20,236 research outputs found
Reconstruction of the Dark Energy equation of state
One of the main challenges of modern cosmology is to investigate the nature
of dark energy in our Universe. The properties of such a component are normally
summarised as a perfect fluid with a (potentially) time-dependent
equation-of-state parameter . We investigate the evolution of this
parameter with redshift by performing a Bayesian analysis of current
cosmological observations. We model the temporal evolution as piecewise linear
in redshift between `nodes', whose -values and redshifts are allowed to
vary. The optimal number of nodes is chosen by the Bayesian evidence. In this
way, we can both determine the complexity supported by current data and locate
any features present in . We compare this node-based reconstruction with
some previously well-studied parameterisations: the Chevallier-Polarski-Linder
(CPL), the Jassal-Bagla-Padmanabhan (JBP) and the Felice-Nesseris-Tsujikawa
(FNT). By comparing the Bayesian evidence for all of these models we find an
indication towards possible time-dependence in the dark energy
equation-of-state. It is also worth noting that the CPL and JBP models are
strongly disfavoured, whilst the FNT is just significantly disfavoured, when
compared to a simple cosmological constant . We find that our node-based
reconstruction model is slightly disfavoured with respect to the CDM
model.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures, minor correction
CPL: A Core Language for Cloud Computing -- Technical Report
Running distributed applications in the cloud involves deployment. That is,
distribution and configuration of application services and middleware
infrastructure. The considerable complexity of these tasks resulted in the
emergence of declarative JSON-based domain-specific deployment languages to
develop deployment programs. However, existing deployment programs unsafely
compose artifacts written in different languages, leading to bugs that are hard
to detect before run time. Furthermore, deployment languages do not provide
extension points for custom implementations of existing cloud services such as
application-specific load balancing policies.
To address these shortcomings, we propose CPL (Cloud Platform Language), a
statically-typed core language for programming both distributed applications as
well as their deployment on a cloud platform. In CPL, application services and
deployment programs interact through statically typed, extensible interfaces,
and an application can trigger further deployment at run time. We provide a
formal semantics of CPL and demonstrate that it enables type-safe, composable
and extensible libraries of service combinators, such as load balancing and
fault tolerance.Comment: Technical report accompanying the MODULARITY '16 submissio
Activity clocks: spreading dynamics on temporal networks of human contact
Dynamical processes on time-varying complex networks are key to understanding
and modeling a broad variety of processes in socio-technical systems. Here we
focus on empirical temporal networks of human proximity and we aim at
understanding the factors that, in simulation, shape the arrival time
distribution of simple spreading processes. Abandoning the notion of wall-clock
time in favour of node-specific clocks based on activity exposes robust
statistical patterns in the arrival times across different social contexts.
Using randomization strategies and generative models constrained by data, we
show that these patterns can be understood in terms of heterogeneous
inter-event time distributions coupled with heterogeneous numbers of events per
edge. We also show, both empirically and by using a synthetic dataset, that
significant deviations from the above behavior can be caused by the presence of
edge classes with strong activity correlations
Bonds, lone pairs, and shells probed by means of on-top dynamical correlations
The Electron Localization Function (ELF) by Becke and Edgecombe [J. Chem.
Phys. {\bf 92}, 5397 (1990)] is routinely adopted as a descriptor of atomic
shells and covalent bonds. Since the ELF and its related quantities find useful
exploitation also in the construction of modern density functionals, the
interest in complementing the ELF is linked to both the quests of improving
electronic structure descriptors and density functional approximations. The ELF
uses information which is available by considering parallel-spin electron pairs
in single-reference many-body states. In this work, we complement this
construction with information obtained by considering antiparallel-spin pairs
whose short-range correlations are modeled by a density functional
approximation. As a result, the approach requires only a contained
computational effort. Applications to a variety of systems show that, in this
way, we gain a spatial description of the bond in H (which is not available
with the ELF) together with some trends not optimally captured by the ELF in
other prototypical situations
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