Comment on: Kinetic Roughening in Slow Combustion of Paper

We comment on a recent Letter by Maunuksela et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 79, 1515 (1997)].Comment: 1 page, 1 figure, http://polymer.bu.edu/~hmakse/Home.htm

Scaling Behavior of Driven Interfaces Above the Depinning Transition

We study the depinning transition for models representative of each of the two universality classes of interface roughening with quenched disorder. For one of the universality classes, the roughness exponent changes value at the transition, while the dynamical exponent remains unchanged. We also find that the prefactor of the width scales with the driving force. We propose several scaling relations connecting the values of the exponents on both sides of the transition, and discuss some experimental results in light of these findings.Comment: Revtex 3.0, 4 pages in PRL format + 5 figures (available at ftp://jhilad.bu.edu/pub/abbhhss/ma-figures.tar.Z ) submitted to Phys Rev Let

Canonical Transformations in a Higher-Derivative Field Theory

It has been suggested that the chiral symmetry can be implemented only in classical Lagrangians containing higher covariant derivatives of odd order. Contrary to this belief, it is shown that one can construct an exactly soluble two-dimensional higher-derivative fermionic quantum field theory containing only derivatives of even order whose classical Lagrangian exhibits chiral-gauge invariance. The original field solution is expressed in terms of usual Dirac spinors through a canonical transformation, whose generating function allows the determination of the new Hamiltonian. It is emphasized that the original and transformed Hamiltonians are different because the mapping from the old to the new canonical variables depends explicitly on time. The violation of cluster decomposition is discussed and the general Wightman functions satisfying the positive-definiteness condition are obtained.Comment: 12 pages, LaTe

Conservação de pólen de cana-de-açúcar.

A conservação de pólen tem aplicações importantes no melhoramento genético de cana-de-açúcar. Entre as diversas aplicações, a realização de cruzamentos entre variedades assincrônicas no florescimento possibilita a exploração de novas combinações genéticas, isoladas pelas diferentes épocas de floração. Com o objetivo de viabilizar a realização de cruzamentos entre variedades assincrônicas no florescimento foi desenvolvida metodologia para coleta e conservação de pólen de cana-de-açúcar. A pesquisa foi conduzida em parceria entre Embrapa-Ridesa na Estação de Floração e Cruzamento Serra do Ouro, em Murici (AL) e em laboratórios, pertencentes à Embrapa Tabuleiros Costeiros e ao Programa de Melhoramento Genético de Cana-de-açúcar, localizado no Centro de Ciências Agrárias da Universidade Federal de Alagoas. Os grãos-de pólen foram conservados com controle de temperatura (Freezer a -18°C) e com redução de umidade (20% de teor de água). Quando analisada a viabilidade in vivo, através de cruzamentos com pólen armazenado por 30-60 dias, foram obtidas mais de uma centena de plantas (139). Parte destas plantas foram submetidas a Teste de Paternidade (19) e confirmaram a origem de pólen conservado (6). Estes resultados demonstram que é possível armazenar e manter viável o pólen de cana-de-açúcar para realizar cruzamentos entre variedades assincrônicas no florescimento em Alagoas/Brasil

A Study of Cool White Dwarfs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 12

In this work we study white dwarfs where $30\,000\,\text{K} {>} \mathrm{T}_{\rm{eff}} {>} 5\,000\,\text{K}$ to compare the differences in the cooling of DAs and non-DAs and their formation channels. Our final sample is composed by nearly $13\,000$ DAs and more than $3\,000$ non-DAs that are simultaneously in the SDSS DR12 spectroscopic database and in the \textit{Gaia} survey DR2. We present the mass distribution for DAs, DBs and DCs, where it is found that the DCs are ${\sim}0.15\,\mathrm{M}_\odot$ more massive than DAs and DBs on average. Also we present the photometric effective temperature distribution for each spectral type and the distance distribution for DAs and non-DAs. In addition, we study the ratio of non-DAs to DAs as a function of effective temperature. We find that this ratio is around ${\sim}0.075$ for effective temperature above ${\sim}22\,000\,\text{K}$ and increases by a factor of five for effective temperature cooler than $15\,000\,\text{K}$. If we assume that the increase of non-DA stars between ${\sim}22\,000\,\text{K}$ to ${\sim}15\,000\,\text{K}$ is due to convective dilution, $14{\pm}3$ per cent of the DAs should turn into non-DAs to explain the observed ratio. Our determination of the mass distribution of DCs also agrees with the theory that convective dilution and mixing are more likely to occur in massive white dwarfs, which supports evolutionary models and observations suggesting that higher mass white dwarfs have thinner hydrogen layers.Comment: 9 pages, 10 figures, accepted by MNRA

Higher-Derivative Two-Dimensional Massive Fermion Theories

We consider the canonical quantization of a generalized two-dimensional massive fermion theory containing higher odd-order derivatives. The requirements of Lorentz invariance, hermiticity of the Hamiltonian and absence of tachyon excitations suffice to fix the mass term, which contains a derivative coupling. We show that the basic quantum excitations of a higher-derivative theory of order 2N+1 consist of a physical usual massive fermion, quantized with positive metric, plus 2N unphysical massless fermions, quantized with opposite metrics. The positive metric Hilbert subspace, which is isomorphic to the space of states of a massive free fermion theory, is selected by a subsidiary-like condition. Employing the standard bosonization scheme, the equivalent boson theory is derived. The results obtained are used as a guideline to discuss the solution of a theory including a current-current interaction.Comment: 23 pages, Late

Emergence of Complex Dynamics in a Simple Model of Signaling Networks

A variety of physical, social and biological systems generate complex fluctuations with correlations across multiple time scales. In physiologic systems, these long-range correlations are altered with disease and aging. Such correlated fluctuations in living systems have been attributed to the interaction of multiple control systems; however, the mechanisms underlying this behavior remain unknown. Here, we show that a number of distinct classes of dynamical behaviors, including correlated fluctuations characterized by $1/f$-scaling of their power spectra, can emerge in networks of simple signaling units. We find that under general conditions, complex dynamics can be generated by systems fulfilling two requirements: i) a ``small-world'' topology and ii) the presence of noise. Our findings support two notable conclusions: first, complex physiologic-like signals can be modeled with a minimal set of components; and second, systems fulfilling conditions (i) and (ii) are robust to some degree of degradation, i.e., they will still be able to generate $1/f$-dynamics