Community resources for clients with mobility problems

Clients are leaving the hospital "quicker and sicker," and they frequently have acute care needs that must be met by resources outside the hospital setting. Community resources are diverse, vary widely from place to place, and have no central administration. Thus, using them can be challenging for both the nurse, client, and family. Reimbursement mechanisms underlie a person's ability to use resources and receive health care. By presenting two actual case scenarios where clients have mobility problems commonly seen by orthopaedic nurses, the authors discuss the community resources available, avenues of access to them, and their reimbursement mechanisms.     

A Comparision of Starch Granules as Seen by Both Scanning Electron and Ordinary Light Microscopy

Starch being a transparent crystal often give images which are difficult to precisely define with the light microscope due to the diffraction and other effects such as internal structure which may appear as a surface phenomena. The scanning electron microscope (SEM); however, gives only surface detail. In a effort to differentiate between surface and internal details, the same starch granules have been studied by both ordinary light and scanning electron microscopy. In each case the granules were held in the same configuration as was seen with the light microscope when they were studied by SEM. In this way a direct comparison could be made between granules viewed by each microscopy technique. From such comparisons it is possible to determine the starch details that are actually due to internal features. The results for canna, potato and corn starches are given.     

Characterization of the Basal and mTOR-Dependent Acute Pulmonary and Systemic Immune Response in a Murine Model of Combined Burn and Inhalation Injury

Severe burn injury leads to a cascade of local and systemic immune responses that trigger an extreme state of immune dysfunction, leaving the patient highly susceptible to acute and chronic infection. When combined with inhalation injury, burn patients have higher mortality and a greater chance of developing secondary respiratory complications including infection. No animal model of combined burn and inhalation injury (B+I) exists that accurately mirrors the human clinical picture, nor are there any effective immunotherapies or predictive models of the risk of immune dysfunction. Our earlier work showed that the mechanistic/mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway is activated early after burn injury, and its chemical blockade at injury reduced subsequent chronic bacterial susceptibility. It is unclear if mTOR plays a role in the exacerbated immune dysfunction seen after B+I injury. We aimed to: (1) characterize a novel murine model of B+I injury, and (2) investigate the role of mTOR in the immune response after B+I injury. Pulmonary and systemic immune responses to B+I were characterized in the absence or presence of mTOR inhibition at the time of injury. Data describe a murine model of B+I with inhalation-specific immune phenotypes and implicate mTOR in the acute immune dysfunction observed.     

Magnetic Damping Effects in Forced-Oscillation Vibrating-Wire Viscometers

Vibrating wire viscometers rely on the principle that the viscosity of the fluid surrounding the wire provides the dominant damping action on the motion of the wire. However, some residual damping is always present due to other effects such as internal friction of the wire (anelastic relaxation), losses through the wire supports, and magnetic damping. Magnetic damping is a physical mechanism that has received relatively less attention than internal friction in the context of viscometers. The phenomenon arises because the current induced by the motion of the wire contributes to the magnetic field in such a way as to oppose its own motion. For a test circuit using a 40 μm diameter tungsten wire in a 0.3 T magnetic field, surprisingly, the effect of magnetic damping was found to be of a similar order of magnitude to other non-viscous damping effects. The effect can be accounted for by including the internal impedance of the oscillating voltage source in the model and it disappears completely for a perfect oscillating current source.     

High performance AlyGa1−yAs-GaAs-lrxGa1−xAs quantum well lasers defined by silicon-oxygen impurity-induced layer disordering

In these experiments impurity-induced layer disordering (IILD) utilizing chemical reduction of SiO₂ by Al (from Al_0.8Ga_0.2As) is employed to generate Si and O to effect layer disordering. The SiO₂-Al_0.8Ga_0.2As reaction is studied with respect to annealing ambient. By controlling the extent of disordering via As₄ overpressure, closely spaced (∼1μm) Si-O IILD buried heterostructure lasers can be optically coupled or uncoupled. Direct observation of O incorporation into the buried layers is shown using secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS). The thermal stability of separate-confinement Al_yGa_1−yAs-GaAs-In_xGa_1−xAs quantum well heterostructure (QWH) laser crystals is investigated using SIMS, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and photoluminescence (PL) measurements. The data show that the thermal stability of a strained-layer In_0.1Ga_0.9As quantum well (QW) is strongly dependent upon: (1) the layer thickness and heterointerfaces of the Al_yGa_1−yAs-GaAs waveguide layers located directly above and below the QW, (2) the type of surface encapsulant employed, and (3) the annealing ambient. Narrow single-stripe (<2μm) lasers fabricated via Si-O diffusion and layer disordering exhibit low threshold currents (I_th ∼ 4 mA) and differential quantum efficiencies,η, of 22% per facet under continuous (cw) room-temperature operation.     

Network Discovery and Verification

Due to its fast, dynamic, and distributed growth process, it is hard to obtain an accurate map of the Internet. In many cases, such a map-representing the structure of the Internet as a graph with nodes and links-is a prerequisite when investigating properties of the Internet. A common way to obtain such maps is to make certain local measurements at a small subset of the nodes, and then to combine these in order to "discover" (an approximation of) the actual graph. Each of these measurements is potentially quite costly. It is thus a natural objective to minimize the number of measurements which still discover the whole graph. We formalize this problem as a combinatorial optimization problem and consider it for two different models characterized by different types of measurements. We give several upper and lower bounds on the competitive ratio (for the online network discovery problem) and the approximation ratio (for the offline network verification problem) in both models. Furthermore, for one of the two models, we compare four simple greedy strategies in an experimental analysis     

A layered modeling and simulation architecture for agent-basedsystem development

The paper proposes a layered architectural framework to support agent based system development in a collaborative, multidisciplinary engineering setting. This architecture is viewed from two distinct perspectives. First, the environment must enable agent based modeling and simulation. Second, it should support concurrent (team oriented) engineering. The main focus is on the proposed layered architecture delineating various needs of an agent based system, thus supporting incremental specification design, implementation, and testing. In our discussions, we distinguish between performing agents and simulated agents. The former refers to agents as they are performing their tasks in real-world settings. The latter refers to agents that have their behavior simulated in a virtual environment. In these terms, the proposed framework is intended to form the basis for environments that support development of agents, in both performance and simulation modes, as well as in hybrid combination (both performing and simulated agents interacting at the same time). The proposed framework is a step toward realization of agent based systems under the umbrella of the simulation based acquisition (SBA) initiative of the US Department of Defense     

Design of 50-nm vertical MOSFET incorporating a dielectric pocket

A new architecture for a vertical MOS transistor is proposed that incorporates a so-called dielectric pocket (DP) for suppression of short-channel effects and bulk punch-through. We outline the advantages that the DP brings and propose a basic fabrication process to realize the device. The design issues of a 50-nm channel device are addressed by numerical simulation. The gate delay of an associated CMOS inverter is assessed in the context of the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors and the vertical transistor is seen to offer considerable advantages down to the 100-nm node and beyond due to the dual channels and the ability to produce a 50-nm channel length with more relaxed lithography.     

CO/sub 2/ laser processing of alumina (Al/sub 2/O/sub 3/) printed circuit board substrates

We report the results of an investigation of the laser-material interaction processes involved in laser drilling of alumina, through the use of an enhanced peak power (2.5 kW) CO/sub 2/ laser and novel temporal pulse formats. Peak power was varied from 30 W to 2 kW for pulses of constant energy to observe the effect produced on scribe depth. High-speed videography of hole formation has been combined with microscopic analysis to investigate the key processes involved in laser processing of alumina. Plasma screening was observed for short, high peak power laser pulses, and optimal scribing was achieved in the weakly plasma absorbing regime. A new processing technique for scribing alumina has been developed, which exploits the fast response of the laser to produce novel temporal pulse shapes, which can be modified to generate cleaner holes. Scribe speeds of up to 280 mm/spl middot/s/sup -1/ were obtained for scribe holes >200 /spl mu/m deep and 150 /spl mu/m apart, with no material plugging the hole, in 0.635-mm-thick 96% alumina.     

Shorted fractal Sierpinski monopole antenna

This paper describes novel configurations of shorted fractal Sierpinski gasket antenna. The antenna uses half the structure of a conventional Sierpinski gasket antenna and is folded over to be parallel to the ground plane, to form an element similar to that of the inverted L antenna. A quasi log periodic resonance behavior is obtained with a shorting pin placed at the far end of the antenna. Several configurations are shown and a design using two shorting pins which improves the bandwidth at the fundamental band is also demonstrated.