Nurses' perceptions of aids and obstacles to the provision of optimal end of life care in ICU

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Annealing and thickness effect on the optical absorption of Ge

Thin films of Ge20Te80 and Cu6Ge14Te80 of different thicknesses are deposited on glass substrate by thermal evaporation under vacuum. The effect of incorporation of copper in Ge20Te80 film is studied by measuring the optical absorption. The mechanism of optical absorption follows the rule of direct transition. The films are annealed at different elevated temperatures from 370 to 520 K. The measurements were carried on as-deposited and annealed specimens. The optical energy gap (Eg) was found to decrease with increasing the annealing temperatures in the case of Ge20Te80 films. But in the case of Cu6Ge14Te80 films, Eg first increases with annealing temperature up to 410 K, then decreases sharply after further increasing the annealing temperature above the glass transition temperature. The decreases of Eg and the increase of the width of localized states Ee could be attributed to the amorphous - crystalline transformation. The values of optical energy gap Eg are also found to increase with thickness of both two-type films. The effect of films thickness on optical energy gap (Eg) of the films is interpreted in terms of the density of state model of Mott and Davis. The refractive index n, extinction coefficient k and dielectric constant $\varepsilon_{\rm i}$ and $\varepsilon_{\rm r}$ are also calculated for all samples

Comparison of different fourth order Hilbert fractal antennas for partial discharge measurement

Three Hilbert fractal antenna designs are proposed in this work to capture and classify common types of partial discharge (PD) in an oil insulated system. Each antenna design shows unique characteristics in terms of resonant frequencies, inception voltage, classification capabilities and noise performance. Three types of PD signals are artificially generated; namely, corona, surface and sharp PD. The captured signals from each antenna design are analyzed then fed to a trained artificial neural network for classification. A recognition rate of 97% is achieved when classifying the different types of PD using one of the proposed antennas. Moreover, the SNR of signals captured from each antenna design are analyzed to determine the best antenna for PD detection under intense noisy environments.This work was made possible by NPRP 5-044-2-016 grant from Qatar National Research Fund (a member of Qatar Foundation). The statements made herein are solely the responsibility of the authors.Scopu

Admission control and buffer management of wireless communication systems with mobile stations and integrated voice and data services

This study presents models for management of voice and data traffic and new algorithms, which use call admission control as well as buffer management to optimise the performance of single channel systems such as wireless local area networks in the presence of mobile stations. Unlike existing studies, the new approach queues incoming voice packets as well as data packets, and uses a new pre-emption algorithm in order to keep the response time of voice requests at certain levels while the blocking of data requests is minimised. A new performance metric is introduced to provide uncorrelated handling of integrated services. Queueing related issues such as overall queue capacity, individual capacities for voice and data requests, the probability of blocking, and effects of waiting time on overall quality of service are considered in detail. Analytical models are presented and the results obtained from the analytical models were validated using discrete event simulations