OBJECTIVE Physicians are expected to be compassionate. However, most compassion research focuses on compassion fatigue--an outcome variable--rather than examining the specific factors that may interfere with compassion in a physician's practice. This report describes the development and early psychometric data for a self-report questionnaire assessing barriers to compassion among physicians. ...

The potential ocular hazards associated with the use of dental curing lights were evaluated. Recommendations are provided for precluding exposure of personnel to hazardous levels of optical radiation. Users should not stare directly into the dental curing lights at distances shorter than 25 cm (which would not be a likely event). Eye protectors which filter wavelengths below 500 nm may be desir...

It is interesting to see how some developments in assessment in the USA and UK seem to have gone in opposite directions. The USA has a longstanding tradition of highquality national licensing examinations, whereas, in the UK, each medical school has traditionally been responsible for its own examination programmes. Although UK medical schools use external examiners, the country has no national ...

The authors applied two technologies to improve the efficiency of fluorescent blue organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). First, an efficiency-enhancement layer (EEL) was introduced to boost triplet-triplet fusion (TTF). Second, new blue dopants with a higher orientation factor in the emitting layer were developed. Consequently, the external quantum efficiency (EQE) was increased up to 11.5% wi...

In this paper the advantages and disadvantages of denitrifying PAOs (polyphosphate accumulating organisms) in conventional BNRAS (biological nutrient removal activated sludge) and external nitrification BNRAS (ENBNRAS) systems are evaluated, with experimental data exhibiting a range of anoxic P uptake from low (<10%) to very high (>60%). The results indicate that the specific denitrification ra...

BACKGROUND Visual perception impairments in schizophrenia stem from abnormal information processing. Information processing requires neural response to a stimulus (signal) against a backdrop of 1) random variation in baseline neural activity (internal noise) and sometimes irrelevant environmental stimulation (external noise). Filtering out noise is a critical aspect of information processing, a...

Visual attention can increase spatial resolution even when it leads to a decrease in performance. Whether this effect is mediated by reduction of external noise or by signal enhancement is an unsettled question. Although we previously demonstrated that attention can improve speed and accuracy in an acuity task, those experiments made use of a local postmask, which could be considered a source o...

A batch anaerobic test was conducted to evaluate the effects of adding high carbon content of corn straw to the digestion of Taihu blue algae to attain an optimal C/N ratio for higher methane yield. The addition of corn straw in algae at a C/N ratio of 20/1 increased methane yield by 61.69% at 325 mL g(-1)VS(-1) (compared with 201 mL g(-1) VS(-1) of algae digestion alone), followed by C/N ratio...

Perceptual estimates can be biased by previously seen stimuli in delayed estimation tasks. These biases are often toward the mean of the whole stimulus set. Recently, we demonstrated such a central tendency bias in delayed color estimation. In the Bayesian framework of perceptual inference, perceptual biases arise when noisy sensory measurements are combined with prior information about the wor...

The usefulness of latex beads of defined concentration was assessed as a substitute for sperm in the performance of External Quality Assurance (EQA) and Internal Quality Control (IQC) of semen analysis. Within the EQA programme, mean±SEM bias (%) was significantly reduced in 2007 compared to 2002 for both specialist (6.0%±5.4% vs. 55.0%±5.9%) and non-specialist (18.4%±5.9% vs. 90.9%±13.4%) labo...