Asthma referrals : a key component of asthma management that needs to be addressed

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Industrial growth and the quality of institutions : what do (transition) economies have to gain from the Rule of Law?

The authors empirically test the link between industrial growth and indicators of institutional quality. They find significant evidence that institutional quality affects inindustrial growth in 27 Asian and Latin American countries. Their results suggest that the development of the legal and regulatory framework works its way to industrial growth through both investment and total factor productivity. The implications for policymakers in transition economies: Institution building should complement privatization, public and private investment in education, research and development, and measures to promote foreign direct investment. Specifically, policymakers should try to reduce corruption, eliminate bureacratic barriers, and improve the legal environment and contract enforcement. Special attention should also be given to measures to deepen financial intermediation, improve the financial sector infrastructure, and increase the efficiency of financial transactions.Governance Indicators,Environmental Economics&Policies,Achieving Shared Growth,Economic Theory&Research,Trade and Regional Integration

Human-activity-centered measurement system:challenges from laboratory to the real environment in assistive gait wearable robotics

Assistive gait wearable robots (AGWR) have shown a great advancement in developing intelligent devices to assist human in their activities of daily living (ADLs). The rapid technological advancement in sensory technology, actuators, materials and computational intelligence has sped up this development process towards more practical and smart AGWR. However, most assistive gait wearable robots are still confined to be controlled, assessed indoor and within laboratory environments, limiting any potential to provide a real assistance and rehabilitation required to humans in the real environments. The gait assessment parameters play an important role not only in evaluating the patient progress and assistive device performance but also in controlling smart self-adaptable AGWR in real-time. The self-adaptable wearable robots must interactively conform to the changing environments and between users to provide optimal functionality and comfort. This paper discusses the performance parameters, such as comfortability, safety, adaptability, and energy consumption, which are required for the development of an intelligent AGWR for outdoor environments. The challenges to measuring the parameters using current systems for data collection and analysis using vision capture and wearable sensors are presented and discussed

Shawnee National Forest Vegetation Plot Analysis

Prescribed burns were conducted in 2675 acres (12 individual burn units) in the Hidden Springs and Vienna Ranger District of the Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois. The prescribed burning program was conducted with the goal of improving wildlife habitat and timber stand condition. Stand condition was monitored from 2004 through 2009 (2013 in two sites) to assess the success in reducing the abundance of undesirable shade tolerant mesic species and increase regeneration of desirable shade intolerant taxa. The results of analyzing data from the monitoring program are reported here from 13 of 23 permanent monitoring plots. Over the first five years of this program the stands are generally increasing in basal area and decreasing in tree density as expected through normal stand maturation. There are indications that the prescribed burning program has been successful in some sites through a reduction in maples and an increase in oaks and hickories, an increase in the herb and shrub layer species richness, and a decrease in the exotic Japanese honeysuckle. The success of prescribed burning as a management tool is site-specific, varying across the landscape, and likely reflecting historical contingency. Continued monitoring of these sites is necessary; analysis of data from additional permanent plots is recommended as is improved intensity of the prescribed burns to enhance efficacy of the management treatment

Contribution of speckle noise in near-infrared spectroscopy measurements

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is widely used in biomedical optics with applications ranging from basic science, such as in functional neuroimaging, to clinical, as in pulse oximetry. Despite the relatively low absorption of tissue in the near-infrared, there is still a significant amount of optical attenuation produced by the highly scattering nature of tissue. Because of this, designers of NIRS systems have to balance source optical power and source–detector separation to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). However, theoretical estimations of SNR neglect the effects of speckle. Speckle manifests as fluctuations of the optical power received at the detector. These fluctuations are caused by interference of the multiple random paths taken by photons in tissue. We present a model for the NIRS SNR that includes the effects of speckle. We performed experimental validations with a NIRS system to show that it agrees with our model. Additionally, we performed computer simulations based on the model to estimate the contribution of speckle noise for different collection areas and source–detector separations. We show that at short source–detector separation, speckle contributes most of the noise when using long coherence length sources. Considering this additional noise is especially important for hybrid applications that use NIRS and speckle contrast simultaneously, such as in diffuse correlation spectroscopy.R01 EB025145 - NIBIB NIH HHS; R24 NS104096 - NINDS NIH HHSPublished versio

Direct Solution Of The Isothermal Gibbs-Duhem Equation For Multicomponent Systems

The numerical solution of the relative volatility form of the isothermal Gibbs-Duhem equation for multicomponent systems Is carried out by a relaxation technique for two ternary systems at five different temperatures. This direct method of solution eliminates calculating and differentiating the excess Gibbs free energy as required by other indirect methods. © 1978, American Chemical Society. All rights reserved

Study of localization in the quantum sawtooth map emulated on a quantum information processor

Quantum computers will be unique tools for understanding complex quantum systems. We report an experimental implementation of a sensitive, quantum coherence-dependent localization phenomenon on a quantum information processor (QIP). The localization effect was studied by emulating the dynamics of the quantum sawtooth map in the perturbative regime on a three-qubit QIP. Our results show that the width of the probability distribution in momentum space remained essentially unchanged with successive iterations of the sawtooth map, a result that is consistent with localization. The height of the peak relative to the baseline of the probability distribution did change, a result that is consistent with our QIP being an ensemble of quantum systems with a distribution of errors over the ensemble. We further show that the previously measured distributions of control errors correctly account for the observed changes in the probability distribution.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figure