In New South Wales, Australia, a cost-effectiveness evaluation was conducted of an adult drug court (ADC) program as an alternative to jail for criminal offenders addicted to illicit drugs. This article describes the program, the cost-effectiveness analysis, and the results. The results of this study reveal that, for the 23-month period of the evaluation, the ADC was as cost-effective as were c...

We outline a theory for the calculation of the beam quality factor of an aberrated laser beam. We provide closed-form equations that show that the beam quality factor of an aberrated Gaussian beam depends on all primary aberrations except tilt, defocus, and x-astigmatism. The model is verified experimentally by implementing aberrations as digital holograms in the laboratory.

This analysis was carried out, first for Health Service properties in Northamptonshire, and then for schools and domestic properties. Comparison of the three programmes showed that the programme in schools was the most cost effective, but that a completed programme in domestic properties would be almost as effective. However, in the UK, only 10 % of those who discover raised radon levels have s...

The day is drawing near when each patient can be made into a SuperModel—not a fashion model, but a digital or virtual model (see companion paper Brown, in review). Such representation of a patient can also be termed a patient avatar (The Discipulus Project, 2013). Principles to help guide successful implementation of these SuperModels are addressed in this article, including efficiency and cost...

Energy dissipation experienced by vibrating microcantilever beams immersed in fluid is strongly dependent on the mode of vibration, with quality factors typically increasing with mode number. Recently, we examined energy dissipation in a new class of cantilever device that embeds a microfluidic channel in its interior-the fundamental mode of vibration only was considered. Due to its importance ...

BACKGROUND Other than the UK, The Netherlands has no formal threshold for cost-per-QALY values defined yet. For example, a cutoff value at €20,000 per QALY is sometimes mentioned in various discussions, however it has no formal status at all. Yet, since 2005, all new innovative do have to go through a cost-effectiveness evaluation though, with the assessment being focused on the methodology rat...

BACKGROUND Although economic evaluation has been widely recognized as a key feature of both health services and educational research, for many years there has been a paucity of such studies relevant to services for children with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN), making the application of economic arguments to the development of services difficult. AIMS The study has two aims, n...

We report that a resonance response with a very high quality factor can be achieved in a planar metamaterial by introducing symmetry breaking in the shape of its structural elements, which enables excitation of trapped modes, i.e., modes that are weakly coupled to free space.