Terms Of Overall Level Research Articles

Quality Infrastructure for the New Material Industry

The quality infrastructure—with evaluation, characterization, and standards as its basic elements—plays an important role in supporting industrial transformation and upgrade, promoting technological innovation, improving production efficiency, ensuring product quality, and enhancing industrial international competitiveness. Meanwhile, the acceleration of new material innovations has expanded the scale of the industry and increased the types and supply of new materials, which proposes new requirements for the industrial quality infrastructure. In this article, we analyze the importance of evaluation, characterization, and standards for the development of the new materials industry and summarize the development status of the quality infrastructure in China. Currently, a technical system has been primarily formed for the new material industry in China and has greatly supported industrial innovation. China has also made progresses in internationalization in terms of assessment, characterization, and standardization of the new material industry. However, China’s quality infrastructure for new materials is still underdeveloped in terms of overall level and technological innovative ability in key areas; and its internationalization progress can hardly meet industrial requirements. Therefore, an assessment–characterization–standards platform is demonstrated and analyzed for the new material industry in China. Correspondingly, we suggest that the top-level design of the quality infrastructure should be strengthened, an “evaluation–characterization–standards” one-stop service mode promoted, independent brands developed regarding certification, testing, and standards, and administrative agencies encouraged to adopt the evaluation results.

Identifying Needs-Based Groupings Among People Accessing Intellectual Disability Services.

There is increasing emphasis on needs-led service provision for people with intellectual disability (ID). This study outlines the statistical cluster analysis of clinical data from 1,692 individuals accessing secondary care ID services in the United Kingdom (U.K.) Using objective needs assessment data from a newly developed ID assessment tool, six clusters were identified. These had clinical face validity and were validated using six concurrently (but independently) rated tools. In keeping with previous studies, the clusters varied in terms of overall level of need as well as specific clinical features (autism spectrum disorder, mental health problems, challenging behaviors and physical health conditions). More work is now needed to further develop these clusters and explore their utility for planning, commissioning and optimizing needs-led services.

Observations of Africanized honey bee Apis mellifera scutellata absence and presence within and outside forests across Rondonia, Brazil

The Africanized honey bee (AHB) has generated much research on invasion ecology and impacts on native pollinators ever since its introduction in Brazil approximately 60 years ago. Some have sought to determine how deforestation plays a role in mediating impacts between the AHB and native pollinators. We present the largest-ever, systematic survey of AHB presence/absence in the Neotropics to test to what extent the AHB prefers to forage within forests vs. outside forests. AHB presence/absence within and outside forest fragments was recorded at 187 locations distributed across the state of Rondonia, Brazil. The landscapes at each location varied in terms of overall level of deforestation and the length of time since modern human settlement. AHB presence was significantly higher outside forest cover. These findings agree with previous studies documenting the spread of AHBs in the Amazon in their preference for deforested areas.

Intercomparisons of 67Ga and 123I assays in UK hospitals, 1996

As part of its ongoing support to the National Measurement System in the UK, the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) conducted two intercomparison exercises in 1996. The participants, hospital physicists, were required to assay samples of 67Ga and 123I using radionuclide calibrators. The analysis of the results presented here, whilst encouraging in terms of overall level of quality compared with previous exercises, identified several areas of concern. The results are discussed, conclusions drawn and recommendations made.

Alternative Displays for Discrete Movement Control

This research examined performance in a single-axis discrete positioning task using three different mappings for the visual display of the movement space. In a normal display condition, displayed distance was proportional to actual distance. In a split-screen condition, 66.5% of the initial distance to the target was mapped into 50% of the visual space and 33.5% of the distance (containing the target) was mapping into the remaining 50% of visual space. Finally, in a log screen condition there was a logarithmic mapping from actual to visual space. The split-screen and log screen conditions resulted in magnification of the space containing the target and compression of space distance from the target. Results for movement time (MT) showed a significant effect of target width. MTs were longer for smaller targets. Performance with normal and log screens was equivalent in terms of overall level and in terms of rate of increase in MT with reduction in target size. A smaller rate of increase, however, was found for the split-screen display. MTs for the smallest target were faster with the split-screen display. Evidence suggests that fewer corrective movements were required for the smaller targets when using the split screen.

Cognitive differences between patients with progressive supranuclear palsy and Alzheimer's disease.

Sixteen patients with dementia of the Alzheimer type (AD) and nine patients with Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP) were administered a battery of neuropsychological tasks that assessed a cross-section of cognitive abilities. The subjects were equated in terms of overall level of impairment. There was no difference between the groups on the WAIS subtests that were administered (Vocabulary, Digit Span Forward, Similarities, Block Design). There was a striking difference between the AD and PSP patients on tests of verbal and nonverbal memory, as assessed by the Wechsler Memory Scale. The memory performance of the PSP patients did not, in fact, differ from a group of normal controls. In addition, there was a double-dissociation between the AD and PSP patients on tasks that evaluated naming and verbal fluency.