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Aims: To determine the accuracy of the forced expiratory volume ratio at one and six seconds (FEV1/FEV6) using a hand-held, expiratory flow meter (PiKo-6 ® , nSpire Health, Inc.) to screen for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in primary care settings. Conclusions: The PiKo-6 ® allows simple and reliable screening for COPD which could optimise early referral for spirometry and early, targeted interventions for COPD.

Postwar U.S. data are characterized by negative correlations between real equity returns and inflation and by positive correlations between real equity returns and money growth. These patterns are closely matched quantitatively by an equilibrium monetary asset pricing model. The model also implies negative correlations between expected asset returns and expected inflation, and it predicts that the inflation‐asset return correlation will be more strongly negative when inflation is generated by fluctuations in real economic activity than when it is generated by monetary fluctuations.

We study the effect of different types of macroeconomic impulses on the nominal yield curve. We employ two distinct approaches to identifying economic shocks in VARs. Our first approach uses a structural VAR due to Galí (1992). Our second strategy identifies fundamental impulses from alternative empirical measures of economic shocks proposed in the literature. We find that most of the long-run variability of interest rates of all maturities is driven by macroeconomic impulses. Shocks to preferences for current consumption consistently induce large, persistent, and statistically significant shifts in the level of the yield curve. In contrast, technology shocks induce weaker and less robust patterns of interest rate responses, since they move real rates and expected inflation in opposite directions. Monetary policy shocks are the only macroeconomic shocks with a consistent and significant impact on the slope of the yield curve. We find no evidence that fiscal policy shocks induce any significant interest rate responses. * The paper represents the views of the authors and should not be interpreted as reflecting the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago or the Federal Reserve System.

We examine the empirical evidence on the expectations hypothesis of the term structure of interest rates in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany using the Campbell-Shiller (1991) regressions and a vector-autoregressive methodology. We argue that anomalies in the U.S. term structure, documented by Campbell and Shiller (1991), may be due to a generalized peso problem in which a high-interest rate regime occuued less frequently in the sample of U.S. data than was rationally anticipated. We formalize this idea as a regime-switching model of short-term interest rates estimated with data from seven countries. Technically, this model extends recent research on regime-switching models with state-dependent transitions to a cross-sectional setting. Use of the small sample distributions generated by the regime-switching model for inference considerably weakens the evidence against the expectations hypothesis, but it remains somewhat implausible that our data-generating process produced the U.S. data. However, a model that combines moderate time-variation in term premiums with peso-problem effects is largely consistent with term structure data from the U.S., U.K., and Germany. dmarshallfrbchi.orgWhen researchers test the expectations hypothesis of the term structure with U.S. data, an interesting paradox emerges. Briefly, the change in the long-term interest rate does not behave as predicted by the expectations hypothesis, whereas future short rates do change in the direction predicted by the expectations hypothesis. Even so, at the short end of the term structure, future short rates do not move enough and the theory is still rejected (Campbell and Shiller (1991)).General equilibrium attempts to explain these observations with time-varying risk premiums generally fail.' The goal of our project is to see whether these problems may be driven, not by a failure of the economic theory, but by a failure of the asymptotic distribution theory used to test these models.There is good reason to be suspicious of the asymptotic distribution theory underlying previous research. In Bekaert, Hodrick and Marshall (1997a), we document extreme small sample biases and deviations from asymptotic distribution theory in standard tests of the expectations hypothesis. Given the extreme persistence of short interest rates, the samples that researchers have available to study the expectations hypothesis are too small for asymptotic distribution theory to allow correct inference. One result in Bekaert, Hodrick and Marshall (1997a) is that the small sample distributions of different tests of the expectations hypothesis imply a more uniform rejection of the null in U.S. data than would be concluded from the asymptotic distributions. Nevertheless, the evidence against the expectations hypothesis is much weaker in other countries (see Hardouvelis (1994), Jorion andMishkin (1991) and Gerlach and Smets (1997)) so that the U.S. data still appear puzzling.In this paper, we attempt to explain the anomalous patterns in the U.S. term struct...

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Beginning in 2005, the aorn foundation and Safer Healthcare implemented a human factors program based on Crew Resource Management training in five diverse surgical facilities across the United States. Highly interactive, customized training sessions were designed to help clinicians standardize communication, enhance teamwork, implement preprocedure briefings and postprocedure debriefings, maintain situational awareness, and recognize red flags in the workplace. Pretraining and post-training surveys were used to determine the effectiveness of the program. Brief overviews from the participating facilities detail specific issues encountered in each setting.