21,144 research outputs found
The Utility of Outpatient Commitment: I. A Need for Treatment and a Least Restrictive Alternative to Psychiatric Hospitalization.
ObjectivesThis study examined whether psychiatric patients assigned to community treatment orders (CTOs), outpatient commitment in Victoria, Australia, have a greater need for treatment to protect their health and safety than patients not assigned to CTOs. It also considered whether such treatment is provided in a least restrictive manner-that is, in a way that contributes to reduced use of psychiatric hospitalization.MethodsThe sample included 11,424 patients first placed on a CTO between 2000 and 2010, and 16,161 patients not placed on a CTO. Need for treatment was independently assessed with the Health of the Nation Outcome Scales (HoNOS) at hospital admission and at discharge. Ordinary least-squares and Poisson regressions were used to assess savings in hospital days attributable to CTO placement.ResultsHoNOS ratings indicated that at admission and discharge, the CTO cohort's need for treatment exceeded that of the non-CTO cohort, particularly in areas indicating potential dangerous behavior. When analyses adjusted for the propensity to be selected into the CTO cohort and other factors, the mean duration of an inpatient episode was 4.6 days shorter for the CTO cohort than for the non-CTO cohort, and a reduction of 10.4 days per inpatient episode was attributable to each CTO placement.ConclusionsCTO placement may have helped patients with a greater need for treatment to experience shorter hospital stays. Whether the CTO directly enabled the fulfillment of unsought but required treatment needs that protected patient health and safety is a question that needs to be addressed in future research
Splitting Sensitivity of the Ground and 7.6 eV Isomeric States of 229Th
The lowest-known excited state in nuclei is the 7.6 eV isomer of 229Th. This
energy is within the range of laser-based investigations that could allow
accurate measurements of possible temporal variation of this energy splitting.
This in turn could probe temporal variation of the fine-structure constant or
other parameters in the nuclear Hamiltonian. We investigate the sensitivity of
this transition energy to these quantities. We find that the two states are
predicted to have identical deformations and thus the same Coulomb energies
within the accuracy of the model (viz., within roughly 30 keV). We therefore
find no enhanced sensitivity to variation of the fine-structure constant. In
the case of the strong interaction the energy splitting is found to have a
complicated dependence on several parameters of the interaction, which makes an
accurate prediction of sensitivity to temporal changes of fundamental constants
problematical. Neither the strong- nor Coulomb-interaction contributions to the
energy splitting of this doublet can be constrained within an accuracy better
than a few tens of keV, so that only upper limits can be set on the possible
sensitivity to temporal variations of the fundamental constants.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure
Fault Testing for Reversible Circuits
Applications of reversible circuits can be found in the fields of low-power
computation, cryptography, communications, digital signal processing, and the
emerging field of quantum computation. Furthermore, prototype circuits for
low-power applications are already being fabricated in CMOS. Regardless of the
eventual technology adopted, testing is sure to be an important component in
any robust implementation.
We consider the test set generation problem. Reversibility affects the
testing problem in fundamental ways, making it significantly simpler than for
the irreversible case. For example, we show that any test set that detects all
single stuck-at faults in a reversible circuit also detects all multiple
stuck-at faults. We present efficient test set constructions for the standard
stuck-at fault model as well as the usually intractable cell-fault model. We
also give a practical test set generation algorithm, based on an integer linear
programming formulation, that yields test sets approximately half the size of
those produced by conventional ATPG.Comment: 30 pages, 8 figures. to appear in IEEE Trans. on CA
A Search for Intrinsic Polarization in O Stars with Variable Winds
New observations of 9 of the brightest northern O stars have been made with
the Breger polarimeter on the 0.9~m telescope at McDonald Observatory and the
AnyPol polarimeter on the 0.4~m telescope at Limber Observatory, using the
Johnson-Cousins UBVRI broadband filter system. Comparison with earlier
measurements shows no clearly defined long-term polarization variability. For
all 9 stars the wavelength dependence of the degree of polarization in the
optical range can be fit by a normal interstellar polarization law. The
polarization position angles are practically constant with wavelength and are
consistent with those of neighboring stars. Thus the simplest conclusion is
that the polarization of all the program stars is primarily interstellar.
The O stars chosen for this study are generally known from ultraviolet and
optical spectroscopy to have substantial mass loss rates and variable winds, as
well as occasional circumstellar emission. Their lack of intrinsic polarization
in comparison with the similar Be stars may be explained by the dominance of
radiation as a wind driving force due to higher luminosity, which results in
lower density and less rotational flattening in the electron scattering inner
envelopes where the polarization is produced. However, time series of
polarization measurements taken simultaneously with H-alpha and UV spectroscopy
during several coordinated multiwavelength campaigns suggest two cases of
possible small-amplitude, periodic short-term polarization variability, and
therefore intrinsic polarization, which may be correlated with the more widely
recognized spectroscopic variations.Comment: LaTeX2e, 22 pages including 11 tables; 12 separate gif figures; uses
aastex.cls preprint package; accepted by The Astronomical Journa
Gate-Level Simulation of Quantum Circuits
While thousands of experimental physicists and chemists are currently trying
to build scalable quantum computers, it appears that simulation of quantum
computation will be at least as critical as circuit simulation in classical
VLSI design. However, since the work of Richard Feynman in the early 1980s
little progress was made in practical quantum simulation. Most researchers
focused on polynomial-time simulation of restricted types of quantum circuits
that fall short of the full power of quantum computation. Simulating quantum
computing devices and useful quantum algorithms on classical hardware now
requires excessive computational resources, making many important simulation
tasks infeasible. In this work we propose a new technique for gate-level
simulation of quantum circuits which greatly reduces the difficulty and cost of
such simulations. The proposed technique is implemented in a simulation tool
called the Quantum Information Decision Diagram (QuIDD) and evaluated by
simulating Grover's quantum search algorithm. The back-end of our package,
QuIDD Pro, is based on Binary Decision Diagrams, well-known for their ability
to efficiently represent many seemingly intractable combinatorial structures.
This reliance on a well-established area of research allows us to take
advantage of existing software for BDD manipulation and achieve unparalleled
empirical results for quantum simulation
Optimal cooling strategies for magnetically trapped atomic Fermi-Bose mixtures
We discuss cooling efficiency for different-species Fermi-Bose mixtures in
magnetic traps. A better heat capacity matching between the two atomic species
is achieved by a proper choice of the Bose cooler and the magnetically
trappable hyperfine states of the mixture. When a partial spatial overlap
between the two species is also taken into account, the deepest Fermi
degeneracy is obtained for an optimal value of the trapping frequency ratio.
This can be achieved by assisting the magnetic trap with a deconfining light
beam, as shown in the case of fermionic 6Li mixed with 23Na, 87Rb, and 133Cs,
with optimal conditions found for the not yet explored 6Li-87Rb mixture.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Physical Review
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