Continuous consent and dignity in dentistry

Despite the heavy emphasis on consent in the ethical code of the General Dental Council (GDC), it is often overlooked that communication difficulties between patient and dentist can cause problems in maintaining genuine consent during interventions. Inconsistencies in the GDC's Standards for dental professionals and Principles of patient consent guidelines are examined in this article, and it is concluded that more emphasis must be placed on continuous consent as an ongoing process essential to maintaining patients' dignity in dentistry

Structured total least norm and approximate GCDs of inexact polynomials

The determination of an approximate greatest common divisor (GCD) of two inexact polynomials f=f(y) and g=g(y) arises in several applications, including signal processing and control. This approximate GCD can be obtained by computing a structured low rank approximation S*(f,g) of the Sylvester resultant matrix S(f,g). In this paper, the method of structured total least norm (STLN) is used to compute a low rank approximation of S(f,g), and it is shown that important issues that have a considerable effect on the approximate GCD have not been considered. For example, the established works only yield one matrix S*(f,g), and therefore one approximate GCD, but it is shown in this paper that a family of structured low rank approximations can be computed, each member of which yields a different approximate GCD. Examples that illustrate the importance of these and other issues are presented

Avoidance Control on Time Scales

We consider dynamic systems on time scales under the control of two agents. One of the agents desires to keep the state of the system out of a given set regardless of the other agent's actions. Leitmann's avoidance conditions are proved to be valid for dynamic systems evolving on an arbitrary time scale.Comment: Revised edition in JOTA format. To appear in J. Optim. Theory Appl. 145 (2010), no. 3. In Pres

Bubble Growth in Superfluid 3-He: The Dynamics of the Curved A-B Interface

We study the hydrodynamics of the A-B interface with finite curvature. The interface tension is shown to enhance both the transition velocity and the amplitudes of second sound. In addition, the magnetic signals emitted by the growing bubble are calculated, and the interaction between many growing bubbles is considered.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figures, LaTeX, ITP-UH 11/9

Renorm-group, Causality and Non-power Perturbation Expansion in QFT

The structure of the QFT expansion is studied in the framework of a new "Invariant analytic" version of the perturbative QCD. Here, an invariant (running) coupling $a(Q^2/\Lambda^2)=\beta_1\alpha_s(Q^2)/4\pi$ is transformed into a "$Q^2$--analytized" invariant coupling $a_{\rm an}(Q^2/\Lambda^2) \equiv {\cal A}(x)$ which, by constuction, is free of ghost singularities due to incorporating some nonperturbative structures. Meanwhile, the "analytized" perturbation expansion for an observable $F$, in contrast with the usual case, may contain specific functions ${\cal A}_n(x)= [a^n(x)]_{\rm an}$, the "n-th power of $a(x)$ analytized as a whole", instead of $({\cal A}(x))^n$. In other words, the pertubation series for $F(x)$, due to analyticity imperative, may change its form turning into an {\it asymptotic expansion \`a la Erd\'elyi over a nonpower set} $\{{\cal A}_n(x)\}$. We analyse sets of functions $\{{\cal A}_n(x)\}$ and discuss properties of non-power expansion arising with their relations to feeble loop and scheme dependence of observables. The issue of ambiguity of the invariant analytization procedure and of possible inconsistency of some of its versions with the RG structure is also discussed.Comment: 12 pages, LaTeX To appear in Teor. Mat. Fizika 119 (1999) No.

A Simple Theory of Condensation

A simple assumption of an emergence in gas of small atomic clusters consisting of $c$ particles each, leads to a phase separation (first order transition). It reveals itself by an emergence of ``forbidden'' density range starting at a certain temperature. Defining this latter value as the critical temperature predicts existence of an interval with anomalous heat capacity behaviour $c_p\propto\Delta T^{-1/c}$. The value $c=13$ suggested in literature yields the heat capacity exponent $\alpha=0.077$.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figur

On the infrared freezing of perturbative QCD in the Minkowskian region

The infrared freezing of observables is known to hold at fixed orders of perturbative QCD if the Minkowskian quantities are defined through the analytic continuation from the Euclidean region. In a recent paper [1] it is claimed that infrared freezing can be proved also for Borel resummed all-orders quantities in perturbative QCD. In the present paper we obtain the Minkowskian quantities by the analytic continuation of the all-orders Euclidean amplitudes expressed in terms of the inverse Mellin transform of the corresponding Borel functions [2]. Our result shows that if the principle of analytic continuation is preserved in Borel-type resummations, the Minkowskian quantities exhibit a divergent increase in the infrared regime, which contradicts the claim made in [1]. We discuss the arguments given in [1] and show that the special redefinition of Borel summation at low energies adopted there does not reproduce the lowest order result obtained by analytic continuation.Comment: 19 pages, 1 figur

The Wright ω Function

This paper defines the Wright ω function, and presents some of its properties. As well as being of intrinsic mathematical interest, the function has a specific interest in the context of symbolic computation and automatic reasoning with nonstandard functions. In particular, although Wright ω is a cognate of the Lambert W function, it presents a di#erent model for handling the branches and multiple values that make the properties of W difficult to work with. By choosing a form for the function that has fewer discontinuities (and numerical difficulties), we make reasoning about expressions containing such functions easier. A final point of interest is that some of the techniques used to establish the mathematical properties can themselves potentially be automated, as was discussed in a paper presented at AISC Madrid [3]

Resultant-based methods for plane curves intersection problems

http://www.springeronline.com/3-540-28966-6We present an algorithm for solving polynomial equations, which uses generalized eigenvalues and eigenvectors of resultant matrices. We give special attention to the case of two bivariate polynomials and the Sylvester or Bezout resultant constructions. We propose a new method to treat multiple roots, detail its numerical aspects and describe experiments on tangential problems, which show the efficiency of the approach. An industrial application of the method is presented at the end of the paper. It consists in recovering cylinders from a large cloud of points and requires intensive resolution of polynomial equations