Small polygons and toric codes

We describe two different approaches to making systematic classifications of plane lattice polygons, and recover the toric codes they generate, over small fields, where these match or exceed the best known minimum distance. This includes a [36,19,12]-code over F_7 whose minimum distance 12 exceeds that of all previously known codes.Comment: 9 pages, 4 tables, 3 figure

Values, ethics and the law--Issues for practice and education

ABSTRACT For many years, thoughtful medical practitioners have concerned themselves with the place of health services and medicine in their social setting. They have recognized that there are genuine moral dilemmas which are peculiarly modern or postmodern. ' As the potential to treat has gathered momentum, so has the cost of health services. These two forces have now collided. The resultant damage is far from finished, and the full extent remains to be assessed. It is clear that medicine will never be as it was, and that it will need to be re-thought in radical ways. To do that, we will need to know what societies expect from their health services, what goods they value as primary, what priorities they may assign to competing goods, like health and education, and what level of taxation they will endure to secure these goods. However, who will think about these matters, and who will create the opportunities for intelligent people to cross disciplinary barriers to talk about them? This paper represents one small attempt to enter this domain. The Centre for Values, Ethics and the Law in Medicine The Centre was opened within the University of Sydney's Department of Surgery in May 1995. In November 1996, the University of Sydney awarded the Certificate of Official Status as a University Centre during the opening ceremony of a seminar on equity and rationing in health. The Centre consists of a core group of people drawn from a number of professions and academic backgrounds. Clinical medicine, community medicine, health economics, sociology, education, philosophy, sociology, ethics, law and anthropology are all represented. Some members come from the campus of the University of Sydney, others from outside. All have particular interests in the value-laden fields of medical ethics, bioethics and health law

The precarious future of the discourse of person-centered medicine

Discourses are more than just patterns of words. For discourse communities, they express ideologies and provide meanings that can be translated into action. They are vehicles for reform when they thrive. The discourse of person-centered medicine has had a vigorous start, with identifiable leaders, a vocabulary which has situated meanings, institutions such as meetings, letterheads and a Society and a group of adherents that constitute a discourse community. For a discourse to thrive, its founding problematic has to be perceived as 'real' by its target audience — in this case, presumably, healthcare workers. Real in this sense can be defined as something perceived to have an influence on foundational values, for better or for worse. It is not yet clear that the discourse of person-centered medicine has convinced its target audience of the 'crisis of knowledge, care, compassion and costs' that it invokes to justify its proposed paradigm shift. In order to make it thrive, those who drive the discourse will need to 'realise' both the crisis it addresses and the outcomes it may achieve. Keywords: Contemporary medicine, discourse, discourse community, entropy, evidence-based medicine, founding problematic, patientcentered care, person-centered medicine, types of discoursen/

Dynamic FOV visible light communications receiver for dense optical networks

This study explores how the field-of-view (FOV) of a visible light communications (VLCs) receiver can be manipulated to realise the best signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) while supporting device mobility and optimal access point (AP) selection. The authors propose a dynamic FOV receiver that changes its aperture according to receiver velocity, location, and device orientation. The D-FOV technique is evaluated through modelling, analysis, and experimentation in an indoor environment comprised of 15 VLC APs. The proposed approach is also realised as an algorithm that is studied through analysis and simulation. The results of the study indicate the efficacy of the approach including a 3X increase in predicted SNR over static FOV approaches based on measured received signal strength in the testbed. Additionally, the collected data reveal that D-FOV increases effectiveness in the presence of noise. Finally, the study describes the tradeoffs among the number of VLC sources, FOV, user device velocity, and SNR as a performance metric.Accepted manuscrip

Reforming the U. S. health care system: where there's a will, there could be a way

The essay in the 2005 annual report summarizes the themes and consensus-based prescriptions for action that emerged from the Boston Fed's 50th economic conference, Wanting It All: The Challenge of Reforming the U.S. Health Care System, held in June 2005.Health care reform ; Medical care, Cost of