The generic design of a high-traffic advanced metering infrastructure using ZigBee

A multi-interface ZigBee building area network (MIZBAN) for a high-traffic advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) for high-rise buildings was developed. This supports meter management functions such as Demand Response for smart grid applications. To cater for the high-traffic communication in these building area networks (BANs), a multi-interface management framework was defined and designed to coordinate the operation between multiple interfaces based on a newly defined tree-based mesh (T-Mesh) ZigBee topology, which supports both mesh and tree routing in a single network. To evaluate MIZBAN, an experiment was set up in a five-floor building. Based on the measured data, simulations were performed to extend the analysis to a 23-floor building. These revealed that MIZBAN yields an improvement in application-layer latency of the backbone and the floor network by 75% and 67%, respectively. This paper provides the design engineer with seven recommendations for a generic MIZBAN design, which will fulfill the requirement for demand response by the U.S. government, i.e. a latency of less than 0.25 s.http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=9424hb201

CKM Favored Semileptonic Decays of Heavy Hadrons at Zero Recoil

We study the properties of Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) favored semileptonic decays of mesons and baryons containing a heavy quark at the point of no recoil. We first use a diagrammatic analysis to rederive the result observed by earlier authors that at this kinematic point the $B$ meson decays via $b\to c$ transitions can only produce a $D$ or $D^*$ meson. The result is generalized to include photon emissions which violate heavy quark flavor symmetry. We show that photons emitted by the heavy quarks and the charged lepton are the only light particles that can decorate the decays $\bar{B}\to D(D^*) + \ell\nu$ at zero recoil, and the similar processes of heavy baryons. Implications for the determinations of the CKM parameter $V_{cb}$ are discussed. Also studied in this paper is the connection between our diagrammatic analysis of suppression of particle emission and the formal observation based on weak currents at zero recoil being generators of heavy quark symmetry. We show that the two approaches can be unified by considering the Isgur-Wise function in the presence of an external source.Comment: 27 pages, including 11 figures using macros FEYNMAN.te

Chiral Lagrangians for Radiative Decays of Heavy Hadrons

The radiative decays of heavy mesons and heavy baryons are studied in a formalism which incorporates both the heavy quark symmetry and the chiral symmetry. The chiral Lagrangians for the electromagnetic interactions of heavy hadrons consist of two pieces: one from gauging electromagnetically the strong-interaction chiral Lagrangian, and the other from the anomalous magnetic moment interactions of the heavy baryons and mesons. Due to the heavy quark spin symmetry, the latter contains only one independent coupling constant in the meson sector and two in the baryon sector. These coupling constants only depend on the light quarks and can be calculated in the nonrelativistic quark model. However, the charm quark is not heavy enough and the contribution from its magnetic moment must be included. Applications to the radiative decays $D^\ast \rightarrow D \gamma~,~B^\ast \rightarrow B \gamma~,~ \Xi^\prime_c \rightarrow \Xi_c \gamma~, \Sigma_c \rightarrow \Lambda_c \gamma$ and $\Sigma_c \rightarrow \Lambda_c \pi \gamma$ are given. Together with our previous results on the strong decay rates of $D^\ast \rightarrow D \pi$ and $\Sigma_c \rightarrow \Lambda_c \pi$, predictions are obtained for the total widths and branching ratios of $D^\ast$ and $\Sigma_c$. The decays $\Sigma^+_c \rightarrow \Lambda^+_c \pi^0 \gamma$ and $\Sigma^0_c \rightarrow \Lambda^+_c \pi^- \gamma$ are discussed to illustrate the important roles played by both the heavy quark symmetry and the chiral symmetry.Comment: 30 pages (one figure, available on request), CLNS 92/1158 and IP-ASTP-13-9

Corrections to Chiral Dynamics of Heavy Hadrons: (I) 1/M Correction

In earlier publications we have analyzed the strong and radiative decays of heavy hadrons in a formalism which incorporates both heavy-quark and chiral symmetries. In particular, we have derived a heavy-hadron chiral Lagrangian whose coupling constants are related by the heavy-quark flavor-spin symmetry arising from the QCD Lagrangian with infinitely massive quarks. In this paper, we re-examine the structure of the above chiral Lagrangian by including the effects of $1/m_Q$ corrections in the heavy quark effective theory. The relations among the coupling constants, originally derived in the heavy-quark limit, are modified by heavy quark symmetry breaking interactions in QCD. Some of the implications are discussed.Comment: PHYZZX, 45 pages, 1 figure (not included), CLNS 93/1192, IP-ASTP-02-93, ITP-SB-93-0

Effective Lagrangian Approach to Weak Radiative Decays of Heavy Hadrons

Motivated by the observation of the decay $\bar{B}\to \bar{K}^*\gamma$ by CLEO, we have systematically analyzed the two-body weak radiative decays of bottom and charmed hadrons. There exist two types of weak radiative decays: One proceeds through the short-distance $b\to s\gamma$ transition and the other occurs through $W$-exchange accompanied by a photon emission. Effective Lagrangians are derived for the $W$-exchange bremsstrahlung processes at the quark level and then applied to various weak electromagnetic decays of heavy hadrons. Predictions for the branching ratios of $\bar{B}^0\to D^{*0} \gamma,~\Lambda_b^0\to\Sigma_c^0\gamma,~\Xi_b^0\to \Xi_c^0\gamma$ and \Xi_b^0\to\xip_c^0\gamma are given. In particular, we found ${\cal B}(\bar{B}^0 \to D^{*0}\gamma)\approx 0.9\times 10^{-6}$. Order of magnitude estimates for the weak radiative decays of charmed hadrons: $~D^0\to \bar{K}^{*0}\gamma,~\Lambda_c^+\to\Sigma^+\gamma$ and $\Xi_c^0\to\Xi^0\gamma$ are also presented. Within this approach, the decay asymmetry for antitriplet to antitriplet heavy baryon weak radiative transitions is uniquely predicted by heavy quark symmetry. The electromagnetic penguin contribution to $\Lambda_b^0\to\Lambda\gamma$ is estimated by two different methods and its branching ratio is found to be of order $1\times 10^{-5}$. We conclude that weak radiative decays of bottom hadrons are dominated by the short-distance $b\to s\gamma$ mechanism.Comment: 28 pages + 3 figures (not included), CLNS 94/1278, IP-ASTP-04-94. [Main changes in this revised version: (i) Sect 2 and subsection 4.1 are revised, (ii) A MIT bag method for calculating the decay rate of $Lambda_b \to\Lambda+gamma$ is presented, (iii) All predictions are updated using the newly available 1994 Particle Data Group, and (iv) Appendix and subsections 3.3 and 4.4 are deleted.

Eficacia de una vía de alta resolución en la evaluación del cólico renoureteral no complicado en un servicio de urgencias hospitalario: un ensayo clínico aleatorizado (Estudio STONE).

Objetivo. Evaluar una vía de alta resolución (vía POC) que utiliza análisis en el punto de atención (point-of-care testing –POCT–) y ecografía en el punto de atención (point-of-care ultrasonography –POCUS–) en la sospecha del cólico renoureteral (CRU) no complicado y compararla con la vía estándar (vía STD). Método. Ensayo clínico aleatorizado, controlado, no ciego, realizado en un servicio de urgencias hospitalario (SUH). Incluyó pacientes con sospecha clínica de CRU agudo y se aleatorizaron 1:1 a seguir vía POC o vía STD. Se analizó el tiempo de estancia en el SUH, el tratamiento administrado, la proporción de diagnósticos alternativos a CRU y las complicaciones a 30 días. Resultados. Entre noviembre de 2018 y octubre de 2019, se reclutaron 140 pacientes de los que se analizaron 124. El tiempo de estancia total en el SUH de la vía POC fue de 112 minutos (DE 45) y en la vía STD 244 minutos (DE 102) (p < 0,001). No hubo diferencias en el tratamiento administrado en urgencias, en el número de diagnósticos alternativos, ni en las complicaciones a 30 días. Conclusiones. La utilización de una vía de alta resolución del manejo del CRU en un SUH es eficaz, segura y reduce el tiempo de estancia en urgencias.post-print225 K

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals &lt;1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data