1,173 research outputs found
How much of Australia's health expenditure is allocated to general practice and primary healthcare?
ackground and objectives
Understanding resource allocation is important to ensure that limited health resources are spent where they bring the greatest benefit. The aim of this study was to explore how much of Australia’s national health expenditure is allocated specifically to general practice services, and more broadly to primary healthcare (PHC) services.
Methods
This study used multiple Australian institutional reports – produced by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Productivity Commission and Services Australia – to classify, compare and quantify general practice and PHC expenditure.
Results
National statistics report that approximately 34% of Australian health expenditure is spent on PHC. However, less than 20% of PHC expenditure (approximately 6.5% of total health expenditure) is allocated to delivering general practice services. Spending on general practitioners and general practice services varies between 4.2% and 6.8% of total health expenditure (between 12.4 billion) depending on the classification used.
Discussion
Significant differences exist in how different institutions classify general practice and PHC spending. Clearer, agreed and more precise methods of classification and reporting of health expenditure are needed
Point-SLAM: Dense Neural Point Cloud-based SLAM
We propose a dense neural simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM)
approach for monocular RGBD input which anchors the features of a neural scene
representation in a point cloud that is iteratively generated in an
input-dependent data-driven manner. We demonstrate that both tracking and
mapping can be performed with the same point-based neural scene representation
by minimizing an RGBD-based re-rendering loss. In contrast to recent dense
neural SLAM methods which anchor the scene features in a sparse grid, our
point-based approach allows dynamically adapting the anchor point density to
the information density of the input. This strategy reduces runtime and memory
usage in regions with fewer details and dedicates higher point density to
resolve fine details. Our approach performs either better or competitive to
existing dense neural RGBD SLAM methods in tracking, mapping and rendering
accuracy on the Replica, TUM-RGBD and ScanNet datasets. The source code is
available at https://github.com/tfy14esa/Point-SLAM.Comment: 17 Pages, 10 Figure
UncLe-SLAM: Uncertainty Learning for Dense Neural SLAM
We present an uncertainty learning framework for dense neural simultaneous
localization and mapping (SLAM). Estimating pixel-wise uncertainties for the
depth input of dense SLAM methods allows re-weighing the tracking and mapping
losses towards image regions that contain more suitable information that is
more reliable for SLAM. To this end, we propose an online framework for sensor
uncertainty estimation that can be trained in a self-supervised manner from
only 2D input data. We further discuss the advantages of the uncertainty
learning for the case of multi-sensor input. Extensive analysis,
experimentation, and ablations show that our proposed modeling paradigm
improves both mapping and tracking accuracy and often performs better than
alternatives that require ground truth depth or 3D. Our experiments show that
we achieve a 38\% and 27\% lower absolute trajectory tracking error (ATE) on
the 7-Scenes and TUM-RGBD datasets respectively. On the popular Replica dataset
using two types of depth sensors, we report an 11\% F1-score improvement on
RGBD SLAM compared to the recent state-of-the-art neural implicit approaches.
Source code: https://github.com/kev-in-ta/UncLe-SLAM.Comment: ICCV 2023 Workshop. 20 pages, 9 figure
Plug-ins for ISpec
ISpec is an interface specification approach where templates provide slots to write interface requirements. These requirements can be written in various "plugin" formalisms. The practical question how to implement this in a tool is answered for regular expressions as a plug-in language. The requirements expressed by the regular expressions are used to assess the correctness of requirements expressed in sequence diagrams. In fact, an editor is coupled to the tool in which a plug-in language can be defined and a slot in a template can be linked to a particular language. The theoretical question how to formalise plug-ins in a relation calculus framework is investigated
Whether, when and how chronic inflammation increases the risk of developing late-onset Alzheimer's disease
Neuropathological studies have revealed the presence of a broad variety of inflammation-related proteins (complement factors, acute-phase proteins, pro-inflammatory cytokines) in Alzheimer's disease (AD) brains. These constituents of innate immunity are involved in several crucial pathogenic events of the underlying pathological cascade in AD, and recent studies have shown that innate immunity is involved in the etiology of late-onset AD. Genome-wide association studies have demonstrated gene loci that are linked to the complement system. Neuropathological and experimental studies indicate that fibrillar amyloid-beta (A beta) can activate the innate immunity-related CD14 and Toll-like receptor signaling pathways of glial cells for pro-inflammatory cytokine production. The production capacity of this pathway is under genetic control and off spring with a parental history of late-onset AD have a higher production capacity for pro-inflammatory cytokines. The activation of microglia by fibrillar A beta deposits in the early preclinical stages of AD can make the brain susceptible later on for a second immune challenge leading to enhanced production of pro-inflammatory cytokines. An example of a second immune challenge could be systemic inflammation in patients with preclinical AD. Prospective epidemiological studies show that elevated serum levels of acute phase reactants can be considered as a risk factor for AD. Clinical studies suggest that peripheral inflammation increases the risk of dementia, especially in patients with preexistent cognitive impairment, and accelerates further deterioration in demented patients. The view that peripheral inflammation can increase the risk of dementia in older people provides scope for preventio
Unsupervised Monocular Depth Reconstruction of Non-Rigid Scenes
Monocular depth reconstruction of complex and dynamic scenes is a highly
challenging problem. While for rigid scenes learning-based methods have been
offering promising results even in unsupervised cases, there exists little to
no literature addressing the same for dynamic and deformable scenes. In this
work, we present an unsupervised monocular framework for dense depth estimation
of dynamic scenes, which jointly reconstructs rigid and non-rigid parts without
explicitly modelling the camera motion. Using dense correspondences, we derive
a training objective that aims to opportunistically preserve pairwise distances
between reconstructed 3D points. In this process, the dense depth map is
learned implicitly using the as-rigid-as-possible hypothesis. Our method
provides promising results, demonstrating its capability of reconstructing 3D
from challenging videos of non-rigid scenes. Furthermore, the proposed method
also provides unsupervised motion segmentation results as an auxiliary output
Managing hostile subsoils in the high rainfall zone of south-western Australia
This report is designed to complement existing information on the management of crops in the High Rainfall Zone of south-western Australia and to identify limitations for crop production arising from the soil properties in this area
Thin lenses of asymmetric power
It is generally supposed that thin systems, including refracting surfaces and thin lenses, have powers that are necessarily symmetric. In other words they have powers which can be represented assymmetric dioptric power matrices and in the familar spherocylindrical form used in optometry and ophthalmology. This paper shows that this is not correct and that it is indeed possible for a thin system to have a power that is not symmetric and which cannot be expressed in spherocylindrical form. Thin systems of asymmetric power are illustratedby means of a thin lens that is modelled with small prisms and is chosen to have a dioptric power ma-trix that is antisymmetric. Similar models can be devised for a thin system whose dioptric power matrix is any 2 2 × matrix. Thus any power, symmetric, asymmetric or antisymmetric, is possible for a
thin system. In this sense our understanding of the power of thin systems is now complete
Foci in ray pencils of general divergency
In generalized optical systems, that is, in systems which may contain thin refracting elements of asymmetric dioptric power, pencils of rays may exhibit phenomena that cannot occur in conventional optical systems. In conventional optical systems astigmatic pencils have two principal meridians that are necessarily orthogonal; in generalized systems the principal meridians can be at any angle. In fact in generalized systems a pencil may have only one principal meridian or even none at all. In contrast to the line foci in the conventional interval of Sturm line foci in generalized systems may be at any angle and there may be only one line focus or no line foci. A conventional cylindrical pencil has a single line focus at a finite distance but it can be regarded as having a second line focus at infinity. Only in generalized systems is a single line focus possible without a second at infinity or anywhere else. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the types of pencils possible in generalized systems. Particular attention is paid to the effect of including an antisymmetric component in the divergency of the pencil
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