Good Night, Little Girl, Good Night

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/5636/thumbnail.jp

Boy O\u27 Dreams

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/5073/thumbnail.jp

Large-scale structural analysis: The structural analyst, the CSM Testbed and the NAS System

The Computational Structural Mechanics (CSM) activity is developing advanced structural analysis and computational methods that exploit high-performance computers. Methods are developed in the framework of the CSM testbed software system and applied to representative complex structural analysis problems from the aerospace industry. An overview of the CSM testbed methods development environment is presented and some numerical methods developed on a CRAY-2 are described. Selected application studies performed on the NAS CRAY-2 are also summarized

CSM Testbed Development and Large-Scale Structural Applications

A research activity called Computational Structural Mechanics (CSM) conducted at the NASA Langley Research Center is described. This activity is developing advanced structural analysis and computational methods that exploit high-performance computers. Methods are developed in the framework of the CSM Testbed software system and applied to representative complex structural analysis problems from the aerospace industry. An overview of the CSM Testbed methods development environment is presented and some new numerical methods developed on a CRAY-2 are described. Selected application studies performed on the NAS CRAY-2 are also summarized

Game Theoretical Interactions of Moving Agents

Game theory has been one of the most successful quantitative concepts to describe social interactions, their strategical aspects, and outcomes. Among the payoff matrix quantifying the result of a social interaction, the interaction conditions have been varied, such as the number of repeated interactions, the number of interaction partners, the possibility to punish defective behavior etc. While an extension to spatial interactions has been considered early on such as in the "game of life", recent studies have focussed on effects of the structure of social interaction networks. However, the possibility of individuals to move and, thereby, evade areas with a high level of defection, and to seek areas with a high level of cooperation, has not been fully explored so far. This contribution presents a model combining game theoretical interactions with success-driven motion in space, and studies the consequences that this may have for the degree of cooperation and the spatio-temporal dynamics in the population. It is demonstrated that the combination of game theoretical interactions with motion gives rise to many self-organized behavioral patterns on an aggregate level, which can explain a variety of empirically observed social behaviors

Standardization of Postoperative Care Guidelines for Pediatric Cleft Palate Patients

At a large, community-based pediatric hospital in Southern California, a quality improvement project commenced with a goal to improve patient outcomes by decreasing length of stay and pain levels, while increasing toleration of feeds. Implementing a standardized guideline would ensure safe practice across the continuum and allow providers to use a systematic tool for postoperative care, including nursing care interventions and medications. The Root-Cause-Analysis tool was used to assess the microsystem and determine the contributing factors to the identified problem. A SWOT analysis was then performed, followed by a plan to collect data from all pediatric cleft palate procedures performed at the hospital within the last year. The data collected included all necessary actions that took place upon patient’s exit from surgery. Patient exclusion criteria included PICU admits and those with cleft palate repair resulting from injury. The patients that fell within the exclusion criteria were excluded due to the increased risk and complications that these conditions bear. Considerations for care guideline use include: congenital abnormalities of the heart, brain, or gastrointestinal system as well as those with hematology or oncology conditions and developmental delays. Research was then performed on the patient information found from chart audits, in order to verify the best practices following postoperative cleft palate repair. Ultimately, research on the impact of care guidelines on postoperative cleft palate repair versus physician preference yielded a recommendation for the development of standardized care guidelines, however, the results showed that additional steps are needed to evaluate the results of this implementation on length of stay, pain levels, and time of first tolerated feed

Standardization of Postoperative Care Guidelines for Pediatric Cleft Palate Patients

At a large, community-based pediatric hospital in Southern California, a quality improvement project commenced with a goal to improve patient outcomes by decreasing length of stay and pain levels, while increasing toleration of feeds. Implementing a standardized guideline would ensure safe practice across the continuum and allow providers to use a systematic tool for postoperative care, including nursing care interventions and medications. The Root-Cause- Analysis tool was used to assess the microsystem and determine the contributing factors to the identified problem. A SWOT analysis was then performed, followed by a plan to collect data from all pediatric cleft palate procedures performed at the hospital within the last year. The data collected included all necessary actions that took place upon patient’s exit from surgery. Patient exclusion criteria included PICU admits and those with cleft palate repair resulting from injury. The patients that fell within the exclusion criteria were excluded due to the increased risk and complications that these conditions bear. Considerations for care guideline use include: congenital abnormalities of the heart, brain, or gastrointestinal system as well as those with hematology or oncology conditions and developmental delays. Research was then performed on the patient information found from chart audits, in order to verify the best practices following postoperative cleft palate repair. Ultimately, research on the impact of care guidelines on postoperative cleft palate repair versus physician preference yielded a recommendation for the development of standardized care guidelines, however, the results showed that additional steps are needed to evaluate the results of this implementation on length of stay, pain levels, and time of first tolerated feed

Charge density wave behavior and order-disorder in the antiferromagnetic metallic series Eu(Ga_1-xAl_x)_4

The solid solution Eu(Ga_1-xAl_x)_4 was grown in single crystal form to reveal a rich variety of crystallographic, magnetic, and electronic properties that differ from the isostructural end compounds EuGa_4 and EuAl_4, despite the similar covalent radii and electronic configurations of Ga and Al. Here we report the onset of magnetic spin reorientation and metamagnetic transitions for x = 0 - 1 evidenced by magnetization and temperature-dependent specific heat measurements. T_N changes non-monotonously with x, and it reaches a maximum around 20 K for x = 0.50, where the a lattice parameter also shows an extreme (minimum) value. Anomalies in the temperature-dependent resistivity consistent with charge density wave behavior exist for x = 0.50 and 1 only. Density functional theory calculations show increased polarization between the Ga-Al covalent bonds in the x = 0.50 structure compared to the end compounds, such that crystallographic order and chemical pressure are proposed as the causes of the charge density wave behavior