Film holder for curved vacuum platen

Vacuum apparatus for holding photographic film of various widths against cylindrically curved patens is discussed. Construction details and method of operation are explained. Illustration of equipment is provided

The effect of a structured internship on the clinical performance of novice nurses?

Objective: The study examined the clinical performance differences of novices before and after a critical care internship and compare their performance attributes to a reference group comprised of experienced critical care nurses. The extant research regarding clinical internship programs has focused on retention in practice, workforce issues and competence. While studies have shown a pattern of improved retention in practice settings, they have failed to objectively measure actual clinical performance. Methods: The study design was based on pre-post comparisons of novice nurses and a reference group comprised of experienced nurses who served as a benchmark. The novice group was required to respond to patient needs in high-fidelity clinical scenarios before and after an internship. The experienced nurses attended a single testing session. Results: Findings revealed statistically significant improvement in the performance of the novice group; however, they failed to perform at the level of the experienced nurses. Conclusions: The study is the first to detail the degree to which a structured internship can facilitate changes in selected aspects of clinical performance. The study establishes the effect associated with engagement in a structured internship. While novices improve significantly, they fail to achieve the level of clinical performance seen in experienced nurses. The paper will present background information related to the established effects of internship programs, and will then present the data related to the current study. The paper will then present similarities and differences between the results of the current study, and the literatur

Automated detection of block falls in the north polar region of Mars

We developed a change detection method for the identification of ice block falls using NASA's HiRISE images of the north polar scarps on Mars. Our method is based on a Support Vector Machine (SVM), trained using Histograms of Oriented Gradients (HOG), and on blob detection. The SVM detects potential new blocks between a set of images; the blob detection, then, confirms the identification of a block inside the area indicated by the SVM and derives the shape of the block. The results from the automatic analysis were compared with block statistics from visual inspection. We tested our method in 6 areas consisting of 1000x1000 pixels, where several hundreds of blocks were identified. The results for the given test areas produced a true positive rate of ~75% for blocks with sizes larger than 0.7 m (i.e., approx. 3 times the available ground pixel size) and a false discovery rate of ~8.5%. Using blob detection we also recover the size of each block within 3 pixels of their actual size

Gentechnik : Medien, Literatur, Internet-Quellen, Unterrichtsmaterialien

Schaut man im Internet unter dem Stichwort "Gentechnik" nach, dann erhält man eine Fülle von Quellen, deren Inhalte in keiner Weise als wissenschaftlich und um Wahrheit bemüht gelten können. Da der Durchschnittsbürger über wenig Wissen über Gentechnik verfügt, kann er meist diese Quellen nicht von seriösen, ideologiefreien und wissenschaftlich korrekten Quellen unterscheiden. Aus diesem Grund sind in der Bevölkerung Meinungen über Gentechnik verbreitet, die in keiner Weise der wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnislage entsprechen

Essays in Bayesian Macroeconometrics and Forecasting

Forecasting macroeconomic conditions in real-time is a crucial prerequisite for the conduct of economic policy. The interest in and importance of timely and accurate forecasts have led to active research in the areas of macroeconomics and econometrics. My dissertation makes a contribution to three strands in this literature: i) the improvement of macroeconometric forecasting models by considering the question of variable selection in the context of large factor models, ii) the econometric methodology by extending so-called precision samplers to applications with missing observations and iii) the incorporation of external information into macroeconometric models by evaluating forecasts from a large macroeconometric model conditional on professional forecasters’ view on key variables like the growth rate of the gross domestic product (GDP) and consumer price index (CPI) inflation. Common to all my papers and in line with a growing trend in the field is the use of Bayesian estimation techniques. Moreover, the forecast evaluations are conducted in real-time, i.e. they exactly replicate the information set available at the time the forecasts were made, thus yielding a more accurate measure of the predictive performance