Would lower federal deficits increase U.S. farm exports?

Agriculture ; Exports

The new bank capital adequacy standards

Bank capital ; Banks and banking

Wave Equation for Sound in Fluids with Vorticity

We use Clebsch potentials and an action principle to derive a closed system of gauge invariant equations for sound superposed on a general background flow. Our system reduces to the Unruh (1981) and Pierce (1990) wave equations when the flow is irrotational, or slowly varying. We illustrate our formalism by applying it to waves propagating in a uniformly rotating fluid where the sound modes hybridize with inertial waves.Comment: RevTeX, 27page

Collaborative working within UK NHS secondary care and across sectors for COPD and the impact of peer review : qualitative findings from the UK National COPD Resources and Outcomes Project

Introduction: We investigated the effects on collaborative work within the UK National Health Service (NHS) of an intervention for service quality improvement: informal, structured, reciprocated, multidisciplinary peer review with feedback and action plans. The setting was care for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Theory and methods: We analysed semi-structured interviews with 43 hospital respiratory consultants, nurses and general managers at 24 intervention and 11 control sites, as part of a UK randomised controlled study, the National COPD Resources and Outcomes Project (NCROP), using Scott’s conceptual framework for action (inter-organisational, intra-organisational, inter-professional and inter-individual). Three areas of care targeted by NCROP involved collaboration across primary and secondary care. Results: Hospital respiratory department collaborations with commissioners and hospital managers varied. Analysis suggested that this is related to team responses to barriers. Clinicians in unsuccessful collaborations told ‘atrocity stories’ of organisational, structural and professional barriers to service improvement. The others removed barriers by working with government and commissioner agendas to ensure continued involvement in patients’ care. Multidisciplinary peer review facilitated collaboration between participants, enabling them to meet, reconcile differences and exchange ideas across boundaries. Conclusions: The data come from the first randomised controlled trial of organisational peer review, adding to research into UK health service collaborative work, which has had a more restricted focus on inter-professional relations. NCROP peer review may only modestly improve collaboration but these data suggest it might be more effective than top-down exhortations to change when collaboration both across and within organisations is required

Experiments in the coordination of large groups of robots

The use of large groups of robots, generally called swarms, has gained increased attention in recent years. In this paper, we present and experimentally validate an algorithm that allows a swarm of robots to navigate in an environment containing unknown obstacles. A coordination mechanism based on dynamic role assignment and local communication is used to help robots that may get stuck in regions of local minima. Experiments were performed using both a realistic simulator and a group of real robots and the obtained results showed the feasibility of the proposed approach

Cosmological Radiation Hydrodynamics with ENZO

We describe an extension of the cosmological hydrodynamics code ENZO to include the self-consistent transport of ionizing radiation modeled in the flux-limited diffusion approximation. A novel feature of our algorithm is a coupled implicit solution of radiation transport, ionization kinetics, and gas photoheating, making the timestepping for this portion of the calculation resolution independent. The implicit system is coupled to the explicit cosmological hydrodynamics through operator splitting and solved with scalable multigrid methods. We summarize the numerical method, present a verification test on cosmological Stromgren spheres, and then apply it to the problem of cosmological hydrogen reionization.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Recent Directions in Astrophysical Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiation Hydrodynamics, Ed. I. Hubeny, American Institute of Physics (2009

Bohr-Sommerfeld quantization of spin Hamiltonians

The Bohr-Sommerfeld rule for a spin system is obtained, including the first quantum corrections. The rule applies to both integer and half-integer spin, and respects Kramers degeneracy for time-reversal invariant systems. It is tested for various models, in particular the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model, and found to agree very well with exact results.Comment: Revtex 4, no figures, 1 tabl

Incidence de certains facteurs sur l’issue d’une psychothérapie dans un essai clinique randomisé auprès de patients avec trouble de personnalité limite (TPL)

Au Personality Disorders Institute, nous avons étudié l’efficacité de la psychothérapie focalisée sur le transfert (PFT), une psychothérapie psychodynamique manualisée qui se déroule deux fois par semaine à l’intention de personnes souffrant de troubles de personnalité limite (TPL). Nous avons comparé la PFT à la thérapie dialectique comportementale (TDC) et à la psychothérapie psychodynamique de soutien (PPS) dans un essai clinique randomisé auprès de 90 patients ayant un TPL. Dans un premier temps, nous présentons certains fondements à l’origine du développement des TPL, suivis d’une discussion des bases théoriques de la PFT. Nous abordons ensuite les caractéristiques des patients qui influent sur les résultats du traitement. Nous présentons des données à la fois cliniques et empiriques dans une discussion de cas individuels représentatifs de l’échantillon de patients borderline traités en PFT.At the Personality Disorders Institute we have been investigating the efficacy of Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP), a twice weekly manualized psychodynamic psychotherapy for borderline personality disorder compared to Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and Supportive Psychotherapy (SP) in a randomized clinical trial of 90 borderline patients. We will first present some developmental foundations of BPD, followed by a discussion of the theoretical foundations of TFP. We will then discuss patient characteristics that have an impact on outcome. We will present both clinical and empirical data in a discussion of individual cases that were representative of a sample of borderline patients treated in Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP).En el Personality Disorders Institute estudiamos la eficacia de la psicoterapia focalizada en la transferencia (PFT), una psicoterapia psicodinámica hecha manual, que se lleva a cabo dos veces por semana para las personas que sufren de trastornos de personalidad límite (TPL). Comparamos la PFT con la terapia dialéctica comportamental (TDC) y la psicoterapia psicodinámica de apoyo (PPS) en una prueba clínica aleatoria en 90 pacientes con TPL. En un primer momento, presentamos ciertos fundamentos al origen del desarrollo de las TPL, seguidos de una discusión de las bases teóricas de la PFT. Enseguida abordamos las características de los pacientes que influyen en los resultados del tratamiento. Presentamos los datos, a la vez clínicos y empíricos, en una discusión de casos individuales representativos de la muestra de pacientes límite tratados por medio de PFT.No Personality Disorders Institute, estudamos a eficácia da psicoterapia focalizada na transferência (PFT), uma psicoterapia psicodinâmica manualizada que é realizada duas vezes por semana com pessoas que sofrem de transtornos de personalidade borderline (TPB). Comparamos a PFT com a terapia comportamental dialética (TCD) e com a psicoterapia psicodinâmica de apoio (PPA) em um teste clínico randomizado junto a 90 pacientes que sofrem de um TPB. Primeiramente, apresentamos alguns fundamentos originários do desenvolvimento dos TPB, seguidos de uma discussão sobre as bases teóricas da PFT. Abordamos, em seguida, as características dos pacientes que influenciam os resultados do tratamento. Apresentamos dados, ao mesmo tempo clínicos e empíricos em uma discussão de casos individuais representativos da amostragem de pacientes borderline tratados em PFT

Age-group differences in speech identification despite matched audiometrically normal hearing: contributions from auditory temporal processing and cognition

Hearing loss with increasing age adversely affects the ability to understand speech, an effect that results partly from reduced audibility. The aims of this study were to establish whether aging reduces speech intelligibility for listeners with normal audiograms, and, if so, to assess the relative contributions of auditory temporal and cognitive processing. Twenty-one older normal-hearing (ONH; 60-79 years) participants with bilateral audiometric thresholds = 20 dB HL at 0.125-6 kHz were matched to nine young (YNH; 18-27 years) participants in terms of mean audiograms, years of education, and performance IQ. Measures included: (1) identification of consonants in quiet and in noise that was unmodulated or modulated at 5 or 80 Hz; (2) identification of sentences in quiet and in co-located or spatially separated two-talker babble; (3) detection of modulation of the temporal envelope (TE) at frequencies 5-180 Hz; (4) monaural and binaural sensitivity to temporal fine structure (TFS); (5) various cognitive tests. Speech identification was worse for ONH than YNH participants in all types of background. This deficit was not reflected in self-ratings of hearing ability. Modulation masking release (the improvement in speech identification obtained by amplitude modulating a noise background) and spatial masking release (the benefit obtained from spatially separating masker and target speech) were not affected by age. Sensitivity to TE and TFS was lower for ONH than YNH participants, and was correlated positively with speech-in-noise (SiN) identification. Many cognitive abilities were lower for ONH than YNH participants, and generally were correlated positively with SiN identification scores. The best predictors of the intelligibility of SiN were composite measures of cognition and TFS sensitivity. These results suggest that declines in speech perception in older persons are partly caused by cognitive and perceptual changes separate from age-related changes in audiometric sensitivity