Undershoot Responses of Circular Path-Following Control for a Vehicle Based on Time-State Control Form

ArticleIFAC-PapersOnLine. 54(14): 66-71. (2021)journal articl

Outpatient perception of service quality and its impact on satisfaction at Gauteng public hospitals

Purpose – To examine the relationship between outpatient service quality expectation, perception and their effect on satisfaction at Gauteng public hospitals. Problem - Gauteng Public healthcare facilities are perceived to be offering deficient and poor quality service to their outpatient clients. Methodology – The SERVQUAL questionnaire tool is used, it encompasses the six dimensional structures of quality. 406 outpatients at public hospitals are the respondents. Limitations – Data collection environment could have led to the collection of inaccurate data. Data collection errors could exist due to the fact that the field workers had to translate questions for the candidates. These limitations limit the conclusions that can be drawn on the study. Findings/implications – The majority of outpatient expectations are not met. Patients are dissatisfied with the overall service quality provided by their outpatient departments. This has the effect of making patients reluctant to attend such facilities and could lead to treatment non compliance.Graduate School of Business LeadershipM.B.L

Identification and frequency shaping control of a vibration isolation system

ArticleCONTROL ENGINEERING PRACTICE.16(6):711-723(2008)journal articl

Non-equilibrium Fluctuation Relations in a Quantum Coherent Conductor

We experimentally demonstrate the validity of non-equilibrium fluctuation relations by using a quantum coherent conductor. In equilibrium the fluctuation-dissipation relation leads to the correlation between current and current noise at the conductor, namely, Johnson-Nyqusit relation. When the conductor is voltage-biased so that the non-linear regime is entered, the fluctuation theorem has predicted similar non-equilibrium fluctuation relations, which hold true even when the Onsager-Casmir relations are broken in magnetic fields. Our experiments qualitatively validate the predictions as the first evidence of this theorem in the non-equilibrium quantum regime. In the appendix, we give simple deduction of the higher order correlations between the current and the current noise based on the fluctuation theorem.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures with 1-page appendix

Systolic blood pressure reactions to acute stress are associated with future hypertension status in the Dutch Famine Birth Cohort Study

These analyses examined the association between blood pressure reactions to acute psychological stress and subsequent hypertension status in a substantial Dutch cohort. Blood pressure was recorded during a resting baseline and during three acute stress tasks, Stroop colour word, mirror tracing and speech. Five years later, diagnosed hypertension status was determined by questionnaire. Participants were 453 (237 women) members of the Dutch Famine Birth Cohort. In analysis adjusting for a number of potential confounders, systolic blood pressure reactivity was positively related to future hypertension. This was the case irrespective of whether reactivity was calculated as the peak or the average response to the stress tasks. The association was strongest for reactions to the speech and Stroop tasks. Diastolic blood pressure reactivity was not significantly associated with hypertension. The results provide support for the reactivity hypothesis. \ud \u

Two-Thirds Honest-Majority MPC for Malicious Adversaries at Almost the Cost of Semi-Honest

Secure multiparty computation (MPC) enables a set of parties to securely carry out a joint computation of their private inputs without revealing anything but the output. Protocols for semi-honest adversaries guarantee security as long as the corrupted parties run the specified protocol and ensure that nothing is leaked in the transcript. In contrast, protocols for malicious adversaries guarantee security in the presence of arbitrary adversaries who can run any attack strategy. Security for malicious adversaries is typically what is needed in practice (and is always preferred), but comes at a significant cost. In this paper, we present the first protocol for a two-thirds honest majority that achieves security in the presence of malicious adversaries at essentially the exact same cost as the best known protocols for semi-honest adversaries. Our construction is not a general transformation and thus it is possible that better semi-honest protocols will be constructed which do not support our transformation. Nevertheless, for the current state-of-the-art for many parties (based on Shamir sharing), our protocol invokes the best semi-honest multiplication protocol exactly once per multiplication gate (plus some additional local computation that is negligible to the overall cost). Concretely, the best version of our protocol requires each party to send on average of just $2\frac23$ elements per multiplication gate (when the number of multiplication gates is at least the number of parties). This is four times faster than the previous-best protocol of Barak et al. (ACM CCS 2018) for small fields, and twice as fast as the previous-best protocol of Chida et al. (CRYPTO 2018) for large fields

Universality of Bias- and Temperature-induced Dephasing in Ballistic Electronic Interferometers

We performed a transport measurement in a ballistic Aharonov-Bohm ring and a Fabry-Perot type interferometer. In both cases we found that the interference signal is reversed at a certain bias voltage and that the visibility decays exponentially as a function of temperature, being in a strong analogy with recent reports on the electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometers. By analyzing the data including those in the previous works, the energy scales that characterize the dephasing are found to be dominantly dependent on the interferometer size, implying the presence of a universal behavior in ballistic interferometers in both linear and non-linear transport regimes.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in PRB rapid com

The impact of emotional well-being on long-term recovery and survival in physical illness: a meta-analysis

This meta-analysis synthesized studies on emotional well-being as predictor of the prognosis of physical illness, while in addition evaluating the impact of putative moderators, namely constructs of well-being, health-related outcome, year of publication, follow-up time and methodological quality of the included studies. The search in reference lists and electronic databases (Medline and PsycInfo) identified 17 eligible studies examining the impact of general well-being, positive affect and life satisfaction on recovery and survival in physically ill patients. Meta-analytically combining these studies revealed a Likelihood Ratio of 1.14, indicating a small but significant effect. Higher levels of emotional well-being are beneficial for recovery and survival in physically ill patients. The findings show that emotional well-being predicts long-term prognosis of physical illness. This suggests that enhancement of emotional well-being may improve the prognosis of physical illness, which should be investigated by future research

Psychological well-being, cardiorespiratory fitness, and long-term survival

BACKGROUND: Psychological well-being is associated with mortality/survival. Although cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) is one of the strongest predictors of mortality, studies examining the relationship between well-being and survival seldom account for the possible effects of CRF. PURPOSE: This study examined the independent associations of psychological well-being components (low level of negative emotion and high level of positive emotion) and CRF, as well as their combined effects, with survival. METHODS: Participants (N=4888) were examined in 1988-1997 and followed up for a median period of ∼15 years (212 deaths, 4.3%). CRF was assessed by a maximal exercise test on a treadmill. Low-level negative emotion was defined as the minimum score of the negative emotion subscale of the CES-D scale and high-level positive emotion as the maximum score of the positive emotion subscale. Results are presented as hazard ratios (95% CIs). Data were analyzed in 2009. RESULTS: After adjustment for a set of established risk factors, men and women with low levels of negative emotion had lower risk of death than those with higher levels of negative emotion, 0.66 (95% CI=0.50, 0.87). The association persisted after additional adjustment for CRF and positive emotion. High level of positive emotion was not associated with survival. A high level of CRF independently predicted lower risk of death, 0.54 (95% CI=0.37, 0.79), compared to a low level of CRF. The risk of death in participants with both a low level of negative emotion and a high level of CRF was 0.37 (95% CI=0.22, 0.63), compared to their peers with higher levels of negative emotion/low levels of CRF. CONCLUSIONS: Low levels of negative emotion and high levels of CRF are independent predictors of long-term survival in men and women. A strong combined effect was observed, as individuals with both a low level of negative emotion and a high level of CRF had a 63% lower risk of premature death than those with higher levels of negative emotion and a low level of CRF.This study was supported by NIH grants AG06945 and HL62508, and in part by an unrestricted research grant from The Coca-Cola Company. The study also was supported in part by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Pioneer Portfolio (grant number 63597); the Spanish Ministry of Education (EX-2008-0641, EX-2007-1124); the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research; and the Swedish Heart-Lung Foundation (20090635)