13,453 research outputs found
Comparative study of patients knowledge on osteoarthritis treatment options to ACR guidelines
Portuguese population is growing older, according to national
data in 2011 the aging index was 129. The number of elderly population
is higher than the younger; average life expectancy is 79,2 years (1).
Because knee Osteoarthritis increases with age, and according to WHO
80% of these subjects will have some degree of impairment and 25% will
not be able to do their daily living activities (2), OA has a big impact on
the sustainability of both health and social care as populations grow
older. Our goal was to compare current guidelines of managing knee OA,
to the degree of information each patient has about their treatment
options.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Evolution of the phase-space density and the Jeans scale for dark matter derived from the Vlasov-Einstein equation
We discuss solutions of Vlasov-Einstein equation for collisionless dark
matter particles in the context of a flat Friedmann universe. We show that,
after decoupling from the primordial plasma, the dark matter phase-space
density indicator Q remains constant during the expansion of the universe,
prior to structure formation. This well known result is valid for
non-relativistic particles and is not "observer dependent" as in solutions
derived from the Vlasov-Poisson system. In the linear regime, the inclusion of
velocity dispersion effects permits to define a physical Jeans length for
collisionless matter as function of the primordial phase-space density
indicator: \lambda_J = (5\pi/G)^(1/2)Q^(-1/3)\rho_dm^(-1/6). The comoving Jeans
wavenumber at matter-radiation equality is smaller by a factor of 2-3 than the
comoving wavenumber due to free-streaming, contributing to the cut-off of the
density fluctuation power spectrum at the lowest scales. We discuss the
physical differences between these two scales. For dark matter particles of
mass equal to 200 GeV, the derived Jeans mass is 4.3 x 10^(-6) solar masses.Comment: 18 pages, 2 figures. Accepted for publication in JCA
Infinite impulse response modal filtering in visible adaptive optics
Diffraction limited resolution adaptive optics (AO) correction in visible
wavelengths requires a high performance control. In this paper we investigate
infinite impulse response filters that optimize the wavefront correction: we
tested these algorithms through full numerical simulations of a
single-conjugate AO system comprising an adaptive secondary mirror with 1127
actuators and a pyramid wavefront sensor (WFS). The actual practicability of
the algorithms depends on both robustness and knowledge of the real system:
errors in the system model may even worsen the performance. In particular we
checked the robustness of the algorithms in different conditions, proving that
the proposed method can reject both disturbance and calibration errors
Evolution of Supermassive Black Holes from Cosmological Simulations
The correlations between the mass of supermassive black holes and properties
of their host galaxies are investigated through cosmological simulations. Black
holes grow from seeds of 100 solar masses inserted into density peaks present
in the redshift range 12-15. Seeds grow essentially by accreting matter from a
nuclear disk and also by coalescences resulting from merger episodes. At z=0,
our simulations reproduce the black hole mass function and the correlations of
the black hole mass both with stellar velocity dispersion and host dark halo
mass. Moreover, the evolution of the black hole mass density derived from the
present simulations agrees with that derived from the bolometric luminosity
function of quasars, indicating that the average accretion history of seeds is
adequately reproduced . However, our simulations are unable to form black holes
with masses above at , whose existence is inferred
from the bright quasars detected by the Sloan survey in this redshift range.Comment: Talk given at the International Workshop on Astronomy and
Relativistic Astrophysics (IWARA 2009), Maresias, Brazil. to be published in
the International Journal of Modern Physics
Three-dimensional Dirac oscillator in a thermal bath
The thermal properties of the three-dimensional Dirac oscillator are
considered. The canonical partition function is determined, and the
high-temperature limit is assessed. The degeneracy of energy levels and their
physical implications on the main thermodynamic functions are analyzed,
revealing that these functions assume values greater than the one-dimensional
case. So that at high temperatures, the limit value of the specific heat is
three times bigger.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures. Text improved, references added. Revised to match
accepted version in Europhysics Letters
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