1,690 research outputs found
CRICKET BOWLING: A TWO-SEGMENT LAGRANGIAN MODEL
In this study, a Lagrangian forward solution of the bowling arm in cricket is made using a two-segment rigid body model, coupled with projectile equations for the free flight of the ball. For given initial arm positions and constant joint torques, the equations are solved numerically to determine the ball speed and arm angle at release so that the ball can land on a predetermined position on the pitch. The model was driven with kinematic data from video obtained from an elite bowler. The model can be analysed in order to study the biomechanics of the bowling arm as well as to quantify the effects of changing input parameters on the trajectory and speed of the ball
Patient choice at the point of GP referral: Department of Health
1 The Department of Health has a Public Service
Agreement target to ensure that by the end of 2005 every
hospital appointment in the National Health Service in
England (the NHS) will be booked for the convenience of
the patient, making it easier for patients and their General
Practitioners (GPs) to choose the hospital and consultant
that best meets their need. The Department aims to
provide patients with the opportunity to choose between
four to five healthcare providers for elective hospital
treatment by December 2005. In consultation with their
GP, patients should be able to choose, from a menu of
NHS and independent sector healthcare providers, their
preferred location for treatment. Patients should also be
able to book the time and date of their initial outpatient
appointment within 24 hours of the decision to refer the
patient for treatment. This target will apply to around
9.4 million patients referred for hospital treatment by their
GP each year, around four per cent of the total estimated
241 million GP consultations.
2 Choice at referral can contribute to a more patientfocused health service, bringing benefits to both patients
and the NHS. But providing such a choice will not happen
by accident. There are a number of dependencies and
interactions with other policies that need to be managed.
Information Technology (IT) systems need to be developed
and modified and significant cultural, organisational and
behavioural changes will need to be made by patients,
NHS organisations and staff.
3 This report examines whether the Department is on
track to deliver choice at the point of referral successfully
by the target date of December 2005. Our work has
found that:
a Progress has been made towards delivering choice
at referral through establishing the required
organisational infrastructure, commissioning new
IT systems and modifications to existing ones, and
providing support for the NHS organisations that will
deliver it.
b The engagement of GPs is currently low and is a key
risk which the Department must address to deliver
choice successfully. The Department plans to
address this risk through a campaign to inform and
engage GPs during 2005 and it will need to monitor
carefully the progress of this campaign.
c Choice at referral will be delivered most efficiently
and effectively through electronic booking (e-booking,
also known as Choose and Book), in which the
Electronic Booking Service, commissioned by the
Department’s National Programme for IT (NPfIT),
is linked to upgraded or new computer systems in
hospitals and GPs’ surgeries. However, e-booking
will not be universally available by December 2005.
Until e-booking is fully adopted choice will have to be
provided in other, less efficient, ways.
d Parts of the NHS still have much to do if they
are to deliver choice. A significant minority of
Primary Care Trusts do not yet have adequate plans
in place to manage the introduction of choice and
some may struggle to manage the required new
commissioning arrangements.
4 Our more detailed findings are as follows.
Progress has been made towards
delivering choice at referral
5 The Department believes that choice is affordable.
Additional annual infrastructure and transaction costs
are estimated to be £122 million – or 1.4 per cent of the
current total expenditure on elective care. The main aim
of introducing choice is to improve services for patients,
but it should lead to increased efficiencies in primary and
secondary care services worth an estimated £71 million,
off-setting some of these costs.
6 It is essential that choice is supported by other
elements of system reform including e-booking, payment
by results, commissioning and appropriate capacity.
Modelling exercises have shown that the system reforms
should work in harmony with one another. Payment by
results should enable the transfer of funding to follow the
patient and there should be sufficient capacity across the
system to enable choice to be effective.
7 Much of the organisational infrastructure that
is required for choice is in place and there is clear
accountability for the delivery of the programme. To
strengthen detailed national programme management
arrangements the Department created, on 22 December
2004, a new post of National Implementation Director
for Choose and Book, with effect from 10 January 2005.
The new Director will be responsible for overseeing the
implementation of choice within the NHS whilst the
National Programme for IT Group Programme Director for
Choose and Book will continue to be responsible for Choose
and Book technology development and deployment, patient
access and Choose and Book contract management.
8 The Department has provided different types of
support to the NHS – for example, ten pilot schemes
have been run to test the policy in practice. It has set up a
system for periodically measuring progress and used this to
establish the position at the end of October 2004, creating
a baseline against which to monitor future progress.
9 Research has identified what information patients
will want to base their choices on, and the Department
is seeking to provide this. While it is unlikely that full
information will be available for December 2005, the
majority of those aspects identified by patients as being
the most important, such as waiting times and basic
access information, will be in place. The Department
plans to increase the information available over time.
The key risk to the delivery of choice
is the engagement of GPs
10 Choice cannot be delivered without support from
GPs but our survey of GPs found that around half of
GPs know very little about it and 61 per cent feel either
very negative or a little negative. GPs’ concerns include
practice capacity, workload, consultation length and fears
that existing health inequalities will be exacerbated. The
Department has deliberately held back its main effort to
inform and engage GPs about choice until it has had a
working e-booking system to show GPs, but it intends to
mount a campaign to inform and engage GPs during 2005.
Until e-booking is fully adopted
choice will be supported by
other mechanisms
11 The Department has commissioned Atos Origin to
develop a national system for e-booking, which will be
linked to upgraded or new Patient Administration Systems
in hospitals and IT systems in GPs’ surgeries to provide
an overall service known as e-booking. The National
Programme for IT has planned the roll out of e-booking on
an incremental basis to minimise risk, and to link it by the
end of 2005 to some 60 to 70 per cent of hospital systems
and GP practices.
12 E-booking is the most effective and efficient way
of delivering the Department’s plans for choice, and
alternative booking mechanisms offer poorer value for
money. Atos Origin has delivered a functioning system
and the first booking using e-booking was made in
July 2004. However the roll-out of e-booking has been
slower than planned and at the end of December 2004
only 63 bookings had been made. Problems have
included the reluctance of users to work with an
unreliable end-to-end system, limited progress in linking
to GP and hospital systems, and the limited number of
GPs willing to use the system.
13 The Department believes that new releases of
software have addressed the reliability of the whole
end-to-end system and that having a fully operational
system will encourage GPs to engage with e-booking. The
roll-out of changes to hospital systems to allow them to
link to e-booking is gathering pace and four types of GP
systems can now link to e-booking, although the largest
supplier has not yet agreed an implementation plan. A
combined team of Departmental and NHS personnel
are working with the three main existing GP system
suppliers to agree a national deployment schedule. This
work should be completed by February 2005, along with
a nationally negotiated commercial arrangement. The
Department is also developing and trialling contingency
plans against further delays, as well as alternatives to the
fully integrated Choose and Book solution.
Parts of the NHS still have much to do
14 Programme management arrangements in the NHS
are incomplete. While most Primary Care Trusts expect to
be able to deliver the choice target, there is variability in
their overall performance. As many as a quarter of Primary
Care Trusts currently forecast that they will not deliver the
choice targets. In addition, some Primary Care Trusts may
struggle to manage the new commissioning arrangements
and two-thirds have yet to commission the required number
of providers. The department is developing a framework of
support to assist trusts to overcome these obstacles.
15 The Department needs urgently to address the low
level of GP support for their plans for implementing
choice at referral, and should:
I Press on urgently with its plans for informing GPs
about the implementation of choice at referral and
its impact on GPs and patients.
II Monitor the views of GPs, for example by a regular
survey, repeating key questions from our own survey,
to assess the rate of progress being achieved towards
the level of support needed to meet its target of full
implementation by December 2005.
III Consider whether further action is needed to secure
the required level of GP support, once GPs are fully
informed on what choice at referral involves.
16 The Department should also:
IV Complete its planned benefits realisation plan for
choice at referral by the summer of 2005, along with
a monitoring mechanism and quantified targets.
V Keep under regular and close review the progress
of its planned implementation of choice through
implementing e-booking and consider the scope
for accelerating the roll-out of e-booking to make it
available everywhere by December 2005.
VI If it becomes clear that it is not possible to deliver
e-booking everywhere by December 2005, the
Department should:
a monitor closely the development of the interim
solutions to ensure that they meet their delivery
dates; and
b ensure that the implementation of interim
solutions does not detract from the priority of
bringing in fully integrated e-booking systems
as soon as possible.
VII Establish an evaluation framework for Primary
Care Trust commissioning to assist Strategic Health
Authorities in assessing the capacity and skills
of Primary Care Trusts in this area and securing
improvements in capacity and skills where necessary
TWO NEW PLOCENE SPECIES OF CYCLOSTEPHANOS (BACILLARIOPHYCEAE) WITH COMMENTS ON THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE FRESHWATER THALASSIOSIRACEAE 1
Two new species of the diatom genus Cyclostephanos Round are described from Pliocene fossil deposits in western North America. Cyclostephanos undatus is distinguished from other Cyclostephanos species by its tangentially undulate valve face; Cyclostephanos fenestratus is distinguished by its extremely shallow alveoli. This paper records previously unreported morphological detail of Cyclostephanos and speculates that structure of the punctum, labiate process and strutted process may enhance diagnosis of the freshwater genera of the Thalassiosiraceae Lebour emend. Hasle. Cyclostephanos undatus is similar to several Cyclotella species, but its external costae are raised and its alveolar morphology is similar to that of Cyclostephanos dubius (Fricke) Round. Cyclostephanos fenestratus is similar in external view to Stephanodiscus Ehrenb. However, the two species described here have flat cribra covering the mantle puncta and the labiate processes appear to lack external tubes, whereas Stephanodiscus species have domed mantle cribra and external tubes.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/65645/1/j.1529-8817.1986.tb04154.x.pd
Electroluminescence from single nanowires by tunnel injection: an experimental study
We present a hybrid light-emitting diode structure composed of an n-type
gallium nitride nanowire on a p-type silicon substrate in which current is
injected along the length of the nanowire. The device emits ultraviolet light
under both bias polarities. Tunnel-injection of holes from the p-type substrate
(under forward bias) and from the metal (under reverse bias) through thin
native oxide barriers consistently explains the observed electroluminescence
behaviour. This work shows that the standard p-n junction model is generally
not applicable to this kind of device structure.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure
Institutions versus market forces: Explaining the employment insecurity of European individuals during (the beginning of) the financial crisis
In reaction to the recent financial crisis, the European Commission re-stated its view that the balance between flexibility and security is the key to success for the future of the European social economy, as well as its belief in the power of institutional arrangements it deems necessary for this balance. However, do powerful institutions actually counter market forces where flexicurity is concerned? In this paper we address this question by analysing the impact of institutional configurations and market factors on perceived employment insecurity among workers in Europe. We use the 4th wave of the European Social Survey for 2008/2009, which covers 22 countries, and implement a multi-level approach where contextual effects are taken into account and individuals are considered to be embedded within a country. We find that policies that secure one’s income and employability skills, such as passive and active labour market policies, are more important for providing employment security for individuals than institutions that secure one’s current job, such as employment protection. Of the economic and labour market factors, general market conditions (measured as employment rate average) and the strength of the financial crisis (measured as gross domestic product growth rate from 2008 to 2009) are both similarly influential in explaining cross-national variance in the employment insecurity perception of individuals. More generally, and most interestingly, we find that institutional factors lose their significance when market factors are taken into account. Thus, it seems that differences in economic and labour market conditions between countries better explain why workers feel insecure about their employment, than the differences in employment and income policies. Although this result could be influenced by the time period under investigation, which is characterized by a financial crisis, results from previous studies using data from different periods suggest that it is not period-specific
Dispersion of swimming algae in laminar and turbulent channel flows: consequences for photobioreactors
Shear flow significantly affects the transport of swimming algae in
suspension. For example, viscous and gravitational torques bias bottom-heavy
cells to swim towards regions of downwelling fluid (gyrotaxis). It is necessary
to understand how such biases affect algal dispersion in natural and industrial
flows, especially in view of growing interest in algal photobioreactors.
Motivated by this, we here study the dispersion of gyrotactic algae in laminar
and turbulent channel flows using direct numerical simulation (DNS) and the
analytical swimming dispersion theory of Bees and Croze (2010). Time-resolved
dispersion measures are evaluated as functions of the Peclet and Reynolds
numbers in upwelling and downwelling flows. For laminar flows, DNS results are
compared with theory using competing descriptions of biased swimming cells in
shear flow. Excellent agreement is found for predictions that employ
generalized-Taylor-dispersion. The results highlight peculiarities of
gyrotactic swimmer dispersion relative to passive tracers. In laminar
downwelling flow the cell distribution drifts in excess of the mean flow,
increasing in magnitude with Peclet number. The cell effective axial
diffusivity increases and decreases with Peclet number (for tracers it merely
increases). In turbulent flows, gyrotactic effects are weaker, but discernable
and manifested as non-zero drift. These results should significantly impact
photobioreactor design.Comment: 31 pages, 15 figures (includes supplementary materials
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