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People have the power to make an innovation a success or a failure. Corporate decision makers act as both facilitators and barriers to the introduction of technologies into their organisations. Psychological factors clearly have an impact on their decisions and acceptance behaviours, but these have not been fully explored. Consequently, an understanding of these factors is essential for organisations who wish to accelerate technology adoption as well as for innovators who face numerous barriers when introducing their new products to the industrial market. The upstream oil and gas (O&G) industry has been characterised as reluctant to adopt new technology. The analysis of three technology introduction case studies in the UK offshore O&G sector (including interviews with 22 personnel involved in developing and commercially buying new technology) confirmed the influence of 15 psychological factors on organisational technology adoption decision making. These have been organized into a framework (P-TAF) consisting of six categories of psychological constructs, namely: personality, attitudes, motivation, social, cognitive, and organisational factors. With further development, this preliminary framework can be used to develop interventions that support the successful technology uptake in O&G and in other sectors experiencing resistance to the introduction of new technology.

Reducing the risk of primary noninvasive ventilation failure in extremely low birthweight infants is linked to reducing bronchopulmonary dysplasia. In a secondary analysis of randomized data, we identified that failure rates and time to failure were similar for nasal intermittent positive pressure ventilation vs nasal continuous positive airway pressure.

Zero-order drainage basins, and their constituent hillslopes, are the fundamental geomorphic unit comprising much of Earth's uplands. The convergent topography of these landscapes generates spatially variable substrate and moisture content, facilitating biological diversity and influencing how the landscape filters precipitation and sequesters atmospheric carbon dioxide. In light of these significant ecosystem services, refining our understanding of how these functions are affected by landscape evolution, weather variability, and long-term climate change is imperative. In this paper we introduce the Landscape Evolution Observatory (LEO): a large-scale controllable infrastructure consisting of three replicated artificial landscapes (each 330 m 2 surface area) within the climate-controlled Biosphere 2 facility in Arizona, USA. At LEO, experimental manipulation of rainfall, air temperature, relative humidity, and wind speed are possible at unprecedented scale. The Landscape Evolution Observatory was designed as a community resource to advance understanding of how topography, physical and chemical properties of soil, and biological communities coevolve, and how this coevolution affects water, carbon, and energy cycles at multiple spatial scales. With well-defined boundary conditions and an extensive network of sensors and samplers, LEO enables an iterative scientific approach that includes numerical model development and virtual experimentation, physical experimentation, data analysis, and model refinement. We plan to engage the broader scientific community through public dissemination of data from LEO, collaborative experimental design, and community-based model development.

In this paper we discuss the adaptation of TCP transport-oriented client-server messaging protocols to many-to-many peer-to-peer networking environments more suitable for deployment in dynamic wireless networks capable of multicast forwarding. We describe four main issues in adapting such protocols: exposing a network server for receiving TCP session data; the creation of server-side semantic proxies to process the messages and adapt to a serverless environment; service discovery to enable the discovery of necessary services on the network and to maintain the network state; and finally support for multicast interfaces for the transportation of messages amongst peers. We show that our system, called GUMP, can be used to support such protocol adaptations and to illustrate we use GUMP to implement an XMPP proxy allowing existing off-the-shelf XMPP client software to dynamically create and operate multi-user chat sessions in a serverless network environment. We then present two sets of results that show how appropriate discovery systems and transport protocols can dramatically increase the success of protocols, such as XMPP, within a mobile wireless networked environment. Specifically, we first demonstrate that a GUMP supported discovery system, INDI, can significantly increase the success rates and decrease latency of discovering services through profiles, caching and retrying schemes. Second, we show that success rates for XMPP transmission of messages can be vastly improved through the use of multicast as apposed to TCP within the mobile environment. These two factors provide strong empirical support for the justification of GUMP in its ability to adapt between a client-server and serverless world.

OBJECTIVE: To test the hypothesis that significant positive end-expiratory pressure level variation exists between neonatal centers. STUDY DESIGN: We performed a secondary analysis cohort study of the Nasal Intermittent Positive-Pressure Ventilation trial. Our study population was extremely low birth weight infants requiring mechanical ventilation within 28 days of life. The exposure was neonatal center; 34 international centers participated in the trial. Subjects from centers with fewer than five eligible cases were excluded. The main outcome was the maximal positive end-expiratory pressure level used during the first course of mechanical ventilation. Infant characteristics judged a priori to directly influence clinical positive end-expiratory pressure level selection and all characteristics associated with positive end-expiratory pressure at P < .05 in bivariable analyses were included with and without center in multivariable linear regression models. Variation in positive end-expiratory pressure level use between centers following adjustment for infant characteristics was assessed. RESULTS: 278 extremely low birth weight infants from 17 centers were included. Maximal positive end-expiratory pressure ranged from 3-9 cm H(2)O, mean = 5.7 (SD = 0.9). Significant variation between centers remained despite adjustment for infant characteristics (p < 0.0001). Further, center alone explained a greater proportion of the positive end-expiratory pressure level variation than all infant characteristics combined. CONCLUSIONS: Marked variation in positive end-expiratory pressure levels for extremely low birth weight infants exists between neonatal centers. Research providing evidence-based guidance for this important aspect of respiratory care in preterm infants at high risk of lung injury is needed.

he revised draft type 2 diabetes guideline1 from the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) were released in June, 2015, for further consultation. Some positive changes have been made since the first draft was published in January, 2015, especially with respect to patient preferences.2 However, we believe that the revised guideline remains unfit for purpose and is a missed opportunity to improve the lives of patients with type 2 diabetes. If sanctioned by NICE, the guideline will be confusing and unworkable in busy clinical practice. It might also diminish the international reputation of NICE and reduce the influence of UK practice on the global management of type 2 diabetes.

No study of the European elections of 1989 would be complete without a glance over the shoulder at the spectre at the feast: the attempts by the European Parliament to establish a uniform electoral procedure. This chapter seeks to call up that spectre, to trace briefly its appearances in the last fifteen years, and to speculate as to how and when it might assume a substantive form in the future.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the extent that social variables influence cognitive development of very low birth weight (VLBW) infants across the preschool years. STUDY DESIGN: Participants were VLBW (500-1250 g) children enrolled in the Caffeine for Apnea of Prematurity randomized trial between 1999 and 2004. We investigated the relationships between 4 potential social advantages: higher maternal education, higher paternal education, caregiver employment, and 2 biologic parents in the same home--and gain in cognitive scores. Cognitive assessments were performed at the corrected ages of 18 months (Mental Development Index score on the Bayley Scales of Infant Development II) and 5 years (Full Scale IQ on the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence III). Cognitive gain was computed by subtracting each individual 18-month Mental Development Index score from the corresponding Full Scale IQ at 5 years. RESULTS: Data were available for 1347 children. Mean (SD) cognitive scores were 90.8 (15.7) at 18 months and 98.9 (14.5) at 5 years. Multivariable regression showed that higher maternal education, higher paternal education, and caregiver employment had independent and additive effects of similar size on cognitive gain (P < .001); the mean cognitive gain between 18 months and 5 years increased by 3.6 points in the presence of each of these advantages. When all 3 were present, cognitive scores improved on average by 10.9 points compared with children without any of these advantages. CONCLUSION: In VLBW children, a count of 3 social advantages strongly predicts gains in cognitive scores across the preschool years.