1,242 research outputs found
Disability in young people and adults one year after head injury: prospective cohort study
OBJECTIVE: To determine the frequency of disability in young people and adults admitted to hospital with a head injury and to estimate the annual incidence in the community.
DESIGN: Prospective, hospital based cohort study, with one year follow up of sample stratified by coma score.
SETTING: Five acute hospitals in Glasgow. SUBJECTS: 2962 patients (aged 14 years or more) with head injury; 549 (71%) of the 769 patients selected for follow up participated.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Glasgow outcome scale and problem orientated questionnaire.
RESULTS: Survival with moderate or severe disability was common after mild head injury (47%, 95% confidence interval 42% to 52%) and similar to that after moderate (45%, 35% to 56%) or severe injury (48%, 36% to 60%). By extrapolation from the population identified (90% of whom had mild injuries), it was estimated that annually in Glasgow (population 909 498) 1400 young people and adults are still disabled one year after head injury.
CONCLUSION: The incidence of disability in young people and adults admitted with a head injury is higher than expected. This reflects the high rate of sequelae previously unrecognised in the large number of patients admitted to hospital with an apparently mild head injury
Pulse detonation propulsion: challenges, current status, and future perspective
The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pecs.2004.05.001The paper is focused on recent accomplishments in basic and applied research on pulse detonation engines (PDE) and various
PDE design concepts. Current understanding of gas and sprary detonations, thermodynamic grounds for detonation-based
propulsion, principles of practical implementation of the detonation-based thermodynamic cycle, and various operational
constraints of PDEs are discussed
Approaches to Bayesian occupancy modelling for habitat quality assessment
Bayesian âoccupancyâ models (BOM) are a powerful tool that have recently been adapted to
deal with âopportunisticâ species data (i.e. biological records).
Individual species trends from any models can be aggregated to produce habitat indicators;
here this is demonstrated for BOMs and Frescalo (Hill, 2012) using two examples.
Example one demonstrates the production of habitat-specific trends using NPMS indicator
species and subsets of 1 x 1 km grid cells predicted to contain the habitat of interest from Land
Cover Mapping. Decisions around whether to include subsets of habitat-containing cells, or all
cells within a political boundary, will be important for trend interpretation: habitat subsets of
cells may lead to biases depending on true habitat change over time.
Example two compares BOMs to the Frescalo method, as well as investigating the impacts of
decisions for indicator production (e.g. weighting or not weighting by a species national
frequency) on the trends produced. In this example weighted trends for 18 Sphagnum species typical
of blanket bog were much more similar than unweighted trends.
In the case of contradictory habitat (or species) trends it will not normally be possible to
know which model is correct (at least in the absence of an unbiased dataset to which to refer).
Given that BOMs, as currently used, may contain significant bias, a prudent approach would be to
compare the outputs of several methods before making decisions
Solar sail capture trajectories at Mercury
Mercury is an ideal environment for future planetary exploration by solar sail since it has proved difficult to reach with conventional propulsion and hence remains largely unexplored. In addition, its proximity to the Sun provides a solar sail acceleration of order ten times the sail characteristic acceleration at 1 AU. Conventional capture techniques are shown to be unsuitable for solar sails and a new method is presented. It is shown that capture is bound by upper and lower limits on the orbital elements of the approach orbit and that failure to be within limits results in a catastrophic collision with the planet. These limits are presented for a range of capture inclinations and sail characteristic accelerations. It is found that sail hyperbolic excess velocity is a critical parameter during capture at Mercury, with only a narrow allowed band in order to avoid collision with the planet. The new capture methodis demonstrated for a Mercury sample return mission
Towards Activity Context using Software Sensors
Service-Oriented Computing delivers the promise of configuring and
reconfiguring software systems to address user's needs in a dynamic way.
Context-aware computing promises to capture the user's needs and hence the
requirements they have on systems. The marriage of both can deliver ad-hoc
software solutions relevant to the user in the most current fashion. However,
here it is a key to gather information on the users' activity (that is what
they are doing). Traditionally any context sensing was conducted with hardware
sensors. However, software can also play the same role and in some situations
will be more useful to sense the activity of the user. Furthermore they can
make use of the fact that Service-oriented systems exchange information through
standard protocols. In this paper we discuss our proposed approach to sense the
activity of the user making use of software
Supersymmetry with a Chargino NLSP and Gravitino LSP
We demonstrate that the lightest chargino can be lighter than the lightest
neutralino in supersymmetric models with Dirac gaugino masses as well as within
a curious parameter region of the MSSM. Given also a light gravitino, such as
from low scale supersymmetry breaking, this mass hierarchy leads to an unusual
signal where every superpartner cascades down to a chargino that decays into an
on-shell W and a gravitino, possibly with a macroscopic chargino track. We
clearly identify the region of parameters where this signal can occur. We find
it is generic in the context of the R-symmetric supersymmetric standard model,
whereas it essentially only occurs in the MSSM when sign(M1) is not equal to
sign(M2) = sign(\mu) and tan(beta) is small. We briefly comment on the search
strategies for this signal at the LHC.Comment: 27 pages and 16 figure
Asymptotic Density of Eigenvalue Clusters for the Perturbed Landau Hamiltonian
We consider the Landau Hamiltonian (i.e. the 2D Schroedinger operator with
constant magnetic field) perturbed by an electric potential V which decays
sufficiently fast at infinity. The spectrum of the perturbed Hamiltonian
consists of clusters of eigenvalues which accumulate to the Landau levels.
Applying a suitable version of the anti-Wick quantization, we investigate the
asymptotic distribution of the eigenvalues within a given cluster as the number
of the cluster tends to infinity. We obtain an explicit description of the
asymptotic density of the eigenvalues in terms of the Radon transform of the
perturbation potential V.Comment: 30 pages. The explicit dependence on B and V in Theorem 1.6 (i) -
(ii) indicated. Typos corrected. To appear in Communications in Mathematical
Physic
Anisotropic optical response of the diamond (111)-2x1 surface
The optical properties of the 21 reconstruction of the diamond (111)
surface are investigated. The electronic structure and optical properties of
the surface are studied using a microscopic tight-binding approach. We
calculate the dielectric response describing the surface region and investigate
the origin of the electronic transitions involving surface and bulk states. A
large anisotropy in the surface dielectric response appears as a consequence of
the asymmetric reconstruction on the surface plane, which gives rise to the
zigzag Pandey chains. The results are presented in terms of the reflectance
anisotropy and electron energy loss spectra. While our results are in good
agreement with available experimental data, additional experiments are proposed
in order to unambiguously determine the surface electronic structure of this
interesting surface.Comment: REVTEX manuscript with 6 postscript figures, all included in uu file.
Also available at http://www.phy.ohiou.edu/~ulloa/ulloa.html Submitted to
Phys. Rev.
From thermal rectifiers to thermoelectric devices
We discuss thermal rectification and thermoelectric energy conversion from
the perspective of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics and dynamical systems
theory. After preliminary considerations on the dynamical foundations of the
phenomenological Fourier law in classical and quantum mechanics, we illustrate
ways to control the phononic heat flow and design thermal diodes. Finally, we
consider the coupled transport of heat and charge and discuss several general
mechanisms for optimizing the figure of merit of thermoelectric efficiency.Comment: 42 pages, 22 figures, review paper, to appear in the Springer Lecture
Notes in Physics volume "Thermal transport in low dimensions: from
statistical physics to nanoscale heat transfer" (S. Lepri ed.
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