A stroboscopic technique for using CCD cameras in flow visualization systems for continuous viewing and stop action photography

A technique for synchronizing a pulse light source to charge coupled device cameras is presented. The technique permits the use of pulse light sources for continuous as well as stop action flow visualization. The technique has eliminated the need to provide separate lighting systems at facilities requiring continuous and stop action viewing or photography

Information scraps: how and why information eludes our personal information management tools

In this paper we describe information scraps -- a class of personal information whose content is scribbled on Post-it notes, scrawled on corners of random sheets of paper, buried inside the bodies of e-mail messages sent to ourselves, or typed haphazardly into text files. Information scraps hold our great ideas, sketches, notes, reminders, driving directions, and even our poetry. We define information scraps to be the body of personal information that is held outside of its natural or We have much still to learn about these loose forms of information capture. Why are they so often held outside of our traditional PIM locations and instead on Post-its or in text files? Why must we sometimes go around our traditional PIM applications to hold on to our scraps, such as by e-mailing ourselves? What are information scraps' role in the larger space of personal information management, and what do they uniquely offer that we find so appealing? If these unorganized bits truly indicate the failure of our PIM tools, how might we begin to build better tools? We have pursued these questions by undertaking a study of 27 knowledge workers. In our findings we describe information scraps from several angles: their content, their location, and the factors that lead to their use, which we identify as ease of capture, flexibility of content and organization, and avilability at the time of need. We also consider the personal emotive responses around scrap management. We present a set of design considerations that we have derived from the analysis of our study results. We present our work on an application platform, jourknow, to test some of these design and usability findings

Adjusting trial results for biases in meta-analysis: combining data-based evidence on bias with detailed trial assessment.

Flaws in the conduct of randomized trials can lead to biased estimation of the intervention effect. Methods for adjustment of within-trial biases in meta-analysis include the use of empirical evidence from an external collection of meta-analyses, and the use of expert opinion informed by the assessment of detailed trial information. Our aim is to present methods to combine these two approaches to gain the advantages of both. We make use of the risk of bias information that is routinely available in Cochrane reviews, by obtaining empirical distributions for the bias associated with particular bias profiles (combinations of risk of bias judgements). We propose three methods: a formal combination of empirical evidence and opinion in a Bayesian analysis; asking experts to give an opinion on bias informed by both summary trial information and a bias distribution from the empirical evidence, either numerically or by selecting areas of the empirical distribution. The methods are demonstrated through application to two example binary outcome meta-analyses. Bias distributions based on opinion informed by trial information alone were most dispersed on average, and those based on opinions obtained by selecting areas of the empirical distribution were narrowest. Although the three methods for combining empirical evidence with opinion vary in ease and speed of implementation, they yielded similar results in the two examples

Medical Emergency Team: How do we play when we stay? Characterization of MET actions at the scene

BACKGROUND: The creation, implementation and effectiveness of a medical emergency team (MET) in every hospital is encourage and supported by international bodies of quality certification. Issues such as what is the best composition of the team or the interventions performed by the MET at the scene and the immediate outcomes of the patients after MET intervention have not yet been sufficiently explored. The purpose of the study is to characterize MET actions at the scene and the immediate patient outcome. METHODS: Retrospective cohort study, at a tertiary care, university-affiliated, 600-bed hospital, in the north of Portugal, over two years. RESULTS: There were 511 MET activations: 389 (76%) were for inpatients. MET activation rate was 8.6/1,000 inpatients. The main criteria for activation were airway threatening in 143 (36.8%), concern of medical staff in 121 (31.1%) and decrease in GCS > 2 in 98 (25.2%) patients; MET calls for cardiac arrest occurred in 68 patients (17.5%). The median (IQR) time the team stayed at the scene was 35 (20-50) minutes. At the scene, the most frequent actions were related to airway and ventilation, namely oxygen administration in 145 (37.3%); in circulation, fluid were administered in 158 (40.6%); overall medication was administered in 185 (47.5%) patients. End-of-life decisions were part of the MET actions in 94 (24.1%) patients. At the end of MET intervention, 73 (18.7%) patients died at the scene, 190 (60.7%) stayed on the ward and the remaining 123 patients were transferred to an increased level of care. Crude hospital mortality rate was 4.1% in the 3 years previously to MET implementation and 3.6% in the following 3 years (p < 0.001). DISCUSSION: During the study period, the rate of activation for medical inpatients was significantly higher than that for surgical inpatients. In our hospital, there is no 24/7 medical cover on the wards, with the exception of high-dependency and intensive care units; assuming that the number of unplanned admissions and chronic ill patients is greater in medical wards that could explain the difference found, which prompts the implementation of a 24/7 ward residence. The team stayed on site for half an hour and during that time most of the actions were simple and nurse-driven, but in one third of all activations medical actions were taken, and in a forth (24%) end-of-life decisions made, reinforcing the inclusion of a doctor in the MET. A significant decrease in overall hospital mortality rate was observed after the implementation of the MET. CONCLUSIONS: The composition of our MET with an ICU doctor and nurse was reinforced by the need of medical actions in more than half of the situations (either clinical actions or end-of-life decisions). After MET implementation there was a significant decrease in hospital mortality. This study reinforces the benefit of implementing an ICU-MET team.This work was supported by Centro Hospitalar do Porto (Research Grant CHP 2011)info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A longitudinal study of adolescents’ judgments of the attractiveness of facial symmetry, averageness and sexual dimorphism

Adolescents have been found to differ by age in their attraction to facial symmetry, averageness, and sexual dimorphism. However, it has not been demonstrated that attraction to these facial characters changes over time as a consequence of age-linked development. We aimed to extend previous cross-sectional findings by examining whether facial attractiveness judgments change over time during adolescence as a consequence of increasing age, in a within-subjects study of two cohorts of adolescents aged 11–16. Consistent with previous findings, we find that adolescents (often particularly females) judged faces with increased averageness, symmetry and femininity to be more attractive than original, asymmetric and masculine faces, respectively. However, we do not find longitudinal changes in face preference judgments across the course of a year, leading us to question the extent to which some of the previously reported differences in facial attractiveness judgments between younger and older adolescents were due to age-linked changes

Symmetry and sexual dimorphism in human faces: interrelated preferences suggest both signal quality

Symmetry and masculinity in human faces have been proposed to be cues to the quality of the owner. Accordingly, symmetry is generally found attractive in male and female faces and femininity is attractive in female faces. Women’s preferences for male facial masculinity vary in ways that may maximise genetic benefits to women’s offspring. Here we examine same- and opposite-sex preferences for both traits (Study 1) and intercorrelations between preferences for symmetry and sexual dimorphism in faces (Study 1, Study 2) using computer manipulated faces. For symmetry, we found that male and female judges preferred symmetric faces more when judging faces of the opposite-sex than when judging same-sex faces. A similar pattern was seen for sexual dimorphism (i.e. women preferred more masculine male faces than men did), but women also showed stronger preferences for femininity in female faces than men reported. This suggests that women are more concerned with female femininity than are men. We also found that in women preferences for symmetry were positively correlated with preferences for masculinity in male faces and that in men preferences for symmetry were positively correlated with preferences for femininity in female faces. These latter findings suggest that symmetry and sexual dimorphism advertise a common quality in faces or that preferences for these facial cues are dependent on a common quality in the judges. Collectively, our findings support the view that preferences for symmetry and sexual dimorphism are related to mechanisms involved in sexual selection and mate choice rather than functionless by-products of other perceptual mechanisms

Statistical Mechanics of Logarithmic REM: Duality, Freezing and Extreme Value Statistics of 1/f1/f Noises generated by Gaussian Free Fields

We compute the distribution of the partition functions for a class of one-dimensional Random Energy Models (REM) with logarithmically correlated random potential, above and at the glass transition temperature. The random potential sequences represent various versions of the 1/f noise generated by sampling the two-dimensional Gaussian Free Field (2dGFF) along various planar curves. Our method extends the recent analysis of Fyodorov Bouchaud from the circular case to an interval and is based on an analytical continuation of the Selberg integral. In particular, we unveil a {\it duality relation} satisfied by the suitable generating function of free energy cumulants in the high-temperature phase. It reinforces the freezing scenario hypothesis for that generating function, from which we derive the distribution of extrema for the 2dGFF on the $[0,1]$ interval. We provide numerical checks of the circular and the interval case and discuss universality and various extensions. Relevance to the distribution of length of a segment in Liouville quantum gravity is noted.Comment: 25 pages, 12 figures Published version. Misprint corrected, references and note adde

Survival through networks: the 'grip' of the administrative links in the Russian post-Soviet context

© 2014 Taylor & Francis. Based on an analysis of the post-Soviet transformation experience of four defence sector organizations in a Russian region where the defence sector occupies a substantial part of the local economy, this article develops a typology of network relationships: Grooved Inter-relationship Patterns (Gr’ip) networks and Fluid Inter-relationship Patterns (Fl’ip) networks. This typology can be applied to a range of transition/emerging market and low system trust contexts. Gr’ip networks, in this case, represent the persisting legacy of the Soviet command-administrative system. Fl’ip networks are here an attempt by the defence companies to link into the civilian supply chains of a developing market economy. This article argues that Gr’ip networks had and still have a crucial role to play in Russian enterprises’ survival and development

Genetic Diversity of PCR-Positive, Culture-Negative and Culture-Positive Mycobacterium ulcerans Isolated from Buruli Ulcer Patients in Ghana.

Culture of Mycobacterium ulcerans from Buruli ulcer patients has very low sensitivity. Thus confirmation of M. ulcerans infection is primarily based on PCR directed against IS2404. In this study we compare the genotypes obtained by variable number of tandem repeat analysis of DNA from IS2404-PCR positive cultures with that obtained from IS2404 positive, culture-negative tissue. A significantly greater genetic heterogeneity was found among culture-negative samples compared with that found in cultured strains but a single genotype is over-represented in both sample sets. This study provides evidence that both the focal location of bacteria in a lesion as well as differences in the ability to culture a particular genotype may underlie the low sensitivity of culture. Though preliminary, data from this work also suggests that mycobacteria previously associated with fish disease (M. pseudoshottsii) may be pathogenic for humans