48,867 research outputs found
A meta-narrative review of electronic patient records
This session comprises four papers that consider how systematic review methods may be
developed in order to make the best use of complex evidence in education and health.
The methods and approaches reflected upon in these papers are not drawn from a single
research tradition, but share a common goal of broadening the methodological scope of
systematic reviews and better understanding the utilisation of knowledge produced in this
way. The first paper (Henry Potts) reports an ongoing review using a meta-narrative
approach to make sense of the diverse sources of knowledge regarding electronic patient
records. The review method has stressed the importance of understanding knowledge
from within the research tradition in which it was produced; it is argued that this has
important implications for the way that evidence is utilised in the policy making process.
The second paper (Geoff Wong) reflects upon the experience of using an explicit realist
approach in the synthesis of the evidence in Internet based learning. This realist synthesis
offers a method of making sense of the highly heterogeneous and context dependent
evidence which exists in this field thus enabling greater insights into what makes such
educational interventions ‘work’. The third paper (Rod Sheaff) reports a review of the
predominantly qualitative research literature on organisational structures and their
impacts upon policy outcomes in health systems. A scoping study found 14389 relevant
papers of which 1568 were selected for review. These studies were very variable in the
amount and quality of the qualitative data, hence 'evidence', which they reported. The
paper describes an attempt to adapt realist methods so as to synthesise such bodies of
research in ways which take account of this variation in the strength of qualitative
evidence. The fourth paper (Mark Pearson) draws upon the work of Donald Campbell
and colleagues in order to gain a fuller understanding of how systematic reviews are
utilised in the policy making process. It is argued that interpretive approaches to
understanding policy making (such as rhetorical analysis) need to be tempered with a
more nuanced understanding of research validity. The case is made that interpretive
approaches not only can, but should, be melded with research validity to increase
understanding of the policy making process
X-ray Observations of Parsec-Scale Tails behind Two Middle-Aged Pulsars
Chandra and XMM-Newton resolved extremely long tails behind two middle-aged
pulsars, J1509-5850 and J1740+1000. The tail of PSR J1509-5850 is discernible
up to 5.6' from the pulsar (6.5 pc at a distance of 4 kpc), with a flux of
2*10^{-13} erg s^{-1} cm^{-2} in 0.5-8 keV. The tail spectrum fits an absorbed
power-law (PL) model with the photon index of 2.3\pm0.2, corresponding to the
0.5-8 keV luminosity of 1*10^{33} ergs s^{-1}, for n_H= 2.1*10^{22} cm^{-2}.
The tail of PSR J1740+1000 is firmly detected up to 5' (2 pc at a 1.4 kpc
distance), with a flux of 6*10^{-14} ergs cm^{-2} s^{-1} in 0.4-10 keV. The PL
fit yields photon index of 1.4-1.5 and n_H=1*10^{21} cm^{-2}. The large extent
of the tails suggests that the bulk flow in the tails starts as mildly
relativistic downstream of the termination shock, and then gradually
decelerates. Within the observed extent of the J1509-5850 tail, the average
flow speed exceeds 5,000 km s^{-1}, and the equipartition magnetic field is a
few times 10^{-5} G. For the J1740+1000 tail, the equipartition field is a
factor of a few lower. The harder spectrum of the J1740+1000 tail implies
either less efficient cooling or a harder spectrum of injected electrons. For
the high-latitude PSR J1740+1000, the orientation of the tail on the sky shows
that the pulsar is moving toward the Galactic plane, which means that it was
born from a halo-star progenitor. The comparison between the J1509 and J1740
tails and the X-ray tails of other pulsars shows that the X-ray radiation
efficiency correlates poorly with the pulsar spin-down luminosity or age. The
X-ray efficiencies of the ram-pressure confined pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe) are
systematically higher than those of PWNe around slowly moving pulsars with
similar spin-down parameters.Comment: 14 pages, 16 figures and 5 table
A Study of Non-Neutral Networks with Usage-based Prices
Hahn and Wallsten wrote that network neutrality "usually means that broadband
service providers charge consumers only once for Internet access, do not favor
one content provider over another, and do not charge content providers for
sending information over broadband lines to end users." In this paper we study
the implications of non-neutral behaviors under a simple model of linear
demand-response to usage-based prices. We take into account advertising
revenues and consider both cooperative and non-cooperative scenarios. In
particular, we model the impact of side-payments between service and content
providers. We also consider the effect of service discrimination by access
providers, as well as an extension of our model to non-monopolistic content
providers
The determination and distribution of iodate in South Atlantic waters
A novel method has been developed for the precise determination of iodate in sea water and the technique has been applied to samples from two stations in the Argentine Basin and one station in the Angola Basin. The method involves acidification of the sea water sample in the presence of excess iodjde in order to form the tri-iodide ion and measurement of the absorbance of this ion in a spectrophotometric titration cell...
Perspective on Quark Mass and Mixing Relations
Recent data indicate that , while
seems to be GeV. The relations and suggest that %a plausible clean separation of
the %origin of the quark mixing matrix: the down type sector is responsible for
and , while comes from the up
type sector. Five to six parameters might suffice to account for the ten quark
mass and mixing parameters, resulting in specific power series representations
for the mass matrices. In this picture, seems to be the more sensible
expansion parameter, while is
tied empirically to .Comment: 10 pages, ReVtex, no figure
Perturbative Wilson loops from unquenched Monte Carlo simulations at weak couplings
Perturbative expansions of several small Wilson loops are computed through
next-to-next-to-leading order in unquenched lattice QCD, from Monte Carlo
simulations at weak couplings. This approach provides a much simpler
alternative to conventional diagrammatic perturbation theory, and is applied
here for the first time to full QCD. Two different sets of lattice actions are
considered: one set uses the unimproved plaquette gluon action together with
the unimproved staggered-quark action; the other set uses the one-loop-improved
Symanzik gauge-field action together with the so-called ``asqtad''
improved-staggered quark action. Simulations are also done with different
numbers of dynamical fermions. An extensive study of the systematic
uncertainties is presented, which demonstrates that the small third-order
perturbative component of the observables can be reliably extracted from
simulation data. We also investigate the use of the rational hybrid Monte Carlo
algorithm for unquenched simulations with unimproved-staggered fermions. Our
results are in excellent agreement with diagrammatic perturbation theory, and
provide an important cross-check of the perturbation theory input to a recent
determination of the strong coupling by the HPQCD
collaboration.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figure
Potential Models and Lattice Gauge Current-Current Correlators
We compare current-current correlators in lattice gauge calculations with
correlators in different potential models, for a pseudoscalar charmonium in the
quark-gluon plasma. An important ingredient in the evaluation of the
current-current correlator in the potential model is the basic principle that
out of the set of continuum states, only resonance states and Gamow states with
lifetimes of sufficient magnitudes can propagate as composite objects and can
contribute to the current-current correlator. When the contributions from the
bound states and continuum states are properly treated, the potential model
current-current correlators obtained with the potential proposed in Ref. [11]
are consistent with the lattice gauge correlators. The proposed potential model
thus gains support to be a useful tool to complement lattice gauge calculations
for the study of states at high temperatures.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures, to be published in Physcial Review
Asymptotic corrections to the eigenvalue density of the GUE and LUE
We obtain correction terms to the large N asymptotic expansions of the
eigenvalue density for the Gaussian unitary and Laguerre unitary ensembles of
random N by N matrices, both in the bulk of the spectrum and near the spectral
edge. This is achieved by using the well known orthogonal polynomial expression
for the kernel to construct a double contour integral representation for the
density, to which we apply the saddle point method. The main correction to the
bulk density is oscillatory in N and depends on the distribution function of
the limiting density, while the corrections to the Airy kernel at the soft edge
are again expressed in terms of the Airy function and its first derivative. We
demonstrate numerically that these expansions are very accurate. A matching is
exhibited between the asymptotic expansion of the bulk density, expanded about
the edge, and the asymptotic expansion of the edge density, expanded into the
bulk.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure
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