Blood flow dynamics in patient specific arterial network in head and neck

This paper shows a steady simulation of blood flow in the major head and neck arteries as if they had rigid walls, using patient specific geometry and CFD software FLUENT R . The Artery geometry is obtained by CT–scan segmentation with the commercial software ScanIPTM. A cause and effect study with various Reynolds numbers, viscous models and blood fluid models is provided. Mesh independence is achieved through wall y+ and pressure gradient adaption. It was found, that a Newtonian fluid model is not appropriate for all geometry parts, therefore the non–Newtonian properties of blood are required for small vessel diameters and low Reynolds numbers. The k–! turbulence model is suitable for the whole Reynolds numbe

XXVI IUPAP Conference on Computational Physics (CCP2014)

The 26th IUPAP Conference on Computational Physics, CCP2014, was held in Boston, Massachusetts, during August 11-14, 2014. Almost 400 participants from 38 countries convened at the George Sherman Union at Boston University for four days of plenary and parallel sessions spanning a broad range of topics in computational physics and related areas. The first meeting in the series that developed into the annual Conference on Computational Physics (CCP) was held in 1989, also on the campus of Boston University and chaired by our colleague Claudio Rebbi. The express purpose of that meeting was to discuss the progress, opportunities and challenges of common interest to physicists engaged in computational research. The conference having returned to the site of its inception, it is interesting to recect on the development of the field during the intervening years. Though 25 years is a short time for mankind, computational physics has taken giant leaps during these years, not only because of the enormous increases in computer power but especially because of the development of new methods and algorithms, and the growing awareness of the opportunities the new technologies and methods can offer. Computational physics now represents a ''third leg'' of research alongside analytical theory and experiments in almost all subfields of physics, and because of this there is also increasing specialization within the community of computational physicists. It is therefore a challenge to organize a meeting such as CCP, which must have suffcient depth in different areas to hold the interest of experts while at the same time being broad and accessible. Still, at a time when computational research continues to gain in importance, the CCP series is critical in the way it fosters cross-fertilization among fields, with many participants specifically attending in order to get exposure to new methods in fields outside their own. As organizers and editors of these Proceedings, we are very pleased with the high quality of the papers provided by the participants. These articles represent a good cross-section of what was presented at the meeting, and it is our hope that they will not only be useful individually for their specific scientific content but will also represent a historical snapshot of the state of computational physics that they represent collectively. The remainder of this Preface contains lists detailing the organizational structure of CCP2014, endorsers and sponsors of the meeting, plenary and invited talks, and a presentation of the 2014 IUPAP C20 Young Scientist Prize. We would like to take the opportunity to again thank all those who contributed to the success of CCP214, as organizers, sponsors, presenters, exhibitors, and participants. Anders Sandvik, David Campbell, David Coker, Ying TangPublished versio

Can behavioral biases explain the rejections of the expectation hypothesis of the term structure of interest rates?

We test whether the rejections of the expectations hypothesis can be explained by two behavioral biases: the law of small numbers and conservatism. We use the term structure to decompose excess bond returns into components related to expectation errors and expectation revisions, enabling a direct test of behavioral models using the expectations of market participants. We find systematic patterns in expectation errors, and expectation revisions, which are consistent with these two biases. We show that a trading strategy that exploits these biases delivers significant economic profits and that our results are unlikely to be driven by a time-varying risk premium

Qualitative theory testing as mixed-method research

While the concept of mixed-methods research is more usually associated with combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, this paper outlines a study that mixed methods by undertaking qualitative theory testing and derivation when examining the relationship between health promotion theory and hospital nursing practice. Thus, it is concerned with relating the metatheoretical aspects of the debate and not with the pragmatic aspects of the research and concomitant methods. A deductive–inductive–deductive design, based on the theory–research–theory strategy of Meleis (1985), tested, revised and developed for nursing established health promotion theory using theory-testing criteria. To complement the methodological mix, the study also used the theory (i.e. a health-promotion taxonomy) as a framework to contextualise the findings rather than generate theory in the way associated with interpretative inquiry. While inconsistent with the traditional view linking theory testing with quantitative, objective epistemology, the process enabled a theoretically robust health-promotion taxonomy to be synthesised and advanced for use in nursing in relation to a paradigm of social thought

Partial Deconfinement in Color Superconductivity

We analyze the fate of the unbroken SU(2) color gauge interactions for 2 light flavors color superconductivity at non zero temperature. Using a simple model we compute the deconfining/confining critical temperature and show that is smaller than the critical temperature for the onset of the superconductive state itself. The breaking of Lorentz invariance, induced already at zero temperature by the quark chemical potential, is shown to heavily affect the value of the critical temperature and all of the relevant features related to the deconfining transition. Modifying the Polyakov loop model to describe the SU(2) immersed in the diquark medium we argue that the deconfinement transition is second order. Having constructed part of the equation of state for the 2 color superconducting phase at low temperatures our results are relevant for the physics of compact objects featuring a two flavor color superconductive state.Comment: 9 pp, 4 eps-figs, version to appear in PR

OGLE-2018-BLG-0022: A Nearby M-dwarf Binary

We report observations of the binary microlensing event OGLE-2018-BLG-0022, provided by the Robotic Observations of Microlensing Events (ROME)/Reactive Event Assessment (REA) Survey, which indicate that the lens is a low-mass binary star consisting of M3 (0.375 ± 0.020 M⊙) and M7 (0.098 ± 0.005 M⊙) components. The lens is unusually close, at 0.998 ± 0.047 kpc, compared with the majority of microlensing events, and despite its intrinsically low luminosity, it is likely that adaptive optics observations in the near future will be able to provide an independent confirmation of the lens masses

Rules versus Discretion in Committee Decision Making: An Application to the 2001 RAE for UK Economics Departments

The question of rules versus discretion has generated a great deal of debate in many areas of the social sciences. Recently, much of the discussion among academics and stakeholders about the assessment of research in UK higher education institutions has focused on the means that should be used to determine research quality. We present a model of committee decision-making when both rules and discretion are available. Some of the predictions of the model are tested empirically using the UK RAE 2001 results