Plasma waves near Saturn: Initial results from Voyager 1

The Voyager 1 encounter with Saturn provided the first opportunity to investigate plasma wave interactions in the magnetosphere of Saturn. An overview of the principal results from the Voyager 1 plasma wave instrument is presented starting with the initial detection of Saturn and ending about four weeks after closest approach. A survey plot of the electric field intensities detected during the Saturn encounter is shown starting shortly before the inbound shock crossing and ending shortly after the outbound magnetopause crossing. Many intense waves were observed in the vicinity of Saturn. To provide a framework for presenting the observations, the results are discussed more or less according to the sequence in which the data were obtained

Wear rate-state interactions within a multi-component system : a study of a gearbox accelerated life testing platform

The degradation process of complex multi-component systems is highly stochastic in nature. A major side effect of this complexity is that components of such systems may have unexpected reduced life and faults and failures that decrease the reliability of multi-component systems in industrial environments. In this work we provide maintenance practitioners with an explanation of the nature of some of these unpredictable events, namely the degradation interactions that take place between components. We begin by presenting a general wear model where the degradation process of a component may be dependent on the operating conditions, the component’s own state, and the state of the other components. We then present our methodology for extracting accurate health indicators from multi-component systems by means of a time-frequency domain analysis. Finally we present a multi-component system degradation analysis of experimental data generated by a gearbox accelerated life testing platform. In so doing, we demonstrate the importance of modelling the interactions between the system components by showing their effect on component lifetime reduction

The ResQu Index: A new instrument to appraise the quality of research on birth place

© 2017 Vedam et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Objective: Place of birth is a known determinant of health care outcomes, interventions and costs. Many studies have examined the maternal and perinatal outcomes when women plan to give birth in hospitals compared with births in birth centres or at home. However, these studies vary substantially in rigour; assessing their quality is challenging. Existing research appraisal tools do not always capture important elements of study design that are critical when comparing outcomes by planned place of birth. To address this deficiency, we aimed to develop a reliable instrument to rate the quality of primary research on maternal and newborn outcomes by place of birth. Study design: The instrument development process involved five phases: 1) generation of items and a weighted scoring system; 2) content validation via a quantitative survey and a modified Delphi process with an international, multi-disciplinary panel of experts; 3) inter-rater consistency; 4) alignment with established research appraisal tools; and 5) pilot-testing of instrument usability. Results: A Birth Place Research Quality Index (ResQu Index) was developed comprising 27 scored items that are summed to generate a weighted composite score out of 100 for studies comparing planned place of birth. Scale content validation indices were .89 for clarity, .94 for relevance and .90 for importance. The Index demonstrated substantial inter-rater consistency; pilot-testing confirmed feasibility and user-friendliness. Conclusion: The ResQu Index is a reliable instrument to evaluate the quality of design, methods and interpretation of reported outcomes from research about place of birth. Higher-scoring studies have greater potential to inform evidence-based selection of birth place by clinicians, policy makers, and women and their families. The Index can also guide the design of future research on place of birth

Plasma wave measurements for the Mariner to Venus and Mercury Final report of the Plasma Wave Instrument Science Advisory Team for the 1973 Mercury/Venus mission design

Very low frequency electric and magnetic wave measurements for Mariner Venus Mercury 1973 missio

Birth models of care and intervention rates: The impact of birth centres.

Birth centres offer a midwifery-led model of care which supports a non-medicalised approach to childbirth. They are often reported as having low rates of birth intervention, however the precise impact is obscured because less disadvantaged mothers with less complex pregnancies, and who prefer and often select little intervention, are more likely to choose a birth centre. In this paper, we use a methodology that purges the impact of these selection effects and provides a causal interpretation of the impact of birth centres on intervention outcomes. Using administrative birth data on over 364,000 births in Australia's most populous state between 2001 and 2012, we implement an instrumental variables framework to address confounding factors influencing choice of birth setting. We find that giving birth in a birth centre results in significantly lower probabilities of intervention, and that critically, this impact has been increasing over time. Our estimates are larger than those in existing studies, reflecting our newer data, diverging intervention rates across birth settings, and our accounting for important selection effects. The results emphasise the greater role of birth centres in delivering on policy priorities which include greater maternal autonomy, lower intervention rates, and lower health system costs

Separable and Low-Rank Continuous Games

In this paper, we study nonzero-sum separable games, which are continuous games whose payoffs take a sum-of-products form. Included in this subclass are all finite games and polynomial games. We investigate the structure of equilibria in separable games. We show that these games admit finitely supported Nash equilibria. Motivated by the bounds on the supports of mixed equilibria in two-player finite games in terms of the ranks of the payoff matrices, we define the notion of the rank of an n-player continuous game and use this to provide bounds on the cardinality of the support of equilibrium strategies. We present a general characterization theorem that states that a continuous game has finite rank if and only if it is separable. Using our rank results, we present an efficient algorithm for computing approximate equilibria of two-player separable games with fixed strategy spaces in time polynomial in the rank of the game

Rating players in test match cricket

In general, the evaluation of player performance in test cricket is based on measures such as batting and bowling averages. These measures have a number of limitations, among which is that they fail to take into account the context in which runs are made or conceded and wickets are taken or given away. Furthermore, batting and bowling averages do not allow the comparison of performances in these two disciplines; this is because batting and bowling performances are measured using different metrics. With these issues in mind, we develop a new player rating system for test cricket. We use multinomial logistic regression to model match outcome probabilities session by session. We then use these probabilities to measure the overall contribution of players to the match outcome based upon their individual batting, bowling and fielding contributions during each session. Our measure of contribution has the potential for rating players through over time and for determining the “best” player in a match, a series, or a calendar year. We use results from 104 matches (in 2010, 2011 and 2012) to illustrate the method

Tropical surface singularities

In this paper, we study tropicalisations of singular surfaces in toric threefolds. We completely classify singular tropical surfaces of maximal-dimensional type, show that they can generically have only finitely many singular points, and describe all possible locations of singular points. More precisely, we show that singular points must be either vertices, or generalized midpoints and baricenters of certain faces of singular tropical surfaces, and, in some cases, there may be additional metric restrictions to faces of singular tropical surfaces.Comment: A gap in the classification was closed. 37 pages, 29 figure

The cost of vaginal birth at home, in a birth centre or in a hospital setting in New South Wales: A micro-costing study

© 2019 Australian College of Midwives Background: Women want greater choice of place of birth in New South Wales, Australia. It is perceived to be more costly to health services for women with a healthy pregnancy to give birth at home or in a birth centre. It is not known how much it costs the health service to provide care for women planning to give birth in these settings. Aim: The aim of this study was to determine the direct cost of giving birth vaginally at home, in a birth centre or in a hospital for women at low risk of complications, in New South Wales. Methods: A micro-costing design was used. Observational (time and motion) and resource use data collection was undertaken to identify the staff time and resources required to provide care in a public hospital, birth centre or at home for women with a healthy pregnancy. Findings: The median cost of providing care for women who plan to give birth at home, in a birth centre and in a hospital were similar (AUD $2150.07,$2100.59 and $2097.30 respectively). Midwifery time was the largest contributor to the cost of birth at home, and overhead costs accounted for over half of the total cost of BC and hospital birth. The cost of consumables was low in all three settings. Conclusion: In this study, we have found there is little difference in the cost to the health service when a woman has an uncomplicated vaginal birth at home, in a birth centre or in a hospital setting

Modelling the cost of place of birth: a pathway analysis

Background In New South Wales (NSW), Australia there are three settings available for women at low risk of complications to give birth: home, birth centre and hospital. Between 2000 and 2012, 93.6% of babies were planned to be born in hospital, 6.0% in a birth centre and 0.4% at home. Availability of alternative birth settings is limited and the cost of providing birth at home or in a birth centre from the perspective of the health system is unknown. Objectives The objective of this study was to model the cost of the trajectories of women who planned to give birth at home, in a birth centre or in a hospital from the public sector perspective. Methods This was a population-based study using linked datasets from NSW, Australia. Women included met the following selection criteria: 37-41 completed weeks of pregnancy, spontaneous onset of labour, and singleton pregnancy at low risk of complications. We used a decision tree framework to depict the trajectories of these women and Australian Refined-Diagnosis Related Groups (AR-DRGs) were applied to each trajectory to estimate the cost of birth. A scenario analysis was undertaken to model the cost for 30 000 women in one year. Findings 496 387 women were included in the dataset. Twelve potential outcome pathways were identified and each pathway was costed using AR-DRGs. An overall cost was also calculated by place of birth: $AUD4802 for homebirth,$AUD4979 for a birth centre birth and $AUD5463 for a hospital birth. Conclusion The findings from this study provides some clarity into the financial saving of offering more options to women seeking an alternative to giving birth in hospital. Given the relatively lower rates of complex intervention and neonatal outcomes associated with women at low risk of complications, we can assume the cost of providing them with homebirth and birth centre options could be cost-effective