32,759 research outputs found
Exploring the consistency of the SF-6D
Objective: The six dimensional health state short form (SF-6D) was designed to be derived from the short-form 36 health survey (SF-36). The purpose of this research was to compare the SF-6D index values generated from the SF 36 (SF-6D(SF-36)) with those obtained from the SF-6D administered as an independent instrument (SF-6D(Ind)). The goal was to assess the consistency of respondents answers to these two methods of deriving the SF-6D. Methods: Data were obtained from a sample of the Portuguese population (n = 414). Agreement between the instruments was assessed on the basis of a descriptive system and their indexes. The analysis of the descriptive system was performed by using a global consistency index and an identically classified index. Agreement was also explored by using correlation coefficients. Parametric tests were used to identify differences between the indexes. Regression models were estimated to understand the relationship between them. Results: The SF-6D(Ind) generates higher values than does the SF-6D(SF-36), There were significant differences between the indexes across sociodemographic groups. There was a significant ceiling effect in the SF-6D(Ind) a but not in the SF-6D(SF-36). The correlation between the indexes was high but less than what was anticipated. The global consistency index identified the dimensions with larger differences. Considerable differences were found in two dimensions, possibly as a result of different item contexts. Further research is needed to fully understand the role of the different layouts and the length of the questionnaires in the respondents' answers. Conclusions: The results show that as the SF-6D was designed to derive utilities from the SF-36 it should be used in this way and not as an independent instrument.Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (FCT
A model for Hopfions on the space-time S^3 x R
We construct static and time dependent exact soliton solutions for a theory
of scalar fields taking values on a wide class of two dimensional target
spaces, and defined on the four dimensional space-time S^3 x R. The
construction is based on an ansatz built out of special coordinates on S^3. The
requirement for finite energy introduces boundary conditions that determine an
infinite discrete spectrum of frequencies for the oscillating solutions. For
the case where the target space is the sphere S^2, we obtain static soliton
solutions with non-trivial Hopf topological charges. In addition, such hopfions
can oscillate in time, preserving their topological Hopf charge, with any of
the frequencies belonging to that infinite discrete spectrum.Comment: Enlarged version with the time-dependent solutions explicitly given.
One reference and two eps figures added. 14 pages, late
Integrable theories and loop spaces: fundamentals, applications and new developments
We review our proposal to generalize the standard two-dimensional flatness
construction of Lax-Zakharov-Shabat to relativistic field theories in d+1
dimensions. The fundamentals from the theory of connections on loop spaces are
presented and clarified. These ideas are exposed using mathematical tools
familiar to physicists. We exhibit recent and new results that relate the
locality of the loop space curvature to the diffeomorphism invariance of the
loop space holonomy. These result are used to show that the holonomy is abelian
if the holonomy is diffeomorphism invariant.
These results justify in part and set the limitations of the local
implementations of the approach which has been worked out in the last decade.
We highlight very interesting applications like the construction and the
solution of an integrable four dimensional field theory with Hopf solitons, and
new integrability conditions which generalize BPS equations to systems such as
Skyrme theories. Applications of these ideas leading to new constructions are
implemented in theories that admit volume preserving diffeomorphisms of the
target space as symmetries. Applications to physically relevant systems like
Yang Mills theories are summarized. We also discuss other possibilities that
have not yet been explored.Comment: 64 pages, 8 figure
CMB Likelihood Functions for Beginners and Experts
Although the broad outlines of the appropriate pipeline for cosmological
likelihood analysis with CMB data has been known for several years, only
recently have we had to contend with the full, large-scale, computationally
challenging problem involving both highly-correlated noise and extremely large
datasets (). In this talk we concentrate on the beginning and end of
this process. First, we discuss estimating the noise covariance from the data
itself in a rigorous and unbiased way; this is essentially an iterated
minimum-variance mapmaking approach. We also discuss the unbiased determination
of cosmological parameters from estimates of the power spectrum or experimental
bandpowers.Comment: Long-delayed submission. In AIP Conference Proceedings "3K Cosmology"
held in Rome, Oct 5-10, 1998, edited by Luciano Maiani, Francesco Melchiorri
and Nicola Vittorio, 343-347, New York, American Institute of Physics 199
Molecular dynamics simulations of ballistic annihilation
Using event-driven molecular dynamics we study one- and two-dimensional
ballistic annihilation. We estimate exponents and that describe
the long-time decay of the number of particles () and of
their typical velocity (). To a good accuracy our results
confirm the scaling relation . In the two-dimensional case our
results are in a good agreement with those obtained from the Boltzmann kinetic
theory.Comment: 4 pages; some changes; Physical Review E (in press
Mean-field analysis of the majority-vote model broken-ergodicity steady state
We study analytically a variant of the one-dimensional majority-vote model in
which the individual retains its opinion in case there is a tie among the
neighbors' opinions. The individuals are fixed in the sites of a ring of size
and can interact with their nearest neighbors only. The interesting feature
of this model is that it exhibits an infinity of spatially heterogeneous
absorbing configurations for whose statistical properties we
probe analytically using a mean-field framework based on the decomposition of
the -site joint probability distribution into the -contiguous-site joint
distributions, the so-called -site approximation. To describe the
broken-ergodicity steady state of the model we solve analytically the
mean-field dynamic equations for arbitrary time in the cases n=3 and 4. The
asymptotic limit reveals the mapping between the statistical
properties of the random initial configurations and those of the final
absorbing configurations. For the pair approximation () we derive that
mapping using a trick that avoids solving the full dynamics. Most remarkably,
we find that the predictions of the 4-site approximation reduce to those of the
3-site in the case of expectations involving three contiguous sites. In
addition, those expectations fit the Monte Carlo data perfectly and so we
conjecture that they are in fact the exact expectations for the one-dimensional
majority-vote model
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