During the recent international uranium exercise organized by the ESARDA NDA Working Group, several participants determined the uranium enrichment of samples using methods based on analysis of the XKalpha region of the uranium spectrum. For these methods, no calibration with known enrichment standards is required but accurate knowledge of nuclear ...

The implementation of IT within any healthcare organization is a demanding and intense exercise in the management of both technical (systemic) and non-technical (social) influences and factors, and the project process is often fraught with unforeseen obstacles or impediments to success. Project success depends as much on a specific understanding ...

Evidence-based clinical practice requires the development and refinement of literature searching, appraisal skills, and clinical experience. Answering clinical questions using evidence-based methods can be time-intensive, but as one becomes more familiar with the methods, it becomes a fairly straightforward process. For example, it took less than an hour to complete ...

In December 2000 the International Atomic Energy Agency sponsored an intercomparison of radiation protection area monitoring instruments which was held at the Instituto de Radioproteção e Dosimetria--IRD/CNEN, Rio de Janeiro. Brazil. This intercomparison exercise was aimed at evaluating the ability of some Latin American and Caribbean countries to perform calibrations ...

The pharmacy market in many European countries is characterised by individual, privately-owned pharmacies that operate under tight government control regarding barriers to entry, scope of activities and profit margins. In Iceland, many of these restrictions were relaxed in 1996 in the hope of stimulating competition. Similar changes were introduced in ...

Mass casualty incidents continue to require the services of forensic dentists to determine the identity of victims. Across North America and Europe. teams of forensic dentists train, using mock disaster exercises, to prepare for such duties. It is vital that these mock exercises simulate the features of real disaster situations ...

Behavioral manipulations such as housing in an enriched environment have been shown to increase brain weight and visual cortical thickness. The present study was designed to test whether skill learning or repetitive movements can alter the thickness of the motor cortex. One group of 6-mo-old Long-Evans female rats learned motor ...

HOLDING: In the accelerating rush to judgment that occurred here, a series of legal errors and missteps following a preliminary hearing compounded what was already an excruciatingly difficult and complex situation. The record strongly suggests that no one involved in the protective proceeding had ever communicated directly with baby AMB's ...

A need for a hand-ergonomics training kit has been identified to increase critical thinking concerning choice of hand tools. This study deals with the design, use and evaluation of a hand-ergonomics training kit for use in ergonomics training programmes. The effects on awareness of hand ergonomics among training course participants ...

There has been a resurgence of interest in the indirect bonding technique for orthodontics. The procedure is not often used in the UK and the reasons for this, as well as the renewal of interest, are explored. A costing exercise suggests that the cost-effectiveness of the technique may be improved ...

Operation Wake-Up Call was a simulated bioterrorism exercise conducted in Waukesha County, Wisconsin (Metropolitan Milwaukee) on November 6, 1999. The purpose of the exercise was to test and evaluate the emergency response capability of local municipal, county, state, federal, and reserve military agencies to a weapons of mass destruction terrorist ...

The aim of this study was to evaluate the mean radiographic length of styloid process in a sample of Croatian population, and based on biological basis, to suggest a classification applicable in clinical practice. Two hundred and ninety six panoramic x-rays were examined, out of which 161 from males and ...

BACKGROUND: The objective of this study was to compare the efficiency of manual and robotically assisted laparoscopic surgery. METHODS: To evaluate the surgical efficiency in a set of basic endoscopic movements, 20 medical students without any surgical experience were selected to perform at random a set of laparoscopic tasks either ...

This article has its genesis in the inquirer's interest in the need for internalizing critical thinking, creative thinking and reflective skills in adult learners. As part of a broader study the inquirer used a combination of two techniques over a period of nine months, namely: Socratic discussion/questioning and Learning Through ...

Histology is a morphologic science in which the structure of the cells, tissues, and organs of the body are examined with a microscope. In the laboratory courses in histology at the School of Medicine of the University at Buffalo, histologic specimens had been used since the late 19th century to ...

In this report we describe our experience in the analytical chemistry curriculum of teaching spectrometer principles and preparing spectroscopy laboratory exercises by means of virtual instruments. The benefits of the intensified preparation of laboratory exercises by virtual instruments will be evaluated with respect to the subsequent handling of real instruments. ...

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether practicing a complex self-care occupation in a contextually relevant environment would enhance the learning and transfer of skill. The design consisted of an acquisition phase, a rest period, and a transfer phase. Fifty-six women were recruited for this study and randomly ...

The objective of this study was to assess the attitudes of emergency medical technicians (EMTs) toward tabletop drills to determine the effect of tabletop simulation on the EMT student perception of disaster preparedness and management. In November 1998 and April 1999, 59 firefighters underwent 260 hours of EMT intermediate level ...

The authors present an integrated approach for the identification of biological threat agents. The methods used have been used extensively in field exercises and during response to incidents of biological terrorism. A diagnostic system, which integrates the clinical diagnosis or medical intelligence with immunodiagnostic tests, rapid gene amplification assays, and ...

A set of physically based exercises is described for illustrating concepts and processes related to fluid movement in porous media. These exercises revolve around a permeameter that costs several dollars to construct and requires no external equipment and no electrical power to operate. The exercises can be used to illustrate ...

Staff response to a code blue can be cultivated when a continuous curriculum for code blue competency is used. This curriculum details ongoing code blue education yet requires only small increments of time for the inservice classes. The curriculum, adaptable to any unit, consists of three components: a unit-specific orientation ...

BACKGROUND: Patients often face medical decisions that involve outcomes that occur and change over time. Survival curves are a promising communication tool for patient decision support because they present information about the probability of an outcome over time in a simple graphic format. However, previous studies of survival curves did ...

Judgment-by-outcomes denotes basing retrospective evaluation of decisions on the valence of their outcomes (success versus failure). Although decisions are typically evaluated in social contexts, so far judgment-by-outcomes has been studied without regard to this context. This study examines the moderating effect of evaluator's identification with the decision maker (the one-of-us-effect) ...

A simple intercomparison of natural radioactivity and radon emanation factor measurements co-ordinated by the Medical Physics Department of the University of Cantabria UC, Spain, has been carried out during 1998 in the framework of the EU Concerted Action ERRICCA (European Research into Radon in Construction Concerted Action). All the measurements ...

The Nuclear Engineering Section of the National Technical University of Athens undertook the organisation of a European building material radon exhalation rate intercomparison exercise in the framework of the European Research into Radon In Construction Concerted Action (ERRICCA). The intercomparison started in June 1998 and it was concluded in February ...

A Web site (http://web2-pc.uncc.edu/cogsci) has been established to support an interdisciplinary course in cognitive science. The modules include introductory reading material, interactive exercises/virtual laboratory, and pointers to existing material on the Web. Our approach to using the Web in support of instruction differs from distance learning initiatives because it is ...

The mouse epididymal sperm aneuploidy (mESA) assay using 3-chromosome fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) was recently developed for assessing the aneugenic potential of chemicals on male germ cells. This study was designed to identify the major technical factors that affect inter-scorer and inter-laboratory variability of the mESA assay. Two laboratories ...

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to determine the easiness, reproducibility, and safety of a laboratory exercise for a drug interaction between furosemide and probenecid. METHODS: From 1995 to 1999 approximately 100 medical students participated in the exercise each year after they gave written informed consent. The students were ...

In summary, the ABS is committed to the competence initiative. Not to do so would be to risk irrelevance. In order for the initiative to succeed, it is clear that the board must partner with specialty societies and most particularly with the American College of Surgeons. That partnership should take ...

The cost of electronic equipment can be a critical barrier to including neurophysiology exercises in biology teaching programs. We describe the construction of a simple and inexpensive AC preamplifier with performance comparable to that of commercial products. The amplifier consists of two integrated circuits in five stages: differential input, fixed ...

In the changing economic times, internists and family physicians are becoming the main performers of the standard exercise test. The education of those noncardiologists who wish to perform exercise testing is quite important. In the new millennium, the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association evidence-based guidelines on exercise testing continue ...

Supporting traumatized employees requires special skills and techniques if it is to be effective. Unfortunately, there is little to inform or guide organizations on how this should be achieved. The present controversy over the use of trauma management systems and debriefing has not been helpful in informing organizations on the ...

Knowledge of cerebral structure and function in its modern form can be traced to the neurone doctrine based largely on the work of Santiago Ramón y Cajal [1852-1934] and his lifelong exploitation of the Golgi method. Cajal openly acknowledged his debt to the neuropsychiatrist Luis Simarro Lacabra [1851-1921] who introduced ...

For years the Division of Radiation Protection (DRP) has participated in exercises, which are required by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to demonstrate our ability to deal with an accident at a nuclear power plant. These demonstrations are defined by objectives and are structured such that they offer little ...

The application of multisurfaced tooth-colored restorations in the posterior dentition is an exercise in risk tolerance when dentin occupies the bulk of the tooth substrate. Part 1 of this article discussed the capricious nature of dentin bonding and acknowledged the prime tenet that clinical success involves more than esthetic realism ...

The quality of any comparison exercise depends critically on the quality. accuracy and fitness for purpose of the comparison samples. The comparisons were designed to move progressively from the testing of the analysis capabilities for relatively simple. aqueous solutions through to the more complex natural matrix materials encountered in the ...

The literature on practicing throughout a life-threatening illness is reviewed and important differences about attitudes toward self-disclosure are understood by noting a division between two perspectives on transference: "one-body" and "two-body" views. The analyst's use of self-disclosure is informed by the prominence given the interpretation of transference as against that ...

Basic surgical skills courses are mandatory for all surgical trainees taking the MRCS examination. An important aspect of these courses is the level of practical skill achieved by junior surgeons attending them. We present a simple knot-tying exercise, which may be used to assess the baseline skill level of trainees ...

In accordance with the phenomenological theory of thermodynamics, we discussed the Magnetocaloric effect of type-I superconductors, which are exposed to a varying magnetic field. It is concluded theoretically that the refrigeration effect is closely associated with demagnetization effect for practical specimens, which is different from the situation for ideal superconductor ...

A Series of comparisons were conducted to test the capabilities of a range of metrological techniques and analytical laboratories engaged in the assay of thorium in the workplace. The results of these exercises are presented together with the decision criteria used to determine whether results are significantly different from the ...

Mass disasters represent a significant challenge for dental personnel who are frequently called upon to provide identifications. Recently-published materials have highlighted the need to prepare such groups for the disaster challenge and to report inadequacies in existing preparation methods with an emphasis on team integration, organization, and the psychological and ...

The application of multisurfaced tooth-colored restorations in the posterior dentition is an exercise in risk tolerance when dentin occupies the bulk of the tooth substrate. Not only is interfacial integrity capricious, but also a recent in vivo study has confirmed that dentin bond strengths deteriorate with time. Although the literature ...

In 1996 and 1997, the Army conducted an exercise to assess the ability to rapidly mobilize the reserve forces. In accordance with Army requirements, each soldier was evaluated to determine if he or she met vision and optical readiness standards. Of the 1,947 individuals processed through the optometry section, 40% ...

A renewed focus has been given to the 3-year-old regulation 21 CFR Part 11, Electronic Records and Electronic Signatures. This paper gives a chronology of the process of an equipment vendor, Zymark Corporation, validating laboratory automation equipment for compliance to the regulation 21 CFR Part 11. Zymark's Tablet Processing Workstation ...

BACKGROUND: Response rates to surveys are declining and this threatens the validity and generalisability of their findings. We wanted to determine whether paper quality influences the response rate to postal surveys METHODS: A postal questionnaire was sent to all members of the British Society of Gynaecological Endoscopy (BSGE). Recipients were ...

Transmyocardial laser revascularization (TMR) is a procedure that is in a state of transition. The purpose of this article is to review the historical aspects of TMR. Important nursing aspects of the thoracotomy and percutaneous approaches are detailed. Outcomes related to the surgical procedure are also discussed. Although the exact ...

This article focuses on aspects of intragenerational and intergenerational equity in the context of a unique policy experiment: the effort of the U.S. government to site a monitored, retrievable storage (MRS) facility for high-level civilian nuclear waste. This process and its outcomes are examined from both normative and subjective perspectives. ...

OBJECTIVES: This study seeks to determine whether there are identifiable differences in patterns of clinical decision-making among family physicians, and whether these patterns persist over time. METHODS: A representative cross-sectional survey of general practice encounters in the Waikato region of New Zealand in 1979-1980 was repeated in 1991-1992. Patterns of ...

The QUASH UE-Project was designed to assess the reliability of normalisation approaches to compensate the influence of natural process affecting the distribution and concentration of contaminants in sediment. The focus of this paper was to test the influence on normalisation procedures of an inorganic matrix using a sample collected in ...

There are strong scientific reasons for holding the broader scope of precautionary approaches to be more consistent with the scientific foundations of rational choice and probability theory than are conventional narrow risk-assessment techniques. The imperatives both of science and precaution can be seen to pull in the same direction. The ...