431 research outputs found
Mapping Aspects to Components
This document defines a representation of aspects in the component model. Such a representation requires modeling the available (primitive) components, defining the composition mechanism, and representing aspects as enhancements of components
Effects of cardiac output-guided hemodynamic management on fluid administration after aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage
Periodic and discrete Zak bases
Weyl's displacement operators for position and momentum commute if the
product of the elementary displacements equals Planck's constant. Then, their
common eigenstates constitute the Zak basis, each state specified by two phase
parameters. Upon enforcing a periodic dependence on the phases, one gets a
one-to-one mapping of the Hilbert space on the line onto the Hilbert space on
the torus. The Fourier coefficients of the periodic Zak bases make up the
discrete Zak bases. The two bases are mutually unbiased. We study these bases
in detail, including a brief discussion of their relation to Aharonov's modular
operators, and mention how they can be used to associate with the single degree
of freedom of the line a pair of genuine qubits.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures; displayed abstract is shortened, see the paper
for the complete abstrac
The participatory turn in radioactive waste management:Deliberation and the social-technical divide
National policies for long-term management of radioactive waste have for decades been driven by technical experts. The pursuit of these technocratic policies led in many countries to conflict with affected communities. Since the late 1990s, however, there has been a turn to more participatory approaches. This participatory turn reflects widespread acknowledgement in the discourse of policy actors and implementing organisations of the importance of social aspects of radioactive waste management and the need to involve citizens and their representatives in the process. This appears to be an important move towards democratisation of this particular field of technological decision making but, despite these developments, technical aspects are still most often brought into the public arena only after technical experts have defined the ‘problem’ and decided upon a ‘solution’. This maintains a notional divide between the treatment of technical and social aspects of radioactive waste management and raises pressing questions about the kind of choice affected communities are given if they are not able to debate fully the technical options. The article aims to contribute to better understanding and addressing this situation by exploring the complex entanglement of the social and the technical in radioactive waste management policy and practice, analysing the contingent configurations that emerge as sociotechnical combinations. Drawing upon empirical examples from four countries that have taken the participatory turn - Belgium, Slovenia, Sweden and the United Kingdom – the article describes the different ways in which sociotechnical combinations have been constructed, and discusses their implications for future practice
A multidimensional grid-adaptive relativistic magnetofluid code
A robust second order, shock-capturing numerical scheme for multi-dimensional
special relativistic magnetohydrodynamics on computational domains with
adaptive mesh refinement is presented. The base solver is a total variation
diminishing Lax-Friedrichs scheme in a finite volume setting and is combined
with a diffusive approach for controlling magnetic monopole errors. The
consistency between the primitive and conservative variables is ensured at all
limited reconstructions and the spatial part of the four velocity is used as a
primitive variable. Demonstrative relativistic examples are shown to validate
the implementation. We recover known exact solutions to relativistic MHD
Riemann problems, and simulate the shock-dominated long term evolution of
Lorentz factor 7 vortical flows distorting magnetic island chains.Comment: accepted for publication in Computer Physics Communication
Extragalactic jets with helical magnetic fields: relativistic MHD simulations
Extragalactic jets are inferred to harbor dynamically important, organized
magnetic fields which presumably aid in the collimation of the relativistic jet
flows. We here explore by means of grid-adaptive, high resolution numerical
simulations the morphology of AGN jets pervaded by helical field and flow
topologies. We concentrate on morphological features of the bow shock and the
jet beam behind the Mach disk, for various jet Lorentz factors and magnetic
field helicities. We investigate the influence of helical magnetic fields on
jet beam propagation in overdense external medium. We use the AMRVAC code,
employing a novel hybrid block-based AMR strategy, to compute ideal plasma
dynamics in special relativity. The helicity of the beam magnetic field is
effectively transported down the beam, with compression zones in between
diagonal internal cross-shocks showing stronger toroidal field regions. In
comparison with equivalent low-relativistic jets which get surrounded by
cocoons with vortical backflows filled by mainly toroidal field, the high speed
jets demonstrate only localized, strong toroidal field zones within the
backflow vortical structures. We find evidence for a more poloidal, straight
field layer, compressed between jet beam and backflows. This layer decreases
the destabilizing influence of the backflow on the jet beam. In all cases, the
jet beam contains rich cross-shock patterns, across which part of the kinetic
energy gets transferred. For the high speed reference jet considered here,
significant jet deceleration only occurs beyond distances exceeding , as the axial flow can reaccelerate downstream to the internal
cross-shocks. This reacceleration is magnetically aided, due to field
compression across the internal shocks which pinch the flow.Comment: 16 pages, Astronomy and Astrophysics accepted for publicatio
Selective digestive and oropharyngeal decontamination in medical and surgical ICU patients:individual patient data meta-analysis
Objectives: Selective digestive decontamination (SDD) and selective oropharyngeal decontamination (SOD) improved intensive care unit (ICU), hospital and 28-day survival in ICUs with low levels of antibiotic resistance. Yet it is unclear whether the effect differs between medical and surgical ICU patients.& para;& para;Methods: In an individual patient data meta-analysis, we systematically searched PubMed and included all randomized controlled studies published since 2000. We performed a two-stage meta-analysis with separate logistic regression models per study and per outcome (hospital survival and ICU survival) and subsequent pooling of main and interaction effects.& para;& para;Results: Six studies, all performed in countries with low levels of antibiotic resistance, yielded 16 528 hospital admissions and 17 884 ICU admissions for complete case analysis. Compared to standard care or placebo, the pooled adjusted odds ratios for hospital mortality was 0.82 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.72-0.93) for SDD and 0.84 (95% CI 0.73-0.97) for SOD. Compared to SOD, the adjusted odds ratio for hospital mortality was 0.90 (95% CI 0.82-0.97) for SDD. The effects on hospital mortality were not modified by type of ICU admission (p values for interaction terms were 0.66 for SDD and control, 0.87 for SOD and control and 0.47 for SDD and SOD). Similar results were found for ICU mortality.& para;& para;Conclusions: In ICUs with low levels of antibiotic resistance, the effectiveness of SDD and SOD was not modified by type of ICU admission. SDD and SOD improved hospital and ICU survival compared to standard care in both patient populations, with SDD being more effective than SOD. (C) 2017 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases
Review of low-cost sensors for indoor air quality: Features and applications
Humans spend the majority of their time indoors, where they are potentially exposed to hazardous pollutants. Within this context, over the past few years, there has been an upsurge of low-cost sensors (LCS) for the measurement of indoor air pollutants, motivated both by recent technological advances and by increased awareness of indoor air quality (IAQ) and its potential negative health impacts. Although not meeting the performance requirements for reference regulatory-equivalent monitoring indoors, LCS can provide informative measurements, offering an opportunity for high-resolution monitoring, emission source identification, exposure mitigation and managing IAQ and energy efficiency, among others. This article discusses the strengths and limitations that LCS offer for applications in the field of IAQ monitoring; it provides an overview of existing sensor technologies and gives recommendations for different indoor applications, considering their performance in the complex indoor environment and discussing future trends
Once-monthly paliperidone palmitate in recently diagnosed and chronic non-acute patients with schizophrenia
OBJECTIVE: To explore the treatment response, tolerability and safety of once-monthly paliperidone palmitate (PP1M) in non-acute patients switched to oral antipsychotics stratified by time since diagnosis as recently diagnosed (3 years). RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: Post-hoc analysis of a prospective, interventional, single-arm, multicentre, open-label, 6-month study performed in 233 recently diagnosed and 360 chronic patients. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The proportion achieving treatment response (defined as >/=20% improvement in Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale [PANSS] total score from baseline to endpoint) and maintained efficacy (defined as non-inferiority in the change in PANSS total score at endpoint [Schuirmann's test]). RESULTS: 71.4% of recently diagnosed and 59.2% of chronic patients showed a >/=20% decrease in PANSS total score (p=0.0028 between groups). Changes in PANSS Marder factors, PANSS subscales, and the proportion of patients with a Personal and Social Performance scale (PSP) total score of 71-100 were significantly greater in recently diagnosed compared with chronic patients. PP1M was well tolerated, presenting no new safety signals. CONCLUSION: These data show that recently diagnosed patients treated with PP1M had a significantly higher treatment response and improved functioning, as assessed by the PSP total score, than chronic patients
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