Acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is one of the leading causes of hospital readmissions within 30 days. Frequent readmissions negatively affect hospital reimbursements and patient outcomes. Creative strategies, such as COPD care bundles, have been shown to reduce readmission rates according to existing studies. A COPD discharge bundle was developed and implemented at 1 community hospital in response to an identified problem with COPD readmissions. Evaluation of this quality improvement initiative was the purpose of this project study. The practice-focused question was: Have 30-day readmission rates changed following the implementation of a COPD discharge bundle prior to transitioning from hospital to home? The framework selected for this project was the model for improvement. Sources of evidence included existing hospital data to evaluate the change in readmissions. The chi-square test of independence was used to assess the difference in frequency of 30-day readmissions. Pre and post-bundle implementation comparisons of readmission rates showed a decrease for 3 out of the 4 groups compared; these results were not statistically significant. Analysis of the post-bundle intervention groups revealed lower 30-day readmissions for individuals who were bundle compliant versus noncompliant and for those who spoke with a pharmacist within 48 hours of discharge opposed to those who did not; these results were statistically significant. Continued use of the bundle and maintaining the role of the pharmacist was recommended. Reduction of readmissions within 30-days has positive social implications for hospitals through financial gains and for the COPD population by improving overall health outcomes.

It has been suggested that the use of fibre bundles rather than individual fibres can improve the toughness properties of a short-fibre composite. Previous experimental work on this topic employed materials in which bundles were impregnated prior to manufacture or materials with poorly defined fibre-bundling. This study is the first to consider the mechanical properties of a series of materials where the bundles have been impregnated during manufacture of the material, and the materials tested contained a well-defined proportion of fibres within bundles of a known size. A novel manufacturing technique has been developed that can be used to produce short carbon fibre reinforced polypropylene materials with a controlled proportion of fibres in bundles. Materials manufactured in this work contained 0 %, 25 %, 50 %, 75 % and 100 % of the fibres in bundles. The fibres had a length of 5 mm or 10 mm and the bundles contained either 1000 or 6000 fibres. An increase in the proportion of fibres within bundles results in a decrease in the tensile modulus of the short-fibre composites. This decrease was less severe for materials containing bundles with a greater aspect ratio or laminates with a greater thickness. A model for the modulus of the materials has been developed which illustrates some of the effects of fibre-bundling on the structure of a short-fibre composite. For the materials studied, tensile strength of materials containing bundles was one quarter of the tensile strength of the filamentised material. Only one combination of fibre length and bundle size resulted in a clear increase in toughness, as measured by JJ, compared to the filamentised material and this increase appears to be due to areas of unreinforced matrix in the material. Materials containing both filamentised fibres and fibre bundles had relatively low values of J, The fracture surfaces were imaged and three distinct ways in which a bundle may fail have been identified. Discussion of the fracture mechanisms active in these materials concludes that the use of fibre-bundling to improve toughness is unlikely to be effective due to the mechanism that has been proposed

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In this thesis, a bundle F →(M,ω) → B is said to be Lagrangian if (M,ω) is a 2n- dimensional symplectic manifold and the fibres are compact and connected Lagrangian submanifolds of (M,ω), i.e. ω |F = 0 for all F. This condition implies that the fibres and the base space are n-dimensional. Such bundles arise naturally in the study of a special class of dynamical systems in Hamiltonian mechanics, namely those called completely integrable Hamiltonian systems. A celebrated theorem due to Liouville [39], Mineur [46] and Arnol`d [2] provides a semi-global (i.e. in the neighbourhood of a fibre) symplectic classification of Lagrangian bundles, given by the existence of local action-angle coordinates. A proof of this theorem, due to Markus and Meyer [41] and Duistermaat [20], shows that the fibres and base space of a Lagrangian bundle are naturally integral affine manifolds, i.e. they admit atlases whose changes of coordinates can be extended to affine transformations of Rn which preserve the standard cocompact lattice Zn Rn. This thesis studies the problem of constructing Lagrangian bundles from the point of view of affinely at geometry. The first step to study this question is to construct topological universal Lagrangian bundles using the affine structure on the fibres. These bundles classify Lagrangian bundles topologically in the sense that every such bundle arises as the pullback of one universal bundle. However, not all bundles which are isomorphic to the pullback of a topological universal Lagrangian bundle are Lagrangian, as there exist further smooth and symplectic invariants. Even for bundles which admit local action-angle coordinates (these are classified up to isomorphism by topological universal Lagrangian bundles), there is a cohomological obstruction to the existence of an appropriate symplectic form on the total space, which has been studied by Dazord and Delzant in [18]. Such bundles are called almost Lagrangian. The second half of this thesis constructs the obstruction of Dazord and Delzant using the spectral sequence of a topological universal Lagrangian bundle. Moreover, this obstruction is shown to be related to a cohomological invariant associated to the integral affine geometry of the base space, called the radiance obstruction. In particular, it is shown that the integral a ne geometry of the base space of an almost Lagrangian bundle determines whether the bundle is, in fact, Lagrangian. New examples of (almost) Lagrangian bundles are provided to illustrate the theory developed.

by Leung Wai-Man Raymond. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [1]-[3] (2nd gp.)). / Chapter CHAPTER 0 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter CHAPTER 1 --- Einstein-Hermitian Vector Bundles / Chapter 1.1 --- Preliminaries on Einstein-Hermitian structures --- p.4 / Chapter 1.2 --- Conformal invariance --- p.7 / Chapter 1.3 --- A Chern number inequality --- p.9 / Chapter CHAPTER 2 --- Stable Vector Bundles / Chapter 2.1 --- Coherent analytic sheaves --- p.12 / Chapter 2.2 --- "Torsion-free, reflexive and normal coherent analytic sheaves" --- p.18 / Chapter 2.3 --- Determinant bundles --- p.22 / Chapter 2.4 --- Stable vector bundles --- p.27 / Chapter 2.5 --- Stability of Einstein-Hermitian vector bundles --- p.32 / Chapter CHAPTER 3 --- Existence of Einstein-Hermitian connection on stable vector bundle over a compact Riemann Surface --- p.34 / Chapter CHAPTER 4 --- Existence of Einstein-Hermitian metric on stable vector bundle over a projective algebraic manifold / Chapter 4.1 --- Solution of the evolution equation for finite time --- p.45 / Chapter 4.2 --- Convergence of solution for infinite time --- p.53 / APPENDIX / Chapter I. --- A vanishing theorem of Bochner type and its consequences --- p.67 / Chapter II. --- Uhlenbeck's results on connections with Lp bounds on curvature --- p.69 / REFERENCE

A modern and straight forward summary of the necessary tools andconcepts needed to understand and work with gauge theory in a fibre bundle formalism. Due to the aim of being a quick but thorough introductionfull derivations are rarely included, but references to such are given wherethey have been omitted. General Relativity, although being a geometrical theory, in the sense that the gravitational force is described by the curvature of space-time, may not be derived from geometry like the other fundamental forces as in Yang-Mills theory. Thus, a possibility of unification lies in a geometrical derivation of gravity from gauge principles. By applying the presented formalism to the case of Gravity such a derivationis pursued along the lines of nonlinear realizations of the gauge group.

This research has been done on a mission from Atlas Copco Secoroc AB, DTH department. The focus and purpose of the study is to acknowledge the important factors you need to take advantage of when it comes to offering bundles. There is also a theoretical purpose, which is to investigate if communication together with bundles can create loyalty and, how this three factors affect each other. This is a somewhat overlooked research area within the bundles theory and is therefore of keen interest for this case. The research has been conducted through seven in-depth interviews with people related to Atlas Copco Secoroc and the sell-buy transactions.  The interviewed people were customers, sales persons, service technician, distributions co-ordinator and price department personnel. There was also investigative quantitative research done, where nineteen customer centres were asked to reveal competitor’s customers net price on different products. The interviews could not have been conducted without a literature review done within the subjects of bundles, communication, loyalty and price strategies. These four topics together with how the order works and the contact between different instances worked as the base for the interviews. The literature review plus learned information on Secoroc was the basis of the knowledge needed to conduct the interviews. The key factors found in the research that Secoroc needs to take advantage of are communication within the company, and with the customer and also the importance of relationship building. This is something a majority of the interviewed persons believe is missing, or hard to have time for, and something that theory puts a lot of pressure on. Better communication will lead to easier sales, better relationships and through that, increased loyalty. It will facilitate the sales of bundles and the communication will help in the creation of bundles. The findings include a suggestion where the mission is to involve Secoroc deeper with their customers. The findings suggested that a reason for the missing contact is because lack of resources. Therefore the solution is to employee service technicians in high-loaded areas. Through that a more regular and close contact will be established. Customers can concentrate on the drilling and Atlas Copco Secoroc will take care of the administrative work. Further research has to be done within subject of how to divide the invoice when more then one product company is involved in the bundle. Connected to this is how the reward should be divided between involved sales persons. A redevelopment of the system is needed and therefore more knowledge and research over how that can be accomplished must be acquired.

Abstract The experiment was performed to measure the flow-induced vibration of tubes in cross flow and to study the effect of different experimental parameters, natural frequency, tube patterns and positions of the missing tube, on the tube vibration. The vibration mode of structures was investigated by root-mean-square values of tube displacements, dominant response frequencies, power spectral densities and orbits. The vibration signals in various velocities were used to analyze the mode and mechanism of the tube vibration by examining the interrelations between power spectral densities and orbits of the tube vibration. It was found that the stability thresholds were higher at the higher natural frequencies of the tubes and approach angles of the flow. Missing tube would affect the stability of local flow field, so that the surrounding tubes became more unstable. For each array pattern, the dominant response frequency of tube was changed with the flow velocity. It should be associated with the flow field, the mode and mechanism of vibration. As the tube frequency jumped, it should be the change of vibrating mode and mechanism. From the spectra and orbits of the tube vibrations, it can be found that the dominant frequencies are more complex at the high flow velocity.

Abstract Pool boiling process is frequently encountered in a number of engineering applications. However, it is difficult to exactly predict the heat transfer coefficient. This is because the nucleate pool boiling phenomenon is rather complex and influenced by many factors, such as surface roughness, areas of heater, material, geometry, arrangement of heated rods, and refrigerants, etc. The key boiling parameters (bubble dynamics data) such as bubble departure frequency, diameter and active nucleation site density will be varied in such different heated surface resulting in the different effect of heat transfer. This study was performed experimentally. R-134a was used as refrigerants, and the present study is aim at providing the pool boiling data for smooth and plasma coating enhanced tube bundles. It is expected that the surface condition, amount of test tubes, geometric of bundles and different heat flux can affect the nucleate boiling heat transfer in certain degree. In addition were calculated and developed that heat transfer coefficients and relevant corrections. Furthermore, more fundamental of the physical phenomenon can be obtained. According to the results of experiments, Boiling curves and calculations of the bundle factors and geometry factors were subsequently secured. The enhanced heat transfer coefficients with coated tube bundles are 1.1-2.0 times higher than smooth tube bundles. The 1.5-2.3 and 1.1-3.8 bundle factors obtained from the smooth tube bundles and coated tube bundles respectively. The geometry factors were about 1 for all arrangements studied herein. Thermal design data of a flooded type evaporator of high performance as well as more and further physical insight of the above-stated nucleate boiling heat transfer can be acquired. The results will hopefully be helpful not only for the academia but for the industry.

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