An analysis of the Research Fellowship Scheme of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

BACKGROUND: The Research Fellowship Scheme of the Royal College of Surgeons of England commenced in 1993 with the aim of exposing selected surgical trainees to research techniques and methodology, with the hope of having an impact on surgical research and increasing the cadre of young surgeons who might decide to pursue an academic career in surgery. Over 11 million pounds sterling (approximately US 20 million dollars) has been invested in 264 fellowships. The College wished to evaluate the impact of the Scheme on the careers of research fellows, surgical research, and patient care. As the 10th anniversary of the Scheme approached. STUDY DESIGN: Two-hundred and sixty research fellows whose current addresses were available were sent a questionnaire. Two-hundred and thirty-eight (91.5%) responded. RESULTS: Three-quarters of the research fellows conducted laboratory-based research, with most of the remainder conducting patient-based clinical research. One-third of the fellows who have reached consultant status have an academic component to their post. The total number of publications based on fellowship projects was 531, with a median impact factor of 3.5. Almost all fellows had been awarded a higher degree or were working toward this. Half of the fellows received subsequent funding for research, mostly awarded by national or international funding bodies. CONCLUSIONS: The Research Fellowship Scheme of the Royal College of Surgeons of England has successfully supported many trainee surgeons in the initial phase of their research career. It has helped surgical research by increasing the pool of surgeons willing to embark on an academic career. Indirectly, patient care has benefited by promoting an evidence-based culture among young surgeons. Such schemes are relevant to surgical training programs elsewhere if more young surgeons are to be attracted into academic surgery

Toward the production of spatiotemporally consistent annual land cover maps using Sentinel-2 time series

Land cover (LC) maps generated by the classification of remote-sensing (RS) data allow for monitoring Earth processes and the dynamics of objects and phenomena. For accurate LC variability quantification in environmental monitoring, maps need to be spatiotemporally consistent, continually updated, and indicate permanent changes. However, producing frequent and spatiotemporally consistent LC maps is challenging because it involves balancing the need for temporal consistency with the risk of missing real changes. In this work, we propose a scalable and semiautomatic method for generating annual LC maps with labels that are consistently applied from one year to the next. It uses a Transformer deep-learning (DL) model as a classifier, which is trained on satellite time series (TS) of images using high performance computing (HPC). The trained model can generate stable maps by shifting the prediction window along the temporal direction. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is tested qualitatively and quantitatively on a multiannual Sentinel-2 dataset acquired over a three-year period in a study area located in the southern Italian Alps.</p

Coupling online control and inhibitory systems in children with Developmental Coordination Disorder: Goal-directed reaching

For children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD), the real-time coupling between frontal executive function and online motor control has not been explored despite reported deficits in each domain. The aim of the present study was to investigate how children with DCD enlist online control under task constraints that compel the need for inhibitory control. A total of 129 school children were sampled from mainstream primary schools. Forty-two children who metre search criteria for DCD were compared with 87 typically developing controls on a modified double-jump reaching task. Children within each skill group were divided into three age bands: younger (6–7years), mid-aged (8–9), and older (10–12). Online control was compared between groups as a function of trial type (non-jump, jump, anti-jump). Overall, results showed that while movement times were similar between skill groups under simple task constraints (non-jump), on perturbation (or jump) trials the DCD group were significantly slower than controls and corrected trajectories later. Critically, the DCD group was further disadvantaged by anti-jump trials where inhibitory control was required; however, this effect reduced with age. While coupling online control and executive systems is not well developed in younger and mid-aged children, there is evidence of age-appropriate coupling in older children. Longitudinal data are needed to clarify this intriguing finding. The theoretical and applied implications of these results are discussed

Non-perturbative thermal flows and resummations

We construct a functional renormalisation group for thermal fluctuations. Thermal resummations are naturally built in, and the infrared problem of thermal fluctuations is well under control. The viability of the approach is exemplified for thermal scalar field theories. In gauge theories the present setting allows for the construction of a gauge-invariant thermal renormalisation group.Comment: 16 pages, eq (38) added to match published versio

Electrostatic potential in a superconductor

The electrostatic potential in a superconductor is studied. To this end Bardeen's extension of the Ginzburg-Landau theory to low temperatures is used to derive three Ginzburg-Landau equations - the Maxwell equation for the vector potential, the Schroedinger equation for the wave function and the Poisson equation for the electrostatic potential. The electrostatic and the thermodynamic potential compensate each other to a great extent resulting into an effective potential acting on the superconducting condensate. For the Abrikosov vortex lattice in Niobium, numerical solutions are presented and the different contributions to the electrostatic potential and the related charge distribution are discussed.Comment: 19 pages, 11 figure

Augmented reality-enhanced navigation in endoscopic sinus surgery: A prospective, randomized, controlled clinical trial

Objective: Endoscopic sinus surgery represents the gold standard for surgical treatment of chronic sinus diseases. Thereby, navigation systems can be of distinct use. In our study, we tested the recently developed KARL STORZ NAV1 SinusTracker navigation software that incorporates elements of augmented reality (AR) to provide a better preoperative planning and guidance during the surgical procedure. Methods: One hundred patients with chronic sinus disease were operated on using either a conventional navigation software (n = 52, non‐AR, control group) or a navigation software incorporating AR elements (n = 48, AR, intervention group). Incidence of postoperative complications, duration of surgery, surgeon‐reported benefit from the navigation system and patient‐reported postoperative rehabilitation were assessed. Results: The surgeons reported a higher benefit during surgery, used the navigation system for more surgical steps and spent longer time with preoperative image analysis when using the AR system as compared with the non‐AR system. No significant differences were seen in terms of postoperative complications, target registration error, operation time and postoperative rehabilitation. Conclusion: The AR enhanced navigation software shows a high acceptance by sinus surgeons in different stages of surgical training and offers potential benefits during surgery without affecting the duration of the operation or the incidence of postoperative complications

Completeness and consistency of renormalisation group flows

We study different renormalisation group flows for scale dependent effective actions, including exact and proper-time renormalisation group flows. These flows have a simple one loop structure. They differ in their dependence on the full field-dependent propagator, which is linear for exact flows. We investigate the inherent approximations of flows with a non-linear dependence on the propagator. We check explicitly that standard perturbation theory is not reproduced. We explain the origin of the discrepancy by providing links to exact flows both in closed expressions and in given approximations. We show that proper-time flows are approximations to Callan-Symanzik flows. Within a background field formalism, we provide a generalised proper-time flow, which is exact. Implications of these findings are discussed.Comment: 33 pages, 15 figures, revtex, typos corrected, to be published in Phys.Rev.

Метафорична картина світу та її місце у системі світів

Статья посвящается исследованию понятия метафорической картины мира, целесообразность выделения которой автор объясняет тем, что по аналогии с языковой и концептуальной картинами мира, термин "метафорическая картина мира" содержит информацию о сложной структуре многосмысловых значений, которые в силу своей метафорической природе гармонически объединяются.У статті йдеться про поняття метафоричної картини світу, доцільність виділення якої авторка пояснює тим, що за аналогією до мовної й концептуальної картин світу, термін "метафорична картина світу" вміщує інформацію про складну структуру багатосмислових значень, що завдяки своїй метафоричній природі гармонійно поєднуються.The article deals with the notion of metaphorical world picture connected with the general principle of conceptualization. The term "metaphorical world picture" consists of a complex structure of various meanings harmonically combined due to their metaphorical nature