Collaborative Request Research Articles

Cohort Profile: The China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS)

The China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) is a nationally representative longitudinal survey of persons in China 45 years of age or older and their spouses, including assessments of social, economic, and health circumstances of community-residents. CHARLS examines health and economic adjustments to rapid ageing of the population in China. The national baseline survey for the study was conducted between June 2011 and March 2012 and involved 17 708 respondents. CHARLS respondents are followed every 2 years, using a face-to-face computer-assisted personal interview (CAPI). Physical measurements are made at every 2-year follow-up, and blood sample collection is done once in every two follow-up periods. A pilot survey for CHARLS was conducted in two provinces of China in 2008, on 2685 individuals, who were resurveyed in 2012. To ensure the adoption of best practices and international comparability of results, CHARLS was harmonized with leading international research studies in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) model. Requests for collaborations should be directed to Dr Yaohui Zhao (yhzhao@nsd.edu.cn). All data in CHARLS are maintained at the National School of Development of Peking University and will be accessible to researchers around the world at the study website. The 2008 pilot data for CHARLS are available at: http://charls.ccer.edu.cn/charls/. National baseline data for the study are expected to be released in January 2013.

Low-Overhead Interference Mitigation Scheme for Collaborative Channel Assignment in Overloaded Multiantenna Femtocells

This paper proposes a collaborative-based scheme for a transmit antenna channel assignment in overloaded multiantenna femtocells, with the aim of reducing the overhead load. It is assumed that multiple femtocell access points (FAPs) are deployed to sequentially allocate the available resources to scheduled users while reducing the interference experienced by each active user. The FAPs operate concurrently and each of them is allocated an orthogonal channel and employs a transmit array of arbitrary size. The suitable FAP and its associated transmit channel are then identified based on the noncoherently predicted interference power levels on available channels when feedback links are capacity limited. The effect of possible FAP failure or infeasibility to collaborate is characterized for different operating conditions. The applicability of the proposed scheme for specific cases, such as the use of directional antennas in each FAP or shared channels among different FAPs, is also discussed. For arbitrary statistical models of interference power levels on different channels, the average numbers of collaboration requests and examined transmit antenna channels are quantified. Moreover, the statistics of the resulting interference power are derived, which are then used to study various system performance measures. The effect of the interference threshold on the aforementioned measures for processing load and achieved performance is investigated. Numerical and simulations results are presented to support the analytical development and to clarify the tradeoff between the achieved performance enhancement using the proposed scheme and the required processing load for different operating scenarios.

Cohort Profile: The Themba Lethu Clinical Cohort, Johannesburg, South Africa

The Themba Lethu Clinical Cohort was established in 2004 to allow large patient-level analyses from a single HIV treatment site to evaluate National Treatment Guidelines, answer questions of national and international policy relevance and to combine an economic and epidemiologic focus on HIV research. The current objectives of the Themba Lethu Clinical Cohort analyses are to: (i) provide cohort-level information on the outcomes of HIV treatment; (ii) evaluate aspects of HIV care and treatment that have policy relevance; (iii) evaluate the cost and cost-effectiveness of different approaches to HIV care and treatment; and (iv) provide a platform for studies on improving HIV care and treatment. Since 2004, Themba Lethu Clinic has enrolled approximately 30,000 HIV-positive patients into its HIV care and treatment programme, over 21,000 of whom have received anti-retroviral therapy since being enrolled. Patients on treatment are typically seen at least every 3 months with laboratory monitoring every 6 months to 1 year. The data collected include demographics, clinical visit data, laboratory data, medication history and clinical diagnoses. Requests for collaborations on analyses can be submitted to our data centre.

A Novel Protocol Design and Collaborative Forensics Mechanism for VoIP Services

The simplicity and low cost of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services has made these services increasingly popular as the Internet has grown. Unfortunately, these advantages of VoIP are attractive to both legitimate and nefarious users, and VoIP is often used by criminals to communicate and conduct illegal activities (such as fraud or blackmail) without being intercepted by Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs). However, VoIP can also increase the efficiency of law enforcement and forensic collaboration. Currently, VoIP researchers have only proposed a framework for this type of partnership, and have yet to provide a common protocol for forensic Internet collaboration. As a result, Internet-based collaboration between agencies is not widespread. Building from the Collaborative Forensics Mechanism (CFM) and the procedures of collaborative forensics work, this paper designs a novel application-layer Collaborative Forensics Protocol (CFP) to overcome the current framework-protocol gap. Here, CFP can exchange collaborative request and response messages between collaborative forensics region centers (CFRCs) to acquire collaborative forensics information. We present a procedure for collaborative forensics and discuss the details of protocol design. In addition, we discuss the defense of PKI working with CFM against various types of attacks and analyze the features of CFP.

To waiver or not to waiver? The dilemma of informed consent in emergency department suicide prevention research.

Ethical issues are inherent in research with vulnerable populations; researchers are encouraged to view these issues as challenges rather than obstacles. This paper details the request of a suicide prevention research collaboration to collect data in specific circumstances involving the waiver of consent. The conflicting multi-ethics committees' responses to this request are examined, with the purpose of highlighting the resultant impact of delayed multi-site ethical approvals. Implications of the committees' responses for this research in terms of being able to address the original stated project aims of improving future acute health service provision to suicidal individuals are discussed.

A new direction-sensitive optical module for deep-sea neutrino telescopy

Within the KM3NeT framework, the NEMO (NEutrino Mediterranean Observatory) project is studying new technologies for a km 3 - scale neutrino telescope in the Mediterranean Sea. The telescope goal will be the investigation of the high-energy component of the cosmic neutrino spectrum: a promising tool to better understand the mechanisms that originate extreme-energy cosmic rays. Neutrino energy and direction will be reconstructed using the Cherenkov light produced in water by muons coming from neutrino interactions. Two prototypes of a new large-area (10 in.) 4-anode photomultipliers, manufactured by Hamamatsu at the request of the NEMO Collaboration, have been extensively studied. These tubes will be integrated into spherical glass pressure-resistant optical modules and used for the first time to detect the direction of the detected Cherenkov light at the NEMO deep-sea (3600 m) site near Capo Passero in Sicily. The photocathode surface in these optical modules will be effectively divided into four quadrants by a pair of crescent-shaped mirrors embedded in the optical gel linking the PMT to the glass pressure sphere. A series of measurements was performed at the testing facility of the NEMO group at the INFN Sezione di Catania. The single photoelectron peak, the transit time spread, the gain and the cross-talk of the prototype have been studied, to have a complete characterization and make feasible a comparison with previous models. The first prototype of direction-sensitive optical module has been assembled and tested with a dedicated experimental setup at the INFN Sezione di Genova. First results of tests of the prototype are presented.

A new direction sensitive Optical Module to be employed in deep sea neutrino telescopes

The NEMO (NEutrino Mediterranean Observatory, [I. Amore, [NEMO Collaboration], et al., Int. J. Mod. Phys. A 22 (2007) 3509, arXiv:0709.3991 [astro-ph]]) project studies, within the KM3NeT framework [U.F. Katz, Nucl. Instr. and Meth. A 567 (2006) 457, arXiv:astro-ph/0606068], new technologies for a km 3 -scale neutrino telescope in the Mediterranean Sea. The telescope goal is the investigation of the high energy component of the cosmic neutrino spectrum. The detection of these neutrinos is a promising tool for a better understanding of the mechanisms that originate the extreme energy cosmic rays. Neutrino energy and direction are reconstructed collecting the Cherenkov light produced in water by the muon coming from a neutrino interaction. Two prototypes of a new large area (10 in.) 4-anode photomultiplier, and manufactured by Hamamatsu, on request of the NEMO Collaboration, will be used for the first time to detect the direction of the detected Cherenkov light at the NEMO Capo Passero site.

President's column: EUPHA is growing

I am very happy to write this last column for 2005, my last one as the president of EUPHA. It is good to see that EUPHA has strengthened its position as an international Public Health Organisation in 2005 using different instruments, which are as follows: 1. An increase in our members from 48 to 50 member associations from 40 European countries, representing some 12 000 public health experts. It was a pleasure for me to play a role in this expansion by visiting Armenia as well as Greece in order to invite Public health organisations there to apply for membership in EUPHA. 2. The improvement of our scientific journal, the European Journal of Public Health . 3. The networking activities of EUPHA. EUPHA has seen an increase in request for collaboration and an increase in invitations to speak at conferences. As EUPHA president, I have been invited to speak at different international conferences during the last few months, for example the International conference on Safe community focusing on Violence prevention as well as a pre-meeting in Greece for the 1st European congress on Injury Prevention and safety Prevention to be held in Austria in 2006. 4. The EUPHA database has not only increased the visibility of EUPHA, but also strengthened our networking possibilities. As you know the EUPHA database is an online system where every public health expert in Europe and beyond can register himself/herself. 5. The further development of the EUPHA website. This included the database and a monthly update of the website with regard to upcoming conferences and recent publications. The average hits for the website over the last 9 months have been just >100 000 hits per month. 6. The activities of our theme-specific sections have increased. At the same time, we have discussed a number of new sections to be created within EUPHA. …

Surveying patients' and family members' satisfaction: the experience of the mental health department in Savona

To point out the degree of satisfaction of psychotic patients and their family members in relation to the assistance given by the four Outpatient Mental Health Services in the Savona Department. patients with a diagnosis of psychosis were selected among those visited during the period from the 1st of January to the 30th of April 2002. VSSS-54 item, was utilized. The analysis, conducted on 301 patients and 149 family members, highlighted: 1) a substantially positive assessment of the Services 2) the patients and their family members quite agreed on the evaluation of the different areas of satisfaction 3) Strong points: all the operators' human and professional skills 4) request of a better knowledge of the Service's programmes and more information to the public opinion 5) request of more collaboration with family doctors and other specialists 6) The worst criticism: the Service's response to night and holiday emergency. The patients and their family members reacted positively to the survey, that created more resistance on the part of the operators. The survey is not to be considered the final objective, but the point of departure for a new form of collaboration between the users and the operators.

GridCAD: A Collaborative CAD System Based on Grid Computing

AbstractCurrent works on distributive and collaborative CAD systems often focus on collaborative request submitting, but not distributively executing. A new approach to integrating Grid Computing into Collaborative CAD system is proposed in this paper. A prototype system GridCAD based on this approach is implemented with Web Services based Grid Computing technology. XML/SOAP is adopted as the communications mechanism between Server and Clients. The Session Manager provides the solution of validity maintenance of product models under collaborative environments. In particular, as the core module, Task Manager enables GridCAD to dynamically split complex operations and to distributively perform subtasks. GridCAD also guarantees interoperability on heterogeneous systems so that different types of systems can communicate smoothly and perform the computation much faster than on a single machine.

Request for Collaboration by Manufacturing Industry, Governmental Organizations, and Academic Institutes in Development of Comercially Available Medical Devices(<Special Isue : R&D for Medical Equipment is at a Turnning Point>)

Request for Collaboration by Manufacturing Industry, Governmental Organizations, and Academic Institutes in Development of Comercially Available Medical Devices(<Special Isue : R&D for Medical Equipment is at a Turnning Point>)

(88‐95) Proposals to implement mandatory registration of new names

Nomenclature Section at the Tokyo Congress decided by a large majority, on a show of hands, to embody the principle of mandatory registration of future new names in the Code, while at the same time postponing the originally proposed starting date (1995) until after the next International Botanical Congress. details of the discussion were minuted and can be looked up in the published proceedings of the Section meetings (see Englera 14: 138-156, 168-169. 1994). principle of registration was in no way disputed, but some concern was expressed at the still unknown details of the mechanism by which it was to be implemented. Section therefore wisely decided that confirmation (at a qualified majority) by the next Congress would be required before registration could become mandatory. By this decision, the Section gave to the IAPT the mandate, accepted by its Officers, to set up a registration mechanism on a trial basis. Greuter (in Englera 14: 149) outlined some of the basic aspects that would have to be taken care of. Some main points from his statement of intent (which raised no contradiction or controversy) are quoted here for convenience: The person submitting the name for registration was unimportant: it could be the secretary or the widow of a deceased botanist, or the publisher of the journal. Hopefully the latter would become the rule... Authors would have the option of publishing either in a journal taking care of the registration procedure or in a perhaps more parochial or less botanical journal ... when registration would be the author's responsibility... There would be many [registration] offices throughout the world... On average, postal delays in developing countries would not be longer than in, e.g., the United States... IAPT felt confident that the system could be made to work. present proposals were perhaps undetailed, but not vague. In six years' time, there would be a possibility..., based on the gained experience, to add details of implementation. After careful preparations, the IAPT-sponsored trial registration phase was launched in December 1997 and is planned to last two full years (or up to such date as the next Congress may decide as the starting point for mandatory registration). So far, no serious technical problems were encountered that would justify scepticism as to the functionality of registration. response to IAPT's request for collaboration was very satisfactory. Details have been reported elsewhere and need not be repeated here (see Taxon 46: 811-814. 1997; 47: 497-502. 1998). Information on the trial phase has been published in several journals and newsletters in addition to Taxon. number of registration offices who have agreed to participate as by 1 October 1998 is 35, and 180 journals have already asked for and been granted accredited status for registration purposes. Last but not least, at the central registra-