We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Identifying cryptic species and juveniles in the Ophiuroidea has always been a challenge. However, post-larval developmental studies have the potential to uncover the identity of these cryptic species and juveniles, as they offer valuable information that is not often found in adults. Although the importance of studying growth series is well-known in ophiuroids, it is difficult to obtain and identify the juvenile stages. For this reason, most studies are restricted to brooding species and information is lacking for many species, including those of the genus Ophiocoma. In this study, a growth series was developed to show the main differences during the development of two similar species of Ophiocoma: Ophiocoma echinata and Ophiocoma trindadensis. Using morphometry and scanning electron microscopy, we describe in detail the juveniles, intermediate stage, and adults of O. echinata and O. trindadensis. Differences in the shape of the ventral arm plate and dorsalmost arm spines, the number of tentacle scales, and the presence of granules ventrally were highlighted in the separation and identification of juveniles of both species.
Understanding healthcare personnel’s (HCP) contact patterns are important to mitigate healthcare-associated infectious disease transmission. Little is known about how HCP contact patterns change over time or during outbreaks such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods:
This study in a large United States healthcare system examined the social contact patterns of HCP via standardized social contact diaries. HCP were enrolled from October 2020 to June 2022. Participants completed monthly surveys of social contacts during a representative working day. In June 2022, participants completed a 2-day individual-level contact diary. Regression models estimated the association between contact rates and job type. We generated age-stratified contact matrices.
Results:
Three-hundred and sixty HCP enrolled, 157 completed one or more monthly contact diaries and 88 completed the intensive 2-day diary. In the monthly contact diaries, the median daily contacts were 15 (interquartile range (IQR) 8–20), this increased slightly during the study (slope-estimate 0.004, p-value 0.016). For individual-level contact diaries, 88 HCP reported 2,550 contacts over 2 days. HCP were 2.8 times more likely to contact other HCP (n = 1,592 contacts) than patients (n = 570 contacts). Rehabilitation/transport staff, diagnostic imaging technologists, doctors, nurses, mid-level, and laboratory personnel had higher contacts compared with the lowest contact group (Nursing aids). Contact matrices concentrated in working-age populations.
Conclusions:
HCP contacts concentrate in their work environment, primarily with other HCP. Their contacts remained stable over time even during large changes to societal contact patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic. This stability is critical for designing outbreak and pandemic responses.
Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation or SLAPPs are abusive lawsuits which have the purpose or effect of suppressing public participation. This Article considers the peculiarities of this form of “strategic litigation” and takes stock of developments in the European Union to combat SLAPPs, noting that while the adoption of an Anti-SLAPP Directive represents an example of effective legal mobilization and a major positive step towards safeguarding the rule of law in the EU, its limitations render it crucial that Member States treat the Directive as a foundation and build national legislation which is more robust in substance and more far-reaching in scope.
Chapter 5 discusses the implementation of ISO 18000-63 downlink and uplink communication chains and offers practical code developed in MATLAB for evaluating the signal processing of the full RFID communication chain. The code provided is suitable for custom projects.
Chapter 4 presents a review of the ISO 18000-63 protocol, including data encoding and modulation, and aspects of the transponder memory structure, security, and privacy, and presents real examples of reader–transponder transactions.
Chapter 8 presents a comprehensive discussion of self-jamming in passive-backscatter systems by covering various self-jamming suppression approaches, including some used in commercial integrated circuit RFID reader devices.
Chapter 7 reports on an SDR-based RFID reader design including hardware and software implementations and demonstrates ISO 18000-63-compliant operation in conventional continuous-wave mode and in a novel multicarrier mode.
Chapter 10 evaluates the application of multicarrier waveforms to improve the efficiency of wireless power transfer systems, and proposes efficient power transmitter architectures, including one based on a mode-locked active antenna array.
Chapter 9 addresses the concept of wake-up radios for IoT and describes the implementation of a wake-up radio system with addressing capabilities for wireless sensor network application.
Chapter 11 concludes the book with an elegant demonstration of wireless power transfer and backscatter communication applied to a practical problem by proposing and prototyping a remote control system that operates without batteries or other local power source in the remote control unit.
Chapter 2 describes the fundamentals, applications, standardization, and operating principles of RFID technology and offers a glimpse into the design considerations and architectures of modern UHF RFID readers.
Chapter 6 explores low-cost and low-complexity techniques for the design of an ISO 18000-63-compliant RFID reader and presents an experimental prototype to validate the proposed concepts.
Chapter 3 discusses the fundamentals of backscatter radio communications, analyzes the RFID backscatter channel, its major limitations and mitigation approaches, and presents recent advances including novel RFID quadrature backscatter modulation techniques.
Chapter 1 walks the reader through the fascinating history and evolution of RFID technology from the early days of radio transmissions in the nineteenth century to today’s internet of things.