14,365 research outputs found
A sample of religious understanding and beliefs of an urban church congregation
Thesis (M.S.)--Boston Universit
First Results of the Search for Neutrinoless Double-Beta Decay with the NEMO 3 Detector
The NEMO 3 detector, which has been operating in the Frejus underground laboratory since February 2003, is devoted to the search for neutrinoless double beta decay (bb0nu). Half-lives of the two neutrino double beta decays (bb2nu) have been measured for 100Mo and 82Se. After 389 effective days of data collection from February 2003 until September 2004 (Phase I), no evidence for neutrinoless double beta decay was found from ~7kg of 100Mo and ~1 kg of 82Se. The corresponding lower limits for the half-lives are 4.6 x 10^23 years for 100Mo and 1.0 x10^23 years for 82Se (90% C.L.). Depending on the nuclear matrix elements calculation, limits for the effective Majorana neutrino mass are < 1.7-4.9 eV for 82Se
Comparison of beam generation techniques using a phase only spatial light modulator
Whether in art or for QR codes, images have proven to be
both powerful and efficient carriers of information. Spatial light modulators
allow an unprecedented level of control over the generation of optical fields
by using digital holograms. There is no unique way of obtaining a desired
light pattern however, leaving many competing methods for hologram
generation. In this paper, we test six hologram generation techniques
in the creation of a variety of modes as well as a photographic image:
rating the methods according to obtained mode quality and power. All
techniques compensate for a non-uniform mode profile of the input laser
and incorporate amplitude scaling. We find that all methods perform well
and stress the importance of appropriate spatial filtering. We expect these
results to be of interest to those working in the contexts of microscopy,
optical trapping or quantum image creation
Influence of engineered interfaces on residual stresses and mechanical response in metal matrix composites
Because of the inherent coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) mismatch between fiber and matrix within metal and intermetallic matrix composite systems, high residual stresses can develop under various thermal loading conditions. These conditions include cooling from processing temperature to room temperature as well as subsequent thermal cycling. As a result of these stresses, within certain composite systems, radial, circumferential, and/or longitudinal cracks have been observed to form at the fiber matrix interface region. A number of potential solutions for reducing this thermally induced residual stress field have been proposed recently. Examples of some potential solutions are high CTE fibers, fiber preheating, thermal anneal treatments, and an engineered interface. Here the focus is on designing an interface (by using a compensating/compliant layer concept) to reduce or eliminate the thermal residual stress field and, therefore, the initiation and propagation of cracks developed during thermal loading. Furthermore, the impact of the engineered interface on the composite's mechanical response when subjected to isothermal mechanical load histories is examined
A Trace Finite Element Method for Vector-Laplacians on Surfaces
We consider a vector-Laplace problem posed on a 2D surface embedded in a 3D
domain, which results from the modeling of surface fluids based on exterior
Cartesian differential operators. The main topic of this paper is the
development and analysis of a finite element method for the discretization of
this surface partial differential equation. We apply the trace finite element
technique, in which finite element spaces on a background shape-regular
tetrahedral mesh that is surface-independent are used for discretization. In
order to satisfy the constraint that the solution vector field is tangential to
the surface we introduce a Lagrange multiplier. We show well-posedness of the
resulting saddle point formulation. A discrete variant of this formulation is
introduced which contains suitable stabilization terms and is based on trace
finite element spaces. For this method we derive optimal discretization error
bounds. Furthermore algebraic properties of the resulting discrete saddle point
problem are studied. In particular an optimal Schur complement preconditioner
is proposed. Results of a numerical experiment are included
Computing Similarity between a Pair of Trajectories
With recent advances in sensing and tracking technology, trajectory data is
becoming increasingly pervasive and analysis of trajectory data is becoming
exceedingly important. A fundamental problem in analyzing trajectory data is
that of identifying common patterns between pairs or among groups of
trajectories. In this paper, we consider the problem of identifying similar
portions between a pair of trajectories, each observed as a sequence of points
sampled from it.
We present new measures of trajectory similarity --- both local and global
--- between a pair of trajectories to distinguish between similar and
dissimilar portions. Our model is robust under noise and outliers, it does not
make any assumptions on the sampling rates on either trajectory, and it works
even if they are partially observed. Additionally, the model also yields a
scalar similarity score which can be used to rank multiple pairs of
trajectories according to similarity, e.g. in clustering applications. We also
present efficient algorithms for computing the similarity under our measures;
the worst-case running time is quadratic in the number of sample points.
Finally, we present an extensive experimental study evaluating the
effectiveness of our approach on real datasets, comparing with it with earlier
approaches, and illustrating many issues that arise in trajectory data. Our
experiments show that our approach is highly accurate in distinguishing similar
and dissimilar portions as compared to earlier methods even with sparse
sampling
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