BACKGROUND A stepped-care program was found effective in preventing depressive and anxiety disorders in older adults with vision impairment. However, before a decision can be made about implementation, the cost-effectiveness of this program should be investigated. Therefore, we aimed to compare the cost-effectiveness of stepped-care versus usual care within low vision rehabilitation. METHODS ...

This paper presents modeling and simulation of Grid Connected Photovoltaic (PV) system by using improved mathematical model. The model is used to study different parameter variations and effects on the PV array including operating temperature and solar irradiation level. In this paper stepped P&O algorithm is proposed for MPPT control. This algorithm will identify the suitable duty ratio in whi...

Several issues concerning stepped care are discussed: the constraints of using Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders diagnoses in randomized clinical trials (RCTs), the importance of basic and process research, the unintended negative effects of exaggerated claims of effectiveness and efficiency, the limits of RCTs in evaluating improvement and deterioration, the self-correcting...

BACKGROUND The cost effectiveness of various treatment strategies for bulimia nervosa (BN) is unknown. AIMS To examine the cost effectiveness of stepped care treatment for BN. METHOD Randomized trial conducted at four clinical centers with intensive measurement of direct medical costs and repeated measurement of subject quality of life and family/significant other time involvement. Two hund...

This paper describes the design and analysis of planar dualband bandpass filters using stepped impedance resonators. In the proposed filter configurations, dual-band bandpass filters are designed, and realized by using inverted stepped impedance (SIR) resonators. The conventional half wavelength open circuited stub single frequency resonators are replaced with dual band simple two section stepp...

BACKGROUND Stepped care is recommended and implemented as a means to organise depression treatment. Compared with alternative systems, it is assumed to achieve equivalent clinical effects and greater efficiency. However, no trials have examined these assumptions. A fully powered trial of stepped care compared with intensive psychological therapy is required but a number of methodological and pr...

BACKGROUND Stepped wedge cluster randomised trials frequently involve a relatively small number of clusters. The most common frameworks used to analyse data from these types of trials are generalised estimating equations and generalised linear mixed models. A topic of much research into these methods has been their application to cluster randomised trial data and, in particular, the number of c...

Excess mortality in persons of lower socioeconomic status is a finding confirmed in many population studies. Among the nearly 11,000 hypertensive trial participants in the population-based Hypertension Detection and Follow-up Program, lower educational level (an indicator of low socioeconomic status) was associated with a 5-year death rate significantly above that found in those with higher edu...

Stepped block protection has considerable potential as a low-cost method for the construction of chute spillways and the protection of embankments from erosion by overtopping flow. Stepped spillways are structurally stable, resistant to water loads and significantly increase the rate of energy dissipation on the spillway face thus eliminating or greatly reducing the need for a large energy diss...

We propose an optimization technique for reducing global synchronizations in traditional time-stepped simulations. Time-stepped simulations are known to be efficient when events are frequent or dense. However, when events are less frequent (when compared to the size of time-steps) the performance of time-stepped simulations drop noticeably. This paper aims at improving the performance of tradit...