Sprayable titanium composition

The addition of 2-ethyl-1-hexanol to an organometallic titanium compound dissolved in a diluent and optionally containing a lower aliphatic alcohol spreading modifier, produces a solution that can be sprayed onto a substrate and cured to form an antireflection titanium oxide coating having a refractive index of from about 2.0 to 2.2

Analyzing Interaction for Automated Adaptation – First Steps in the IAAA Project

Because of an aging society and the relevance of computer-based systems in a variety of fields of our life, personalization of software systems is becoming more important by the day in order to prevent usage errors and create a good user experience. However, personalization typically is a time-consuming and costly process if it is done through manual configuration. Automated adaptation to specific users’ needs is, therefore, a useful way to reduce the efforts necessary. The IAAA project focuses on the analysis of user interaction capabilities and the implementation of automated adaptations based on them. However, the success of these endeavors is strongly reliant on a careful selection of interaction modalities as well as profound knowledge of the target group’s general interaction behavior. Therefore, as a first step in the project, an extensive task-based user observation with thorough involvement of the actual target group was conducted in order to determine input devices and modalities that would in a second step become subject of the first prototypic implementations. This paper discusses the general objectives of the IAAA project, describes the methodology and aims behind the user observation and presents its results

Disability-adjusted life years lost due to diabetes in France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom: a burden of illness study

To compare the burden of disease (BoD) attributable to diabetes expressed in disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) for five European countries in 2010

Self-reported hypoglycaemia: a global study of 24 countries with 27,585 insulin-treated patients with diabetes: the HAT study.

Background and aims: Hypoglycaemia is an important concern for patients with diabetes and physicians when setting glycaemic targets. The Hypoglycaemia Assessment Tool (HAT) study, the largest and most comprehensive of its kind, assessed self-reported hypoglycaemia and associated predictive factors in a global population of patients with insulin-treated diabetes. Materials and methods: HAT was a non-interventional, multicentre, 6-month retrospective and 1-month prospective study of hypoglycaemic events in 24 countries using self-assessment questionnaires and patient diaries (for 28 days) in people aged ≥18 years with type 1 (T1D) or type 2 (T2D) diabetes using insulin for ≥12 months attending routine clinics. Associations between predictive factors and hypoglycaemia were examined using negative binomial regression models adjusted for period and country. Results: 27,585 patients completed the study (Table 1). 83.4% of patients with T1D and 50.8% of patients with T2D experienced ≥1 hypoglycaemic event in the 4 weeks before baseline (51.5 and 16.5 events per patient year). Higher (p < 0.001) incidence rates were reported in the 4 weeks after baseline (73.3 [T1D] and 19.3 [T2D] events per patient year). A greater percentage of patients with T1D vs. T2D reported any (83.0 vs. 46.5%), nocturnal (40.6 vs. 15.9%) or severe (14.4 vs. 8.9) hypoglycaemia in the prospective period. Conclusion: In this large, multinational population of patients (insulin-treated) with T1D or T2D, rates of overall, nocturnal and severe hypoglycaemia were higher than previously published. An increased incidence of overall hypoglycaemia in the prospective study indicated significant under-reporting of hypoglycaemia

Non-LTE modeling of supernova-fallback disks

We present a first detailed spectrum synthesis calculation of a supernova-fallback disk composed of iron. We assume a geometrically thin disk with a radial structure described by the classical alpha-disk model. The disk is represented by concentric rings radiating as plane-parallel slabs. The vertical structure and emission spectrum of each ring is computed in a fully self-consistent manner by solving the structure equations simultaneously with the radiation transfer equations under non-LTE conditions. We describe the properties of a specific disk model and discuss various effects on the emergent UV/optical spectrum. We find that strong iron-line blanketing causes broad absorption features over the whole spectral range. Limb darkening changes the spectral distribution up to a factor of four depending on the inclination angle. Consequently, such differences also occur between a blackbody spectrum and our model. The overall spectral shape is independent of the exact chemical composition as long as iron is the dominant species. A pure iron composition cannot be distinguished from silicon-burning ash. Non-LTE effects are small and restricted to few spectral features.Comment: ApSS, accepted, Proceedings of Isolated Neutron Stars: from the Interior to the Surface, April 24-28, 2006, London, U