The neuronal correlate of bidirectional synesthesia: a combined event-related potential and functional magnetic resonance imaging study

The neuronal correlate of a rare explicit bi-directional synaesthesia was investigated with numerical and physical size comparison tasks using both functional magnetic resonance imaging and event-related potentials. Interestingly, although participant I.S. exhibited similar congruity effects for both tasks at the behavioural level, subsequent analyses of the imaging data revealed that different brain areas were recruited for each task, and in different time windows. The results support: 1) the genuineness of bi-directional synaesthesia at the neuronal level, 2) the possibility that discrepancy in the neuronal correlates of synaesthesia between previous studies might be task-related, and 3) the possibility that synaesthesia might not be a unitary phenomenon

Method and apparatus for stable silicon dioxide layers on silicon grown in silicon nitride ambient

A method and apparatus for thermally growing stable silicon dioxide layers on silicon is disclosed. A previously etched and baked silicon nitride tube placed in a furnace is used to grow the silicon dioxide. First, pure oxygen is allowed to flow through the tube to initially coat the inside surface of the tube with a thin layer of silicon dioxide. After the tube is coated with the thin layer of silicon dioxide, the silicon is oxidized thermally in a normal fashion. If the tube becomes contaminated, the silicon dioxide is etched off thereby exposing clean silicon nitride and then the inside of the tube is recoated with silicon dioxide. As is disclosed, the silicon nitride tube can also be used as the ambient for the pyrolytic decomposition of silane and ammonia to form thin layers of clean silicon nitride

Persistent currents in continuous one-dimensional disordered rings within the Hartree--Fock approximation

We present numerical results for the zero temperature persistent currents carried by interacting spinless electrons in disordered one dimensional continuous rings. The disorder potential is described by a collection of delta-functions at random locations and strengths. The calculations are performed by a self-consistent Hartree-Fock (H-F) approximation. Because the H-F approximation retains the concept of single-electron levels, we compare the statistics of energy levels of noninteracting electrons with those of interacting electrons as well as of the level persistent currents. We find that the e-e interactions alters the levels and samples persistent currents and introduces a preffered diamagnetic current direction. In contrast to the analogous calculations that recently appeared in the literature for interacting spinless electrons in the presence of moderate disorder in tight-binding models we find no suppression of the persistent currents due to the e-e interactions.Comment: 10 RevTex pages including 11 figures, minor updated ref'

A method for selective gold diffusion of monolithic silicon devices and/or circuits Patent application

Selective gold diffusion on monolithic silicon chips for switching and nonswitching amplifier devices and circuits and linear and digital logic circuit

Relative importance of crystal field versus bandwidth to the high pressure spin transition in transition metal monoxides

The crystal field splitting and d bandwidth of the 3d transition metal monoxides MnO, FeO, CoO and NiO are analyzed as a function of pressure within density functional theory. In all four cases the 3d bandwidth is significantly larger than the crystal field splitting over a wide range of compressions. The bandwidth actually increases more as pressure is increased than the crystal field splitting. Therefore the role of increasing bandwidth must be considered in any explanation of a possible spin collapse that these materials may exhibit under pressure.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Penalized Orthogonal-Components Regression for Large p Small n Data

We propose a penalized orthogonal-components regression (POCRE) for large p small n data. Orthogonal components are sequentially constructed to maximize, upon standardization, their correlation to the response residuals. A new penalization framework, implemented via empirical Bayes thresholding, is presented to effectively identify sparse predictors of each component. POCRE is computationally efficient owing to its sequential construction of leading sparse principal components. In addition, such construction offers other properties such as grouping highly correlated predictors and allowing for collinear or nearly collinear predictors. With multivariate responses, POCRE can construct common components and thus build up latent-variable models for large p small n data.Comment: 12 page

Computer program for stress, vibration, and buckling characteristics of general shells of revolution

Structures Research Associates (SRA) system of programs is composed of six compatible computer programs for structural analyses of axisymmetric shell structures. Theories and methods upon which these programs are based are presented in documentation. They apply to a common structural model but analyze different modes of structural response

Transport through an Anderson impurity: Current ringing, non-linear magnetization and a direct comparison of continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo and hierarchical quantum master equations

We give a detailed comparison of the hierarchical quantum master equation (HQME) method to a continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo (CT-QMC) approach, assessing the usability of these numerically exact schemes as impurity solvers in practical nonequilibrium calculations. We review the main characteristics of the methods and discuss the scaling of the associated numerical effort. We substantiate our discussion with explicit numerical results for the nonequilibrium transport properties of a single-site Anderson impurity. The numerical effort of the HQME scheme scales linearly with the simulation time but increases (at worst exponentially) with decreasing temperature. In contrast, CT-QMC is less restricted by temperature at short times, but in general the cost of going to longer times is also exponential. After establishing the numerical exactness of the HQME scheme, we use it to elucidate the influence of different ways to induce transport through the impurity on the initial dynamics, discuss the phenomenon of coherent current oscillations, known as current ringing, and explain the non-monotonic temperature dependence of the steady-state magnetization as a result of competing broadening effects. We also elucidate the pronounced non-linear magnetization dynamics, which appears on intermediate time scales in the presence of an asymmetric coupling to the electrodes.Comment: 32 pages, 10 figures; revised versio