PRINCIPLES The literature has described opinion leaders not only as marketing tools of the pharmaceutical industry, but also as educators promoting good clinical practice. This qualitative study addresses the distinction between the opinion-leader-as-marketing-tool and the opinion-leader-as-educator, as it is revealed in the discourses of physicians and experts, focusing on the prescription of ...

A major challenge for global query optimization in a multidatabase system (MDBS) is lack of local cost information at the global level due to local autonomy. A number of methods to derive local cost models have been suggested recently. However, these methods are only suitable for a static multidatabase environment. In this paper, we propose a new multi-states query sampling method to develop lo...

STUDY OBJECTIVE To assess the health impacts of local public swimming pool and leisure provision. DESIGN Retrospective qualitative study using focus groups. Reports from two areas with contrasting experience of provision of a public swimming pool (opening and closure) were compared within the context of general reports about health and neighbourhood. SETTING Two deprived neighbourhoods in s...

Study objective: To assess the health impacts of local public swimming pool and leisure provision. Design: Retrospective qualitative study using focus groups. Reports from two areas with contrasting experience of provision of a public swimming pool (opening and closure) were compared within the context of general reports about health and neighbourhood. Setting: Two deprived neighbourhoods in so...

This paper presents the qualitative heterogeneous control framework, a methodology for the design of a controlled hybrid system based on attractors and transitions between them. This framework designs a robust controller that can accommodate bounded amounts of parametric and structural uncertainty. This framework provides a number of advantages over other similar techniques. The local models us...

Morphological variation among geographic populations of the New World sand fly Lutzomyia quinquefer (Diptera, Phlebotominae) was analyzed and patterns detected that are probably associated with species emergence. This was achieved by examining the relationships of size and shape components of morphological attributes, and their correlation with geographic parameters. Quantitative and qualitativ...