Preventive youth health care in 11 European countries: an exploratory analysis

Objective: To systematically identify similarities and differences in the way preventive youth health care (YHC) is organized in 11 European countries. - \ud Method: Questionnaire survey to EUSUHM (European Union for School and University Health and Medicine) representatives. - \ud Results: The greatest similarities were found in the age range of the YHC target group and the separation of curative and preventive services. Croatia, Germany and Switzerland show the greatest differences when compared to other European countries, for example, in the access to medical records, YHC professional input and the number of examinations, immunizations and screenings. In eight countries YHC is financed by national insurances or taxation. In Germany, FYR Macedonia, the Netherlands, Russia and Switzerland, different forms of financing exist in parallel. - Conclusion The results should be interpreted as a preliminary step in mapping organizational features of YHC in Europe

Aligning Perspectives and Methods for Value-Driven Design

Recent years have seen a push to use explicit consideration of “value” in order to drive design. This paper conveys the need to explicitly align perspectives on “value” with the method used to quantify “value.” Various concepts of value are introduced in the context of its evolution within economics in order to propose a holistic definition of value. Operationalization of value is discussed, including possible assumption violations in the aerospace domain. A series of prominent Value-Centric Design Methodologies for valuation are introduced, including Net Present Value, Multi-Attribute Utility Theory, and Cost-Benefit Analysis. These methods are compared in terms of the assumptions they make with regard to operationalizing value. It is shown that no method is fully complete in capturing the definition of value, but selecting the most appropriate one involves matching the particular system application being valued with acceptable assumptions for valuation. Two case studies, a telecommunications mission and a deep-space observation mission, are used to illustrate application of the three prior mentioned valuation methods. The results of the studies show that depending on method used for valuation, very different conclusions and insights will be derived, therefore an explicit consideration of the appropriate definition of value is necessary in order to align a chosen method with desired valuation insights.Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Systems Engineering Advancement Research Initiativ

Assessment of the current density evolution during an ELM cycle using beam emission polarimetry at ASDEX Upgrade

EUROfusion Consortium 63305

Airborne in-situ measurements of vertical, seasonal and latitudinal distributions of carbon dioxide over Europe

International audienceAirborne in-situ observations of carbon dioxide (CO2) were made during 7 intensive measurement campaigns between November 2001 and April 2003 as part of the SPURT project. Vertical profiles and latitudinal gradients in the upper troposphere/lowermost stratosphere were measured along the western shore of Europe from the subtropics to high northern latitudes during different seasons. In the boundary layer, CO2 exhibits a strong seasonal cycle with the maximum mixing ratios in winter and minimum values in summer, reflecting the strength of CO2 uptake by vegetation. Seasonal variations are strongest in high latitudes and propagate to the free troposphere and lowermost stratosphere, although with reduced amplitude, resulting in increasing CO2 mixing ratios with altitude during the summer. In the lowermost stratosphere, the CO2 seasonal cycle is phase-shifted relative to the free troposphere by approximately 3 months, with highest mixing ratios during the summer

Lag time and parameter mismatches in synchronization of unidirectionally coupled chaotic external cavity semiconductor lasers

We report an analysis of synchronization between two unidirectionally coupled chaotic external cavity master/slave semiconductor lasers with two characteristic delay times, where the delay time in the coupling is different from the delay time in the coupled systems themselves. We demonstrate for the first time that parameter mismatches in photon decay rates for the master and slave lasers can explain the experimental observation that the lag time is equal to the coupling delay time.Comment: LaTex, 5 pages, submitted to PRE(R

Structural transitions and nonmonotonic relaxation processes in liquid metals

Structural transitions in melts as well as their dynamics are considered. It is supposed that liquid represents the solution of relatively stable solid-like locally favored structures (LFS) in the surrounding of disordered normal-liquid structures. Within the framework of this approach the step changes of liquid Co viscosity are considered as liquid-liquid transitions. It is supposed that this sort of transitions represents the cooperative medium-range bond ordering, and corresponds to the transition of the "Newtonian fluid" to the "structured fluid". It is shown that relaxation processes with oscillating-like time behavior ($\omega \sim 10^{-2}$~$s^{-1}$) of viscosity are possibly close to this point

proovframe: frameshift-correction for long-read (meta)genomics

Long-read sequencing technologies hold big promises for the genomic analysis of complex samples such as microbial communities. Yet, despite improving accuracy, basic gene prediction on long-read data is still often impaired by frameshifts resulting from small indels. Consensus polishing using either complementary short reads or to a lesser extent the long reads themselves can mitigate this effect but requires universally high sequencing depth, which is difficult to achieve in complex samples where the majority of community members are rare. Here we present proovframe, a software implementing an alternative approach to overcome frameshift errors in long-read assemblies and raw long reads. We utilize protein-to-nucleotide alignments against reference databases to pinpoint indels in contigs or reads and correct them by deleting or inserting 1-2 bases, thereby conservatively restoring reading-frame fidelity in aligned regions. Using simulated and real-world benchmark data we show that proovframe performs comparably to short-read-based polishing on assembled data, works well with remote protein homologs, and can even be applied to raw reads directly. Together, our results demonstrate that protein-guided frameshift correction significantly improves the analyzability of long-read data both in combination with and as an alternative to common polishing strategies. Proovframe is available from https://github.com/thackl/proovframe

Evaluation of corrections for spherical-shell neutron transmission experiments by the Monte-Carlo technique

Berechnung von Korrekturen für Neutronen-Kugelschalentransmissions-Experimente mit der Monte-Carlo-Methode. Der Einfluß einiger experimenteller Einzelheiten auf die Meßgrößen bei Neutronen-Kugelschalentransmissionsexperimenten zur Kerndatenüberprüfung wurde abgeschätzt, indem die entsprechenden Bestandteile der Anordnung (Material nahe der Neutronenquelle, Kollimator und Abschirmung des Detektors u.a.) sowie die spezifische Meßmethode (Flugzeitspektrometrie) in Monte-Carlo-Rechnungen simuliert wurden. Die Rechnungen wurden mit dem Programm MCNP und Kerndaten der Bibliotheken EFF-1 und FENDL-1 durchgeführt. Es wurden Korrekturen bestimmt, die die Auswirkungen der verschiedener Details jeweils getrennt beschreiben

Solitary magnetic perturbations at the ELM onset

Edge localised modes (ELMs) allow maintaining sufficient purity of tokamak H-mode plasmas and thus enable stationary H-mode. On the other hand in a future device ELMs may cause divertor power flux densities far in excess of tolerable material limits. The size of the energy loss per ELM is determined by saturation effects in the non-linear phase of the ELM, which at present is hardly understood. Solitary magnetic perturbations (SMPs) are identified as dominant features in the radial magnetic fluctuations below 100kHz. They are typically observed close (+-0.1ms) to the onset of pedestal erosion. SMPs are field aligned structures rotating in the electron diamagnetic drift direction with perpendicular velocities of about 10km/s. A comparison of perpendicular velocities suggests that the perturbation evoking SMPs is located at or inside the separatrix. Analysis of very pronounced examples showed that the number of peaks per toroidal turn is 1 or 2, which is clearly lower than corresponding numbers in linear stability calculations. In combination with strong peaking of the magnetic signals this results in a solitary appearance resembling modes like palm tree modes, edge snakes or outer modes. This behavior has been quantified as solitariness and correlated to main plasma parameters. SMPs may be considered as a signature of the non-linear ELM-phase originating at the separatrix or further inside. Thus they provide a handle to investigate the transition from linear to non-linear ELM phase. By comparison with data from gas puff imaging processes in the non-linear phase at or inside the separatrix and in the scrape-off-layer (SOL) can be correlated. A connection between the passing of an SMP and the onset of radial filament propagation has been found. Eventually the findings related to SMPs may contribute to a future quantitative understanding of the non-linear ELM evolution.Comment: submitted to Nuclear Fusio