液氦温区VM型脉冲管制冷机的研究

本文的研究成果是世界上第一台热压缩机驱动的液氮温区脉冲管制冷机．它的主要特点是采用热压缩机来驱动脉冲管制冷机，主要研究目标有以下两个：无阀压缩机驱动的高效率液氦温区制冷机和使用最小容积的氦3得到低于2K的最低温度．热压缩机的设计与VM制冷机类似，利用室温和液氮之间的温差产生压力波，但一个重要的发明是功传递管的引入使得本系统中的热压缩机没有低温下的运动部件．使用这种设计也是一个全新的研究，它的重要性可以与脉冲管的引入取消了制冷机低温下的运动部件比拟．笔者进行了最初原型的调试，提出并完成了两次重要改进；最后在压比小于1.3的情况下成功地获得了3.5K的最低温度；为以后的发展打下了好的基础．

Formação no trabalho da enfermagem: a visão do egresso de um curso de residência

Estudo possui como objeto a contribuição da residência em enfermagem para a formação de especialistas na percepção de egressos de uma instituição publica. O problema do estudo foi elaborado a partir das seguintes questões norteadoras: qual a contribuição da residência em enfermagem para a formação de especialistas na visão dos egressos? Os egressos da residência em enfermagem vêm aplicando os conhecimentos e as competências obtidas durante a residência na sua área de atuação? Quais as contribuições da residência em enfermagem para a identidade do enfermeiro especialista? Os objetivos do estudo foram: Identificar a contribuição da residência em enfermagem para a formação de especialistas na visão de egressos; descrever a aplicação dos conhecimentos e competências obtidas pelo residente de enfermagem na área de atuação; e analisar as contribuições da residência em enfermagem para a identidade do enfermeiro especialista. Metodologia: estudo qualitativo, descritivo, exploratório, tendo como campo um uma instituição de ensino superior, situada no município do Rio de Janeiro. Participaram do estudo 25 egressos do curso de residência de uma instituição pública a partir dos critérios de inclusão estabelecidos. O projeto atendeu as exigências do Comitê de Ética em Pesquisa em atenção a Resolução 466/12. A coleta de dados ocorreu no primeiro semestre de 2014. No tratamento dos depoimentos foi aplicada a técnica de Análise de Conteúdo, cujos resultados foram discutidos a luz do suporte teórico adotado. Os resultados evidenciaram que a residência na concepção dos egressos é uma opção do recém-graduado de capacitação e ingresso no mercado de trabalho no intuito de aprofundar os conhecimentos teóricos e práticos em determinada área do saber. Para o grupo a residência configura-se como uma estratégia relevante em termos de desenvolvimento de competências de cunho técnico e gerencial, diminuindo a defasagem dos conteúdos não obtidos na graduação, principalmente no que dizem respeito ao cuidado de pacientes de alta complexidade e manuseio de tecnologias de ponta. Neste sentido, a residência contribuiu para outros fatores de ordem subjetiva como identidade e realização profissional como também em relação a satisfação e reconhecimento pelo trabalho realizado junto aos pacientes e instituições onde atuam. Por outro lado os egressos apontaram problemas de ordem institucional vivenciados no período em que realizaram o curso, principalmente no tocante a precarização da força de trabalho em termos de pessoal e inadequação das condições de trabalho. Concluiu-se que apesar das inestimáveis contribuições da residência para o aprimoramento técnico, gerencial e relacional do enfermeiro recém-formado e sua inserção no mundo do trabalho com maior segurança e conhecimento do que é ser enfermeiro, há necessidade de ampliar a discussão sobre fatores de ordem estrutural que interferem no processo de formação. E, dentre eles, a precarização da força de trabalho e condições de trabalho inadequadas que interferem no processo de capacitação. Todo esforço deve ser realizado pelas instituições responsáveis pelos programas de residência no intuito de fornecer condições adequadas de formação, o que pode repercutir na motivação, satisfação e maior adesão a esta forma de capacitação em serviço.

Automated Placement of Cameras in a Floorplan to Satisfy Task-Specific Constraints

In many multi-camera vision systems the effect of camera locations on the task-specific quality of service is ignored. Researchers in Computational Geometry have proposed elegant solutions for some sensor location problem classes. Unfortunately, these solutions utilize unrealistic assumptions about the cameras' capabilities that make these algorithms unsuitable for many real-world computer vision applications: unlimited field of view, infinite depth of field, and/or infinite servo precision and speed. In this paper, the general camera placement problem is first defined with assumptions that are more consistent with the capabilities of real-world cameras. The region to be observed by cameras may be volumetric, static or dynamic, and may include holes that are caused, for instance, by columns or furniture in a room that can occlude potential camera views. A subclass of this general problem can be formulated in terms of planar regions that are typical of building floorplans. Given a floorplan to be observed, the problem is then to efficiently compute a camera layout such that certain task-specific constraints are met. A solution to this problem is obtained via binary optimization over a discrete problem space. In preliminary experiments the performance of the resulting system is demonstrated with different real floorplans.

Amorphous Placement and Informed Diffusion for Timely Monitoring by Autonomous, Resource-Constrained, Mobile Sensors

Personal communication devices are increasingly equipped with sensors for passive monitoring of encounters and surroundings. We envision the emergence of services that enable a community of mobile users carrying such resource-limited devices to query such information at remote locations in the field in which they collectively roam. One approach to implement such a service is directed placement and retrieval (DPR), whereby readings/queries about a specific location are routed to a node responsible for that location. In a mobile, potentially sparse setting, where end-to-end paths are unavailable, DPR is not an attractive solution as it would require the use of delay-tolerant (flooding-based store-carry-forward) routing of both readings and queries, which is inappropriate for applications with data freshness constraints, and which is incompatible with stringent device power/memory constraints. Alternatively, we propose the use of amorphous placement and retrieval (APR), in which routing and field monitoring are integrated through the use of a cache management scheme coupled with an informed exchange of cached samples to diffuse sensory data throughout the network, in such a way that a query answer is likely to be found close to the query origin. We argue that knowledge of the distribution of query targets could be used effectively by an informed cache management policy to maximize the utility of collective storage of all devices. Using a simple analytical model, we show that the use of informed cache management is particularly important when the mobility model results in a non-uniform distribution of users over the field. We present results from extensive simulations which show that in sparsely-connected networks, APR is more cost-effective than DPR, that it provides extra resilience to node failure and packet losses, and that its use of informed cache management yields superior performance.

Amorphous Placement and Retrieval of Sensory Data in Sparse Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

Abstract—Personal communication devices are increasingly being equipped with sensors that are able to passively collect information from their surroundings – information that could be stored in fairly small local caches. We envision a system in which users of such devices use their collective sensing, storage, and communication resources to query the state of (possibly remote) neighborhoods. The goal of such a system is to achieve the highest query success ratio using the least communication overhead (power). We show that the use of Data Centric Storage (DCS), or directed placement, is a viable approach for achieving this goal, but only when the underlying network is well connected. Alternatively, we propose, amorphous placement, in which sensory samples are cached locally and informed exchanges of cached samples is used to diffuse the sensory data throughout the whole network. In handling queries, the local cache is searched first for potential answers. If unsuccessful, the query is forwarded to one or more direct neighbors for answers. This technique leverages node mobility and caching capabilities to avoid the multi-hop communication overhead of directed placement. Using a simplified mobility model, we provide analytical lower and upper bounds on the ability of amorphous placement to achieve uniform field coverage in one and two dimensions. We show that combining informed shuffling of cached samples upon an encounter between two nodes, with the querying of direct neighbors could lead to significant performance improvements. For instance, under realistic mobility models, our simulation experiments show that amorphous placement achieves 10% to 40% better query answering ratio at a 25% to 35% savings in consumed power over directed placement.

Distributed Placement of Service Facilities in Large-Scale Networks

The effectiveness of service provisioning in largescale networks is highly dependent on the number and location of service facilities deployed at various hosts. The classical, centralized approach to determining the latter would amount to formulating and solving the uncapacitated k-median (UKM) problem (if the requested number of facilities is fixed), or the uncapacitated facility location (UFL) problem (if the number of facilities is also to be optimized). Clearly, such centralized approaches require knowledge of global topological and demand information, and thus do not scale and are not practical for large networks. The key question posed and answered in this paper is the following: "How can we determine in a distributed and scalable manner the number and location of service facilities?" We propose an innovative approach in which topology and demand information is limited to neighborhoods, or balls of small radius around selected facilities, whereas demand information is captured implicitly for the remaining (remote) clients outside these neighborhoods, by mapping them to clients on the edge of the neighborhood; the ball radius regulates the trade-off between scalability and performance. We develop a scalable, distributed approach that answers our key question through an iterative reoptimization of the location and the number of facilities within such balls. We show that even for small values of the radius (1 or 2), our distributed approach achieves performance under various synthetic and real Internet topologies that is comparable to that of optimal, centralized approaches requiring full topology and demand information.

Measurements of Epidural Space Depth Using Preexisting CT Scans Correlate with Loss of Resistance Depth during Thoracic Epidural Catheter Placement.

Background. Thoracic epidural catheters provide the best quality postoperative pain relief for major abdominal and thoracic surgical procedures, but placement is one of the most challenging procedures in the repertoire of an anesthesiologist. Most patients presenting for a procedure that would benefit from a thoracic epidural catheter have already had high resolution imaging that may be useful to assist placement of a catheter. Methods. This retrospective study used data from 168 patients to examine the association and predictive power of epidural-skin distance (ESD) on computed tomography (CT) to determine loss of resistance depth acquired during epidural placement. Additionally, the ability of anesthesiologists to measure this distance was compared to a radiologist, who specializes in spine imaging. Results. There was a strong association between CT measurement and loss of resistance depth (P < 0.0001); the presence of morbid obesity (BMI > 35) changed this relationship (P = 0.007). The ability of anesthesiologists to make CT measurements was similar to a gold standard radiologist (all individual ICCs > 0.9). Conclusions. Overall, this study supports the examination of a recent CT scan to aid in the placement of a thoracic epidural catheter. Making use of these scans may lead to faster epidural placements, fewer accidental dural punctures, and better epidural blockade.

Placement of Small Vertical Axis Wind Turbine to Maximize Power Generation Influenced by Architectural and Geographic Interfaces in Urban Areas

Current methods for large-scale wind collection are unviable in urban areas. In order to investigate the feasibility of generating power from winds in these environments, we sought to optimize placements of small vertical-axis wind turbines in areas of artificially-generated winds. We explored both vehicular transportation and architecture as sources of artificial wind, using a combination of anemometer arrays, global positioning system (GPS), and weather report data. We determined that transportation-generated winds were not significant enough for turbine implementation. In addition, safety and administrative concerns restricted the implementation of said wind turbines along roadways for transportation-generated wind collection. Wind measurements from our architecture collection were applied in models that can help predict other similar areas with artificial wind, as well as the optimal placement of a wind turbine in those areas.