Among fitted-operator methods for solving one-dimensional singular perturbation problems one of the most accurate is the collocation by linear combinations of {1, x, exp (±px)}, known as tension spline collocation. There exist well established results for determining the ‘tension parameter’ p, as well as special collocation points, that provide higher order local and global convergence rates. H...

The aim of the present study was to define the nature of individual differences in shift work tolerance (SWT). This was investigated by an exploratory factor analysis of scores from a wide range of established instruments designed to measure sleep, sleepiness, fatigue, social functioning, as well as physical and mental health. Data were collected from a representative sample of 1,529 Norwegian ...

BACKGROUND Recent studies have reported that peripheral neuropathy (PN) is common in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and raised the possibility that levodopa neurotoxicity is the main culprit. METHODS We evaluated the presence of large & small (autonomic) fiber PN in 54 consecutive patients with PD or parkinsonism in a tertiary outpatient clinic from Brazil. Initial PN screening consis...

Data collected by the National Livestock Research Institute of the Rural Development Administration of Korea were used to estimate genetic parameters for yearling (YWT, n = 5,848), 18-mo (W18, n = 4,585), and slaughter (SWT, n = 2,279) weights for Korean Native cattle. Nine animal models were used to obtain REML estimates of genetic parameters: DP-2 included genetic, uncorrelated dam, and resid...

Tension spline is a function that, for given partition x0 < x1 < . . . < xn, on each interval [xi, xi+1] satisfies differential equation (D − ρiD)u = 0, where ρi’s are prescribed nonnegative real numbers. In the literature, tension splines are used in collocation methods applied to two-points singularly perturbed boundary value problems with Dirichlet boundary conditions. In this paper, we adap...

OBJECTIVE Pooled meta-analyses of statistically and clinically heterogeneous data of randomised-controlled studies are difficult to interpret. Therefore, a qualitative study-by-study assessment was thought to be of greater relevance, to physicians confronted with a therapy-resistant tennis elbow patient, to determine the effectiveness of shock wave therapy (SWT) for lateral elbow tendinopathy. ...

We study a vectorial approximation problem based on thin plate spline with tension involving two positive parameters one for a control of the oscillations and the other one allows a control on the divergence and rotational components of the field. The existence and uniqueness of the solution is proved and the solution is explicitly given. We study the limit problems and the convergence problem ...

Abstract Previous research has indicated that the surface wave transmission (SWT) method can be used to measure the depth of a single surface-breaking crack in concrete. In this paper, the authors extend the SWT method to evaluation of distributed cracks in concrete. First, scattering field of surface waves caused by distributed cracks in concrete was investigated using numerical simulation. Se...

Vector field approximation is a problem involving the reconstruction of physical fields from a set of scattered observed data. In this paper, we address the problem of interpolation of divergence-free vector fields in three dimensional space by thin plate spline under tension. The problem is formulated as a minimization problem where the cost is related to the equilibrium energy of thin plate w...