445 research outputs found
Efficacy and Safety of Pediatric Critical Care Physician Telemedicine Involvement in Rapid Response Team and Code Response in a Satellite Facility
OBJECTIVES:
Satellite inpatient facilities of larger children's hospitals often do not have on-site intensivist support. In-house rapid response teams and code teams may be difficult to operationalize in such facilities. We developed a system using telemedicine to provide pediatric intensivist involvement in rapid response team and code teams at the satellite facility of our children's hospital. Herein, we compare this model with our in-person model at our main campus.
DESIGN:
Cross-sectional.
SETTING:
A tertiary pediatric center and its satellite facility.
PATIENTS:
Patients admitted to the satellite facility.
INTERVENTIONS:
Implementation of a rapid response team and code team model at a satellite facility using telemedicine to provide intensivist support.
MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS:
We evaluated the success of the telemedicine model through three a priori outcomes: 1) reliability: involvement of intensivist on telemedicine rapid response teams and codes, 2) efficiency: time from rapid response team and code call until intensivist response, and 3) outcomes: disposition of telemedicine rapid response team or code calls. We compared each metric from our telemedicine model with our established main campus model.
MAIN RESULTS:
Critical care was involved in satellite campus rapid response team activations reliably (94.6% of the time). The process was efficient (median response time 7 min; mean 8.44 min) and effective (54.5 % patients transferred to PICU, similar to the 45-55% monthly rate at main campus). For code activations, the critical care telemedicine response rate was 100% (6/6), with a fast response time (median 1.5 min). We found no additional risk to patients, with no patients transferred from the satellite campus requiring a rapid escalation of care defined as initiation of vasoactive support, greater than 60 mL/kg in fluid resuscitation, or endotracheal intubation.
CONCLUSIONS:
Telemedicine can provide reliable, timely, and effective critical care involvement in rapid response team and Code Teams at satellite facilities
The Loudest Event Statistic: General Formulation, Properties and Applications
The use of the loudest observed event to generate statistical statements
about rate and strength has become standard in searches for gravitational waves
from compact binaries and pulsars. The Bayesian formulation of the method is
generalized in this paper to allow for uncertainties both in the background
estimate and in the properties of the population being constrained. The method
is also extended to allow rate interval construction. Finally, it is shown how
to combine the results from multiple experiments and a comparison is drawn
between the upper limit obtained in a single search and the upper limit
obtained by combining the results of two experiments each of half the original
duration. To illustrate this, we look at an example case, motivated by the
search for gravitational waves from binary inspiral.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figure
Cosmic Censorship: As Strong As Ever
Spacetimes which have been considered counter-examples to strong cosmic
censorship are revisited. We demonstrate the classical instability of the
Cauchy horizon inside charged black holes embedded in de Sitter spacetime for
all values of the physical parameters. The relevant modes which maintain the
instability, in the regime which was previously considered stable, originate as
outgoing modes near to the black hole event horizon. This same mechanism is
also relevant for the instability of Cauchy horizons in other proposed
counter-examples of strong cosmic censorship.Comment: 4 pages RevTeX style, 1 figure included using epsfi
Quantum Effects in Black Hole Interiors
The Weyl curvature inside a black hole formed in a generic collapse grows,
classically without bound, near to the inner horizon, due to partial absorption
and blueshifting of the radiative tail of the collapse. Using a spherical
model, we examine how this growth is modified by quantum effects of conformally
coupled massless fields.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figure (not included), RevTe
Host Galaxies Catalog Used in LIGO Searches for Compact Binary Coalescence Events
An up-to-date catalog of nearby galaxies considered as hosts of binary
compact objects is provided with complete information about sky position,
distance, extinction-corrected blue luminosity and error estimates. With our
current understanding of binary evolution, rates of formation and coalescence
for binary compact objects scale with massive-star formation and hence the
(extinction-corrected) blue luminosity of host galaxies. Coalescence events in
binary compact objects are among the most promising gravitational-wave sources
for ground-based gravitational-wave detectors such as LIGO. Our catalog and
associated error estimates are important for the interpretation of analyses,
carried out for LIGO, to constrain the rates of compact binary coalescence,
given an astrophysical population model for the sources considered. We discuss
how the notion of effective distance, created to account for the antenna
pattern of a gravitational-wave detector, must be used in conjunction with our
catalog. We note that the catalog provided can be used on other astronomical
analysis of populations that scale with galaxy blue luminosity.Comment: 29 pages, 7 figures, Accepted to Astrophysical Journal. To appear in
March 20 2008 Astrophysical Journa
The late-time singularity inside non-spherical black holes
It was long believed that the singularity inside a realistic, rotating black
hole must be spacelike. However, studies of the internal geometry of black
holes indicate a more complicated structure is typical. While it seems likely
that an observer falling into a black hole with the collapsing star encounters
a crushing spacelike singularity, an observer falling in at late times
generally reaches a null singularity which is vastly different in character to
the standard Belinsky, Khalatnikov and Lifschitz (BKL) spacelike singularity.
In the spirit of the classic work of BKL we present an asymptotic analysis of
the null singularity inside a realistic black hole. Motivated by current
understanding of spherical models, we argue that the Einstein equations reduce
to a simple form in the neighborhood of the null singularity. The main results
arising from this approach are demonstrated using an almost plane symmetric
model. The analysis shows that the null singularity results from the blueshift
of the late-time gravitational wave tail; the amplitude of these gravitational
waves is taken to decay as an inverse power of advanced time as suggested by
perturbation theory. The divergence of the Weyl curvature at the null
singularity is dominated by the propagating modes of the gravitational field.
The null singularity is weak in the sense that tidal distortion remains bounded
along timelike geodesics crossing the Cauchy horizon. These results are in
agreement with previous analyses of black hole interiors. We briefly discuss
some outstanding problems which must be resolved before the picture of the
generic black hole interior is complete.Comment: 16 pages, RevTeX, 3 figures included using psfi
The central density of a neutron star is unaffected by a binary companion at linear order in
Recent numerical work by Wilson, Mathews, and Marronetti [J. R. Wilson, G. J.
Mathews and P. Marronetti, Phys. Rev. D 54, 1317 (1996)] on the coalescence of
massive binary neutron stars shows a striking instability as the stars come
close together: Each star's central density increases by an amount proportional
to 1/(orbital radius). This overwhelms any stabilizing effects of tidal
coupling [which are proportional to 1/(orbital radius)^6] and causes the stars
to collapse before they merge. Since the claimed increase of density scales
with the stars' mass, it should also show up in a perturbation limit where a
point particle of mass orbits a neutron star. We prove analytically that
this does not happen; the neutron star's central density is unaffected by the
companion's presence to linear order in . We show, further, that the
density increase observed by Wilson et. al. could arise as a consequence of not
faithfully maintaining boundary conditions.Comment: 3 pages, REVTeX, no figures, submitted to Phys Rev D as a Rapid
Communicatio
Quantum corrections to critical phenomena in gravitational collapse
We investigate conformally coupled quantum matter fields on spherically
symmetric, continuously self-similar backgrounds. By exploiting the symmetry
associated with the self-similarity the general structure of the renormalized
quantum stress-energy tensor can be derived. As an immediate application we
consider a combination of classical, and quantum perturbations about exactly
critical collapse. Generalizing the standard argument which explains the
scaling law for black hole mass, , we
demonstrate the existence of a quantum mass gap when the classical critical
exponent satisfies . When our argument is
inconclusive; the semi-classical approximation breaks down in the spacetime
region of interest.Comment: RevTeX, 6 pages, 3 figures included using psfi
Phases of massive scalar field collapse
We study critical behavior in the collapse of massive spherically symmetric
scalar fields. We observe two distinct types of phase transition at the
threshold of black hole formation. Type II phase transitions occur when the
radial extent of the initial pulse is less than the Compton
wavelength () of the scalar field. The critical solution is that
found by Choptuik in the collapse of massless scalar fields. Type I phase
transitions, where the black hole formation turns on at finite mass, occur when
. The critical solutions are unstable soliton stars with
masses \alt 0.6 \mu^{-1}. Our results in combination with those obtained for
the collapse of a Yang-Mills field~{[M.~W. Choptuik, T. Chmaj, and P. Bizon,
Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 424 (1996)]} suggest that unstable, confined solutions to
the Einstein-matter equations may be relevant to the critical point of other
matter models.Comment: 5 pages, RevTex, 4 postscript figures included using psfi
Radiative falloff in Schwarzschild-de Sitter spacetime
We consider the time evolution of a scalar field propagating in
Schwarzschild-de Sitter spacetime. At early times, the field behaves as if it
were in pure Schwarzschild spacetime; the structure of spacetime far from the
black hole has no influence on the evolution. In this early epoch, the field's
initial outburst is followed by quasi-normal oscillations, and then by an
inverse power-law decay. At intermediate times, the power-law behavior gives
way to a faster, exponential decay. At late times, the field behaves as if it
were in pure de Sitter spacetime; the structure of spacetime near the black
hole no longer influences the evolution in a significant way. In this late
epoch, the field's behavior depends on the value of the curvature-coupling
constant xi. If xi is less than a critical value 3/16, the field decays
exponentially, with a decay constant that increases with increasing xi. If xi >
3/16, the field oscillates with a frequency that increases with increasing xi;
the amplitude of the field still decays exponentially, but the decay constant
is independent of xi.Comment: 10 pages, ReVTeX, 5 figures, references updated, and new section
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