1,032 research outputs found
The design of a multi-cell box in pure bending for minimum weight
The optimum skin thickness, web thickness and web pitch to
be used for a multi-cell box of given depth under a given
bending load are obtained by two different methods, resulting
in a graph where the optimum geometry is plotted against
the structural index for a given materia
Reimagine the ICU: Healthcare Professionalsâ Perspectives on How Environments (Can) Promote Patient Well-Being
Objective: This study aims (1) to understand the needs and challenges of the current intensive care unit (ICU) environments in supporting patient well-being from the perspective of healthcare professionals (HCPs) and (2) to explore the new potential of ICU environments enabled by technology.Background: Evidence-based design has yielded how the design of environments can advocate for patient well-being, and digital technology offers new possibilities for indoor environments. However, the role of technology in facilitating ICU patient well-being has been unexplored.Method: This study was conducted in two phases. First, a mixed-method study was conducted with ICU HCPs from four Dutch hospitals. The study investigated the current environmental support for care activities, as well as the factors that positively and negatively contribute to patient experience. Next, a co-creation session was held involving HCPs and health technology experts to explore opportunities for technology to support ICU patient well-being.Results: The mixed-method study revealed nine negative and eight positive patient experience factors. HCPs perceived patient emotional care as most challenging due to the ICU workload and a lack of environmental support in fulfilling patient emotional needs. The co-creation session yielded nine technology-enabled solutions to address identified challenges. Finally, drawing from insights from both studies, four strategies were introduced that guide toward creating technology to provide holistic and personalized care for patients.Conclusion: Patient experience factors are intertwined, necessitating a multifactorial approach to support patient well-being. Viewing the ICU environment as a holistic unit, our findings provide guidance on creating healing environments using technology
Hydrogen-bonded Silica Gels Dispersed in a Smectic Liquid Crystal: A Random Field XY System
The effect on the nematic to smectic-A transition in octylcyanobiphenyl (8CB)
due to dispersions of hydrogen-bonded silica (aerosil) particles is
characterized with high-resolution x-ray scattering. The particles form weak
gels in 8CB creating a quenched disorder that replaces the transition with the
growth of short range smectic correlations. The correlations include thermal
critical fluctuations that dominate at high temperatures and a second
contribution that quantitatively matches the static fluctuations of a random
field system and becomes important at low temperatures.Comment: 10 pages, 4 postscript figures as separate file
Simplified amino acid alphabets based on deviation of conditional probability from random background
The primitive data for deducing the Miyazawa-Jernigan contact energy or
BLOSUM score matrix consists of pair frequency counts. Each amino acid
corresponds to a conditional probability distribution. Based on the deviation
of such conditional probability from random background, a scheme for reduction
of amino acid alphabet is proposed. It is observed that evident discrepancy
exists between reduced alphabets obtained from raw data of the
Miyazawa-Jernigan's and BLOSUM's residue pair counts. Taking homologous
sequence database SCOP40 as a test set, we detect homology with the obtained
coarse-grained substitution matrices. It is verified that the reduced alphabets
obtained well preserve information contained in the original 20-letter
alphabet.Comment: 9 pages,3figure
Field theoretic description of charge regulation interaction
In order to find the exact form of the electrostatic interaction between two
proteins with dissociable charge groups in aqueous solution, we have studied a
model system composed of two macroscopic surfaces with charge dissociation
sites immersed in a counterion-only ionic solution. Field-theoretic
representation of the grand canonical partition function is derived and
evaluated within the mean-field approximation, giving the Poisson-Boltzmann
theory with the Ninham-Parsegian boundary condition. Gaussian fluctuations
around the mean-field are then analyzed in the lowest order correction that we
calculate analytically and exactly, using the path integral representation for
the partition function of a harmonic oscillator with time-dependent frequency.
The first order (one loop) free energy correction gives the interaction free
energy that reduces to the zero-frequency van der Waals form in the appropriate
limit but in general gives rise to a mono-polar fluctuation term due to charge
fluctuation at the dissociation sites. Our formulation opens up the possibility
to investigate the Kirkwood-Shumaker interaction in more general contexts where
their original derivation fails.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, submitted to EPJ
Dynamics of spin-2 Bose condensate driven by external magnetic fields
Dynamic response of the F=2 spinor Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) under the
influence of external magnetic fields is studied. A general formula is given
for the oscillation period to describe population transfer from the initial
polar state to other spin states. We show that when the frequency and the
reduced amplitude of the longitudinal magnetic field are related in a specific
manner, the population of the initial spin-0 state will be dynamically
localized during time evolution. The effects of external noise and nonlinear
spin exchange interaction on the dynamics of the spinor BEC are studied. We
show that while the external noise may eventually destroy the Rabi oscillations
and dynamic spin localization, these coherent phenomena are robust against the
nonlinear atomic interaction.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures. accepted by Phys. Rev.
Effects of Pore Walls and Randomness on Phase Transitions in Porous Media
We study spin models within the mean field approximation to elucidate the
topology of the phase diagrams of systems modeling the liquid-vapor transition
and the separation of He--He mixtures in periodic porous media. These
topologies are found to be identical to those of the corresponding random field
and random anisotropy spin systems with a bimodal distribution of the
randomness. Our results suggest that the presence of walls (periodic or
otherwise) are a key factor determining the nature of the phase diagram in
porous media.Comment: REVTeX, 11 eps figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.
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