1,646 research outputs found
Interplay Between Time-Temperature-Transformation and the Liquid-Liquid Phase Transition in Water
We study the TIP5P water model proposed by Mahoney and Jorgensen, which is
closer to real water than previously-proposed classical pairwise additive
potentials. We simulate the model in a wide range of deeply supercooled states
and find (i) the existence of a non-monotonic ``nose-shaped'' temperature of
maximum density line and a non-reentrant spinodal, (ii) the presence of a low
temperature phase transition, (iii) the free evolution of bulk water to ice,
and (iv) the time-temperature-transformation curves at different densities.Comment: RevTeX4, 4 pages, 4 eps figure
The effects of a controlled worksite environmental intervention on determinants of dietary behavior and self-reported fruit, vegetable and fat intake
BACKGROUND: Eating patterns in Western industrialized countries are characterized by a high energy intake and an overconsumption of (saturated) fat, cholesterol, sugar and salt. Many chronic diseases are associated with unhealthy eating patterns. On the other hand, a healthy diet (low saturated fat intake and high fruit and vegetable intake) has been found important in the prevention of health problems, such as cancer and cardio-vascular disease (CVD). The worksite seems an ideal intervention setting to influence dietary behavior. The purpose of this study is to present the effects of a worksite environmental intervention on fruit, vegetable and fat intake and determinants of behavior. METHODS: A controlled trial that included two different governmental companies (n = 515): one intervention and one control company. Outcome measurements (short-fat list and fruit and vegetable questionnaire) took place at baseline and 3 and 12 months after baseline. The relatively modest environmental intervention consisted of product information to facilitate healthier food choices (i.e., the caloric (kcal) value of foods in groups of products was translated into the number of minutes to perform a certain (occupational) activity to burn these calories). RESULTS: Significant changes in psychosocial determinants of dietary behavior were found; subjects at the intervention worksite perceived more social support from their colleagues in eating less fat. But also counter intuitive effects were found: at 12 months the attitude and self-efficacy towards eating less fat became less positive in the intervention group. No effects were found on self-reported fat, fruit and vegetable intake. CONCLUSION: This environmental intervention was modestly effective in changing behavioral determinant towards eating less fat (social support, self-efficacy and attitude), but ineffective in positively changing actual fat, fruit and vegetable intake of office workers
Ab initio van der Waals interactions in simulations of water alter structure from mainly tetrahedral to high-density-like
The structure of liquid water at ambient conditions is studied in ab initio
molecular dynamics simulations using van der Waals (vdW) density-functional
theory, i.e. using the new exchange-correlation functionals optPBE-vdW and
vdW-DF2. Inclusion of the more isotropic vdW interactions counteracts highly
directional hydrogen-bonds, which are enhanced by standard functionals. This
brings about a softening of the microscopic structure of water, as seen from
the broadening of angular distribution functions and, in particular, from the
much lower and broader first peak in the oxygen-oxygen pair-correlation
function (PCF), indicating loss of structure in the outer solvation shells. In
combination with softer non-local correlation terms, as in the new
parameterization of vdW-DF, inclusion of vdW interactions is shown to shift the
balance of resulting structures from open tetrahedral to more close-packed. The
resulting O-O PCF shows some resemblance with experiment for high-density water
(A. K. Soper and M. A. Ricci, Phys. Rev. Lett., 84:2881, 2000), but not
directly with experiment for ambient water. However, an O-O PCF consisting of a
linear combination of 70% from vdW-DF2 and 30% from experiment on low-density
liquid water reproduces near-quantitatively the experimental O-O PCF for
ambient water, indicating consistency with a two-liquid model with fluctuations
between high- and low-density regions
Low-Lying Excited States and Low-Temperature Properties of an Alternating Spin-1 / Spin-1/2 Chain : A DMRG study
We report spin wave and DMRG studies of the ground and low-lying excited
states of uniform and dimerized alternating spin chains. The DMRG procedure is
also employed to obtain low-temperature thermodynamic properties of the system.
The ground state of a 2N spin system with spin-1 and spin-1/2 alternating from
site to site and interacting via an antiferromagnetic exchange is found to be
ferrimagnetic with total spin from both DMRG and spin wave analysis.
Both the studies also show that there is a gapless excitation to a state with
spin and a gapped excitation to a state with spin .
Surprisingly, the correlation length in the ground state is found to be very
small from both the studies for this gapless system. For this very reason, we
show that the ground state can be described by a variational ``ansatz'' of the
product type. DMRG analysis shows that the chain is susceptible to a
conditional spin-Peierls' instability. The DMRG studies of magnetization,
magnetic susceptibility () and specific heat show strong magnetic-field
dependence. The product shows a minimum as a function of
temperature() at low-magnetic fields and the minimum vanishes at
high-magnetic fields. This low-field behaviour is in agreement with earlier
experimental observations. The specific heat shows a maximum as a function of
temperature and the height of the maximum increases sharply at high magnetic
fields. It is hoped that these studies will motivate experimental studies at
high-magnetic fields.Comment: 22 pages in latex; 16 eps figures available upon reques
Prediction of Emerging Technologies Based on Analysis of the U.S. Patent Citation Network
The network of patents connected by citations is an evolving graph, which
provides a representation of the innovation process. A patent citing another
implies that the cited patent reflects a piece of previously existing knowledge
that the citing patent builds upon. A methodology presented here (i) identifies
actual clusters of patents: i.e. technological branches, and (ii) gives
predictions about the temporal changes of the structure of the clusters. A
predictor, called the {citation vector}, is defined for characterizing
technological development to show how a patent cited by other patents belongs
to various industrial fields. The clustering technique adopted is able to
detect the new emerging recombinations, and predicts emerging new technology
clusters. The predictive ability of our new method is illustrated on the
example of USPTO subcategory 11, Agriculture, Food, Textiles. A cluster of
patents is determined based on citation data up to 1991, which shows
significant overlap of the class 442 formed at the beginning of 1997. These new
tools of predictive analytics could support policy decision making processes in
science and technology, and help formulate recommendations for action
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The use of the Kalman filter in the automated segmentation of EIT lung images
In this paper, we present a new pipeline for the fast and accurate segmentation of impedance images of the lungs using electrical impedance tomography (EIT). EIT is an emerging, promising, non-invasive imaging modality that produces real-time, low spatial but high temporal resolution images of impedance inside a body. Recovering impedance itself constitutes a nonlinear ill-posed inverse problem, therefore the problem is usually linearized, which produces impedance-change images, rather than static impedance ones. Such images are highly blurry and fuzzy along object boundaries. We provide a mathematical reasoning behind the high suitability of the Kalman filter when it comes to segmenting and tracking conductivity changes in EIT lung images. Next, we use a two-fold approach to tackle the segmentation problem. First, we construct a global lung shape to restrict the search region of the Kalman filter. Next, we proceed with augmenting the Kalman filter by incorporating an adaptive foreground detection system to provide the boundary contours for the Kalman filter to carry out the tracking of the conductivity changes as the lungs undergo deformation in a respiratory cycle. The proposed method has been validated by using performance statistics such as misclassified area, and false positive rate, and compared to previous approaches. The results show that the proposed automated method can be a fast and reliable segmentation tool for EIT imaging
Dynamical Structure Factor for the Alternating Heisenberg Chain: A Linked Cluster Calculation
We develop a linked cluster method to calculate the spectral weights of
many-particle excitations at zero temperature. The dynamical structure factor
is expressed as a sum of exclusive structure factors, each representing
contributions from a given set of excited states. A linked cluster technique to
obtain high order series expansions for these quantities is discussed. We apply
these methods to the alternating Heisenberg chain around the dimerized limit
(), where complete wavevector and frequency dependent spectral
weights for one and two-particle excitations (continuum and bound-states) are
obtained. For small to moderate values of the inter-dimer coupling parameter
, these lead to extremely accurate calculations of the dynamical
structure factors. We also examine the variation of the relative spectral
weights of one and two-particle states with bond alternation all the way up to
the limit of the uniform chain (). In agreement with Schmidt and
Uhrig, we find that the spectral weight is dominated by 2-triplet states even
at , which implies that a description in terms of triplet-pair
excitations remains a good quantitative description of the system even for the
uniform chain.Comment: 26 pages, 17 figure
THE ROLE OF INTERDEPENDENCE IN THE MICRO-FOUNDATIONS OF ORGANIZATION DESIGN: TASK, GOAL, AND KNOWLEDGE INTERDEPENDENCE
Interdependence is a core concept in organization design, yet one that has remained consistently understudied. Current notions of interdependence remain rooted in seminal works, produced at a time when managers’ near-perfect understanding of the task at hand drove the organization design process. In this context, task interdependence was rightly assumed to be exogenously determined by characteristics of the work and the technology. We no longer live in that world, yet our view of interdependence has remained exceedingly task-centric and our treatment of interdependence overly deterministic. As organizations face increasingly unpredictable workstreams and workers co-design the organization alongside managers, our field requires a more comprehensive toolbox that incorporates aspects of agent-based interdependence. In this paper, we synthesize research in organization design, organizational behavior, and other related literatures to examine three types of interdependence that characterize organizations’ workflows: task, goal, and knowledge interdependence. We offer clear definitions for each construct, analyze how each arises endogenously in the design process, explore their interrelations, and pose questions to guide future research
Decision aids for respite service choices by carers of people with dementia: development and pilot RCT
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Decision aids are often used to assist individuals confronted with a diagnosis of a serious illness to make decisions about treatment options. However, they are rarely utilised to help those with chronic or age related conditions to make decisions about care services. Decision aids should also be useful for carers of people with decreased decisional capacity. These carers' choices must balance health outcomes for themselves and for salient others with relational and value-based concerns, while relying on information from health professionals. This paper reports on a study that both developed and pilot tested a decision aid aimed at assisting carers to make evaluative judgements of community services, particularly respite care.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A mixed method sequential study, involving qualitative development and a pilot randomised controlled trial, was conducted in Tasmania, Australia. We undertook 13 semi-structured interviews and three focus groups to inform the development of the decision aid. For the randomised control trial we randomly assigned 31 carers of people with dementia to either receive the service decision aid at the start or end of the study. The primary outcome was measured by comparing the difference in carer burden between the two groups three months after the intervention group received the decision aid. Pilot data was collected from carers using interviewer-administered questionnaires at the commencement of the project, two weeks and 12 weeks later.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The qualitative data strongly suggest that the intervention provides carers with needed decision support. Most carers felt that the decision aid was useful. The trial data demonstrated that, using the mean change between baseline and three month follow-up, the intervention group had less increase in burden, a decrease in decisional conflict and increased knowledge compared to control group participants.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>While these results must be interpreted with caution due to the small sample size, all intervention results trend in a direction that is beneficial for carers and their decisional ability. Mixed method data suggest the decision aid provides decisional support that carers do not otherwise receive. Decision aids may prove useful in a community health services context.</p> <p>Trial registration number</p> <p>ISRCTN: <a href="http://www.controlled-trials.com/ISRCTN32163031">ISRCTN32163031</a></p
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