Senior Programmers: Characteristics of Elderly Users from Stack Overflow

In this paper we presents results of research about elderly users of Stack Overflow (Question and Answer portal for programmers). They have different roles, different main activities and different habits. They are an important part of the community, as they tend to have higher reputation and they like to share their knowledge. This is a great example of possible way of keeping elderly people active and helpful for society

Breakdown of adiabatic transfer of light in waveguides in the presence of absorption

In atomic physics, adiabatic evolution is often used to achieve a robust and efficient population transfer. Many adiabatic schemes have also been implemented in optical waveguide structures. Recently there has been increasing interests in the influence of decay and absorption, and their engineering applications. Here it is shown that even a small decay can significantly influence the dynamical behaviour of a system, above and beyond a mere change of the overall norm. In particular, a small decay can lead to a breakdown of adiabatic transfer schemes, even when both the spectrum and the eigenfunctions are only sightly modified. This is demonstrated for the generalization of a STIRAP scheme that has recently been implemented in optical waveguide structures. Here the question how an additional absorption in either the initial or the target waveguide influences the transfer property of the scheme is addressed. It is found that the scheme breaks down for small values of the absorption at a relatively sharp threshold, which can be estimated by simple analytical arguments.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, revised and extende

Balancing the bio in a biopsychosocial model of hazardous drinking and alcohol use disorders

How alcohol problems are represented, including as ‘Alcohol Use Disorder’ (AUD), has a broad set of implications for research, policy and practice. A biopsychosocial approach is commonly offered as a means of taking into account the various environmental and individual level factors that may contribute to so called mental and behavioural disorders including AUD. In this reply we argue that the reference article presents a heavy focus on ‘bio’ factors without sufficiently acknowledging the potential costs of doing so, particularly that a focus on individual level ‘bio’ factors may undermine the utilization of effective environmental policy levers whilst potentially harming AUD recovery processes. Thus, we call for a more balanced focus on the ‘psychosocial’ factors related to AUD

Pro and Con, A Complete Investigation of the Sunday School Question Viewed from a Bible Standpoint

In the first third of the twentieth century a significant debate was held among Churches of Christ concerning the propriety of employing Sunday Schools to teach the Bible in congregational settings. Trott and Clark\u27s tract is an early summary of the arguments.https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/crs_books/1012/thumbnail.jp

Calculations of time-dependent observables in non-Hermitian quantum mechanics: The problem and a possible solution

The solutions of the time independent Schrodinger equation for non-Hermitian (NH) Hamiltonians have been extensively studied and calculated in many different fields of physics by using L^2 methods that originally have been developed for the calculations of bound states. The existing non-Hermitian formalism breaks down when dealing with wavepackets(WP). An open question is how time dependent expectation values can be calculated when the Hamiltonian is NH ? Using the F-product formalism, which was recently proposed, [J. Phys. Chem., 107, 7181 (2003)] we calculate the time dependent expectation values of different observable quantities for a simple well known study test case model Hamiltonian. We carry out a comparison between these results with those obtained from conventional(i.e., Hermitian) quantum mechanics (QM) calculations. The remarkable agreement between these results emphasizes the fact that in the NH-QM, unlike standard QM, there is no need to split the entire space into two regions; i.e., the interaction region and its surrounding. Our results open a door for a type of WP propagation calculations within the NH-QM formalism that until now were impossible.Comment: 20 pages, 5 Postscript figures. To be Published in Physical Review