We report on two experiments to encourage record use by respondents in an Internet survey. The experiments were conducted in the 2009 Health and Retirement Study (HRS) Internet Survey, administered to those in the HRS panel with Internet access, and in the 2011 HRS Internet Survey. Encouraging respondents to consult records at the relevant point in the questionnaire significantly increased repo...

In this paper, we work on extending a Chinese thesaurus with words distinctly used in various Chinese communities. The acquisition and classification of such region-specific lexical items is an important step toward the larger goal of constructing a Pan-Chinese lexical resource. In particular, we extend a previous study in three respects: (1) to improve automatic classification by removing dupl...

We evaluated measurements of oxygen saturation from four noninvasive pulse oximeters, and two conventional arterial oximeters. Simultaneous measurements were obtained on each instrument on three different occasions in five healthy subjects breathing gas with an FIO2 of 1.00, 0.50, 0.21, 0.17, 0.15, 0.13 and 0.11. Mean bias relative to the sum of oxy-, carboxy-, and methemoglobins ranged from -0...

Lower gastrointestinal endoscopy (LGIE) is an important procedure in primary care for detecting colorectal cancer. This survey of family practice (FP) and internal medicine (IM) residency directors in the southeastern United States shows that 100 percent of FP and 92 percent of IM programs provide training in LGIE. Less than half of all programs had certification criteria, and both disciplines ...

High tibial osteotomy (HTO) is an established treatment option for isolated medial osteoarthritis in young and active patients. One important factor for success of this procedure is the degree of correction of the weight-bearing line. Computer-assisted navigation systems are believed to improve the precision of axis correction through intraoperative real-time monitoring. This study investigates...

The structures of micelles of the surfactant polysorbate 80 (Tween 80) in 0-50% aqueous N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) solutions (pH 7.2, ionic strength 2.44 mM) were investigated by means of small-angle X-ray scattering. At all the tested DMF concentrations, core-shell cylinder micelles formed; that is, increasing the concentration of DMF did not result in changes in the shape of the micelles. Th...

During a 90-day period in 1994, we measured the availability and connection latency of HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) information servers. These measurements 'were made from a site in the Eastern United States. The list of servers included 189 servers from Europe and 324 servers from North America. Our measurements indicate that on average, 5.0 percent of North American servers and 5.4 perc...

Automobile use has greatly increased during the last few decades. The number of passenger kilometers by private car per capita increased by 90 percent in Western Europe and 13 percent in the US between 1970 and 1990. In 1990, the average number of passenger kilometers travelled by private car in the US (18,650 km) was more than double the Western European figure (8710 km; OECD, 1996). The numbe...

This study explores the little-understood process of evaluating the performance of assistant and associate deans at dental colleges in the United States and Canada. Specifically, this research aimed to identify the methods, processes, and outcomes related to the performance appraisals of assistant/associate deans. Both deans and assistant/associate deans were surveyed. Forty-four of sixty-six d...