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Introduction: Reported increases in surgical wait times for cancer have intensified the focus on this quality of health care indicator and have created a very public, concerted effort by providers to decrease wait times for cancer surgeryin Ontario. Delays in access to health care are multifactorial and their measurement from existing administrative databases can lack pertinent detail. The purpose of our study was to use a real-time surgery-booking software program to examine surgical wait times at a single centre.Methods: The real-time wait list management system Axcess.Rx has been used exclusively by the department of urology at the Kingston General Hospital to book all nonemergency surgery for 4 years. We reviewed the length of time from the decision to perform surgery to the actual date of surgery for patients in our group urological practice. Variables thought to be potentially important in predicting wait time were also collected, including the surgeon’s assessment of urgency, the type of procedure (i.e., diagnostic, minor cancer, major cancer, minor benign, major benign), age and sex of the patient, inpatient versus outpatient status and year of surgery. Analysis was planned a priori to determine factors that affected wait time by using multivariate analysis to analyze variables that were significant in univariate analysis.Results: There were 960 operations for cancer and 1654 for benign conditions performed during the evaluation period. The overall mean wait time was 36 days for cancer and 47 days for benign conditions, respectively. The mean wait time for cancer surgery reached a nadir in 2004 at 29.9 days and subsequently increased every year, reaching 56 days in 2007. In comparison, benign surgery reached a nadir wait time of 33.7 days in 2004 and in 2007 reached 74 days at our institution. Multivariate analysis revealed that the year of surgery was still a significant predictor of wait time. Urgency score, type of procedure and inpatient versus outpatient status were also predictive of wait time.Conclusion: The application of a prospectively collected data set is an effective and important tool to measure and subsequently examine surgical wait times. This tool has been essential to the accurate assessment of the effect of resource allocation on wait times for priority and nonpriority surgical programs within a discipline. Such tools are necessary to more fully assess and follow wait times at an institution or across a region.

Two basic types of interferometer, a point diffraction interferometer (PDI) and a lateral shearing interferometer (LSI) suitable for operation in the extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) wavelength region, are described. To address the challenges of wavefront measurement with an accuracy of 0.1 nm rms, we present a calibration method for the PDI that places a mask with two large windows at the image plane of the illumination point light source and a general approach to deriving the phase-shift algorithm series that eliminates the undesired zeroth-order effect in the LSI. These approaches to improving the measurement accuracy were experimentally verified by the wavefront measurements of a Schwarzschild-type EUV projection lens.

1-(1-naphthalenecarboxy)-n-(p-cyano benzenecarboxy)oxaalkanes (1NPnCN, n = 1–6) as fluorescent sensors by exciplex emission for metal ions were synthesized. we investigated the relationship between the length of the polyether chain and the metal ion recognition of 1NPnCN (n = 1–6). Changes in the fluorescence spectra of 1NPnCN (n = 1–4) were not observed by the addition of calcium and barium salts. However, the spectra of 1NPnCN (n = 5, 6) were changed.

4625 Background: Androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) has been shown to be effective in advanced forms of prostate cancer as it is generally androgen sensitive. ADT is being used for patients with cl...

1,n -Bis(1-naphthylcarboxy)oxaalkanes (1NPnN, n = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) as fluorescent sensors by excimer emission for metal ions were synthesized, and the complexation of 1NPnN with alkali and alkaline earth metal ions in acetonitrile was investigated. Alkaline earth metal cations suppress or enhance the fluorescence remarkably, depending on the cation size and the length of polyether chain.

In phase-shifting point diffraction interferometry (PS/PDI), a pinhole with a diameter of 34 nm is necessary to measure a wave-front aberration of extreme ultraviolet projection optics of numerical aperture (NA) 0.20. However, it is extremely difficult to process such a small pinhole, and light transmission through the pinhole becomes too low. Here, the diameter of a pinhole is optimized, together with the thickness of a Ta membrane, for a converging wave of NA 0.20 with no aberration so that the difference between a wave front produced by the pinhole and that of a spherical wave is minimized. On that condition, the optimum values are a diameter of 50 nm and a thickness of 200 nm. For these values, behaviors are examined in real cases, including focal point shifts and aberrations with incident light. Astigmatism in the aberrations has the most impact on a wave-front error, and a 0°–90° astigmatism (Z5) coefficient in the FRINGE Zernike polynomials of test optics is required to be less than 50 mλ to use th...

A narrow-linewidth semiconductor laser system at 780 nm wavelength was developed, with frequency locked to the saturation absorption resonance frerquency of rubidium ( 87Rb). Optical feedback from an external Fabry-Perot cavity was employed to reduce the linewidth of the laser. The third derivative of the saturated absorption spectrum in 87Rb was used as a frequency demodulator for frequency locking, for which the Zeeman modulation was employed to keep the output power and frequency unmodulated. The minimum of the square root of the Allan variance was 2.1×10-12 at the integration time of 300 s. The full linewidth at half maximum of the field spectrum was measured to be narrower than 170 kHz. A computer-control program was developed for automatic frequency locking to the 87Rb line.

A monitoring method for landslide activity by using acoustic emission (AE) was developed. This technique was applied to an insitu slope failure test, where AE was observed with the aid of newly developed wave guides during the ground movement. Using high frequency waves, background noise is effectively eliminated, and the ground movement can be monitored by this method. Results of the test show that AE event rate can be used for monitoring the small deformation of the ground.

Tunnel blasting causes several undesirable effects, for example, overbreak at the perimeter and damage to or loosening of the remaining rock at the perimeter. Notched blast hole technique is sometimes employed in order to minimize these undesirable effects.Model blast tests were conducted in order to simulate the propagation of blast cracks from the notched holes. Through the tests, the following conclusions were summarized.(1) Notching of blast holes can initiate blast cracks from the notch tips.(2) The fracture plane from the notch tip is rough when the hole is loaded with high explosive detonation. It is smooth when the hole is loaded with low explosive combustion gas pressure.(3) When the notched holes are used as perimeter blast holes, underbreak can be reduced remarkably.