How was it for you? Experiences of participatory design in the UK health service

Improving co-design methods implies that we need to understand those methods, paying attention to not only the effect of method choices on design outcomes, but also how methods affect the people involved in co-design. In this article, we explore participants' experiences from a year-long participatory health service design project to develop ‘Better Outpatient Services for Older People’. The project followed a defined method called experience-based design (EBD), which represented the state of the art in participatory service design within the UK National Health Service. A sample of participants in the project took part in semi-structured interviews reflecting on their involvement in and their feelings about the project. Our findings suggest that the EBD method that we employed was successful in establishing positive working relationships among the different groups of stakeholders (staff, patients, carers, advocates and design researchers), although conflicts remained throughout the project. Participants' experiences highlighted issues of wider relevance in such participatory design: cost versus benefit, sense of project momentum, locus of control, and assumptions about how change takes place in a complex environment. We propose tactics for dealing with these issues that inform the future development of techniques in user-centred healthcare design

The Warped Nuclear Disk of Radio Galaxy 3C 449

Among radio galaxies containing nuclear dust disks, the bipolar jet axis is generally observed to be perpendicular to the disk major axis. The FR I radio source 3C 449 is an outlier to this statistical majority, as it possesses a nearly parallel jet/disk orientation on the sky. We examine the 600 pc dusty disk in this galaxy with images from the Hubble Space Telescope. We find that a colormap of the disk exhibits a twist in its isocolor contours (isochromes). We model the colormap by integrating galactic starlight through an absorptive disk, and find that the anomalous twist in the isochromes can be reproduced in the model with a vertically thin, warped disk. The model predicts that the disk is nearly perpendicular to the jet axis within 100 pc of the nucleus. We discuss physical mechanisms capable of causing such a warp. We show that precessional models or a torque on the disk arising from a possible binary black hole in the AGN causes precession on a timescale that is too long to account for the predicted disk morphology. However, we estimate that the pressure in the X-ray emitting interstellar medium is large enough to perturb the disk, and argue that jet-driven anisotropy in the excited ISM may be the cause of the warp. In this way, the warped disk in 3C 449 may be a new manifestation of feedback from an active galactic nucleus.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap

Knaster's problem for (Z2)k(Z_2)^k-symmetric subsets of the sphere S2k−1S^{2^k-1}

We prove a Knaster-type result for orbits of the group $(Z_2)^k$ in $S^{2^k-1}$, calculating the Euler class obstruction. Among the consequences are: a result about inscribing skew crosspolytopes in hypersurfaces in $\mathbb R^{2^k}$, and a result about equipartition of a measures in $\mathbb R^{2^k}$ by $(Z_2)^{k+1}$-symmetric convex fans

Complexity of Bradley-Manna-Sipma Lexicographic Ranking Functions

In this paper we turn the spotlight on a class of lexicographic ranking functions introduced by Bradley, Manna and Sipma in a seminal CAV 2005 paper, and establish for the first time the complexity of some problems involving the inference of such functions for linear-constraint loops (without precondition). We show that finding such a function, if one exists, can be done in polynomial time in a way which is sound and complete when the variables range over the rationals (or reals). We show that when variables range over the integers, the problem is harder -- deciding the existence of a ranking function is coNP-complete. Next, we study the problem of minimizing the number of components in the ranking function (a.k.a. the dimension). This number is interesting in contexts like computing iteration bounds and loop parallelization. Surprisingly, and unlike the situation for some other classes of lexicographic ranking functions, we find that even deciding whether a two-component ranking function exists is harder than the unrestricted problem: NP-complete over the rationals and $\Sigma^P_2$-complete over the integers.Comment: Technical report for a corresponding CAV'15 pape

Non-polynomial Worst-Case Analysis of Recursive Programs

We study the problem of developing efficient approaches for proving worst-case bounds of non-deterministic recursive programs. Ranking functions are sound and complete for proving termination and worst-case bounds of nonrecursive programs. First, we apply ranking functions to recursion, resulting in measure functions. We show that measure functions provide a sound and complete approach to prove worst-case bounds of non-deterministic recursive programs. Our second contribution is the synthesis of measure functions in nonpolynomial forms. We show that non-polynomial measure functions with logarithm and exponentiation can be synthesized through abstraction of logarithmic or exponentiation terms, Farkas' Lemma, and Handelman's Theorem using linear programming. While previous methods obtain worst-case polynomial bounds, our approach can synthesize bounds of the form $\mathcal{O}(n\log n)$ as well as $\mathcal{O}(n^r)$ where $r$ is not an integer. We present experimental results to demonstrate that our approach can obtain efficiently worst-case bounds of classical recursive algorithms such as (i) Merge-Sort, the divide-and-conquer algorithm for the Closest-Pair problem, where we obtain $\mathcal{O}(n \log n)$ worst-case bound, and (ii) Karatsuba's algorithm for polynomial multiplication and Strassen's algorithm for matrix multiplication, where we obtain $\mathcal{O}(n^r)$ bound such that $r$ is not an integer and close to the best-known bounds for the respective algorithms.Comment: 54 Pages, Full Version to CAV 201

Neutron Imaging Camera

The Neutron Imaging Camera (NIC) is based on the Three-dimensional Track Imager (3DTI) technology developed at GSFC for gamma-ray astrophysics applications. The 3-DTI, a large volume time-projection chamber, provides accurate, approximately 0.4 mm resolution, 3-D tracking of charged particles. The incident direction of fast neutrons, En > 0.5 MeV, are reconstructed from the momenta and energies of the proton and triton fragments resulting from (sup 3)He(n,p) (sup 3)H interactions in the 3-DTI volume. The performance of the NIC from laboratory and accelerator tests is presented

How to suppress undesired synchronization

It is delightful to observe the emergence of synchronization in the blinking of fireflies to attract partners and preys. Other charming examples of synchronization can also be found in a wide range of phenomena such as, e.g., neurons firing, lasers cascades, chemical reactions, and opinion formation. However, in many situations the formation of a coherent state is not pleasant and should be mitigated. For example, the onset of synchronization can be the root of epileptic seizures, traffic congestion in communication networks, and the collapse of constructions. Here we propose the use of contrarians to suppress undesired synchronization. We perform a comparative study of different strategies, either requiring local or total knowledge of the system, and show that the most efficient one solely requires local information. Our results also reveal that, even when the distribution of neighboring interactions is narrow, significant improvement in mitigation is observed when contrarians sit at the highly connected elements. The same qualitative results are obtained for artificially generated networks as well as two real ones, namely, the Routers of the Internet and a neuronal network

N-Methylimidazole Promotes The Reaction Of Homophthalic Anhydride With Imines

The addition of N-methylimidazole (NMI) to the reaction of homophthalic anhydride with imines such as pyridine-3-carboxaldehyde-N-trifluoroethylimine (9) reduces the amount of elimination byproduct and improves the yield of the formal cycloadduct, tetrahydroisoquinolonic carboxylate 10. Carboxanilides of such compounds are of interest as potential antimalarial agents. A mechanism that rationalizes the role of NMI is proposed, and a gram-scale procedure for the synthesis and resolution of 10 is also described

Conformal Yano-Killing tensor for the Kerr metric and conserved quantities

Properties of (skew-symmetric) conformal Yano--Killing tensors are reviewed. Explicit forms of three symmetric conformal Killing tensors in Kerr spacetime are obtained from the Yano--Killing tensor. The relation between spin-2 fields and solutions to the Maxwell equations is used in the construction of a new conserved quantity which is quadratic in terms of the Weyl tensor. The formula obtained is similar to the functional obtained from the Bel--Robinson tensor and is examined in Kerr spacetime. A new interpretation of the conserved quantity obtained is proposed.Comment: 29 page

Colloquium on Solid State Devices

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