18,399 research outputs found
Alliances and industry analysis
Traditionally alliances have been left at of industry analysis. We have been focusing basically on the economic characteristics determining bargaining power on the relationships between the actors in a value system. The paper proposes a methodology to analyze industries from a very different perspective that incorporates alliances as one of the main drivers of industry structure.Alliances; industry structure; networks;
Comment on ``Force Balance at the Transition from Selective Withdrawal to Viscous Entrainment
Comment on paper by Blanchette and Zhang, Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 144501
(2009)
Safety of opioid patch initiation in Australian residential aged care
Explores opioid use by aged care facility residents before and after initiation of transdermal opioid patches.
Abstract
Objective: To explore opioid use by aged care facility residents before and after initiation of transdermal opioid patches.
Design: A cross-sectional cohort study, analysing pharmacy data on individual patient supply between 1 July 2008 and 30 September 2013.
Setting: Sixty residential aged care facilities in New South Wales.
Participants: Residents receiving an initial opioid patch during the study period
Main outcome measure: The proportion of residents who were opioid-naive in the 4 weeks prior to patch initiation was determined. In addition, the patch strength at initiation and the daily dose of transdermal patches and of additional opioids 1 month after initiation were determined.
Results: An opioid patch was initiated in 596 of 5297 residents (11.3%: 2.6% fentanyl, 8.7% buprenorphine) in the 60 residential aged care facilities. The mean age at initiation was 87 years, and 74% of the recipients were women. The proportion of recipients who were opioid-naive before patch initiation was 34% for fentanyl and 49% for buprenorphine. Most were initiated at the lowest available patch strength, and the dose was up-titrated after initiation. Around 15% of fentanyl users and 10% of buprenorphine users needed additional regular opioids after patch initiation.
Conclusions: The results suggest some inappropriate initiation of opioid patches in Australian residential aged care facilities. Contrary to best practice, a third of residents initiated on fentanyl patches were opioid-naive in the 4 weeks before initiation.
 
Ground-Based Photometric Searches for Transiting Planets
This paper reviews the basic technical characteristics of the ground-based
photometric searches for transiting planets, and discusses a possible
observational selection effect. I suggest that additional photometric
observations of the already observed fields might discover new transiting
planets with periods around 4-6 days. The set of known transiting planets
support the intriguing correlation between the planetary mass and the orbital
period suggested already in 2005.Comment: Proceedings of IAU Symposium 253 "Transiting Planets", p. 11-1
The scaling of the density of states in systems with resonance states
Resonance states of a two-electron quantum dot are studied using a
variational expansion with both real basis-set functions and complex scaling
methods. We present numerical evidence about the critical behavior of the
density of states in the region where there are resonances. The critical
behavior is signaled by a strong dependence of some features of the density of
states with the basis-set size used to calculate it. The resonance energy and
lifetime are obtained using the scaling properties of the density of statesComment: Presented in the Workshop on Quantum Nonstationary Systems (Brasilia-
2009
Electron-correlation driven capture and release in double quantum dots
We recently predicted that the interatomic Coulombic electron capture (ICEC)
process, a long-range electron correlation driven capture process, is
achievable in gated double quantum dots (DQDs). In ICEC an incoming electron is
captured by one QD and the excess energy is used to remove an electron from the
neighboring QD. In this work we present systematic full three-dimensional
electron dynamics calculations in quasi-one dimensional model potentials that
allow for a detailed understanding of the connection between the DQD geometry
and the reaction probability for the ICEC process. We derive an effective
one-dimensional approach and show that its results compare very well with those
obtained using the full three-dimensional calculations. This approach
substantially reduces the computation times. The investigation of the
electronic structure for various DQD geometries for which the ICEC process can
take place clarify the origin of its remarkably high probability in the
presence of two-electron resonances
A transiting planet among 23 new near-threshold candidates from the OGLE survey - OGLE-TR-182
By re-processing the data of the second season of the OGLE survey for
planetary transits and adding new mesurements on the same fields gathered in
subsequent years with the OGLE telescope, we have identified 23 new transit
candidates, recorded as OGLE-TR-178 to OGLE-TR-200. We studied the nature of
these objects with the FLAMES/UVES multi-fiber spectrograph on the VLT. One of
the candidates, OGLE-TR-182, was confirmed as a transiting gas giant planet on
a 4-day orbit. We characterised it with further observations using the FORS1
camera and UVES spectrograph on the VLT. OGLE-TR-182b is a typical ``hot
Jupiter'' with an orbital period of 3.98 days, a mass of 1.01 +- 0.15 MJup and
a radius of 1.13 (+0.24-0.08) RJup. Confirming this transiting planet required
a large investment in telescope time with the best instruments available, and
we comment on the difficulty of the confirmation process for transiting planets
in the OGLE survey. We delienate the zone were confirmation is difficult or
impossible, and discuss the implications for the Corot space mission in its
quest for transiting telluric planets.Comment: 7 pages, submitted to Astronomy and Astrophysic
Nonlinear trend removal should be carefully performed in heart rate variability analysis
Background : In Heart rate variability analysis, the rate-rate time
series suffer often from aperiodic non-stationarity, presence of ectopic beats
etc. It would be hard to extract helpful information from the original signals.
10 Problem : Trend removal methods are commonly practiced to reduce
the influence of the low frequency and aperiodic non-stationary in RR data.
This can unfortunately affect the signal and make the analysis on detrended
data less appropriate. Objective : Investigate the detrending effect
(linear \& nonlinear) in temporal / nonliear analysis of heart rate variability
of long-term RR data (in normal sinus rhythm, atrial fibrillation, 15
congestive heart failure and ventricular premature arrhythmia conditions).
Methods : Temporal method : standard measure SDNN; Nonlinear methods
: multi-scale Fractal Dimension (FD), Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (DFA) \&
Sample Entropy (Sam-pEn) analysis. Results : The linear detrending
affects little the global characteristics of the RR data, either 20 in temporal
analysis or in nonlinear complexity analysis. After linear detrending, the
SDNNs are just slightly shifted and all distributions are well preserved. The
cross-scale complexity remained almost the same as the ones for original RR
data or correlated. Nonlinear detrending changed not only the SDNNs
distribution, but also the order among different types of RR data. After this
processing, the SDNN became indistinguishable be-25 tween SDNN for normal sinus
rhythm and ventricular premature beats. Different RR data has different
complexity signature. Nonlinear detrending made the all RR data to be similar ,
in terms of complexity. It is thus impossible to distinguish them. The FD
showed that nonlinearly detrended RR data has a dimension close to 2, the
exponent from DFA is close to zero and SampEn is larger than 1.5 -- these
complexity values are very close to those for 30 random signal.
Conclusions : Pre-processing by linear detrending can be performed on RR data,
which has little influence on the corresponding analysis. Nonlinear detrending
could be harmful and it is not advisable to use this type of pre-processing.
Exceptions do exist, but only combined with other appropriate techniques to
avoid complete change of the signal's intrinsic dynamics. 35 Keywords
heart rate variability linear / nonlinear detrending
complexity analysis mul-tiscale analysis detrended
fluctuation analysis fractal dimension sample entropy
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