Patients with suspected nephrolithiasis were randomly assigned to ultrasonography performed by an emergency physician or a radiologist or to CT for initial study. Ultrasonography was associated with ...a lower cumulative radiation dose, with no significant difference in complications.
This volume describes the Pomeron, an object of crucial importance in very high energy particle physics. Starting with a general description of the Pomeron within the framework of Regge theory, the ...emergence of the Pomeron within scalar field theory is discussed, providing a natural foundation on which to develop the more realistic case of QCD. The reggeization of the gluon is demonstrated and used to build the Pomeron of perturbative QCD. The dynamical nature of the Pomeron and its role in small-x deep inelastic scattering and in diffractive scattering is also examined in detail. The volume concludes with a study of the colour dipole approach to high energy scattering and the explicit role of unitarity corrections. This book will be of interest to theoretical and experimental particle physicists, and applied mathematicians. First published in 1997, this title has been reissued as an Open Access publication.
In a previous volume, State and Society in Papua New Guinea: The First Twenty-Five Years (2001, reprinted by ANU E Press in 2004), a collection of papers by the author published between 1971 and 2001 ...was put together to mark Papua New Guinea's first 25 years as an independent state. This volume presents a collection of papers written between 2001 and 2021, which update the story of political and social development in Papua New Guinea in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. The chapters cover a range of topics, from an evaluation of proposals for political reform in the early 2000s, a review of the discussion of 'failing states’ in the island Pacific and the shift to limited preferential voting in 2007, to a detailed account of political developments from the move against Sir Michael Somare in 2011 to the election of Prime Minister Marape and his performance to 2022. There are also chapters on language policy, external and internal security, religious fundamentalism and national identity, and the sustainability of economic growth.
The advent of the internet, the exponential growth in computing power and the rapid developments in artificial intelligence have given rise to numerous ethical questions in relation to cybersecurity ...across various domains, not least by virtue of the dual-use character of cybertechnology—it can be used to provide great benefits to humankind, but also to do great harm. The domains in question intersect and include business (e.g., data security, data ownership and privacy), public communication (e.g., disinformation and computational propaganda), health (e.g., privacy, ransomware attacks), law enforcement (e.g., data security, predictive policing), and interstate conflict (e.g., cyberwar, autonomous weapons). This work undertakes analyses of the key ethical concepts in play, such as privacy, freedom of communication, security, and the right to self-defence. This work also develops sets of ethical guidelines to give direction to the regulation of cyberspace in these various domains. It does so from a liberal democratic perspective that seeks to protect individual rights while ensuring the collective good of cybersecurity. A central informing idea is that of institutionally embedded collective moral responsibilities that function as “webs of prevention” against cyberattacks. Cybersecurity is, in the end, a collective moral responsibility of both individual citizens and organizations, but a collective responsibility the discharging of which requires new regulation and the redesign of institutional roles, as well as technical countermeasures to cyberattacks, such as passwords, encryption, firewalls, patching, and the like. It also involves at times, we suggest, offensive as well as defensive measures.
This book explores the links among ecology, disease, and international politics in the context of the Greater Caribbean - the landscapes lying between Surinam and the Chesapeake - in the seventeenth ...through early twentieth centuries. Ecological changes made these landscapes especially suitable for the vector mosquitoes of yellow fever and malaria, and these diseases wrought systematic havoc among armies and would-be settlers. Because yellow fever confers immunity on survivors of the disease, and because malaria confers resistance, these diseases played partisan roles in the struggles for empire and revolution, attacking some populations more severely than others. In particular, yellow fever and malaria attacked newcomers to the region, which helped keep the Spanish Empire Spanish in the face of predatory rivals in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In the late eighteenth and through the nineteenth century, these diseases helped revolutions to succeed by decimating forces sent out from Europe to prevent them.
Evidence-based psychosocial treatments for schizophrenia founded on Western belief systems and values may not be efficacious in different cultures without adaptation. This systematic review analyses ...the nature and outcomes of culturally-adapted psychosocial interventions in schizophrenia, examining how interventions have been adapted, their efficacy and what features drive heterogeneity in outcome.
Articles identified by searching electronic databases from inception to 3 March 2016, reference lists and previous reviews were independently screened by two authors for eligible controlled trials. Data on the nature of adaptations was analysed inductively using thematic analyses. Meta-analyses were conducted using random effects models to calculate effect sizes (Hedges' g) for symptoms.
Forty-six studies with 7828 participants were included, seven adapted for minority populations. Cultural adaptations were grouped into nine themes: language, concepts and illness models, family, communication, content, cultural norms and practices, context and delivery, therapeutic alliance, and treatment goals. Meta-analyses showed significant post-treatment effects in favour of adapted interventions for total symptom severity (n = 2345, g: -0.23, 95% confidence interval (CI) -0.36 to -0.09), positive (n = 1152, g: -0.56, 95% CI -0.86 to -0.26), negative (n = 855, g: -0.39, 95% CI -0.63 to -0.15), and general (n = 525, g: -0.75, CI -1.21 to -0.29) symptoms.
The adaptation process can be described within a framework that serves as a benchmark for development or assessment of future adaptations. Culturally adapted interventions were more efficacious than usual treatment in proportion to the degree of adaptation. There is insufficient evidence to show that adapted interventions are better than non-adapted interventions. Features of context, intervention and design influenced efficacy. Investigating whether adaptation improves efficacy, most importantly amongst ethnic minorities, requires better designed trials with comparisons against unadapted interventions.
To evaluate the efficacy and safety of tositumomab and iodine I 131 tositumomab (Bexxar; Corixa Corp, Seattle, WA, and GlaxoSmithKline, Philadelphia, PA) in patients with chemotherapy-refractory ...low-grade or transformed low-grade non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) and to compare its efficacy to the patients' last qualifying chemotherapy (LQC) regimens.
Sixty patients who had been treated with at least two protocol-specified qualifying chemotherapy regimens and had not responded or progressed within 6 months after their LQC were treated with a single course of iodine I 131 tositumomab.
Patients had received a median of four prior chemotherapy regimens. A partial or complete response (CR) was observed in 39 patients (65%) after iodine I 131 tositumomab, compared with 17 patients (28%) after their LQC (P <.001). The median duration of response (MDR) was 6.5 months after iodine I 131 tositumomab, compared with 3.4 months after the LQC (P <.001). Two patients (3%) had a CR after their LQC, compared with 12 (20%) after iodine I 131 tositumomab (P <.001). The MDR for CR was 6.1 months after the LQC and had not been reached with follow-up of more than 47 months after iodine I 131 tositumomab. An independent review panel verified that 32 (74%) of the 43 patients with nonequivalent durations of response (> 30 days difference) had a longer duration of response after iodine I 131 tositumomab (P <.001). Only one patient was hospitalized for neutropenic fever. Five patients (8%) developed human antimurine antibodies, and one (2%) developed an elevated TSH level after treatment. Myelodysplasia was diagnosed in four patients in follow-up.
A single course of iodine I 131 tositumomab was significantly more efficacious than the LQC received by extensively pretreated patients with chemotherapy-refractory, low-grade, or transformed low-grade NHL and had an acceptable safety profile.
"This book, Perturbation Theories for the Thermodynamic Properties of Fluids and Solids, provides a comprehensive review of current perturbation theorie--as well as integral equation theories and ...density functional theorie--for the equilibrium thermodynamic and structural properties of classical systems. Emphasizing practical applications, the text avoids complex theoretical derivations as much as possible. It begins with discussions of the nature of intermolecular forces and simple potential models. The book also presents a summary of statistical mechanics concepts and formulae. In addition, it reviews simulation techniques, providing background for the performance analyses of theories executed throughout the text using simulation data.Chapters describe integral equation theories, theoretical approaches for hard-sphere fluid or solid systems, and perturbation theories for simple fluids and solids for monocomponent and multicomponent systems. They also cover density functional theories for inhomogeneous systems and perturbative and nonperturbative approaches to describe the structure and thermodynamics of hard-body molecular fluids. The final chapter examines several more challenging systems, such as fluids near the critical point, liquid metals, molten salts, colloids, and aqueous protein solutions.This book offers a thorough account of the available equilibrium theories for the thermodynamic and structural properties of fluids and solids, with special focus on perturbation theories, emphasizing their applications, strengths, and weaknesses. Appropriate for experienced researchers as well as postgraduate students, the text presents a wide-ranging yet detailed view and provides a useful guide to the application of the theories described"--
Members of Parliament in the United Kingdom are elected to represent geographic constituencies; but how are these defined and what are the consequences for democracy? Tracing the UK???s system of ...parliamentary representation from its origins in the thirteenth century right through to the present, this comprehensive new survey reveals how a system initially designed to restrain the power of monarchs gradually evolved to serve their interests, then those of political parties before the twentieth century ???settlement??? of an independent process for revising the constituency map. That settlement is now under pressure, with the traditional pattern of constituencies representing communities about to be replaced by one which elevates numbers above community. Advanced under the slogan of ???making votes equal???, this new regime promises fairness yet, as the authors show, is destined to fail to address the disproportional and biased election results that have long been a feature of UK politics. Concluding with a detailed consideration of the ways in which various parts of the UK have embraced alternatives to first-past-the-post over the last two decades, this book serves as a timely reminder that the needs of political parties do not always coincide with those of us, the electors.
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