2,756 research outputs found
Shaping Metrics for HEI Cultural Engagement - Knowledge Transfer
An application was submitted to the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for support for a project that would identify and define activities deemed relevant to Knowledge Transfer (KT) - Cultural Engagement (CE), and propose appropriate means to evaluate them. It was acknowledged from the outset that efforts at agreeing “metrics” for the impact of such activities had been attempted before, albeit with limited success. (One such notable example has been lately provided by the Higher Education and Business Community Interaction Survey (HEBCIS) which has collected some data on social, community, and cultural engagement for some years; however, the robustness and consistency of the data for these purposes have often been questioned.
Consumer-oriented Drug Information Service Needs Assessment
Federal legislation that has been introduced to amend the Social Security Act in order to provide for coverage of cognitive pharmacist services under the Medicare program in medically underserved communities. In the rural state of Arkansas this legislation would be well-received because a large portion of the state meets the criteria of a health professional shortage area. Considering the growing interest of using telecommunications as an alternative means of delivering healthcare services to medically underserved rural areas, a pharmacist-staffed consumer-oriented drug information service was explored. Over a 5-day period, 473 face-to-face consumer surveys were conducted in pharmacy and non-pharmacy settings in an urban cluster population center that serves the surrounding rural area. The survey was designed to determine whether or not consumers had a perceived need for a drug information service that was independent from and supplemental to services provided by their pharmacist. Results reveal that 71% of participants surveyed did not perceive a need for medication information that was supplemental to that provided by their pharmacist. When queried regarding the likelihood of using a drug information service if one was available their response was neutral, and they became less likely if a fee was associated with the service. While the results are not conclusive and cannot be generalized as to whether a consumer-oriented drug information service would contribute to improving patient care, the survey suggests that this telepharmacy service is not perceived as being needed by the public
SN 1997bs in M66: Another Extragalactic Eta Carinae Analog?
We report on SN 1997bs in NGC 3627 (M66), the first supernova discovered by
the Lick Observatory Supernova Search using the 0.75-m Katzman Automatic
Imaging Telescope (KAIT). Based on its early-time optical spectrum, SN 1997bs
was classified as Type IIn. However, from the BVRI light curves obtained by
KAIT early in the supernova's evolution, and F555W and F814W light curves
obtained from Hubble Space Telescope archival WFPC2 images at late times, we
question the identification of SN 1997bs as a bona fide supernova. We believe
that it is more likely a super-outburst of a very massive luminous blue
variable star, analogous to Eta Carinae, and similar to SN 1961V in NGC 1058
(Filippenko et al. 1995 [AJ, 110, 2261]) and SN 1954J (``Variable 12'') in NGC
2403 (Humphreys & Davidson 1994 [PASP, 106, 1025]). The progenitor may have
survived the outburst, since the SN is seen in early 1998 at m_F555W=23.4,
about 0.5 mag fainter than the progenitor identified by Van Dyk et al. (1999,
[AJ, 118, 2331]) in a pre-discovery image. Based on analysis of its environment
in the Hubble Space Telescope images, the progenitor was not in an H II region
or association of massive stars. The recent discovery of additional objects
with properties similar to those of SN 1997bs suggests that the heterogeneous
class of Type IIn supernovae consists in part of ``impostors.''Comment: 15 pages, 8 figures, to appear in the PASP (2000 Dec issue
A zeta function approach to the relation between the numbers of symmetry planes and axes of a polytope
A derivation of the Ces\`aro-Fedorov relation from the Selberg trace formula
on an orbifolded 2-sphere is elaborated and extended to higher dimensions using
the known heat-kernel coefficients for manifolds with piecewise-linear
boundaries. Several results are obtained that relate the coefficients, ,
in the Shephard-Todd polynomial to the geometry of the fundamental domain. For
the 3-sphere we show that is given by the ratio of the volume of the
fundamental tetrahedron to its Schl\"afli reciprocal.Comment: Plain TeX, 26 pages (eqn. (86) corrected
Multiplicative point process as a model of trading activity
Signals consisting of a sequence of pulses show that inherent origin of the
1/f noise is a Brownian fluctuation of the average interevent time between
subsequent pulses of the pulse sequence. In this paper we generalize the model
of interevent time to reproduce a variety of self-affine time series exhibiting
power spectral density S(f) scaling as a power of the frequency f. Furthermore,
we analyze the relation between the power-law correlations and the origin of
the power-law probability distribution of the signal intensity. We introduce a
stochastic multiplicative model for the time intervals between point events and
analyze the statistical properties of the signal analytically and numerically.
Such model system exhibits power-law spectral density S(f)~1/f**beta for
various values of beta, including beta=1/2, 1 and 3/2. Explicit expressions for
the power spectra in the low frequency limit and for the distribution density
of the interevent time are obtained. The counting statistics of the events is
analyzed analytically and numerically, as well. The specific interest of our
analysis is related with the financial markets, where long-range correlations
of price fluctuations largely depend on the number of transactions. We analyze
the spectral density and counting statistics of the number of transactions. The
model reproduces spectral properties of the real markets and explains the
mechanism of power-law distribution of trading activity. The study provides
evidence that the statistical properties of the financial markets are enclosed
in the statistics of the time interval between trades. A multiplicative point
process serves as a consistent model generating this statistics.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure
Hybrid Elastic ARM&Cloud HPC Collaborative Platform for generic tasks
Compute-heavy workloads are currently run on Hybrid HPC structures using x86 CPUs and GPUs from Intel, AMD, or NVidia, which have extremely high energy and financial costs. However, thanks to the incredible progress made on CPUs and GPUs based on the ARM architecture and their ubiquity in today’s mobile devices, it’s possible to conceive of a low-cost solution for our world’s data processing needs.
Every year ARM-based mobile devices become more powerful, efficient, and come in ever smaller packages with ever growing storage. At the same time, smartphones waste these capabilities at night while they’re charging. This represents billions of idle devices whose processing power is not being utilized.
For that reason, the objective of this paper is to evaluate and develop a hybrid, distributed, scalable, and redundant platform that allows for the utilization of these idle devices through a cloud-based administration service. The system would allow for massive improvements in terms of efficiency and cost for com-pute-heavy workload. During the evaluation phase, we were able to establish savings in power and cost significant enough to justify exploring it as a serious alternative to traditional computing architectures.Instituto de Investigación en Informátic
Observations and analysis of two type IIP supernovae: the intrinsically faint object SN 2005cs and the ambiguous object SN 2005ay
Aims: To derive observational properties and physical parameters of the
progenitor stars of type IIP supernovae SN 2005ay and SN 2005cs from their
U,B,V,R,I CCD photometry, and to define their velocity behaviour. Methods:
Light curves are analysed, and the velocities and spectral characteristics of
SN 2005cs are obtained using synthetic spectra modeling. Results: Both
supernovae are found to be fainter than the average
SN IIP, with SN 2005cs being more subluminous and showing slight brightening
in the second half of plateau stage in the
V,R,I bands and a low expansion velocity.
The effects of two different plausible distance moduli on the derived
physical parameters of SN 2005ay are considered.
Two approaches are used to recover the amounts of the ejected 56Ni,
indicating masses of the order of
0.02 Msun, although late luminosities might indicate a higher amount for SN
2005ay, especially for the large distance case.
Constraints on the progenitor properties are also presented, based on
empirical analytical models. Two approaches are used to estimate the expansion
velocities at the middle of the plateau phase. SN 2005cs represents an example
of where all 3 physical parameters, velocity, energy and 56Ni mass are lower
than average, a correlation not always observed in SNe IIP. SN 2005ay may
belong to the same class if the shorter distance possibility is adopted.
Furthermore, the estimated mass range for SN 2005cs is in agreement with limits
established by using pre-supernova imaging.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, to be published in A&A vol.460, issue 3, December
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Long-Term Stability of Visual Pattern Selective Responses of Monkey Temporal Lobe Neurons
Many neurons in primate inferotemporal (IT) cortex respond selectively to complex, often meaningful, stimuli such as faces and objects. An important unanswered question is whether such response selectivity, which is thought to arise from experience-dependent plasticity, is maintained from day to day, or whether the roles of individual cells are continually reassigned based on the diet of natural vision. We addressed this question using microwire electrodes that were chronically implanted in the temporal lobe of two monkeys, often allowing us to monitor activity of individual neurons across days. We found that neurons maintained their selectivity in both response magnitude and patterns of spike timing across a large set of visual images throughout periods of stable signal isolation from the same cell that sometimes exceeded two weeks. These results indicate that stimulus-selectivity of responses in IT is stable across days and weeks of visual experience
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