Large magnetic-field-induced strain ~MFIS! of 22700 ppm has been obtained from the Heusler alloy Ni52Mn23Ga25 at 300 K. The temperature for structure transformation was confirmed by three types of magnetic measurements. A burst of MFIS up to 5400 ppm could be induced by rotating a steady field of 1 T. In the martensitic phase, the material have a high saturated magnetization of 66 Am/kg and a h...

BACKGROUND The Oral Health Impact Profile-14 (OHIP-14) is an example of a specific questionnaire used for assessing the quality of life in relation to oral health. OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to validate the Polish version of the original English Short-Form OHIP-14 questionnaire. MATERIAL AND METHODS The Polish version of the OHIP-14 instrument had been prepared in accordance with ...

BACKGROUND To test the validity of the short form of the Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP-14) for use among adults in Greece. METHODS The original English version of the OHIP-14 was translated using the forward-backward technique, pilot-tested, and then applied to 211 adults aged 35 years and above. The questionnaire was filled out during face-to-face interviews conducted by one dentist, whil...

OBJECTIVES To assess the growth of quality of life measures and to examine the availability of measures across specialties. DESIGN Systematic searches of electronic databases to identify developmental and evaluative work relating to health outcome measures assessed by patients. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Types of measures: disease or population specific, dimension specific, generic, individualis...

Plasma ionization composition and level population calculations require, in particular, the cross sections of direct ionization from each quantum state into each state which may be generated by means of removal of any electron. We analysed published data and propose here an empirical formula for cross sections of direct electron-impact ionization of positive atomic ions. The cross sections give...

1 University of Liverpool, Department of Public Health, Liverpool, United Kingdom. Send correspondence to: Alex Scott-Samuel, Department of Public Health, University of Liverpool, Whelan Building, Quadrangle, Brownlow Hill, Liverpool L69 3GB, United Kingdom; telephone: +44 151 794 5569; fax: +44 151 794 5588; e-mail: [email protected]. An early definition of health impact assessment (HIA) ...

With the rapid feature size reduction of modern semiconductor devices accurate description of hot-carrier phenomena is becoming very important. Frequently used carrier transport models are the traditional drift-diffusion model and energy-transport models which also consider the average carrier energy as an independent solution variable. Recent results show, however, that the average energy is i...

Objective: To introduce a conceptual structure that can be used to organise the evidence base for Health Impact Assessment (HIA). Background: HIA can be used to judge the potential health effects of a policy, programme or project on a population, and the distribution of those effects. Progress has been made in incorporating HIA into routine practice, especially (in the UK) at local level. Howev...

Early career scientists today face many obstacles in their effort to achieve an independent career, including stiff competition for grant funding and jobs. Many of these hurdles reappear throughout one's scientific career; thus, for example, achieving and maintaining external funding for one's research is a widely used criterion in evaluations for academic advancement. One widely perceived barr...

Varying coefficient models have been widely used in longitudinal data analysis, nonlinear time series, survival analysis, and so on. They are natural non-parametric extensions of the classical linear models in many contexts, keeping good interpretability and allowing us to explore the dynamic nature of the model. Recently, penalized estimators have been used for fitting varying-coefficient mode...