EU DataGRID testbed management and support at CERN

In this paper we report on the first two years of running the CERN testbed site for the EU DataGRID project. The site consists of about 120 dual-processor PCs distributed over several testbeds used for different purposes: software development, system integration, and application tests. Activities at the site included test productions of MonteCarlo data for LHC experiments, tutorials and demonstrations of GRID technologies, and support for individual users analysis. This paper focuses on node installation and configuration techniques, service management, user support in a gridified environment, and includes considerations on scalability and security issues and comparisons with "traditional" production systems, as seen from the administrator point of view.Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 7 pages, LaTeX. PSN THCT00

Innovative Approaches to Emergency Medical Services Fellowship Challenges

Introduction: Since the development of an Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education (ACGME)-accredited emergency medical services (EMS) fellowship, there has been little published literature on effective methods of content delivery or training modalities. Here we explore a variety of innovative approaches to the development and revision of the EMS fellowship curriculum.Methods: Three academic, university-based ACGME-accredited EMS fellowship programs each implemented an innovative change to their existing training curricula. These changes included the following: a novel didactic curriculum delivery modality and evaluation; implementation of a distance education program to improve EMS fellows’ rural EMS experiences; and modification of an existing EMS fellowship curriculum to train a non-emergency medicine physician.Results: Changes made to each of the above EMS fellowship programs addressed unique challenges, demonstrating areas of success and promise for more generalized implementation of these curricula. Obstacles remain in tailoring the described curricula to the needs of each unique institution and system.Conclusion: Three separate curricula and program changes were implemented to overcome specific challenges and achieve educational goals. It is our hope that our shared experiences will enable others in addressing common barriers to teaching the EMS fellowship core content and share similar innovative approaches to educational challenges

Slave-boson approach to the metallic stripe phases with large unit cells

Using a rotationally invariant version of the slave-boson approach in spin space we analyze the stability of stripe phases with large unit cells in the two-dimensional Hubbard model. This approach allows one to treat strong electron correlations in the stripe phases relevant in the low doping regime, and gives results representative of the thermodynamic limit. Thereby we resolve the longstanding controversy concerning the role played by the kinetic energy in stripe phases. While the transverse hopping across the domain walls yields the largest kinetic energy gain in the case of the insulating stripes with one hole per site, the holes propagating along the domain walls stabilize the metallic vertical stripes with one hole per two sites, as observed in the cuprates. We also show that a finite next-nearest neighbor hopping $t'$ can tip the energy balance between the filled diagonal and half-filled vertical stripes, which might explain a change in the spatial orientation of stripes observed in the high $T_c$ cuprates at the doping $x\simeq 1/16$.Comment: 16 pages, 14 figure

Physical Acoustics

Contains reports on two research projects.U. S. Navy (Office of Naval Research) under Contract Nonr-1841-(42)Joint Services Electronics Programs (U. S. Army, U. S. Navy, and U. S. Air Force) under Contract DA 36-039-AMC-03200(E