30,146 research outputs found
Using action understanding to understand the left inferior parietal cortex in the human brain
Published in final edited form as: Brain Res. 2014 September 25; 1582: 64–76. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2014.07.035.Humans have a sophisticated knowledge of the actions that can be performed with objects. In an fMRI study we tried to establish whether this depends on areas that are homologous with the inferior parietal cortex (area PFG) in macaque monkeys. Cells have been described in area PFG that discharge differentially depending upon whether the observer sees an object being brought to the mouth or put in a container. In our study the observers saw videos in which the use of different objects was demonstrated in pantomime; and after viewing the videos, the subject had to pick the object that was appropriate to the pantomime. We found a cluster of activated voxels in parietal areas PFop and PFt and this cluster was greater in the left hemisphere than in the right. We suggest a mechanism that could account for this asymmetry, relate our results to handedness and suggest that they shed light on the human syndrome of apraxia. Finally, we suggest that during the evolution of the hominids, this same pantomime mechanism could have been used to ‘name’ or request objects.We thank Steve Wise for very detailed comments on a draft of this paper. We thank Rogier Mars for help with identifying the areas that were activated in parietal cortex and for comments on a draft of this paper. Finally, we thank Michael Nahhas for help with the imaging figures. This work was supported in part by the NIH grant RO1NS064100 to LMV. (RO1NS064100 - NIH)Accepted manuscrip
Stabilizing quantum metastable states in a time-periodic potential
Metastability of a particle trapped in a well with a time-periodically
oscillating barrier is studied in the Floquet formalism. It is shown that the
oscillating barrier causes the system to decay faster in general. However,
avoided crossings of metastable states can occur with the less stable states
crossing over to the more stable ones. If in the static well there exists a
bound state, then it is possible to stabilize a metastable state by
adiabatically increasing the oscillating frequency of the barrier so that the
unstable state eventually cross-over to the stable bound state. It is also
found that increasing the amplitude of the oscillating field may change a
direct crossing of states into an avoided one.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure
Thermomechanical behavior of plasma-sprayed ZrO2-Y2O3 coatings influenced by plasticity, creep and oxidation
Thermocycling of ceramic-coated turbomachine components produces high thermomechanical stresses that are mitigated by plasticity and creep but aggravated by oxidation, with residual stresses exacerbated by all three. These residual stresses, coupled with the thermocyclic loading, lead to high compressive stresses that cause the coating to spall. A ceramic-coated gas path seal is modeled with consideration given to creep, plasticity, and oxidation. The resulting stresses and possible failure modes are discussed
Progress toward the development of dual junction GaAs/Ge solar cells
Large area GaAs/Ge cells offer substantial promise for increasing the power output from existing silicon solar array designs and for providing an enabled technology for missions hitherto impossible using silicon. Single junction GaAs/Ge cells offer substantial advantages in both size, weight, and cost compared to GaAs cells but the efficiency is limited to approximately 19.2 to 20 percent AMO. The thermal absorptance of GaAs/Ge cells is also worse than GaAs/GaAs cells (0.88 vs 0.81 typ.) due to the absorption in the Ge substrate. On the other hand dual junction GaAs/Ge cells offer efficiencies up to ultimately 24 percent AMO in sizes up to 8 x 8 cm but there are still technological issues remaining to achieve current matching in the GaAs and Ge cells. This can be achieved through tuned antireflection (AR) coatings, improved quality of the GaAs growth, improved quality Ge wafers and the use of a Back Surface Field (BSF)/Back Surface Reflector (BSR) in the Ge cell. Although the temperature coefficients of efficiency and voltage are higher for dual junction GaAs/Ge cells, it has been shown elsewhere that for typical 28 C cell efficiencies of 22 percent (dual junction) vs 18.5 percent (single junction) there is a positive power tradeoff up to temperatures as high as 120 C. Due to the potential ease of fabrication of GaAs/Ge dual junction cells there is likely to be only a small cost differential compared to single junction cells
Quantum spin correlations in an organometallic alternating sign chain
High resolution inelastic neutron scattering is used to study excitations in
the organometallic magnet DMACuCl. The correct magnetic Hamiltonian
describing this material has been debated for many years. Combined with high
field bulk magnetization and susceptibility studies, the new results imply that
DMACuCl is a realization of the alternating
antiferromagnetic-ferromagnetic (AFM-FM) chain. Coupled-cluster calculations
are used to derive exchange parameters, showing that the AFM and FM
interactions have nearly the same strength. Analysis of the scattering
intensities shows clear evidence for inter-dimer spin correlations, in contrast
to existing results for conventional alternating chains. The results are
discussed in the context of recent ideas concerning quantum entanglement.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures included in text. Submitted to APS Journal
Fabrication of bismuth nanowires with a silver nanocrystal shadowmask
We fabricated bismuth (Bi) nanowires with low energy electron beam lithography using silver (Ag) nanocrystal shadowmasks and a subsequent chlorine reactive ion etching. Submicron-size metal contacts on the single Bi nanowire were successfully prepared by in situ focused ion beam metal deposition for transport measurements. The temperature dependent resistance measurements on the 50 nm wide Bi nanowires showed that the resistance increased with decreasing temperature, which is characteristic of semiconductors and insulators
Time evolution towards q-Gaussian stationary states through unified Ito-Stratonovich stochastic equation
We consider a class of single-particle one-dimensional stochastic equations
which include external field, additive and multiplicative noises. We use a
parameter which enables the unification of the traditional
It\^o and Stratonovich approaches, now recovered respectively as the
and particular cases to derive the associated Fokker-Planck
equation (FPE). These FPE is a {\it linear} one, and its stationary state is
given by a -Gaussian distribution with , where characterizes the
strength of the confining external field, and is the (normalized)
amplitude of the multiplicative noise. We also calculate the standard kurtosis
and the -generalized kurtosis (i.e., the standard
kurtosis but using the escort distribution instead of the direct one). Through
these two quantities we numerically follow the time evolution of the
distributions. Finally, we exhibit how these quantities can be used as
convenient calibrations for determining the index from numerical data
obtained through experiments, observations or numerical computations.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figure
Absorption cross section in warped AdS_3 black hole revisited
We investigate the absorption cross section for minimal-coupled scalars in
the warped AdS_3 black hole. According to our calculation, the cross section
reduces to the horizon area in the low energy limit as usually expected in
contrast to what was previously found. We also calculate the greybody factor
and find that the effective temperatures for the two chiral CFT's are
consistent with that derived from the quasinormal modes. Observing the
conjectured warped AdS/CFT correspondence, we suspect that a specific sector of
the CFT operators with the desired conformal dimension could be responsible for
the peculiar thermal behaviour of the warped AdS_3 black hole.Comment: 16+1 pages, typos corrected, references and footnotes adde
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