746 research outputs found
Advanced Medical Imaging in Privately Insured Patients Recent Trends in Utilization and Payments
Boston University Health Policy Institut
Atom chips on direct bonded copper substrates
We present the use of direct bonded copper (DBC) for the straightforward
fabrication of high power atom chips. Atom chips using DBC have several
benefits: excellent copper/substrate adhesion, high purity, thick (> 100
microns) copper layers, high substrate thermal conductivity, high aspect ratio
wires, the potential for rapid (< 8 hr) fabrication, and three dimensional atom
chip structures. Two mask options for DBC atom chip fabrication are presented,
as well as two methods for etching wire patterns into the copper layer. The
wire aspect ratio that optimizes the magnetic field gradient as a function of
power dissipation is determined to be 0.84:1 (height:width). The optimal wire
thickness as a function of magnetic trapping height is also determined. A test
chip, able to support 100 A of current for 2 s without failing, is used to
determine the thermal impedance of the DBC. An assembly using two DBC atom
chips to provide magnetic confinement is also shown.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure
Time-resolved photoionization spectroscopy of mixed Rydberg-valence states:indole case study
Time-resolved photoelectron imaging reveals subtle new mechanistic insight into the ultraviolet relaxation dynamics of gas-phase indole.</p
Uplifting and Inflation with D3 Branes
Back-reaction effects can modify the dynamics of mobile D3 branes moving
within type IIB vacua, in a way which has recently become calculable. We
identify some of the ways these effects can alter inflationary scenarios, with
the following three results: (1) By examining how the forces on the brane due
to moduli-stabilizing interactions modify the angular motion of D3 branes
moving in Klebanov-Strassler type throats, we show how previous slow-roll
analyses can remain unchanged for some brane trajectories, while being modified
for other trajectories. These forces cause the D3 brane to sink to the bottom
of the throat except in a narrow region close to the D7 brane, and do not
ameliorate the \eta-problem of slow roll inflation in these throats; (2) We
argue that a recently-proposed back-reaction on the dilaton field can be used
to provide an alternative way of uplifting these compactifications to Minkowski
or De Sitter vacua, without the need for a supersymmetry-breaking anti-D3
brane; and (3) by including also the D-term forces which arise when
supersymmetry-breaking fluxes are included on D7 branes we identify the 4D
supergravity interactions which capture the dynamics of D3 motion in D3/D7
inflationary scenarios. The form of these potentials sheds some light on recent
discussions of how symmetries constrain D term interactions in the low-energy
theory.Comment: JHEP.cls, 35 pages, 3 .eps figure
Inflating in a Better Racetrack
We present a new version of our racetrack inflation scenario which, unlike
our original proposal, is based on an explicit compactification of type IIB
string theory: the Calabi-Yau manifold P^4_[1,1,1,6,9]. The axion-dilaton and
all complex structure moduli are stabilized by fluxes. The remaining 2 Kahler
moduli are stabilized by a nonperturbative superpotential, which has been
explicitly computed. For this model we identify situations for which a linear
combination of the axionic parts of the two Kahler moduli acts as an inflaton.
As in our previous scenario, inflation begins at a saddle point of the scalar
potential and proceeds as an eternal topological inflation. For a certain range
of inflationary parameters, we obtain the COBE-normalized spectrum of metric
perturbations and an inflationary scale of M = 3 x 10^{14} GeV. We discuss
possible changes of parameters of our model and argue that anthropic
considerations favor those parameters that lead to a nearly flat spectrum of
inflationary perturbations, which in our case is characterized by the spectral
index n_s = 0.95.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figures. Brief discussion on the non-gaussianity of this
model, one more figure of the field trajectories added as well as other minor
changes to the tex
Contribution of patient, physician, and environmental factors to demographic and health variation in colonoscopy follow-up for abnormal colorectal cancer screening test results
BACKGROUND:
Patient, physician, and environmental factors were identified, and the authors examined the contribution of these factors to demographic and health variation in colonoscopy follow-up after a positive fecal occult blood test/fecal immunochemical test (FOBT/FIT) screening.
METHODS:
In total, 76,243 FOBT/FIT-positive patients were identified from 120 Veterans Health Administration (VHA) facilities between August 16, 2009 and March 20, 2011 and were followed for 6 months. Patient demographic (race/ethnicity, sex, age, marital status) and health characteristics (comorbidities), physician characteristics (training level, whether primary care provider) and behaviors (inappropriate FOBT/FIT screening), and environmental factors (geographic access, facility type) were identified from VHA administrative records. Patient behaviors (refusal, private sector colonoscopy use) were estimated with statistical text mining conducted on clinic notes, and follow-up predictors and adjusted rates were estimated using hierarchical logistic regression.
RESULTS:
Roughly 50% of individuals completed a colonoscopy at a VHA facility within 6 months. Age and comorbidity score were negatively associated with follow-up. Blacks were more likely to receive follow-up than whites. Environmental factors attenuated but did not fully account for these differences. Patient behaviors (refusal, private sector colonoscopy use) and physician behaviors (inappropriate screening) fully accounted for the small reverse race disparity and attenuated variation by age and comorbidity score. Patient behaviors (refusal and private sector colonoscopy use) contributed more to variation in follow-up rates than physician behaviors (inappropriate screening).
CONCLUSIONS:
In the VHA, blacks are more likely to receive colonoscopy follow-up for positive FOBT/FIT results than whites, and follow-up rates markedly decline with advancing age and comorbidity burden. Patient and physician behaviors explain race variation in follow-up rates and contribute to variation by age and comorbidity burden. Cancer 2017;123:3502-12. Published 2017. This article is a US Government work and is in the public domain in the USA
Variant N=(1,1) Supergravity and (Minkowski)_4 x S^2 Vacua
We construct the fermionic sector and supersymmetry transformation rules of a
variant N=(1,1) supergravity theory obtained by generalized Kaluza-Klein
reduction from seven dimensions. We show that this model admits both
(Minkowski)_4 x S^2 and (Minkowski)_3 x S^3 vacua. We perform a consistent
Kaluza-Klein reduction on S^2 and obtain D=4, N=2 supergravity coupled to a
vector multiplet, which can be consistently truncated to give rise to D=4, N=1
supergravity with a chiral multiplet.Comment: Latex, 17 pages. Version appearing in Classical and Quantum Gravit
Ghost Images in Helioseismic Holography? Toy Models in a Uniform Medium
Helioseismic holography is a powerful technique used to probe the solar
interior based on estimations of the 3D wavefield. Porter--Bojarski holography,
which is a well-established method used in acoustics to recover sources and
scatterers in 3D, is also an estimation of the wavefield, and hence it has the
potential to be applied to helioseismology. Here we present a proof of concept
study, where we compare helioseismic holography and Porter--Bojarski holography
under the assumption that the waves propagate in a homogeneous medium. We
consider the problem of locating a point source of wave excitation inside a
sphere. Under these assumptions, we find that the two imaging methods have the
same capability of locating the source, with the exception that helioseismic
holography suffers from "ghost images" (i.e., artificial peaks away from the
source location). We conclude that Porter--Bojarski holography may improve the
current method used in helioseismology.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figure
Overproduction of cosmic superstrings
We show that the naive application of the Kibble mechanism seriously
underestimates the initial density of cosmic superstrings that can be formed
during the annihilation of D-branes in the early universe, as in models of
brane-antibrane inflation. We study the formation of defects in effective field
theories of the string theory tachyon both analytically, by solving the
equation of motion of the tachyon field near the core of the defect, and
numerically, by evolving the tachyon field on a lattice. We find that defects
generically form with correlation lengths of order M_s^{-1} rather than H^{-1}.
Hence, defects localized in extra dimensions may be formed at the end of
inflation. This implies that brane-antibrane inflation models where inflation
is driven by branes which wrap the compact manifold may have problems with
overclosure by cosmological relics, such as domain walls and monopoles.Comment: 31 pages, 16 figures, JHEP style; References added; Improved
discussion of initial condition
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