Search results for " Methods"

Tonometers and infectious risk: myth or reality? Efficacy of different disinfection regimens on tonometer tips

2006

Purpose To evaluate the adequacy of common disinfection regimens for disposable tonometer tips and assess if disinfection of reusable prisms or the use of disposable tips is preferable. Methods We used disposable tonometer tips, using the same material and tip diameter of standard Goldmann tonometer prism. Strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus subtilis and Candida albicans were tested according to the European standard guidelines for disinfectants test. Antimicrobial effectiveness of the following disinfection practices has been assessed: dry wipe, Minuten wipes (Alpros), soaking in 3% hydrogen peroxide, 0.5% benzalkonium chloride, and 0.5% Pantasepts for 1, 5, …

Growth Volatility and the Structure of the Economy

2011

The aim of the chapter is twofold: (i) to propose a methodology to compute the growth rate volatility of an economy and (ii) to investigate the relationship between growth volatility and economic development through the lenses of the structural characteristics of an economy. We study a large cross-section of countries in the period 1970–2009, controlling for the stability of the estimates in two subperiods: 1970:1989 (Period I) and 1990:2009 (Period II). Our main findings are (i) the degree of trade openness has a destabilizing effect, while the degree of financial openness has not a significant effect; (ii) the size of the public sector displays a U-shaped relationship with growth volatili…

Design and analysis of discrete choice experiments for models with response time

2013

Riflessività, interazione e rispetto delle norme. Il contributo dei mixed methods tra analisi dei testi e social network analysis

2018

The book, through a special methodological mix that uses text analysis and social network analysis, explores the ways in which people, starting from some elements considered implicit, are able to problematize specific behaviours. People contribute differently to social change or reproduction, by selecting certain aspects of reality and attributing to these aspects power of constraint or facilitation. Starting from the theoretical approach of Margaret Archer, which looks at the reflexivity of social actors as the capacity to develop an internal conversation, which is able to mediate between structure and agency, the book deals with the dynamics that take place when reflexive types converse o…

On the history of torsional stress concentrations in shafts: From electrical analogies to numerical methods

2014

This article proposes a retrospective on experimental and numerical methods developed throughout the past century to solve the torsion problem in shafts, with particular emphasis on the determination of shear stress concentration factors in discontinuities of typical use in shaft design. This article, in particular, presents the theory and related solutions distinguishing between two classes of geometries: shafts with constant cross section and axisymmetric shafts with variable diameter. Emphasis is given to approaches based on physical analog methods and, in particular, those based on electrical analogies proposed since about 1925. Experimental methods based on structural physical models …

XMM-Newton large programme on SN1006 - II. Thermal emission

2016

Based on the XMM-Newton large program on SN1006 and our newly developed spatially resolved spectroscopy tools (Paper~I), we study the thermal emission from ISM and ejecta of SN1006 by analyzing the spectra extracted from 583 tessellated regions dominated by thermal emission. With some key improvements in spectral analysis as compared to Paper~I, we obtain much better spectral fitting results with less residuals. The spatial distributions of the thermal and ionization states of the ISM and ejecta show different features, which are consistent with a scenario that the ISM (ejecta) is heated and ionized by the forward (reverse) shock propagating outward (inward). Different elements have differe…

High-order regularization in lattice-Boltzmann equations

2017

A lattice-Boltzmann equation (LBE) is the discrete counterpart of a continuous kinetic model. It can be derived using a Hermite polynomial expansion for the velocity distribution function. Since LBEs are characterized by discrete, finite representations of the microscopic velocity space, the expansion must be truncated and the appropriate order of truncation depends on the hydrodynamic problem under investigation. Here we consider a particular truncation where the non-equilibrium distribution is expanded on a par with the equilibrium distribution, except that the diffusive parts of high-order nonequilibrium moments are filtered, i.e., only the corresponding advective parts are retained afte…

Present-day use of an empirical wave prediction method

2016

Knowledge of the offshore wave climate is key to the design of coastal engineering structures and to the study of shoreline evolution. To date, the available wave data have been limited both in time and space; even though there are several options for obtaining wave data calculated using complex numerical models at basin scale, design issues can in some cases be solved by means of simpler models. This paper shows whether, under certain conditions and in an enclosed basin, an old empirical model can provide results that are good enough to determine the design condition necessary for engineering purposes. The empirical model chosen to answer this question is called Sverdrup–Munk–Bretschneide…

Educational Impact Evaluation of Professional Development of In-Service Teachers: The Case of the Dialogic Pedagogical Gatherings at Valencia “On Gia…

2021

There is a broad consensus on the impact of teacher quality on students’ outcomes. However, the debate on how to evaluate the impact of teacher training on student improvement remains open. The evaluation of the impact of in-service teacher training, organized in a network for different schools, has been analyzed very little to date. Our research displays an innovative approach in this regard, through an In-Service Professional Development Program based upon scientific evidence and dialogic principles: The Pedagogical Gatherings “On Giant’s Shoulders”. We conducted a multilevel communicative study to analyze its impact upon students’ achievement and schools’ outcomes whose teachers taking p…

Statistical Learning for End-to-End Simulations

2018

End-to-end mission performance simulators (E2ES) are suitable tools to accelerate satellite mission development from concet to deployment. One core element of these E2ES is the generation of synthetic scenes that are observed by the various instruments of an Earth Observation mission. The generation of these scenes rely on Radiative Transfer Models (RTM) for the simulation of light interaction with the Earth surface and atmosphere. However, the execution of advanced RTMs is impractical due to their large computation burden. Classical interpolation and statistical emulation methods of pre-computed Look-Up Tables (LUT) are therefore common practice to generate synthetic scenes in a reasonable…