Anglo-Japanese Naval Cooperation, 1914-1918

Focuses on the cooperation between British and Japanese naval forces in World War I (WWI) from 1914 to 1918. Historical account of Japanese involvement in WWI as a jackal state; Accounts on the Japanese naval assistance to allied operations in the Mediterranean Sea; Alliance of Japan with Great Britain to pursue an expansionist policy designed to increase territorial gains

Isolated Photons in Deep Inelastic Scattering

Photon radiation at large transverse momenta at colliders is a detailed probe of hard interaction dynamics. The isolated photon production cross section in deep inelastic scattering was measured recently by the ZEUS experiment, and found to be considerably larger than theoretical predictions obtained with widely used event generators. To investigate this discrepancy, we perform a dedicated parton-level calculation of this observable, including contributions from fragmentation and large-angle radiation. Our results are in good agreement with all aspects of the experimental measurement.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Patterns of therapist variability: Therapist effects and the contribution of patient severity and risk.

Objective: To investigate the size of therapist effects using multilevel modeling (MLM), to compare the outcomes of therapists identified as above and below average, and to consider how key variables—in particular patient severity and risk and therapist caseload—contribute to therapist variability and outcomes. Method: We used a large practice-based data set comprising patients referred to the U.K.'s National Health Service primary care counseling and psychological therapy services between 2000 and 2008. Patients were included if they had received ≥2 sessions of 1-to-1 therapy (including an assessment), had a planned ending to treatment, and completed the Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation–Outcome Measure (CORE-OM; Barkham et al., 2001; Barkham, Mellor-Clark, Connell, & Cahill, 2006; Evans et al., 2002) at pre- and post-treatment. The study sample comprised 119 therapists and 10,786 patients, whose mean age was 42.1 years (71.5% were female). MLM, including Markov chain Monte Carlo procedures, was used to derive estimates to produce therapist effects and to analyze therapist variability. Results: The model yielded a therapist effect of 6.6% for average patient severity, but it ranged from 1% to 10% as patient non-risk scores increased. Recovery rates for individual therapists ranged from 23.5% to 95.6%, and greater patient severity and greater levels of aggregated patient risk in a therapist's caseload were associated with poorer outcomes. Conclusions: The size of therapist effect was similar to those found elsewhere, but the effect was greater for more severe patients. Differences in patient outcomes between those therapists identified as above or below average were large, and greater therapist risk caseload, rather than non-risk caseload, was associated with poorer patient outcomes

Therapist effects and IAPT Psychological Wellbeing Practitioners (PWPs): A multilevel modelling and mixed methods analysis

The aim of this research was (a) to determine the extent of therapist effects in Psychological Wellbeing Practitioners (PWPs) delivering guided self-help in IAPT services and (b) to identify factors that defined effective PWP clinical practice. Using patient (N = 1122) anxiety and depression outcomes (PHQ-9 and GAD-7), the effectiveness of N = 21 PWPs across 6 service sites was examined using multi-level modelling. PWPs and their clinical supervisors were also interviewed and completed measures of ego strength, intuition and resilience. Therapist effects accounted for around 9 per cent of the variance in patient outcomes. One PWP had significantly better than average outcomes on both PHQ-9 and GAD-7 while 3 PWPs were significantly below average on the PHQ-9 and 2 were below average on the GAD-7. Computed PWP ranks identified quartile clusters of the most (N = 5) and least (N = 5) effective PWPs. More effective PWPs generated higher rates of reliable and clinically significant change and displayed greater resilience, organisational abilities, knowledge and confidence. Study weaknesses are identified and methodological considerations for future studies examining therapist effects in low intensity cognitive behaviour therapy are provided

Group psychoeducative cognitive-behaviour therapy for mixed anxiety and depression with older adults

Objectives: There is a dearth of older adult evidence regarding the group treatment for co-morbid anxiety and depression. This research evaluated the effectiveness of a low-intensity group psychoeducational approach. Method: Patients attended six sessions of a manualised cognitive-behavioural group. Validated measures of anxiety, depression and psychological well-being were taken at assessment, termination and six-week follow-up from patients, who also rated the alliance and their anxiety/depression at each group session. Staff rated patients regarding their functioning at assessment, termination and six-week follow-up. Outcomes were categorised according to whether patients had recovered, improved, deteriorated or been harmed. Effect sizes were compared to extant group interventions for anxiety and depression. Results: Eight groups were completed with 34 patients, with a drop-out rate of 17%. Staff and patient rated outcome measures showed significant improvements (with small effect sizes) in assessment to termination and assessment to follow-up comparisons. Over one quarter (26.47%) of patients met the recovery criteria at follow-up and no patients were harmed. Outcomes for anxiety were better than for depression with the alliance in groups stable over time. Conclusion: The intervention evaluated shows clinical and organisational promise. The group approach needs to be further developed and tested in research with greater methodological control

Fault tolerant motor drive system with redundancy for critical applications

Some of the recent research activities in the area of electric motor drives for critical applications (such as aerospace and nuclear power plants) are focused on looking at various motor and drive topologies. This paper presents a motor drive system, which provides an inverter topology for three-phase motors, and also proposes an increased redundancy. The paper develops a simulation model for the complete drive system including synthetic faults. In addition, the hardware details including the implementation of DSP based motor controller, inverter module, and brushless PM motor system are provided and some experimental results are presented.N. Ertugrul, W. Soong, G. Dostal and D. Saxo

The Contribution of Therapist Effects to Patient Dropout and Deterioration in the Psychological Therapies

BACKGROUND: In the psychological therapies, patient outcomes are not always positive. Some patients leave therapy prematurely (dropout), while others experience deterioration in their psychological well-being. METHODS: The sample for dropout comprised patients (n = 10 521) seen by 85 therapists, who attended at least the initial session of one-to-one therapy and completed a Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation-Outcome Measure (CORE-OM) at pre-treatment. The subsample for patient deterioration comprised patients (n = 6405) seen by the same 85 therapists but who attended two or more sessions, completed therapy and returned a CORE-OM at pre-treatment and post-treatment. Multilevel modelling was used to estimate the extent of therapist effects for both outcomes after controlling for patient characteristics. RESULTS: Therapist effects accounted for 12.6% of dropout variance and 10.1% of deterioration variance. Dropout rates for therapists ranged from 1.2% to 73.2%, while rates of deterioration ranged from 0% to 15.4%. There was no significant correlation between therapist dropout rate and deterioration rate (Spearman's rho = 0.07, p = 0.52). CONCLUSIONS: The methods provide a reliable means for identifying therapists who return consistently poorer rates of patient dropout and deterioration compared with their peers. The variability between therapists and the identification of patient risk factors as significant predictors has implications for the delivery of safe psychological therapy services. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. KEY PRACTITIONER MESSAGE: Therapists play an important role in contributing to patient dropout and deterioration, irrespective of case mix. Therapist effects on patient dropout and deterioration appear to act independently. Being unemployed as a patient was the strongest predictor of both dropout and deterioration. Patient risk to self or others was also an important predictor