Angular scattering from irregularly shaped particles with application to astronomy

Angular scattering from irregularly shaped particles with application to astronom

Thermocouple installation

A thermocouple assembly which includes a plug having a pair of small diameter holes near one end thereof which are spaced a small distance apart to leave a thin quantity of plug material between the holes is presented. There are a pair of thermocouple wires extending through the different holes and with the outer ends of the wires joined to the thin quantity of plug material which lies between the holes to form a thermocouple junction

The Effectiveness of Insurance Fraud Statutues: Evidence from Automobile Insurance

Insurance fraud, which adds an estimated $85 billion per year to the total insurance bill in the U.S., is an extremely serious problem for consumers, regulators, and insurance companies. This paper analyzes the effects of state legislation and market conditions on automobile insurance fraud from 1988 to 1999, a period representing a substantial increase in the enactment of antifraud legislation. Our empirical results show that the laws have mixed effects; two laws have no statistically significant effect on fraud. The strongest evidence of fraud mitigation effects are associated with mandatory Special Investigation Units, classification of insurance fraud as a felony, and mandatory reporting of professionals to licensing authorities. However, laws requiring insurers to report potentially fraudulent claims to law enforcement authorities increase fraud, which may reflect some substitution from more efficacious private efforts to less productive state activity. Many underlying characteristics of the market also affect fraud.Insurance Fraud, Automobile Insurance, Moral Hazard

East Lancashire Research 2008

East Lancashire Research 200

Determination of the effects of nozzle nonlinearities upon nonlinear stability of liquid propellant rocket motors

The research is reported concerning the development of a three-dimensional nonlinear nozzle admittance relation to be used as a boundary condition in the nonlinear combustion instability theories for liquid propellant rocket engines. The derivation of the nozzle wave equation and the application of the Galerkin method are discussed along with the nozzle response

A phenomenological model of the superconducting state of the Bechgaard salts

We present a group theoretical analysis of the superconducting state of the Bechgaard salts, e.g., (TMTSF)_2PF_6 or (TMTSF)_2ClO_6. We show that there are eight symmetry distinct superconducting states. Of these only the (fully gapped, even frequency, p-wave, triplet) 'polar state' is consistent with the full range of the experiments on the Bechgaard salts. The gap of the polar state is d(k) (psi_uk,0,0), where psi_uk may be any odd parity function that is translationally invariant.Comment: 4 pages, no figure

Aggressive digital papillary adenocarcinoma and sentinel node biopsy: A case report and literature review.

Aggressive digital papillary adenocarcinomas (ADPA) are malignant tumours of the sweat gland. Due to the high tendency to recur and metastasise, wide local resection of the lesion is recommended. However, there are a limited number of cases reporting the use of sentinel node biopsy in the management of ADPA, thus its effectiveness remains unclear. We present a case of ADPA of the right middle finger treated with digital amputation and sentinel node biopsy, and review the current literature focusing on the usefulness of sentinel node biopsy

Forward and Adjoint Radiance Monte Carlo Models for Quantitative Photoacoustic Imaging

In quantitative photoacoustic imaging, the aim is to recover physiologically relevant tissue parameters such as chromophore concentrations or oxygen saturation. Obtaining accurate estimates is challenging due to the non-linear relationship between the concentrations and the photoacoustic images. Nonlinear least squares inversions designed to tackle this problem require a model of light transport, the most accurate of which is the radiative transfer equation. This paper presents a highly scalable Monte Carlo model of light transport that computes the radiance in 2D using a Fourier basis to discretise in angle. The model was validated against a 2D finite element model of the radiative transfer equation, and was used to compute gradients of an error functional with respect to the absorption and scattering coefficient. It was found that adjoint-based gradient calculations were much more robust to inherent Monte Carlo noise than a finite difference approach. Furthermore, the Fourier angular discretisation allowed very efficient gradient calculations as sums of Fourier coefficients. These advantages, along with the high parallelisability of Monte Carlo models, makes this approach an attractive candidate as a light model for quantitative inversion in photoacoustic imaging