Background: General Practitioners have limited means to compete. As quality is hard to observe by patients, GPs have incentives to signal quality by using instruments patients perceive as quality. Objectives: We investigate whether GPs exhibit different prescribing behavior (volume and value of prescriptions) when confronted with more competition. As there is no monetary benefit in doing so, th...

BACKGROUND Vagal nerve stimulation (VNS) has been shown to provide a protective effect against ischemia/reperfusion (I/R)-related arrhythmias by preventing the loss of Connexin43 (Cx43). Our previous studies showed that atrial epicardial ganglionated plexus stimulation (GPS) might exert a VNS-like effect on ventricular electrophysiology. OBJECTIVES To investigate whether GPS could preserve Cx...

BACKGROUND Research suggests that variation in laboratory requesting patterns may indicate unnecessary test use. Requesting patterns for serum immunoglobulins vary significantly between general practitioners (GPs). This study aims to explore GP's views on testing to identify the determinants of behaviour and recommend feasible intervention strategies for improving immunoglobulin test use in pri...

1 Traffic has become a major problem in metropolitan areas around the world. It is of a great 2 importance to understand the complex interplay of road networks and traffic conditions. We 3 propose a novel framework to estimate traffic conditions at metropolitan scale using GPS traces. 4 Our approach begins with a coarse inference of network travel times by solving a convex 5 optimization progra...

BACKGROUND With the recent publication of comprehensive evidence based guidelines and the inclusion of epilepsy in the new GMS contract in the UK the importance of epilepsy to primary care has become clear. There seem to be many deficiencies in GP service provision for epilepsy including a lack of structured review and poor information provision for patients. Therefore, it is likely that furthe...

Letters Not just another primary care workforce crisis … There is a baffling disconnect in the position of Irish and Purvis on the primary care workforce crisis. 1 On the one hand, they say: 'The supply of newly qualified GPs is unlikely to match demand without international recruits and returners to the GP workforce.' On the other hand, many readers of this Journal will be astonished to learn ...

In recent sociomaterialist, materialist and post-human theorizing which foregrounds the importance of objects bodies, ideas consciousness intentionality are seen as potentially tainted either with Cartesian mind-body splits or subjectivities that too discursively constructed. At same time, new theories affect something pre-personal corporeal further marginalize notion human agency. But could pe...