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Phenomenon: While part-time clinical work options are popular for physicians, part-time residency training is uncommon. Some residency training programs have offered trainees the option to complete their training on a modified schedule in the past. These part-time tracks often involved extending training in order to complete equivalent hours on a part-time basis. Having experience with trainees in such programs, we sought to explore the impact of completing residency training part-time on the professional and private lives of physicians. Approach: Between 2019 and 2020, we conducted interviews with physicians who completed portions of their residency training part-time between 1995 and 2005 in our institution's pediatrics, combined medicine-pediatrics, and family medicine programs. Findings: Seven female physicians who completed at least some portion of residency part-time were interviewed. To better characterize their experiences, we chose phenomenology as our analytic framework. Members of the research team independently coded each interview and met to resolve conflicts. Codes were then combined and discussed to determine four overarching themes as reasons and benefits of part-time training: The pursuit of extended-time training, logistics, effects on career trajectory, and wellness. These themes highlighted the utility of part-time training and the need for programmatic support to ensure their success. Insights: Based on our findings, adaptability for training and a sense of agency from their part-time experiences persisted throughout interviewees' careers. Each felt empowered to make career choices that fit their personal and professional needs. These findings suggest further investigation into the benefits of offering time-variable training in residency programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The knowledge of earth pressure concepts plays a major role to design a retaining wall. The most traditional pseudo-static methodology as proposed by Mononobe–Okabe gives the direct approximation of earth pressure in seismic condition. This paper utilised the pseudo-dynamic methodology to figure out the seismic earth pressure on rigid wall with cohesion less backfill along with considering the effects of time, phase difference, soil amplification factor along with the variation in seismic velocities. The main contribution is the soil amplification and backfill inclination which is not given much attention before. By considering the above factors coefficients the seismic earth pressure against retaining wall is determined. The coefficient of seismic passive earth pressure decreases with the increase of soil amplification keeping other properties as standard values. The value of coefficient of seismic active earth pressure increases with increase of soil amplification. The comparison is also done without taking backfill angle for both coefficients of seismic earth pressures. The influence of all the soil properties like backfill angle, wall friction angle, soil friction angle, non-dimensional parameters are shown in tabular format as well as in the graphical with respect to the soil amplification which is more realistic towards the design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Production of fructose is important especially in the food industries where fructose is used as a sweetener in preference to sucrose. This work studied some cultural conditions for the production of invertase by Aspergillus niger. In a preliminary experiment, all isolated fungal spores were incubated in 0.2 M sucrose solution and the spores of Aspergillus niger produced the highest invertase activity of 72.8U/mg protein and was therefore selected for further work. Inversion of sucrose by spores of Aspergillus niger was then studied after various incubation periods. Incubation for 6 hours with shaking was best for enzyme production at which 94.6 U/mg protein of the enzyme was produced. Enzyme yields at 1 and 2 h of incubation were very low while incubation for elevated periods of 7 and 8 h resulted in moderate enzyme yields of 68.3 and 60.4 U/mg protein respectively. Lower sucrose concentrations of 0.3 and 0.4 M were almost completely inverted while higher concentrations showed decreases in enzyme activities. Invertase from Aspergillus niger was incubated at various temperatures and it was found that at 10oC, only 26.5 U/mg protein of the enzyme activity was produced. This level increased gradually with increases in temperature until 30oC at which the highest enzyme activity of 72.8 U/mg protein was produced. This level reduced progressively with increases in temperature until it reached a temperature of 50oC at which very low activity was obtained. It was shown that pH 5.0 was the best for invertase production by the test fungus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The results of the interrupted building processes are ascribable to an anomalous category of built environment, which offers an important test bench for the technological design of architecture. In fact, the finalism focused on achieving the objectives and the linear vision of time are irrelevant when confronted by constructions, whose life cycle has never begun and which are irreducibly extraneous to both the present and the future. The bipolar phenomenon of unfinished buildings suggests a theoretical framework linked to the time variable, intended as a transformation factor and cornerstone of architectural design. Considering their diffusion and evolution, a future is foreseeable for the unfinished buildings, which is different to a certain kind of pretentious demonisation or exaltation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Soft sensors are widely used to predict process variables in chemical plants. [•] Our goal is to achieve high prediction accuracy of soft sensors for new data. [•] We employ the online support vector regression (OSVR) and time variable. [•] The hyperparameters and the window size of the OSVR model were discussed. [•] The performance was confirmed with simulation data and real industrial data. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: A number of scholars have questioned the practice of assessing academic writing in the context of a one-off language test, claiming that the time restrictions imposed in the test environment, when compared to the writing conditions typical at university, may prevent learners from displaying the kinds of writing skills required in academic contexts. Studies which have explored this issue have thus far produced conflicting findings. This paper investigates the impact of an efficiency driven policy decision to reduce the time allowed for performance on a post-entry diagnostic test of academic writing from 55 to 30min. It does so by comparing the performance of 30 test takers under both old and new time conditions. A fully counter-balanced design was chosen to establish whether the different time limits had an effect on (a) the writing scores, (b) the inter-rater reliability and (c) the quality of the discourse. Test takers’ perceptions were also canvassed via a post-task questionnaire. Findings showed that the test takers’ scores on the analytic rating criteria were not significantly different under the two time conditions, although high proficiency candidates profited more from the extended time allowance than did the others. Ratings were equally reliable in the “short” and “long” condition. The detailed discourse analysis illustrated that the longer writing condition yielded, as predicted, a better quality performance on a number of variables; however the performance on the majority of the variables was unaffected by the time factor. The questionnaire data nevertheless showed that students in general preferred having more time for planning and revising. The study considers the implications of these findings for the validity and fairness of diagnostic writing tests. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Recent laboratory investigations into the bioaccumulation and toxicity of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) have focused on low-level, time-variable exposures to early life-stage fish. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon body-burden residues reported in these studies were lower than critical body-burden residues predicted by the target lipid model (TLM). To understand this discrepancy, a time-variable uptake and depuration model of PAH bioaccumulation was developed. Kinetic constants were fit using measured exposure and tissue concentrations. The resulting lipid-water partition coefficients (KLW) were uncorrelated with the octanol-water partition coefficient (KOW)-a qualitatively unrealistic finding considering that numerous studies have reported a positive correlation between the two. Because PAHs are known to be metabolized, the comparison of KLW with KOW suggests that metabolism may be occurring in early life-stage fish. Therefore, the uptake and depuration model was modified to include metabolism while assuming linearity of KLW with KOW. Calculated metabolism rates were positively correlated with KOW-a finding qualitatively similar to those of other studies. The present study provides a reasonable explanation for the discrepancy between the TLM predictions and the measured toxic effect levels. Given the time-variable exposure concentrations, the maximum measured body burdens used to relate to toxic effects may be underestimated. In addition, the maximum body burden of parent PAH plus metabolites may be a better measure in relating tissue concentrations to toxic effects. Incorporating these refinements in relating body burdens to toxic effects may result in a better comparison between TLM predictions and measured effect levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bryant, Hartley & Jessen (1960) presented a two-way stratification sampling design when the sample size is less than the number of strata. Their design was extended to a three-way stratification case by Chaudhary & Kumar (1988) , but this design does not take into account serial correlation, which might be present as a result of the presence of a time variable. In this paper, a new sampling procedure is presented for three-way stratification when one of the stratifying variables is time. The purpose of such a design is to take into account serial correlation. The variance of the unweighted estimator of the population mean with respect to a super population model is used as the basis for comparison. Simulation results show that the suggested design is more efficient than the Chaudhary & Kumar (1988) design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]