This study demonstrated that the new, early-cannulation AVG graft can be cannulated soon after implantation without a significant difference in patency and complication rates compared with rates associated with standard cannulation of expanded polytetrafluoroethylene grafts in the literature. This new AVG may allow early removal or avoidance of TDC use in patients undergoing hemodialysis, potentially reducing or eliminating the number of days of catheter-dependent dialysis, but further studies will be needed to demonstrate this potential.

A s S T R A C rWe present a system for the real-time rendering of scenes to produce images like watercolour paintings. Our system uses a hybrid of object space rendering techniques and image plane post processing to attain extremely good results very quickly. We achieve this through Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) programming, bardware accelerated shadow volumes, and the use of noise for various dif€erent tasks. We manage to circumvent problems found in both previous image space and object space methods by combining the two.Nonphotorealistic rendering ("R) is the family of techniques that can be used to produce scenes that do not exactly resemble the real world. Standard, realistic graphics techniques do not produce image features that are necessary in many NPR fields. The field that we are interested in is painterly rendering -the rendering of scenes in the style of paintings. Some of the characteristics of paintings that are missing h m standatd approaches to rendering are: 0 The sketchiness inherent in certain styles of painting.The presence of brushstrokeS. Complex colour interactions caused by paint on canvas rather than by light in the real world. NPR metbods that attempt to model these characteristics have typically worked on finished images [1][2][3]. That is to say, the system would be provided w i t h a rendered scene or photograph, and it would then ptocess it so thaf it resembled a painting. Our method does much of its work in object space.There are two key problems to painterly rendering in the image plane that we have dealt with thmugh object space * June 22-24,2005, Stony Brook, NY, USA 0-7803-9330-9105l$20 .OD 02005 I EEE techniques. Firstly, it is usually very slow. The speed of such processes is not a necessary feature of image plane techniques.Such methods are t y p i d y slow because of the large mount of processing needed at every pixel. The second problem is that the post-processing step usually has only the information contained in a single fiame. Because of this, generated features, such as brush strokes, are not coherent.We present a hybrid system for rendering images in the style of watercolour paintings. Working in hardware and doing much of the 'bard work' in object space, our system is very fast. Object space techniques produce h e -t o -8 a m e coherency almost automatically.Our system first produces various pieces of infomation about each pixel in the scene through object space methods, and then performs a post-processing step on this information to produce a final W e . In section 2 we look a! the features of real watercolour paintings, examine previous work in painterly rendering, and discuss the limitations and benefits of working on the GPU. In section 3 we. Iwk at how we can rapidly produce shadows using a technique found primarily in video games, and in section 4 we examine our paint layers algorithm €rom beginning to end. In section 5 we examine our results, and in section 6 provide a brief discussion of our success up to this point with an eye towards future work. BACKGROU...

for a week, and participated in creating a public service announcement focused on vascular health education and awareness in their communities. An additional 2950 students participated in a survey questionnaire on the impact of the V-Healthy campaign.Results: Of the previously undiagnosed 1210 parents who participated in the Diagnosing HTN study, >50% were hypertensive; 10% had pre-HTN (120-129/<80 mm Hg), 31% had stage 1 HTN (130-139/80-89 mm Hg), and an additional 20% had stage 2 HTN ($140/$90 mm Hg). Of the 2950 students who participated in the V-Healthy survey, 99% reported that they had a better understanding of vascular health; 90% recognized HTN, diabetes, smoking, obesity, and family history as risk factors; 84% would discuss vascular health with their families; and 76% were interested in learning more about their vascular health.Conclusions: V-Healthy is a grassroots campaign that allows vascular surgeons to lead community vascular health education and awareness and to have an impact on change. HTN is prevalent and an under-recognized vascular disease risk factor that can be used as a focal point for public vascular health education and awareness. The V-Healthy project identifies a process that can be used to develop outreach programs that empower high-school students to understand the implications of vascular disease risks and promote vascular health in our communities.

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We sought to identify what services indigenous (Maori) and immigrant populations use pharmacies for, and how long pharmacy staff spend interacting with them, as longer interactions are associated with better quality care. We review literature on counseling in pharmacy, and interaction length as an indicator of counseling quality. 1,086 interactions were discretely observed in 36 pharmacies in 5 cities around New Zealand. Maori or Pacific people, along with men, were more likely to treat pharmacies as prescription 'depots', being less likely to buy over-the-counter or pharmacist only medicines (ORs: 0.25-0.72). However, the influence of demographic factors on interaction length was small (|B|s < 7.7 s). The weak effect of ethnicity on interaction length suggests that pharmacies are providing advice of relatively consistent quality to different population groups. Possible barriers to use of pharmacies for primary healthcare, including over-the-counter medicines in Maori and Pacific people are discussed.