BACKGROUND The six item Confusion, Hubbub and Order Scale (CHAOS-6) has been validated as a reliable tool to measure levels of household disorder. We aimed to investigate the goodness of fit and reliability of a new Malay version of the CHAOS-6. METHODS The original English version of the CHAOS-6 underwent forward-backward translation into the Malay language. The finalised Malay version was a...

We study an (s, S) production–inventory system with an attached Markovian service queue. A production facility gradually replenishes items in the inventory based on the (s, S) scheme, and the production process is assumed to be a Poisson process. In addition to the production–inventory system, c servers process customers that arrive in the system according to the Poisson process. The service ti...

This report provided a good description of a generic large scale composting plant. In this light, it is useful to those who have little knowledge of how such a facility is composed. Of particular interest is the detailed compo­ sition of the Portland waste stream which is presented and which can be compared to other areas. While the flow diagram is complete, generally it would be more illuminat...

The problem of scheduling the production of new and recoverable defective items of the same product manufactured on the same facility is studied. Items are processed in batches. Each batch comprises two sub-batches processed consecutively. In the first subbatch, all the items are newly manufactured. Some of them are of the required good quality and some are defective. The defective items are re...

This attribute contains a short description of the item. It may also include a Gopher reference to a longer abstract, held in a separate Gopher node. ASK This attribute is used for the interactive query extension. The interactive query facility in Gopher+ is used to obtain information from a user before retrieving the contents of a node. The client fetches the ASK attribute, which contains a li...

For heating and current drive the neutral beam injection system for ITER requires a 1 MeV deuterium beam for up to 1 h pulse length. In order to inject the required 17 MW the large area source (1.9m x 0.9m) has to deliver 40 A of negative ion current at the specified source pressure of 0.3 Pa. In 2007 the IPP RF driven negative hydrogen ion source was chosen as the new reference source for the ...

BACKGROUND Evidence on the efficacy of acupuncture for reducing the pain and dysfunction of osteoarthritis is equivocal. OBJECTIVE To determine whether acupuncture provides greater pain relief and improved function compared with sham acupuncture or education in patients with osteoarthritis of the knee. DESIGN Randomized, controlled trial. SETTING Two outpatient clinics (an integrative med...

Background: The environment for birth influences women in labour. Optimal birthing environments have the potential to facilitate normal labour and birth. The measurement of optimal birth units is currently not possible as there are no tools. An audit tool, the Birth Unit Design Spatial Evaluation Tool (BUDSET), was developed to assess the optimality of birthing environments. The BUDSET is based...

BACKGROUND Older adults may find it problematic to attend hospital appointments due to the difficulty associated with travelling to, within and from a hospital facility for the purpose of a face-to-face assessment. This study aims to investigate equivalence between telephone and face-to-face administration for the Frenchay Activities Index (FAI) and the Euroqol-5D (EQ-5D) generic health-related...

OBJECTIVES To determine whether nightly administration of melatonin, magnesium, and zinc improves primary insomnia in long-term care facility residents. DESIGN Double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial. SETTING One long-term care facility in Pavia, Italy. PARTICIPANTS Forty-three participants with primary insomnia (22 in the supplemented group, 21 in the placebo group) aged 78.3 ± 3...