23,895 research outputs found
Neonatal weight loss in breast and formula-fed infants
We have observed an increase in the number of breast fed babies presenting with dehydration and/or failure to thrive because of lactation failure and non-recognition of feeding problems. Recent reports1,2 support this experience and recommend monitoring of the weight of infants through the neonatal period. However, these reports acknowledge uncertainty as to what actually constitutes normal neonatal weight loss. Maisels and colleagues published two studies which have been quoted as giving guidance on normal loss. Both studies were designed primarily to study factors that influence breast milk jaundice. The first3 reported a mean weight loss of about 6% in 100 unselected well babies during the first 3 days. The subsequent study4 reported a mean weight loss of 6.86% in 186 infants. The timescale over which babies were weighed was not clearly indicated, although it may have only been 2-3 days. The sample was neither population based nor randomly selected, being largely preselected because of the presence of more pronounced jaundice. The distribution of data points for early neonatal weight loss are likely to be skewed, yet both studies reported the results as mean (SD). Owing to the design and method of data presentation, these studies cannot reliably inform the debate as to what constitutes the norm. Marchini and colleagues published reports also designed primarily to study other issues. One5 indicated a mean early weight loss of 5.7%. Measurements were recorded over a three day period, and no indication is given of the skewness of the data. Another study6 reported a median weight loss of about 6% recorded over a four day period. At least one baby lost > 15% of his/her birth weight during this time, but there is no clear information as to the frequency with which more extreme degrees of weight loss are observed
Identifying and measuring patients' preferences and priorities for information in chronic kidney disease
Trapping of magnetic flux by the plunge region of a black hole accretion disk
The existence of the radius of marginal stability means that accretion flows
around black holes invariably undergo a transition from a MHD turbulent
disk-like flow to an inward plunging flow. We argue that the plunging inflow
can greatly enhance the trapping of large scale magnetic field on the black
hole, and therefore may increase the importance of the Blandford-Znajek (BZ)
effect relative to previous estimates that ignore the plunge region. We support
this hypothesis by constructing and analyzing a toy-model of the dragging and
trapping of a large scale field by a black hole disk, revealing a strong
dependence of this effect on the effective magnetic Prandtl number of the MHD
turbulent disk. Furthermore, we show that the enhancement of the BZ effect
depends on the geometric thickness of the accretion disk. This may be, at least
in part, the physical underpinnings of the empirical relation between the
inferred geometric thickness of a black hole disk and the presence of a radio
jet.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical
Journal. See
http://www.astro.umd.edu/~chris/publications/movies/flux_trapping.html for
animation
Establishing the potential for using routine data on Incapacity Benefit to assess the local impact of policy initiatives
<i>Background</i>: Incapacity Benefit (IB) is the key contributory benefit for people who are incapable of work because of illness or disability.
<i>Methods</i>: The aims were to establish the utility of routinely collected data for local evaluation and to provide a descriptive epidemiology of the IB population in Glasgow and Scotland for the period 2000–05 using data supplied by the Department for Work and Pensions.
<i>Results</i>: Glasgow's IB population is large in absolute and relative terms but is now falling, mainly due to a decrease in on flow. Claimants, tend to be older, have a poor work history and suffer from mental health problems. The rate of decline has been greater in Glasgow than Scotland, although the rate of on flow is still higher.
<i>Conclusions</i>: Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) data can be used locally to provide important insights into the dynamics of the IB population. However, to be truly useful, more work needs to be undertaken to combine the DWP data with other information
Online Forum Thread Retrieval using Pseudo Cluster Selection and Voting Techniques
Online forums facilitate knowledge seeking and sharing on the Web. However,
the shared knowledge is not fully utilized due to information overload. Thread
retrieval is one method to overcome information overload. In this paper, we
propose a model that combines two existing approaches: the Pseudo Cluster
Selection and the Voting Techniques. In both, a retrieval system first scores a
list of messages and then ranks threads by aggregating their scored messages.
They differ on what and how to aggregate. The pseudo cluster selection focuses
on input, while voting techniques focus on the aggregation method. Our combined
models focus on the input and the aggregation methods. The result shows that
some combined models are statistically superior to baseline methods.Comment: The original publication is available at
http://www.springerlink.com/. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with
arXiv:1212.533
Gilbert Damping in Conducting Ferromagnets II: Model Tests of the Torque-Correlation Formula
We report on a study of Gilbert damping due to particle-hole pair excitations
in conducting ferromagnets. We focus on a toy two-band model and on a four-band
spherical model which provides an approximate description of ferromagnetic
(Ga,Mn)As. These models are sufficiently simple that disorder-ladder-sum vertex
corrections to the long-wavelength spin-spin response function can be summed to
all orders. An important objective of this study is to assess the reliability
of practical approximate expressions which can be combined with electronic
structure calculations to estimate Gilbert damping in more complex systems.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures. Submitted to Phys. Rev.
Direct comparison of boron, phosphorus, and aluminum gettering of iron in crystalline silicon
This paper presents a direct quantitative comparison of the effectiveness of borondiffusion, phosphorus diffusion, and aluminumalloying in removing interstitial iron in crystalline silicon in the context of silicon solar cells. Phosphorus diffusion gettering was effective in removing more than 90% of the interstitial iron across a range of diffusion temperatures, sheet resistances, and iron doses. Even relatively light phosphorus diffusions (145 Ω/□) were found to give very effective gettering, especially when combined with extended low temperature annealing.Aluminumalloying was extremely effective and removed more than 99% of the implanted iron for a range of alloying temperatures and aluminum film thicknesses. In contrast, our experimental results showed that borondiffusion gettering is very sensitive to the deposition conditions and can change from less than 5% of the Fe being gettered to more than 99.9% gettered by changing only the gas flow ratios and the post-oxidation step
Renormalised four-point coupling constant in the three-dimensional O(N) model with N=0
We simulate self-avoiding walks on a cubic lattice and determine the second
virial coefficient for walks of different lengths. This allows us to determine
the critical value of the renormalized four-point coupling constant in the
three-dimensional N-vector universality class for N=0. We obtain g* =
1.4005(5), where g is normalized so that the three-dimensional
field-theoretical beta-function behaves as \beta(g) = - g + g^2 for small g. As
a byproduct, we also obtain precise estimates of the interpenetration ratio
Psi*, Psi* = 0.24685(11), and of the exponent \nu, \nu = 0.5876(2).Comment: 16 page
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