The American Society of Internal Medicine (ASIM) appreciates the opportunity to share our perspectives on HCFA’s approach to developing resource-based practice expenses (RBPEs). We understand that HCFA is particularly interested in our views on how indirect practice expense relative value units (RVUs) should be developed. Given the fact that HCFA has proposed that the indirect practice expense ...

Conflicts between local people's livelihoods and conservation have led to many unsuccessful conservation efforts and have stimulated debates on policies that might simultaneously promote sustainable management of protected areas and improve the living conditions of local people. Many government-sponsored payments-for-ecosystem-services (PES) schemes have been implemented around the world. Howev...

BACKGROUND this study aimed to compare mental health of mothers of children with spina bifida with mothers of able-bodied controls. METHODS eighty-one mothers of children with spina bifida aged 1-18 years completed the General Health Questionnaire-12 (GHQ-12) and Parenting Stress Index Short Form (PSI/SF). The controls were 69 mothers of children with acute, non-disabling illnesses. Each chil...

This study was conducted to examine an adaptation of the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale (VABS) [Sparrow, S. S., Balla, D. A., & Cicchetti, D. V. (1984). The Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales. Circle Pines, MN: America Guidance Service; Sparrow, S. S., Balla, D. A., & Cicchetti, D. V. (2005). Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales Second Edition Survey Forms Manual. AGS Publishing] and its psychome...

L ean thinking has been successfully employed beyond manufacturing in product design and development. This has led to an increasing interest to utilize it in software engineering (SE). The thesis advances this goal by identifying the key practice of Value Stream Mapping (VSM) that can facilitate organizations to adopt Lean for software development. Two major shortcomings of VSM when applying it...

We show for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, that, in a coherent communication system that employs a phase-shift-keying signal and Raman amplification, besides the pump relative intensity noise (RIN) transfer to the amplitude, the signal's phase will also be affected by pump RIN through the pump-signal cross-phase modulation. Although the average pump power induced linear phase cha...

This study compared performance on the Functional Independence Measure for Children (WeeFIM), the Battelle Developmental Inventory Screening Test (BDIST), and the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales (VABS) in children with developmental disabilities. The three instruments were administered to 205 children with identified disabilities. All 205 children were tested using the WeeFIM instrument. The ...

The relationship between topography, land use, and topsoil moisture storage is investigated for a small catchment with undulating deep loess hilslopes in the south of the Netherlands. For a period of 10 months, soil moisture profiles have been measured weekly at 15 locations throughout the catchment. A Generalized Additive Model was employed to find relationships between the various factors inf...

This paper presents numerical results obtained by applying an LES model based on a rational subdiagonal Pad e approximation in the wave number space We used a spectral element code to test this LES model a coarse DNS and the Smagorinsky model with Van Driest damping in the numerical simulation of a D channel ow at Re The corresponding results were compared with the ne DNS simulation of Moser Ki...

The ® rst impressions of web pages presented to users was investigated by using 13 diVerent web pages, three types of scales and 18 participants. Multidimensional analysis of similarity and preference judgements found four important dimensions: beauty, mostly illustrations versus mostly text, overview and structure. Category scales indicated the existence of two factors related to formal aspect...