2,348 research outputs found
Where do Elderly Veterans Obtain Care for Acute Myocardial Infarction: Department of Veterans Affairs or Medicare?
To examine Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and Medicare hospitalizations for elderly veterans with acute myocardial infarction (AMI), their use of cardiac procedures in both systems, and patient mortality. DATA SOURCES: Merging of inpatient discharge abstracts obtained from VA Patient Treatment Files (PTF) and Medicare MedPAR Part A files. A retrospective cohort study of male veterans 65 years or older who were prior users of the VA medical system (veteran-users) and who were initially admitted to a VA or Medicare hospital with a primary diagnosis of AMI at some time from January 1, 1988 through December 31, 1990 (N = 25,312). We examined the use of cardiac catheterization, coronary bypass surgery, and percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty in the 90 days after initial admission for AMI in both VA and Medicare systems, and survival at 30 days, 90 days, and one year. Other key measures included patient age, race, marital status, comorbidities, cardiac complications, prior utilization, and the availability of cardiac technology at the admitting hospital
A Novel Approach to Study Highly Correlated Nanostructures: The Logarithmic Discretization Embedded Cluster Approximation
This work proposes a new approach to study transport properties of highly
correlated local structures. The method, dubbed the Logarithmic Discretization
Embedded Cluster Approximation (LDECA), consists of diagonalizing a finite
cluster containing the many-body terms of the Hamiltonian and embedding it into
the rest of the system, combined with Wilson's idea of a logarithmic
discretization of the representation of the Hamiltonian. The physics associated
with both one embedded dot and a double-dot side-coupled to leads is discussed
in detail. In the former case, the results perfectly agree with Bethe ansatz
data, while in the latter, the physics obtained is framed in the conceptual
background of a two-stage Kondo problem. A many-body formalism provides a solid
theoretical foundation to the method. We argue that LDECA is well suited to
study complicated problems such as transport through molecules or quantum dot
structures with complex ground states.Comment: 17 pages, 13 figure
MAPPING SEA CLIFFS ON DOMINICA USING PHOTO MOSAICS
Mapping on islands covered by rain forest presents challenges due to the extremely limited exposure of bedrock. In general, exposures are limited to road cuts, quarries, and sea cliffs. While the first two are easily accessible, the last one provides the most reliable series of exposures for most islands, and generally forms the largest exposures. However, these outcrops are frequently difficult to impossible to reach from land, due to a lack of roads and/or strong surf right to the bases of the cliffs. Therefore, in July 2007, we chartered a boat to circumnavigate the island of Dominica in the Lesser Antilles to map and photograph the sea cliffs all around the island. The results provide modifications to the published geological map of the island and hitherto unknown details on the geology of the Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene-to-Recent volcanic centers. For example, an area previously mapped as part of the oldest sequence on the island (Miocene), has been identified as a megabreccia that is part of the Pleistocene sequence of the Grande Soufriere Hills volcanic center, and is now identified as much more extensive than was known from exposures accessible from land. Detailed stratigraphic sections of selected sequences will be presented to illustrate the effectiveness of this technique
Monitoring the process of formation of ZnO from ZnO2 using in situ combined XRD/XAS technique
Use of in situ combined X-ray diffraction and X-ray absorption spectroscopy for the study of the thermal decomposition of zinc peroxide to zinc oxide is reported here. Comparison of data extracted from both X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) with thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA) enabled us to follow the nature of the conversion of ZnO2 to ZnO. A temperature range between 230 and 350oC appears to show a very poorly crystalline ZnO is formed prior to the formation of ordered ZnO material. Both the decrease in white line intensity in the Zn K-edge XANES and resulting lower coordination numbers estimated from analysis of Zn K-edge data of ZnO heated at 500oC, in comparison to bulk ZnO, suggest that that the ZnO produced by this method has significant defects in the system
Efficient simulation of one-dimensional quantum many-body systems
We present a numerical method to simulate the time evolution, according to a
Hamiltonian made of local interactions, of quantum spin chains and systems
alike. The efficiency of the scheme depends on the amount of the entanglement
involved in the simulated evolution. Numerical analysis indicate that this
method can be used, for instance, to efficiently compute time-dependent
properties of low-energy dynamics of sufficiently regular but otherwise
arbitrary one-dimensional quantum many-body systems.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur
Creating artificial magnetic fields for cold atoms by photon-assisted tunneling
This paper proposes a simple setup for introducing an artificial magnetic
field for neutral atoms in 2D optical lattices. This setup is based on the
phenomenon of photon-assisted tunneling and involves a low-frequency periodic
driving of the optical lattice. This low-frequency driving does not affect the
electronic structure of the atom and can be easily realized by the same means
which employed to create the lattice. We also address the problem of detecting
this effective magnetic field. In particular, we study the center of mass
wave-packet dynamics, which is shown to exhibit certain features of cyclotron
dynamics of a classical charged particle.Comment: EPL-style, 8 pages, 4 figure
Long time correlations of nonlinear Luttinger liquids
An overview is given of the limitations of Luttinger liquid theory in
describing the real time equilibrium dynamics of critical one-dimensional
systems with nonlinear dispersion relation. After exposing the singularities of
perturbation theory in band curvature effects that break the Lorentz invariance
of the Tomonaga-Luttinger model, the origin of high frequency oscillations in
the long time behaviour of correlation functions is discussed. The notion that
correlations decay exponentially at finite temperature is challenged by the
effects of diffusion in the density-density correlation due to umklapp
scattering in lattice models.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures. Short review to appear in the Luttinger Liquids
special issue of Int. J. Mod. Phys. B; reference adde
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Improving the condition number of estimated covariance matrices
High dimensional error covariance matrices and their inverses are used to weight the
contribution of observation and background information in data assimilation procedures. As
observation error covariance matrices are often obtained by sampling methods, estimates are
often degenerate or ill-conditioned, making it impossible to invert an observation error
covariance matrix without the use of techniques to reduce its condition number. In this paper
we present new theory for two existing methods that can be used to âreconditionâ any covariance
matrix: ridge regression, and the minimum eigenvalue method. We compare these methods
with multiplicative variance inflation, which cannot alter the condition number of a matrix, but
is often used to account for neglected correlation information. We investigate the impact of
reconditioning on variances and correlations of a general covariance matrix in both a theoretical
and practical setting. Improved theoretical understanding provides guidance to users regarding
method selection, and choice of target condition number. The new theory shows that, for the
same target condition number, both methods increase variances compared to the original
matrix, with larger increases for ridge regression than the minimum eigenvalue method. We
prove that the ridge regression method strictly decreases the absolute value of off-diagonal
correlations. Theoretical comparison of the impact of reconditioning and multiplicative
variance inflation on the data assimilation objective function shows that variance inflation alters
information across all scales uniformly, whereas reconditioning has a larger effect on scales
corresponding to smaller eigenvalues. We then consider two examples: a general correlation
function, and an observation error covariance matrix arising from interchannel correlations. The
minimum eigenvalue method results in smaller overall changes to the correlation matrix than
ridge regression, but can increase off-diagonal correlations. Data assimilation experiments reveal
that reconditioning corrects spurious noise in the analysis but underestimates the true signal
compared to multiplicative variance inflation
One-dimensional fermionic systems after interaction quenches and their description by bosonic field theories
We show that the dynamics of quenches in one dimension far off equilibrium
can be described by power laws, but with exponents differing from the fully
renormalized ones at lowest energies. Instead they depend on the initial state
and its excitation energy. Furthermore, we found that for quenches to strong
interactions unexpected similarities between systems in one and in infinite
dimensions occur, indicating the dominance of local processes.Comment: This is a distinctly revised version which is focussed on the
description of the dynamics by bosonization technique
Ground states and dynamics of population-imbalanced Fermi condensates in one dimension
By using the numerically exact density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG)
approach, we investigate the ground states of harmonically trapped
one-dimensional (1D) fermions with population imbalance and find that the
Larkin-Ovchinnikov (LO) state, which is a condensed state of fermion pairs with
nonzero center-of-mass momentum, is realized for a wide range of parameters.
The phase diagram comprising the two phases of i) an LO state at the trap
center and a balanced condensate at the periphery and ii) an LO state at the
trap center and a pure majority component at the periphery, is obtained. The
reduced two-body density matrix indicates that most of the minority atoms
contribute to the LO-type quasi-condensate. With the time-dependent DMRG, we
also investigate the real-time dynamics of a system of 1D fermions in response
to a spin-flip excitation.Comment: 20 pages, 15 figures, accepted for publication in New Journal of
Physic
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