Communications payload concepts for geostationary facilities

Summarized and compared are the major results of two NASA sponsored studies that defined potential communication payload concepts to meet the satellite traffic forecast for the turn of the century for the continental US and Region 2 of the International Telecommunications Union. The studies were performed by the Ford Aerospace and Communications Corporation and RCA Astro-Electronics (now GE-RCA Astro-Space Division). Future scenarios of aggregations of communications services are presented. Payload concepts are developed and defined in detail for nine of the scenarios. Payload costs and critical technologies per payload are also presented. Finally the payload concepts are compared and the findings of the reports are discussed

Foreign growth, the dollar, and regional economies, 1970-97

International markets are an important contributor to U.S. economic activity. U.S. regions have varying exposure to the influences of international markets--foreign demand or exchange rate movements. Still, the overriding determinants of regional economic growth is the state of the domestic economy.Foreign exchange rates ; Manufactures ; Middle West ; Exports

A comprehensive survey of hearing questionnaires: how many are there, what do they measure, and how have they been validated?

The self-report questionnaire is a popular tool for measuring outcomes in trials of interventions for hearing impairment. Many have been designed over the last fifty years, and there is no single standard questionnaire that is widely accepted and used. We felt it would be a valuable resource to have a comprehensive collection of all adult hearing-loss questionnaires (excluding those wholly devoted to tinnitus, children, or cochlear implants) and to survey their degree of validation. We collated copies of every published hearing difficulty questionnaire that we could find. The search was primarily done by iterative reference searching. Questionnaire topics were obtained by mapping the text of each questionnaire onto a set of categories; reports of validation methods were taken from the primary paper(s) on each questionnaire. In total we found 139 hearing-specific questionnaires (though many others were found that were primarily about something else). Though not formally systematic, we believe that we have included every questionnaire that is important, most of those of some notice, and a fair fraction of those obscure. We classified 111 as “primary” and the remaining 28 as “contractions”, being shortened versions of a primary without any new questions. In total, there were 3618 items across all the primary questionnaires. The median number of items per questionnaire was 20; the maximum was 158. Across all items, about one third were concerned with the person’s own hearing, another third with the repercussions of it, and about a quarter with hearing aids. There was a wide range in validation methods, from only using items chosen statistically from wider pools and with formal validation against independent measures of clinical outcomes, to just reporting a correlation with an audiogram measure of hearing loss. The “state of play” of the field of hearing questionnaires will be discussed

The Phytoplankton of the J. W. Frisz Memorial Lagoon, Shades State Park, Indiana

Plankton net collections were made from the J. W. Frisz Memorial Lagoon in the Shades State Park, Montgomery County, at various intervals of time from June 12, 1951 until April 19, 1952. Most of the collections were made by jack McCormick, several by Jay D. Gilliland of Waveland, Indiana, and a few by W. A. Daily.The thirty-seven year old artificial lagoon has an area of approximately three acres and a maximum depth of eighteen feet. It has been well stocked with game fish, but higher aquatic plants are scarce

An investigation of the heat rejection to the engine oil in an internal combustion engine.

Thesis (B.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 1944.MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN BARKER ENGINEERING LIBRARY. MIT copy bound with: Analysis of an automatic pressure controller / by Lawrence S. Churchill [1944]Includes bibliographical references (leaf 29).B.S

Spring 1982 Conference Issue

Turf Clippings (page 3) How the RPAR Process is Working (4) Cellular and Genetic Engineering Techniques Applied Towards the Improvement of Turfgrass (7) Fifty-First Annual Turf Conference and Sixth Industrial Show (10) Natural Versus Artificial Turf--an Economical Alternative (13) Fertility Assay of Sands (17

The international value of the dollar: an inflation-adjusted index

Dollar, American ; Foreign exchange rates

Changes in hospital mortality for United States intensive care unit admissions from 1988 to 2012

Introduction A decrease in disease-specific mortality over the last twenty years has been reported for patients admitted to United States (US) hospitals, but data for intensive care patients are lacking. The aim of this study was to describe changes in hospital mortality and case-mix using clinical data for patients admitted to multiple US ICUs over the last 24 years. Methods We carried out a retrospective time series analysis of hospital mortality using clinical data collected from 1988 to 2012. We also examined the impact of ICU admission diagnosis and other clinical characteristics on mortality over time. The potential impact of hospital discharge destination on mortality was also assessed using data from 2001 to 2012. Results For 482,601 ICU admissions there was a 35% relative decrease in mortality from 1988 to 2012 despite an increase in age and severity of illness. This decrease varied greatly by diagnosis. Mortality fell by \u3e60% for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, seizures and surgery for aortic dissection and subarachnoid hemorrhage. Mortality fell by 51% to 59% for six diagnoses, 41% to 50% for seven diagnoses, and 10% to 40% for seven diagnoses. The decrease in mortality from 2001 to 2012 was accompanied by an increase in discharge to post-acute care facilities and a decrease in discharge to home. Conclusions Hospital mortality for patients admitted to US ICUs has decreased significantly over the past two decades despite an increase in the severity of illness. Decreases in mortality were diagnosis specific and appear attributable to improvements in the quality of care, but changes in discharge destination and other confounders may also be responsible