether studies controlled for the arousal level of the cues. The principal finding is that positively-valenced cues improve prospective memory performance and that timing of the manipulation can moderate emotional effects on prospective memory. We offer a new agenda for future empirical work and theorising in this area

Students benefit from developing their own emergency medicine OSCE stations: a comparative study using the matched-pair method

Background: Students can improve the learning process by developing their own multiple choice questions. If a similar effect occurred when creating OSCE (objective structured clinical examination) stations by themselves it could be beneficial to involve them in the development of OSCE stations. This study investigates the effect of students developing emergency medicine OSCE stations on their test performance. Method: In the 2011/12 winter semester, an emergency medicine OSCE was held for the first time at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Leipzig. When preparing for the OSCE, 13 students (the intervention group) developed and tested emergency medicine examination stations as a learning experience. Their subsequent OSCE performance was compared to that of 13 other students (the control group), who were parallelized in terms of age, gender, semester and level of previous knowledge using the matched-pair method. In addition, both groups were compared to 20 students who tested the OSCE prior to regular emergency medicine training (test OSCE group). Results: There were no differences between the three groups regarding age (24.3 +/- 2.6; 24.2 +/- 3.4 and 24 +/- 2.3 years) or previous knowledge (29.3 +/- 3.4; 29.3 +/- 3.2 and 28.9 +/- 4.7 points in the multiple choice {[} MC] exam in emergency medicine). Merely the gender distribution differed (8 female and 5 male students in the intervention and control group vs. 3 males and 17 females in the test OSCE group). In the exam OSCE, participants in the intervention group scored 233.4 +/- 6.3 points (mean +/- SD) compared to 223.8 +/- 9.2 points (p < 0.01) in the control group. Cohen's effect size was d = 1.24. The students of the test OSCE group scored 223.2 +/- 13.4 points. Conclusions: Students who actively develop OSCE stations when preparing for an emergency medicine OSCE achieve better exam results

All in the family: partisan disagreement and electoral mobilization in intimate networks—a spillover experiment

We advance the debate about the impact of political disagreement in social networks on electoral participation by addressing issues of causal inference common in network studies, focusing on voters' most important context of interpersonal influence: the household. We leverage a randomly assigned spillover experiment conducted in the United Kingdom, combined with a detailed database of pretreatment party preferences and public turnout records, to identify social influence within heterogeneous and homogeneous partisan households. Our results show that intrahousehold mobilization effects are larger as a result of campaign contact in heterogeneous than in homogeneous partisan households, and larger still when the partisan intensity of the message is exogenously increased, suggesting discussion rather than behavioral contagion as a mechanism. Our results qualify findings from influential observational studies and suggest that within intimate social networks, negative correlations between political heterogeneity and electoral participation are unlikely to result from political disagreement

Computer modeling of diabetes and Its transparency: a report on the Eighth Mount Hood Challenge

Objectives The Eighth Mount Hood Challenge (held in St. Gallen, Switzerland, in September 2016) evaluated the transparency of model input documentation from two published health economics studies and developed guidelines for improving transparency in the reporting of input data underlying model-based economic analyses in diabetes. Methods Participating modeling groups were asked to reproduce the results of two published studies using the input data described in those articles. Gaps in input data were filled with assumptions reported by the modeling groups. Goodness of fit between the results reported in the target studies and the groups’ replicated outputs was evaluated using the slope of linear regression line and the coefficient of determination (R2). After a general discussion of the results, a diabetes-specific checklist for the transparency of model input was developed. Results Seven groups participated in the transparency challenge. The reporting of key model input parameters in the two studies, including the baseline characteristics of simulated patients, treatment effect and treatment intensification threshold assumptions, treatment effect evolution, prediction of complications and costs data, was inadequately transparent (and often missing altogether). Not surprisingly, goodness of fit was better for the study that reported its input data with more transparency. To improve the transparency in diabetes modeling, the Diabetes Modeling Input Checklist listing the minimal input data required for reproducibility in most diabetes modeling applications was developed. Conclusions Transparency of diabetes model inputs is important to the reproducibility and credibility of simulation results. In the Eighth Mount Hood Challenge, the Diabetes Modeling Input Checklist was developed with the goal of improving the transparency of input data reporting and reproducibility of diabetes simulation model results