672 research outputs found
Improving pathology reports using business intelligence techniques: An experimental study
Health professionals use pathology reports to monitor and manage a patientâs health. Typically, pathologists diagnose patientsâ conditions and produce these reports which are then used as reference by clinicians and eventually shared with the patient. Pathology reports are difficult to interpret as the reports are written using complex medical terminology. As patients only see their doctors for a limited time, the complexity of report content and the manner in which the information is presented in the reports may hinder patientsâ understanding of their medical condition and prognosis. The objective of this study was to compare patient comprehension of results from two pathology-reporting styles: the traditional format in current widespread use and new style developed using techniques common in business intelligence system (BI) development. The study found that the reports prepared using a âBI styleâ improve experimental subjectâs understanding and satisfaction with the reports
Public Service Decentralisation : Governance Opportunities and Challenges
Background
This discussion paper identifies and analyses a number of
key governance issues that are relevant to âdecentralisationâ
as a concept in public sector reform. It explores,
particularly within the context of contemporary Irish
experience, some of the key opportunities and challenges
for effective leadership and collegiality in a geographically
decentralised Irish civil and public service: areas which may
have been comparatively neglected, in both research and
policy terms, in the past but which demand further
attention for effective implementation of current initiatives.
The research draws upon:
· an extensive review of the national and international
literature on civil/public service decentralisation, as
well as effective leadership and positive collegiality in
the commercial and non-commercial sectors;
· in-depth discussions with those engaged, at a senior
level, both in Ireland and elsewhere with developing and
implementing decentralisation programmes;
· in-depth discussions with the chief officers in a crosssection
of Irish public bodies directly affected by the
current programme, as well as senior trade union representatives
and senior private sector managers;
In this regard, it must be stressed that the geographical
decentralisation programme currently in hand for the Irish
public service will have a direct and/or indirect impact not
just on those specific bodies identified for decentralisation
under the current programme but will have an impact
across the public service as well as in other sectors. Indeed
the changes that are afoot are of a scale and character that
should lead to a fundamental recasting of the Irish system
of public administration.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Policy context
Since 1994, the Irish public service has been engaged upon
a long-term programme of public service modernisation,
also known as the Strategic Management Initiative (SMI),
broadly along New Public Management (NPM) lines. While
Irelandâs efforts at geographical decentralisation long predate
the SMI and have not, until now, had significant,
explicit implications for the modernisation agenda, a
considerable sense of urgency has now been injected into
this gradually, self-modernising administrative system. For,
into a previously consensual and gradualist policy
environment, the Minister for Finance in December 2003
announced the Irish government\u27s commitment to the
voluntary decentralisation of over 10,300 posts in civil
service departments/offices and agencies to over fifty
locations across twenty-five counties throughout the
country. Of this total, over 3,000 of the posts earmarked for
relocation are in state agencies. Additionally, the
government decided that, save in exceptional
circumstances, any new agencies/bodies being established
in the future should be located in areas compatible with
this new programme. While decentralisation has not formed
an explicit plank of either current or past Irish public
service reform initiatives and while Ireland\u27s experience to
date has demonstrated little devolution of fiscal and other
high-level decision-making functions from central to local
levels, the spatial decentralisation of Dublin-based public
service employment and functions to non-metropolitan
locations has been a feature of Irish administrative reorganisation
at least since the 1960s.
Broadly speaking, there have been two previous phases
of geographical decentralisation in Ireland: (a) dispersal
during the period 1967 to 1987; followed by (b) a complex
period of dispersal, deconcentration and regionalisation
(1988-2003). Thus, even before the new programme is
implemented, previous national-level initiatives, together
with the adoption of regional strategies by some
departments/offices, have already resulted in a complex
spatial mosaic of public service locations. Together with
dispersed functional units, this complex mosaic includes
regionalised and/or county-based offices supported by
networks of branch, district and local offices. However,
there is little doubt that, although it builds upon these
earlier initiatives, the current decentralisation programme
will present unprecedented management and operational
challenges at the departmental/organisational and publicservice
wide levels. It will also be important to learn from
experiences in the past regarding leadership and collegiality
in a geographically complex civil service in order to help plot
the future.
The current proposals will not only mean that the
majority of civil service, as well as public service, posts will
be based outside Dublin but no fewer than eight
government departmental HQs will be located away from
the capital, while the government itself and many other
departments and stakeholder organisations will continue to
operate from the centre. As a consequence, an entirely new
approach to the governance of the service will be required
and, in particular, new models of leadership and collegiality
developed. This dramatic policy initiative, in the short-term,
has not only reverberated throughout the administrative
system, but, in the longer term, has the potential to present
hitherto un-thought of opportunities for radical reform and
improvements in the way the Irish public service operates.
Learning from others
A number of other countries have implemented decentralisation
initiatives in the past number of decades. For example, in the Netherlands and UK up to the end of the 1980s the decentralisation of public service employment
away from the capital had been used as part of a regional development strategy to relieve long-term unemployment in declining industrial areas. More recently, evidence from secondary sources indicates international experience of
relocation and decentralisation in a wide range of countries
and/or other public administrations; e.g. France, Germany,
Norway, Japan and Canada (British Colombia).
Internationally, the geographical decentralisation of the
civil and public service is seen as an opportunity to secure
improved efficiency on the back of business process reengineering
(BPR), new working practices and modernisation.
However, this research found that, although some
useful inferences can be drawn from a review of available
international evidence, it is difficult to identify in other
public administrations in OECD a direct comparator for the
current programme of Irish decentralisation. This lack of a
comparator relates to the scale of the current programme,
its scope, timing and, above all, its inclusion of proposals to
relocate entire organisations in locations away from the
capital city and centre of political life. For example, the UK
approach specifically excludes the movement of head offices
of government departments away from London.
Leadership and collegiality
Available research evidence suggests that both effective
leadership and positive collegiality are key features of good
governance and the significance of both these qualities is at
a premium within the context of a geographically complex,
decentralised civil and public service. Such qualities of good
governance as leadership, effectiveness, participation,
coherence, programme delivery and effective stakeholder
engagement are particularly relevant in the context of the
decentralisation programme given the continuing location
of the Oireachtas and a number of departments in central
Dublin and the particular challenges posed by the
geographical decentralisation of others. Indeed, it is
important to note that, as early as March 2004, the
Decentralisation Implementation Group was beginning to
acknowledge the importance of these qualities in forming
âa post-decentralised civil serviceâ: âThe geographic
relocation and dispersal of staff may help to reinforce
existing moves towards greater devolution of authority and
responsibility to, and within, organisations. There will be an
onus on management at organisational and suborganisational
level to exercise greater de facto
responsibility for HR, finance and other organisational
matters. A more geographically dispersed civil service needs
to be balanced by sufficiently strong common values and
culture to support effective system-wide co-operation and
decision-making. It will be necessary to reinforce, and
invest more heavily in corporate culture and ethosâ (First
Report of the Decentralisation Implementation Group to
Minister for Finance p.28). These opportunities and
challenges are explored in this research at
corporate/service-wide, interdepartmental and intradepartmental
levels
A review of the latest international literature and best
practice management frameworks clearly highlights that
not only is effective leadership the cornerstone upon which
organisational excellence is built, it also:
· gives strategic direction: it develops and communicates
vision, mission and values;
· achieves change and focuses efforts on customer
service;
· develops and implements a system for organisational
management and performance review;
· motivates and supports people, acting as a role model;
· manages the relationships with politicians and other
stakeholders, acting in a socially responsible manner.
These qualities hold true across the public and private
sectors. Effective and visible leadership is required to
promote an emphasis on co-operation, consensus,
persuasion and the like. A key quality of leadership is also
the capacity to operate in a collegial manner and to support
collegiality between and within organisations. Together with
positive collegiality, these qualities of effective leadership
apply at three levels: the corporate or service-wide; the
inter- and the intra-departmental. The key research
question for this study was to consider the extent to which
these qualities of leadership and collegiality could be
affected by the geographical dispersal of the public service
organisations concerned and, specifically, to identify and
discuss opportunities and challenges thus presented.
Opportunities and challenges
There is little doubt that the current decentralisation
programme will have a profound impact on structures,
communication frameworks, networking fora and the
relationship interface between the civil service, the political
and stakeholder systems. How this is managed is vital in
terms of the effects on customer service and the efficiency
of business processes during the transition phase and
beyond. As such, if effectively managed and implemented, it
could represent a unique opportunity to fundamentally
revisit and restructure the ways in which the civil and wider
public services conduct their business.
There is little doubt that the movement of public service
bodies away from Dublin will provide an unprecedented
xiii
opportunity for a fundamental overhaul of work done and
the way it is done, through the use of business process reengineering
and other techniques. Concerns from the past
regarding blocked career progression for those in dispersed
and regional civil service offices could be ameliorated by
adopting a regional approach to facilitate promotion across
public service bodies. Otherwise, a move away from Dublin
would very definitely become a one-way journey. Because of
the travel imperative for contact with the minister and
meetings with other public servants, while the burden of
travel will be greatly increased, especially when engaged in
EU and other international work, it is very likely that both
the frequency and management of meetings will become
subject to stricter discipline. The use of ICT will help
communication but it is expected to be only a limited
substitute for face-to-face collegiality.
The discussions that took place during this research
also suggest that it could be timely to re-explore the
potential benefits of a Senior Civil Service. Such an
incremental step could support the development of
leadership skills training and help sustain collegiality at the
service-wide level. Respondents frequently expressed
concern that local pressures could lead to a parochial mindset
developing. For instance one respondent said:
âLeadership has not historically been considered as a skill
that can be learned - it has been regarded rather as
Churchill described âgreatnessâ: you can be born with it,
achieve it or have it thrust upon you. Yet recent thinking in
both the private and public sectors sees the development of
the skills of leadership as essential to the effective delivery
of any programme of change - and that all efficient
organisations are in a state of ordered changeâ.
It was outside the scope of this research to suggest or
even less to prescribe firm recommendations for further
action. That needs to be on the national agenda for another
day. However, although no organisation is scheduled to
decentralise before the end of 2006, there is little doubt
that, if the current decentralisation programme is to rise
above the very considerable logistical issues (around
staffing/training and physical infrastructure) that have
understandably pre-occupied the implementation agenda to
date, then serious consideration of the governance
opportunities and challenges arising from this programme
need to rise up that agenda. Only two of these issues have
been initially reviewed and discussed in this paper: namely
effective leadership and positive collegiality. However, it is
clear from this research that, if Ireland is to retain its hard
won and justified reputation for first rate civil and public
services, as well as its international standing, positive
action is required across a wide front to turn leadership and
collegiality challenges into opportunities.
On the basis of this research evidence, such action
should include constructive, informed and positive support
being given to a wide range of issues, including:
· Giving urgent attention to the development of a servicewide
Knowledge Management initiative to minimise loss
and open up new opportunities for knowledge sharing
on a collegial basis, within, between and across those
public service bodies significantly affected by the decentralisation
programme. Allied to this is the need to map
more clearly, and understand better, current formal and
informal networks within the service. These will need to
be significantly recast. Resort to ICT and large amounts
of travel appear to only offer partial solutions.
· Implementing a coherent, service-wide change
management programme, which recognises and
empowers leadership within and across the civil and
wider public services. Again models appear to exist,
based upon international best practice, which could
inform this process, as could the more systematic indepth
analysis of private sector experiences. It would
appear also that the timing could be opportune for a
revisiting and reassertion of core public service values
that could help to maintain consistency in the
considerably more geographically complex and younger
service of the future. Allied and supportive of this
approach could be the further examination of the
implications for Ireland of the explicit development of a
senior civil and public service.
In summary, there is little doubt that the current
leaders of the Irish public service have had decentralisation
thrust upon them, even though it may be up to their
successors to fully operationalise the resultant changes
from new and diverse localities. While issues of staffing and
infrastructure are understandably pre-occupying minds
presently concerned with implementation, action will need
to be commenced soon to rearticulate, and sustain, the
values of the Irish public service and to cultivate the
leadership skills necessary for the next generation of
secretaries general and chief executives so that the
modernisation programme set in motion a decade ago is
sustained and re-invigorated. In a decade from now, a new
generation of leaders should be leading an entirely recast,
modernised civil and public service, in diverse places but
with shared values
Femtosecond deep-infrared optical parametric oscillator pumped directly by a Ti:sapphire laser
We report a high-repetition-rate femtosecond optical parametric oscillator (OPO) for the deep-infrared (deep-IR) based on the nonlinear optical crystal, CdSiP2 (CSP), pumped directly by a Ti:sapphire laser, for the first time. By pumping CSP at <1 ÎŒm, we have achieved practical output powers at the longest wavelengths generated by any Ti:sapphire-pumped OPO. Using a combination of pump wavelength tuning, type-I critical phase-matching, and cavity delay tuning, we have generated continuously tunable radiation across 6654â8373 nm (1194â1503 cm-1) at 80.5 MHz repetition rate, providing up to 20 mW of average power at 7314 nm and <7 mW beyond 8000 nm, with idler spectra exhibiting bandwidths of 140â180 nm across the tuning range. Moreover, the near-IR signal is tunable across 1127â1192 nm, providing up to 37 mW of average power at 1150 nm. Signal pulses, characterised using intensity autocorrelation, have durations of âŒ260â320 fs, with corresponding time-bandwidth product of âÏ
âÏâŒ1. The idler and signal output exhibit a TEM00 spatial profile with single-peak Gaussian distribution. With an equivalent spectral brightness of âŒ6.68Ă1020 photons s-1 mm-2 sr-1 0.1% BW-1, this OPO represents a viable table-top alternative to synchrotron and supercontinuum sources for deep-IR applications in spectroscopy, metrology and medical diagnostics.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft
Emergency endovascular repair of acute descending thoracic aortic dissection
Muhammad Anees Sharif, Mark Edward O’Donnell, Paul Henry Blair, Peter KennedyDepartment of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery, Royal Victoria Hospital, Grosvenor Road, Belfast, BT12 6BA, United KingdomBackground: Acute descending thoracic aortic dissection is a life-threatening emergency. It is not often considered as the initial diagnosis in patients presenting with epigastric pain and could easily be missed in a busy casualty department.Aim: This case report is aimed to highlight the feasibility of the technique and the need for long-term surveillance following endovascular repair of acute thoracic aortic dissection.Results: The patient presented with epigastric pain radiating to the interscapular region with a stable hemodynamic status. A computerized tomography (CT) scan demonstrated type B thoracic aortic dissection of the proximal descending thoracic aorta. A successful endovascular repair was carried out with uneventful recovery and follow-up CT scan six years after stent-grafting shows satisfactory position of the stent-graft, patent false lumen in the abdominal aorta perfusing the right kidney, and progressively enlarging diameter of the abdominal aorta.Conclusion: Thoracic aortic dissection should be considered as a differential diagnosis in patients presenting with epigastric and interscapular chest pain. Emergency endovascular repair of acute thoracic aortic dissection is feasible and relatively safe. Regular follow-up with CT scan is required to evaluate the long-term effi cacy and identify the need for re-intervention.Keywords: aortic, dissection, endovascular, thoraci
A new avenue in the search for <i>CP</i> violation:Mössbauer spectroscopy of <sup>227</sup> Ac
This work proposes a new avenue in the search for CP-violating odd-electric
and even-magnetic nuclear moments. A promising candidate to find such moments
in the ground state is the quadrupole-deformed and octupole-correlated nucleus
227-actinium. In this nucleus, the 27.4-keV ~transition that connects the
parity-doublet partner and the ground state is perfectly suited
to apply the sensitive technique of recoil-free selfabsorption, commonly known
as M\"ossbauer spectroscopy. In this experimental approach, the lifetime of the
upper parity-doublet partner allows an estimate of the lower limit of
= eV for the
achievable energy resolution to be made. This resolution must be exceeded by
the interaction of a CP-violating moment and the corresponding multipole moment
of the field distribution in the lattice. This work presents the first ideas
for patterns caused by CP-violating moments on the expected quadrupole
splitting and nuclear Zeeman effect.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure
Iterative focused screening with biological fingerprints identifies selective Asc-1 inhibitors distinct from traditional high throughput screening
N-methyl-d-aspartate receptors (NMDARs) mediate glutamatergic signaling that is critical to cognitive processes in the central nervous system, and NMDAR hypofunction is thought to contribute to cognitive impairment observed in both schizophrenia and Alzheimerâs disease. One approach to enhance the function of NMDAR is to increase the concentration of an NMDAR coagonist, such as glycine or d-serine, in the synaptic cleft. Inhibition of alanineâserineâcysteine transporter-1 (Asc-1), the primary transporter of d-serine, is attractive because the transporter is localized to neurons in brain regions critical to cognitive function, including the hippocampus and cortical layers III and IV, and is colocalized with d-serine and NMDARs. To identify novel Asc-1 inhibitors, two different screening approaches were performed with whole-cell amino acid uptake in heterologous cells stably expressing human Asc-1: (1) a high-throughput screen (HTS) of 3 M compounds measuring 35S l-cysteine uptake into cells attached to scintillation proximity assay beads in a 1536 well format and (2) an iterative focused screen (IFS) of a 45âŻ000 compound diversity set using a 3H d-serine uptake assay with a liquid scintillation plate reader in a 384 well format. Critically important for both screening approaches was the implementation of counter screens to remove nonspecific inhibitors of radioactive amino acid uptake. Furthermore, a 15âŻ000 compound expansion step incorporating both on- and off-target data into chemical and biological fingerprint-based models for selection of additional hits enabled the identification of novel Asc-1-selective chemical matter from the IFS that was not identified in the full-collection HTS
Double exchange magnets: Spin-dynamics in the paramagnetic phase
The electronic structure of perovskite manganese oxides is investigated in
terms of a Kondo lattice model with ferromagnetic Hund coupling and
antiferromagnetic exchange between -spins using a finite temperature
diagonalization technique. Results for the dynamic structure factor are
consistent with recent neutron scattering experiments for the bilayer manganite
LaSrMnO . The susceptibility shows Curie-Weiss
behaviour and is used to derive a phase diagram. In the paramagnetic phase
carriers are characterized as ferromagnetic polarons in an antiferromagnetic
spin liquid.Comment: Revtex, 4 pages with 5 postscript figures include
Recommended from our members
Trends in the Association of Parental History of Obesity over 60 Years
Objective: The association of familial as compared to genetic factors in the current obesogenic environment, compared to earlier, leaner time periods, is uncertain. Design and Methods Participants from the Framingham Heart Study were classified according to parental obesity status in the Original, Offspring, and Third Generation cohorts; mean BMI levels were estimated and we compared the association of parental history across generations. Finally, a genetic risk score comprised of 32 well-replicated single nucleotide polymorphisms for BMI was examined in association with BMI levels in 1948, 1971, and 2002. Results: BMI was 1.49 kg/m2 higher per each affected parent among the Offspring, and increased to 2.09 kg/m2 higher among the Third Generation participants (p-value for the cohort comparison=0.007). Parental history of obesity was associated with increased weight gain (p<0.0001) and incident obesity (p=0.009). Despite a stronger association of parental obesity with offspring BMI in more contemporary time periods, we observed no change in the effect size of a BMI genetic risk score from 1948 to 2002 (p=0.11 for test of trend across the time periods). Conclusions: The association of parental obesity has become stronger in more contemporary time period, whereas the association of a BMI genetic risk score has not changed
Low T-cell Receptor Diversity, High Somatic Mutation Burden, and High Neoantigen Load as Predictors of Clinical Outcome in Muscle-invasive Bladder Cancer
AbstractBackgroundThe success of cancer immunotherapies has highlighted the potent ability of local adaptive immune responses to eradicate cancer cells by targeting neoantigens generated by somatic alterations. However, how these factors interact to drive the natural history of muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) is not well understood.ObjectiveTo investigate the role of immune regulation in MIBC disease progression, we performed massively parallel T-cell receptor (TCR) sequencing of tumor-infiltrating T cells (TILs), in silico neoantigen prediction from exome sequences, and expression analysis of immune-related genes.Design, setting, and participantsWe analyzed 38 MIBC tissues from patients who underwent definitive surgery with a minimum clinical follow-up of 2 yr.Outcome measurements and statistical analysisRecurrence-free survival (RFS) was determined. TCR diversity was quantified using Simpson's diversity index. The main analyses involved the Mann-Whitney U test, Kaplan-Meier survival analysis, and Cox proportional hazards models.Results and limitationsLow TCRÎČ chain diversity, correlating with oligoclonal TIL expansion, was significantly correlated with longer RFS, even after adjustment for pathologic tumor stage, node status, and receipt of adjuvant chemotherapy (hazard ratio 2.67, 95% confidence interval 1.08â6.60; p=0.03). Patients with both a high number of neoantigens and low TCRÎČ diversity had longer RFS compared to those with fewer neoantigens and high TCR diversity (median RFS 275 vs 30 wk; p=0.03). Higher expression of immune cytolytic genes was associated with nonrecurrence among patients with low TCR diversity or fewer neoantigens. Limitations include the sample size and the inability to distinguish CD8+ and CD4+ T cells using TCR sequencing.ConclusionsThese findings are the first to show that detailed tumor immune-genome analysis at definitive surgery can identify molecular patterns of antitumor immune response contributing to better clinical outcomes in MIBC.Patient summaryWe discovered that clonal expansion of certain T cells in tumor tissue, possibly targeting cancer-specific antigens, contributes to prevention of bladder cancer recurrence
Semantic Search in Psychosis: Modeling Local Exploitation and Global Exploration
Impairments in category verbal fluency task (VFT) performance have been widely documented in psychosis. These deficits may be due to disturbed âcognitive foragingâ in semantic space, in terms of altered salience of cues that influence individuals to search locally within a subcategory of semantically related responses (âclusteringâ) or globally between subcategories (âswitchingâ). To test this, we conducted a study in which individuals with schizophrenia (n = 21), schizotypal personality traits (n = 25), and healthy controls (n = 40) performed VFT with âanimalsâ as the category. Distributional semantic model Word2Vec computed cosine-based similarities between words according to their statistical usage in a large text corpus. We then applied a validated foraging-based search model to these similarity values to obtain salience indices of frequency-based global search cues and similarity-based local cues. Analyses examined whether diagnosis predicted VFT performance, search strategies, cue salience, and the time taken to switch between vs search within clusters. Compared to control and schizotypal groups, individuals with schizophrenia produced fewer words, switched less, and exhibited higher global cue salience, indicating a selection of more common words when switching to new clusters. Global cue salience negatively associated with vocabulary ability in controls and processing speed in schizophrenia. Lastly, individuals with schizophrenia took a similar amount of time to switch to new clusters compared to control and schizotypal groups but took longer to transition between words within clusters. Findings of altered local exploitation and global exploration through semantic memory provide preliminary evidence of aberrant cognitive foraging in schizophrenia
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