3-D coupled electric mechanics for MEMS: Applications of COSOLVE-EM

Micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) are often designed on scales at which electrostatic forces are capable of moving or deforming the parts of the system. In this regime accurate prediction of device behavior may require 3D coupled simulations between the electrostatic and mechanical domains. We have recently developed CoSolve-EM, a coupled solver for 3D quasi-static electro-mechanics. In this paper, we demonstrate the application of CoSolve-EM to five classes of electro-mechanical problems that are often intractable to other techniques. These classes are: devices with electrostatic pull-in instabilities, devices in which precise deformations are required, devices driven by multiple conductors, capacitive sensors that make use of surface contact, and actuators that make use of surface contact

Prevalence of endemic pig-associated zoonoses in Southeast Asia: A review of findings from the Lao people's Democratic Republic

The increasing intensification of pork production in southeast Asia necessitates an urgent requirement to better understand the dual impact of pig-associated zoonotic disease on both pig production and human health in the region. Sharing porous borders with five countries and representing many regional ethnicities and agricultural practices, the Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) appears well placed to gauge the levels of pig-associated zoonoses circulating in the wider region. Despite this, little is known about the true impact of zoonotic pathogens such as leptospirosis, Trichinella, hepatitis E virus (HEV), Japanese encephalitis (JE), and Taenia solium on human health and livestock production in the country. A comprehensive review of the published prevalences of these five pig-associated zoonoses in Lao PDR has demonstrated that although suspicion remains high of their existence in pig reservoirs across the country, epidemiological data are scarce; only 31 epidemiological studies have been undertaken on these diseases in the past 25 years. A greater understanding of the zoonoses prevalence and subsequent risks associated with pork production in the southeast Asian region could help focus public health and food safety interventions at key points along the value chain, benefiting both livestock producers and the broader animal and human health systems in the region

Intimate partner violence in South Asian communities:Exploring the notion of 'shame' to promote understandings of migrant women's experiences

The notion of 'shame' is increasingly being recognized as a tool with some explanatory power to help promote understandings about a range of social problems. Through an exploration of migrant South Asian women's experiences of domestic violence and help-seeking practices, this article considers the relevance of the notion of shame as a unit of analysis to help contribute to the growing theoretical and empirical literature. This article sheds light on the meanings, events, processes and structures in the lives of migrant South Asian women respondents living in Hong Kong. Within the framework of the discussion on shame and intimate partner violence(IPV), the article also identifies the implications for social work practice

Reporting guidelines for surgical technique could be improved: a scoping review and a call for action.

To identify reporting guidelines related to surgical technique and propose recommendations for areas that require improvement. A protocol-guided scoping review was conducted. A literature search of MEDLINE, the EQUATOR Network Library, Google Scholar, and Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations was conducted to identify surgical technique reporting guidelines published up to December 31, 2021. We finally included 55 surgical technique reporting guidelines, vascular surgery (n = 18, 32.7%) was the most common among the clinical specialties covered. The included guidelines generally showed a low degree of international and multidisciplinary cooperation. Few guidelines provided a detailed development process (n = 14, 25.5%), conducted a systematic literature review (n = 13, 23.6%), used the Delphi method (n = 4, 7.3%), or described post-publication strategy (n = 6, 10.9%). The vast majority guidelines focused on the reporting of intraoperative period (n = 50, 90.9%). However, of the guidelines requiring detailed descriptions of surgical technique methodology (n = 43, 78.2%), most failed to provide guidance on what constitutes an adequate description. Our study demonstrates significant deficiencies in the development methodology and practicality of reporting guidelines for surgical technique. A standardized reporting guideline that is developed rigorously and focuses on details of surgical technique may serve as a necessary impetus for change

Search for a W' boson decaying to a bottom quark and a top quark in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

Results are presented from a search for a W' boson using a dataset corresponding to 5.0 inverse femtobarns of integrated luminosity collected during 2011 by the CMS experiment at the LHC in pp collisions at sqrt(s)=7 TeV. The W' boson is modeled as a heavy W boson, but different scenarios for the couplings to fermions are considered, involving both left-handed and right-handed chiral projections of the fermions, as well as an arbitrary mixture of the two. The search is performed in the decay channel W' to t b, leading to a final state signature with a single lepton (e, mu), missing transverse energy, and jets, at least one of which is tagged as a b-jet. A W' boson that couples to fermions with the same coupling constant as the W, but to the right-handed rather than left-handed chiral projections, is excluded for masses below 1.85 TeV at the 95% confidence level. For the first time using LHC data, constraints on the W' gauge coupling for a set of left- and right-handed coupling combinations have been placed. These results represent a significant improvement over previously published limits.Comment: Submitted to Physics Letters B. Replaced with version publishe

Search for displaced vertices arising from decays of new heavy particles in 7 TeV pp collisions at ATLAS

We present the results of a search for new, heavy particles that decay at a significant distance from their production point into a final state containing charged hadrons in association with a high-momentum muon. The search is conducted in a pp-collision data sample with a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and an integrated luminosity of 33 pb^-1 collected in 2010 by the ATLAS detector operating at the Large Hadron Collider. Production of such particles is expected in various scenarios of physics beyond the standard model. We observe no signal and place limits on the production cross-section of supersymmetric particles in an R-parity-violating scenario as a function of the neutralino lifetime. Limits are presented for different squark and neutralino masses, enabling extension of the limits to a variety of other models.Comment: 8 pages plus author list (20 pages total), 8 figures, 1 table, final version to appear in Physics Letters

Measurement of the polarisation of W bosons produced with large transverse momentum in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS experiment

This paper describes an analysis of the angular distribution of W->enu and W->munu decays, using data from pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in 2010, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of about 35 pb^-1. Using the decay lepton transverse momentum and the missing transverse energy, the W decay angular distribution projected onto the transverse plane is obtained and analysed in terms of helicity fractions f0, fL and fR over two ranges of W transverse momentum (ptw): 35 < ptw < 50 GeV and ptw > 50 GeV. Good agreement is found with theoretical predictions. For ptw > 50 GeV, the values of f0 and fL-fR, averaged over charge and lepton flavour, are measured to be : f0 = 0.127 +/- 0.030 +/- 0.108 and fL-fR = 0.252 +/- 0.017 +/- 0.030, where the first uncertainties are statistical, and the second include all systematic effects.Comment: 19 pages plus author list (34 pages total), 9 figures, 11 tables, revised author list, matches European Journal of Physics C versio