61,006 research outputs found
Similarity Renormalization Group for Few-Body Systems
Internucleon interactions evolved via flow equations yield soft potentials
that lead to rapid variational convergence in few-body systems.Comment: 3 pages, 6 figures. To appear in the proceedings of the 20th European
Conference on Few-Body Problems in Physics (EFB20), Pisa, September 10-14,
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Beating heart coronary surgery and renal function: a prospective randomised study (Presented at 18th Spring Meeting of the Association of Cardiothoracic Anaesthetists: Selected abstracts, Cambridge, UK. 22 June 2001)
Introduction
Cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) is widely regarded as an important contributor to renal failure, a well recognised complication, following coronary artery surgery (CABG). Off-pump coronary surgery (OPCAB) is intuitively considered renoprotective. We examine the extent of renal glomerular and tubular injury in low-risk patients undergoing either OPCAB or on-pump coronary artery bypass (ONCAB).Methods
Forty patients awaiting elective CABG were prospectively randomized into those undergoing OPCAB (n = 20) and ONCAB (n = 20). Table 1 illustrates the exclusion criteria. Glomerular and tubular injury were assessed, respectively, by urinary excretion of microalbumin and retinol binding protein (RBP) indexed to urinary creatinine [1]. Daily measurements were made from admission to postoperative day 5. Fluid balance, serum creati-nine and blood urea were also monitored.
Results
No mortality or renal complication was observed. Both groups had similar demographic make-up. The OPCAB group received fewer coronary grafts than their counterparts (1.8 versus 2.8; P = 0.002). Serum creatinine and blood urea remained normal in both groups throughout the study. A dramatic and similar rise in mean ± 2SD urinary RBP:creatinine ratio occurred in both groups peaking on day 1 (3183 ± 2534 versus 4035 ± 4078; P = 0.43) before returning to baseline levels. These trends were also observed with the urinary microalbumin:creatinine ratio (5.05 ± 2.66 versus 6.77 ± 5.76; P = 0.22). ONCAB patients had a significantly more negative fluid balance on postoperative day 2 (-183 ± 1118 versus 637 ± 847 ml; P < 0.05).
Conclusions
Although renal dysfunction did not clinically occur in any patient, sensitive indicators revealed significant and similar injury to both renal tubules and glomeruli following either OPCAB or ONCAB. These suggest that avoidance of CPB per se does not offer additional renoprotection to patients at low risk of perioperative renal insult during CABG
Accretion Disks Around Black Holes: Twenty Five Years Later
We study the progress of the theory of accretion disks around black holes in
last twenty five years and explain why advective disks are the best bet in
explaining varied stationary and non-stationary observations from black hole
candidates. We show also that the recently proposed advection dominated flows
are incorrect.Comment: 30 Latex pages including figures. Kluwer Style files included.
Appearing in `Observational Evidence for Black Holes in the Universe', ed.
Sandip K. Chakrabarti, Kluwer Academic Publishers (DORDRECHT: Holland
Vision-Based Autonomous Landing of a Quadrotor on the Perturbed Deck of an Unmanned Surface Vehicle
Autonomous landing on the deck of an unmanned surface vehicle (USV) is still a major challenge for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). In this paper, a fiducial marker is located on the platform so as to facilitate the task since it is possible to retrieve its six-degrees of freedom relative-pose in an easy way. To compensate interruption in the marker’s observations, an extended Kalman filter (EKF) estimates the current USV’s position with reference to the last known position. Validation experiments have been performed in a simulated environment under various marine conditions. The results confirmed that the EKF provides estimates accurate enough to direct the UAV in proximity of the autonomous vessel such that the marker becomes visible again. Using only the odometry and the inertial measurements for the estimation, this method is found to be applicable even under adverse weather conditions in the absence of the global positioning system
Computing a rectilinear shortest path amid splinegons in plane
We reduce the problem of computing a rectilinear shortest path between two
given points s and t in the splinegonal domain \calS to the problem of
computing a rectilinear shortest path between two points in the polygonal
domain. As part of this, we define a polygonal domain \calP from \calS and
transform a rectilinear shortest path computed in \calP to a path between s and
t amid splinegon obstacles in \calS. When \calS comprises of h pairwise
disjoint splinegons with a total of n vertices, excluding the time to compute a
rectilinear shortest path amid polygons in \calP, our reduction algorithm takes
O(n + h \lg{n}) time. For the special case of \calS comprising of concave-in
splinegons, we have devised another algorithm in which the reduction procedure
does not rely on the structures used in the algorithm to compute a rectilinear
shortest path in polygonal domain. As part of these, we have characterized few
of the properties of rectilinear shortest paths amid splinegons which could be
of independent interest
Literasi Kaum Muda Tentang Good Governance Melalui Isu Korupsi Di Televisi
: Politics, for young people, is mostly uninteresting. But the large amount of television news coverage on corruption cases could be used to study the literacy of youth about good governance. This research is using mix-method and examining 89 respondents and 12 informants in Kelurahan Panembahan and Gowongan Yogyakarta which are differentiated by socio-economic characteristics. Cross-tabulation and coding model are used for analysis. According to young people the government has bad performance due to various corruption cases that affect the governance embodiment. The uses of numerous medium to obtain information could help the youth to have high literacy about good governance
Commercial property markets and property cycles in Chinese cities
This paper uses interview data to explore and examines property markets in three
Chinese cities with the focus placed on the emergence of the commercial property
markets and the government-market interplay, noting the market formation process
and cycles that are ‘unexpected’ in a transitional economy. The research identified
varying opinions and perceptions among key stake-holders about cycles in China’s
emerging commercial property markets. Interviews in the three cities suggested a
spectrum of factors that may substantially affect the stability of China’s office
markets. A cross-sectional comparison of the three cities has revealed a similar
pattern of cyclical behaviour highlighting structural change and state intervention with
leads-and-lags, in spite of the dispersion in geography, culture and market maturity.
The various views offered about market mechanism and cyclical behaviour represent
varying levels of market maturity. These brief insights offer an opportunity to develop
an alternative approach to measure property market conditions in emerging or
immature markets such as China.published_or_final_versio
Regulatory Matters Affecting Distribution Planning with Distributed Generation
Session 6 : Challenges for DOSs in new business environments - Block 2 – Development of regulation: paper no. 0358published_or_final_versio
Morse homology for the heat flow
We use the heat flow on the loop space of a closed Riemannian manifold to
construct an algebraic chain complex. The chain groups are generated by
perturbed closed geodesics. The boundary operator is defined in the spirit of
Floer theory by counting, modulo time shift, heat flow trajectories that
converge asymptotically to nondegenerate closed geodesics of Morse index
difference one.Comment: 89 pages, 3 figure
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