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Introduction. Transitioning from one clinical rotation to the next may be particularly stressful for orthopaedic residents attempting to navigate new work environments with new faculty mentors and new patients. The purpose of this quality improvement (QI) project was to determine if resident stress could be improved by using a handbook to disseminate key rotation-specific data during quarterly rotation transition periods. Methods. A comprehensive electronic handbook was created by residents to describe each rotation in our orthopaedic training program in terms of: (1) faculty and staff contact data, (2) daily clinic and surgery schedules, (3) resident responsibilities and faculty expectations, and (4) key resources and documents. At rotation transition, a session in the academic schedule was dedicated for outgoing residents to update the handbook and to sign-out to incoming residents. Pre- and post-handbook questionnaires were administered to assess resident perceptions of stress or anxiety, preparedness, and confidence before commencing the new rotation. Nonparametric data derived from the surveys were analyzed using the sign test choosing p < 0.05 for a two-tailed test as the level of statistical significance. Results. Most residents perceived improvements in stress/anxiety, preparedness, and confidence understanding rotation expectations after the handbook was implemented. Changes in these three outcome parameters were statistically significant. Conclusions. This rotation transition QI initiative consisting of a resident-authored, rotation-specific electronic handbook and dedicated verbal sign-out session enhanced resident wellness by decreasing stress, increasing preparedness, and improving confidence among residents starting a new rotation. Similar online resources may be useful for trainees in other specialties.

This paper provides an historical exploration of local governance in Yemen across the past sixty years. It highlights the presence of a strong tradition of local self-rule, self-help, and participation “from below” as well as the presence of a rival, official, political culture upheld by central elites that celebrates centralization and the strong state. Shifts in the predominance of one or the other tendency have coincided with shifts in the political economy of the Yemeni state(s). When it favored the local, central rulers were compelled to give space to local initiatives and Yemen experienced moments of political participation and local development.

Distal radius fractures account for 18 percent of all fractures in the elderly age group. It is estimated that the yearly cost of treatment for distal radius fractures approaches $240 million. The frequency of fractures will continue to increase with the aging population. The operative treatment of distal radius fractures has changed dramatically with the advent of the fixed-angle volar plate. Volar plating allows stable internal fixation which permits early return of function. A common and serious complication of volar plating of distal radius fractures is rupture of the flexor pollicis longus tendon. We report a case of a late rupture of the flexor pollicis longus tendon six years following plating of a distal radius fracture. The pathology and treatment options for flexor tendon ruptures are discussed. Guidelines for patient surveillance following distal radius plating are reviewed.

As part of a 3-wk intersession workshop funded by a National Science Foundation Expeditions in Computing award, 15 undergraduate students from the City University of New York1collaborated on a study aimed at characterizing the voltage dynamics and arrhythmogenic behavior of cardiac cells for a broad range of physiologically relevant conditions using an in silico model. The primary goal of the workshop was to cultivate student interest in computational modeling and analysis of complex systems by introducing them through lectures and laboratory activities to current research in cardiac modeling and by engaging them in a hands-on research experience. The success of the workshop lay in the exposure of the students to active researchers and experts in their fields, the use of hands-on activities to communicate important concepts, active engagement of the students in research, and explanations of the significance of results as the students generated them. The workshop content addressed how spiral waves of electrical activity are initiated in the heart and how different parameter values affect the dynamics of these reentrant waves. Spiral waves are clinically associated with tachycardia, when the waves remain stable, and with fibrillation, when the waves exhibit breakup. All in silico experiments were conducted by simulating a mathematical model of cardiac cells on graphics processing units instead of the standard central processing units of desktop computers. This approach decreased the run time for each simulation to almost real time, thereby allowing the students to quickly analyze and characterize the simulated arrhythmias. Results from these simulations, as well as some of the background and methodology taught during the workshop, is presented in this article along with the programming code and the explanations of simulation results in an effort to allow other teachers and students to perform their own demonstrations, simulations, and studies.

Many school psychologists focus their interpretation on composite scores from intelligence test batteries designed to measure the broad abilities from the Cattell–Horn–Carroll theory. The purpose o...

We describe a method for the automatic identification of communities of practice from e-mail logs within an organization. We use a betweenness centrality algorithm that can rapidly find communities within a graph representing information flows. We apply this algorithm to an initial e-mail corpus of nearly 1 million messages collected over a 2-month span, and show that the method is effective at identifying true communities, both formal and informal, within these scale-free graphs. This approach also enables the identification of leadership roles within the communities. These studies are complemented by a qualitative evaluation of the results in the field.

We present new integral field spectroscopy of the gravitationally lensed broad absorption line (BAL) quasar H1413+117, covering the ultraviolet to visible rest-frame spectral range. We observe strong microlensing signatures in lensed image D, and we use this microlensing to simultaneously constrain both the broad emission and broad absorption line gas. By modeling the lens system over the range of probable lensing galaxy redshifts and using on a new argument based on the wavelength-independence of the broad line lensing magnifications, we determine that there is no significant broad line emission from smaller than ~20 light days. We also perform spectral decomposition to derive the intrinsic broad emission line (BEL) and continuum spectrum, subject to BAL absorption. We also reconstruct the intrinsic BAL absorption profile, whose features allow us to constrain outflow kinematics in the context of a disk-wind model. We find a very sharp, blueshifted onset of absorption of 1,500 km/s in both C IV and N V that may correspond to an inner edge of a disk-wind's radial outflow. The lower ionization Si IV and Al III have higher-velocity absorption onsets, consistent with a decreasing ionization parameter with radius in an accelerating outflow. There is evidence of strong absorption in the BEL component which indicates a high covering factor for absorption over two orders of magnitude in outflow radius., Comment: 29 pages, 8 figures

The requirement to transmit video data over unreliable wireless networks (with the possibility of packet loss) is anticipated in the foreseeable future. Significant compression ratio and error resilience are both needed for complex applications including tele-operated robotics, vehicle-mounted cameras, sensor network, etc. Block-matching based inter-frame coding techniques, including MPEG-4 and H.264/AVC, do not perform well in these scenarios due to error propagation between frames. Many wireless applications often use intra-only coding technologies such as Motion-JPEG, which exhibit better recovery from network data loss at the price of higher data rates. In order to address these research issues, an intra-only coding scheme of H.264/AVC (iAVC) is proposed. In this approach, each frame is coded independently as an I-frame. Frame copy is applied to compensate for packet loss. This approach is a good balance between compression performance and error resilience. It achieves compression performance comparable to Motion- JPEG2000 (MJ2), with lower complexity. Error resilience similar to Motion-JPEG (MJ) will also be accomplished. Since the intra-frame prediction with iAVC is strictly confined within the range of a slice, memory usage is also extremely low. Low computational complexity and memory usage are very crucial to mobile stations and devices in wireless network.

We present a study of information flow that takes into account the observation that an item relevant to one person is more likely to be of interest to individuals in the same social circle than those outside of it. This is due to the fact that the similarity of node attributes in social networks decreases as a function of the graph distance. An epidemic model on a scale-free network with this property has a finite threshold, implying that the spread of information is limited. We tested our predictions by measuring the spread of messages in an organization and also by numerical experiments that take into consideration the organizational distance among individuals.

A computationally enhanced message contains some embedded programmatic components that are interpreted and executed automatically upon receipt. Unlike ordinary text email or instant messages, they make possible a number of useful applications. In this paper, we describe a general and flexible messaging system called SHOCK that extends the functionality of prior computational email systems by allowing XML-encoded SHOCK messages to interact with an automatically created profile of a user. These profiles consist of information about the most common tasks users perform, such as their Web browsing behavior, their conventional email usage, etc. Since users are sensitive about such data, the system is designed with privacy as a central design goal, and employs a distributed peer-to-peer architecture to achieve it. The system is largely implemented with commodity Web technologies and provides both a Web interface as well as one that is tightly integrated with users ordinary email clients. With SHOCK, users can send highly targeted messages without violating others privacy, and engage in structured conversation appropriate to the context without disrupting their existing work practices. We describe our implementation in detail, the most useful novel applications of the system, and our experiences with the system in a pilot field test.

We describe a method for the automatic identification of communities of practice from email logs within an organization. We use a betweenness centrality algorithm that can rapidly find communities within a graph representing information flows. We apply this algorithm to an email corpus of nearly one million messages collected over a two-month span, and show that the method is effective at identifying true communities, both formal and informal, within these scale-free graphs. This approach also enables the identification of leadership roles within the communities. These studies are complemented by a qualitative evaluation of the results in the field.