2,091 research outputs found
Fracture clinic redesign reduces the cost of outpatient orthopaedic trauma care
Objectives: “Virtual fracture clinics” have been reported as a safe and effective alternative to the traditional fracture clinic. Robust protocols are used to identify cases that do not require further review, with the remainder triaged to the most appropriate subspecialist at the optimum time for review. The objective of this study was to perform a “top-down” analysis of the cost effectiveness of this virtual fracture clinic pathway.
Methods: National Health Service financial returns relating to our institution were examined for the time period 2009 to 2014 which spanned the service redesign.
Results: The total staffing costs rose by 4% over the time period (from £1 744 933 to £1 811 301) compared with a national increase of 16%. The total outpatient department rate of attendance fell by 15% compared with a national fall of 5%. Had our local costs increased in line with the national average, an excess expenditure of £212 705 would have been required for staffing costs.
Conclusions: The virtual fracture clinic system was associated with less overall use of staff resources in comparison to national cost data. Adoption of this system nationally may have the potential to achieve significant cost savings
Influence of the grow-out density and nursery system on growth rates of juvenile Queen Conch, Strombus gigas
Foreign nationals who receive science or engineering Ph.D.`s from US universities: Stay rates and characteristics of stayers
This report studies the behavior of foreign nationals who received Ph.D. degrees in science or engineering from US universities during the period 1984--1990. It addresses two distinct questions: What proportion of foreign students stay to work in the United States after graduation; and do foreign students who leave the United States differ from those who stay? Descriptive statistics are provided to answer the first question. These estimates of stay rates have small margins of error because they were produced from the tax payment records of the Social Security Administration. The estimates of stay rates in also provide a partial answer to the second question as well as we are able to provide stay rates for different degree fields and different countries of citizenship, thereby identifying country-specific and field-specific differences in stay rates
Amplitude equations near pattern forming instabilities for strongly driven ferromagnets
A transversally driven isotropic ferromagnet being under the influence of a
static external and an uniaxial internal anisotropy field is studied. We
consider the dissipative Landau-Lifshitz equation as the fundamental equation
of motion and treat it in ~dimensions. The stability of the spatially
homogeneous magnetizations against inhomogeneous perturbations is analyzed.
Subsequently the dynamics above threshold is described via amplitude equations
and the dependence of their coefficients on the physical parameters of the
system is determined explicitly. We find soft- and hard-mode instabilities,
transitions between sub- and supercritical behaviour, various bifurcations of
higher codimension, and present a series of explicit bifurcation diagrams. The
analysis of the codimension-2 point where the soft- and hard-mode instabilities
coincide leads to a system of two coupled Ginzburg-Landau equations.Comment: LATeX, 25 pages, submitted to Z.Phys.B figures available via
[email protected] in /pub/publications/frank/zpb_95
(postscript, plain or gziped
The symmetry of the superconducting order parameter in PuCoGa
The symmetry of the superconducting order parameter in single-crystalline
PuCoGa ( K) is investigated via zero- and transverse-
field muon spin relaxation (SR) measurements, probing the possible
existence of orbital and/or spin moments (time reversal-symmetry violation TRV)
associated with the superconducting phase and the in-plane magnetic-field
penetration depth in the mixed state, respectively. We find no
evidence for TRV, and show that the superfluid density, or alternatively,
, are for . Taken together these measurements are consistent with an even-parity
(pseudo-spin singlet), d-wave pairing state.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure
General relativistic Sagnac formula revised
The Sagnac effect is a time or phase shift observed between two beams of
light traveling in opposite directions in a rotating interferometer. We show
that the standard description of this effect within the framework of general
relativity misses the effect of deflection of light due to rotational inertial
forces. We derive the necessary modification and demonstrate it through a
detailed analysis of the square Sagnac interferometer rotating about its
symmetry axis in Minkowski space-time. The role of the time shift in a Sagnac
interferometer in the synchronization procedure of remote clocks as well as its
analogy with the Aharanov-Bohm effect are revised.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure
Mass Loss Due to Sputtering and Thermal Processes in Meteoroid Ablation
Conventional meteoroid theory assumes that the dominant mode of ablation is
by evaporation following intense heating during atmospheric flight. In this
paper we consider the question of whether sputtering may provide an alternative
disintegration process of some importance.For meteoroids in the mass range from
10^-3 to 10^-13 kg and covering a meteor velocity range from 11 to 71 km/s, we
numerically modeled both thermal ablation and sputtering ablation during
atmospheric flight. We considered three meteoroid models believed to be
representative of asteroidal (3300 kg m^-3 mass density), cometary (1000 kg
m^-3) and porous cometary (300 kg m^-3) meteoroid structures. Atmospheric
profiles which considered the molecular compositions at different heights were
used in the sputtering calculations. We find that while in many cases
(particularly at low velocities and for relatively large meteoroid masses)
sputtering contributes only a small amount of mass loss during atmospheric
flight, in some cases sputtering is very important. For example, a 10^-10 kg
porous meteoroid at 40 km/s will lose nearly 51% of its mass by sputtering,
while a 10^-13 kg asteroidal meteoroid at 60 km/s will lose nearly 83% of its
mass by sputtering. We argue that sputtering may explain the light production
observed at very great heights in some Leonid meteors. The impact of this work
will be most dramatic for very small meteoroids such as those observed with
large aperture radars.Comment: in pdf form, 48 pgs incl figures and table
Hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm for the Double Exchange Model
The Hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm is adapted to the simulation of a system of
classical degrees of freedom coupled to non self-interacting lattices fermions.
The diagonalization of the Hamiltonian matrix is avoided by introducing a
path-integral formulation of the problem, in Euclidean space-time. A
perfect action formulation allows to work on the continuum euclidean time,
without need for a Trotter-Suzuki extrapolation. To demonstrate the feasibility
of the method we study the Double Exchange Model in three dimensions. The
complexity of the algorithm grows only as the system volume, allowing to
simulate in lattices as large as on a personal computer. We conclude
that the second order paramagnetic-ferromagnetic phase transition of Double
Exchange Materials close to half-filling belongs to the Universality Class of
the three-dimensional classical Heisenberg model.Comment: 20 pages plus 4 postscript figure
Vacuum polarization of a scalar field in wormhole spacetimes
An analitical approximation of for a scalar field in a static
spherically symmetric wormhole spacetime is obtained. The scalar field is
assumed to be both massive and massless, with an arbitrary coupling to
the scalar curvature, and in a zero temperature vacuum state.Comment: 10 pages, RevTeX, two eps figure
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