BACKGROUND Patients with schizophrenia have severe problems with personal and social relations which affect their quality of life. AIM The aim of the paper was to monitor personal and social relations in patients with schizophrenia and to find out the differences regarding socio-demographic characteristics and ambulatory and day hospital treatment. MATERIAL AND METHODS The investigation inc...

The interactive manipulation of rigid objects in virtual reality environments requires an object behaviour which is at least physically plausible to be useful for applications like interactive assembly simulation or virtual training. Physically plausible behaviour implies that collisions between simulated solid objects are taken into account, and that the motion of objects with obstacle contact...

When an object is manipulated, contacts between the object and the robot, and between the object and the environment, serve two purposes: they transmit forces to the object, and impose motion constraints on the object. Even if the robot can precisely control its configuration, it is slave to the interactions at the contacts for the control of the object. Contact interactions are governed by fri...

The diagnosis of tuberculosis in children is difficult because of the paucibacillary nature of infection. Uniform diagnostic criteria have not been generally accepted and the currently available guidelines differ widely. A simple, reliable and rapid diagnostic test for the diagnosis of active tuberculosis has still to be evolved. So the diagnosis of tuberculosis still depends on the conventiona...

Electronic passports (ePassports) have known a wide and fast deployment all around the world since the International Civil Aviation Organization published their specifications in 2004. Based on an integrated circuit, ePassports are significantly more secure than their predecessors. Forging an ePassport is definitely thwarted by the use of cryptographic means. In spite of their undeniable benefi...

We report on the preparation of carbon nanotube Josephson junctions using superconducting electrodes made of niobium. Gate-controllable supercurrents with values of up to 30 nA are induced by the proximity effect. The IV curves are hysteretic at low temperature and the corresponding switching histograms have a width of 0.5%–2%. An on-chip resistive environment integrated in the sample layout is...

special education programs often do not act as a protective factor for students with emotional and behavioral disorders because contact with these agencies is not suffi ciently early, comprehensive, or coordinated across agencies. A study by UW–Madison education professor Kimber Malmgren and colleague Sheri Meisel supports a large body of research that identifi es early childhood as a critical ...

We report the use of bilayer graphene as an atomically smooth contact for nanoscale devices. A two-terminal bucky-ball (C60) based molecular memory is fabricated with bilayer graphene as a contact on the polycrystalline nickel electrode. Graphene provides an atomically smooth covering over an otherwise rough metal surface. The use of graphene additionally prohibits the electromigration of nicke...