Standardization of the measurement of pain in clinical trials will reduce variability, thus improving the quality of the data and reducing the number of patients needed to conduct pain trials. ...Standardization applies to the physical and psychosocial environment surrounding the patient, and there are many elements within this environment that can be effectively controlled. For example, the appearance of the examination room can be selected for neutrality and influences from visitors and staff can be minimized. Training is an important aspect of the standardization process and should be provided to all study staff. Staff training should first provide orientation on the protocol objectives and procedures and then a thorough discussion of the pain measures being used and how assessments will be conducted. Furthermore, as the patient is ultimately responsible for assessing his or her level of pain, it is important to train the patient to make reliable and accurate assessments of pain.
São descritos a construção e o funcionamento de um sistema de aquisição de dados automático de muito baixo custo formado por uma chave óptica (photogate) ativada por luz infravermelha, do tipo ...convencional, e um cronômetro digital comum com 0,01 s de resolução, alterado para ser acionado e parado eletronicamente pela chave óptica. O sistema é projetado para uso em medidas de intervalos de tempo e pode ser utilizado tanto em laboratórios universitários de física experimental como nos de Ensino Médio de física.
This paper reports the design and development of field programmable gate array based digital clock with additional feature of stopwatch. The implementation includes two different coding techniques. ...The performance has been comparatively analyzed based on these techniques. The portability of reconfigurable platform allows for application to various designs. The architecture has been implemented and verified experimentally on a test board.
In this paper, we define a model dedicated to the specification of multimedia applications called Pre-emptive Time Petri Nets with synchronizing transitions (STPTPN) as an extension of T-time Petri ...nets where time is associated with transitions. The model is proposed in the general purpose to model a large scale of multimedia requirements. Thus, resource requirement issues are discussed in this paper, and addressed in the model. To deal with, resources are modelled as special places using a new mechanism called “pre-emptor hyperarc” which lets a transition be “resource strongly-enabled”, “resource-violated” or “resource-violating”. Moreover, two additional mechanisms are considered: A time suspension mechanism uses inhibitor arcs associated with stopwatches and synchronization mechanisms allow the simultaneous firing of a set of transitions (called Rendezvous), according to different schemes. Compared to other existing models, our model is provided with an adapted semantic, designed to represent clearly and accurately time requirements, as well as the complex resource-pre-empting mechanisms that are observed in multimedia systems.
It is common for clinical trials designed to compare treatments for migraine to
incorporate a component for estimating onset. Our objective is to describe a
stopwatch method for collecting data on ...time to meaningful relief and a
conceptual framework for describing and analysing the results. The survival
distribution of onset is modelled in two parts: the probability that onset does
not occur, and the survival distribution conditional on its occurrence. Using
data from a clinical trial comparing an active treatment and placebo, we
illustrate the method and find that the distributions of onset among those with
onset do not differ, but the probabilities that onset occurs are substantially
different. We illustrate how the model can be used to help determine how long
patients without onset should wait before further intervention, how patients
interpret the phrase meaningful relief, and how baseline clinical
characteristics affect the onset.
Drinking in the rat occurs in bursts of rapid licking, a high frequency rhythmic behavior controlled by a neural clock located in the brain stem. We found that 3.0 mg/kg amphetamine increased the ...speed of licking and shifted to the left the frequency distribution of inter-lick intervals. Repeated amphetamine treatments result in long-lasting sensitization to this effect. Thus, it appears possible to produce enduring changes in the activity of a biological interval clock (or `stopwatch') by manipulating catecholaminergic transmission. These findings may be important for an understanding of the neural basis of normal and pathological timing behavior.
A modeling paradigm called Post and Pre-initialized Stopwatch Petri Nets (SWPN) is introduced. It extends Time Petri Nets TPN to the concept of stopwatch with an original mechanism of stopwatches ...reset. SWPN makes this reset dependent on the firing of the corresponding transitions. The resulting model permits natural description of so-called preemption-resume behavior. We give the formal semantics of SWPN as a timed transition system. We propose also a method for its analysis consisting in the computation of its equivalent stopwatch automaton SWA. The advantage of Petri Nets for modeling the complex system in concise way is combined with the power analysis of SWA.
In general, men are able to control the timing of their ejaculation reasonably well, even if ejaculation may sometimes occur earlier than they would have wished. The probability that it may take a ...longer time at a next occasion makes most men not to worry about their ejaculation. However, this is not the case in men who suffer from premature ejaculation (PE). Males affected by PE are often continuously worried about and even obsessed by their ejaculation. As soon as ejaculation has occurred too early again, these males feel frustrated, are full of shame, or may feel guilty towards their sexual partner.
Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) are frequently used in the automation industry for the control of hybrid systems. Although the programming languages for PLCs are given in the standard IEC ...61131-3, their semantics are defined in an ambiguous and incomplete way. This holds in particular for the graphical language Sequential Function Charts (SFC), a high-level programming language comprising such interesting features as parallelism, activity manipulation, priorities and hierarchy. In this work we present a formal semantics for timed SFCs, which belong to the class of linear hybrid systems.
Determined whether 24 male and female middle-class American 5th graders could solve B. Inhelder and Piaget's pendulum problem of 1958 and if several types of instructional techniques would improve ...their performance. The initial training method included presentation of a conceptual framework, 2 analog problems, and a stopwatch. The training procedure remained effective if either the conceptual framework or the analog training was deleted, but not if both were absent. Control group members who were unable to solve the problem were retrained using the initial experimental procedure; their subsequent performance closely paralleled that of the experimental group members. Results replicated Inhelder and Piaget's observation that unaided 10- and 11-yr-olds do not often solve the pendulum problem, but did not support their inference that the students' cognitive developmental level did not allow them to benefit from appropriate instruction.
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