412 research outputs found
Nurse telephone triage for same day appointments in general practice: multiple interrupted time series trial of effect on workload and costs
OBJECTIVE: To compare the workloads of general practitioners and nurses and costs of patient care for nurse telephone triage and standard management of requests for same day appointments in routine primary care. DESIGN: Multiple interrupted time series using sequential introduction of experimental triage system in different sites with repeated measures taken one week in every month for 12 months. SETTING: Three primary care sites in York. Participants: 4685 patients: 1233 in standard management, 3452 in the triage system. All patients requesting same day appointments during study weeks were included in the trial. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Type of consultation (telephone, appointment, or visit), time taken for consultation, presenting complaints, use of services during the month after same day contact, and costs of drugs and same day, follow up, and emergency care. RESULTS: The triage system reduced appointments with general practitioner by 29-44%. Compared with standard management, the triage system had a relative risk (95% confidence interval) of 0.85 (0.72 to 1.00) for home visits, 2.41 (2.08 to 2.80) for telephone care, and 3.79 (3.21 to 4.48) for nurse care. Mean overall time in the triage system was 1.70 minutes longer, but mean general practitioner time was reduced by 2.45 minutes. Routine appointments and nursing time increased, as did out of hours and accident and emergency attendance. Costs did not differ significantly between standard management and triage: mean difference £1.48 more per patient for triage (95% confidence interval -0.19 to 3.15). CONCLUSIONS: Triage reduced the number of same day appointments with general practitioners but resulted in busier routine surgeries, increased nursing time, and a small but significant increase in out of hours and accident and emergency attendance. Consequently, triage does not reduce overall costs per patient for managing same day appointments
Properties of the Strange Axial Mesons in the Relativized Quark Model
We studied properties of the strange axial mesons in the relativized quark
model. We calculated the decay constant in the quark model and showed how
it can be used to extract the mixing angle
() from the weak decay . The ratio is the most sensitive
measurement and also the most reliable since the largest of the theoretical
uncertainties factor out. However the current bounds extracted from the
TPC/Two-Gamma collaboration measurements are rather weak: we typically obtain
at 68\% C.L. We also calculated the
strong OZI-allowed decays in the pseudoscalar emission model and the flux-tube
breaking model and extracted a mixing angle of . Our analysis also indicates that the heavy quark limit does not give a
good description of the strange mesons.Comment: Revised version to be published in Phys. Rev. D. Minor changes. Latex
file uses revtex version 3 and epsfig, 4 postcript figures are attached. The
full postcript version with embedded figures is available at
ftp://ftp.physics.carleton.ca/pub/theory/godfrey/ocipc9512.ps.
Scaling in Plasticity-Induced Cell-Boundary Microstructure: Fragmentation and Rotational Diffusion
We develop a simple computational model for cell boundary evolution in
plastic deformation. We study the cell boundary size distribution and cell
boundary misorientation distribution that experimentally have been found to
have scaling forms that are largely material independent. The cell division
acts as a source term in the misorientation distribution which significantly
alters the scaling form, giving it a linear slope at small misorientation
angles as observed in the experiments. We compare the results of our simulation
to two closely related exactly solvable models which exhibit scaling behavior
at late times: (i) fragmentation theory and (ii) a random walk in rotation
space with a source term. We find that the scaling exponents in our simulation
agree with those of the theories, and that the scaling collapses obey the same
equations, but that the shape of the scaling functions depend upon the methods
used to measure sizes and to weight averages and histograms
Gravity and Random Surfaces on the Lattice - A Review
We review recent work in the lattice approach to random surfaces and quantum
gravity. Our task is made somewhat easier by some very interesting results,
particularly in four dimensions, that have appeared recently and which are
reported elsewhere in these proceedings. Inevitably, given the scope of the
review and the limitations of space, the presentation will omit work of
importance and be telegraphic in discussing work that is included, for which
apologies are offered in advance. After the customary brief historical
introduction we work our way in dimensional order from one up to four
dimensions before closing with some remarks on the relation, if any, between
the various lattice models and ``real'' 4D gravity.Comment: 13 pages with 8 embedded eps figures, Latex+espcrc2.sty (included).
Plenary review talk at Lattice96 rendered, more or less, into written
English. Now with a minor typo in last section fixe
I=3/2 Scattering in the Nonrelativisitic Quark Potential Model
We study elastic scattering to Born order using
nonrelativistic quark wavefunctions in a constituent-exchange model. This
channel is ideal for the study of nonresonant meson-meson scattering amplitudes
since s-channel resonances do not contribute significantly. Standard quark
model parameters yield good agreement with the measured S- and P-wave phase
shifts and with PCAC calculations of the scattering length. The P-wave phase
shift is especially interesting because it is nonzero solely due to
symmetry breaking effects, and is found to be in good agreement with experiment
given conventional values for the strange and nonstrange constituent quark
masses.Comment: 12 pages + 2 postscript figures, Revtex, MIT-CTP-210
Study of the Process e+ e- --> omega pi0 --> pi0 pi0 gamma in c.m. Energy Range 920--1380 MeV at CMD-2
The cross section of the process e+ e- --> omega pi0 --> pi0 pi0 gamma has
been measured in the c.m. energy range 920-1380 MeV with the CMD-2 detector.
Its energy dependence is well described by the interference of the rho(770) and
rho'(1450) mesons decaying to omega pi0. Upper limits for the cross sections of
the direct processes e+ e- --> pi0 pi0 gamma, eta pi0 gamma have been set.Comment: Accepted for publication in PL
Towards Noncommutative Fuzzy QED
We study in one-loop perturbation theory noncommutative fuzzy quenched QED_4.
We write down the effective action on fuzzy S**2 x S**2 and show the existence
of a gauge-invariant UV-IR mixing in the model in the large N planar limit. We
also give a derivation of the beta function and comment on the limit of large
mass of the normal scalar fields. We also discuss topology change in this 4
fuzzy dimensions arising from the interaction of fields (matrices) with
spacetime through its noncommutativity.Comment: 33 page
NN Core Interactions and Differential Cross Sections from One Gluon Exchange
We derive nonstrange baryon-baryon scattering amplitudes in the
nonrelativistic quark model using the ``quark Born diagram" formalism. This
approach describes the scattering as a single interaction, here the
one-gluon-exchange (OGE) spin-spin term followed by constituent interchange,
with external nonrelativistic baryon wavefunctions attached to the scattering
diagrams to incorporate higher-twist wavefunction effects. The short-range
repulsive core in the NN interaction has previously been attributed to this
spin-spin interaction in the literature; we find that these perturbative
constituent-interchange diagrams do indeed predict repulsive interactions in
all I,S channels of the nucleon-nucleon system, and we compare our results for
the equivalent short-range potentials to the core potentials found by other
authors using nonperturbative methods. We also apply our perturbative
techniques to the N and systems: Some
channels are found to have attractive core potentials and may accommodate
``molecular" bound states near threshold. Finally we use our Born formalism to
calculate the NN differential cross section, which we compare with experimental
results for unpolarised proton-proton elastic scattering. We find that several
familiar features of the experimental differential cross section are reproduced
by our Born-order result.Comment: 27 pages, figures available from the authors, revtex, CEBAF-TH-93-04,
MIT-CTP-2187, ORNL-CCIP-93-0
Eureka and beyond: mining's impact on African urbanisation
This collection brings separate literatures on mining and urbanisation together at a time when both artisanal and large-scale mining are expanding in many African economies. While much has been written about contestation over land and mineral rights, the impact of mining on settlement, notably its catalytic and fluctuating effects on migration and urban growth, has been largely ignored. African nation-states’ urbanisation trends have shown considerable variation over the past half century. The current surge in ‘new’ mining countries and the slow-down in ‘old’ mining countries are generating some remarkable settlement patterns and welfare outcomes. Presently, the African continent is a laboratory of national mining experiences. This special issue on African mining and urbanisation encompasses a wide cross-section of country case studies: beginning with the historical experiences of mining in Southern Africa (South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe), followed by more recent mineralizing trends in comparatively new mineral-producing countries (Tanzania) and an established West African gold producer (Ghana), before turning to the influence of conflict minerals (Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone)
Constraints on Dark Matter Annihilation in Clusters of Galaxies with the Fermi Large Area Telescope
Nearby clusters and groups of galaxies are potentially bright sources of
high-energy gamma-ray emission resulting from the pair-annihilation of dark
matter particles. However, no significant gamma-ray emission has been detected
so far from clusters in the first 11 months of observations with the Fermi
Large Area Telescope. We interpret this non-detection in terms of constraints
on dark matter particle properties. In particular for leptonic annihilation
final states and particle masses greater than ~200 GeV, gamma-ray emission from
inverse Compton scattering of CMB photons is expected to dominate the dark
matter annihilation signal from clusters, and our gamma-ray limits exclude
large regions of the parameter space that would give a good fit to the recent
anomalous Pamela and Fermi-LAT electron-positron measurements. We also present
constraints on the annihilation of more standard dark matter candidates, such
as the lightest neutralino of supersymmetric models. The constraints are
particularly strong when including the fact that clusters are known to contain
substructure at least on galaxy scales, increasing the expected gamma-ray flux
by a factor of ~5 over a smooth-halo assumption. We also explore the effect of
uncertainties in cluster dark matter density profiles, finding a systematic
uncertainty in the constraints of roughly a factor of two, but similar overall
conclusions. In this work, we focus on deriving limits on dark matter models; a
more general consideration of the Fermi-LAT data on clusters and clusters as
gamma-ray sources is forthcoming.Comment: accepted to JCAP, Corresponding authors: T.E. Jeltema and S. Profumo,
minor revisions to be consistent with accepted versio
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