432 research outputs found
The use of mobile phones for skin tumor screening
A lot of importance is attributed to mobile telemedicine these days, a topic that encompasses a wide and ever growing range of applications. Small, handheld devices such as camera mobile phones have come into every day use providing technically sophisticated tasks on a user-friendly level and can therefore be easily used in various fields of telemedicine. Dermatology is a perfect candidate for the use of telemedicine tools in general, as well as mobile devices in particular. The unique aspect of mobile teledermatology is that this system represents a filtering, or triage system, allowing a sensitive approach for the management of patients with emergent skin diseases. In order to investigate the feasibility of teleconsultation using a new generation of cellular phones, a clinical study to evaluate the accuracy of online diagnosis of skin tumours was conducted. Teledermoscopy represents a recent development of teledermatology that might add up additional information in the diagnosis of pigmented skin lesions. Teledermatology, mobile as well as stationary, can advance the reliability of diagnosis by expert consultations without expensive and time-consuming relocations. Consequently, the quality of patient's care can be raised and the costs of the health care system can be reduced
Momentum constraint relaxation
Full relativistic simulations in three dimensions invariably develop runaway
modes that grow exponentially and are accompanied by violations of the
Hamiltonian and momentum constraints. Recently, we introduced a numerical
method (Hamiltonian relaxation) that greatly reduces the Hamiltonian constraint
violation and helps improve the quality of the numerical model. We present here
a method that controls the violation of the momentum constraint. The method is
based on the addition of a longitudinal component to the traceless extrinsic
curvature generated by a vector potential w_i, as outlined by York. The
components of w_i are relaxed to solve approximately the momentum constraint
equations, pushing slowly the evolution toward the space of solutions of the
constraint equations. We test this method with simulations of binary neutron
stars in circular orbits and show that effectively controls the growth of the
aforementioned violations. We also show that a full numerical enforcement of
the constraints, as opposed to the gentle correction of the momentum relaxation
scheme, results in the development of instabilities that stop the runs shortly.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figures. New numerical tests and references added. More
detailed description of the algorithms are provided. Final published versio
Recoil velocities from equal-mass binary black-hole mergers: a systematic investigation of spin-orbit aligned configurations
Binary black-hole systems with spins aligned with the orbital angular
momentum are of special interest, as studies indicate that this configuration
is preferred in nature. If the spins of the two bodies differ, there can be a
prominent beaming of the gravitational radiation during the late plunge,
causing a recoil of the final merged black hole. We perform an accurate and
systematic study of recoil velocities from a sequence of equal-mass black holes
whose spins are aligned with the orbital angular momentum, and whose individual
spins range from a = +0.584 to -0.584. In this way we extend and refine the
results of a previous study and arrive at a consistent maximum recoil of 448 +-
5 km/s for anti-aligned models as well as to a phenomenological expression for
the recoil velocity as a function of spin ratio. This relation highlights a
nonlinear behavior, not predicted by the PN estimates, and can be readily
employed in astrophysical studies on the evolution of binary black holes in
massive galaxies. An essential result of our analysis is the identification of
different stages in the waveform, including a transient due to lack of an
initial linear momentum in the initial data. Furthermore we are able to
identify a pair of terms which are largely responsible for the kick, indicating
that an accurate computation can be obtained from modes up to l=3. Finally, we
provide accurate measures of the radiated energy and angular momentum, finding
these to increase linearly with the spin ratio, and derive simple expressions
for the final spin and the radiated angular momentum which can be easily
implemented in N-body simulations of compact stellar systems. Our code is
calibrated with strict convergence tests and we verify the correctness of our
measurements by using multiple independent methods whenever possible.Comment: 24 pages, 15 figures, 5 table
Gauge conditions for long-term numerical black hole evolutions without excision
Numerical relativity has faced the problem that standard 3+1 simulations of
black hole spacetimes without singularity excision and with singularity
avoiding lapse and vanishing shift fail after an evolution time of around
30-40M due to the so-called slice stretching. We discuss lapse and shift
conditions for the non-excision case that effectively cure slice stretching and
allow run times of 1000M and more.Comment: 19 pages, 14 figures, REVTeX, Added a missing Acknowledgmen
Binary black hole merger in the extreme mass ratio limit
We discuss the transition from quasi-circular inspiral to plunge of a system
of two nonrotating black holes of masses and in the extreme mass
ratio limit . In the spirit of the Effective One Body
(EOB) approach to the general relativistic dynamics of binary systems, the
dynamics of the two black hole system is represented in terms of an effective
particle of mass moving in a (quasi-)Schwarzschild
background of mass and submitted to an
radiation reaction force defined by Pad\'e resumming high-order Post-Newtonian
results. We then complete this approach by numerically computing, \`a la
Regge-Wheeler-Zerilli, the gravitational radiation emitted by such a particle.
Several tests of the numerical procedure are presented. We focus on
gravitational waveforms and the related energy and angular momentum losses. We
view this work as a contribution to the matching between analytical and
numerical methods within an EOB-type framework.Comment: 14 pages, six figures. Revised version. To appear in the CQG special
issue based around New Frontiers in Numerical Relativity conference, Golm
(Germany), July 17-21 200
Highly efficient polymer solar cells cast from non-halogenated xylene/anisaldehyde solution
Several high performance polymer:fullerene bulk-heterojunction photo-active layers, deposited from the non-halogenated solvents o-xylene or anisole in combination with the eco-compatible additive p-anisaldehyde, are investigated. The respective solar cells yield excellent power conversion efficiencies up to 9.5%, outperforming reference devices deposited from the commonly used halogenated chlorobenzene/1,8-diiodooctane solvent/additive combination. The impact of the processing solvent on the bulk-heterojunction properties is exemplified on solar cells comprising benzodithiophene-thienothiophene co-polymers and functionalized fullerenes (PTB7:PC71BM). The additive p-anisaldehyde improves film formation, enhances polymer order, reduces fullerene agglomeration and shows high volatility, thereby positively affecting layer deposition, improving charge carrier extraction and reducing drying time, the latter being crucial for future large area roll-to-roll device fabrication. © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2015
Are moving punctures equivalent to moving black holes?
When simulating the inspiral and coalescence of a binary black-hole system,
special care needs to be taken in handling the singularities. Two main
techniques are used in numerical-relativity simulations: A first and more
traditional one ``excises'' a spatial neighbourhood of the singularity from the
numerical grid on each spacelike hypersurface. A second and more recent one,
instead, begins with a ``puncture'' solution and then evolves the full
3-metric, including the singular point. In the continuum limit, excision is
justified by the light-cone structure of the Einstein equations and, in
practice, can give accurate numerical solutions when suitable discretizations
are used. However, because the field variables are non-differentiable at the
puncture, there is no proof that the moving-punctures technique is correct,
particularly in the discrete case. To investigate this question we use both
techniques to evolve a binary system of equal-mass non-spinning black holes. We
compare the evolution of two curvature 4-scalars with proper time along the
invariantly-defined worldline midway between the two black holes, using
Richardson extrapolation to reduce the influence of finite-difference
truncation errors. We find that the excision and moving-punctures evolutions
produce the same invariants along that worldline, and thus the same spacetimes
throughout that worldline's causal past. This provides convincing evidence that
moving-punctures are indeed equivalent to moving black holes.Comment: 4 pages, 3 eps color figures; v2 = major revisions to introduction &
conclusions based on referee comments, but no change in analysis or result
A Tapestry Of Educational Technology Women Leaders In Higher Education: A Qualitative Study
A qualitative study was used to understand the experiences of 12 women, leaders in Education Technology in higher education. Through interviews, women leaders described their environment as well as personal and behavioral aspects of their work. Findings revealed four threads of descriptive concepts including relationships, leadership, persistence, and advice. Relationships were from workplaces and professional networks. Leadership was defined by vision and teamwork. Persistence was addressed as either values-based or relationship-based. The fourth thread in the findings, advice, was divided into three sub-threads: education, family (both personal and work), and managing emotions. A qualitative approach was used to highlight interview responses to demonstrate the experiences of women leaders in Education Technology in Higher Education
Velocity-space sensitivity of the time-of-flight neutron spectrometer at JET
The velocity-space sensitivities of fast-ion diagnostics are often described by so-called weight functions. Recently, we formulated weight functions showing the velocity-space sensitivity of the often dominant beam-target part of neutron energy spectra. These weight functions for neutron emission spectrometry (NES) are independent of the particular NES diagnostic. Here we apply these NES weight functions to the time-of-flight spectrometer TOFOR at JET. By taking the instrumental response function of TOFOR into account, we calculate time-of-flight NES weight functions that enable us to directly determine the velocity-space sensitivity of a given part of a measured time-of-flight spectrum from TOFOR
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