17,865 research outputs found
Hydraulic servo system increases accuracy in fatigue testing
Hydraulic servo system increases accuracy in applying fatigue loading to a specimen under test. An error sensing electronic control loop, coupled to the hydraulic proportional closed loop cyclic force generator, provides an accurately controlled peak force to the specimen
Speckle-visibility spectroscopy: A tool to study time-varying dynamics
We describe a multispeckle dynamic light scattering technique capable of
resolving the motion of scattering sites in cases that this motion changes
systematically with time. The method is based on the visibility of the speckle
pattern formed by the scattered light as detected by a single exposure of a
digital camera. Whereas previous multispeckle methods rely on correlations
between images, here the connection with scattering site dynamics is made more
simply in terms of the variance of intensity among the pixels of the camera for
the specified exposure duration. The essence is that the speckle pattern is
more visible, i.e. the variance of detected intensity levels is greater, when
the dynamics of the scattering site motion is slow compared to the exposure
time of the camera. The theory for analyzing the moments of the spatial
intensity distribution in terms of the electric field autocorrelation is
presented. It is demonstrated for two well-understood samples, a colloidal
suspension of Brownian particles and a coarsening foam, where the dynamics can
be treated as stationary. However, the method is particularly appropriate for
samples in which the dynamics vary with time, either slowly or rapidly, limited
only by the exposure time fidelity of the camera. Potential applications range
from soft-glassy materials, to granular avalanches, to flowmetry of living
tissue.Comment: review - theory and experimen
Asymmetric Non-Abelian Orbifolds and Model Building
The rules for the free fermionic string model construction are extended to
include general non-abelian orbifold constructions that go beyond the real
fermionic approach. This generalization is also applied to the asymmetric
orbifold rules recently introduced. These non-abelian orbifold rules are quite
easy to use. Examples are given to illustrate their applications.Comment: 30 pages, Revtex 3.
Swimming in curved space or The Baron and the cat
We study the swimming of non-relativistic deformable bodies in (empty) static
curved spaces. We focus on the case where the ambient geometry allows for rigid
body motions. In this case the swimming equations turn out to be geometric. For
a small swimmer, the swimming distance in one stroke is determined by the
Riemann curvature times certain moments of the swimmer.Comment: 19 pages 6 figure
Note Value Recognition for Piano Transcription Using Markov Random Fields
This paper presents a statistical method for use in music transcription that can estimate score times of note onsets and offsets from polyphonic MIDI performance signals. Because performed note durations can deviate largely from score-indicated values, previous methods had the problem of not being able to accurately estimate offset score times (or note values) and thus could only output incomplete musical scores. Based on observations that the pitch context and onset score times are influential on the configuration of note values, we construct a context-tree model that provides prior distributions of note values using these features and combine it with a performance model in the framework of Markov random fields. Evaluation results show that our method reduces the average error rate by around 40 percent compared to existing/simple methods. We also confirmed that, in our model, the score model plays a more important role than the performance model, and it automatically captures the voice structure by unsupervised learning
Randomised controlled trial and economic evaluation of a chest pain observation unit compared with routine care
Objectives To measure the effectiveness and cost effectiveness
of providing care in a chest pain observation unit compared
with routine care for patients with acute, undifferentiated chest
pain.
Design Cluster randomised controlled trial, with 442 days
randomised to the chest pain observation unit or routine care,
and cost effectiveness analysis from a health service costing
perspective.
Setting The emergency department at the Northern General
Hospital, Sheffield, United Kingdom.
Participants 972 patients with acute, undifferentiated chest
pain (479 attending on days when care was delivered in the
chest pain observation unit, 493 on days of routine care)
followed up until six months after initial attendance.
Main outcome measures The proportion of participants
admitted to hospital, the proportion with acute coronary
syndrome sent home inappropriately, major adverse cardiac
events over six months, health utility, hospital reattendance and
readmission, and costs per patient to the health service.
Results Use of a chest pain observation unit reduced the
proportion of patients admitted from 54% to 37% (difference
17%, odds ratio 0.50, 95% confidence interval 0.39 to 0.65,
P < 0.001) and the proportion discharged with acute coronary
syndrome from 14% to 6% (8%, –7% to 23%, P = 0.264). Rates
of cardiac event were unchanged. Care in the chest pain
observation unit was associated with improved health utility
during follow up (0.0137 quality adjusted life years gained, 95%
confidence interval 0.0030 to 0.0254, P = 0.022) and a saving of
£78 per patient (–£56 to £210, P = 0.252).
Conclusions Care in a chest pain observation unit can improve
outcomes and may reduce costs to the health service. It seems
to be more effective and more cost effective than routine care
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