RTNN: The new parallel machine in Zaragoza

I report on the development of RTNN, a parallel computer designed as a 4^4 hypercube of 256 T9000 transputer nodes, each with 8 MB memory. The peak performance of the machine is expected to be 2.5 Gflops.Comment: 10 pages PostScript, including 5 figures. Write-up (June 1995) of talk at the International Workshop ``QCD on Massively Parallel Computers'', Yamagata, Japan, 16-18 March 1995. To appear in the Proceedings, Suppl. Progr. Theor. Phys. (Kyoto

Some views on monopoles and confinement

Aspects of the monopole condensation picture of confinement are discussed. First, the nature of the monopole singularities in the abelian projection approach is analysed. Their apparent gauge dependence is shown to have a natural interpretation in terms of 't~Hooft-Polyakov-like monopoles in euclidean SU(2) gauge theory. Next, the results and predictions of a realization of confinement through condensation of such monopoles are summarized and compared with numerical data.Comment: Talk at the International RCNP Workshop on COLOR CONFINEMENT AND HADRONS --- CONFINEMENT 95 (March 22--24, 1995, RCNP Osaka, Japan), to appear in the proceedings. 9 pages latex, 1 PostScript figure in uufiles format, uses epsf.te

Interplay of air and sand: Faraday heaping unravelled

We report on numerical simulations of a vibrated granular bed including the effect of the ambient air, generating the famous Faraday heaps known from experiment. A detailed analysis of the forces shows that the heaps are formed and stabilized by the airflow through the bed while the gap between bed and vibrating bottom is growing, confirming the pressure gradient mechanism found experimentally by Thomas and Squires [Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 574 (1998)], with the addition that the airflow is partly generated by isobars running parallel to the surface of the granular bed. Importantly, the simulations also explain the heaping instability of the initially flat surface and the experimentally observed coarsening of a number of small heaps into a larger one

Electromagnons and instabilities in magnetoelectric materials with non-collinear spin orders

We show that strong electromagnon peaks can be found in absorption spectra of non-collinear magnets exhibiting a linear magnetoelectric effect. The frequencies of these peaks coincide with the frequencies of antiferromagnetic resonances and the ratio of the spectral weights of the electromagnon and antiferromagnetic resonance is related to the ratio of the static magnetoelectric constant and magnetic susceptibility. Using a Kagome lattice antiferromagnet as an example, we show that frustration of spin ordering gives rise to magnetoelastic instabilities at strong spin-lattice coupling, which transform a non-collinear magnetoelectric spin state into a collinear multiferroic state with a spontaneous electric polarization and magnetization. The Kagome lattice antiferromagnet also shows a ferroelectric incommensurate-spiral phase, where polarization is induced by the exchange striction mechanism.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

Garuda 5 (khyung lnga): Ecologies of Potency and the Poison-Medicine Spectrum of Sowa Rigpa’s Renowned ‘Black Aconite’ Formula

This article focuses on ethnographic work conducted at the Men-Tsee-Khang (Dharamsala, India) on Garuda 5 (khyung lnga), a commonly prescribed Tibetan medical formula. This medicine’s efficacy as a painkiller and activity against infection and inflammation is largely due to a particularly powerful plant, known as ‘virulent poison’ (btsan dug) as well as ‘the great medicine’ (sman chen), and identified as a subset of Aconitum species. Its effects, however, are potentially dangerous or even deadly. How can these poisonous plants be used in medicine and, conversely, when does a medicine become a poison? How can ostensibly the same substance be both harmful and helpful? The explanation requires a more nuanced picture than mere dose dependency. Attending to the broader ‘ecologies of potency’ in which these substances are locally enmeshed, in line with Sienna Craig’s Efficacy and the Social Ecologies of Tibetan Medicine (2012), provides fertile ground to better understand the effects of Garuda 5 and how potency is developed and directed in practice. I aim to unpack the spectrum between sman (medicine) and dug (poison) in Sowa Rigpa by elucidating some of the multiple dimensions which determine the activity of Garuda 5 as it is formulated and prescribed in India. I thus embrace the full spectrum of potency— the ‘good’ and the ‘bad,’ the ‘wanted’ and the ‘unwanted’—without presuming the universal validity of biomedical notions of toxicity and side effects

On association in regression: the coefficient of determination revisited

Universal coefficients of determination are investigated which quantify the strength of the relation between a vector of dependent variables Y and a vector of independent covariates X. They are defined as measures of dependence between Y and X through theta(x), with theta(x) parameterizing the conditional distribution of Y given X=x. If theta(x) involves unknown coefficients gamma the definition is conditional on gamma, and in practice gamma, respectively the coefficient of determination has to be estimated. The estimates of quantities we propose generalize R^2 in classical linear regression and are also related to other definitions previously suggested. Our definitions apply to generalized regression models with arbitrary link functions as well as multivariate and nonparametric regression. The definition and use of the proposed coefficients of determination is illustrated for several regression problems with simulated and real data sets

Tuplix Calculus

We introduce a calculus for tuplices, which are expressions that generalize matrices and vectors. Tuplices have an underlying data type for quantities that are taken from a zero-totalized field. We start with the core tuplix calculus CTC for entries and tests, which are combined using conjunctive composition. We define a standard model and prove that CTC is relatively complete with respect to it. The core calculus is extended with operators for choice, information hiding, scalar multiplication, clearing and encapsulation. We provide two examples of applications; one on incremental financial budgeting, and one on modular financial budget design.Comment: 22 page