161 research outputs found
Exploring the relationship between a fluid container\u27s geometry and when it will balance on edge
At some point while consuming a beverage, many people will idly try to balance its container on edge. The act itself is physically straightforward, merely involving the system\u27s center of mass and achieving a static equilibrium between the opposing torques caused by gravity and the normal force between the container and the surface on which it balances. Further analysis of the act, however, illuminates the richness of the exercise.
These nuances are apparent even in simplified two-dimensional models because of the depth of the relationship between a container\u27s geometry and achieving balance. The purpose of such analysis is threefold: first, when considering a rectangular container, to determine the relationship between the angle at which it balances and the amount of fluid in the container; second, to consider a massless analogue to a standard twelve-ounce aluminum can which balances at a fixed angle and observe the interplay between the various parameters of that container\u27s geometry and balance; and finally, to revisit the aluminum can model, this time considering its mass relative to the fluid\u27s, and recover the familiar behavior observed when balancing real-world beverages in aluminum cans
Prolonged length of stay in illeal conduit compared to neobladder diversion in radical cystectomy patients for bladder cancer
Background:
Radical cystectomy and urinary diversion has become the standard treatment for invasive and complicated malignancies of the bladder, urethra, and ureters. [1] Robotic-assisted radical cystectomy (RARC), introduced in the last decade, has been associated with favorable perioperative outcomes when compared to open radical cystectomy. Yet little is known about how different urinary diversion types compare in regards to length of hospital stay, readmission rates, and perioperative course. This data analysis seeks to identify the statistically significant differences in postoperative course of ileal conduit versus neobladder among patients with staged bladder cancer.
Methods:
The American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP) is a health insurance portability and accountability act (HIPAA) compliant data file containing cases from 706 participating hospitals. The data includes 275 HIPAA compliant variables on 902,968 cases in 2020 and 273 variables on 1,076,441 cases in 2019. ACS NSQIP includes all major cases as determined by Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) code. The goal of the program is to determine the quality of care after surgical procedures. The ACS NSQIP is deidentified and the study was exempted from the requirement for institutional review board approval. The primary outcomes were length of stay and readmission after radical cystectomy with either ileal conduit or neobladder. Wilcoxon signed-rank test was utilized for continuous variables as the data was not normally distributed. For categorical variables, Fisher’s exact test was performed and Chi-squared analysis where more than two categories were evaluated. Statistical significance was set at P-value \u3c 0.05.
Results:
Data from a total of 6,103 patients in the NSQIP database were screened and 1,478 analyzed for all outcomes measures. There was no statistical significance in terms of mean length of stay between the ileal conduit and neobladder groups (7.85 vs. 7.44 days, p = 0.185) (Table 1). Additionally, there was not a statistically significant difference in mean days to discharge. Secondary endpoints that resulted in statistically significant differences include rates of readmission (21.5% vs 30%, p \u3c 0.05), colonic anastomotic leak (6.3% vs 1.8%, p \u3c 0.05), urinary anastomotic leak (3.1% vs 6.7%, p \u3c 0.05) , and lymphocele/lymphatic leak (3.8% vs 8.5%, p \u3c 0.05)( Table 1.) Multivariable analysis revealed additional differences between these groups. Prior pelvic radiotherapy ( p = 0.003) and a characterized bleeding disorder (p = 0.001) were associated with length of stay in the ileal conduit group (Table 2). Chemotherapy within 90 days (p = 0.004) and diabetes mellitus (p = 0.029) were predictors of length of stay in the neobladder group (Table 2).
Conclusion:
The conduit diversion cohort did not show a difference in length of stay compared to the neobladder cohort. However, secondary endpoints including rates of readmission, colonic anastomotic leak, urinary anastomotic leak, and lymphocele/lymphatic leak showed significant differences. Risk factors that influenced length of stay were prior pelvic radiation, a characterized bleeding disorder, chemotherapy within 90 days, and diabetes mellitus
Making sense of cancer news coverage trends: a comparison of three comprehensive content analyses
Cancer stories (N = 5,327) in the top 50 U.S. newspapers were analyzed by a team of four coders and the results were compared with the earliest analyses of this type (from 1977 and 1980). Using cancer incidence rates as a comparison, three cancers were found to be consistently underreported (male Hodgkin’s, and thyroid) and four cancers were found to be consistently overreported (breast, blood/Leukemia, pancreatic, and bone/muscle). In addition, cancer news coverage consistently has focused on treatment rather than on other aspects of the cancer continuum (e.g., prevention), portrayed lifestyle choices (e.g., diet, smoking) as the most common cancer risk factor, and rarely reported incidence or mortality data. Finally, the data were compatible with the idea that personalization bias (e.g., celebrity profiles, event coverage) may explain some news coverage distortions
Initial results from a field campaign of wake steering applied at a commercial wind farm – Part 1
Wake steering is a form of wind farm control in which turbines use
yaw offsets to affect wakes in order to yield an increase in total energy
production. In this first phase of a study of wake steering at a commercial
wind farm, two turbines implement a schedule of offsets. Results exploring
the observed performance of wake steering are presented and some
first lessons learned. For two closely spaced turbines, an approximate
14 % increase in energy was measured on the downstream turbine over a
10∘ sector, with a 4 % increase in energy production of the
combined upstream–downstream turbine pair. Finally, the influence of
atmospheric stability over the results is explored.</p
Search for Ultraheavy Dark Matter from Observations of Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies with VERITAS
Dark matter is a key piece of the current cosmological scenario, with weakly
interacting massive particles (WIMPs) a leading dark matter candidate. WIMPs
have not been detected in their conventional parameter space (100 GeV 100 TeV), a mass range accessible with current Imaging
Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes. As ultraheavy dark matter (UHDM; 100 TeV) has been suggested as an under-explored alternative to the
WIMP paradigm, we search for an indirect dark matter annihilation signal in a
higher mass range (up to 30 PeV) with the VERITAS gamma-ray observatory. With
216 hours of observations of four dwarf spheroidal galaxies, we perform an
unbinned likelihood analysis. We find no evidence of a -ray signal from
UHDM annihilation above the background fluctuation for any individual dwarf
galaxy nor for a joint-fit analysis, and consequently constrain the
velocity-weighted annihilation cross section of UHDM for dark matter particle
masses between 1 TeV and 30 PeV. We additionally set constraints on the allowed
radius of a composite UHDM particle.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure
Demonstration of stellar intensity interferometry with the four VERITAS telescopes
High angular resolution observations at optical wavelengths provide valuable
insights in stellar astrophysics, directly measuring fundamental stellar
parameters, and probing stellar atmospheres, circumstellar disks, elongation of
rapidly rotating stars, and pulsations of Cepheid variable stars. The angular
size of most stars are of order one milli-arcsecond or less, and to spatially
resolve stellar disks and features at this scale requires an optical
interferometer using an array of telescopes with baselines on the order of
hundreds of meters. We report on the successful implementation of a stellar
intensity interferometry system developed for the four VERITAS imaging
atmospheric-Cherenkov telescopes. The system was used to measure the angular
diameter of the two sub-mas stars Canis Majoris and Orionis
with a precision better than 5%. The system utilizes an off-line approach where
starlight intensity fluctuations recorded at each telescope are correlated
post-observation. The technique can be readily scaled onto tens to hundreds of
telescopes, providing a capability that has proven technically challenging to
current generation optical amplitude interferometry observatories. This work
demonstrates the feasibility of performing astrophysical measurements with
imaging atmospheric-Cherenkov telescope arrays as intensity interferometers and
the promise for integrating an intensity interferometry system within future
observatories such as the Cherenkov Telescope Array.Comment: Accepted for publication in Nature Astronomy (2020
VERITAS and Fermi-LAT constraints on the Gamma-ray Emission from Superluminous Supernovae SN2015bn and SN2017egm
Superluminous supernovae (SLSNe) are a rare class of stellar explosions with
luminosities ~10-100 times greater than ordinary core-collapse supernovae. One
popular model to explain the enhanced optical output of hydrogen-poor (Type I)
SLSNe invokes energy injection from a rapidly spinning magnetar. A prediction
in this case is that high-energy gamma rays, generated in the wind nebula of
the magnetar, could escape through the expanding supernova ejecta at late times
(months or more after optical peak). This paper presents a search for gamma-ray
emission in the broad energy band from 100 MeV to 30 TeV from two Type I SLSNe,
SN2015bn, and SN2017egm, using observations from Fermi-LAT and VERITAS.
Although no gamma-ray emission was detected from either source, the derived
upper limits approach the putative magnetar's spin-down luminosity. Prospects
are explored for detecting very-high-energy (VHE; 100 GeV - 100 TeV) emission
from SLSNe-I with existing and planned facilities such as VERITAS and CTA.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figures, 2 table
An Archival Search for Neutron-Star Mergers in Gravitational Waves and Very-High-Energy Gamma Rays
The recent discovery of electromagnetic signals in coincidence with
neutron-star mergers has solidified the importance of multimessenger campaigns
in studying the most energetic astrophysical events. Pioneering multimessenger
observatories, such as LIGO/Virgo and IceCube, record many candidate signals
below the detection significance threshold. These sub-threshold event
candidates are promising targets for multimessenger studies, as the information
provided by them may, when combined with contemporaneous gamma-ray
observations, lead to significant detections. Here we describe a new method
that uses such candidates to search for transient events using archival
very-high-energy gamma-ray data from imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes
(IACTs). We demonstrate the application of this method to sub-threshold binary
neutron star (BNS) merger candidates identified in Advanced LIGO's first
observing run. We identify eight hours of archival VERITAS observations
coincident with seven BNS merger candidates and search them for TeV emission.
No gamma-ray emission is detected; we calculate upper limits on the integral
flux and compare them to a short gamma-ray burst model. We anticipate this
search method to serve as a starting point for IACT searches with future
LIGO/Virgo data releases as well as in other sub-threshold studies for
multimessenger transients, such as IceCube neutrinos. Furthermore, it can be
deployed immediately with other current-generation IACTs, and has the potential
for real-time use that places minimal burden on experimental operations.
Lastly, this method may serve as a pilot for studies with the Cherenkov
Telescope Array, which has the potential to observe even larger fields of view
in its divergent pointing mode
VERITAS Observations of the Galactic Center Region at Multi-TeV Gamma-Ray Energies
The Galactic Center (GC) region hosts a variety of powerful astronomical
sources and rare astrophysical processes that emit a large flux of non-thermal
radiation. The inner 375 pc x 600 pc region, called the Central Molecular Zone,
is home to the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*, massive cloud complexes,
and particle accelerators such as supernova remnants. We present the results of
our improved analysis of the very-high-energy (VHE) gamma-ray emission above 2
TeV from the GC using 125 hours of data taken with the VERITAS
imaging-atmospheric Cherenkov telescope between 2010 and 2018. The central
source VER J1745-290, consistent with the position of Sagittarius A*, is
detected at a significance of 38 standard deviations above the background level
, and we report its spectrum and light curve. Its differential
spectrum is consistent with a power law with exponential cutoff, with a
spectral index of , a flux normalization at 5.3 TeV of
TeV-1 cm-2 s-1, and cutoff energy of
TeV. We also present results on the diffuse emission near
the GC, obtained by combining data from multiple regions along the GC ridge
which yield a cumulative significance of . The diffuse GC ridge
spectrum is best fit by a power law with a hard index of 2.19 0.20,
showing no evidence of a cutoff up to 40 TeV. This strengthens the evidence for
a potential accelerator of PeV cosmic rays being present in the GC. We also
provide spectra of the other sources in our field of view with significant
detections, composite supernova remnant G0.9+0.1 and HESS J1746-285.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figures, Accepted for publication in Astrophysical
Journa
VERITAS Discovery of VHE Emission from the Radio Galaxy 3C 264: A Multi-Wavelength Study
The radio source 3C 264, hosted by the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 3862, was
observed with VERITAS between February 2017 and May 2019. These deep
observations resulted in the discovery of very-high-energy (VHE; E GeV)
-ray emission from this active galaxy. An analysis of 57 hours of
quality-selected live time yields a detection at the position of the source,
corresponding to a statistical significance of 7.8 standard deviations above
background. The observed VHE flux is variable on monthly time scales, with an
elevated flux seen in 2018 observations. The VHE emission during this elevated
state is well-characterized by a power-law spectrum with a photon index and flux F( GeV) = ( cm s, or approximately 0.7%
of the Crab Nebula flux above the same threshold. 3C 264 () is the
most distant radio galaxy detected at VHE, and the elevated state is thought to
be similar to that of the famously outbursting jet in M 87. Consequently,
extensive contemporaneous multi-wavelength data were acquired in 2018 at the
time of the VHE high state. An analysis of these data, including VLBA, VLA,
HST, Chandra and Swift observations in addition to the VERITAS data, is
presented, along with a discussion of the resulting spectral energy
distribution.Comment: 19 pages, 11 figures, Accepted for publication in Astrophysical
Journa
- …