20,063 research outputs found
Measuring quality of care with routine data: avoiding confusion between performance indicators and health outcomes
Objective To investigate the impact of factors outside the control of primary care on performance indicators proposed as measures of the quality of primary care. Design Multiple regression analysis relating admission rates standardised for age and sex for asthma, diabetes, and epilepsy to socioeconomic population characteristics and to the supply of secondary care resources. Setting 90 family health services authorities in England, 1989-90 to 1994-5. Results At health authority level socioeconomic characteristics, health status, and secondary care supply factors explained 45% of the variation in admission rates for asthma, 33% for diabetes, and 55% for epilepsy. When health authorities were ranked, only four of the 10 with the highest age-sex standardised admission rates for asthma in 1994-5 remained in the top 10 when allowance was made for socioeconomic characteristics, health status, and secondary care supply factors. There was also substantial year to year variation in the rates. Conclusion Health outcomes should relate to crude rates of adverse events in the population. These give the best indication of the size of a health problem. Performance indicators, however, should relate to those aspects of care which can be altered by the staff whose performance is being measured
Compressing nearly hard sphere fluids increases glass fragility
We use molecular dynamics to investigate the glass transition occurring at
large volume fraction, phi, and low temperature, T, in assemblies of soft
repulsive particles. We find that equilibrium dynamics in the (phi, T) plane
obey a form of dynamic scaling in the proximity of a critical point at T=0 and
phi=phi_0, which should correspond to the ideal glass transition of hard
spheres. This glass point, `point G', is distinct from athermal jamming
thresholds. A remarkable consequence of scaling behaviour is that the dynamics
at fixed phi passes smoothly from that of a strong glass to that of a very
fragile glass as phi increases beyond phi_0. Correlations between fragility and
various physical properties are explored.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures; Version accepted at Europhys. Let
Bootstrapping the economy -- a non-parametric method of generating consistent future scenarios
The fortune and the risk of a business venture depends on the future course of the economy. There is a strong demand for economic forecasts and scenarios that can be applied to planning and modeling. While there is an ongoing debate on modeling economic scenarios, the bootstrapping (or resampling) approach presented here has several advantages. As a non-parametric method, it directly relies on past market behaviors rather than debatable assumptions on models and parameters. Simultaneous dependencies between economic variables are automatically captured. Some aspects of the bootstrapping method require additional modeling: choice and ransformation of the economic variables, arbitrage-free consistency, heavy tails of distributions, serial dependence, trends and mean reversion. Results of a complete economic scenario generator are presented, tested and discussed.economic scenario generator (ESG); asset-liability management (ALM); bootstrapping; resampling; simulation; Monte-Carlo simulation; non-parametric model; yield curve model
Spectral Properties and Linear Stability of Self-Similar Wave Maps
We study co--rotational wave maps from --Minkowski space to the
three--sphere . It is known that there exists a countable family
of self--similar solutions. We investigate their stability under linear
perturbations by operator theoretic methods. To this end we study the spectra
of the perturbation operators, prove well--posedness of the corresponding
linear Cauchy problem and deduce a growth estimate for solutions. Finally, we
study perturbations of the limiting solution which is obtained from by
letting .Comment: Some extensions added to match the published versio
Critical Percolation Phase and Thermal BKT Transition in a Scale-Free Network with Short-Range and Long-Range Random Bonds
Percolation in a scale-free hierarchical network is solved exactly by
renormalization-group theory, in terms of the different probabilities of
short-range and long-range bonds. A phase of critical percolation, with
algebraic (Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless) geometric order, occurs in the
phase diagram, in addition to the ordinary (compact) percolating phase and the
non-percolating phase. It is found that no connection exists between, on the
one hand, the onset of this geometric BKT behavior and, on the other hand, the
onsets of the highly clustered small-world character of the network and of the
thermal BKT transition of the Ising model on this network. Nevertheless, both
geometric and thermal BKT behaviors have inverted characters, occurring where
disorder is expected, namely at low bond probability and high temperature,
respectively. This may be a general property of long-range networks.Comment: Added explanations and data. Published version. 4pages, 4 figure
The Maximum Flux of Star-Forming Galaxies
The importance of radiation pressure feedback in galaxy formation has been
extensively debated over the last decade. The regime of greatest uncertainty is
in the most actively star-forming galaxies, where large dust columns can
potentially produce a dust-reprocessed infrared radiation field with enough
pressure to drive turbulence or eject material. Here we derive the conditions
under which a self-gravitating, mixed gas-star disc can remain hydrostatic
despite trapped radiation pressure. Consistently taking into account the
self-gravity of the medium, the star- and dust-to-gas ratios, and the effects
of turbulent motions not driven by radiation, we show that galaxies can achieve
a maximum Eddington-limited star formation rate per unit area
pc Myr,
corresponding to a critical flux of
kpc similar to previous estimates; higher fluxes eject mass in bulk,
halting further star formation. Conversely, we show that in galaxies below this
limit, our one-dimensional models imply simple vertical hydrostatic equilibrium
and that radiation pressure is ineffective at driving turbulence or ejecting
matter. Because the vast majority of star-forming galaxies lie below the
maximum limit for typical dust-to-gas ratios, we conclude that infrared
radiation pressure is likely unimportant for all but the most extreme systems
on galaxy-wide scales. Thus, while radiation pressure does not explain the
Kennicutt-Schmidt relation, it does impose an upper truncation on it. Our
predicted truncation is in good agreement with the highest observed gas and
star formation rate surface densities found both locally and at high redshift.Comment: Version accepted for publication in MNRAS. 12 pages, 8 figures. New
appendix on photon tirin
The super algebra and its associated generalized KdV hierarchies
We construct the super algebra as a certain reduction of the
second Gel'fand-Dikii bracket on the dual of the Lie superalgebra of
super pseudo-differential operators. The algebra is put in manifestly
supersymmetric form in terms of three superfields , with
being the energy momentum tensor and and being
conformal spin and superfields respectively. A search for integrable
hierarchies of the generalized KdV variety with this algebra as Hamiltonian
structure gives three solutions, exactly the same number as for the
(super KdV) and (super Boussinesq) cases.Comment: 16 pages, LaTeX, UTAS-PHYS-92-3
Magnetic substructure in the northern Fermi Bubble revealed by polarized WMAP emission
We report a correspondence between giant, polarized microwave structures
emerging north from the Galactic plane near the Galactic center and a number of
GeV gamma-ray features, including the eastern edge of the recently-discovered
northern Fermi Bubble. The polarized microwave features also correspond to
structures seen in the all-sky 408 MHz total intensity data, including the
Galactic center spur. The magnetic field structure revealed by the polarization
data at 23 GHz suggests that neither the emission coincident with the Bubble
edge nor the Galactic center spur are likely to be features of the local ISM.
On the basis of the observed morphological correspondences, similar inferred
spectra, and the similar energetics of all sources, we suggest a direct
connection between the Galactic center spur and the northern Fermi Bubble.Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters after
minor change
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