Comment on "Transverse Force on a Quantized Vortex in a Superfluid"

The result of Thouless, Ao and Niu (TAN), that the mutual friction parameter $d_\perp =0$, contradicts to the experiments made in rotating 3He-B by Manchester group. The Manchester group observed that $d_\perp <0$ at low temperature and approaches 1 at high temperature. The reason of the contradiction is that TAN did not take into account the Iordanskii force on the vortex and the spectral flow force, which comes from the anomaly related to the low-energy bound states of fermions in cores of quantized vortices. The Iordanskii force is responsible for the negative $d_\perp <0$ at low temperature, while due to the spectral flow $d_\perp$ approaches 1 at high temperature. Relation of the spectral flow anomaly with the paradoxes of the linear and angular momenta in gapless superfluids is discussed.Comment: revtex, 2 pages, submitted to Physical Review Letters as "Comment" to the paper D.J. Thouless, P. Ao and Q. Niu, Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 3758 (1996

Computing Three-dimensional Constrained Delaunay Refinement Using the GPU

We propose the first GPU algorithm for the 3D triangulation refinement problem. For an input of a piecewise linear complex $\mathcal{G}$ and a constant $B$, it produces, by adding Steiner points, a constrained Delaunay triangulation conforming to $\mathcal{G}$ and containing tetrahedra mostly of radius-edge ratios smaller than $B$. Our implementation of the algorithm shows that it can be an order of magnitude faster than the best CPU algorithm while using a similar amount of Steiner points to produce triangulations of comparable quality

The Public Library: A Photographic Essay

Over the last eighteen years, photographer Robert Dawson documented hundreds of public libraries throughout the United States. The Public Library presents an inspiring selection of his work—libraries grand and modest, from the reading room at the New York Public Library to Allensworth, California’s one-room Tulare County Free Library, built by former slaves. Essays, letters, and poetry by distinguished writers and librarians complete this impassioned tribute to a vibrant but threatened American institution. With a foreword by Bill Moyers and an afterword by Ann Patchett. Additional contributors include Isaac Asimov, Walker Dawson, Luis Herrera, Barbara Kingsolver, Anne Lamott, Dorothy Lazard, Philip Levine, David Morris, Stuart A. P. Murray, Kevin K. Selders, Dr. Seuss, Charles Simic, Amy Tan, Chip Ward, and E. B. Whit

A holistic approach for selection of Bacillus spp. as a bioremediator for shrimp postlarvae culture.

Indigenous Bacillus pumilus, B. licheniformis, and B. subtilis were isolated from marine water and soil samples and investigated for potential bioremediation ability in Penaeus monodon culture. Bacillus spp. were selected based on their wide range of growth conditions, ease of mass culture, tolerance to total ammonia nitrogen (TAN), inhibition of pathogenic vibrios, nonpathogenicity, and ability to reduce TAN. Results showed that optimum growth of the selected Bacillus spp. occurred at 30 °C, pH 7.5, and 1.5% NaCl, and they secreted protease, amylase, and lipase. Vibrio spp. were also inhibited by 3 Bacillus spp. In addition, the selected Bacillus spp. had no pathogenic effect on shrimp postlarvae (PL) and were able to reduce TAN. They promoted better growth and survival in shrimp PL without water exchange. This study was a systematic approach undertaken for the selection of suitable Bacillus spp. as bioremediators for a Penaeus monodon culture system

Youth flight: are housing costs the issue?

Young people are leaving New England. To combat the problem, the six states should not go it alone but should promote cooperation among governments, businesses, housing advocates, and educational institutions to devise regional strategies and solutions.Housing - New England ; New England - Population ; Youth - New England - Economic conditions

New horizons: for New England agriculture

In 2005, the national Farm Credit System undertook a comprehensive research project to examine agriculture and rural America and analyze trends. The author tackles the implications for New England and suggests appropriate policy goals.Agriculture - New England

A New Hierarchical Redundancy Eliminated Tree Augmented Naive Bayes Classifier for Coping with Gene Ontology-based Features

The Tree Augmented Naive Bayes classifier is a type of probabilistic graphical model that can represent some feature dependencies. In this work, we propose a Hierarchical Redundancy Eliminated Tree Augmented Naive Bayes (HRE-TAN) algorithm, which considers removing the hierarchical redundancy during the classifier learning process, when coping with data containing hierarchically structured features. The experiments showed that HRE-TAN obtains significantly better predictive performance than the conventional Tree Augmented Naive Bayes classifier, and enhanced the robustness against imbalanced class distributions, in aging-related gene datasets with Gene Ontology terms used as features.Comment: International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2016) Computational Biology Worksho

Nanomedicine Topic for Semester\u27s Final UM Science Cafe

Chalet Tan to discuss how nanotechnology is transforming diagnosis, imaging and treatment of disease