Recent investigations on the aerodynamics of natural fliers have illuminated the significance of the Leading-Edge Vortex (LEV) for lift generation in a variety of flight conditions. A well documented example of an LEV is that generated by aircraft with highly swept, delta shaped wings. While the wing aerodynamics of a manoeuvring aircraft, a bird gliding and a bird in flapping flight vary signi...

We report on NuSTAR, XMM-Newton, and Swift observations of the gamma-ray binary 1FGL J1018.6–5856. We measure the orbital period to be 16.544 ± 0.008 days using Swift data spanning 1900 days. The orbital period is different from the 2011 gamma-ray measurement which was used in the previous X-ray study of An et al. using ∼400 days of Swift data, but is consistent with a new gamma-ray solution re...

Both medical research and clinical practice are starting to involve large quantities of data and to require large-scale computation, as a result of the digitization of many areas of medicine. For example, in brain research - the domain that we consider here - a single research study may require the repeated processing, using computationally demanding and complex applications, of thousands of fi...

Using the sample of long Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) detected by Swift-BAT before June 2007, we measure the cumulative distribution of the peak photon fluxes (logN–logP ) of the Swift bursts. Compared with the BATSE sample, we find that the two distributions are consistent after correcting the band pass difference, suggesting that the two instruments are sampling the same population of bursts. We a...

The X-ray telescope on board the Swift satellite for gamma-ray burst astronomy has been exposed to the radiation of the space environment since launch in November 2004. Radiation causes damage to the detector, with the generation of dark current and charge trapping sites that result in the degradation of the spectral resolution and an increase of the instrumental background. The Swift team has ...

IGR J16479−4514 is a Supergiant Fast X–ray Transient (SFXT), a new class of High Mass X–ray Binaries, whose number is rapidly growing thanks to the INTEGRAL observations of the Galactic plane. It was regularly monitored with Swift/XRT since November 2007, to study the quiescent emission, the outburst properties and their recurrence. A new bright outburst, reaching fluxes above 10 −9 erg cm −2 s...

We predict the redshift distribution of long Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) with Monte Carlo simulations. Our improved analysis constrains free parameters with three kinds of observation: (i) the logN − logP diagram of BATSE bursts; (ii) the peak energy distribution of bright BATSE bursts; (iii) the HETE2 fraction of X-ray rich GRBs and X-ray flashes. The statistical analysis of the Monte Carlo simula...

We compute the luminosity function (LF) and the formation rate of long gamma ray bursts (GRBs) by fitting the observed differential peak flux distribution obtained by the BATSE satellite in three different scenarios: i) GRBs follow the cosmic star formation and their LF is constant in time; ii) GRBs follow the cosmic star formation but the LF varies with redshift; iii) GRBs form preferentially ...

BACKGROUND Readmission to intensive care units (ICU) is accompanied with longer ICU stay as well as higher ICU, in-hospital and 30-day mortality. Different scoring systems have been used in order to predict and reduce readmission rates. METHODS The purpose of this study was to evaluate the Stability and Workload Index for Transfer (SWIFT) score as a predictor of readmission. Further, we wante...