Case Study II: VG4 - Building and Land Use

Reproduced with permission of the publisher. © Authors and School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester, 2004. Details of the full publication are available at: http://www.le.ac.uk/ar/research/pubs/catalogue.htm

Tumbleweeds and airborne gravitational noise sources for LIGO

Gravitational-wave detectors are sensitive not only to astrophysical gravitational waves, but also to the fluctuating Newtonian gravitational forces of moving masses in the ground and air around the detector. This paper studies the gravitational effects of density perturbations in the atmosphere, and from massive airborne objects near the detector. These effects were previously considered by Saulson; in this paper I revisit these phenomena, considering transient atmospheric shocks, and the effects of sound waves or objects colliding with the ground or buildings around the test masses. I also consider temperature perturbations advected past the detector as a source of gravitational noise. I find that the gravitational noise background is below the expected noise floor even of advanced interferometric detectors, although only by an order of magnitude for temperature perturbations carried along turbulent streamlines. I also find that transient shockwaves in the atmosphere could potentially produce large spurious signals, with signal-to-noise ratios in the hundreds in an advanced interferometric detector. These signals could be vetoed by means of acoustic sensors outside of the buildings. Massive wind-borne objects such as tumbleweeds could also produce gravitational signals with signal-to-noise ratios in the hundreds if they collide with the interferometer buildings, so it may be necessary to build fences preventing such objects from approaching within about 30m of the test masses.Comment: 15 pages, 10 PostScript figures, uses REVTeX4.cls and epsfig.st

The Wallingford Burh to Borough Research Project

Reproduced with permission of the publisher. Journal home page http://www.britarch.ac.uk/msrg/publications.ht

Lung, breast, and bowel cancer treatment for Aboriginal people in New South Wales: a population-based cohort study.

BACKGROUND:Aboriginal Australians have higher cancer mortality than non-Aboriginal Australians. Lower rates of cancer treatment among Aboriginal people can contribute to this. AIMS:To investigate demographic, clinical and access factors associated with lung, breast, and bowel cancer treatment for Aboriginal people compared with non-Aboriginal people in New South Wales, Australia. METHODS:Population-based cohort study using linked routinely-collected datasets, including all diagnoses of primary lung, breast, or bowel cancer from January 2009-June 2012. Treatment (surgery, radiotherapy, or chemotherapy) within six months from diagnosis was measured. Access was measured using minimum distance to radiotherapy or hospital with a cancer-specific multidisciplinary team, visit to a specialist, and possession of private health insurance. Logistic regression modelling was employed. RESULTS:There were 587 Aboriginal and 34 015 non-Aboriginal people diagnosed with cancer. For lung cancer, significantly fewer Aboriginal than non-Aboriginal people received surgery (odds ratio (OR) 0.46 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.29-0.73, p < 0.001)) or any treatment (surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy; OR 0.64, 95% CI 0.47-0.88, p = 0.006) after adjusting for sex, age, disease extent and comorbidities. They were less likely to have an attendance with a surgeon (27.0%, 62/230 v 33.3%, 2865/8597, p = 0.04) compared with non-Aboriginal people. There were no significant differences in cancer treatment for Aboriginal people compared with non-Aboriginal people for breast or bowel cancers after adjusting for patient sex, age, disease extent and comorbidities. CONCLUSION:Aboriginal people were significantly less likely to receive surgery for lung cancer than non-Aboriginal people and had fewer attendances with a surgeon, suggesting a need to strengthen referral pathways. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

Validation of administrative hospital data for identifying incident pancreatic and periampullary cancer cases: A population-based study using linked cancer registry and administrative hospital data in New South Wales, Australia

© 2015 Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use. Objectives: Informing cancer service delivery with timely and accurate data is essential to cancer control activities and health system monitoring. This study aimed to assess the validity of ascertaining incident cases and resection use for pancreatic and periampullary cancers from linked administrative hospital data, compared with data from a cancer registry (the 'gold standard'). Design, setting and participants: Analysis of linked statutory population-based cancer registry data and administrative hospital data for adults (aged .18 years) with a pancreatic or periampullary cancer case diagnosed during 2005.2009 or a hospital admission for these cancers between 2005 and 2013 in New South Wales, Australia. Methods: The sensitivity and positive predictive value (PPV) of pancreatic and periampullary cancer case ascertainment from hospital admission data were calculated for the 2005.2009 period through comparison with registry data. We examined the effect of the look-back period to distinguish incident cancer cases from prevalent cancer cases from hospital admission data using 2009 and 2013 as index years. Results: Sensitivity of case ascertainment from the hospital data was 87.5% (4322/4939), with higher sensitivity when the cancer was resected (97.9%, 715/730) and for pancreatic cancers (88.6%, 3733/4211). Sensitivity was lower in regional (83.3%) and remote (85.7%) areas, particularly in areas with interstate outflow of patients for treatment, and for cases notified to the registry by death certificate only (9.6%). The PPV for the identification of incident cases was 82.0% (4322/5272). A 2-year look-back period distinguished the majority (98%) of incident cases from prevalent cases in linked hospital data. Conclusions: Pancreatic and periampullary cancer cases and resection use can be ascertained from linked hospital admission data with sufficient validity for informing aspects of health service delivery and system-level monitoring. Limited tumour clinical information and variation in case ascertainment across population subgroups are limitations of hospitalderived cancer incidence data when compared with population cancer registries

Parallelization of Markov chain generation and its application to the multicanonical method

We develop a simple algorithm to parallelize generation processes of Markov chains. In this algorithm, multiple Markov chains are generated in parallel and jointed together to make a longer Markov chain. The joints between the constituent Markov chains are processed using the detailed balance. We apply the parallelization algorithm to multicanonical calculations of the two-dimensional Ising model and demonstrate accurate estimation of multicanonical weights.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, uses elsart.cl

Pancreatectomy is underused in NSW regions with low institutional surgical volumes: A population data linkage study

© 2017 AMPCo Pty Ltd. Produced with Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Objective: To examine differences in the proportions of people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer who underwent pancreatectomy, post-operative outcomes and 5-year survival in different New South Wales administrative health regions of residence. Design, setting and participants: Retrospective analysis of NSW data on pancreatic cancer incidence and surgery, 2005e2013. Main outcome measures: The proportion of newly diagnosed patients with pancreatic cancer who were resected in each region; 90-day post-operative mortality; one-year post-operative survival; 5-year post-diagnosis survival. Results: 14% of people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer during 2010e2013 (431 of 3064) underwent pancreatectomy, an average of 108 resections per year. After adjusting for age, sex and comorbidities, the proportion that underwent resection varied significantly between regions, ranging between 8% and 21% (P<0.001). Higher resection rates were not associated with higher post-operative 90-day mortality or lower one-year survival (unadjusted and risk-adjusted analyses). Higher resection rates were associated with higher 5-year post-diagnosis survival: the mean survival in regions with resection rates below 10% was 3.4%, compared with 7.2% in regions with rates greater than 15% (unadjusted and adjusted survival analyses; P<0.001). There was a positive association between regional resection rate and the pancreatectomy volume of hospitals during 2005e2009. An additional 32 people would be resected annually if resection rates in low rate regions were increased to the 80th percentile regional resection rate (18%). Conclusion: There is significant geographic variation in the proportion of people with pancreatic cancer undergoing pancreatectomy, and the 5-year survival rate is higher in regions where this proportion is higher

Duality of Quasilocal Black Hole Thermodynamics

We consider T-duality of the quasilocal black hole thermodynamics for the three-dimensional low energy effective string theory. Quasilocal thermodynamic variables in the first law are explicitly calculated on a general axisymmetric three-dimensional black hole solution and corresponding dual one. Physical meaning of the dual invariance of the black hole entropy is considered in terms of the Euclidean path integral formulation.Comment: 19 pages, Latex, no figures, to be published in Class. Quantum Grav. Some minor changes, references adde

Duality of Quasilocal Gravitational Energy and Charges with Non-orthogonal Boundaries

We study the duality of quasilocal energy and charges with non-orthogonal boundaries in the (2+1)-dimensional low-energy string theory. Quasilocal quantities shown in the previous work and some new variables arisen from considering the non-orthogonal boundaries as well are presented, and the boost relations between those quantities are discussed. Moreover, we show that the dual properties of quasilocal variables such as quasilocal energy density, momentum densities, surface stress densities, dilaton pressure densities, and Neuve-Schwarz(NS) charge density, are still valid in the moving observer's frame.Comment: 19pages, 1figure, RevTe

Response of the Brazilian gravitational wave detector to signals from a black hole ringdown

It is assumed that a black hole can be disturbed in such a way that a ringdown gravitational wave would be generated. This ringdown waveform is well understood and is modelled as an exponentially damped sinusoid. In this work we use this kind of waveform to study the performance of the SCHENBERG gravitational wave detector. This first realistic simulation will help us to develop strategies for the signal analysis of this Brazilian detector. We calculated the signal-to-noise ratio as a function of frequency for the simulated signals and obtained results that show that SCHENBERG is expected to be sensitive enough to detect this kind of signal up to a distance of $\sim 20\mathrm{kpc}$.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, Amaldi 5 Conference Proceedings contribution. Submitted to Class. Quantum Gra