Peritonitis. Some experimental and clinical observations on its pathology, prophylaxis and treatment

The impression conveyed to one from a rapid survey of the vast literature 011 the subject of Peritonitis is that this literature may be divided into two clearly defined and widely differing parts. The one part dealing with the experimental side of the subject,is chiefly concerned with physiological and pathological questions,and to a less degree with prophylactic measures for peritonltis; this part is highly scientific in its methods and design. The other part deals with the methods and the results of the surgical treatment of Peritonitis practised in various hospitals and this section bears for the most part singularly little relation to the former one. This separation and lack of co-operation between the experimental and the clinical workers on the subject has, one feels sure, retarded the progress of our treatment of Peritonitis. The work recorded in this thesis is an attempt to harmonise and to combine the methods of experimental research with those of clinical and practical therapeutics. Whilst this thesis treats essentially of the use of certain prophylactic and therapeutic measures for peritoneal infections, facts of a more purely pathological and bacteriological nature which were brought out during the research are ,however,also recorded and discussed

Hardware-in-the-loop tuning of a feedback controller for a buck converter using a GA

This paper presents a methodology for tuning a PID-based feedback controller for a buck converter using the ITAE controller performance index. The controller parameters are optimized to ensure that a reasonable transient response can be achieved whilst retaining stable operation. Experimental results demonstrate the versatility of the on-line tuning methodology

A cascaded H-bridge BLDC drive incorporating battery management

A multilevel BLDC drive is proposed using cascaded H-bridges with isolated sources to provide superior output waveforms and reduced current ripple whilst incorporating observer based SoC estimation. Energy management, based on SoC, is incorporated to improve battery performance, reduce variation between cells and to control charge/discharge profiles

Neural processing of imminent collision in humans

Detecting a looming object and its imminent collision is imperative to survival. For most humans, it is a fundamental aspect of daily activities such as driving, road crossing and participating in sport, yet little is known about how the brain both detects and responds to such stimuli. Here we use functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess neural response to looming stimuli in comparison with receding stimuli and motion-controlled static stimuli. We demonstrate for the first time that, in the human, the superior colliculus and the pulvinar nucleus of the thalamus respond to looming in addition to cortical regions associated with motor preparation. We also implicate the anterior insula in making timing computations for collision events

First-principles quantum dynamics in interacting Bose gases I: The positive P representation

The performance of the positive P phase-space representation for exact many-body quantum dynamics is investigated. Gases of interacting bosons are considered, where the full quantum equations to simulate are of a Gross-Pitaevskii form with added Gaussian noise. This method gives tractable simulations of many-body systems because the number of variables scales linearly with the spatial lattice size. An expression for the useful simulation time is obtained, and checked in numerical simulations. The dynamics of first-, second- and third-order spatial correlations are calculated for a uniform interacting 1D Bose gas subjected to a change in scattering length. Propagation of correlations is seen. A comparison is made to other recent methods. The positive P method is particularly well suited to open systems as no conservation laws are hard-wired into the calculation. It also differs from most other recent approaches in that there is no truncation of any kind.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables, IOP styl

The Effect of Natural Dissolved Organic Carbon on the Acute Toxicity of Copper to Larval Freshwater Mussels (\u3cem\u3eGlochidia\u3c/em\u3e)

The present study examined the effect of dissolved organic carbon (DOC), both added and inherent, on Cu toxicity in glochidia, the larvae of freshwater mussels. Using incremental additions of natural DOC concentrate and reconstituted water, a series of acute copper toxicity tests were conducted. An increase in DOC from 0.7 to 4.4 mg C/L resulted in a fourfold increase (36–150 μg Cu/L) in the 24-h median effective concentration (EC50) and a significant linear relationship (r2=0.98, p=0.0008) between the DOC concentration and the Cu EC50 of Lampsilis siliquoidea glochidia. The ameliorating effect of added DOC on Cu toxicity was confirmed using a second mussel species, the endangered (in Canada) Lampsilis fasciola. The effect of inherent (i.e., not added) DOC on Cu toxicity was also assessed in eight natural waters (DOC 5–15 mg C/L). These experiments revealed a significant relationship between the EC50 and the concentration of inherent DOC (r2=0.79, p=0.0031) with EC50s ranging from 27 to 111 μg Cu/L. These laboratory tests have demonstrated that DOC provides glochidia with significant protection from acute Cu toxicity. The potential risk that Cu poses to mussel populations was assessed by comparing Cu and DOC concentrations from significant mussel habitats in Ontario to the EC50s. Although overall mean Cu concentration in the mussel’s habitat was well below the acutely toxic level given the concentration of DOC, episodic Cu releases in low DOC waters may be a concern for the recovery of endangered freshwater mussels. The results are examined in the context of current Cu water quality regulations including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (U.S. EPA) biotic ligand model

A software process improvement lifecycle framework for the medical device industry

This paper describes a software process improvement framework to ensure regulatory compliance for the software developed in medical devices. Software is becoming an increasingly important aspect of medical devices and medical device regulation. Medical devices can only be marketed if compliance and approval from the appropriate regulatory bodies of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) [1] (US requirement), and the European Commission under its Medical Device Directives (MDD) [2] (CE marking requirement) is achieved. Integrated into the design process of medical devices, is the requirement of the production and maintenance of a device technical file, incorporating a design history file. Design history illustrates the well documented, defined and controlled processes and outputs, undertaken in the development of medical devices and for our particular consideration with this framework - the software components

When is Quantum Decoherence Dynamics Classical?

A direct classical analog of quantum decoherence is introduced. Similarities and differences between decoherence dynamics examined quantum mechanically and classically are exposed via a second-order perturbative treatment and via a strong decoherence theory, showing a strong dependence on the nature of the system-environment coupling. For example, for the traditionally assumed linear coupling, the classical and quantum results are shown to be in exact agreement.Comment: 5 pages, no figures, to appear in Physical Review Letter

The Heliogyro Reloaded

The heliogyro is a high-performance, spinning solar sail architecture that uses long - order of kilometers - reflective membrane strips to produce thrust from solar radiation pressure. The heliogyro s membrane blades spin about a central hub and are stiffened by centrifugal forces only, making the design exceedingly light weight. Blades are also stowed and deployed from rolls; eliminating deployment and packaging problems associated with handling extremely large, and delicate, membrane sheets used with most traditional square-rigged or spinning disk solar sail designs. The heliogyro solar sail concept was first advanced in the 1960s by MacNeal. A 15 km diameter version was later extensively studied in the 1970s by JPL for an ambitious Comet Halley rendezvous mission, but ultimately not selected due to the need for a risk-reduction flight demonstration. Demonstrating system-level feasibility of a large, spinning heliogyro solar sail on the ground is impossible; however, recent advances in microsatellite bus technologies, coupled with the successful flight demonstration of reflectance control technologies on the JAXA IKAROS solar sail, now make an affordable, small-scale heliogyro technology flight demonstration potentially feasible. In this paper, we will present an overview of the history of the heliogyro solar sail concept, with particular attention paid to the MIT 200-meter-diameter heliogyro study of 1989, followed by a description of our updated, low-cost, heliogyro flight demonstration concept. Our preliminary heliogyro concept (HELIOS) should be capable of demonstrating an order-of-magnitude characteristic acceleration performance improvement over existing solar sail demonstrators (HELIOS target: 0.5 to 1.0 mm/s2 at 1.0 AU); placing the heliogyro technology in the range required to enable a variety of science and human exploration relevant support missions

“some kind of thing it aint us but yet its in us”: David Mitchell, Russell Hoban, and metafiction after the millennium

This article appraises the debt that David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas owes to the novels of Russell Hoban, including, but not limited to, Riddley Walker. After clearly mapping a history of Hoban’s philosophical perspectives and Mitchell’s inter-textual genre-impersonation practice, the article assesses the degree to which Mitchell’s metatextual methods indicate a nostalgia for by-gone radical aesthetics rather than reaching for new modes of its own. The article not only proposes several new backdrops against which Mitchell’s novel can be read but also conducts the first in-depth appraisal of Mitchell’s formal linguistic replication of Riddley Walker