A simple clinical test for differentiating physiological from pathological head lag in full-term newborn infants

The New Doctor paper recently published by the General Medical Council outlines the primarily educational role of preregistration house officers. This article illustrates one innovative way in which this is being implemented simultaneously with a significant service provision, often increasing the standard of patient care.     

Using an Incentive Compensation Plan to Achieve Your Firm's Goals

While design professionals are in high demand, the number of available graduates in design fields is low-a 17-year low. This increase in demand, coupled with the reduction in supply, has caused design professionals to have higher salary expectations at all levels. So how does the manager of a design firm maintain competitive salaries and reward your top performers? This issue is serious because a design firm's people are its greatest asset; that is, good architects, engineers, and support staff make a good firm. In a design firm, the price of employing those good people is the biggest cost on monthly income statements. Therefore, design firms must use a tool that makes employee compensation a somewhat variable cost rather than a fixed cost. A well-constructed incentive compensation plan will allow a firm to fairly compensate its key employees based on the performance of the company. A good incentive compensation plan also will help meet both the short-term and long-term goals of the company.     

Surface Form Memory in NiTi: Energy Density of Constrained Recovery During Indent Replication

Spherical indentation of NiTi shape memory alloys (SMA) to depths greater than about 3% of the indenter radius results in two-way shape-memory training in a deformation zone beneath the indent. If deep spherical or cylindrical indents are subsequently machined away just sufficiently to remove traces of the original indent (in the martensitic condition), a thermally induced and cyclically reversible flat-to-protruded surface topography is enabled. We term the phenomenon surface form memory. The amplitude of cyclic protrusions, or ‘exdents’, is related to the existence of a subsurface deformation zone in which indentation has resulted in plastic strains beyond that which can be accomplished by martensite detwinning reactions. Dislocation generation in this zone is thought to underlie the observed two-way shape-memory (TWSME) training effect. In this article, we show that these cyclic exdents can perform appreciable mechanical work when displacing under load against a base-metal substrate (constrained recovery). This “non-Hertzian” indentation, which appears to be able to exert the full energy density of SMA actuation, may have use for assembly of micromachines, bond-release, microforging, microjoining, electrical switching, microconnectors, and variable heat transfer devices, among many other potential applications.     

Herpes simplex virus seropositivity and reactivation at delivery among pregnant women infected with human immunodeficiency virus-1

OBJECTIVE: Our purpose was to determine whether pregnant women infected with human immunodeficiency virus-1 have an increased risk of herpes simplex virus-2 seropositivity and herpes simplex virus reactivation at delivery. STUDY DESIGN: Sixty women infected with human immunodeficiency virus and 8408 other patients who were delivered at the University of Washington between 1989 and 1995 had herpes simplex virus serologic determinations at delivery. Genital herpes simplex virus cultures were obtained for 48 (80%) of the human immunodeficiency virus-infected women and 5567 (66%) of the controls. Logistic regression was used to adjust for possible confounding factors. RESULTS: Forty-five (75%) of human immunodeficiency virus-infected women and 2709 (32%) controls were seropositive for herpes simplex virus-2 (p < 0.0001). Eight percent of human immunodeficiency virus-infected women and 2% of controls had herpes simplex virus reactivation in labor (p < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Infection with herpes simplex virus-2 is common among pregnant women infected with human immunodeficiency virus. Herpes simplex virus reactivation complicates labor in this group more often than in other obstetric patients. The role of herpes simplex virus in perinatal human immunodeficiency virus transmission warrants further study.     

ML iterative soft-decision-directed (ML-ISDD): a carrier synchronization system for short packet turbo coded communication

Modern communication systems are required to provide services based on high data rates burst-mode packet-data transmission, capable of operating at very low SNR conditions. Turbo codes enable the operation at low SNR, close to the Shannon limit. However, carrier frequency and phase synchronization, needed for optimal coherent performance of the receiver, still remains a problem in low SNR and short bursts conditions. This paper proposes a new carrier synchronization method, the Maximum-Likelihood Iterative-Soft-Decision-Directed (ML-ISDD), which uses the turbo-decoder soft decisions to improve the carrier synchronization performance at low SNR values. The ML-ISDD method operates iteratively and jointly with the turbo decoder, enhancing both the turbo-decoder and the synchronization performance. The ML-ISDD method has been shown by simulation to significantly increase the allowed initial frequency and phase uncertainty region, thus allowing the use of very short training sequences for initial carrier synchronization.     

Effect of external loads on damage detection of rubber‐toughened nanocomposites using carbon nanotubes sensory network

Multiwalled carbon nanotubes of 0.2% weight fraction are used as a sensory network for detecting and characterizing the damage of particulate epoxy composites under shear loading conditions. Three different weight fractions of carboxyl‐terminated butadiene acrylonitrile copolymer rubber [10 parts per hundred of epoxy resin (phr), 20 phr, and 30 phr] are used for toughening a thermoset epoxy composite. The electrical response of the specimens is measured, nearest the central shearing plane, using a four‐circumferential ring probe technique in conjunction with a high‐resolution data acquisition system. A collection of the electromechanical response results are reported with respect to the shear strain. The resistance changes observed under shear loading are related to nonlinear deformation mechanisms, void initiation, and growth around rubber particulate. With increasing rubber content, the strength of the material decreases and a greater drop in resistance is recorded as a result of decreased distance between neighboring carbon nanotubes (CNTs) due to declustering and straightening of molecular chains of host matrix. In the end, a comparison for 30 phr composites under shear loading with that of tensile and compression loading conditions is presented. For initial deformation, there is no change in resistance under shear loading condition; however, the significant resistance change can be noticed under both tension and compression. The specimen under shear loading conditions experiences smaller decrease in resistance when compared with both tension and compression. However, the decrease in resistance is higher for compression due to higher decrease in distance between neighboring CNTs. POLYM. COMPOS., 37:360–369, 2016. © 2014 Society of Plastics Engineers