Supporting quality indicators in the UK national health service

Quality indicators for performance management of the UK National Health Service have been introduced for general practitioners (GPs) in order to monitor if they are meeting their performance targets. Such requirements impose significant load to GPs’ everyday operations and any type of software solution that stores relevant information and addresses performance indicators can help GPs to justify their fundholding. In this paper we report on a way of incorporating the semantics of a set of quality indicators in a database schema that can fit any GPs' practice. We concentrate on indicators that posed problems when creating the database and we provide a discussion that justifies our design decisions

Scalar field theory on kappa-Minkowski spacetime and translation and Lorentz invariance

We investigate the properties of kappa-Minkowski spacetime by using representations of the corresponding deformed algebra in terms of undeformed Heisenberg-Weyl algebra. The deformed algebra consists of kappa-Poincare algebra extended with the generators of the deformed Weyl algebra. The part of deformed algebra, generated by rotation, boost and momentum generators, is described by the Hopf algebra structure. The approach used in our considerations is completely Lorentz covariant. We further use an adventages of this approach to consistently construct a star product which has a property that under integration sign it can be replaced by a standard pointwise multiplication, a property that was since known to hold for Moyal, but not also for kappa-Minkowski spacetime. This star product also has generalized trace and cyclic properties and the construction alone is accomplished by considering a classical Dirac operator representation of deformed algebra and by requiring it to be hermitian. We find that the obtained star product is not translationally invariant, leading to a conclusion that the classical Dirac operator representation is the one where translation invariance cannot simultaneously be implemented along with hermiticity. However, due to the integral property satisfied by the star product, noncommutative free scalar field theory does not have a problem with translation symmetry breaking and can be shown to reduce to an ordinary free scalar field theory without nonlocal features and tachionic modes and basicaly of the very same form. The issue of Lorentz invariance of the theory is also discussed.Comment: 22 pages, no figures, revtex4, in new version comments regarding translation invariance and few references are added, accepted for publication in Int. J. Mod. Phys.

A ring as a model of the main belt in planetary ephemerides

We assess the ability of a solid ring to model a global perturbation induced by several thousands of main-belt asteroids. The ring is first studied in an analytical framework that provides an estimate of all the ring's parameters excepting mass. In the second part, numerically estimated perturbations on the Earth-Mars, Earth-Venus, and Earth-Mercury distances induced by various subsets of the main-belt population are compared with perturbations induced by a ring. To account for large uncertainties in the asteroid masses, we obtain results from Monte Carlo experiments based on asteroid masses randomly generated according to available data and the statistical asteroid model. The radius of the ring is analytically estimated at 2.8 AU. A systematic comparison of the ring with subsets of the main belt shows that, after removing the 300 most perturbing asteroids, the total main-belt perturbation of the Earth-Mars distance reaches on average 246 m on the 1969-2010 time interval. A ring with appropriate mass is able to reduce this effect to 38 m. We show that, by removing from the main belt ~240 asteroids that are not necessarily the most perturbing ones, the corresponding total perturbation reaches on average 472 m, but the ring is able to reduce it down to a few meters, thus accounting for more than 99% of the total effect.Comment: 18 pages, accepted in A&

Kappa-deformed Snyder spacetime

We present Lie-algebraic deformations of Minkowski space with undeformed Poincare algebra. These deformations interpolate between Snyder and kappa-Minkowski space. We find realizations of noncommutative coordinates in terms of commutative coordinates and derivatives. Deformed Leibniz rule, the coproduct structure and star product are found. Special cases, particularly Snyder and kappa-Minkowski in Maggiore-type realizations are discussed. Our construction leads to a new class of deformed special relativity theories.Comment: 12 pages, no figures, LaTeX2e class file, accepted for publication in Modern Physics Letters

Tidal Synchronization and Differential Rotation of Kepler Eclipsing Binaries

Few observational constraints exist for the tidal synchronization rate of late-type stars, despite its fundamental role in binary evolution. We visually inspected the light curves of 2278 eclipsing binaries (EBs) from the Kepler Eclipsing Binary Catalog to identify those with starspot modulations, as well as other types of out-of-eclipse variability. We report rotation periods for 816 EBs with starspot modulations, and find that 79% of EBs with orbital periods less than ten days are synchronized. However, a population of short period EBs exists with rotation periods typically 13% slower than synchronous, which we attribute to the differential rotation of high latitude starspots. At 10 days, there is a transition from predominantly circular, synchronized EBs to predominantly eccentric, pseudosynchronized EBs. This transition period is in good agreement with the predicted and observed circularization period for Milky Way field binaries. At orbital periods greater than about 30 days, the amount of tidal synchronization decreases. We also report 12 previously unidentified candidate $\delta$ Scuti and $\gamma$ Doradus pulsators, as well as a candidate RS CVn system with an evolved primary that exhibits starspot occultations. For short period contact binaries, we observe a period-color relation, and compare it to previous studies. As a whole, these results represent the largest homogeneous study of tidal synchronization of late-type stars.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal. EB rotation periods and classifications available at https://github.com/jlurie/decatur/blob/master/decatur/data/final_catalog.cs

Radio Astronomy in LSST Era

A community meeting on the topic of "Radio Astronomy in the LSST Era" was hosted by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, VA (2013 May 6--8). The focus of the workshop was on time domain radio astronomy and sky surveys. For the time domain, the extent to which radio and visible wavelength observations are required to understand several classes of transients was stressed, but there are also classes of radio transients for which no visible wavelength counterpart is yet known, providing an opportunity for discovery. From the LSST perspective, the LSST is expected to generate as many as 1 million alerts nightly, which will require even more selective specification and identification of the classes and characteristics of transients that can warrant follow up, at radio or any wavelength. The LSST will also conduct a deep survey of the sky, producing a catalog expected to contain over 38 billion objects in it. Deep radio wavelength sky surveys will also be conducted on a comparable time scale, and radio and visible wavelength observations are part of the multi-wavelength approach needed to classify and understand these objects. Radio wavelengths are valuable because they are unaffected by dust obscuration and, for galaxies, contain contributions both from star formation and from active galactic nuclei. The workshop touched on several other topics, on which there was consensus including the placement of other LSST "Deep Drilling Fields," inter-operability of software tools, and the challenge of filtering and exploiting the LSST data stream. There were also topics for which there was insufficient time for full discussion or for which no consensus was reached, which included the procedures for following up on LSST observations and the nature for future support of researchers desiring to use LSST data products.Comment: Conference summary, 29 pages, 1 figure; to be published in the Publ. Astron. Soc. Pacific; full science program and presentations available at http://science.nrao.edu/science/event/RALSST201

Self-energy of Lambda in finite nuclei

The self--energy of the strange baryon $\Lambda$ in $^{17}$O is calculated using a microscopic many--body approach which accounts for correlations beyond the mean--field or Hartree--Fock approximation. The non-locality and energy-dependence of the $\Lambda$ self--energy is discussed and the effects on the bound and scattering states are investigated. For the nucleon--hyperon interaction, we use the potential models of the J\"{u}lich and Nijmegen groups.Comment: 17 pages, Revtex Latex style, 7 figs include