A transatlantic comparative study of acute dysphagia services

This was the first study to compare acute dysphagia service provision directly between the UK and the US. It examined variations in acute dysphagia services between the UK and the US, determined clinicians’ perceptions of their own service and that of their transatlantic counterparts, and elicited the reason for variation. An online survey was distributed to randomly-allocated teaching hospitals in the UK and the US, and speech and language therapists working with acute dysphagia responded anonymously via an automated system. Content analysis was employed to convert free-text responses to numeric data, and then this and existing numeric responses were subjected to descriptive statistical analysis. Variability was high, with the US having on average 0.95 whole time equivalent more clinicians per hospital than the UK. This resulted in an increased number of new patients examined and increased frequency of review of existing patients compared to the UK. In contrast, the UK had significantly increased waiting times with no patient being assessed on the same day as referral (compared to 63.6% of US responses). Notable variation was also seen in objective or instrumental assessment, with most US patients receiving videofluoroscopy or fiberoptic endoscopic evaluation of swallowing (compared to only one UK hospital). Finance was found to be at the root of the variation. However, the more extensive US service was found to be more cost-effective

Key technology issues for space robotic systems

Robotics has become a key technology consideration for the Space Station project to enable enhanced crew productivity and to maximize safety. There are many robotic functions currently being studied, including Space Station assembly, repair, and maintenance as well as satellite refurbishment, repair, and retrieval. Another area of concern is that of providing ground based experimenters with a natural interface that they might directly interact with their hardware onboard the Space Station or ancillary spacecraft. The state of the technology is such that the above functions are feasible; however, considerable development work is required for operation in this gravity-free vacuum environment. Furthermore, a program plan is evolving within NASA that will capitalize on recent government, university, and industrial robotics research and development (R and D) accomplishments. A brief summary is presented of the primary technology issues and physical examples are provided of the state of the technology for the initial operational capability (IOC) system as well as for the eventual final operational capability (FOC) Space Station

Solar Sources of Interplanetary Magnetic Clouds Leading to Helicity Prediction

This study identifies the solar origins of magnetic clouds that are observed at 1 AU and predicts the helical handedness of these clouds from the solar surface magnetic fields. We started with the magnetic clouds listed by the Magnetic Field Investigation (MFI) team supporting NASA's WIND spacecraft in what is known as the MFI table and worked backwards in time to identify solar events that produced these clouds. Our methods utilize magnetograms from the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) instrument on the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft so that we could only analyze MFI entries after the beginning of 2011. This start date and the end date of the MFI table gave us 37 cases to study. Of these we were able to associate only eight surface events with clouds detected by WIND at 1 AU. We developed a simple algorithm for predicting the cloud helicity which gave the correct handedness in all eight cases. The algorithm is based on the conceptual model that an ejected flux tube has two magnetic origination points at the positions of the strongest radial magnetic field regions of opposite polarity near the places where the ejected arches end at the solar surface. We were unable to find events for the remaining 29 cases: lack of a halo or partial halo CME in an appropriate time window, lack of magnetic and/or filament activity in the proper part of the solar disk, or the event was too far from disk center. The occurrence of a flare was not a requirement for making the identification but in fact flares, often weak, did occur for seven of the eight cases.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures, 2 table

Real Business Cycles and the Lucas Paradigm

When the Lucas paradigm is generalized to include real effects, the effects of real factors and monetary factors on the business cycle are always interrelated. Furthermore, in such models monetary factors can affect the long-run behavior or real output, contrary to the commonly held view that they can't. Real business cycle models and Lucas-type models are different paradigms not in the sense of real versus monetary, but in the interrelation- ships between real and monetary factors intrinsic to the Lucas paradigm as contrasted to the dichotomy between real and monetary factors implied by the real business cycle literature.