RESUMEN
INTRODUCTION: Dive computers are used in some occupational diving sectors to manage decompression but there is little independent assessment of their performance. A significant proportion of occupational diving operations employ single square-wave pressure exposures in support of their work. METHODS: Single examples of 43 models of dive computer were compressed to five simulated depths between 15 and 50 metres' sea water (msw) and maintained at those depths until they had registered over 30 minutes of decompression. At each depth, and for each model, downloaded data were used to collate the times at which the unit was still registering "no decompression" and the times at which various levels of decompression were indicated or exceeded. Each depth profile was replicated three times for most models. RESULTS: Decompression isopleths for no-stop dives indicated that computers tended to be more conservative than standard decompression tables at depths shallower than 30 msw but less conservative between 30-50 msw. For dives requiring decompression, computers were predominantly more conservative than tables across the whole depth range tested. There was considerable variation between models in the times permitted at all of the depth/decompression combinations. CONCLUSIONS: The present study would support the use of some dive computers for controlling single, square-wave diving by some occupational sectors. The choice of which makes and models to use would have to consider their specific dive management characteristics which may additionally be affected by the intended operational depth and whether staged decompression was permitted.
Asunto(s)
Descompresión/instrumentación , Buceo/fisiología , Minicomputadores , Algoritmos , Minicomputadores/clasificación , Valores de Referencia , Reproducibilidad de los Resultados , Agua de Mar , Programas Informáticos , Temperatura , Factores de TiempoRESUMEN
A number of relatively low-cost processors are now available which employ architectural features previously found only on very expensive supercomputers. The speed of these computers makes it possible to reduce the time to solution of certain problems and to resolve large problems that previously were too time consuming to perform locally. A brief overview of this type of processor is given and the implications for computations in molecular biophysics are discussed in reference to the results of a benchmark that uses the refinement of a protein structure from X-ray crystallographic data.