Ethnic differences in Internal Medicine referrals and diagnosis in the Netherlands

As in other Western countries, the number of immigrants in the Netherlands is growing rapidly. In 1980 non-western immigrants constituted about 3% of the population, in 1990 it was 6% and currently it is more than 10%. Nearly half of the migrant population lives in the four major cities. In the municipality of Rotterdam 34% of the inhabitants are migrants. Health policy is based on the ideal that all inhabitants should have equal access to health care and this requires an efficient planning of health care resources, like staff and required time per patient. The aim of this study is to examine ethnic differences in the use of internal medicine outpatient care, specifically to examine ethnic differences in the reason for referral and diagnosis. Methods We conducted a study with an open cohort design. We registered the ethnicity, sex, age, referral reasons, diagnosis and living area of all ne

In-pile steam oxidation of model HTGR fuel elements

Model HTGR fuel elements were exposed to various concentrations of steam while being irradiated under several sets of temperature conditions in the Oak Ridge Research Reactor. In one test, catalysis by iron impurities in the graphite casing of the fuel element caused a highly localized attack on the graphite by the steam; this resulted in the formation of deep pits in the casing. Furthermore, the iron impurities were sufficiently mobile to cause pitting attack on the pyrolytic carbon coatings of the fuel particles as well. The presence of steam induced a rapid increase in the release of gaseous fission products. However, the cessation of steam ingress in the primary system resulted in a pronounced, but correspondingly smaller, reduction in the level of gaseous release. The incidence of fuel failure was greater than anticipated; however, even though the coatings of greater than 30% of the fuel had failed, the release of fission products beyond the fuel element itself was largely confined to iodine and the noble gases. A novel mode of fuel failure was observed under the rather severe conditions of the tests; this involved the attack of the pyrolytic carbon coatings on intact particles by uncoated fragments of uranium fuel kernel material from failed particles

Fordisc and the determination of ancestry from cranial measurements

Determining the ancestry of unidentified human remains is a major task for bioarchaeologists and forensic anthropologists. Here, we report an assessment of the computer program that has become the main tool for accomplishing this task. Called Fordisc, the program determines ancestry through discriminant function analysis of cranial measurements. We evaluated the utility of Fordisc with 200 specimens of known ancestry. We ran the analyses with and without the test specimen's source population included in the program's reference sample, and with and without specifying the sex of the test specimen. We also controlled for the possibility that the number of variables employed affects the program's ability to attribute ancestry. The results of the analyses suggest that Fordisc's utility in research and medico-legal contexts is limited. Fordisc will only return a correct ancestry attribution when an unidentified specimen is more or less complete, and belongs to one of the populations represented in the program's reference samples. Even then Fordisc can be expected to classify no more than 1 per cent of specimens with confidence