10,398 research outputs found
To boldly go:an occam-π mission to engineer emergence
Future systems will be too complex to design and implement explicitly. Instead, we will have to learn to engineer complex behaviours indirectly: through the discovery and application of local rules of behaviour, applied to simple process components, from which desired behaviours predictably emerge through dynamic interactions between massive numbers of instances. This paper describes a process-oriented architecture for fine-grained concurrent systems that enables experiments with such indirect engineering. Examples are presented showing the differing complex behaviours that can arise from minor (non-linear) adjustments to low-level parameters, the difficulties in suppressing the emergence of unwanted (bad) behaviour, the unexpected relationships between apparently unrelated physical phenomena (shown up by their separate emergence from the same primordial process swamp) and the ability to explore and engineer completely new physics (such as force fields) by their emergence from low-level process interactions whose mechanisms can only be imagined, but not built, at the current time
CfAIR2: Near Infrared Light Curves of 94 Type Ia Supernovae
CfAIR2 is a large homogeneously reduced set of near-infrared (NIR) light
curves for Type Ia supernovae (SN Ia) obtained with the 1.3m Peters Automated
InfraRed Imaging TELescope (PAIRITEL). This data set includes 4607 measurements
of 94 SN Ia and 4 additional SN Iax observed from 2005-2011 at the Fred
Lawrence Whipple Observatory on Mount Hopkins, Arizona. CfAIR2 includes JHKs
photometric measurements for 88 normal and 6 spectroscopically peculiar SN Ia
in the nearby universe, with a median redshift of z~0.021 for the normal SN Ia.
CfAIR2 data span the range from -13 days to +127 days from B-band maximum. More
than half of the light curves begin before the time of maximum and the coverage
typically contains ~13-18 epochs of observation, depending on the filter. We
present extensive tests that verify the fidelity of the CfAIR2 data pipeline,
including comparison to the excellent data of the Carnegie Supernova Project.
CfAIR2 contributes to a firm local anchor for supernova cosmology studies in
the NIR. Because SN Ia are more nearly standard candles in the NIR and are less
vulnerable to the vexing problems of extinction by dust, CfAIR2 will help the
supernova cosmology community develop more precise and accurate extragalactic
distance probes to improve our knowledge of cosmological parameters, including
dark energy and its potential time variation.Comment: 31 pages, 15 figures, 10 tables. Accepted to ApJS. v2 modified to
more closely match journal versio
Motion Calculations on Stent Grafts in AAA
Endovascular aortic repair (EVAR) is a technique which uses stent grafts to treat aortic aneurysms in patients at risk of aneurysm rupture. Although this technique has been shown to be very successful on the short term, the long term results are less optimistic due to failure of the stent graft. The pulsating blood flow applies stresses and forces to the stent graft, which can cause problems such as breakage, leakage, and migration. Therefore it is of importance to gain more insight into the in vivo motion behavior of these devices. If we know more about the motion patterns in well-behaved stent graft as well as ill-behaving devices, we shall be better able to distinguish between these type of behaviors These insights will enable us to detect stent-related problems and might even be used to predict problems beforehand. Further, these insights will help in designing the next generation stent grafts. Firstly, this work discusses the applicability of ECG-gated CT for measuring the motions of stent grafts in AAA. Secondly, multiple methods to segment the stent graft from these data are discussed. Thirdly, this work proposes a method that uses image registration to apply motion to the segmented stent mode
Negotiating the inhuman: Bakhtin, materiality and the instrumentalization of climate change
The article argues that the work of literary theorist Mikhail M. Bakhtin presents a starting point for thinking about the instrumentalization of climate change. Bakhtin’s conceptualization of human–world relationships, encapsulated in the concept of ‘cosmic terror’, places a strong focus on our perception of the ‘inhuman’. Suggesting a link between the perceived alienness and instability of the world and in the exploitation of the resulting fear of change by political and religious forces, Bakhtin asserts that the latter can only be resisted if our desire for a false stability in the world is overcome. The key to this overcoming of fear, for him, lies in recognizing and confronting the worldly relations of the human body. This consciousness represents the beginning of one’s ‘deautomatization’ from following established patterns of reactions to predicted or real changes. In the vein of several theorists and artists of his time who explored similar ‘deautomatization’ strategies – examples include Shklovsky’s ‘ostranenie’, Brecht’s ‘Verfremdung’, Artaud’s emotional ‘cruelty’ and Bataille’s ‘base materialism’ – Bakhtin proposes a more playful and widely accessible experimentation to deconstruct our ‘habitual picture of the world’. Experimentation is envisioned to take place across the material and the textual to increase possibilities for action. Through engaging with Bakhtin’s ideas, this article seeks to draw attention to relations between the imagination of the world and political agency, and the need to include these relations in our own experiments with creating climate change awareness
Lineshape of the Lambda(1405) Hyperon Measured Through its Sigma0 pion0 Decay
The pp -> p K+ Y0 reaction has been studied for hyperon masses m(Y0)<1540
MeV/c2 at COSY-Juelich by using a 3.65 GeV/c circulating proton beam incident
on an internal hydrogen target. Final states comprising two protons, one
positively charged kaon and one negatively charged pion have been identified
with the ANKE spectrometer. Such configurations are sensitive to the production
of the ground state Lambda and Sigma0 hyperons as well as the Sigma0(1385) and
Lambda(1405) resonances. Applying invariant- and missing-mass techniques, the
two overlapping excited states could be well separated, though with limited
statistics. The shape and position of the Lambda(1405) distribution,
reconstructed cleanly in the Sigma0 pion0 channel, are similar to those found
from other decay modes and there is no obvious mass shift. This finding
constitutes a challenging test for models that predict Lambda(1405) to be a
two-state resonance.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Lett.
2D Semiconductor Nonlinear Plasmonic Modulators
A plasmonic modulator is a device that controls the amplitude or phase of
propagating plasmons. In a pure plasmonic modulator, the presence or absence of
a pump plasmonic wave controls the amplitude of a probe plasmonic wave through
a channel. This control has to be mediated by an interaction between disparate
plasmonic waves, typically requiring the integration of a nonlinear material.
In this work, we demonstrate the first 2D semiconductor nonlinear plasmonic
modulator based on a WSe2 monolayer integrated on top of a lithographically
defined metallic waveguide. We utilize the strong coupling between the surface
plasmon polaritons, SPPs, and excitons in the WSe2 to give a 73 percent change
in transmission through the device. We demonstrate control of the propagating
SPPs using both optical and SPP pumps, realizing the first demonstration of a
2D semiconductor nonlinear plasmonic modulator, with a modulation depth of 4.1
percent, and an ultralow switching energy estimated to be 40 aJ
Rootstock Effects on Scion Phenotypes in a ‘Chambourcin’ Experimental Vineyard
Understanding how root systems modulate shoot system phenotypes is a fundamental question in plant biology and will be useful in developing resilient agricultural crops. Grafting is a common horticultural practice that joins the roots (rootstock) of one plant to the shoot (scion) of another, providing an excellent method for investigating how these two organ systems affect each other. In this study, we used the French-American hybrid grapevine ‘Chambourcin’ (Vitis L.) as a model to explore the rootstock–scion relationship. We examined leaf shape, ion concentrations, and gene expression in ‘Chambourcin’ grown ungrafted as well as grafted to three different rootstocks (‘SO4’, ‘1103P’ and ‘3309C’) across 2 years and three different irrigation treatments. We found that a significant amount of the variation in leaf shape could be explained by the interaction between rootstock and irrigation. For ion concentrations, the primary source of variation identified was the position of a leaf in a shoot, although rootstock and rootstock by irrigation interaction also explained a significant amount of variation for most ions. Lastly, we found rootstock-specific patterns of gene expression in grafted plants when compared to ungrafted vines. Thus, our work reveals the subtle and complex effect of grafting on ‘Chambourcin’ leaf morphology, ionomics, and gene expression
Critical Dynamics of Gelation
Shear relaxation and dynamic density fluctuations are studied within a Rouse
model, generalized to include the effects of permanent random crosslinks. We
derive an exact correspondence between the static shear viscosity and the
resistance of a random resistor network. This relation allows us to compute the
static shear viscosity exactly for uncorrelated crosslinks. For more general
percolation models, which are amenable to a scaling description, it yields the
scaling relation for the critical exponent of the shear
viscosity. Here is the thermal exponent for the gel fraction and
is the crossover exponent of the resistor network. The results on the shear
viscosity are also used in deriving upper and lower bounds on the incoherent
scattering function in the long-time limit, thereby corroborating previous
results.Comment: 34 pages, 2 figures (revtex, amssymb); revised version (minor
changes
An SU(3) model for octet baryon and meson fragmentation
The production of the octet of baryons and mesons in e^+ e^- collisions is
analysed, based on considerations of SU(3) symmetry and a simple model for
SU(3) symmetry breaking in fragmentation functions. All fragmentation
functions, D_q^h(x, Q^2), describing the fragmentation of quarks into a member
of the baryon octet (and similarly for fragmentation into members of the meson
octet) are expressed in terms of three SU(3) symmetric functions, \alpha(x,
Q^2), \beta(x, Q^2), and \gamma(x, Q^2). With the introduction of an SU(3)
breaking parameter, \lambda, the model is successful in describing
hadroproduction data at the Z pole. The fragmentation functions are then
evolved using leading order evolution equations and good fits to currently
available data at 34 GeV and at 161 GeV are obtained.Comment: 24 pages LaTeX file including 11 postscript figure file
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