Design-for-test structure to facilitate test vector application with low performance loss in non-test mode.

A switching based circuit is described which allows application of voltage test vectors to internal nodes of a chip without the problem of backdriving. The new circuit has low impact on the performance of an analogue circuit in terms of loss of bandwidth and allows simple application of analogue test voltages into internal nodes. The circuit described facilitates implementation of the forthcoming IEEE 1149.4 DfT philosophy [1]

A Comparison of Quality of Care in Critical Access Hospitals and Other Rural Hospitals

Purpose: The United States has about 2100 rural hospitals. Approximately 1300 are Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs) with 25 beds or less. CAHs receive cost-based reimbursement through the federal Flex program with the goal to improve quality and access to health care. Reports on quality of care (QOC) and factors that influence quality in CAHs are mixed. This study compared QOC and factors that influence QOC in CAHs and other rural hospitals. Sample: 385 staff nurses in 6 CAHs and 9 other rural hospitals in North Carolina and Virginia. Method: Descriptive cross-sectional design using nurse surveys aggregated to the hospital level, data from provider of services file, and the United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research files. Variables on community, hospital, and nursing unit characteristics, the nurse work environment, nurse rated QOC and community perception of hospital quality were compared using t-test or chi-square. Findings: There were no differences in the majority of factors influencing QOC. A culture of safety, the nurse work environment, and QOC were rated high in all hospitals. Compared to other rural hospitals CAHs tend to be located in communities with better economic status and their nurses had more years of nursing experience. More nurses in CAHs felt their community recognized their hospital as a good place for minor health issues and would recommend the hospital to family and friends. Conclusions: The high ratings of QOC were accompanied with the presence of safety cultures and work environments rated as highly as in Magnet hospitals. The lower poverty levels in communities with CAHs suggest possible community financial benefits from CAHs. More studies are warranted to explore these relationships. Further reporting to public quality indicator databases by all CAHs should be encouraged and QOC measures relevant for small rural hospitals should be developed

On Gauge-Invariant Decomposition of Nucleon Spin

We investigate the relation between the known decompositions of the nucleon spin into its constituents, thereby clarifying in what respect they are common and in what respect they are different essentially. The decomposition recently proposed by Chen et al. can be thought of as a nontrivial generalization of the gauge-variant Jaffe-Manohar decomposition so as to meet the gauge-invariance requirement of each term of the decomposition. We however point out that there is another gauge-invariant decomposition of the nucleon spin, which is closer to the Ji decomposition, while allowing the decomposition of the gluon total angular momentum into the spin and orbital parts. After clarifying the reason why the gauge-invariant decomposition of the nucleon spin is not unique, we discuss which decomposition is more preferable from the experimental viewpoint.Comment: The version to appear in Phys. Rev.

America, the Old?

1. Introduction Barack Obama’s election to the presidency in 2008 was greeted in most of Europe with joy, or at least relief, an emotion that was shared in a great many precincts in the United States. In both venues a curious mix of language attended these celebrations. A new day had dawned, it was said; the American people had turned a page to give themselves, and the rest of the world, a fresh start. Paradoxically, that meant that the USA would return to being its old, familiar self—a count..

Nucleon structure from mixed action calculations using 2+1 flavors of asqtad sea and domain wall valence fermions

We present high statistics results for the structure of the nucleon from a mixed-action calculation using 2+1 flavors of asqtad sea and domain wall valence fermions. We perform extrapolations of our data based on different chiral effective field theory schemes and compare our results with available information from phenomenology. We discuss vector and axial form factors of the nucleon, moments of generalized parton distributions, including moments of forward parton distributions, and implications for the decomposition of the nucleon spin.Comment: 68 pages, 47 figures. Main revision points: improved discussion of chiral fits and systematic uncertainties, several minor refinements. Accepted for publication in Phys.Rev.

Perceived age discrimination across age in Europe: from an ageing society to a society for all ages

Ageism is recognized as a significant obstacle to older people's well-being, but age discrimination against younger people has attracted less attention. We investigate levels of perceived age discrimination across early to late adulthood, using data from the European Social Survey (ESS), collected in 29 countries (N = 56,272). We test for approximate measurement invariance across countries. We use local structural equation modeling as well as moderated nonlinear factor analysis to test for measurement invariance across age as a continuous variable. Using models that account for the moderate degree of noninvariance, we find that younger people report experiencing the highest levels of age discrimination. We also find that national context substantially affects levels of ageism experienced among older respondents. The evidence highlights that more research is needed to address ageism in youth and across the life span, not just old adulthood. It also highlights the need to consider factors that differently contribute to forms of ageism experienced by people at different life stages and ages.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Molecular-beam epitaxial growth of a far-infrared transparent electrode for extrinsic Germanium photoconductors

We have evaluated the optical and electrical properties of a far-infrared (IR) transparent electrode for extrinsic germanium (Ge) photoconductors at 4 K, which was fabricated by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). As a far-IR transparent electrode, an aluminum (Al)-doped Ge layer is formed at well-optimized doping concentration and layer thickness in terms of the three requirements: high far-IR transmittance, low resistivity, and excellent ohmic contact. The Al-doped Ge layer has the far-IR transmittance of >95 % within the wavelength range of 40--200 microns, while low resistivity (~5 ohm-cm) and ohmic contact are ensured at 4 K. We demonstrate the applicability of the MBE technology in fabricating the far-IR transparent electrode satisfying the above requirements.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in the PAS

Explorations of the quark substructure of the nucleon in lattice QCD

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Physics, 2009.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 163-166).Lattice gauge theory is a valuable tool for understanding how properties of the nucleon arise from the fundamental interactions of QCD. Numerical computations on the lattice can be used not only for first principles calculations of experimentally accessible quantities, but also for calculations of quantities that are not (yet) known from experiment. This thesis presents two lattice studies of the quark substructure of nucleons. The first study used overlaps calculated on the lattice to evaluate the goodness of trial nucleon sources. A variational study was performed to find the trial source that best approximated the true nucleon ground state. In this exploratory work with relatively simple trial sources on quenched lattices, we obtained overlaps as high as 80%. The second study was performed using domain wall valence fermions on Asqtad improved staggered lattices provided by the MILC collaboration, with pion masses as low as 290 MeV. We compute nucleon matrix elements of local quark operators: (F', S'l@P(0) F{Il Dt12 ... i D 0 (0)P, S), where F" E {y", -y"-y, -io*}. These operators are parameterized by generalized form factors, which in the infinite momentum frame can be unambiguously interpreted in terms of Fourier transforms of the transverse spatial distributions of quarks in a nucleon. By calculating the local operators at many different values of nucleon momentum, we extract a complete set of generalized form factors for the lowest two moments of the vector, axial and tensor operators. From the form factors, we compute a variety of quantities characterizing the internal structure of the nucleon. Finally, we explore chiral extrapolations of the lattice results to the physical pion mass.by Jonathan D. Bratt.Ph.D

Big Bang Nucleosynthesis Constraints on Brane Cosmologies

We examine constraints from Big Bang nucleosynthesis on type II Randall-Sundrum brane cosmologies with both a dark radiation component and a quadratic term that depends on the 5-dimensional Planck mass, M_5. Using limits on the abundances of deuterium and helium-4, we calculate the allowed region in the M_5-dark radiation plane and derive the precise BBN bound on M_5 alone with no dark radiation: M_5 > 13 TeV.Comment: 3 pages, 1 figure, references added, to appear in Phys. Lett.