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Useful Guidance (useful + guidance)
Selected AbstractsA MASTER CLASS IN UNDERSTANDING VARIATIONS IN HEALTHCARECYTOPATHOLOGY, Issue 2006M. Mohammed That there is wide-spread variation in healthcare outcomes cannot be denied. The question is what does the variation mean and what can we do about it? Using a series of well-known case-studies, which include data from the Bristol and Shipman Inquiries, fundamental limitations of traditional methods of understanding variation will be highlighted. These methods, which include comparison with standards, league tables and statistical testing, have flaws and they offer little or no guidance on how to re-act to the variation. Fortunately, there is a theory of variation that overcomes these limitations and provides useful guidance on re-acting to variation, which was developed by Walter Shewhart in the 1920s in an industrial setting. Shewhart's theory of variation found widespread application and won him the accolade ,Father of modern quality control'. His work is central to philosophies of continual improvement. Application of Shewhart's theory of variation, also known as Statistical Process Control (SPC), to case-studies from healthcare will be demonstrated, whilst highlighting the implications and challenges for performance management/monitoring and continual improvement in the healthcare. References:, 1. M A Mohammed, KK Cheng, A Rouse, T Marshall. "Bristol, Shipman and clinical governance: Shewhart's forgotten lessons" The Lancet 2001; 357: 463,7. 2. P Adab, A Rouse, M A Mohammed, T Marshall. "Performance league tables: the NHS deserves better" British Medical Journal 2002; 324: 95,98 [source] Between Immigration and Policing: Cross RecognitionEUROPEAN LAW JOURNAL, Issue 2 2004Andrew Nicol The Dublin Convention of 1990 addressed some of the problems which this policy created, but left others unresolved. Domestic legislation has progressively reduced the opportunities for challenging safe third-country removals, especially to an EU state. The incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law has generated new possibilities for challenging safe third-country decisions where removal might damage physical or mental health. Articles 3 and 8 have been invoked in particular. The Dublin machinery established ,rules' to decide which member state was responsible for considering the asylum claim and the procedure to be followed. The article examines why the UK courts have said that these provisions are not justiciable in the English courts. Finally the article considers whether the experience with Dublin provides any useful guidance as to the approach that will be taken to European arrest warrants and extradition requests. [source] A New Stent Design for the Treatment of True Bifurcation Lesions: H-Side Branch StentsJOURNAL OF INTERVENTIONAL CARDIOLOGY, Issue 1 2010MYEONG-KI HONG M.D. Background:There has been much debate for the adequate treatment strategies for true bifurcation lesions. The purpose of this study is to introduce and test a novel stent design for the treatment of true bifurcation lesions. Methods:This side branch stent is composed of three parts: proximal, connecting, and distal parts. The distal part for the side branch vessel has a slope-side stent margin for circumferential coverage of the ostium and one radio-opaque marker for targeting the carina. The proximal part with two radio-opaque markers operates for safe stent delivery and useful guidance for a more precise placement of the distal part on the side branch ostium. Results of the in vitro test in the acrylic resin-made bifurcation phantom model were evaluated with microcomputer tomography. Animal experiments with this new stent platform were also performed in five pigs. Results:In vitro test and microcomputer tomography showed complete coverage of the side branch ostium circumferentially with stent struts, and the absence of stent struts in the main vessel above the side branch ostium level. This side branch stents were successfully deployed in all 5 pigs. The results of animal experiments were also similar to those of in vitro tests. Conclusions:In vivo and vitro tests demonstrated the effective modality of this side branch stent for the treatment of true bifurcation lesions. (J Interven Cardiol 2010;23:54,59) [source] Transitions in search tactics during the Web-based search processJOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, Issue 11 2010Iris Xie Although many studies have identified search tactics, few studies have explored tactic transitions. This study investigated the transitions of search tactics during the Web-based search process. Bringing their own 60 search tasks, 31 participants, representing the general public with different demographic characteristics, participated in the study. Data collected from search logs and verbal protocols were analyzed by applying both qualitative and quantitative methods. The findings of this study show that participants exhibited some unique Web search tactics. They overwhelmingly employed accessing and evaluating tactics; they used fewer tactics related to modifying search statements, monitoring the search process, organizing search results, and learning system features. The contributing factors behind applying most and least frequently employed search tactics are in relation to users' efforts, trust in information retrieval (IR) systems, preference, experience, and knowledge as well as limitation of the system design. A matrix of search-tactic transitions was created to show the probabilities of transitions from one tactic to another. By applying fifth-order Markov chain, the results also presented the most common search strategies representing patterns of tactic transition occurring at the beginning, middle, and ending phases within one search session. The results of this study generated detailed and useful guidance for IR system design to support the most frequently applied tactics and transitions, to reduce unnecessary transitions, and support transitions at different phases. [source] Prediction of Microporous Aluminophosphate AlPO4 -5 Based on Resampling Using Partial Least Squares and Logistic DiscriminationMOLECULAR INFORMATICS, Issue 3 2010Miao Qi Abstract In this paper, Partial Least Squares (PLS) regression and Logistic Discrimination (LD) are employed to predict the formation of microporous aluminophosphate AlPO4 -5 based on the database of AlPO synthesis, which aims to provide a useful guidance to the rational synthesis of microporous materials as well as other inorganic crystalline materials. To deal with the problem of class imbalance, four guided resampling methods considering not only the between-class imbalance but also the within-class imbalance are proposed. Experimental results indicate that the presented methods are competent for predicting the formation of microporous aluminophosphate AlPO4 -5. Specially, compared with some existing resampling methods, our proposed resampling methods exhibit much better predictive results. [source] Collapse temperature of solutions important for lyopreservation of living cells at ambient temperature,BIOTECHNOLOGY & BIOENGINEERING, Issue 2 2010Geer Yang Abstract In this study, the collapse temperature was determined using the freeze-drying microscopy (FDM) method for a variety of cell culture medium-based solutions (with 0.05,0.8,M trehalose) that are important for long-term stabilization of living cells in the dry state at ambient temperature (lyopreservation) by freeze-drying. Being consistent with what has been reported in the literature, the collapse temperature of binary water-trehalose solutions was found to be similar to the glass transition temperature (T,g , ,30°C) of the maximally freeze-concentrated trehalose solution (,80,wt% trehalose) during the freezing step of freeze-drying, regardless of the initial concentration of trehalose. However, the effect of the initial trehalose concentration on the collapse temperature of the cell culture medium-based trehalose solutions was identified to be much more significant, particularly when the trehalose concentration is less than 0.2,M (the collapse temperature can be as low as ,65°C). We also determined that cell density from 1 to 10,million cells/mL and ice seeding at high subzero temperatures (,4 and ,7°C) have negligible impact on the solution collapse temperature. However, ice seeding does significantly affect the ice crystal morphology formed during the freezing step and therefore the drying rate. Finally, bulking agents (mannitol) could significantly affect the collapse temperature only when trehalose concentration is low (<0.2,M). However, improving the collapse temperature by using a high concentration of trehalose might be preferred to the addition of bulking agents in the solutions for freeze-drying of living cells. We further confirmed the applicability of the collapse temperature measured with small-scale (2,µL) samples using the FDM system to freeze-drying of large-scale (1,mL) samples using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) data. Taken together, the results reported in this study should provide useful guidance to the development of optimal freeze-drying protocols for lyopreservation of living cells at ambient temperature for easy maintenance and convenient wide distribution to end users, which is important to the eventual success of modern cell-based medicine. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2010;106: 247,259. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source] | ||||||||||