Cascaded transformerless DC-DC voltage amplifier with optically isolated switching devices

A very high voltage amplifier is provided in which plural cascaded banks of capacitors are switched by optically isolated control switches so as to be charged in parallel from the preceding stage or capacitor bank and to discharge in series to the succeeding stage or capacitor bank in alternating control cycles. The optically isolated control switches are controlled by a logic controller whose power supply is virtually immune to interference from the very high voltage output of the amplifier by the optical isolation provided by the switches, so that a very high voltage amplification ratio may be attained using many capacitor banks in cascade

Transparency Trade-Offs: Priority Setting, Scarcity, and Health Fairness

This chapter argues that rather than viewing transparency as a right, we should regard it as a finite resource whose allocation involves tradeoffs. It then argues that those tradeoffs should be resolved by using a multi-principle approach to distributive justice. The relevant principles include maximizing welfare, maximizing autonomy, and giving priority to the worst off. Finally, it examines some of the implications for law of recognizing the tradeoffs presented by transparency proposals

Justice and Public Health

This chapter discusses how justice applies to public health. It begins by outlining three different metrics employed in discussions of justice: resources, capabilities, and welfare. It then discusses different accounts of justice in distribution, reviewing utilitarianism, egalitarianism, prioritarianism, and sufficientarianism, as well as desert-based theories, and applies these distributive approaches to public health examples. Next, it examines the interplay between distributive justice and individual rights, such as religious rights, property rights, and rights against discrimination, by discussing examples such as mandatory treatment and screening. The chapter also examines the nexus between public health and debates concerning whose interests matter to justice (the “scope of justice”), including global justice, intergenerational justice, and environmental justice, as well as debates concerning whether justice applies to individual choices or only to institutional structures (the “site of justice”). The chapter closes with a discussion of strategies, including deliberative and aggregative democracy, for adjudicating disagreements about justice

Sample positioning in microgravity

Repulsion forces arising from laser beams are provided to produce mild positioning forces on a sample in microgravity vacuum environments. The system of the preferred embodiment positions samples using a plurality of pulsed lasers providing opposing repulsion forces. The lasers are positioned around the periphery of a confinement area and expanded to create a confinement zone. The grouped laser configuration, in coordination with position sensing devices, creates a feedback servo whereby stable position control of a sample within microgravity environment can be achieved

Approach to self-similarity in Smoluchowski's coagulation equations

We consider the approach to self-similarity (or dynamical scaling) in Smoluchowski's equations of coagulation for the solvable kernels $K(x,y)=2$, $x+y$ and $xy$. In addition to the known self-similar solutions with exponential tails, there are one-parameter families of solutions with algebraic decay, whose form is related to heavy-tailed distributions well-known in probability theory. For K=2 the size distribution is Mittag-Leffler, and for $K=x+y$ and $K=xy$ it is a power-law rescaling of a maximally skewed $\alpha$-stable Levy distribution. We characterize completely the domains of attraction of all self-similar solutions under weak convergence of measures. Our results are analogous to the classical characterization of stable distributions in probability theory. The proofs are simple, relying on the Laplace transform and a fundamental rigidity lemma for scaling limits.Comment: Latex2e, 42 pages with 1 figur

On lightest baryon and its excitations in large-N 1+1-dimensional QCD

We study baryons in multicolour 1+1D QCD via Rajeev's gauge-invariant reformulation as a non-linear classical theory of a bilocal meson field constrained to lie on a Grassmannian. It is known to reproduce 't Hooft's meson spectrum via small oscillations around the vacuum, while baryons arise as topological solitons. The lightest baryon has zero mass per colour in the chiral limit; we find its form factor. It moves at the speed of light through a family of massless states. To model excitations of this baryon, we linearize equations for motion in the tangent space to the Grassmannian, parameterized by a bilocal field U. A redundancy in U is removed and an approximation is made in lieu of a consistency condition on U. The baryon spectrum is given by an eigenvalue problem for a hermitian singular integral operator on such tangent vectors. Excited baryons are like bound states of the lightest one with a meson. Using a rank-1 ansatz for U in a variational formulation, we estimate the mass and form factor of the first excitation.Comment: 26 pages, 3 figures, shorter published version, added remarks on parit