5,276 research outputs found
Universal transloader moves delicate equipment without stress
Transloader moves delicate or heavy items over irregular surfaces without transmitting stress to the load. The loader is supported on three pivot points which produce a wrap free base. The base is supported by an artificial four-wheel frame
Sickness certification system in the United Kingdom: qualitative study of views of general practitioners in Scotland
Objectives: To explore how general practitioners operate the sickness certification system, their views on the system, and suggestions for change.
Design: Qualitative focus group study consisting of 11 focus groups with 67 participants.
Setting: General practitioners in practices in Glasgow, Tayside, and Highland regions, Scotland.
Sample: Purposive sample of general practitioners, with further theoretical sampling of key informant general practitioners to examine emerging themes.
Results: General practitioners believed that the sickness certification system failed to address complex, chronic, or doubtful cases. They seemed to develop various operational strategies for its implementation. There appeared to be important deliberate misuse of the system by general practitioners, possibly related to conflicts about roles and incongruities in the system. The doctor-patient relationship was perceived to conflict with the current role of general practitioners in sickness certification. When making decisions about certification, the general practitioners considered a wide variety of factors. They experienced contradictory demands from other system stakeholders and felt blamed for failing to make impossible reconciliations. They clearly identified the difficulties of operating the system when there was no continuity of patient care. Many wished either to relinquish their gatekeeper role or to continue only with major changes.
Conclusions: Policy makers need to recognise and accommodate the range and complexity of factors that influence the behaviour of general practitioners operating as gatekeepers to the sickness certification system, before making changes. Such changes are otherwise unlikely to result in improvement. Models other than the primary care gatekeeper model should be considered
Interacting vector fields in Relativity without Relativity
Barbour, Foster and \'{O} Murchadha have recently developed a new framework,
called here {\it{the 3-space approach}}, for the formulation of classical
bosonic dynamics. Neither time nor a locally Minkowskian structure of spacetime
are presupposed. Both arise as emergent features of the world from
geodesic-type dynamics on a space of 3-dimensional metric--matter
configurations. In fact gravity, the universal light cone and Abelian gauge
theory minimally coupled to gravity all arise naturally through a single common
mechanism. It yields relativity -- and more -- without presupposing relativity.
This paper completes the recovery of the presently known bosonic sector within
the 3-space approach. We show, for a rather general ansatz, that 3-vector
fields can interact among themselves only as Yang--Mills fields minimally
coupled to gravity.Comment: Replaced with final version accepted by Classical and Quantum Gravity
(14 pages, no figures
Leptons, quarks, and their antiparticles from a phase-space perspective
It is argued that antiparticles may be interpreted in macroscopic terms
without explicitly using the concept of time and its reversal. The appropriate
framework is that of nonrelativistic phase space. It is recalled that a quantum
version of this approach leads also, alongside the appearance of antiparticles,
to the emergence of `internal' quantum numbers identifiable with weak isospin,
weak hypercharge and colour, and to the derivation of the Gell-Mann-Nishijima
relation, while simultaneously offering a preonless interpretation of the
Harari-Shupe rishon model. Furthermore, it is shown that - under the assumption
of the additivity of canonical momenta - the approach entails the emergence of
string-like structures resembling mesons and baryons, thus providing a
different starting point for the discussion of quark unobservability.Comment: Talk given at Fifth Int. Workshop DICE2010 Space-Time-Matter,
Castiglioncello, Italy, September 13-17, 201
Connecting deterministic and stochastic metapopulation models
In this paper, we study the relationship between certain stochastic and
deterministic versions of Hanski's incidence function model and the spatially
realistic Levins model. We show that the stochastic version can be well
approximated in a certain sense by the deterministic version when the number of
habitat patches is large, provided that the presence or absence of individuals
in a given patch is influenced by a large number of other patches. Explicit
bounds on the deviation between the stochastic and deterministic models are
given.Comment: The final publication is available at Springer via
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00285-015-0865-
Local approximation of a metapopulation's equilibrium
We consider the approximation of the equilibrium of a metapopulation model,
in which a finite number of patches are randomly distributed over a bounded
subset of Euclidean space. The approximation is good when a large
number of patches contribute to the colonization pressure on any given
unoccupied patch, and when the quality of the patches varies little over the
length scale determined by the colonization radius. If this is the case, the
equilibrium probability of a patch at being occupied is shown to be close
to , the equilibrium occupation probability in Levins's model, at any
point not too close to the boundary, if the local colonization
pressure and extinction rates appropriate to are assumed. The approximation
is justified by giving explicit upper and lower bounds for the occupation
probabilities, expressed in terms of the model parameters. Since the patches
are distributed randomly, the occupation probabilities are also random, and we
complement our bounds with explicit bounds on the probability that they are
satisfied at all patches simultaneously
On the emergence of random initial conditions in fluid limits
The paper presents a phenomenon occurring in population processes that start
near zero and have large carrying capacity. By the classical result of
Kurtz~(1970), such processes, normalized by the carrying capacity, converge on
finite intervals to the solutions of ordinary differential equations, also
known as the fluid limit. When the initial population is small relative to
carrying capacity, this limit is trivial. Here we show that, viewed at suitably
chosen times increasing to infinity, the process converges to the fluid limit,
governed by the same dynamics, but with a random initial condition. This random
initial condition is related to the martingale limit of an associated linear
birth and death process
The geometry of the Barbour-Bertotti theories II. The three body problem
We present a geometric approach to the three-body problem in the
non-relativistic context of the Barbour-Bertotti theories. The Riemannian
metric characterizing the dynamics is analyzed in detail in terms of the
relative separations. Consequences of a conformal symmetry are exploited and
the sectional curvatures of geometrically preferred surfaces are computed. The
geodesic motions are integrated. Line configurations, which lead to curvature
singularities for , are investigated. None of the independent scalars
formed from the metric and curvature tensor diverges there.Comment: 16 pages, 2 eps figures, to appear in Classical and Quantum Gravit
The Definition of Mach's Principle
Two definitions of Mach's principle are proposed. Both are related to gauge
theory, are universal in scope and amount to formulations of causality that
take into account the relational nature of position, time, and size. One of
them leads directly to general relativity and may have relevance to the problem
of creating a quantum theory of gravity.Comment: To be published in Foundations of Physics as invited contribution to
Peter Mittelstaedt's 80th Birthday Festschrift. 30 page
Sal and Amanda Take Morganâs Victory March to the Battle of Cowpens by Mary Ann Solsbee
Jeffery Barbour, MLIS, University of South Carolina, reviews Sal and Amanda Take Morganâs Victory March to the Battle of Cowpens by Mary Ann Solsbee
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