Visible (660 nm) resonant cavity light-emitting diodes

The demonstration of the first visible resonant cavity light-emitting diodes (RCLEDs) is reported. The devices consist of an InAlGaP strained quantum well active region surrounded by AlAs/AlGaAs distributed Bragg reflectors. Linewidths from 0.9 mm (2.6 meV) to 45 nm (12.8 meV) were obtained by varying the cavity factor (Q).<>     

Childhood thyroid cancer. Characteristics and long-term outcome in children irradiated for benign conditions of the head and neck

OBJECTIVE: To determine the characteristics and long-term outcome of radiation-induced thyroid cancer in children. DESIGN: Retrospective review of a cohort of 4296 irradiated patients who received childhood radiation treatment to the head and neck area at the same hospital. PATIENTS: Forty-one children who were younger than 20 years when thyroid cancer developed in them and 77 adults in whom thyroid cancer developed. All 118 cases were diagnosed before 1974 and were followed up for a median of 19.4 years. RESULTS: Children presented with clinically palpable lymph nodes more often than adults (30.7% vs 15.1%, P = .05) and had more recurrences (39% vs 16%, P = .05). Despite these frequent recurrences, only one patient (an adult) died of thyroid cancer. Seventy percent of the recurrences occurred during the first 10 years of follow-up, but recurrences continued after 20 years. The adults had previously identified factors that predicted the risk of recurrences, but none could be identified in the children. CONCLUSION: The presentation and relatively good outcome of radiation-induced thyroid cancer in children is similar to that in nonirradiated children. Frequent and late recurrences call for lifelong follow-up.     

Employee and customer perceptions of service in banks: Replication and extension.

Replicated the 1st author and J. J. Parkington's (1979) research on the relationships between employees and customers in service organizations by analyzing survey data from 142 employees and 968 customers from 28 branches of a bank. Moderate support was found for the 1st author and Parkington's work on correlates of stress for boundary role employees. Support was also found for relationships between branch employees' and branch customers' service perceptions and attitudes as reported by the present 1st author et al (1980). Significant relationships were reported between branch employees' perceptions of organizational human resources practices and branch customers' attitudes about service. Employee attitudes and customer attitudes were related to their own and one another's turnover intentions. Results are discussed from the perspective of promoting an integration of consumer and organizational behavior in the service sector. (51 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Biaxiale Ermüdung reibrührgeschweißter Strukturelemente

Biaxial fatigue of friction stir welded stiffened panels Within the framework of the European WelAir project, cruciform specimens made from stiffening FSW overlap joints were fatigued in the DLR biaxial test rig. To resemble the loading situation of pressurized fuselage structures, proportional loading without any phase shift, but with different load ratios λ between the loading components in both directions was applied.Natural crack initiation and subsequent crack growth were governed by the stiffness gradient caused by introducing the stringer. Cracks initiated and propagated at run‐in and run‐out locations in a direction perpendicular to the weld seam. The shortest fatigue life was observed for uniaxial loading in welding direction (λ = 0). An additional stress component perpendicular to the joint line (λ > 0) resulted in a higher number of cycles to failure. Similar to single stringer panels, increasing the load ratio also increased the number of cycles to failure for FSW clip‐stringer structural members, but additionally gives a different location of the fatal crack.     

Task versus relationship conflict, team performance, and team member satisfaction: A meta-analysis.

This study provides a meta-analysis of research on the associations between relationship conflict, task conflict, team performance, and team member satisfaction. Consistent with past theorizing, results revealed strong and negative correlations between relationship conflict, team performance, and team member satisfaction. In contrast to what has been suggested in both academic research and introductory textbooks, however, results also revealed strong and negative (instead of the predicted positive) correlations between task conflict, team performance, and team member satisfaction. As predicted, conflict had stronger negative relations with team performance in highly complex (decision making, project, mixed) than in less complex (production) tasks. Finally, task conflict was less negatively related to team performance when task conflict and relationship conflict were weakly, rather than strongly, correlated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Power combining characteristics of backed-off traveling wave tubes for communications applications

Traveling wave tubes (TWTs) used in multi-tone and digital communications applications are typically operated backed off from saturation in order to improve the amplifier linearity. This reduces the bit error rate (BER), decreases intermodulation distortion and lowers adjacent channel power; all at the expense of reducing the average output power. For emerging telecommunications applications, the average power requirement is increasing to provide higher bit rates and lower BER, and often exceeds the power obtainable from backed-off space or telecommunications TWTs. One solution is to power combine TWTs that are operated 3 to 10 dB backed off from saturation. Efficient power combining requires that the phase and gain of the signal from each TWT be closely matched. To understand the variation in these parameters across a build-set of tubes, the phase and gain versus drive of 35 Boeing S-band 5525H TWTs were measured. The standard deviation in the phase about the mean phase shift measured at saturation was found to be 2.6/spl deg/, with a related standard deviation of the gain compression at saturation of 0.22 dB. These levels result in small power combining losses and small errors in phased-array fed multi-beam antennas in broadband multi-tone applications.     

Esmolol potentiates reduction of minimum alveolar isoflurane concentration by alfentanil

The beta subunit of human chorionic gonadotropin is potentially encoded by six genes, which can be categorized into two types based on a sequence change at codon 117: GCC for the type I and GAC for the type II genes. We previously showed that, whereas type I genes were exclusively expressed in normal breast tissues, expression of type II genes was associated with malignant transformation (Bellet, D., et al. Cancer Res., 57: 516-523, 1997). We designed a simple and robust test (the CG117 assay) that measures the percentage of type II over both types of chorionic gonadotropin beta mRNAs. Normal breast tissues consistently had a negative CG117 index, whereas cancer breast tissues showed indexes ranging from 0 to 100%. The prognostic significance of the CG117 index was investigated in a series of 99 unilateral invasive primary breast cancer patients with known long-term outcome (median follow-up, 9 years). The CG117 index was positive in 48 (48.5%) of the 99 tumor mRNA samples. The index was not significantly associated with standard prognostic parameters, including clinical and macroscopic tumor size, histopathological grade, and lymph node status or steroid receptor status. Patients with a positive CG117 index in primary tumor mRNA had significantly shorter metastasis-free survival (P = 0.014) and overall survival (P = 0.038) after surgery, compared to patients with a negative index. The prognostic significance of the CG117 index persisted in Cox multivariate regression analysis, both for metastasis-free survival (P = 0.008) and overall survival (P = 0.016), together with lymph node status (P = 0.027 and P = 0.009, respectively). These findings indicate that the CG117 index may contribute to the identification of high-risk breast cancer patients.     

Use of serum tumor markers for the diagnosis and follow-up of breast cancer

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) seroprevalence rates among rural trauma patients range between 0.15 and 1.32 per cent. A random sample of trauma patients treated at our rural trauma center between September 1994 and November 1995 was enrolled into a blind HIV serosurvey. Five hundred sixty-six of 1315 trauma patients (43%) were tested. Two of the 566 patients (0.35%) were HIV positive. A review of aggregate data for HIV infection among rural trauma patients in the United States show that 28 of the 4639 patients (0.60%) are HIV positive. We conclude that there was a low HIV incidence among our trauma patients from September 1994 to November 1995, and the cost-effectiveness of HIV testing for rural trauma patients is questionable with incidences between 0.5 and 1.0 per cent.