Interpolation Parameter and Expansion for the Three Dimensional Non-Trivial Scalar Infrared Fixed Point

We compute the non--trivial infrared $\phi^4_3$--fixed point by means of an interpolation expansion in fixed dimension. The expansion is formulated for an infinitesimal momentum space renormalization group. We choose a coordinate representation for the fixed point interaction in derivative expansion, and compute its coordinates to high orders by means of computer algebra. We compute the series for the critical exponent $\nu$ up to order twenty five of interpolation expansion in this representation, and evaluate it using \pade, Borel--\pade, Borel--conformal--\pade, and Dlog--\pade resummation. The resummation returns $0.6262(13)$ as the value of $\nu$.Comment: 29 pages, Latex2e, 2 Postscript figure

Is voice therapy an effective treatment for dysphonia? A randomised controlled trial

OBJECTIVES: To assess the overall efficacy of voice therapy for dysphonia. DESIGN: Single blind randomised controlled trial. SETTING: Outpatient clinic in a teaching hospital. Participants: 204 outpatients aged 17-87 with a primary symptom of persistent hoarseness for at least two months. INTERVENTIONS: After baseline assessments, patients were randomised to six weeks of either voice therapy or no treatment. Assessments were repeated at six weeks on the 145 (71%) patients who continued to this stage and at 12-14 weeks on the 133 (65%) patients who completed the study. The assessments at the three time points for the 70 patients who completed treatment and the 63 patients in the group given no treatment were compared. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Ratings of laryngeal features, Buffalo voice profile, amplitude and pitch perturbation, voice profile questionnaire, hospital anxiety and depression scale, clinical interview schedule, SF-36. RESULTS: Voice therapy improved voice quality as assessed by rating by patients (P=0.001) and rating by observer (P<0.001). The treatment effects for these two outcomes were 4.1 (95% confidence interval 1.7 to 6.6) points and 0.82 (0.50 to 1.13) points. Amplitude perturbation showed improvement at six weeks (P=0.005) but not on completion of the study. Patients with dysphonia had appreciable psychological distress and lower quality of life than controls, but voice therapy had no significant impact on either of these variables. CONCLUSION: Voice therapy is effective in improving voice quality as assessed by self rated and observer rated methods

Future capacity growth of energy technologies: are scenarios consistent with historical evidence?

Future scenarios of the energy system under greenhouse gas emission constraints depict dramatic growth in a range of energy technologies. Technological growth dynamics observed historically provide a useful comparator for these future trajectories. We find that historical time series data reveal a consistent relationship between how much a technology’s cumulative installed capacity grows, and how long this growth takes. This relationship between extent (how much) and duration (for how long) is consistent across both energy supply and end-use technologies, and both established and emerging technologies. We then develop and test an approach for using this historical relationship to assess technological trajectories in future scenarios. Our approach for “learning from the past” contributes to the assessment and verification of integrated assessment and energy-economic models used to generate quantitative scenarios. Using data on power generation technologies from two such models, we also find a consistent extent - duration relationship across both technologies and scenarios. This relationship describes future low carbon technological growth in the power sector which appears to be conservative relative to what has been evidenced historically. Specifically, future extents of capacity growth are comparatively low given the lengthy time duration of that growth. We treat this finding with caution due to the low number of data points. Yet it remains counter-intuitive given the extremely rapid growth rates of certain low carbon technologies under stringent emission constraints. We explore possible reasons for the apparent scenario conservatism, and find parametric or structural conservatism in the underlying models to be one possible explanation

Underground measurements on secondary cosmic rays

Measurements made at the Poatina cosmic ray station (41.8 S 149.9 E, 347 m.w.e.) from August 1983 to July 1984 are summarized. The cosmic ray primary particles responsible for events detected at the station have a median primary energy of 1.2 TeV. The motivation for part of this work came from the reported detection of narrow angle anisotropies in the arrival direction of cosmic rays

Universal scaling behavior at the upper critical dimension of non-equilibrium continuous phase transitions

In this work we analyze the universal scaling functions and the critical exponents at the upper critical dimension of a continuous phase transition. The consideration of the universal scaling behavior yields a decisive check of the value of the upper critical dimension. We apply our method to a non-equilibrium continuous phase transition. But focusing on the equation of state of the phase transition it is easy to extend our analysis to all equilibrium and non-equilibrium phase transitions observed numerically or experimentally.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Equation of State for Helium-4 from Microphysics

We compute the free energy of helium-4 near the lambda transition based on an exact renormalization-group equation. An approximate solution permits the determination of universal and nonuniversal thermodynamic properties starting from the microphysics of the two-particle interactions. The method does not suffer from infrared divergences. The critical chemical potential agrees with experiment. This supports a specific formulation of the functional integral that we have proposed recently. Our results for the equation of state reproduce the observed qualitative behavior. Despite certain quantitative shortcomings of our approximation, this demonstrates that ab initio calculations for collective phenomena become possible by modern renormalization-group methods.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, revtex updated version, journal referenc