12,174 research outputs found
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 in economics: II. Modeling of company growth
In the preceding paper we presented empirical results describing the growth
of publicly-traded United States manufacturing firms within the years
1974--1993. Our results suggest that the data can be described by a scaling
approach. Here, we propose models that may lead to some insight into these
phenomena. First, we study a model in which the growth rate of a company is
affected by a tendency to retain an ``optimal'' size. That model leads to an
exponential distribution of the logarithm of the growth rate in agreement with
the empirical results. Then, we study a hierarchical tree-like model of a
company that enables us to relate the two parameters of the model to the
exponent , which describes the dependence of the standard deviation of
the distribution of growth rates on size. We find that , where defines the mean branching ratio of the hierarchical tree and
is the probability that the lower levels follow the policy of higher
levels in the hierarchy. We also study the distribution of growth rates of this
hierarchical model. We find that the distribution is consistent with the
exponential form found empirically.Comment: 19 pages LateX, RevTeX 3, 6 figures, to appear J. Phys. I France
(April 1997
Scaling behavior in economics: I. Empirical results for company growth
We address the question of the growth of firm size. To this end, we analyze
the Compustat data base comprising all publicly-traded United States
manufacturing firms within the years 1974-1993. We find that the distribution
of firm sizes remains stable for the 20 years we study, i.e., the mean value
and standard deviation remain approximately constant. We study the distribution
of sizes of the ``new'' companies in each year and find it to be well
approximated by a log-normal. We find (i) the distribution of the logarithm of
the growth rates, for a fixed growth period of one year, and for companies with
approximately the same size displays an exponential form, and (ii) the
fluctuations in the growth rates -- measured by the width of this distribution
-- scale as a power law with , . We find
that the exponent takes the same value, within the error bars, for
several measures of the size of a company. In particular, we obtain:
for sales, for number of employees,
for assets, for cost of goods sold, and
for property, plant, & equipment.Comment: 16 pages LateX, RevTeX 3, 10 figures, to appear J. Phys. I France
(April 1997
Interface Depinning in the Absence of External Driving Force
We study the pinning-depinning phase transition of interfaces in the quenched
Kardar-Parisi-Zhang model as the external driving force goes towards zero.
For a fixed value of the driving force we induce depinning by increasing the
nonlinear term coefficient , which is related to lateral growth, up to
a critical threshold. We focus on the case in which there is no external force
applied (F=0) and find that, contrary to a simple scaling prediction, there is
a finite value of that makes the interface to become depinned. The
critical exponents at the transition are consistent with directed percolation
depinning. Our results are relevant for paper wetting experiments, in which an
interface gets moving with no external driving force.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures included, uses epsf. Submitted to PR
Elastic String in a Random Medium
We consider a one dimensional elastic string as a set of massless beads
interacting through springs characterized by anisotropic elastic constants. The
string, driven by an external force, moves in a medium with quenched disorder.
We present evidence that the consideration of longitudinal fluctuations leads
to nonlinear behavior in the equation of motion which is {\it kinematically}
generated by the motion of the string. The strength of the nonlinear effects
depends on the anisotropy of the medium and the distance from the depinning
transition. On the other hand the consideration of restricted solid on solid
conditions imposed to the growth of the string leads to a nonlinear term in the
equation of motion with a {\it diverging} coefficient at the depinning
transition.Comment: 9 pages, REVTEX, figures available upon request from
[email protected]
Driven interfaces in disordered media: determination of universality classes from experimental data
While there have been important theoretical advances in understanding the
universality classes of interfaces moving in porous media, the developed tools
cannot be directly applied to experiments. Here we introduce a method that can
identify the universality class from snapshots of the interface profile. We
test the method on discrete models whose universality class is well known, and
use it to identify the universality class of interfaces obtained in experiments
on fluid flow in porous media.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure
Universal macroscopic background formation in surface super-roughening
We study a class of super-rough growth models whose structure factor
satisfies the Family-Vicsek scaling. We demonstrate that a macroscopic
background spontaneously develops in the local surface profile, which dominates
the scaling of the local surface width and the height-difference. The shape of
the macroscopic background takes a form of a finite-order polynomial whose
order is decided from the value of the global roughness exponent. Once the
macroscopic background is subtracted, the width of the resulting local surface
profile satisfies the Family-Vicsek scaling. We show that this feature is
universal to all super-rough growth models, and we also discuss the difference
between the macroscopic background formation and the pattern formation in other
models.Comment: 5 pages, LaTex, 1 figure, minor correction
Ice Age Epochs and the Sun's Path Through the Galaxy
We present a calculation of the Sun's motion through the Milky Way Galaxy
over the last 500 million years. The integration is based upon estimates of the
Sun's current position and speed from measurements with Hipparcos and upon a
realistic model for the Galactic gravitational potential. We estimate the times
of the Sun's past spiral arm crossings for a range in assumed values of the
spiral pattern angular speed. We find that for a difference between the mean
solar and pattern speed of Omega_Sun - Omega_p = 11.9 +/- 0.7 km/s/kpc the Sun
has traversed four spiral arms at times that appear to correspond well with
long duration cold periods on Earth. This supports the idea that extended
exposure to the higher cosmic ray flux associated with spiral arms can lead to
increased cloud cover and long ice age epochs on Earth.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Ap
Desigualdades regionais e retomada do crescimento num quadro de integração económica
Este artigo apresenta um quadro geral da evolução das desigualdades regionais entre os estados e regiões brasileiras ao longo do período 85/95, através da análise de indicadores sociais e econômicos. A partir de tais indicadores constata-se tendência ao aumento da dispersão das rendas estaduais, sobretudo após 1992, apontando para o recrudescimento das desigualdades entre unidades da federação. A avaliação do desempenho econômico se dá com base na evolução dos PIB estaduais (setoriais) e da balança comercial. Numa década de crescimento mediocre algumas regiões periféricas parecem estar redefinindo sua inserção a nivel do comércio internacinal, como é o caso do Norte e do Centro-Oeste. O Nordeste evidencia forte estagnação no período analisado, não se integrando ao Mercosul, que favorece primordialmente os estados das regiões Sul e Sudeste, destacadamente São Paulo. Assim, podemos indicar o risco de que novas trajetórias de crescimento possam vir a ser abortadas por carecerem de condições mínimas de sustentação, como ocorrido no passado recente.
Functional cartography of complex metabolic networks
High-throughput techniques are leading to an explosive growth in the size of
biological databases and creating the opportunity to revolutionize our
understanding of life and disease. Interpretation of these data remains,
however, a major scientific challenge. Here, we propose a methodology that
enables us to extract and display information contained in complex networks.
Specifically, we demonstrate that one can (i) find functional modules in
complex networks, and (ii) classify nodes into universal roles according to
their pattern of intra- and inter-module connections. The method thus yields a
``cartographic representation'' of complex networks. Metabolic networks are
among the most challenging biological networks and, arguably, the ones with
more potential for immediate applicability. We use our method to analyze the
metabolic networks of twelve organisms from three different super-kingdoms. We
find that, typically, 80% of the nodes are only connected to other nodes within
their respective modules, and that nodes with different roles are affected by
different evolutionary constraints and pressures. Remarkably, we find that
low-degree metabolites that connect different modules are more conserved than
hubs whose links are mostly within a single module.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures. Go to http://amaral.northwestern.edu for the PDF
file of the reprin
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