Patient-maintained sedation for oral surgery using a target-controlled infusion of propofol - a pilot study

OBJECTIVE: To assess the safety and efficacy of a new patient-maintained propofol system for conscious sedation in dentistry. DESIGN: Prospective clinical trial SETTING: Department of Sedation, Glasgow Dental Hospital and School, 2001 SUBJECTS AND METHODS: Patients scheduled for oral surgery with conscious sedation. Exclusions included ASA IV -V, inability to use the handset, opioid use and severe respiratory disease. INTERVENTIONS: Patients were given intravenous propofol to a level of 1.0 microg/ml (reducing from 1.5 microg/ml) using a target controlled infusion system, they then controlled their sedation level by double-clicking a handset which on each activation increased the propofol concentration by 0.2 microg/ml. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Oxygen saturation, patient satisfaction, and surgeon satisfaction. RESULTS: Twenty patients were recruited, 16 female and four male. Nineteen patients completed sedation and treatment successfully. Mean lowest oxygen saturation was 94%. No patients were over-sedated. All patients successfully used the system to maintain a level of sedation adequate for their comfort. Patient and surgeon satisfaction were consistently high. CONCLUSIONS: Initial experience with this novel system has confirmed safety, patient satisfaction and surgeon satisfaction

An efficient semiparametric maxima estimator of the extremal index

The extremal index $\theta$, a measure of the degree of local dependence in the extremes of a stationary process, plays an important role in extreme value analyses. We estimate $\theta$ semiparametrically, using the relationship between the distribution of block maxima and the marginal distribution of a process to define a semiparametric model. We show that these semiparametric estimators are simpler and substantially more efficient than their parametric counterparts. We seek to improve efficiency further using maxima over sliding blocks. A simulation study shows that the semiparametric estimators are competitive with the leading estimators. An application to sea-surge heights combines inferences about $\theta$ with a standard extreme value analysis of block maxima to estimate marginal quantiles.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures. Minor edits made to version 1 prior to journal publication. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10687-015-0221-

A fitting formula for the non-Gaussian contribution to the lensing power spectrum covariance

Weak gravitational lensing is one of the most promising tools to investigate the equation-of-state of dark energy. In order to obtain reliable parameter estimations for current and future experiments, a good theoretical understanding of dark matter clustering is essential. Of particular interest is the statistical precision to which weak lensing observables, such as cosmic shear correlation functions, can be determined. We construct a fitting formula for the non-Gaussian part of the covariance of the lensing power spectrum. The Gaussian contribution to the covariance, which is proportional to the lensing power spectrum squared, and optionally shape noise can be included easily by adding their contributions. Starting from a canonical estimator for the dimensionless lensing power spectrum, we model first the covariance in the halo model approach including all four halo terms for one fiducial cosmology and then fit two polynomials to the expression found. On large scales, we use a first-order polynomial in the wave-numbers and dimensionless power spectra that goes asymptotically towards $1.1 C_{pt}$ for $\ell \to 0$, i.e., the result for the non-Gaussian part of the covariance using tree-level perturbation theory. On the other hand, for small scales we employ a second-order polynomial in the dimensionless power spectra for the fit. We obtain a fitting formula for the non-Gaussian contribution of the convergence power spectrum covariance that is accurate to 10% for the off-diagonal elements, and to 5% for the diagonal elements, in the range $50 \lesssim \ell \lesssim 5000$ and can be used for single source redshifts $z_{s} \in [0.5,2.0]$ in WMAP5-like cosmologies.Comment: 23 pages, 15 figures, submitted to A&

A redshift distortion free correlation function at third order in the nonlinear regime

The zeroth-order component of the cosine expansion of the projected three-point correlation function is proposed for clustering analysis of cosmic large scale structure. These functions are third order statistics but can be measured similarly to the projected two-point correlations. Numerical experiments with N-body simulations indicate that the advocated statistics are redshift distortion free within 10% in the non-linear regime on scales ~0.2-10Mpc/h. Halo model prediction of the zeroth-order component of the projected three-point correlation function agrees with simulations within ~10%. This lays the ground work for using these functions to perform joint analyses with the projected two-point correlation functions, exploring galaxy clustering properties in the framework of the halo model and relevant extensions.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figs; MNRAS accepte

The Impact of Non-Gaussian Errors on Weak Lensing Surveys

The weak lensing power spectrum carries cosmological information via its dependence on the growth of structure and on geometric factors. Since much of the cosmological information comes from scales affected by nonlinear clustering, measurements of the lensing power spectrum can be degraded by non-Gaussian covariances. Recently there have been conflicting studies about the level of this degradation. We use the halo model to estimate it and include new contributions related to the finite size of lensing surveys, following Rimes and Hamilton's study of 3D simulations. We find that non-Gaussian correlations between different multipoles can degrade the cumulative signal-to-noise for the power spectrum amplitude by up to a factor of 2 (or 5 for a worst-case model that exceeds current N-body simulation predictions). However, using an eight-parameter Fisher analysis we find that the marginalized errors on individual parameters are degraded by less than 10% (or 20% for the worst-case model). The smaller degradation in parameter accuracy is primarily because: individual parameters in a high-dimensional parameter space are degraded much less than the volume of the full Fisher ellipsoid; lensing involves projections along the line of sight, which reduce the non-Gaussian effect; some of the cosmological information comes from geometric factors which are not degraded at all. We contrast our findings with those of Lee & Pen (2008) who suggested a much larger degradation in information content. Finally, our results give a useful guide for exploring survey design by giving the cosmological information returns for varying survey area, depth and the level of some systematic errors.Comment: To appear in MNRAS, 22 pages, 12 figures. Minor modifications made according to the referee comment

Automated metamorphic testing on the analyses of feature models

Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Context: A feature model (FM) represents the valid combinations of features in a domain. The automated extraction of information from FMs is a complex task that involves numerous analysis operations, techniques and tools. Current testing methods in this context are manual and rely on the ability of the tester to decide whether the output of an analysis is correct. However, this is acknowledged to be time-consuming, error-prone and in most cases infeasible due to the combinatorial complexity of the analyses, this is known as the oracle problem.Objective: In this paper, we propose using metamorphic testing to automate the generation of test data for feature model analysis tools overcoming the oracle problem. An automated test data generator is presented and evaluated to show the feasibility of our approach.Method: We present a set of relations (so-called metamorphic relations) between input FMs and the set of products they represent. Based on these relations and given a FM and its known set of products, a set of neighbouring FMs together with their corresponding set of products are automatically generated and used for testing multiple analyses. Complex FMs representing millions of products can be efficiently created by applying this process iteratively.Results: Our evaluation results using mutation testing and real faults reveal that most faults can be automatically detected within a few seconds. Two defects were found in FaMa and another two in SPLOT, two real tools for the automated analysis of feature models. Also, we show how our generator outperforms a related manual suite for the automated analysis of feature models and how this suite can be used to guide the automated generation of test cases obtaining important gains in efficiency.Conclusion: Our results show that the application of metamorphic testing in the domain of automated analysis of feature models is efficient and effective in detecting most faults in a few seconds without the need for a human oracle.This work has been partially supported by the European Commission(FEDER)and Spanish Government under CICYT project SETI(TIN2009-07366)and the Andalusian Government project ISABEL(TIC-2533)

Effects of halo substructure on the power spectrum and bispectrum

We study the effects of halo substructure and a distribution in the concentration parameter of haloes on large-scale structure statistics. The effects on the power spectrum and bispectrum are studied on the smallest scales accessible from future surveys. We compare halo-model predictions with results based on N-body simulations, but also extend our predictions to 10-kpc scales which will be probed by future simulations. We find that weak-lensing surveys proposed for the coming decade can probe the power spectrum on small enough scales to detect substructure in massive haloes. We discuss the prospects of constraining the mass fraction in substructure in view of partial degeneracies with parameters such as the tilt and running of the primordial power spectrum.Comment: 9 pages, 10 figures; replaced with version published in MNRAS; removed grey-scale versions of figures which were being included at the end by the serve

Self calibration of photometric redshift scatter in weak lensing surveys

Photo-z errors, especially catastrophic errors, are a major uncertainty for precision weak lensing cosmology. We find that the shear-(galaxy number) density and density-density cross correlation measurements between photo-z bins, available from the same lensing surveys, contain valuable information for self-calibration of the scattering probabilities between the true-z and photo-z bins. The self-calibration technique we propose does not rely on cosmological priors nor parameterization of the photo-z probability distribution function, and preserves all of the cosmological information available from shear-shear measurement. We estimate the calibration accuracy through the Fisher matrix formalism. We find that, for advanced lensing surveys such as the planned stage IV surveys, the rate of photo-z outliers can be determined with statistical uncertainties of 0.01-1% for $z<2$ galaxies. Among the several sources of calibration error that we identify and investigate, the {\it galaxy distribution bias} is likely the most dominant systematic error, whereby photo-z outliers have different redshift distributions and/or bias than non-outliers from the same bin. This bias affects all photo-z calibration techniques based on correlation measurements. Galaxy bias variations of $O(0.1)$ produce biases in photo-z outlier rates similar to the statistical errors of our method, so this galaxy distribution bias may bias the reconstructed scatters at several-$\sigma$ level, but is unlikely to completely invalidate the self-calibration technique.Comment: v2: 19 pages, 10 figures. Added one figure. Expanded discussions. Accepted to MNRA

Multicolor Photometry Study of the Galaxy Cluster A2589: Dynamics, Luminosity Function and Star Formation History

In this paper we present a multicolor photometry for A2589 ($z=0.0414$) with 15 intermediate bands in the Beijing-Arizona-Taiwan-Connecticut (BATC) system which covers an optical wavelength range from 3000 \AA\ to 10000 \AA. The spectral energy distributions (SEDs) for more than 5000 sources are achieved down to {\it V} $\sim$ 20 mag in about 1 deg$^{2}$ field. A2589 has been also covered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) in photometric mode only. A cross-identification of the BATC-detected galaxies with the SDSS photometric catalog achieves 1199 galaxies brighter than $i=19.5$ mag, among which 68 member galaxies with known spectroscopic redshifts are found. After combining the SDSS five-band photometric data and the BATC SEDs, the technique of photometric redshift is applied to these galaxies for selecting faint member galaxies. The color-magnitude relation is taken as a further restriction of early-type cluster galaxies. As a result, 106 galaxies are newly selected as member galaxies. Spatial distribution of member galaxies shows a north-south elongation which agrees with the X-ray brightness profile and the orientation of central cD galaxy, NGC 7647. No substructures are detected on the basis of positions and radial velocities of cluster galaxies, indicating that A2589 is a well-relaxed system. The luminosity function of A2589 exhibits a peak at $M_{R} \sim -20$ mag and a dip at $M_{R} \sim -19$ mag. The low-density outer regions are the preferred habitat of faint galaxies. With the evolutionary population synthesis model, PEGASE, the environmental effect on the star formation properties for 68 spectroscopically confirmed member galaxies is studied. The outlier faint galaxies tend to have longer time scales of star formation, shorter mean stellar ages, and lower metallicities of interstellar medium, which can be interpreted in the context of hierarchical cosmological scenario.Comment: 2011 Accepted to A

ROSAT X-ray sources in the field of the LMC I.Total LMC gas from the background AGN spectral fits

We analyzed a sample of 26 background X-ray sources in a ~60 square degree field of the Large Magellanic Cloud observed with the ROSAT PSPC. The sample has been selected from previously classified and optically identified X-ray sources. In addition pointlike and spectrally hard sources with at least 100 to 200 observed counts have been used for the analysis. We performed X-ray spectral fitting and derived total hydrogen absorbing column densities due to LMC gas in the range 10^20 - 2. 10^21 cm^-2. We compared these columns with the HI columns derived from a 21-cm Parkes survey of the LMC. For 7 optically identified sources we find, within the uncertainties derived from the X-ray spectral fit, agreement for both columns. For further 19 sources we constrain the LMC columns from the X-ray spectral fit assuming that the powerlaw photon index is that of AGN type spectra. We derive for 20 sources gas columns which are within the uncertainties in agreement with the HI columns. We derive for two background sources (RX J0536.9-6913 and RX J0547.0-7040) hydrogen absorbing column densities due to LMC gas, which are in excess to the HI columns. These sources - located in regions of large (~3. 10^21 cm^-2) LMC HI column densities - could be seen through additional gas which may be warm and diffuse, cold or molecular. For 10 sources we derive upper limits for the gas columns additional to HI and constrain the molecular mass fraction to <(30-140)%.Comment: Accepted by A&