Vacuum probe sampler removes micron-sized particles from surfaces

Vacuum probe sampler removes micron-sized particles from sensitive surfaces, without damage to the surface. The probe has a critical orifice to ensure an optimum airflow rate that disturbs the boundary layer of air and raises bacteria from the surface into the probe with the moving air stream

Glossae Vergilianae

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Selective plating of etched circuits without removing previous plating Patent

Selective plating of etched circuits without removing previous platin

Collaborative support for distributed design

A number of large integrated projects have been funded by the European Commission within both FP5 and FP6 that have aimed to develop distributed design solutions within the shipbuilding industry. VRShips-ROPAX was funded within FP5 and aimed to develop a platform to support distributed through-life design of a ROPAX (roll-on passenger) ferry. VIRTUE is an FP6 funded project that aims to integrate distributed virtual basins within a platform that allows a holistic Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis of a ship to be undertaken. Finally, SAFEDOR is also an FP6 funded project that allows designers to perform distributed Risk-Based Design (RBD) and simulation of different types of vessels. The projects have a number of commonalities: the designers are either organisationally or geographically distributed; a large amount of the design and analysis work requires the use of computers, and the designers are expected to collaborate - sharing design tasks and data. In each case a Virtual Integration Platform (VIP) has been developed, building on and sharing ideas between the projects with the aim of providing collaborative support for distributed design. In each of these projects the University of Strathclyde has been primarily responsible for the development of the associated VIP. This paper describes each project in terms of their differing collaborative support requirements, and discusses the associated VIP in terms of the manner that collaborative support has been provided

Interstitial laser therapy of benign prostatic hyperplasia

The objective of interstitial laser coagulation (ILC) of benign prostatic enlargement is to achieve a marked volume reduction and to decrease bladder outlet obstruction and lower urinary tract symptoms with minimal morbidity. Coagulation necrosis is generated well inside the adenoma by means of specifically designed laser applicators combined with either a Nd:YAG laser or a diode laser. Because the laser applicators can be inserted as deeply and as often as necessary, it is possible to coagulate any amount of tissue at any desired location while preserving adjacent structures such as the urethra. Postprocedural, the intraprostatic lesions result in secondary atrophy and regression of the prostate lobes, rather than sloughing of necrotic tissue. Several single-armed and randomized studies indicated the effectiveness of interstitial laser coagulation of BPH-syndrome. Marked improvements in AUA score, peak flow rate, residual urine volume and prostate volume were reported. Pressure-flow studies demonstrated a sufficient decrease of the intravesical/detrusor pressure, urethral opening pressure and urethral resistance. Long-term results demonstrating sustained success for up to 3 years were reported on a series of 394 patients. ILC is suitable to debulk even large prostates and to treat highly obstructive patients. Therefore, ILC can be seen as a true alternative to TURF with certain advantages, such as almost no serious morbidity and with certain disadvantages, such as the need for postoperative catheterization. However, ILC can be done under local anesthesia and does not require hospitalization

The North Cyprus Conference Sector: Establishing a Competitive Advantage

North Cyprus had recently positioned itself as a conference destination. Given external and internal factors such as political isolation and the over dependency on casino tourism, policymakers have recognised the importance of the conference sector in creating sustainable growth for North Cyprus’s tourism driven economy. Increasingly, Turkish conference organisers are choosing North Cyprus as a destination to host conferences. As such, Turkish conference organisers were questioned via an internet based questionnaire to determine attributes considered important within the conference destination selection process. An Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) was performed, the findings identified that North Cyprus was perceived as a high performer with reference to; ease of accessibility, distance of destination, conference venue and accommodation price, safety and security, climate, hospitality, quality, quantity and availability of hotel rooms. However, in relation to North Cyprus, a unique application of IPA identified macro- and micro-destination attributes that North Cyprus should improve on; transportation within destination, availability of technological resources, the range of conference venues, conference staff training, destinations marketing activities and quality of local restaurants. The findings provided implications for destination managers in terms of branding, as well as conference venue and accommodation providers in terms of targeting conference organisers more effectively and promoting North Cyprus to conference sector stakeholders

Bravyi-Kitaev Superfast simulation of fermions on a quantum computer

Present quantum computers often work with distinguishable qubits as their computational units. In order to simulate indistinguishable fermionic particles, it is first required to map the fermionic state to the state of the qubits. The Bravyi-Kitaev Superfast (BKSF) algorithm can be used to accomplish this mapping. The BKSF mapping has connections to quantum error correction and opens the door to new ways of understanding fermionic simulation in a topological context. Here, we present the first detailed exposition of BKSF algorithm for molecular simulation. We provide the BKSF transformed qubit operators and report on our implementation of the BKSF fermion-to-qubits transform in OpenFermion. In this initial study of the hydrogen molecule, we have compared BKSF, Jordan-Wigner and Bravyi-Kitaev transforms under the Trotter approximation. We considered different orderings of the exponentiated terms and found lower Trotter errors than previously reported for Jordan-Wigner and Bravyi-Kitaev algorithms. These results open the door to further study of the BKSF algorithm for quantum simulation.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figure

On the NP-completeness of the Hartree-Fock method for translationally invariant systems

The self-consistent field method utilized for solving the Hartree-Fock (HF) problem and the closely related Kohn-Sham problem, is typically thought of as one of the cheapest methods available to quantum chemists. This intuition has been developed from the numerous applications of the self-consistent field method to a large variety of molecular systems. However, as characterized by its worst-case behavior, the HF problem is NP-complete. In this work, we map out boundaries of the NP-completeness by investigating restricted instances of HF. We have constructed two new NP-complete variants of the problem. The first is a set of Hamiltonians whose translationally invariant Hartree-Fock solutions are trivial, but whose broken symmetry solutions are NP-complete. Second, we demonstrate how to embed instances of spin glasses into translationally invariant Hartree-Fock instances and provide a numerical example. These findings are the first steps towards understanding in which cases the self-consistent field method is computationally feasible and when it is not.Comment: 6 page