The Enthalpy of Formation of Dysprosium Trifluoride by Fluorine Bomb Calorimetry

The energy of formation of dysprosium trifluoride has been measured by direct fluorination of dysprosium metal with fluorine gas in a bomb calorimeter, giving a value of - (16748) kJ mol⁻¹. From this value, the standard enthalpy of formation of DyF₃ (c) is deduced as -(16788) kJ mol⁻¹. and the standard Gibbs energy of formation of DyF₅ (c) is calculated to be -(16009) kJ mol⁻¹, using estimates for the entropy

The Enthalpy of Formation of Terbium Trifluoride by Fluorine Bomb Calorimetry

The energy of formation of terbium trifluoride has been measured by a direct fluorination of terbium metal with fluorine gas in a bomb calorimeter, giving a value of -(1698±14) KJ mol⁻¹. From this value, the standard enthalpy of formation of TbF₃ (c) is deduced as -(1701±14) kj mol⁻¹, and the standard Gibbs energy of formation of TbF₃ (c) is calculated to be -(1623±14) kj mol⁻¹, using estimates for the entropy. These values should be considered as being tentative

Translation and Cross-Cultural Adaptation of the Supportive and Palliative Care Indicators Tool into Japanese:A Preliminary Report

BACKGROUND: There is a need for tools in primary care to support clinicians to identify patients with unmet palliative care needs. The Supportive and Palliative Care Indicators Tool (SPICT) is concise and covers most conditions in primary care settings. However, the SPICT was not available in Japanese. METHODS: The translation and cultural adaptation of the SPICT was conducted in four stages: forward translation (Stage I), synthesis (Stage II), back translation (Stage III), and expert committee review (Stage IV). RESULTS: During the translation process, any content challenging to translate was addressed in Stage II and through discussion among the researchers. The expert committee review provided valuable insights on palliative care in Japan in addition to the translation. CONCLUSION: The Japanese version of the SPICT and its user guide are ready to be tested in clinical settings. They have the potential to help Japanese family physicians integrate palliative care in their care of patients with all life-limiting illnesses

Frequency of discussing and documenting advance care planning in primary care: secondary analysis of a multicenter cross-sectional observational study

Background To improve the quality of advance care planning (ACP) in primary care, it is important to understand the frequency of and topics involved in the ACP discussion between patients and their family physicians (FPs). Methods A secondary analysis of a previous multicenter cross-sectional observational study was performed. The primary outcome of this analysis was the frequency of and topics involved in the ACP discussion between outpatients and FPs. In March 2017, 22 family physicians at 17 clinics scheduled a day to assess outpatients and enrolled patients older than 65 years who were recognized by FPs as having regular visits. We defined three ACP discussion topics: 1) future decline in activities of daily living (ADL), 2) future inability to eat, and 3) surrogate decision makers. FPs assessed whether they had ever discussed any ACP topics with each patient and their family members, and if they had documented the results of these discussions in medical records before patients were enrolled in the present study. We defined patients as being at risk of deteriorating and dying if they had at least 2 positive general indicators or at least 1 positive disease-specific indicator in the Japanese version of the Supportive and Palliative Care Indicators Tool. Results In total, 382 patients with a mean age of 77.4 ± 7.9 years were enrolled, and 63.1% were female. Seventy-nine patients (20.7%) had discussed at least one ACP topic with their FPs. However, only 23 patients (6.0%) had discussed an ACP topic with family members and their FPs, with the results being documented in their medical records. The topic of future ADL decline was discussed and documented more often than the other two topics. Patients at risk of deteriorating and dying discussed ACP topics significantly more often than those not at risk of deteriorating and dying (39.4% vs. 16.8%, p < 0.001). Conclusion FPs may discuss ACP with some of their patients, but may not often document the results of this discussion in medical records. FPs need to be encouraged to discuss ACP with patients and family members and describe the decisions reached in medical records

Non-learning Stereo-aided Depth Completion under Mis-projection via Selective Stereo Matching

We propose a non-learning depth completion method for a sparse depth map captured using a light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensor guided by a pair of stereo images. Generally, conventional stereo-aided depth completion methods have two limiations. (i) They assume the given sparse depth map is accurately aligned to the input image, whereas the alignment is difficult to achieve in practice. (ii) They have limited accuracy in the long range because the depth is estimated by pixel disparity. To solve the abovementioned limitations, we propose selective stereo matching (SSM) that searches the most appropriate depth value for each image pixel from its neighborly projected LiDAR points based on an energy minimization framework. This depth selection approach can handle any type of mis-projection. Moreover, SSM has an advantage in terms of long-range depth accuracy because it directly uses the LiDAR measurement rather than the depth acquired from the stereo. SSM is a discrete process; thus, we apply variational smoothing with binary anisotropic diffusion tensor (B-ADT) to generate a continuous depth map while preserving depth discontinuity across object boundaries. Experimentally, compared with the previous state-of-the-art stereo-aided depth completion, the proposed method reduced the mean absolute error (MAE) of the depth estimation to 0.65 times and demonstrated approximately twice more accurate estimation in the long range. Moreover, under various LiDAR-camera calibration errors, the proposed method reduced the depth estimation MAE to 0.34-0.93 times from previous depth completion methods.Comment: 15 pages, 13 figure