Do Primary Care Doctors Behave the Same in Antibiotic Prescribing for Upper Respiratory Tract Infections?

Purpose: To compare the extent of using an evidence-based approach in managing upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs) among primary care doctors from two different government clinic settings in Malaysia. Method: This is a cross sectional, prospective study carried out in a teaching university primary care centre in Kuala Lumpur (KL) where doctors are constantly exposed to continuing medical education (CME) and seven health clinics in Seremban, Malaysia where doctors have less exposure to CME in the year 2000. Twelve primary care practitioners in KL and 13 in Seremban participated in the study. Each practitioner was asked to record clinical data and prescriptions given to twenty consecutive patients with URTIs using a structured questionnaire for each patient. The extent of usage of an evidence-based approach in managing URTIs among practitioners was assessed

Are Doctors in the University-Based Primary Care Clinic More Evidence-Based?

Letter to the editor

How do Doctors Decide When to Prescribe Antibiotics in Upper Respiratory Tract Infections?

Purpose: To examine the predictive features which doctors use when prescribing antibiotics in upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs). Method: This is a cross sectional, prospective study done in a teaching university primary care centre in Kuala Lumpur from June to August 2000. Twelve primary care practitioners participated in the study. Each practitioner was asked to record clinical data and prescriptions given to twenty consecutive patients with URTIs using a structured questionnaire for each patient

An Exploratory Study of Lecturers' Views of Out-of-class Academic Collaboration Among Students

This article reports an exploratory study of lecturers' perceptions of out-of-class academic collaboration (OCAC) among students at a large Singapore university. Two types of OCAC were investigated: collaboration initiated by students, e.g., groups decide on their own to meet to prepare for exams, and collaboration required by teachers, e.g., teachers assign students to do projects in groups. Data were collected via one-on-one interviews with 18 faculty members from four faculties at the university. Findings suggest that OCAC, especially of a teacher-required kind, is fairly common at the university. Faculty members' views on factors affecting the success of OCAC are discussed for the light they might shed on practices to enhance the effectiveness of OCAC

Flexural behaviour of hybrid FRP-concrete-steel double skin tubular members

This paper presents the results of an experimental study on the flexural behavior of a new type of hybrid FRP-concrete-steel member as well as results from a corresponding theoretical model based on the plane section assumption and the fiber element approach. This new type of hybrid member is in the form of a double-skin tube, composed of a steel inner tube and an FRP outer tube with a concrete infill between the two tubes, and may be employed as columns or beams. The parameters examined in this study include the section configuration, the concrete strength, and the thicknesses of the steel tube and the FRP tube, respectively. The results presented in this paper show that these hybrid beams have a very ductile response because the compressive concrete is confined by the FRP tube and the steel tube provides ductile longitudinal reinforcement. The beams\u27 flexural response, including the flexural stiffness, ultimate load, and cracking, can be substantially improved by shifting the inner steel tube toward the tension zone or by providing FRP bars as additional longitudinal reinforcement. The predictions from the theoretical model are in reasonably close agreement with the test results. Differences between the test and predicted results arise from factors not considered in the theoretical model, including the existence of a strain gradient in the confined concrete, concentrations of cracks and the slips between the concrete and the two tubes; these are issues to be accounted for in the development of a more accurate model in the future

HA-grid: security aware hazard analysis for smart grids

Attacks targeting smart grid infrastructures can result in the disruptions of power supply as well as damages to costly equipment, with significant impact on safety as well as on end-consumers. It is therefore of essence to identify attack paths in the infrastructure that lead to safety violations and to determine critical components that must be protected. In this paper, we introduce a methodology (HA-Grid) that incorporates both safety and security modelling of smart grid infrastructure to analyse the impact of cyber threats on the safety of smart grid infrastructures. HA-Grid is applied on a smart grid test-bed to identify attack paths that lead to safety hazards, and to determine the common nodes in these attack paths as critical components that must be protected

The shrinking instability of toroidal liquid droplets in the Stokes flow regime

We analyze the stability and dynamics of toroidal liquid droplets. In addition to the Rayleigh instabilities akin to those of a cylindrical droplet there is a shrinking instability that is unique to the topology of the torus and dominates in the limit that the aspect ratio is near one (fat tori). We first find an analytic expression for the pressure distribution inside the droplet. We then determine the velocity field in the bulk fluid, in the Stokes flow regime, by solving the biharmonic equation for the stream function. The flow pattern in the external fluid is analyzed qualitatively by exploiting symmetries. This elucidates the detailed nature of the shrinking mode and the swelling of the cross-section following from incompressibility. Finally the shrinking rate of fat toroidal droplets is derived by energy conservation.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figure

Quark Delocalization, Color Screening, and Nuclear Intermediate Range Attraction

We consider the effect of including quark delocalization and color screening, in the nonrelativistic quark cluster model, on baryon-baryon potentials and phase shifts. We find that the inclusion of these additional effects allows a good qualitative description of both.Comment: 10 pages, LaTeX, 4 figures in PostScript after text, LA-UR-91-215

Rings of real functions in pointfree topology

AbstractThis paper deals with the algebra F(L) of real functions on a frame L and its subclasses LSC(L) and USC(L) of, respectively, lower and upper semicontinuous real functions. It is well known that F(L) is a lattice-ordered ring; this paper presents explicit formulas for its algebraic operations which allow to conclude about their behaviour in LSC(L) and USC(L).As applications, idempotent functions are characterized and previous pointfree results about strict insertion of functions are significantly improved: general pointfree formulations that correspond exactly to the classical strict insertion results of Dowker and Michael regarding, respectively, normal countably paracompact spaces and perfectly normal spaces are derived.The paper ends with a brief discussion concerning the frames in which every arbitrary real function on the α-dissolution of the frame is continuous

Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) Products from NASA Hydrology Data and Information Services Center (HDISC)

The Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) is generating a series of land surface state (e.g., soil moisture and surface temperature) and flux (e.g., evaporation and sensible heat flux) products simulated by four land surface models (CLM, Mosaic, Noah and VIC). These products are now accessible at the Hydrology Data and Information Services Center (HDISC), a component of the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC). Current data holdings include a set of 1.0 degree resolution data products from the four models, covering 1979 to the present; and a 0.25 degree data product from the Noah model, covering 2000 to the present. The products are in Gridded Binary (GRIB) format and can be accessed through a number of interfaces. New data formats (e.g., netCDF), temporal averaging and spatial subsetting will be available in the future. The HDISC has the capability to support more hydrology data products and more advanced analysis tools. The goal is to develop HDISC as a data and services portal that supports weather and climate forecast, and water and energy cycle research