The International Location of Pork Production

Efficient hog production technologies which have cost advantages for international competition also have environmental disadvantages which may effect the location of facilities using this technology. This paper presents an econometric analysis of the impact of country characteristics on the growth of pork production in major producing countries over the period 1985-2003.Livestock Production/Industries,

Assessing the Effectiveness of the New Senior ED Program at Summa Akron City Hospital

Objectives: To compare the outcomes of patients seen during a pilot Senior Emergency Department (ED) program to a historical cohort of geriatric patients receiving usual ED care. Methods: We performed a retrospective cohort analysis of quality assurance data obtained to evaluate the implementation of a pilot Senior ED program at a 78,000 visit hospital ED. The historical cohort covered 1/23/2012 to 12/31/2012. The pilot Senior ED program was implemented from 1/1/2013 to 12/31/2013. Patients 65 years and older arriving between 8:30 am and 8:30 pm were triaged to a 15 bed Senior ED. Interventions included assessment by a nurse transitional care coordinator, care protocols, education, pharmacy review and call backs on discharged patients. Data are presented as means, proportions, differences, and analyzed for statistical significance using the t-test where p\u3c0.05 is considered significant. Results: There were 12,503 eligible visits in 2012 and 13,627 eligible visits in 2013. The mean age was 78 years in both cohorts; 58% were female in 2012 and 53% in 2013. During the pilot Senior ED program length of stay was increased (2012: 287 minutes vs. 2013: 298 minutes), admissions were significantly decreased (54% vs. 49%, p=0.000), and observation patients increased (2.4% vs. 4.9%, p=0.000). During the pilot Senior ED program, discharges to home increased by 2.7% (p=0.000). Conclusions: The pilot Senior ED program reduced inpatient admissions, increased observations, and increased discharges to home significantly showing the program’s effectiveness in managing acutely ill senior patients

Modeling of near-continuum laminar boundary layer shocks using DSMC

The hypersonic flow of nitrogen gas over a double wedge was simulated by the DSMC method using two-dimensional and three-dimensional geometries. The numerical results were compared with experiments conducted in the HET facility for a high-enthalpy pure nitrogen flow corresponding to a free stream Mach number of approximately seven. Since the conditions for the double wedge case are near-continuum and surface heat flux and size of the separation are sensitive to DSMC numerical parameters, special attention was paid to the convergence of these parameters for both geometries. At the beginning of the simulation, the separation zone was predicted to be small and the heat flux values for the 2-D model were comparable to the experimental data. However, for increasing time, it was observed that the heat flux values and shock profile strongly deviated from the experiment. Investigation of a three-dimensional model showed that the flow is truly three-dimensional and the side edge pressure relief provides good agreement between simulations and the experiment

Factors influencing flow steadiness in laminar boundary layer shock interactions

The Direct Simulation Monte Carlo method has been used to model laminar shock wave boundary interactions of hypersonic flow over a 30/55-deg double-wedge and “tick-shaped” model configurations studied in the Hypervelocity Expansion Tube facility and T-ADFA free-piston shock tunnel, respectively. The impact of thermochemical effects on these interactions by changing the chemical composition from nitrogen to air as well as argon for a stagnation enthalpy of 8.0 MJ/kg flow are investigated using the 2-D wedge model. The simulations are found to reproduce many of the classic features related to Edney Type V strong shock interactions that include the attached, oblique shock formed over the first wedge, the detached bow shock from the second wedge, the separation zone, and the separation and reattachment shocks that cause complex features such as the triple point for both cases. However, results of a reacting air flow case indicate that the size of the separation length, and the movement of the triple point toward to the leading edge is much less than the nitrogen case

Degradation in AlGaN/GaN heterojunction field effect transistors upon electrical stress: Effects of field and temperature

AlGaN/GaN heterojunction field effect transistors (HFETs) with 2 μm gate length were subjected to on-state-high-field (high drain bias and drain current) and reverse-gate-bias (no drain currentand reverse gate bias) stress at room and elevated temperatures for up to 10 h. The resulting degradation of the HFETs was studied by direct current and uniquely phase noise before and after stress. A series of drain and gate voltages was applied during the on-state-high-field and reverse-gate-bias stress conditions, respectively, to examine the effect of electric field on degradation of the HFET devices passivated with SiNx. The degradation behaviors under these two types of stress conditions were analyzed and compared. In order to isolate the effect of self-heating/temperature on device degradation, stress experiments were conducted at base plate temperatures up to 150 °C. It was found that the electric field induced by reverse-gate-bias mainly generated trap(s), most likely in the AlGaN barrier, which initially were manifested as generation-recombination (G-R) peak(s) in the phase noise spectra near 103 Hz. Meanwhileelectric field induced by on-state-high-field stress mainly generated hot-electron and hot-phonon effects, which result in a nearly frequency independent increase of noise spectra. The external base plate temperatures promote trap generation as evidenced by increased G-R peak intensities

Probability densities for the sums of iterates of the sine-circle map in the vicinity of the quasi-periodic edge of chaos

We investigate the probability density of rescaled sum of iterates of sine-circle map within quasi-periodic route to chaos. When the dynamical system is strongly mixing (i.e., ergodic), standard Central Limit Theorem (CLT) is expected to be valid, but at the edge of chaos where iterates have strong correlations, the standard CLT is not necessarily to be valid anymore. We discuss here the main characteristics of the central limit behavior of deterministic dynamical systems which exhibit quasi-periodic route to chaos. At the golden-mean onset of chaos for the sine-circle map, we numerically verify that the probability density appears to converge to a q-Gaussian with q<1 as the golden mean value is approached.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, 1 tabl