Do diabetic veterans use the Internet? Self-reported usage, skills, and interest in using My HealtheVet Web portal.

OBJECTIVE: The Veterans Health Administration has developed My HealtheVet (MHV), a Web-based portal that links veterans to their care in the veteran affairs (VA) system. The objective of this study was to measure diabetic veterans' access to and use of the Internet, and their interest in using MHV to help manage their diabetes. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Cross-sectional mailed survey of 201 patients with type 2 diabetes and hemoglobin A(1c) > 8.0% receiving primary care at any of five primary care clinic sites affiliated with a VA tertiary care facility. Main measures included Internet usage, access, and attitudes; computer skills; interest in using the Internet; awareness of and attitudes toward MHV; demographics; and socioeconomic status. RESULTS: A majority of respondents reported having access to the Internet at home. Nearly half of all respondents had searched online for information about diabetes, including some who did not have home Internet access. More than a third obtained "some" or "a lot" of their health-related information online. Forty-one percent reported being "very interested" in using MHV to help track their home blood glucose readings, a third of whom did not have home Internet access. Factors associated with being "very interested" were as follows: having access to the Internet at home (p < 0.001), "a lot/some" trust in the Internet as a source of health information (p = 0.002), lower age (p = 0.03), and some college (p = 0.04). Neither race (p = 0.44) nor income (p = 0.25) was significantly associated with interest in MHV. CONCLUSIONS: This study found that a diverse sample of older VA patients with sub-optimally controlled diabetes had a level of familiarity with and access to the Internet comparable to an age-matched national sample. In addition, there was a high degree of interest in using the Internet to help manage their diabetes.

Predicting the frequency dispersion of electronic hyperpolarizabilities on the basis of absorption data and thomas-kuhn sum rules

Successfully predicting the frequency dispersion of electronic hyperpolarizabilities is an unresolved challenge in materials science and electronic structure theory. We show that the generalized Thomas-Kuhn sum rules, combined with linear absorption data and measured hyperpolarizability at one or two frequencies, may be used to predict the entire frequency-dependent electronic hyperpolarizability spectrum. This treatment includes two- and three-level contributions that arise from the lowest two or three excited electronic state manifolds, enabling us to describe the unusual observed frequency dispersion of the dynamic hyperpolarizability in high oscillator strength M-PZn chromophores, where (porphinato)zinc(II) (PZn) and metal(II)polypyridyl (M) units are connected via an ethyne unit that aligns the high oscillator strength transition dipoles of these components in a head-to-tail arrangement. We show that some of these structures can possess very similar linear absorption spectra yet manifest dramatically different frequency dependent hyperpolarizabilities, because of three-level contributions that result from excited state-to excited state transition dipoles among charge polarized states. Importantly, this approach provides a quantitative scheme to use linear optical absorption spectra and very limited individual hyperpolarizability measurements to predict the entire frequency-dependent nonlinear optical response. Copyright © 2010 American Chemical Society.

No-Holdback allocation rules for continuous-time assemble-to-order systems

This paper analyzes a class of common-component allocation rules, termed no-holdback (NHB) rules, in continuous-review assemble-to-order (ATO) systems with positive lead times. The inventory of each component is replenished following an independent base-stock policy. In contrast to the usually assumed first-come-first-served (FCFS) component allocation rule in the literature, an NHB rule allocates a component to a product demand only if it will yield immediate fulfillment of that demand. We identify metrics as well as cost and product structures under which NHB rules outperform all other component allocation rules. For systems with certain product structures, we obtain key performance expressions and compare them to those under FCFS. For general product structures, we present performance bounds and approximations. Finally, we discuss the applicability of these results to more general ATO systems. © 2010 INFORMS.

All my children: The roles of semantic category and phonetic similarity in the misnaming of familiar individuals.

Despite knowing a familiar individual (such as a daughter) well, anecdotal evidence suggests that naming errors can occur among very familiar individuals. Here, we investigate the conditions surrounding these types of errors, or misnamings, in which a person (the misnamer) incorrectly calls a familiar individual (the misnamed) by someone else's name (the named). Across 5 studies including over 1,700 participants, we investigated the prevalence of the phenomenon of misnaming, identified factors underlying why it may occur, and tested potential mechanisms. We included undergraduates and MTurk workers and asked questions of both the misnamed and the misnamer. We find that familiar individuals are often misnamed with the name of another member of the same semantic category; family members are misnamed with another family member's name and friends are misnamed with another friend's name. Phonetic similarity between names also leads to misnamings; however, the size of this effect was smaller than that of the semantic category effect. Overall, the misnaming of familiar individuals is driven by the relationship between the misnamer, misnamed, and named; phonetic similarity between the incorrect name used by the misnamer and the correct name also plays a role in misnaming.

A note on stopping rules for iterative regularisation methods and filtered SVD

"This volume contains the proceedings of a meeting held at Montpellier from December 1st to December 5th 1986 .sponsored by the Centre national de la recherche scientifique ."--Preface.

Heavy metals in family orchards of the NGO "A roof for my country"

p.19-29

Heavy metals in family orchards of the NGO "A roof for my country"

p.19-29

Home is where my archive is

The miniaturization and dissemination of audiovisual media into small, mobile assemblages of cameras, screens and microphones has brought "database cinema" (Manovich) into pockets and handbags. In turn, this micro-portability of video production calls for a reconsideration of database cinema, not as an aesthetic but rather as a media ecology that makes certain experiences and forms of interaction possible. In this context the clip and the fragment become a social currency (showing, trading online, etc.), and the enjoyment of a moment or "occasion" becomes an opportunity for recording, extending, preserving and displaying. If we are now the documentarists of our lives (as so many mobile phone adverts imply), it follows that we are also our own archivists as well. From the folksonomies of Flickr and YouTube to the slick "media centres" of Sony, Apple and Microsoft, the audiovisual home archive is a prized territory of struggle among platforms and brands. The database is emerging as the dominant (screen) medium of popular creativity and distribution – but it also brings the categories of "home" and "person" closer to that of the archive.

But no one in my family has been to university - aiming higher: school students attitudes to higher education

In this paper, we present findings from the second stage of a three year longitudinal study involving 3,570 students aged 13-18 in a London Borough looking at the impact of Widening Participation (WP) on the attitudes of students. We outline findings from a previous stage and then focus specifically on two cohorts of Year 10 students (aged 14-15) in two consecutive years. The students completed the specially designed Attitudes to Higher Education Questionnaire (AHEQ) and provided information on WP activities in which they had participated. Data on the students' academic attainment and social backgrounds were also included. There were significant sex and cohort differences and interactions which were found to be related to WP activities specifically aimed at increasing the participation of socially disadvantaged students in higher education. The implications of findings are discussed in relation to theories of social identity and self concept and the implementation of strategies to increase participation in Higher Education

Investigation into a modular rule-based testing method for testing business rules in scheduling applications

Rule testing in transport scheduling is a complex and potentially costly business problem. This paper proposes an automated method for the rule-based testing of business rules using the extensible Markup Language for rule representation and transportation. A compiled approach to rule execution is also proposed for performance-critical scheduling systems.