Home About us Contact
|
Home About us Contact | ||
|
|
||
Users
Kinds of Users Terms modified by Users Selected AbstractsPOLITICAL AND SYSTEMIC BARRIERS INCREASING RISK OF HIV FOR INJECTING DRUG USERS IN EAST AFRICAADDICTION, Issue 10 2010DANIEL WOLFE No abstract is available for this article. [source] [Commentary] THE BOTTOM LINE ON CASH INCENTIVES WITH DRUG USERSADDICTION, Issue 5 2009DAVID VLAHOV No abstract is available for this article. [source] IS LEVEL OF INTEREST AMONG CANNABIS USERS IN SELF-HELP MATERIALS AND OTHER SERVICES AIMED AT REDUCING PROBLEM USE?ADDICTION, Issue 4 2005JOHN CUNNINGHAM No abstract is available for this article. [source] THE PRIVATE FINANCE INITIATIVE (PFI) IN SCHOOLS: THE EXPERIENCES OF USERSFINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY & MANAGEMENT, Issue 4 2006Suhaiza Ismail First page of article [source] SAFETY OF DEXTROAMPHETAMINE AND COCAINE COMBINATIONS IN COCAINE USERSALCOHOLISM, Issue 2008William Murff Two studies evaluated the safety and abuse liability of d-amphetamine in combination with cocaine in twenty cocaine-using research volunteers maintained in a controlled research laboratory. The first study tested low doses of d-amphetamine (15 mg) administered orally as a 1.5-hr pretreatment before low intranasal doses (48 mg) of cocaine. The study was double-blind, double-dummy, and placebo-controlled. A dose run-up procedure was employed to maximize safety. All drug effects were modest and the main finding of the study was diminished subjective effects of cocaine on a replicate determination of the original cocaine dose. The second study examined higher doses of d-amphetamine (30 mg, p.o.) and cocaine (96 mg, i.n.), alone and in combination, without a gradual dose run-up. Cocaine alone increased subjective mood, cocaine craving, and ratings indicating cocaine abuse potential. Again, replicate administration of cocaine produced lesser subjective effects than the first dose. D-amphetamine alone increased systolic and mean arterial pressures, but produced minimal effects on subjective mood. The combination of d-amphetamine and cocaine never produced effects greater than cocaine alone except for one subject who had an asymptomatic hypertensive episode. The data are interpreted in light of the possible use of stimulants for the treatment of cocaine dependence. [source] TASTE PERCEPTIONS AND DIETARY INTAKES OF SMOKELESS TOBACCO USERS AND NONTOBACCO USERS,JOURNAL OF SENSORY STUDIES, Issue 3 2005RHONDA A. SCHUELLER ABSTRACT Smokeless tobacco and nontobacco users differed for certain concentrations of perceived intensities of the four solutions , significantly for sweet (P , 0.008) and salty (P = 0.001). Sensitivity to salty (P = 0.02) and bitter (P = 0.11) solutions decreased with increasing hours of exposure to smokeless tobacco. Smokeless tobacco and nontobacco users rated fruits and vegetables for preference and the four taste senses differently, with a decreasing trend for sweet tastes in smokeless tobacco users with increasing hours of exposure to smokeless tobacco. Smokeless tobacco users consumed more total fat (P = 0.06) and fat per 1000 kcal (P = 0.13) than nontobacco users. Higher intakes of total fat (P = 0.005), total fat per 1000 kcal (P = 0.18), total sodium (P = 0.03) and total Vitamin E (P = 0.06) were found with increasing hours of exposure to smokeless tobacco. Although fruit and vegetable intakes did not differ between smokeless tobacco and nontobacco users, both groups should increase their consumption of fruits and vegetables. [source] User Controlled Research: Its Meanings and PotentialHEALTH EXPECTATIONS, Issue 3 2006Anne Langston No abstract is available for this article. [source] Estimating Trends with Percentage of Smoothness Chosen by the UserINTERNATIONAL STATISTICAL REVIEW, Issue 2 2008Victor M. Guerrero Summary This work presents a method for estimating trends of economic time series that allows the user to fix at the outset the desired percentage of smoothness for the trend. The calculations are based on the Hodrick-Prescott (HP) filter usually employed in business cycle analysis. The situation considered here is not related to that kind of analysis, but with describing the dynamic behaviour of the series by way of a smooth curve. To apply the filter, the user has to specify a smoothing constant that determines the dynamic behaviour of the trend. A new method that formalizes the concept of trend smoothness is proposed here to choose that constant. Smoothness of the trend is measured in percentage terms with the aid of an index related to the underlying statistical model of the HP filter. Empirical illustrations are provided using data on Mexico's GDP. Résumé Ce travail présente un méthode pour estimer les tendances des séries de temps économiques qui permet à l'usager fixer dès début le pourcentage désiré de douceur pour la tendance. Les calculs ont fondement en le filtre de Hodrick et Prescott que s'emploie généralement dans l'analyse de cycles économiques. La situation ici considéré n'a pas relation avec ce type d'analyse, mais comment la description du comportement dynamique des séries avec une courbe douce. Pour appliquer le filtre, l'usager a besoin de spécifier une constante de douceur que détermine le comportement dynamique de la tendance. Un nouveau méthode que formalise le concept de douceur de la tendance est ici proposé pour choisir la constante. La douceur de la tendance est mesuré en termes de pourcentage avec l'aide d'un index rapporté avec le modèle statistique après le filtre. Quelques illustrations empiriques sont munies avec données de l'économie mexicaine. [source] Mainstream In-Patient Mental Health Care for People with Intellectual Disabilities: Service User, Carer and Provider ExperiencesJOURNAL OF APPLIED RESEARCH IN INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES, Issue 3 2010Ben Donner Background, Government guidelines promote the use of mainstream mental health services for people with intellectual disabilities whenever possible. However, little is known about the experiences of people with intellectual disabilities who use such services. Materials and Methods, Face-to-face interviews with service users, carers and community nurses were completed and analysed on a case by case basis using interpretative phenomenological analysis. The results were followed up in focus groups with service providers. Results, Positive aspects included the provision of respite, particularly for carers, and good basic care. These were outweighed by a perception of the admission as disempowering and lacking in flexible treatment provision. Accessing help emerged as a major problem, as well as the prospect of staff neglecting the specific needs of people with intellectual disabilities. Conclusions, While there were some indications of improvements in line with recent policies and guidance, mainstream services seem a long way off realizing aims of easy accessibility, person-centred practices and active partnership with intellectual disability services. [source] Figure and table retrieval from scholarly journal articles: User needs for teaching and researchPROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY (ELECTRONIC), Issue 1 2007Robert J. Sandusky This paper discusses user needs for a system that indexes tables and figures culled from scientific journal articles. These findings are taken from a comprehensive investigation into scientists' satisfaction with and use of a tables and figures retrieval prototype. Much previous research has examined the usability and features of digital libraries and other online retrieval systems that retrieve either full-text of journal articles, traditional article-level abstracts, or both. In contrast, this paper examines the needs of users directly searching for and accessing discrete journal article components , figures, tables, graphs, maps, and photographs , that have been individually indexed. [source] Foreword for Frontier Session, "Markov Chain Monte Carlo Methods: A User's Guide for Agricultural Economics"CANADIAN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, Issue 3 2001Arnold Zellner No abstract is available for this article. [source] Furstyling on angle-split shell texturesCOMPUTER ANIMATION AND VIRTUAL WORLDS (PREV: JNL OF VISUALISATION & COMPUTER ANIMATION), Issue 2-3 2009Bin Sheng Abstract This paper presents a new method for modeling and rendering fur with a wide variety of furstyles. We simulate virtual fur using shell textures,a multiple layers of textured slices for its generality and efficiency. As shell textures usually suffer from the inherent visual gap errors due to the uniform discretization nature, we present the angle-split shell textures (ASST) approach, which classifies the shell textures into different types with different numbers of texture layers, by splitting the angle space of the viewing angles between fur orientation and view direction. Our system can render the fur with biological patterns, and utilizes vector field and scalar field on ASST to control the geometric variations of the furry shape. Users can intuitively shape the fur by applying the combing, blowing, and interpolating effects in real time. Our approach is intuitive to implement without using complex data structures, with real-time performance for dynamic fur appearances. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] A digital simulation of the vibration of a two-mass two-spring systemCOMPUTER APPLICATIONS IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION, Issue 3 2010Wei-Pin Lee Abstract In this study, we developed a computer program to simulate the vibration of a two-mass two-spring system by using Visual BASIC. Users can enter data for the two-mass two-spring system. The software will derive the eigenvalue problem from the input data. Then the software solves the eigenvalue problem and illustrates the results numerically and graphically on the screen. In addition, the program uses animation to demonstrate the motions of the two masses. The displacements, velocities, and accelerations of the two bodies can be shown if the corresponding checkboxes are selected. This program can be used in teaching courses, such as Linear Algebra, Advanced Engineering Mathematics, Vibrations, and Dynamics. Use of the software may help students to understand the applications of eigenvalue problems and related topics such as modes of vibration, natural frequencies, and systems of differential equations. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 18: 563,573, 2010; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20241 [source] Environment for engineering design, analysis, and simulation for education using MATLAB via the World Wide Web.COMPUTER APPLICATIONS IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION, Issue 3 2002Abstract In Part II of this paper, we present representative examples that demonstrate the capabilities and features of the developed education environment that allows one to simulate in real time engineering systems utilizing the power of MATLAB through a web browser interface. The web-based graphical user interface (GUI) provides the means for the user to input system parameters and the display of the analysis results. The examples presented demonstrate the required clarity of the developed GUI, and the nature and type of the results returned to the web browser of the user in real time. This environment has the capability to return to the user textual, graphical, pictorial, and animation related material. The user has the option to download analysis results in any of the generated forms to the client computer. This work demonstrates the ease of implementation and advantages of using this technology to aid in classroom instruction. Users with Internet can access the developed simulation modules at http://zodhia.uta.edu/development. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 10: 109,120, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com); DOI 10.1002/cae.10019 [source] Semantic knowledge facilities for a web-based recipe database system supporting personalizationCONCURRENCY AND COMPUTATION: PRACTICE & EXPERIENCE, Issue 7 2008Liping Wang Abstract The recent explosive proliferation of interesting and useful data over the Web such as various recipes, while providing people with readily available information, brings out a challenging issue on how to manage such non-conventional data effectively. To respond to the challenge, we have been developing a Web-based recipe database system called Dish_Master to manage recipes in a novel way, which not only covers the static recipe attributes but also elucidates the dynamic cooking behaviors. In this paper, we present several semantic knowledge facilities devised in Dish_Master, including a set of semantic modeling and knowledge constructs to effectively represent recipe data, rules and constraints, and user profile aspects. With such a rich set of semantic knowledge facilities, Dish_Master lays down a solid foundation of providing users with personalized services such as adaptation and recommendation. Users can benefit from the system's real-time consultation and automatic summarization of cuisine knowledge. The usefulness and elegance of Dish_Master are demonstrated through an experimental prototype system. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Resource reservations with fuzzy requestsCONCURRENCY AND COMPUTATION: PRACTICE & EXPERIENCE, Issue 13 2006T. Röblitz Abstract We present a scheme for reserving job resources with imprecise requests. Typical parameters such as the estimated runtime, the start time or the type or number of required CPUs need not be fixed at submission time but can be kept fuzzy in some aspects. Users may specify a list of preferences which guide the system in determining the best matching resources for the given job. Originally, the impetus for our work came from the need for efficient co-reservation mechanisms in the Grid where rigid constraints on multiple job components often make it difficult to find a feasible solution. Our method for handling fuzzy reservation requests gives the users more freedom to specify the requirements and it gives the Grid Reservation Service more flexibility to find optimal solutions. In the future, we will extend our methods to process co-reservations. We evaluated our algorithms with real workload traces from a large supercomputer site. The results indicate that our scheme greatly improves the flexibility of the solution process without having much affect on the overall workload of a site. From a user's perspective, only about 10% of the non-reservation jobs have a longer response time, and from a site administrator's view, the makespan of the original workload is extended by only 8% in the worst case. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Organizational Learning in Global Purchasing: A Model and Test of Internal Users and Corporate Buyers,DECISION SCIENCES, Issue 2 2000G. Tomas M. Hult ABSTRACT This research examines a model centered on organizational learning in purchasing. Two different studies are conducted to test the hypotheses among purchasing users (Study 1) and buyers (Study 2). The user sample consists of users representing 355 strategic business units of a Fortune 500 multinational corporation. The buyer sample consists of corporate buyers of 200 multinational corporations drawn from the membership directory of the National Association of Purchasing Management (NAPM). In each study, the focus is on the learning relationships between corporate buyers and internal users in the purchasing organization. Based on the two studies, the results suggest that organizational learning in the purchasing process is influenced by the organizational culture factors of localness, transformational leadership, and openness. Organizational learning has a positive effect on information processing in the purchasing system, which, in turn, has a positive influence on the cycle time of the purchasing process. [source] Counterfeiting in performance- and image-enhancing drugsDRUG TESTING AND ANALYSIS, Issue 3 2009Michael R. Graham Abstract The current drastic escalation in obesity may be contributing to the exponential rise in drugs used for image enhancement. Drugs such as anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS) are perceived as a viable method of achieving a perfect physique. They are also the most widely abused drugs in sport. The Internet has encouraged the abuse of expensive drugs, particularly human growth hormone (hGH), resulting in increased importation for personal use. The substantial increase in this market has opened up avenues for counterfeiting, estimated as a multi-million pound business. The acute adverse effects from contaminated vials may result in a variety of pathologies including communicable diseases. In 2007, in the UK, a series of intramuscular abscesses, requiring surgical treatment, led us to study samples obtained from the underground market. The analysis of 38 parenteral samples and 19 oral samples of tablets was performed by a World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) accredited laboratory, in an attempt to establish the extent of available counterfeit products. Fifty-three per cent (20) of the injectable AAS esters and 21% (4) of the oral tablets were counterfeit. Culture and sensitivity revealed the presence of skin commensal organisms, which may have contributed to the development of the abscesses. Users of AAS and hGH for sport, including bodybuilding, are currently risking their health because of counterfeit and poorly controlled products. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Medical association rule mining using genetic network programmingELECTRONICS & COMMUNICATIONS IN JAPAN, Issue 2 2008Kaoru Shimada Abstract An efficient algorithm for building a classifier is proposed based on an important association rule mining using genetic network programming (GNP). The proposed method measures the significance of the association via the chi-squared test. Users can define the conditions of important association rules for building a classifier flexibly. The definition can include not only the minimum threshold chi-squared value, but also the number of attributes in the association rules. Therefore, all the extracted important rules can be used for classification directly. GNP is one of the evolutionary optimization techniques, which uses the directed graph structure as genes. Instead of generating a large number of candidate rules, our method can obtain a sufficient number of important association rules for classification. In addition, our method suits association rule mining from dense databases such as medical datasets, where many frequently occurring items are found in each tuple. In this paper, we describe an algorithm for classification using important association rules extracted by GNP with acquisition mechanisms and present some experimental results of medical datasets. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn, 91(2): 46,54, 2008; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/eej.10022 [source] Information technology supporting diabetes sel-care: a pilot studyEUROPEAN DIABETES NURSING, Issue 1 2007A Halkoaho MSc Diabetes Nurse Specialist Abstract Although diabetes is a lifelong, incurable disease, people can live a full and normal life, provided that they receive appropriate and well-planned care. The care of people with diabetes should be organised as flexibly as possible to suit individual lifestyles. Information technology has become a useful tool to support functional patient,professional relationships and improve care balance. The Self-Care System software tool set by ProWellness is one such tool. Users can enter blood glucose data by using a computer, modem and mobile phone and diabetes nurses can monitor the situation from their own computer and, if necessary, give instructions by sending a SMS (text) message to the patient's mobile phone. This pilot study investigated whether the Self-Care System application supports people with diabetes and can be used as a diabetes education method. The study was carried out in the municipal consortium for healthcare of Siilinjärvi and Maaninka. Nine individuals with diabetes and three diabetes nurses were selected to participate in the study. Data were collected by questionnaire and interview. People with diabetes were sent a questionnaire and the nurses were interviewed. Content analysis was carried out on the interview data. The results suggest that the Self-Care System software supports and motivates diabetes self-care. The nurses felt that the application was useful when changes, such as starting insulin treatment, were introduced. The application was further described as effective and motivating in short-term intensive diabetes education and monitoring; however, both nurses and patients disliked the mechanical nature of the software. Copyright © 2007 FEND. [source] Epidemiologic Analysis of an Urban, Public Emergency Department's Frequent UsersACADEMIC EMERGENCY MEDICINE, Issue 6 2000Joshua H. Mandelberg BA Abstract. Objectives: To determine how the demographic, clinical, and utilization characteristics of emergency department (ED) frequent users differ from those of other ED patients. Methods: A cross-sectional and retrospective cohort study was performed using a database of all 348,858 visits to the San Francisco General Hospital ED during a five-year period (July 1, 1993, to June 30, 1998). A "frequent user" visited the ED five or more times in a 12-month period. Results: Frequent users constituted 3.9% of ED patients but accounted for 20.5% of ED visits. The relative risk (RR) of frequent use was high among patients who were homeless (RR = 4.5), African American (RR = 1.8), and Medi-Cal sponsored (RR = 2.1). Frequent users were more likely to be seen for alcohol withdrawal (RR = 4.4), alcohol dependence (RR = 3.4), and alcohol intoxication (RR = 2.4). Frequent users were also more likely to visit for exacerbations of chronic conditions, including sickle cell anemia (RR = 8.0), renal failure (RR = 3.6), and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (RR = 3.3). They were less likely to visit for all forms of trauma (RR = 0.43). Survival analysis showed that only 38% of frequent users for one year remained frequent users the next year. However, 56% of frequent users for two consecutive years remained frequent users in the third year. Conclusions: Frequent use of the ED reflects the urban social problems of homelessness, poverty, alcohol abuse, and chronic illness. Frequent use of the ED shows a high rate of decline from one year to the next. This rate of decline slows after the first year and suggests the existence of a smaller group of chronic frequent users. [source] Inquiry into the ideal function of the pharmacy in home care,GERIATRICS & GERONTOLOGY INTERNATIONAL, Issue 3 2004Mitsuko Onda Background: The aim of this study is to analyze why home-care services provided by pharmacists have not been effectively utilized. Method: Questionnaires were submitted to home-care service users, physicians, visiting nurses and home-helpers and pharmacy directors. We studied whether gaps existed between users' needs, physicians' expectations of pharmacy services and pharmacists' awareness of the importance of pharmacy services. We also investigated whether a failure to recognize the importance of cooperation with pharmacists in home-care provision existed among physicians and nurses/home-helpers. Results: Users and physicians expect pharmacists to be more involved in counseling about home care and welfare services than home-visiting services. Pharmacists recognize home visiting services as being of greater importance than counseling about home care and welfare services. The results indicated that gaps existed between users' needs, the physicians' expectations and pharmacists' awareness of the importance of pharmacy services. In terms of cooperation with pharmacists, study results implied that: (i) nurses/home-helpers' awareness of pharmacists' home-visiting service is lower than that of physicians; (ii) physicians' expectations regarding pharmacists' participation in home care services is lower than that of nurses/home-helpers; (iii) over 70% of both groups recognize the necessity of pharmacists' home-visiting service. Conclusions: Pharmacists need to get more involved in counseling users about home care and welfare. Also, there should be a special focus on heightening nurses/home-helpers' awareness of pharmacists' home-visiting service and on raising physicians' expectations for pharmacists' participation in home care services to develop home-care related pharmacy services in Japan. [source] A consultation leaflet to improve an older patient's involvement in general practice care: a randomized trialHEALTH EXPECTATIONS, Issue 4 2005Raymond Wetzels MD Abstract Objective, To evaluate the effects of a programme to enhance the involvement of older patients in their consultations in general practice. Design, Cluster randomized trial, in which data was collected from different cohorts. Setting and participants, Twenty-five general practices in the south-east part of the Netherlands and their patients aged 70 years and over. Intervention, Patients in the intervention group received a leaflet to help them prepare for the consultation. General practitioners (GPs) received an outreach visit to optimize older patients' involvement when visiting their GP. Patients in the control group received usual care. Main outcome measures, Questionnaires measuring involvement (COMRADE), enablement (Patient Enablement Index) and satisfaction with their care (EUROPEP). Results, Pre-intervention 315 patients and post-intervention 263 patients were included. Subjects were satisfied with their involvement and the GP's behaviour during the consultation. No differences in effect as a result of the leaflet on involvement, enablement or satisfaction were found between the intervention and the control group. Of 318 patients who received the leaflet and visited their GP in the intervention period, 47 patients used the leaflet. These users were more accustomed to prepare themselves for consultations. Users reported more psychological problems than non-users. Conclusions, No relevant effects of the implementation programme on involvement, enablement or satisfaction were found. Other strategies are needed to enhance involvement of older patients in their care. Alternatively, older patients may perceive themselves sufficiently involved. [source] Redesigning mental health services: lessons on user involvement from the Mental Health CollaborativeHEALTH EXPECTATIONS, Issue 1 2003Glenn Robert PhD Abstract Objectives, To explore the involvement of mental health service users in the redesign of in-patient mental health services in six Trusts participating in a multi-regional NHS modernization programme. Design, Semi-structured interviews and observation of team meetings undertaken as part of an action research study. Participants and setting, Users, clinical, medical and managerial staff from six mental health trusts which participated in the Northern & Yorkshire and Trent regions' Mental Health Collaborative (MHC). Results and conclusions, Whilst there were some problems, user involvement was undoubtedly a strength of the MHC in comparison to other modernization programmes within the NHS we have studied. However, the particular challenges posed by the specific context of acute mental health services should not be overlooked. The initial approach taken in each of the sites was to simply invite a user or user representative to join the local project team. In the course of events, various changes were made to this initial mechanism for involving users in the ongoing work of the teams. These changes , and setbacks in some sites , make drawing firm conclusions as to the effectiveness of the various strategies employed problematic. However, our qualitative data suggest a number of broad lessons that will assist both those leading and participating in other redesign initiatives to maximize the benefits to be gained from service user involvement. [source] Visuo-spatial working memory deficits in current and former users of MDMA (,ecstasy')HUMAN PSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY: CLINICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL, Issue 2 2005Michelle Wareing Abstract Verbal working memory and executive deficits have been observed in ecstasy users. The present study sought to establish whether these also extended to visuo-spatial working memory. Thirty-six current ecstasy users, 12 former users (abstinent for at least 6 months) and 31 individuals that had never used ecstasy were tested on a maintenance plus type visuo-spatial working memory task. The task required participants to recall a sequence of specially marked cells in a four-by-four matrix display while at the same time performing a concurrent visual judgement task. Both the current and former user groups registered impairments relative to nonusers. These remained significant following statistical controls for a range of potentially confounding variables including the use of various other drugs during the 3 months prior to testing. Users were unimpaired on a simple spatial span measure suggesting that the deficits observed reflected the executive aspects of the spatial working memory task. Also consistent with executive involvement, statistical controls for measures of verbal working memory performance (computation span) removed half of the ecstasy-related variance in spatial working memory. The possibility that the pattern of results obtained might reflect some general impairment in information processing efficiency is discussed. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] xBCI: A Generic Platform for Development of an Online BCI SystemIEEJ TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONIC ENGINEERING, Issue 4 2010I Putu Susila Non-member Abstract A generic platform for realizing an online brain,computer interface (BCI) named xBCI was developed. The platform consists of several functional modules (components), such as data acquisition, storage, mathematical operations, signal processing, network communication, data visualization, experiment control, and real-time feedback presentation. Users can easily build their own BCI systems by combining the components on a graphical-user-interface (GUI) based diagram editor. They can also extend the platform by adding components as plug-ins or by creating components using a scripting language. The platform works on multiple operating systems and supports parallel (multi-threaded) data processing and data transfer to other PCs through a network transmission control protocol/internet protocol or user datagram protocol (TCP/IP or UDP). A BCI system based on motor imagery and a steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) based BCI system were constructed and tested on the platform. The results show that the platform is able to process multichannel brain signals in real time. The platform provides users with an easy-to-use system development tool and reduces the time needed to develop a BCI system. Copyright © 2010 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. [source] Generalized strain probing of constitutive modelsINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR NUMERICAL AND ANALYTICAL METHODS IN GEOMECHANICS, Issue 15 2004Youssef M. A. Hashash Abstract Advanced material constitutive models are used to describe complex soil behaviour. These models are often used in the solution of boundary value problems under general loading conditions. Users and developers of constitutive models need to methodically investigate the represented soil response under a wide range of loading conditions. This paper presents a systematic procedure for probing constitutive models. A general incremental strain probe, 6D hyperspherical strain probe (HSP), is introduced to examine rate-independent model response under all possible strain loading conditions. Two special cases of HSP, the true triaxial strain probe (TTSP) and the plane-strain strain probe (PSSP), are used to generate 3-D objects that represent model stress response to probing. The TTSP, PSSP and general HSP procedures are demonstrated using elasto-plastic models. The objects resulting from the probing procedure readily highlight important model characteristics including anisotropy, yielding, hardening, softening and failure. The PSSP procedure is applied to a Neural Network (NN) based constitutive model. It shows that this probing is especially useful in understanding NN constitutive models, which do not contain explicit functions for yield surface, hardening, or anisotropy. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Networking lessons in delivering ,Software as a Service',Part IIINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NETWORK MANAGEMENT, Issue 6 2002David Greschler In part I of this paper, we described the origins and evolution of Software as a Service (SaaS) and its value proposition to Corporate IT, Service Providers, Independent Software Vendors and End Users. SaaS is a model in which software applications are deployed, managed, updated and supported on demand,like a utility,and are served to users centrally using servers that are internal or external to the enterprise. Applications are no longer installed locally on a user's desktop PC; instead, upgrades, licensing and version control, metering, support and provisioning are all managed at the server level. In part we examine the lessons learned in researching, building and running an SaaS service. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Clients' experiences of living at home with a mechanical ventilatorJOURNAL OF ADVANCED NURSING, Issue 2 2009Randi Ballangrud Abstract Title.,Clients' experiences of living at home with a mechanical ventilator. Aim., This paper reports on a study of how clients experience living with home mechanical ventilation and how they experience care and supervision of healthcare personnel. Background., The number of people living at home with mechanical ventilators is increasing, and this is considered a successful approach to reducing incapacity and mortality. Method., Qualitative interviews were conducted with 10 service users in 2006. The informants were 18,75 years old and had varying diagnoses and levels of functioning. The interviews were tape recorded, transcribed and analysed by qualitative content analysis. Findings., Two main themes emerged: Theme 1. Having a home ventilator enhances quality of life , a life worth living. The ventilator treatment builds up strength and improves well-being. Participants emphasized that it was important to feel in control of their own situation and had an overriding wish to live a normal and active life; Theme 2. Competence and continuity of healthcare personnel are factors for success. The experience was that competence and follow-up by healthcare personnel varied, and that good quality teaching and information were important. Conclusion., Users of home mechanical ventilators should be active partners in their own care so that their experience is taken into account. It is important for clients having home mechanical ventilation to be empowered and have control in their daily lives, as well as having competent caregivers and continuity of care. [source] Application of genetic algorithm for scheduling and schedule coordination problemsJOURNAL OF ADVANCED TRANSPORTATION, Issue 1 2002Prabhat Shrivastava The problems on scheduling and schedule co-ordination usually have conflicting objectives related to user's cost and operator's cost. Users want to spend less time to wait, transfer and travel by public buses. Operators are interested in profit making by lesser vehicle operating cost and having a minimum number of buses. As far as level of service is concerned users are interested in lesser crowing while operators are concerned with maximizing profit and thus to have higher load factors. In schedule co-ordination problems transfer time plays an important role. Users are interested in coordinating services with in acceptable waiting time whereas operators prefer to have lesser services and want to meet higher demands, which invariably increases waiting time. These problems have multiple conflicting objectives and constraints. It is difficult to determine optimum solution for such problems with the help of conventional approaches. It is found that Genetic Algorithm performs well for such multi objective problems. [source] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||