Long-distance remote comparison of ultrastable optical frequencies with 1e-15 instability in fractions of a second

We demonstrate a fully optical, long-distance remote comparison of independent ultrastable optical frequencies reaching a short term stability that is superior to any reported remote comparison of optical frequencies. We use two ultrastable lasers, which are separated by a geographical distance of more than 50 km, and compare them via a 73 km long phase-stabilized fiber in a commercial telecommunication network. The remote characterization spans more than one optical octave and reaches a fractional frequency instability between the independent ultrastable laser systems of 3e-15 in 0.1 s. The achieved performance at 100 ms represents an improvement by one order of magnitude to any previously reported remote comparison of optical frequencies and enables future remote dissemination of the stability of 100 mHz linewidth lasers within seconds.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Working time flexibility components and working time regimes in Europe: using company-level data across 21 countries

Working time ?exibility comprises a wide variety of arrangements, from part-time, overtime, to long-term leaves. Theoretical approaches to grouping these arrangements have been developed, but empirical underpinnings are rare. This article investigates the bundles that can be found for various ?exible working time arrangements, using the Establishment Survey on Working Time and Work–Life Balance, 2004/2005, covering 21 EU member states and 13 industries. The results from the factor analyses con?rmed that working time arrangements can be grouped into two bundles, one for the employee-centred arrangements and second for the employer-centred arrangements, and that these two bundles are separate dimensions.Wealso tested the stability of the factor analysisoutcome, showing that although we ?nd some deviations from the pan-Europe and pan-industry outcome, the naming of the components as ?exibility for employees and ?exibility for employers can be considered rather stable. Lastly, we ?nd three country clusters for the 21 European countries using the bundle approach. The ?rst group includes the Northern European countries along side Poland and Czech Republic, the second group the continental European countries with UK and Ireland, and lastly, the southern European countries with Hungary and Slovenia

Work-time underemployment and financial hardship: class inequalities and recession in the UK

The economic crisis that led to recession in the UK in 2008–9 impacted in multiple ways on work and economic life. This article examines changes to the work-time of employees. The UK stood out for its recessionary expansion of work-time underemployment. Working in a job that provides ‘too few’ hours can have serious ramifications for the economic livelihood of workers. Working-class workers are central here. Drawing on analysis of large-scale survey data, the article identifies that workers in lower level occupations experienced the most substantial post-recessionary growth in the proportions working ‘too few’ hours. Did these work-time changes narrow or widen class inequalities in feelings of financial hardship? The article concludes that although middle-class workers also saw their financial positions damaged, this so-called ‘first middle-class recession’ did not erode class inequalities in financial hardship among UK workers

Investigating the factorial structure and availability of work time control in a representative sample of the Swedish working population

Contains fulltext : 161946.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)AIMS: Past research has often neglected the sub-dimensions of work time control (WTC). Moreover, differences in levels of WTC with respect to work and demographic characteristics have not yet been examined in a representative sample. We investigated these matters in a recent sample of the Swedish working population. METHODS: The study was based on the 2014 data collection of the Swedish Longitudinal Occupational Survey of Health. We assessed the structure of the WTC measure using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Differences in WTC by work and demographic characteristics were examined with independent samplet-tests, one-way ANOVAs and gender-stratified logistic regressions. RESULTS: Best model fit was found for a two-factor structure that distinguished between control over daily hours and control over time off (root mean square error of approximation = 0.06; 95% CI 0.04 to 0.09; Comparative Fit Index (CFI) = 0.99). Women, shift and public-sector workers reported lower control in relation to both factors. Age showed small associations with WTC, while a stronger link was suggested for civil status and family situation. Night, roster and rotating shift work seemed to be the most influential factors on reporting low control over daily hours and time off. CONCLUSIONS: Our data confirm the two-dimensional structure underlying WTC, namely the components 'control over daily hours' and 'control over time off'. Women, public-sector and shift workers reported lower levels of control. Future research should examine the public health implications of WTC, in particular whether increased control over daily hours and time off can reduce health problems associated with difficult working-time arrangements.9 p

Remote frequency measurement of the 1S0-3P1 transition in laser cooled Mg-24

We perform Ramsey-Bord\'e spectroscopy on laser-cooled magnesium atoms in free fall to measure the 1S0 \rightarrow 3P1 intercombination transition frequency. The measured value of 655 659 923 839 730 (48) Hz is consistent with our former atomic beam measurement (Friebe et al 2008 Phys. Rev. A 78 033830). We improve upon the fractional accuracy of the previous measurement by more than an order of magnitude to 7e-14. The magnesium frequency standard was referenced to a fountain clock of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) via a phase-stabilized telecom fiber link and its stability was characterized for interrogation times up to 8000 s. The high temperature of the atomic ensemble leads to a systematic shift due to the motion of atoms across the spectroscopy beams. In our regime, this leads to a counterintuitive reduction of residual Doppler shift with increasing resolution. Our theoretical model of the atom-light interaction is in agreement with the observed effect and allows us to quantify its contribution in the uncertainty budget.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figures. Accepted in New Journal of Physic

Development of a context model to prioritize drug safety alerts in CPOE systems

Background: Computerized physician order entry systems (CPOE) can reduce the number of medication errors and adverse drug events (ADEs) in healthcare institutions. Unfortunately, they tend to produce a large number of partly irrelevant alerts, in turn leading to alert overload and causing alert fatigue. The objective of this work is to identify factors that can be used to prioritize and present alerts depending on the 'context' of a clinical situation. Methods: We used a combination of literature searches and expert interviews to identify and validate the possible context factors. The internal validation of the context factors was performed by calculating the inter-rater agreement of two researcher's classification of 33 relevant articles. Results: We developed a context model containing 20 factors. We grouped these context factors into three categories: characteristics of the patient or case (e. g. clinical status of the patient); characteristics of the organizational unit or user (e. g. professional experience of the user); and alert characteristics (e. g. severity of the effect). The internal validation resulted in nearly perfect agreement (Cohen's Kappa value of 0.97). Conclusion: To our knowledge, this is the first structured attempt to develop a comprehensive context model for prioritizing drug safety alerts in CPOE systems. The outcome of this work can be used to develop future tailored drug safety alerting in CPOE systems

The First European Interdisciplinary Ewing Sarcoma Research Summit

The European Network for Cancer Research in Children and Adolescents (ENCCA) provides an interaction platform for stakeholders in research and care of children with cancer. Among ENCCA objectives is the establishment of biology-based prioritization mechanisms for the selection of innovative targets, drugs, and prognostic markers for validation in clinical trials. Specifically for sarcomas, there is a burning need for novel treatment options, since current chemotherapeutic treatment protocols have met their limits. This is most obvious for metastatic Ewing sarcoma (ES), where long term survival rates are still below 20%. Despite significant progress in our understanding of ES biology, clinical translation of promising laboratory results has not yet taken place due to fragmentation of research and lack of an institutionalized discussion forum. To fill this gap, ENCCA assembled 30 European expert scientists and five North American opinion leaders in December 2011 to exchange thoughts and discuss the state of the art in ES research and latest results from the bench, and to propose biological studies and novel promising therapeutics for the upcoming European EWING2008 and EWING2012 clinical trials

Positively Selected Codons in Immune-Exposed Loops of the Vaccine Candidate OMP-P1 of Haemophilus influenzae

The high levels of variation in surface epitopes can be considered as an evolutionary hallmark of immune selection. New computational tools enable analysis of this variation by identifying codons that exhibit high rates of amino acid changes relative to the synonymous substitution rate. In the outer membrane protein P1 of Haemophilus influenzae, a vaccine candidate for nontypeable strains, we identified four codons with this attribute in domains that did not correspond to known or assumed B- and T-cell epitopes of OMP-P1. These codons flank hypervariable domains and do not appear to be false positives as judged from parsimony and maximum likelihood analyses. Some closely spaced positively selected codons have been previously considered part of a transmembrane domain, which would render this region unsuited for inclusion in a vaccine. Secondary structure analysis, three-dimensional structural database searches, and homology modeling using FadL of E. coli as a structural homologue, however, revealed that all positively selected codons are located in or near extracellular looping domains. The spacing and level of diversity of these positively selected and exposed codons in OMP-P1 suggest that vaccine targets based on these and conserved flanking residues may provide broad coverage in H. influenzae