General practitioners’ perceptions of asynchronous telemedicine in a randomized controlled trial of teledermatology.

Background: Telemedicine is viewed as having a key role to play in the Government’s plans to modernise the NHS.1 However, to date there are few studies which have explored the views and acceptability of GPs towards telemedicine in primary care. Aim: To elicit the perceptions of GPs towards teledermatology (TD) before and after it’s introduction into their Practices and to observe whether GP views of TD had changed over the course of the study. Design of study: A postal questionnaire administered as part of a wider randomised controlled trial of telemedicine in dermatology. Setting: A locality group of eight General Practices in Sheffield and a single teaching hospital in Sheffield that provided the local dermatology referral service. Method: A postal questionnaire circulated to all GPs from the eight participating Practices. Results: A 85.7% (36/42) response rate was achieved. Only 21% (n=7; 95% CI: 10-37%) of respondents felt satisfied/very satisfied with TD in their Practice, 47% (n=16) said that they were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied. Thirty one per cent (n=10; 95% CI: 18-49%) said that they felt confident about diagnosis and management of care through TD, with 28% (n=9) reporting that they were unconfident. Only 23% (n=8; 95% CI: 12-39%) of respondents said that they would consider using a telemedicine system in the future, 34% (n=12) said they would probably or definitely not and 43% (n=15) were unsure. There was some evidence that GPs views about TD became more negative over the course of the study. Conclusions: The study reports less favourable GP responses to telemedicine than observed in previous studies, and suggests that the model of telemedicine described in this study paper would not be widely acceptable to GPs

Genetic algorithm search for stent design improvements

Copyright @ 2002 SpringerThis paper presents an optimisation process for finding improved stent design using Genetic Algorithms. An optimisation criterion based on dissipated power is used which fits with the accepted principle that arterial flows follow a minimum energy loss. The GA shows good convergence and the solution found exhibits improved performance over proprietary designs used for comparison purposes

Effects of stents under asymmetric inflow conditions

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below. Copyright @ 2002 IOS PressPatient-to-patient variations in artery geometry may determine their susceptibility to stenosis formation. These geometrical variations can be linked to variations in flow characteristics such as wall shear stress through stents, which increases the risk of restenosis. This paper considers computer models of stents in non-symmetric flows and their effects on flow characteristics at the wall. This is a fresh approach from the point of view of identifying a stent design whose performance is insensitive to asymmetric flow. Measures of dissipated energy and power are introduced in order to discriminate between competing designs of stents

Investor Protection and the Value Effects of Bank Merger Announcements in Europe and the US

Investor protection regimes have been shown to partly explain why the same type of corporate event may attract different investor reactions across countries. We compare the value effects of large bank merger announcements in Europe and the US and find an inverse relationship between the level of investor protection prevalent in the target country and abnormal returns that bidders realize during the announcement period. Accordingly, bidding banks realize higher returns when targeting low protection economies (most European economies) than bidders targeting institutions which operate under a high investor protection regime (the US). We argue that bidding bank shareholders need to be compensated for an increased risk of expropriation by insiders which they face in a low protection environment where takeover markets are illiquid and there are high private benefits of control

Can consumer research panels form an effective part of the cancer research community?

The North Trent Cancer Research Network’s Consumer Research Panel (NTCRN CRP) was established in December 2001 by the Academic Unit of Supportive Care at the University of Sheffield. In three years, the CRP has succeeded in nurturing a climate of sustainable consumer involvement within the NTCRN and this has become embedded in the culture of the network. Furthermore, the panel have championed a sustainable development of consumer involvement in health and social care research by testing new ground and forging a new way of working between health professionals and patients and carers. The CRP model has been held up as an example to other cancer networks, with new panels being set up around the country to emulate its success. This paper describes the Sheffield model of patient and public involvement and using the eight key principles of successful consumer involvement in research, identified in a recent paper by Telford et al (2003), provides a useful framework for analysing the work of the Panel. This demonstrates how consumers and professionals can inform each other to work constructively and synergistically to achieve impressive research results. The need for measurable outcomes to assess the impact and effect of consumer involvement is finally explored

Zero-loss/deflection map analysis

Experimental plots of the fraction of detected electrons removed from the zero-loss peak, versus the fraction of incident electrons scattered outside of the objective aperture, can serve as a robust fingerprint of object-contrast in an energy filtered transmission electron microscope (EFTEM). Examples of this, along with the first in a series of models for interpreting the resulting patterns, were presented at the August 2010 meeting of the Microscope Society of America meeting in Portland, Oregon, and published in {\em Microscopy and MicroAnalysis} {\bf 16}, Supplement 2, pages 1534-1535 by Cambridge University Press.Comment: 3 pages (3 figs, 4 refs) RevTeX, cf. http://www.umsl.edu/~fraundorfp/zldeflmaps.htm

A systematic review of pedagogical approaches that can effectively include children with special educational needs in mainstream classrooms with a particular focus on peer group interactive approaches

The broad background to this review is a long history of concepts of special pupils and special education, and a faith in special pedagogical approaches. The rise of inclusive schools and some important critiques of special pedagogy (e.g. Hart, 1996; Norwich and Lewis, 2001; Thomas and Loxley, 2001) have raised the profile of teaching approaches that ordinary teachers can and do use to include children with special educational needs in mainstream classrooms. Inclusive education itself is increasingly conceived as being about the quality of learning and participation that goes on in inclusive schools rather than simplistic matters of where children are place

Novel theoretical approach in photoemission spectroscopy: application to isotope effect and boron-doped diamond

A new path-integral theory is developed to calculate the photoemission spectra (PES) of correlated many-electron systems. The application to the study on Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8 (Bi2212) and boron-doped diamond (BDD) is discussed in details. It is found that the isotopic shift in the angle-resolved photoemission spectra of Bi2212 is due to the off-diagonal quadratic electron-phonon (e-ph) coupling, whereas the presence of electron-electron repulsion partially suppresses this effect. For the BDD, a semiconductor-metal phase transition, which is induced by increasing the e-ph coupling and dopant concentration, is reproduced by our theory. Additionally, the presence of Fermi edge and phonon step-like structure in PES is found to be due to a co-existence of itinerant and localized electronic states in BDD.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, Procs. of LEHTSC 2007, submitted to J. Phys.: Conf. Se