Klipsun Magazine, 1986, Volume 17, Issue 03 - January

https://cedar.wwu.edu/klipsun_magazine/1084/thumbnail.jp

The prevalence and significance of renal perfusion defects in early kidney transplants quantified using 3D contrast enhanced ultrasound (CEUS)

Objectives - Vascular complications are one of the most common causes of early kidney transplant dysfunction. Contrast enhanced ultrasound increases sensitivity to tiny vascular changes.. The aim was to assess the prevalence and size of vascular abnormalities in renal transplantation patients following surgery using 3D CEUS to determine the significance of perfusion defects on renal function. Methods - Ninety nine renal transplant patients underwent 3D CEUS after surgery to quantify perfusion defects as percentage total renal volume (TRV). Serum creatinine and estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) were recorded up to three months post-surgery. Results - In the 99 patients, 20 had perfusion defects (0.2 – 43% TRV). There was a meaningful difference in patients with perfusion defects in eGFR at 1 month (90% CI 2.7 to 19.2 ml/min/1.73m2) and 3 months (90% CI 1.9 to 19.6 ml/min/1.73m2) and in Creatinine at 3 months (90% CI -56 to -8 μmol/L) using a predetermined clinical threshold. Perfusion defect size correlated well with both serum creatinine and eGFR at 3 months (R= 0.80 (p ≤ 0.000) and 0.58 (p= 0.038)). No correlation seen prior to 3 months. Conclusions - Perfusion defects in kidney transplants were more common than expected and were highly likely to reduce renal function at 1-3 months and the size of the defect affected the degree of functional change at 3 months

Use of near infrared reflectance spectroscopy to predict nitrogen uptake by winter wheat within fields with high variability in organic matter

In this study, the ability to predict N-uptake in winter wheat crops using NIR-spectroscopy on soil samples was evaluated. Soil samples were taken in unfertilized plots in one winter wheat field during three years (1997-1999) and in another winter wheat field nearby in one year (2000). Soil samples were analyzed for organic C content and their NIR-spectra. N-uptake was measured as total N-content in aboveground plant materials at harvest. Models calibrated to predict N-uptake were internally cross validated and validated across years and across fields. Cross-validated calibrations predicted N-uptake with an average error of 12.1 to 15.4 kg N ha-1. The standard deviation divided by this error (RPD) ranged between 1.9 and 2.5. In comparison, the corresponding calibrations based on organic C alone had an error from 11.7 to 28.2 kg N ha-1 and RPDs from 1.3 to 2.5. In three of four annual calibrations within a field, the NIR-based calibrations worked better than the organic C based calibrations. The prediction of N-uptake across years, but within a field, worked slightly better with an organic C based calibration than with a NIR based one, RPD = 1.9 and 1.7 respectively. Across fields, the corresponding difference was large in favour of the NIR-calibration, RPD = 2.5 for the NIR-calibration and 1.5 for the organic C calibration. It was concluded that NIR-spectroscopy integrates information about organic C with other relevant soil components and therefore has a good potential to predict complex functions of soils such as N-mineralization. A relatively good agreement of spectral relationships to parameters related to the N-mineralization of datasets across the world suggests that more general models can be calibrated

Are pinholes the cause of excess current in superconducting tunnel junctions? A study of Andreev current in highly resistive junctions

In highly resistive superconducting tunnel junctions, excess subgap current is usually observed and is often attributed to microscopic "pinholes" in the tunnel barrier. We have studied the subgap current in superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) and superconductor-insulator-normal-metal (SIN) junctions. In Al/AlOx/Al junctions, we observed a decrease of 2 orders of magnitude in the current upon the transition from the SIS to the SIN regime, where it then matched theory. In Al/AlOx/Cu junctions, we also observed generic features of coherent diffusive Andreev transport in a junction with a homogenous barrier. We use the quasiclassical Keldysh-Green function theory to quantify single- and two-particle tunneling and find good agreement over 2 orders of magnitude in transparency. We argue that our observations rule out pinholes as the origin of the excess current.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Using costing to facilitate policy making towards universal health coverage: findings and recommendations from country-level experiences

As countries progress towards universal health coverage (UHC), they frequently develop explicit packages of health services compatible with UHC goals. As part of the Disease Control Initiative 3 Country Translation project, a systematic survey instrument was developed and used to review the experience of five low-income and lower-middle-income countries-Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Somalia and Sudan-in estimating the cost of their proposed packages. The paper highlights the main results of the survey, providing information about how costing exercises were conducted and used and what country teams perceived to be the main challenges. Key messages are identified to facilitate similar exercises and improve their usefulness. Critical challenges to be addressed include inconsistent application of costing methods, measurement errors and data reliability issues, the lack of adequate capacity building, and the lack of integration between costing and budgeting. The paper formulates four recommendations to address these challenges: (1) developing more systematic guidance and standard ways to implement costing methodologies, particularly regarding the treatment of health systems-related common costs, (2) acknowledging ranges of uncertainty of costing results and integrating sensitivity analysis, (3) building long-term capacity at the local level and institutionalising the costing process in order to improve both reliability and policy relevance, and (4) closely linking costing exercises to public budgeting

Higher-order mesoscopic fluctuations in quantum wires: Conductance and current cumulants

We study conductance cumulants $>$ and current cumulants $C_j$ related to heat and electrical transport in coherent mesoscopic quantum wires near the diffusive regime. We consider the asymptotic behavior in the limit where the number of channels and the length of the wire in the units of the mean free path are large but the bare conductance is fixed. A recursion equation unifying the descriptions of the standard and Bogoliubov--de Gennes (BdG) symmetry classes is presented. We give values and come up with a novel scaling form for the higher-order conductance cumulants. In the BdG wires, in the presence of time-reversal symmetry, for the cumulants higher than the second it is found that there may be only contributions which depend nonanalytically on the wire length. This indicates that diagrammatic or semiclassical pictures do not adequately describe higher-order spectral correlations. Moreover, we obtain the weak-localization corrections to $C_j$ with $j\le 10$.Comment: 7 page

What motivates to work in a pub? What can the boss do to motivate?

Da vi skulle finne ut av hva som motiverer til å arbeide i et bar-miljø, viser det seg at selve arbeidsoppgavene ikke stod i fokus. Det som motiverte til å få en jobb på denne puben var forskjellige faktorer. Det var image, at det var kult å jobbe der, behovet for penger og at det virket gøy. Men det som fikk dem til å bli værende var av en annen grunn. Her var det sosiale samholdet som stod i fokus. Likevel fant vi faktorer som kunne ført til en økt, og kanskje endret, motivasjon blant de ansatte hvis disse ble endret. Når det gjelder hva sjefen kunne gjort for å motivere, var det små grep som behøvdes. Det var i grunn lite som skulle til for å fjerne mistrivsel og øke motivasjonen hos de ansatte.Sammendrag engelsk (abstract): What motivates to work in a pub? What can the boss do to motivate? When we were to find out what motivates to work in a pub, we found that the work itself was not in focus. What motivated to get a job on this pub was for different reasons. It was image, that it was cool to work there, the need for money, and that it seemed fun. But what got them to stay was for another reason, the social interraction. Even so, we found factors that could have caused, and maybe changed, the motivation amongst the employees if those were changed. When we studied what the boss could do to motivate, we found small actions that needed to be done. Actually, it was not much that needed to be done to make sure of the employees well-being and increase the motivation amongst them

Microservice Transition and its Granularity Problem: A Systematic Mapping Study

Microservices have gained wide recognition and acceptance in software industries as an emerging architectural style for autonomic, scalable, and more reliable computing. The transition to microservices has been highly motivated by the need for better alignment of technical design decisions with improving value potentials of architectures. Despite microservices' popularity, research still lacks disciplined understanding of transition and consensus on the principles and activities underlying "micro-ing" architectures. In this paper, we report on a systematic mapping study that consolidates various views, approaches and activities that commonly assist in the transition to microservices. The study aims to provide a better understanding of the transition; it also contributes a working definition of the transition and technical activities underlying it. We term the transition and technical activities leading to microservice architectures as microservitization. We then shed light on a fundamental problem of microservitization: microservice granularity and reasoning about its adaptation as first-class entities. This study reviews state-of-the-art and -practice related to reasoning about microservice granularity; it reviews modelling approaches, aspects considered, guidelines and processes used to reason about microservice granularity. This study identifies opportunities for future research and development related to reasoning about microservice granularity.Comment: 36 pages including references, 6 figures, and 3 table