2,398 research outputs found

    Community based trial of home blood pressure monitoring with nurse-led telephone support in patients with stroke or transient ischaemic attack recently discharged from hospital.

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    BACKGROUND: High blood pressure in patients with stroke increases the risk of recurrence but management in the community is often inadequate. Home blood pressure monitoring may increase patients' involvement in their care, increase compliance, and reduce the need for patients to attend their General Practitioner if blood pressure is adequately controlled. However the value of home monitoring to improve blood pressure control is unclear. In particular its use has not been evaluated in stroke patients in whom neurological and cognitive ability may present unique challenges. DESIGN: Community based randomised trial with follow up after 12 months. PARTICIPANTS: 360 patients admitted to three South London Stroke units with stroke or transient ischaemic attack within the past 9 months will be recruited from the wards or outpatients and randomly allocated into two groups. All patients will be visited by the specialist nurse at home at baseline when she will measure their blood pressure and administer a questionnaire. These procedures will be repeated at 12 months follow up by another researcher blind as to whether the patient is in intervention or control group. INTERVENTION: INTERVENTION patients will be given a validated home blood pressure monitor and support from the specialist nurse. Control patients will continue with usual care (blood pressure monitoring by their practice). Main outcome measures in both groups after 12 months: 1. Change in systolic blood pressure.2. Cost effectiveness: Incremental cost of the intervention to the National Health Service and incremental cost per quality adjusted life year gained

    Diagnosing faults in autonomous robot plan execution

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    A major requirement for an autonomous robot is the capability to diagnose faults during plan execution in an uncertain environment. Many diagnostic researches concentrate only on hardware failures within an autonomous robot. Taking a different approach, the implementation of a Telerobot Diagnostic System that addresses, in addition to the hardware failures, failures caused by unexpected event changes in the environment or failures due to plan errors, is described. One feature of the system is the utilization of task-plan knowledge and context information to deduce fault symptoms. This forward deduction provides valuable information on past activities and the current expectations of a robotic event, both of which can guide the plan-execution inference process. The inference process adopts a model-based technique to recreate the plan-execution process and to confirm fault-source hypotheses. This technique allows the system to diagnose multiple faults due to either unexpected plan failures or hardware errors. This research initiates a major effort to investigate relationships between hardware faults and plan errors, relationships which were not addressed in the past. The results of this research will provide a clear understanding of how to generate a better task planner for an autonomous robot and how to recover the robot from faults in a critical environment

    How Catastrophic Innovation Failure Affects Organizational and Industry Legitimacy: The 2014 Virgin Galactic Test Flight Crash

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    We examine how catastrophic innovation failure affects organizational and industry legitimacy in nascent sectors by analyzing the interactions between Virgin Galactic and stakeholders in the space community in the aftermath of the firm’s 2014 test flight crash. Following catastrophic innovation failure, we find that industry participants use their interpretations of the failure to either uphold or challenge the legitimacy of the firm while maintaining the legitimacy of the industry. These dynamics yield two interesting effects. First, we show that, in upholding the legitimacy of the industry, different industry participants rhetorically redraw the boundaries of the industry to selectively include players they consider legitimate and exclude those they view as illegitimate: detracting stakeholders constrain the boundaries of the industry by excluding the firm or excluding the firm and its segment, whereas the firm and supporting stakeholders amplify the boundaries of the industry by including firms in adjacent high-legitimacy sectors. Second, we show that, in assessing organizational legitimacy, the firm and its stakeholders differ in the way they approach distinctiveness between the identities of the industry and the firm. Detracting stakeholders differentiate the firm from the rest of the industry and isolate it, whereas the firm and supporting stakeholders reidentify the firm with the industry, embedding the firm within it. Overall, our findings illuminate the effects that catastrophic innovation failure has over high-order dynamics that affect the evolution of nascent industries

    Study of iatrogenic bladder injury in vaginal hysterectomy: our experience

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    Background: This study was carried out to calculate the incidence of bladder injury detected during benign gynecologic vaginal hysterectomy. This investigation examined the clinical features of urologic complications during gynecologic surgery and outcome of their management.Methods: It was a retrospective study done at Department of Gynecology, GCS medical college, Ahmedabad from year 2012-2016. All patients undergoing vaginal hysterectomy for benign diseases were included in the study. This study assessed the causative disease and surgical approach type, and treatment method of the bladder injury.Results: Of these 237 patients who underwent vaginal hysterectomies, 3 (1.26%) had bladder perforation. All the 3 cases of bladder injury underwent primary suturing during surgery without complications.Conclusions: Bladder injury was the most common urological injury during obstetric and gynecologic surgery. Early diagnosis and urologic intervention is important for better outcomes

    How Catastrophic Innovation Failure Affects Organizational and Industry Legitimacy: The 2014 Virgin Galactic Test Flight Crash

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    We examine how catastrophic innovation failure affects organizational and industry legitimacy in nascent sectors by analyzing the interactions between Virgin Galactic and stakeholders in the space community in the aftermath of the firm’s 2014 test flight crash. Following catastrophic innovation failure, we find that industry participants use their interpretations of the failure to either uphold or challenge the legitimacy of the firm while maintaining the legitimacy of the industry. These dynamics yield two interesting effects. First, we show that, in upholding the legitimacy of the industry, different industry participants rhetorically redraw the boundaries of the industry to selectively include players they consider legitimate and exclude those they view as illegitimate: detracting stakeholders constrain the boundaries of the industry by excluding the firm or excluding the firm and its segment, whereas the firm and supporting stakeholders amplify the boundaries of the industry by including firms in adjacent high-legitimacy sectors. Second, we show that, in assessing organizational legitimacy, the firm and its stakeholders differ in the way they approach distinctiveness between the identities of the industry and the firm. Detracting stakeholders differentiate the firm from the rest of the industry and isolate it, whereas the firm and supporting stakeholders reidentify the firm with the industry, embedding the firm within it. Overall, our findings illuminate the effects that catastrophic innovation failure has over high-order dynamics that affect the evolution of nascent industries

    How Firms Frame Catastrophic Innovation Failure

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    We examine how catastrophic innovation failure affects organizational and industry legitimacy in nascent sectors by analyzing the interactions between Virgin Galactic and stakeholders in the space community in the aftermath of the firm’s 2014 test flight crash. Following catastrophic innovation failure, we find that industry participants use their interpretations of the failure to either uphold or challenge the legitimacy of the firm, while maintaining the legitimacy of the industry. These dynamics yield two interesting effects. First, we show that, in upholding the legitimacy of the industry, different industry participants rhetorically re-draw the boundaries of the industry to selectively include players they consider ‘legitimate’ and exclude those they view as ‘illegitimate:’ detracting stakeholders constrain the boundaries of the industry by excluding the firm or excluding the firm and its segment, while the firm and supporting stakeholders amplify the boundaries of the industry by including firms in adjacent high-legitimacy sectors. Second, we show that, in assessing organizational legitimacy, the firm and its stakeholders differ in the way they approach distinctiveness between the identities of the industry and the firm. Detracting stakeholders differentiate the firm from the rest of the industry and isolate it, while the firm and supporting stakeholders re-identify the firm with the industry, embedding the firm within it. Overall, our findings illuminate the effects that catastrophic innovation failure has over high-order dynamics that affect the evolution of nascent industries

    Control of the Spanwise Distribution of Circulation on NACA 0012 and Flat Plate Wings

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    Open-loop active flow control is used to modify the spanwise distribution of circulation around an NACA 0012 and flat plate wing. The leading edge on both airfoils and tip regions of the NACA airfoil contain spatially localized actuators that can be independently controlled in terms of amplitude and frequency, allowing the spanwise distribution of circulation to be modified. Different orientations of the pulsed-blowing actuators were used to provide upstream, downstream, in-line with the flow, and outward span components of actuation. The actuation effectiveness was documented using force balance measurements of the lift and drag, smoke-wire visualization, surface pressure measurements and PIV velocity field measurements. Actuation with an upstream component is shown to be far more effective in reducing the separated region than actuation in the streamwise direction. Initial measurements of the change in circulation on the suction surface of the airfoil indicate that spatially localized forcing produces global changes over the wing, primarily associated with the reduction in size of the separated flow region

    Cost-effectiveness of a physical exercise programme for residents of care homes: a pilot study

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    BACKGROUND: Oomph! Wellness organises interactive exercise and activity classes (Oomph! classes) for older people in care homes. We investigated the cost-effectiveness of Oomph! classes. METHODS: Health-related quality of life was measured using the EQ-5D-5 L questionnaire at three time points; 3 months and 1 week prior to the start of the classes and after 3 months of Oomph! classes. Costs included the costs of organising the classes, training instructors and health service use (General Practitioner (GP) and hospital outpatient visits). To determine the cost-effectiveness of Oomph! classes, total costs and quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) during the 3 months after initiation of the classes were compared to the total costs and QALYs of the 3 months prior to the classes and extrapolated to a 1-year time horizon. Uncertainty was taken into account using one-way and probabilistic sensitivity analysis. RESULTS: Sixteen residents completed all three EQ-5D-5 L questionnaires. There was a decrease in mean health related quality of life per participant in the 3 months before Oomph! classes (0.56 to 0.52, p = 0.26) and an increase in the 3 months after the start of Oomph! classes (0.52 to 0.60, p = 0.06), but the changes were not statistically significant. There were more GP visits after the start of Oomph! classes and fewer hospital outpatient visits, leading to a slight decrease in NHS costs (mean £132 vs £141 per participant), but the differences were not statistically significant (p = 0.79). In the base case scenario, total costs for Oomph! classes were £113 higher per participant than without Oomph! classes (£677 vs £564) and total QALYs were 0.074 higher (0.594 vs 0.520). The incremental costs per QALY gained were therefore £1531. The 95 % confidence intervals around the cost/QALY gained varied from dominant to dominated, meaning there was large uncertainty around the cost-effectiveness results. Given a willingness to pay threshold of £20,000 per QALY gained, Oomph! classes had a 62 %-86 % probability of being cost-effective depending on the scenario used. CONCLUSIONS: Preliminary evidence suggests that Oomph! classes may be cost-effective, but further evidence is needed about its impact on health-related quality of life and health service use
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