46,871 research outputs found
Setting up an acupuncture knee clinic under Practice Based Commissioning
Original article can be found at: http://www.acupunctureinmedicine.org.uk/index.shtmlThis paper outlines the setting up of a new service in primary care offering acupuncture to patients with severe osteoarthritis of the knee. The high volume clinic is funded under the Practice Based Commissioning initiative and is the first of its type in the UK. It would appear to offer a model for similar services elsewhere.Peer reviewe
Hierarchical models of very large problems, dilemmas, prospects, and an agenda for the future
Interdisciplinary approaches to the modeling of global problems are discussed in terms of multilevel cooperation. A multilevel regionalized model of the Lake Erie Basin is analyzed along with a multilevel regionalized world modeling project. Other topics discussed include: a stratified model of interacting region in a world system, and the application of the model to the world food crisis in south Asia. Recommended research for future development of integrated models is included
Multispectral processing based on groups of resolution elements
Several nine-point rules are defined and compared with previously studied rules. One of the rules performed well in boundary areas, but with reduced efficiency in field interiors; another combined best performance on field interiors with good sensitivity to boundary detail. The basic threshold gradient and some modifications were investigated as a means of boundary point detection. The hypothesis testing methods of closed-boundary formation were also tested and evaluated. An analysis of the boundary detection problem was initiated, employing statistical signal detection and parameter estimation techniques to analyze various formulations of the problem. These formulations permit the atmospheric and sensor system effects on the data to be thoroughly analyzed. Various boundary features and necessary assumptions can also be investigated in this manner
Coboson formalism for Cooper pairs used to derive Richardson's equations
We propose a many-body formalism for Cooper pairs which has similarities to
the one we recently developed for composite boson excitons (coboson in short).
Its Shiva diagram representation evidences that Cooper pairs differ from
single pairs through electron exchange only: no direct coupling exists due
to the very peculiar form of the BCS potential. As a first application, we here
use this formalism to derive Richardson's equations for the exact eigenstates
of Cooper pairs. This gives hints on why the dependence of the
-pair ground state energy we recently obtained by solving Richardson's
equations analytically in the low density limit, stays valid up to the dense
regime, no higher order dependence exists even under large overlap, a
surprising result hard to accept at first. We also briefly question the BCS
wave function ansatz compared to Richardson's exact form, in the light of our
understanding of coboson many-body effects
Substrate Induced Denitrification over or under Estimates Shifts in Soil N2/N2O Ratios
Funding: Funding was provided by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, BBSRC UK (http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk). Grant number BB/H013431/1. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Economic Benefits of American Lobster Fishery Management Regulations
A simulation model is used to compare measures for future management identified in the American lobster fishery management plan; specifically, increases in the minimum legal size and a modest reduction in aggregate fishing mortality are evaluated. The analysis differs from previous work in that the distributional aspects of the alternative management regulations are quantified. The results indicate that (1) both an increased minimum size and a reduction in fishing mortality are economically justified in the sense that net benefits are positive; (2) increasing the minimum size without an adjunct regulation to prohibit entry will cause present fishermen to suffer an initial short-term reduction in revenues for which there will be no long-term gain; (3) because increased minimum size can be justified on the basis of consumer benefits alone, arguments favoring its increase to prevent recruitment failure are moot as far as a test of national economic efficiency is concerned; and (4) a program of effort reduction which reduces by 20% the fraction of available lobsters captured annually is projected to generate SI of producer benefits for every pound of lobster landed. Reducing the annual harvest fraction by 20% results in a level of fishery benefits greater than increasing the minimum size to 89 mm (3^-in.), and increases the coincidence of short-run costs and long-term benefits among those impacted by fishery management.Environmental Economics and Policy, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,
A fast and robust numerical scheme for solving models of charge carrier transport and ion vacancy motion in perovskite solar cells
Drift-diffusion models that account for the motion of both electronic and
ionic charges are important tools for explaining the hysteretic behaviour and
guiding the development of metal halide perovskite solar cells. Furnishing
numerical solutions to such models for realistic operating conditions is
challenging owing to the extreme values of some of the parameters. In
particular, those characterising (i) the short Debye lengths (giving rise to
rapid changes in the solutions across narrow layers), (ii) the relatively large
potential differences across devices and (iii) the disparity in timescales
between the motion of the electronic and ionic species give rise to significant
stiffness. We present a finite difference scheme with an adaptive time step
that is posed on a non-uniform staggered grid that provides second order
accuracy in the mesh spacing. The method is able to cope with the stiffness of
the system for realistic parameters values whilst providing high accuracy and
maintaining modest computational costs. For example, a transient sweep of a
current-voltage curve can be computed in only a few minutes on a standard
desktop computer.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figure
Novel Fiber Design for Wideband Conversion and Amplification in Multimode Fibers
We propose an operating principle to achieve broadband and highly tunable
mode conversion and amplification exploiting inter-modal four wave mixing in a
multimode fiber. A bandwidth of 30 nanometers is demonstrated by properly
designing a simple step-index silica fiber.Comment: Ecoc conference 201
Crystallization of a Mos1 transposase-inverted-repeat DNA complex: biochemical and preliminary crystallographic analyses
A complex formed between Mos1 transposase and its inverted-repeat DNA has been crystallized. The crystals diffract to 3.25 Å resolution and exhibit monoclinic (P2(1)) symmetry, with unit-cell parameters a = 120.8, b = 85.1, c = 131.6 Å, β = 99.3°. The X-ray diffraction data display noncrystallographic twofold symmetry and characteristic dsDNA diffraction at ∼3.3 Å. Biochemical analyses confirmed the presence of DNA and full-length protein in the crystals. The relationship between the axis of noncrystallographic symmetry, the unit-cell axes and the DNA diffraction pattern are discussed. The data are consistent with the previously proposed model of the paired-ends complex containing a dimer of the transposase
Reaction Diffusion and Ballistic Annihilation Near an Impenetrable Boundary
The behavior of the single-species reaction process is examined
near an impenetrable boundary, representing the flask containing the reactants.
Two types of dynamics are considered for the reactants: diffusive and ballistic
propagation. It is shown that the effect of the boundary is quite different in
both cases: diffusion-reaction leads to a density excess, whereas ballistic
annihilation exhibits a density deficit, and in both cases the effect is not
localized at the boundary but penetrates into the system. The field-theoretic
renormalization group is used to obtain the universal properties of the density
excess in two dimensions and below for the reaction-diffusion system. In one
dimension the excess decays with the same exponent as the bulk and is found by
an exact solution. In two dimensions the excess is marginally less relevant
than the bulk decay and the density profile is again found exactly for late
times from the RG-improved field theory. The results obtained for the diffusive
case are relevant for Mg or Cd doping in the TMMC crystal's
exciton coalescence process and also imply a surprising result for the dynamic
magnetization in the critical one-dimensional Ising model with a fixed spin.
For the case of ballistic reactants, a model is introduced and solved exactly
in one dimension. The density-deficit profile is obtained, as is the density of
left and right moving reactants near the impenetrable boundary.Comment: to appear in J. Phys.
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