We reviewed the literature on instruments for work-based assessment in single clinical encounters, such as the mini-clinical evaluation exercise (mini-CEX), and examined differences between these instruments in characteristics and feasibility, reliability, validity and educational effect. A PubMed search of the literature published before 8 January 2009 yielded 39 articles dealing with 18 diffe...

When used in flowing electrostatically accelerated plasmas, electrostatic energy analyzers, such as Retarding Potential Analyzers ~RPA’s! or Cylindrical Mirror Analyzers ~CMA’s!, occasionally yield data which seem implausible: for a known applied plasma acceleration voltage, electrostatic analyzers may indicate populations of ions having voltages much greater than that available through the ele...

Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) is the cause of an economically important swine disease that has been devastating the global swine industry since the early 1990s. The current PRRSV vaccines are not very effective largely due to heterogeneic nature of the virus. The major envelope protein, GP5, exposes outside the virion, induces neutralizing antibodies, and thus is a...

OBJECTIVE The fitness to practise of international medical graduates (IMGs) is usually evaluated with standardised assessment tests. The performance rather than the competency of practising doctors should, however, be assessed, for which reason workplace-based assessment (WBA) has gained increasing attention. Our aim was to assess the composite reliability of WBA instruments for assessing IMGs....

Ongoing Congressional deliberations about reforming Social Security and Medicare require accurate assessments of the economic status of the retiring population. The most direct indicator of economic well-being is consumption. Yet our understanding of how consumption evolves with age is limited. The primary data source in the United States for understanding spending patterns over the life cycle ...