Clinical innovation: wider collaboration on lymphoedema research is needed — footwear and gait analysis

Extending teams that research and manage lymphoedema to include orthotists and podiatrists may extend our understanding of the condition and component parts of treatment. New technology, some of which is low cost, enables an increasing range of data and outcome measures. This article highlights the reality of a shortage of studies involving gait analysis and a lack of consideration of the impact of inappropriate footwear on exercise as a key component of lymphoedema management

The Attack on Boulogne

Account by Lieutenant-Colonel Roger Rowley, OC, Stormont, Dundas & Glengarry Highlanders given to Historical Officer, 21 September 1944

Profiling and understanding student information behaviour: Methodologies and meaning

This paper draws on work conducted under the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) User Behaviour Monitoring and Evaluation Framework to identify a range of issues associated with research design that can form a platform for enquiry about knowledge creation in the arena of user behaviour. The Framework has developed a multidimensional set of tools for profiling, monitoring and evaluating user behaviour. The Framework has two main approaches: one, a broad‐based survey which generates both a qualitative and a quantitative profile of user behaviour, and the other a longitudinal qualitative study of user behaviour that (in addition to providing in‐depth insights) is the basis for the development of the EIS (Electronic Information Services) Diagnostic Toolkit. The strengths and weaknesses of the Framework approach are evaluated. In the context of profiling user behaviour, key methodological concerns relate to: representativeness, sampling and access, the selection of appropriate measures and the interpretation of those measures. Qualitative approaches are used to generate detailed insights. These include detailed narratives, case study analysis and gap analysis. The messages from this qualitative analysis do not lend themselves to simple summarization. One approach that has been employed to capture and interpret these messages is the development of the EIS Diagnostic Toolkit. This toolkit can be used to assess and monitor an institution's progress with embedding EIS into learning processes. Finally, consideration must be given to integration of insights generated through different strands within the Framework

Prairie Surreal--A Digital-Poetic Road Trip

Poetry by Mari-Lou Rowle

Feedback control of unstable steady states of flow past a flat plate using reduced-order estimators

We present an estimator-based control design procedure for flow control, using reduced-order models of the governing equations, linearized about a possibly unstable steady state. The reduced models are obtained using an approximate balanced truncation method that retains the most controllable and observable modes of the system. The original method is valid only for stable linear systems, and we present an extension to unstable linear systems. The dynamics on the unstable subspace are represented by projecting the original equations onto the global unstable eigenmodes, assumed to be small in number. A snapshot-based algorithm is developed, using approximate balanced truncation, for obtaining a reduced-order model of the dynamics on the stable subspace. The proposed algorithm is used to study feedback control of 2-D flow over a flat plate at a low Reynolds number and at large angles of attack, where the natural flow is vortex shedding, though there also exists an unstable steady state. For control design, we derive reduced-order models valid in the neighborhood of this unstable steady state. The actuation is modeled as a localized body force near the leading edge of the flat plate, and the sensors are two velocity measurements in the near-wake of the plate. A reduced-order Kalman filter is developed based on these models and is shown to accurately reconstruct the flow field from the sensor measurements, and the resulting estimator-based control is shown to stabilize the unstable steady state. For small perturbations of the steady state, the model accurately predicts the response of the full simulation. Furthermore, the resulting controller is even able to suppress the stable periodic vortex shedding, where the nonlinear effects are strong, thus implying a large domain of attraction of the stabilized steady state.Comment: 36 pages, 17 figure

Quasi-elastic barrier distribution as a tool for investigating unstable nuclei

The method of fusion barrier distribution has been widely used to interpret the effect of nuclear structure on heavy-ion fusion reactions around the Coulomb barrier. We discuss a similar, but less well known, barrier distribution extracted from large-angle quasi-elastic scattering. We argue that this method has several advantages over the fusion barrier distribution, and offers an interesting tool for investigating unstable nuclei.Comment: 4 pages, 4 eps figures. A talk given at the XXVII Reuniao de Trabalho em Fisica Nuclear no Brazil, September 7 - 11, 2004, Santos, Brazil. To be published in the Brazilian Journal of Physic

Mapping from quasi-elastic scattering to fusion reactions

The fusion barrier distribution has provided a nice representation for the channel coupling effects on heavy-ion fusion reactions at energies around the Coulomb barrier. Here we discuss how one can extract the same representation using the so called sum-of-differences (SOD) method with quasi-elastic scattering cross sections. In contrast to the conventional quasi-elastic barrier distribution, the SOD barrier distribution has an advantage in that it can be applied both to non-symmetric and symmetric systems. It is also the case that the correspondence to the fusion barrier distribution is much better than the quasi-elastic barrier distribution. We demonstrate its usefulness by studying $^{16}$O+$^{144}$Sm, $^{58}$Ni+$^{58}$Ni, and $^{12}$C+$^{12}$C systems.Comment: 6 pages, 9 figures. A talk given at VI International Conference FUSION14, Feb. 24-28, 2014, New Delhi, Indi