26,069 research outputs found
The impact of a needs-based educational programme on General Practitioners' confidence and skill in managing common musculoskeletal problems
Disorders of the musculoskeletal (MSK) system are prevalent in the UK. They are a significant cause of pain, disability and health and social care resource utilisation. Most patients with MSK disorders are seen and treated by General Practitioners (GPs). MSK disorders form up to 20% of GP consultations and the majority are formed of a small number of conditions such as back, neck, and knee pain. Despite the prevalence of these conditions, there is evidence that management of affected patients is suboptimal.
This thesis investigated the possibility and feasibility of improving GP delivery of care to patients with MSK problems using an evidence-based educational intervention. The study population was a cohort of GPs from Camden and Islington Primary Care Trusts. The first phase of the project was a needs assessment case study of prior training and CME experience in MSK disorders using questionnaires and face-to-face interviews. The second phase used these results to develop, deliver and evaluate an MSK training course.
The principal findings from the needs assessment were that formal postgraduate training in MSK disorders was rare. CME events were mainly in the form of lectures. GPs rated the need for knowledge of MSK disorders in primary care as high. The MSK training course was based on the needs assessment, taking place in small groups, using trained patients (Patient Partners) and clinical cases. GPs evaluated the course as highly relevant to their needs, leading to increased confidence and skills. However, GPs estimated that confidence would reduce after 6 months without further training. It is feasible to deliver a research informed training course for GPs on MSK disorders. Further work needs to be done to find effective strategies to produce prolonged changes in behaviour and practice that deliver effective patient care
Viscosity and glass transition in amorphous oxides
An overview is given of amorphous oxide materials viscosity and glass-liquid transition phenomena. The viscosity is a continuous function of temperature, whereas the glass-liquid transition is accompanied by explicit discontinuities in the derivative parameters such as the specific heat or thermal expansion coefficient. A compendium of viscosity models is given including recent data on viscous flow model based on network defects in which thermodynamic parameters of configurons—elementary excitations resulting from broken bonds—are found from viscosity-temperature relationships. Glass-liquid transition phenomena are described including the configuron model of glass transition which shows a reduction of Hausdorff dimension of bonds at glass-liquid transition
Magnetic field effects on spin relaxation in heterostructures
Effect of magnetic field on electron spin relaxation in quantum wells is
studied theoretically. We have shown that Larmor effect and cyclotron motion of
carriers can either jointly suppress D'yakonov-Perel' spin relaxation or
compensate each other. The spin relaxation rates tensor is derived for any
given direction of the external field and arbitrary ratio of bulk and
structural contributions to spin splitting. Our results are applied to the
experiments on electron spin resonance in SiGe heterostructures, and enable us
to extract spin splitting value for such quantum wells.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure
Ferrohydrodynamics: testing a new magnetization equation
A new magnetization equation recently derived from irreversible
thermodynamics is employed to the calculation of an increase of ferrofluid
viscosity in a magnetic field. Results of the calculations are compared with
those obtained on the basis of two well-known magnetization equations. One of
the two was obtained phenomenologically, another one was derived
microscopically from the Fokker-Planck equation. It is shown that the new
magnetization equation yields a quite satisfactory description of
magnetiviscosity in the entire region of magnetic field strength and the flow
vorticity. This equation turns out to be valid -- like the microscopically
derived equation but unlike the former phenomenological equation -- even far
from equilibrium, and so it should be recommended for further applications.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, Submitted to Phys. Rev.
A singly fed rectangular dielectric resonator antenna with a wideband circular polarization
A rectangular dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) that is excited using an outer-fed square spiral strip has been studied theoretically and experimentally. Utilizing such excitation has provided a circular polarization over a broad bandwidth of in conjunction with an impedance-matching bandwidth of . The structure has been rigorously modeled using a method of moments (MoM) model. A good agreement has been attained between computed and measured results
The Diffusion of Bt Cotton and the Economic Impact on Producers
The objective is to present the economic impact of producers adopting Bt cotton and the rapid diffusion on the main producing countries: USA, China and India. The existing literature about this type of transgenic crop has been revised and the results of different research are presented. Bt cotton varieties have been quickly adopted by the countries in this study. Data show that this technology helps reduce production losses and significantly decrease the use of pesticides, thus saving their cost and the associated labour cost. But the total cost reduction is weak due to the high prices of the seeds incorporating this technology.Innovation diffusion, Bt cotton, Crop Production/Industries,
An automatic method for assessing structural importance of amino acid positions
Background: A great deal is known about the qualitative aspects of the sequence-structure relationship, for example that buried residues are usually more conserved between structurally similar homologues, but no attempts have been made to quantitate the relationship between evolutionary conservation at a sequence position and change to global tertiary structure. In this paper we demonstrate that the Spearman correlation between sequence and structural change is suitable for this purpose.
Results:
Buried residues, bends, cysteines, prolines and leucines were significantly more likely to occupy positions highly correlated with structural change than expected by chance. Some buried residues were found to be less informative than expected, particularly residues involved in active sites and the binding of small molecules.
Conclusion:
The correlation-based method generates predictions of structural importance for superfamily positions which agree well with previous results of manual analyses, and may be of use in automated residue annotation piplines. A PERL script which implements the method is provided
Large Deviations Principle for a Large Class of One-Dimensional Markov Processes
We study the large deviations principle for one dimensional, continuous,
homogeneous, strong Markov processes that do not necessarily behave locally as
a Wiener process. Any strong Markov process in that is
continuous with probability one, under some minimal regularity conditions, is
governed by a generalized elliptic operator , where and are
two strictly increasing functions, is right continuous and is
continuous. In this paper, we study large deviations principle for Markov
processes whose infinitesimal generator is where
. This result generalizes the classical large deviations
results for a large class of one dimensional "classical" stochastic processes.
Moreover, we consider reaction-diffusion equations governed by a generalized
operator . We apply our results to the problem of wave front
propagation for these type of reaction-diffusion equations.Comment: 23 page
Comment on "Magnetoviscosity and relaxation in ferrofluids"
It is shown and discussed how the conventional system of hydrodynamic
equations for ferrofluids was derived. The set consists of the equation of
fluid motion, the Maxwell equations, and the magnetization equation. The latter
was recently revised by Felderhof [Phys. Rev. E, v.62, p.3848 (2000)]. His
phenomenological magnetization equation looks rather like corresponding
Shliomis' equation, but leads to wrong consequences for the dependence of
ferrofluid viscosity and magnetization relaxation time on magnetic field.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, Submitted to Phys. Rev.
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