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We report evaluation of 30 assays’ (17 rapid tests (RDTs) and 13 automated/manual ELISA/CLIA assay (IAs)) clinical performances with 2594 sera collected from symptomatic patients with positive SARS-CoV-2 rRT-PCR on a respiratory sample, and 1996 pre-epidemic serum samples expected to be negative. Only 4 RDT and 3 IAs fitted both specificity (> 98%) and sensitivity (> 90%) criteria according to French recommendations. Serology may offer valuable information during COVID-19 pandemic, but inconsistent performances observed among the 30 commercial assays evaluated, which underlines the importance of independent evaluation before clinical implementation. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10096-021-04232-3.

Engineering undergraduate lab sections are often instructed by undergraduate or graduate teaching assistants (U/GTAs), who also grade lab reports and provide feedback. Although U/GTAs contribute extensively to the assessment of lab reports, their perspectives and understanding of writing pedagogy are largely unknown. U/GTAs are primarily trained as writers in engineering; however, they are often novices in writing knowledge and its pedagogy. The electrical engineering and mechanical engineering programs of Washington State University Vancouver have conducted professional development workshops for the U/GTAs (n=6) who instruct engineering lab courses and/or grade lab reports. The goal of the workshops was to enhance the U/GTAs’ knowledge of writing and lab report evaluation to support and improve engineering undergraduate students’ lab report writing. The workshop contents consisted of 1) lab instructors’ expectations, 2) the fundamentals of lab report writing (rhetorical features of lab reports), and 3) productive feedbacks. The workshops were offered to six U/GTAs from five courses (two sophomore, two junior, and one senior electrical engineering lab courses). In order to identify the overall effectiveness of the workshops, we conducted the survey and focus group with the U/GTAs to investigate their writing background, their understanding of audience awareness, their perspectives and understanding of writing instruction, and their lab report evaluation processes. We also collected the graded lab reports to investigate feedback comments. This paper discusses the U/GTAs’ perspectives and their practices of writing pedagogies in the lab courses. The knowledge generated from this study has provided a direction for refining the professional development workshops for U/GTAs in the present and future.

Compression of sentences in Facebook posts and Twitter is one of the important tasks for automatic summarization of social media text. The task can be formally defined as transformation of sentence into precise form by preserving the original meaning of the sentence. In this paper, we propose an approach for compressing sentences from Facebook English posts by dropping those words who contribute very less importance to the overall meaning of sentences. We develop one parallel corpus of Facebook English posts and corresponding compressed sentences for our research task. We also report evaluation result of our approach through experiments on develop dataset.

When we use code repositories, each commit should include code changes for only a single task and code changes for a single task should not be scattered over multiple commits. There are many studies on the former violation-often referred to as tangled commits- but the latter violation has been out of scope for MSR research. In this paper, we firstly investigate how much and what kinds of inappropriately partitioned commits in Java projects. Then, we propose a simple technique to detect such commits automatically. We also report evaluation results of the proposed technique.

Student response systems (SRSs) have been proven useful for enhancing student engagement and improving learning outcomes. Although many previous studies have found that both instructors and students generally hold positive attitudes toward technology which can increase classroom interaction, continuously maintaining student attention and interest remains a key challenge. The Center for Teaching and Learning Development at National Taiwan University has proactively promoted the use of an SRS since 2011. Two major approaches have been successfully implemented to assist professors in applying the SRS in their classrooms: the adoption of the Zuvio multimedia online interactive system and the implementation of a faculty SRS development group. Based on qualitative data gathered from the faculty SRS development group, this study elucidates four crucial teaching practices of the SRS: (1) designing pre- and post-instruction content comprehension assessments, (2) ensuring participatory learning through guided classroom discussions, (3) combining theory and practice, and (4) implementing group report evaluation participation.

WOS: 000339983000016 This report evaluation of the psychotropic drug usage in Turkey based on the data provided by Intercontinental Marketing Service (IMSHealth), Ministry of Health, Turkish Statistical Institute, Turkish Mental Health Profile. A total of 14.24 millions units of antidepressants were used in 2003. By increasing 162%, annual antidepressant usage reached 37.35 millions units by the end of 2012. Antipsychotic drug usage increased by 71% during the last 5 years, from 7.20 millions units in 2005 to 12.32 millions as of the end of 2012. The total number of prescriptions including an antidepressant was 18.14 millions in 2007, by increasing 50% in the last 5 years, it reached 26.60 millions in 2012. The total number of prescriptions including any antipsychotic drug increased from 3.92 millions in 2007 to 5.76 millions in 2012, increasing by 46.7%. In the worst case scenario considering concurrent psychiatric disorders, prevalence of disorders requiring antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs could be as high as 20% and 5%, respectively. The calculated frequency (prescription/population) was much higher than the worst case scenario estimates. In 2007, family physicans and practitioners, psychiatrists, neurologists, and specialists of other disciplines prescribed 33, 37, 20, and 11% of all antidepressants, respectively. In 2012, they prescribed 48, 31, 14, and 7% of all antidepressants, respectively. The first time antidepressant prescriptions in 2012 were done at the rate of 37, 34, 19, and 11% by above mentioned specialists, respectively. In 2007, family physicans and practitioners, psychiatrists, neurologists, and specialists of other disciplines prescribed 18, 67, 13, and 3% of all antipsychotics, respectively. In 2012, the same set of specialisations prescribed 21, 63, 14, and 2% of antipsychotics, respectively. The "first time" antipsychotics were prescribed at the rate of 6, 73, 19, and 3% by above mentioned order of specialists, respectively. In conclusion, the data suggest that there was an unnecessary and/or excessive prescribing of psychotropic agents. The increase is not related to increased population and/or prevalance of psychiatric disorders. The numbers of first time prescriptions suggest that non-psychiatrists diagnose and initiate treatment for psychiatric disorders. This requires re-evaluation of authorization to presribe psychotropic agents.

We have shown previously that technical performance score (TPS) is strongly associated with early mortality and major postoperative adverse events in a diverse group of patients. We now report evaluation of the validity of TPS in predicting late outcomes in the same group of patients.Patients who underwent surgery between June 1, 2005 and June 30, 2006 were included. The TPS were assigned based on discharge echocardiograms and certain clinical criteria as previously described. Follow-up data for up to 4 years were retrospectively collected. Cox proportional hazards models were used for analysis.A total of 679 patients were included in the analysis. One hundred twenty-three (18%) were neonates, 213 (31%) infants, 291 (435) children, and 52 (8%) adults. Four hundred ninety-one (72%) were in low-risk adjustment in congenital heart surgery (RACHS; 1 to 3), 109 (16%) in high risk (4 to 6), and 27 (4%) were less than 18 years and could not be assigned a RACHS score. Three hundred thirty-one (48%) had an optimal TPS, 283 (42%) adequate, 61 (9%) inadequate, and 4 (1%) could not be scored. There were 34 (5%) late deaths and 149 (22%) late unplanned reinterventions. By univariate analysis, age, RACHS-1 categories, and TPS were all significantly associated with late reintervention (p0.001 for all), while TPS and RACHS-1 were significant factors for mortality (p0.001). On multivariable modeling, inadequate TPS was strongly associated with both late mortality (p = 0.001; HR [hazard ratio] 3.8, CI [confidence interval] 1.7 to 8.4) and late reintervention (p = 0.002, HR 2.1, CI 1.3 to 3.3) after controlling for RACHS-1 and age.The TPS has a strong association with late outcomes across a wide range of age and disease complexity and may serve as a tool to identify patients who are at a higher risk for late reintervention or mortality.

Minimally invasive surgical implant placement has numerous advantages over conventional open flap technique. A series of cases is described here explaining the use of the tissue punch with discussion of the complications and management.

Aim and objective: To validate the Caring Assessment Report Evaluation Q-sort questionnaire in the residential aged-care setting. Based on this determination, to conclude with what degree of confidence the questionnaire can be used to determine the ranking of the importance of caring behaviours amongst aged-care nurses and residents in residential aged-care. Background: Perceptions of caring may be context specific. Caring in residential aged-care may stand in contrast to the sense of caring understood and practiced in other settings. Design: Self-administered survey. Methods: Residents from three not-for-profit aged-care facilities, across both high-care (nursing-home) and low-care (hostel care) were surveyed relying on the Caring Assessment Report Evaluation Q-sort questionnaire. A sub-sample of registered and enrolled nurses working in residential aged-care and registered with the Nurses & Midwives e-cohort study completed the same survey. Results: Although the Caring Assessment Report Evaluation Q-sort questionnaire showed good internal consistency for the sample of nurses, the results for the residents were more erratic. Both groups displayed large ranges for the inter-item correlations. The results of the Mann–Whitney U-test indicated that the nurses rated the Comforts, Anticipates and Trusting relationship as significantly more important than the residents. Both groups rated the Explains and facilitates subscale as least important. All subscales, however, received median scores greater than, or equal to, six (seven-point, Likert scale) indicating that all were considered important overall. Conclusion: Based on poor Cronbach's alpha coefficients, negative inter-item correlations and qualitative observations, without further development within the residential aged-care facility the free response format version of the Caring Assessment Report Evaluation Q-sort may not be an appropriate measure to use with residential aged-care residents. More research needs to be conducted into how residents and nurses are interpreting the items in the Caring Assessment Report Evaluation Q-sort. Relevance to clinical practice: There will always remain a need for nurses to enact behaviours that are meaningful to residents (and patients generally).

Accurate indoor localization has long been an objective of the ubiquitous computing research community, and numerous indoor localization solutions based on 802.11, Bluetooth, ultrasound and infrared technologies have been proposed. This paper presents the first accurate GSM indoor localization system that achieves median within floor accuracy of 4 m in large buildings and is able to identify the floor correctly in up to 60% of the cases and is within 2 floors in up to 98% of the cases in tall multi-floor buildings. We report evaluation results of two case studies conducted over a course of several years, with data collected from 6 buildings in 3 cities across North America. The key idea that makes accurate GSM-based indoor localization possible is the use of wide signal-strength fingerprints. In addition to the 6-strongest cells traditionally used in the GSM standard, the wide fingerprint includes readings from additional cells that are strong enough to be detected, but are too weak to be used for efficient communication. We further show that selecting a subset of highly relevant channels for fingerprinting matching out of all available channels, further improves the localization accuracy.

Objective : The aim of the study was to determine the effectiveness of a care workshop in improving caring behaviors and job involvement among nurses. Methods : A quasi-experimental designed study was used in which 338 nurses, on a hospital in Taiwan were surveyed before and after a care workshop. The intervention consisted: (1) formal educational sessions twice a week for six weeks, (2) a loving care mentorship activity, and (3) posts of exemplary caring behavior and stories. The socio-demographics, the Modified Caring Assessment Report Evaluation Q-sort, and the Modified Job Involvement Instrument were used. Descriptive statistics were analyzed to evaluate participant demographic characteristics. Paired t tests were used to determine the effects of a care workshop on caring behaviors and job involvement of nurses. Results : The participants’ ages ranged from 20 to 45 years, with a mean of 30.67 years (SD = 5.86). Nurse caring behavior and job involvement were negatively correlated on the pretest ( p < .01) and positively correlated on 6-week posttest ( p < .01). Nurses exhibited more caring behaviors after the intervention than did nurses before the intervention ( p < .001). Increased job involvement scores were observed after the intervention compared with the scores before the intervention ( p < .001). Conclusions : The findings of this study, suggest that a care workshop intervention focused at nurses can be effective in improving nurses caring knowledge and attitudes regarding patient-center care and in increasing job involvement among nurses. Further research is required to explore the long-term efficacy of the intervention in the organization.

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) released a groundbreaking 2010 report, Evaluation of Biomarkers and Surrogate Endpoints in Chronic Disease. Key recommendations included a harmonized scientific process and a general framework for biomarker evaluation with three interrelated steps: (1) Analytical validation -- is the biomarker measurement accurate? (2) Qualification -- is the biomarker associated with the clinical endpoint of concern? (3) Utilization -- what is the specific context of the proposed use?

In the first part, this article review the accepted knowledge of type 1 diabetes, its physiopathology, the importance of cytokines and the induction of apoptosis and necrosis during its evolution. Throughout this work we describe in more detail the inhibition of this mechanism of cell destruction by acetyl-L-carnitine and nicotinamide. We also explain the complementary action of their association which gave support to the treatment. In the second part, we present the complete evolution of 8 children treated with the oral medication of 50 mg/Kg of acetyl-L-carnitine plus 25 mg/Kg of nicotinamide during 5 years. We published the first 2 years of evolution under treatment in these children (JPEM 26: 347, 2013). The children had positive auto-antibodies and were consanguineous of type 1 diabetic patients. The intravenous glucose tolerance test (IVGTT) showed a first phase of insulin release minor of 48 μU to enter in the protocol, and the same test was used for children evolution. Seven out eight children stopped the treatment because they normalized the metabolic parameters and no one became diabetic. All children increased the insulin response to IVGTT (between 1.44 to 5.69 times). Along the treatment, seven of these eight children turned their positive auto-antibodies into negatives.

Morning report is an important conference for medical education, but direct comparisons of approaches to morning report have only rarely been reported.During the 2003 to 2004 academic year, we conducted both our traditional single-learner-level morning report and a new highly interactive multiple-learner-level format. Attendees were rotating students, residents, and faculty on the inpatient general medicine services.We conducted anonymous surveys of participants to record their evaluations of the morning report formats. We received evaluations from 293 (60%) of 490 students, residents, and faculty. Students, 1st-year residents, and faculty preferred the mixed-learner model significantly more than did senior residents. Overall, more than 80% of participants rated the interactive multilevel format as good or very good when asked about content, discussion quality, level, and usefulness.An interactive morning report involving learners across multiple levels was well-received and has several educational benefits, with a greater emphasis on collaborative case discussion and active learning. Education leaders should remain open to experimenting with even the most well-established institutional traditions as they continuously reevaluate the effectiveness of teaching conferences.

Transliteration is used to phonetically translate proper names and technical terms especially from languages in Roman alphabets to languages in non-Roman alphabets such as from English to Korean, Japanese, and Chinese. Because transliterations are usually representative index terms for documents, proper handling of the transliterations is important for an effective information retrieval system. However, there are limitations on handling transliterations depending on dictionary lookup, because transliterations are usually not registered in the dictionary. For this reason, many researchers have been trying to overcome the problem using machine transliteration. In this paper, we propose a method for improving machine transliteration using an ensemble of three different transliteration models. Because one transliteration model alone has limitation on reflecting all possible transliteration behaviors, several transliteration models should be complementary used in order to achieve a high-performance machine transliteration system. This paper describes a method about transliteration production using the several machine transliteration models and transliteration ranking with web data and relevance scores given by each transliteration model. We report evaluation results for our ensemble transliteration model and experimental results for its impact on IR effectiveness. Machine transliteration tests on English-to-Korean transliteration and English-to-Japanese transliteration show that our proposed method achieves 78-80% word accuracy. Information retrieval tests on KTSET and NTCIR-1 test collection show that our transliteration model can improve the performance of an information retrieval system about 10-34%.

The accuracy of a lead screening questionnaire in predicting elevated blood lead levels was examined in a pediatric practice in a rural part of New York state. A retrospective chart review was used to collect data on children ages 9 to 24 months who presented for well-child visits. Children with both questionnaire and lead level results available in the chart were included in the study (n = 171). The mean blood lead level among all children was 1.6 microg/dl (median = 2.0 microg/dl, range 0 to 24 microg/dl). Four children (2.3%) had elevated lead levels (greater than 10 microg/dl), with levels for two of these children being greater than 20 microg/dl. Although our lead screening questionnaire was expanded from the standard 1991 CDC questionnaire by the inclusion of six additional items, it was not especially useful in predicting elevated blood lead levels above 10 microg/dl. However, the questionnaire exhibited some utility in predicting marked elevations in blood lead levels (over 20 microg/dl). Although results in other geographic areas might differ, the lead questionnaire may have value by enhancing parents' awareness of potential lead hazards in their children's environment and may prove to be more useful in areas of high risk to lead exposure.

A time-division-multiplexing passive optical network (TDM-PON) accommodating a time-division duplex (TDD)-based mobile fronthaul (MFH) contributes to the realization of a low-cost network. However, there are two issues with the TDM-PON. The first is the limited number of optical network units (ONUs) that can be accommodated because the statistical multiplexing effect is weaker than with the accommodation of a conventional MFH. The other issue is the discovery process for registering new ONUs. While operating the discovery process, the signals of the registered ONUs cannot be forwarded in the optical link, and a huge latency is added to the registered ONUs. We have proposed a technique for the effective utilization of unallocated intervals, which certainly occur in optical links. Secondary service signals are forwarded in the unallocated intervals to increase the number of ONUs. The discovery process also operates in the unallocated intervals to avoid any latency increase. In this paper, we report evaluation results obtained using the numerical simulations.

Here, we report evaluation results of implementing a health promotion program for individuals with serious mental illnesses. Healthy Amistad aimed to address four behaviors: physical inactivity, nutrition choices, smoking, and seeking access to health care. The evaluation employed a mixed-method study design to assess changes in the health of individuals in the program. Process measures assessed the implementation of the program. A pre-post examination was used to compare data associated with behaviors. Data sources included the 2008 and 2009 annual surveys, clinical data, interviews for staff, interviews with members, and an on-site observation. Participants were staff and members of Amistad. Those involved with the Peer Patient Navigator lost weight; new physically active activities were being offered. A new salad bar and healthier menu was offered in the Amistad cafeteria. Interviews revealed that 11 members lost a total of 150 pounds. The percentage reporting visits to an emergency room more than once in the last 6 months decreased from 58% to 37%, the percentage calling the crisis line less often increased from 75% to 86%, and the percentage reporting that they had become more satisfied with their life since joining Amistad improved from 76% to 88%. Individuals with serious mental illnesses are benefiting from programs that focus on the mitigation of disease states manifested from issues with physical inactivity, nutrition, smoking, and health access. Evaluation of the Healthy Amistad program has shown a positive influence.

At the request of the United States (U.S.) government, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) assembled a team of 20 senior safety experts to review the regulatory framework for the safety of operating nuclear power plants in the United States. This review focused on the effectiveness of the regulatory functions implemented by the NRC and on its commitment to nuclear safety and continuous improvement. One suggestion resulting from that review was that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) incorporate lessons learned from periodic safety reviews (PSRs) performed in other countries as an input to the NRC’s assessment processes. In the U.S., commercial nuclear power plants (NPPs) are granted an initial 40-year operating license, which may be renewed for additional 20-year periods, subject to complying with regulatory requirements. The NRC has established a framework through its inspection, and operational experience processes to ensure the safe operation of licensed nuclear facilities on an ongoing basis. In contrast, most other countries do not impose a specific time limit on the operating licenses for NPPs, they instead require that the utility operating the plant perform PSRs, typically at approximately 10-year intervals, to assure continued safe operation until the next assessment. The staff contracted with Argonne National Laboratory (Argonne) to perform a pilot review of selected translated PSR assessment reports and related documentation from foreign nuclear regulatory authorities to identify any potential new regulatory insights regarding license renewal-related topics and NPP operating experience (OpE). A total of 14 PSR assessment documents from 9 countries were reviewed. For all of the countries except France, individual reports were provided for each of the plants reviewed. In the case of France, three reports were provided that reviewed the performance assessment of thirty-four 900-MWe reactors of similar design commissioned between 1978 and 1988. All of the reports reviewed were the regulator’s assessment of the PSR findings rather than the original PSR report, and all but one were English translations from the original language. In these reviews, it was found that most of the countries base their regulatory guidance to some extent (and often to a large extent) on U.S. design codes and standards, NRC regulatory guidance, and U.S. industry guidance. In addition, many of the observed operational technical issues and OpE events reported for U.S. reactors are also cited in the PSR reports. The PSR reports also identified a number of potential technical material/component performance issues and OpE events that are not commonly reported for U.S. plants.

Interoperability of engineering tools, which is important for engineering efficiency, requires the openness of the tools for the import and/or export of engineering data. A metric to assess the openness of an engineering tool has been presented recently at IEEE ETFA 2012. This contribution reflects the methodology and focuses on the initial empirical assessment of the method with data from industrial practice, i.e., the comparison of openness evaluation of well-established engineering tools. The authors report evaluation results and discuss lessons learnt to guide improving the openness of automation tools for supporting more efficient engineering processes. Major results are: the measurement method has been found useful and usable in practice and pointed out strengths and weaknesses in 15 well-established engineering tools from 4 tool categories.

Evaluation and management services are important aspects of interventional pain management; however, significant confusion continues as to proper coding and documentation in this field. In addition, recent developments in the area of evaluation and management services over the last few months are of significance to interventional pain physicians. Two major developments in the year 2000 include a warning from the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) with regards to misused codes, and issue of new draft evaluation and management guidelines to improve physician acceptance by simplification. The HCFA has sent letters to all physicians in the United States on June 1, 2000, with information that it will be focusing this year on two current procedural terminology (CPT) codes used to report evaluation and management services - 99214 and 99233. The HCFA contends that these codes accounted for a significant portion of coding errors in the last two audits and that documentation for many of these services was found to be sufficient only to support services more appropriately described by CPT codes 99212 and 99231 resulting in downcoding by two levels by HCFA and implying that physicians are upcoding by two levels. The second issue relates to the release of yet another version of the new draft evaluation and management guidelines by HCFA in June 2000. These were preceded by an article by the administrator of HCFA, Nancy-Ann Min DeParle, which was published in JAMA. The new guidelines are purported to eliminate "bullets" and "shading"; reduce the need for counting the "elements"; introduce the first specialty-specific vignettes; and include a nationwide study of the new proposed guidelines.

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY This study was performed to determine the gastrointestinal symptoms, and endoscopic and histopathological findings in patients on maintenance haemodialysis. STUDY DESIGN Nintey-two patients on haemodialysis were enrolled in this study and 100 consecutive dyspeptic patients referred for endoscopy served as controls. They were interviewed to obtain information regarding GI symptoms and endoscopy was performed and biopsies were taken from antral mucosa for histopathological evaluation and helicobacter identification. RESULTS Prevalence of GI symptoms in the dialysis group was extremely common (77%); with more cases in those with periods of dialysis longer than 6 months. Endoscopically observed of hiatus hernia was present in 27 patients in the dialysis group versus 14 in the control group (P

In this paper, we present a framework which harvests grassroots-generated data from the Web (e.g., reviews, blogs), extracts latent information from these data, and provides a multimodal interface for review browsing and inquiring. A prescription-drug domain system is implemented under this framework. Patient-provided drug reviews were collected from various health-related forums, from which significant side effects correlated to each drug type were identified with association algorithms. A multimodal web-based spoken dialogue system was implemented to allow users to inquire about drugs and correlated side effects as well as browsing the reviews obtained from the Web. We report evaluation results on speech recognition, parse coverage and system response.

A lithium iron phosphate battery has superior rapid charging performance and is suitable for electric vehicles designed to be charged frequently and driven short distances between charges. This paper describes the results of testing conducted to evaluate the capacity loss characteristics of a newly developed lithium iron phosphate battery. These results confirmed that, in the assumed use temperature range of the battery, the degree of storage capacity loss (referred to below as “calendar capacity loss”) over 120 days was approximately 4% and the degree of capacity loss on cycle test over 500 cycles was approximately 6%.

Key components of the nuclear fuel cycle are short-term storage and long-term disposal of nuclear waste. The latter encompasses the immobilization of used nuclear fuel (UNF) and radioactive waste streams generated by various phases of the nuclear fuel cycle, and the safe and permanent disposition of these waste forms in geological repository environments. The engineered barrier system (EBS) plays a very important role in the long-term isolation of nuclear waste in geological repository environments. EBS concepts and their interactions with the natural barrier are inherently important to the long-term performance assessment of the safety case where nuclear waste disposition needs to be evaluated for time periods of up to one million years. Making the safety case needed in the decision-making process for the recommendation and the eventual embracement of a disposal system concept requires a multi-faceted integration of knowledge and evidence-gathering to demonstrate the required confidence level in a deep geological disposal site and to evaluate long-term repository performance. The focus of this report is the following: (1) Evaluation of EBS in long-term disposal systems in deep geologic environments with emphasis on the multi-barrier concept; (2) Evaluation of key parameters in the characterization of EBS performance; (3) Identification of key knowledge gaps and uncertainties; and (4) Evaluation of tools and modeling approaches for EBS processes and performance. The above topics will be evaluated through the analysis of the following: (1) Overview of EBS concepts for various NW disposal systems; (2) Natural and man-made analogs, room chemistry, hydrochemistry of deep subsurface environments, and EBS material stability in near-field environments; (3) Reactive Transport and Coupled Thermal-Hydrological-Mechanical-Chemical (THMC) processes in EBS; and (4) Thermal analysis toolkit, metallic barrier degradation mode survey, and development of a Disposal Systems Evaluation Framework (DSEF). This report will focus on the multi-barrier concept of EBS and variants of this type which in essence is the most adopted concept by various repository programs. Empasis is given mainly to the evaluation of EBS materials and processes through the analysis of published studies in the scientific literature of past and existing repository research programs. Tool evaluations are also emphasized, particularly on THCM processes and chemical equilibria. Although being an increasingly important aspect of NW disposition, short-term or interim storage of NW will be briefly discussed but not to the extent of the EBS issues relevant to disposal systems in deep geologic environments. Interim storage will be discussed in the report Evaluation of Storage Concepts FY10 Final Report (Weiner et al. 2010).

The purpose of this study is to establish the method for decisions on proper inspection intervals needed to maintain reliability of aircraft structures using the parameter values estimated from inspection results in service by Bayesian theorem. Attention is focused on only fatigue damage in this study, and inference is made for uncertain factors related to the probability of detection and initiation of cracks. It is demonstrated that the reliability is possibly kept above a predetermined level, by updating inspection schedule according to the already performed inspections. Applying the model to the economical consideration for maintenance procedures, a preliminary study is attempted to evaluate the effect of nonrepaired crack length. Numerical examples are carried out to demonstrate the application of the present analysis.

An important goal of the US DOE reactor development program is to conceptualize advanced safety design features for a demonstration Sodium Fast Reactor (SFR). The treatment of severe accidents is one of the key safety issues in the design approach for advanced SFR systems. It is necessary to develop an in-depth understanding of the risk of severe accidents for the SFR so that appropriate risk management measures can be implemented early in the design process. This report presents the results of a review of the SFR features and phenomena that directly influence the sequence of events during a postulated severe accident. The report identifies the safety features used or proposed for various SFR designs in the US and worldwide for the prevention and/or mitigation of Core Disruptive Accidents (CDA). The report provides an overview of the current SFR safety approaches and the role of severe accidents. Mutual understanding of these design features and safety approaches is necessary for future collaborations between the US and its international partners as part of the GEN IV program. The report also reviews the basis for an integrated safety approach to severe accidents for the SFR that reflects the safety design knowledge gained in the more » US during the Advanced Liquid Metal Reactor (ALMR) and Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) programs. This approach relies on inherent reactor and plant safety performance characteristics to provide additional safety margins. The goal of this approach is to prevent development of severe accident conditions, even in the event of initiators with safety system failures previously recognized to lead directly to reactor damage. « less

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We report evaluation of a technique that may be applied to estimate the compliance of atherosclerotic intima. This estimation can help in identification of the type of plaque. It can also be applied in our finite element software, developed to simulate coronary angioplasty. The software accepts segmented intravascular ultrasound images together with each segment's material characteristics. It then simulates the response of the diseased artery, to help choose optimal balloons or stents and also to improve the pressurization strategy. The technique is based on formulating the compliance of two materials in series. A two-layer and two single-layer phantoms were produced to verify the validity of this formulation in practice. The outer layer of the two-layer phantom is chosen with characteristics similar to a real artery. The harder inner layer imitates the intimal thickening. A balloon deployment testing machine, non-compliant balloons and a laser measurement unit were used in experiments.

灸実技において, 学生の艾〓作りへの評価と動機づけの関係を検討した。方法としては, 同一学習者に対して, 機器を用いて燃焼温度を測定し自己評価 (内発的フィードバック) する練習 (測定時) と, 用いない (外発的フィードバック) で練習 (非測定時) する2種類の練習方法を, 同一実技時間内で課した。動機づけの評価としては, SD法, 評定尺度法, そして感想文で行った。その結果, 非測定時に比べ測定時では, 動機づけを強くする傾向がみられたが有意な差はみられなかった。また, 動機づけの要因として, 測定時では燃焼温度が大きく作用すると考えられた。

The skilled machinists evaluate exactly the tool changing time from observational information in cutting process. Such machining know-how gained through long experience may be regarded in a sense as fuzzy object. Recently, the study on the model representation of this know-how are progressed for making use of automatic working. In this paper, a rational way for the constructed model of evaluating the tool changing time is discussed. The proposed model gives the value of sharpness grade by weighing the observational information on fuzzy measure which the machinist's subjective characteristics in grading the tool changing time are identified. From the applications of model using fuzzy integral, it was found that the output of the model agreed approximately with the machinist's evaluation, and that the model became a very useful method for the monitoring by the in-process measurement.

We describe an implemented generator for a spoken dialogue system that follows the 'overgeneration and ranking' approach. We find that overgeneration based on bottom-up chart generation is well-suited to a) model phenomena such as alignment and variation in dialogue, and b) address robustness issues in the face of imperfect generation input. We report evaluation results of a first user study involving 20 subjects.

Radiographs play an important role in assessment of both the location and the typing of supernumerary teeth. In general, periapical, occlusal, and/or panoramic radiographs are sufficient for providing the information required by the clinician. These modalities, however, do not provide detailed information concerning the 3-dimensional relationship between supernumerary or ectopically impacted teeth and adjacent structures. This case report discusses the value of computerized tomography (CT) for evaluation of the root relationships of supernumerary teeth located palatally to maxillary permanent central incisors. CT accurately demonstrated the relationship between the supernumerary teeth and the permanent tooth roots.

This paper presents a statistical approach to developing multimodal recognition systems and, in particular, to integrating the posterior probabilities of parallel input signals involved in the multimodal system. We first derive the performance bounds of multimodal recognition probabilities, and identify the primary factors that influence multimodal recognition performance. We then develop a technique, a members-teams-committee (MTC) recognition approach, designed to optimize accurate recognition during the multimodal integration process. We evaluate these methods using Quickset, a speech/gesture multimodal system, and report evaluation results based on an empirical corpus collected with Quickset. From an architectural perspective, the integration technique presented offers enhanced robustness. It also is premised on more realistic assumptions than previous multimodal systems using semantic fusion. From a methodological standpoint, the evaluation techniques that we describe provide a valuable tool for evaluating multimodal systems.