11,840 research outputs found
Operating experiences of retardant bombers during firefighting operations
Data are presented on operational practices and maneuver accelerations experienced by two Douglas DC-6B airplanes converted to retardant bombers and used in firefighting operations. The data cover two fire seasons in the mountainous regions of the northwestern United States
Regulating Advertisements: The Case of Smoking Cessation Products
In this paper we investigate how direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of pharmaceutical products in affected by regulations of the Food and Drug Administration and by market conditions. We focus on a relatively under-studied segment of the pharmaceutical market -- the market for smoking cessation products. Because of their proven effectiveness, these products could be the key to meeting public health goals to reduce smoking. However, in many ways, smoking cessation products have been more heavily regulated than cigarettes. Our empirical analysis uses data on advertising expenditures and data from an archive of print advertisements. The archive includes all smoking cessation product advertisements that appeared in over 13,000 issues of 28 magazines between January 1985 and May 2002. Our study period begins shortly atfer the first nicotine replacement product was introduced, and covers the evolution of the market as new products are introduced while some of the older products move from prescription to over-the-counter (OTC) status. OTC status eases the disclosure requirements imposed on advertisements of prescription pharmaceuticals, substantially reducing the costs of a print advertisement. Our results suggest that OTC status is associated with an increase in advertising expenditures and the number and pages of magazine advertisements. A current proposal to reduce disclosure requirements on all DTC advertisements of prescription drugs could have similar effects. Our results also suggest that advertising increase with the introduction of new products and with market competition.
Virtual Data in CMS Analysis
The use of virtual data for enhancing the collaboration between large groups
of scientists is explored in several ways:
- by defining ``virtual'' parameter spaces which can be searched and shared
in an organized way by a collaboration of scientists in the course of their
analysis;
- by providing a mechanism to log the provenance of results and the ability
to trace them back to the various stages in the analysis of real or simulated
data;
- by creating ``check points'' in the course of an analysis to permit
collaborators to explore their own analysis branches by refining selections,
improving the signal to background ratio, varying the estimation of parameters,
etc.;
- by facilitating the audit of an analysis and the reproduction of its
results by a different group, or in a peer review context.
We describe a prototype for the analysis of data from the CMS experiment
based on the virtual data system Chimera and the object-oriented data analysis
framework ROOT. The Chimera system is used to chain together several steps in
the analysis process including the Monte Carlo generation of data, the
simulation of detector response, the reconstruction of physics objects and
their subsequent analysis, histogramming and visualization using the ROOT
framework.Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics
(CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 9 pages, LaTeX, 7 eps figures. PSN
TUAT010. V2 - references adde
Hyperspherical harmonics with arbitrary arguments
The derivation scheme for hyperspherical harmonics (HSH) with arbitrary
arguments is proposed. It is demonstrated that HSH can be presented as the
product of HSH corresponding to spaces with lower dimensionality multiplied by
the orthogonal (Jacobi or Gegenbauer) polynomial. The relation of HSH to
quantum few-body problems is discussed. The explicit expressions for
orthonormal HSH in spaces with dimensions from 2 to 6 are given. The important
particular cases of four- and six-dimensional spaces are analyzed in detail and
explicit expressions for HSH are given for several choices of hyperangles. In
the six-dimensional space, HSH representing the kinetic energy operator
corresponding to i) the three-body problem in physical space and ii) four-body
planar problem are derived.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figur
Impact of multiscale dynamical processes and mixing on the chemical composition of the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere during the Intercontinental Chemical Transport Experiment–North America
We use high-frequency in situ observations made from the DC8 to examine fine-scale tracer structure and correlations observed in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere during INTEX-NA. Two flights of the NASA DC-8 are compared and contrasted. Chemical data from the DC-8 flight on 18 July show evidence for interleaving and mixing of polluted and stratospheric air masses in the vicinity of the subtropical jet in the upper troposphere, while on 2 August the DC-8 flew through a polluted upper troposphere and a lowermost stratosphere that showed evidence of an intrusion of polluted air. We compare data from both flights with RAQMS 3-D global meteorological and chemical model fields to establish dynamical context and to diagnose processes regulating the degree of mixing on each day. We also use trajectory mapping of the model fields to show that filamentary structure due to upstream strain deformation contributes to tracer variability observed in the upper troposphere. An Eulerian measure of strain versus rotation in the large-scale flow is found useful in predicting filamentary structure in the vicinity of the jet. Higher-frequency (6–24 km) tracer variability is attributed to buoyancy wave oscillations in the vicinity of the jet, whose turbulent dissipation leads to efficient mixing across tracer gradients
Radio Signatures of HI at High Redshift: Mapping the End of the ``Dark Ages''
The emission of 21-cm radiation from a neutral intergalactic medium (IGM) at
high redshift is discussed in connection with the thermal and ionization
history of the universe. The physical mechanisms that make such radiation
detectable against the cosmic microwave background include Ly_alpha coupling of
the hydrogen spin temperature to the kinetic temperature of the gas and
preheating of the IGM by the first generation of stars and quasars. Three
different signatures are investigated in detail: (a) the fluctuations in the
redshifted 21-cm emission induced by the gas density inhomogeneities that
develop at early times in cold dark matter (CDM) dominated cosmologies; (b) the
sharp absorption feature in the radio sky due to the rapid rise of the Ly_alpha
continuum background that marks the birth of the first UV sources in the
universe; and (c) the 21-cm emission and absorption shells that are generated
on several Mpc scales around the first bright quasars. Future radio
observations with projected facilities like the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope
and the Square Kilometer Array may shed light on the power spectrum of density
fluctuations at z>5, and map the end of the "dark ages", i.e. the transition
from the post-recombination universe to one populated with radiation sources.Comment: LateX, 19 pages, 5 figures, significantly revised version to be
published in the Ap
Hyperspherical Description of the Degenerate Fermi Gas: S-wave Interactions
We present a unique theoretical description of the physics of the spherically
trapped -atom degenerate Fermi gas (DFG) at zero temperature based on an
ordinary Schr\"{o}dinger equation with a microscopic, two body interaction
potential. With a careful choice of coordinates and a variational wavefunction,
the many body Schr\"{o}dinger equation can be accurately described by a
\emph{linear}, one dimensional effective Schr\"{o}dinger equation in a single
collective coordinate, the rms radius of the gas. Comparisons of the energy,
rms radius and peak density of ground state energy are made to those predicted
by Hartree-Fock (HF). Also the lowest radial excitation frequency (the
breathing mode frequency) agrees with a sum rule calculation, but deviates from
a HF prediction
Intertwining Relations for the Deformed D1D5 CFT
The Higgs branch of the D1D5 system flows in the infrared to a
two-dimensional N=(4,4) SCFT. This system is believed to have an "orbifold
point" in its moduli space where the SCFT is a free sigma model with target
space the symmetric product of copies of four-tori; however, at the orbifold
point gravity is strongly coupled and to reach the supergravity point one needs
to turn on the four exactly marginal deformations corresponding to the blow-up
modes of the orbifold SCFT. Recently, technology has been developed for
studying these deformations and perturbing the D1D5 CFT off its orbifold point.
We present a new method for computing the general effect of a single
application of the deformation operators. The method takes the form of
intertwining relations that map operators in the untwisted sector before
application of the deformation operator to operators in the 2-twisted sector
after the application of the deformation operator. This method is
computationally more direct, and may be of theoretical interest. This line of
inquiry should ultimately have relevance for black hole physics.Comment: latex, 23 pages, 3 figure
Exploring service providers’ perceptions of the barriers and enablers to recruitment of service users into social prescribing research
\ua9 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.Objective: To explore the views of social prescribing service providers on the barriers and enablers to recruitment of service users in social prescribing research. Design: A qualitative study design, using semi-structured interviews with social prescribing service providers in the voluntary, community, faith, and social enterprise sector. Data were analysed using Thematic Framework Analysis. Results: Ten interviews were conducted with service providers from five different social prescribing services. Three analytical themes were created. (1) What are you talking about?, related to service provider experiences of attempting to engage service users in social prescribing research, specifically confusion about the term social prescribing. (2) You’ve got a friend in me, focused on the positive impact of quality relationships between service providers and service users on recruitment. (3) No, no, no. Not today, reflected the experiences of service providers who reported that service users will often experience fluctuations in their mental and physical health, limiting their capacity to engage with structured research activity. Conclusions: Key implications arising from this study is a need for more accessible and person-centred strategies for strengthening recruitment to, and participation in, social prescribing research. Increasing accessibility of research language (and information about participation), providing flexibility in recruitment methods, and conduct of research can also improve recruitment and retention. Service providers are vital for supporting engagement of service users in social prescribing research
EIT-MESHER – Segmented FEM Mesh Generation and Refinement
EIT-MESHER (https://github.com/EIT-team/Mesher) is C++ software, based on the CGAL library, which generates high quality Finite Element Model tetrahedral meshes from binary masks of 3D volume segmentations. Originally developed for biomedical applications in Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) to address the need for custom, non-linear refinement in certain areas (e.g. around electrodes), EIT-MESHER can also be used in other fields where custom FEM refinement is required, such as Diffuse Optical Tomography (DOT)
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