Numerical Implementation of Harmonic Polylogarithms to Weight w = 8

We present the FORTRAN-code HPOLY.f for the numerical calculation of harmonic polylogarithms up to w = 8 at an absolute accuracy of $\sim 4.9 \cdot 10^{-15}$ or better. Using algebraic and argument relations the numerical representation can be limited to the range $x \in [0, \sqrt{2}-1]$. We provide replacement files to map all harmonic polylogarithms to a basis and the usual range of arguments $x \in ]-\infty,+\infty[$ to the above interval analytically. We also briefly comment on a numerical implementation of real valued cyclotomic harmonic polylogarithms.Comment: 19 pages LATEX, 3 Figures, ancillary dat

Speed control with low armature loss for very small sensorless brushed DC motors

A method for speed control of brushed dc motors is presented. It is particularly applicable to motors with armatures of less than 1 cm3. Motors with very small armatures are difficult to control using the usual pulsewidth-modulation (PWM) approach and are apt to overheat if so driven. The technique regulates speed via the back electromotive force but does not require current-discontinuous drives. Armature heating in small motors under PWM drive is explained and quantified. The method is verified through simulation and measurement. Control is improved, and armature losses are minimized. The method can expect to find application in miniature mechatronic equipment

A safer place for patients: learning to improve patient safety

1 Every day over one million people are treated successfully by National Health Service (NHS) acute, ambulance and mental health trusts. However, healthcare relies on a range of complex interactions of people, skills, technologies and drugs, and sometimes things do go wrong. For most countries, patient safety is now the key issue in healthcare quality and risk management. The Department of Health (the Department) estimates that one in ten patients admitted to NHS hospitals will be unintentionally harmed, a rate similar to other developed countries. Around 50 per cent of these patient safety incidentsa could have been avoided, if only lessons from previous incidents had been learned. 2 There are numerous stakeholders with a role in keeping patients safe in the NHS, many of whom require trusts to report details of patient safety incidents and near misses to them (Figure 2). However, a number of previous National Audit Office reports have highlighted concerns that the NHS has limited information on the extent and impact of clinical and non-clinical incidents and trusts need to learn from these incidents and share good practice across the NHS more effectively (Appendix 1). 3 In 2000, the Chief Medical Officer’s report An organisation with a memory 1 , identified that the key barriers to reducing the number of patient safety incidents were an organisational culture that inhibited reporting and the lack of a cohesive national system for identifying and sharing lessons learnt. 4 In response, the Department published Building a safer NHS for patients3 detailing plans and a timetable for promoting patient safety. The goal was to encourage improvements in reporting and learning through the development of a new mandatory national reporting scheme for patient safety incidents and near misses. Central to the plan was establishing the National Patient Safety Agency to improve patient safety by reducing the risk of harm through error. The National Patient Safety Agency was expected to: collect and analyse information; assimilate other safety-related information from a variety of existing reporting systems; learn lessons and produce solutions. 5 We therefore examined whether the NHS has been successful in improving the patient safety culture, encouraging reporting and learning from patient safety incidents. Key parts of our approach were a census of 267 NHS acute, ambulance and mental health trusts in Autumn 2004, followed by a re-survey in August 2005 and an omnibus survey of patients (Appendix 2). We also reviewed practices in other industries (Appendix 3) and international healthcare systems (Appendix 4), and the National Patient Safety Agency’s progress in developing its National Reporting and Learning System (Appendix 5) and other related activities (Appendix 6). 6 An organisation with a memory1 was an important milestone in the NHS’s patient safety agenda and marked the drive to improve reporting and learning. At the local level the vast majority of trusts have developed a predominantly open and fair reporting culture but with pockets of blame and scope to improve their strategies for sharing good practice. Indeed in our re-survey we found that local performance had continued to improve with more trusts reporting having an open and fair reporting culture, more trusts with open reporting systems and improvements in perceptions of the levels of under-reporting. At the national level, progress on developing the national reporting system for learning has been slower than set out in the Department’s strategy of 2001 3 and there is a need to improve evaluation and sharing of lessons and solutions by all organisations with a stake in patient safety. There is also no clear system for monitoring that lessons are learned at the local level. Specifically: a The safety culture within trusts is improving, driven largely by the Department’s clinical governance initiative 4 and the development of more effective risk management systems in response to incentives under initiatives such as the NHS Litigation Authority’s Clinical Negligence Scheme for Trusts (Appendix 7). However, trusts are still predominantly reactive in their response to patient safety issues and parts of some organisations still operate a blame culture. b All trusts have established effective reporting systems at the local level, although under-reporting remains a problem within some groups of staff, types of incidents and near misses. The National Patient Safety Agency did not develop and roll out the National Reporting and Learning System by December 2002 as originally envisaged. All trusts were linked to the system by 31 December 2004. By August 2005, at least 35 trusts still had not submitted any data to the National Reporting and Learning System. c Most trusts pointed to specific improvements derived from lessons learnt from their local incident reporting systems, but these are still not widely promulgated, either within or between trusts. The National Patient Safety Agency has provided only limited feedback to trusts of evidence-based solutions or actions derived from the national reporting system. It published its first feedback report from the Patient Safety Observatory in July 2005

Wace and his Authorities

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The Landing of Queen Isadella in 1326

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Note on Magna Carta

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3-loop Massive O(TF2)O(T_F^2) Contributions to the DIS Operator Matrix Element AggA_{gg}

Contributions to heavy flavour transition matrix elements in the variable flavour number scheme are considered at 3-loop order. In particular a calculation of the diagrams with two equal masses that contribute to the massive operator matrix element $A_{gg,Q}^{(3)}$ is performed. In the Mellin space result one finds finite nested binomial sums. In $x$-space these sums correspond to iterated integrals over an alphabet containing also square-root valued letters.Comment: 4 pages, Contribution to the Proceedings of QCD '14, Montpellier, July 201

XXX. Discours

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer Verlag via the DOI in this record.Mapping between non-preference- and preference-based health-related quality-of-life instruments has become a common technique for estimating health state utility values for use in economic evaluations. Despite the increased use of mapped health state utility estimates in health technology assessment and economic evaluation, the methods for deriving them have not been fully justified. Recent guidelines aim to standardise reporting of the methods used to map between instruments but do not address fundamental concerns in the underlying conceptual model. Current mapping methods ignore the important conceptual issues that arise when extrapolating results from potentially unrelated measures. At the crux of the mapping problem is a question of validity; because one instrument can be used to predict the scores on another, does this mean that the same preference for health is being measured in actual and estimated health state utility values? We refer to this as conceptual validity. This paper aims to (1) explain the idea of conceptual validity in mapping and its implications; (2) consider the consequences of poor conceptual validity when mapping for decision making in the context of healthcare resource allocation; and (3) offer some preliminary suggestions for improving conceptual validity in mapping

3-Loop Heavy Flavor Corrections in Deep-Inelastic Scattering with Two Heavy Quark Lines

We consider gluonic contributions to the heavy flavor Wilson coefficients at 3-loop order in QCD with two heavy quark lines in the asymptotic region $Q^2 \gg m_{1(2)}^2$. Here we report on the complete result in the case of two equal masses $m_1 = m_2$ for the massive operator matrix element $A_{gg,Q}^{(3)}$, which contributes to the corresponding heavy flavor transition matrix element in the variable flavor number scheme. Nested finite binomial sums and iterated integrals over square-root valued alphabets emerge in the result for this quantity in $N$ and $x$-space, respectively. We also present results for the case of two unequal masses for the flavor non-singlet OMEs and on the scalar integrals ic case of $A_{gg,Q}^{(3)}$, which were calculated without a further approximation. The graphs can be expressed by finite nested binomial sums over generalized harmonic sums, the alphabet of which contains rational letters in the ratio $\eta = m_1^2/m_2^2$.Comment: 10 pages LATEX, 1 Figure, Proceedings of Loops and Legs in Quantum Field Theory, Weimar April 201