Charge and mass effects on the evaporation of higher-dimensional rotating black holes

To study the dynamics of discharge of a brane black hole in TeV gravity scenarios, we obtain the approximate electromagnetic field due to the charged black hole, by solving Maxwell's equations perturbatively on the brane. In addition, arguments are given for brane metric corrections due to backreaction. We couple brane scalar and brane fermion fields with non-zero mass and charge to the background, and study the Hawking radiation process using well known low energy approximations as well as a WKB approximation in the high energy limit. We argue that contrary to common claims, the initial evaporation is not dominated by fast Schwinger discharge.Comment: Published version. Minor typos corrected. 29 pages, 5 figure

Can forest management based on natural disturbances maintain ecological resilience?

Given the increasingly global stresses on forests, many ecologists argue that managers must maintain ecological resilience: the capacity of ecosystems to absorb disturbances without undergoing fundamental change. In this review we ask: Can the emerging paradigm of natural-disturbance-based management (NDBM) maintain ecological resilience in managed forests? Applying resilience theory requires careful articulation of the ecosystem state under consideration, the disturbances and stresses that affect the persistence of possible alternative states, and the spatial and temporal scales of management relevance. Implementing NDBM while maintaining resilience means recognizing that (i) biodiversity is important for long-term ecosystem persistence, (ii) natural disturbances play a critical role as a generator of structural and compositional heterogeneity at multiple scales, and (iii) traditional management tends to produce forests more homogeneous than those disturbed naturally and increases the likelihood of unexpected catastrophic change by constraining variation of key environmental processes. NDBM may maintain resilience if silvicultural strategies retain the structures and processes that perpetuate desired states while reducing those that enhance resilience of undesirable states. Such strategies require an understanding of harvesting impacts on slow ecosystem processes, such as seed-bank or nutrient dynamics, which in the long term can lead to ecological surprises by altering the forest's capacity to reorganize after disturbance

Zero dynamics and stabilization for linear DAEs

We study linear differential-algebraic multi-input multi-output systems which are not necessarily regular and investigate the asymptotic stability of the zero dynamics and stabilizability. To this end, the concepts of autonomous zero dynamics, transmission zeros, right-invertibility, stabilizability in the behavioral sense and detectability in the behavioral sense are introduced and algebraic characterizations are derived. It is then proved, for the class of right-invertible systems with autonomous zero dynamics, that asymptotic stability of the zero dynamics is equivalent to three conditions: stabilizability in the behavioral sense, detectability in the behavioral sense, and the condition that all transmission zeros of the system are in the open left complex half-plane. Furthermore, for the same class, it is shown that we can achieve, by a compatible control in the behavioral sense, that the Lyapunov exponent of the interconnected system equals the Lyapunov exponent of the zero dynamics

Development of the South African Personality Inventory: A cross-cultural design in a non-Western society: Lessons learned and generalizability to other parts of the world

The usual operationalization of the psycholexical approach to personality becomes inefficient when dealing with languages with a limited lexicography or languages that are inaccessible to the investigator. These conditions, which probably hold for most of the world’s languages, call for different approaches to uncover the complexities of personality. This chapter describes the mixed-method approach in designing the South African Personality Inventory (SAPI). We describe (1) the dynamics and lessons learned from the extensive qualitative research conducted in 11 languages, (2) the challenges of item development and reduction with a focus on cultural comparability and validity, and (3) the complexities in extracting and validating the SAPI factor structure across language versions. We discuss how the diversification of methods can enrich the understanding of personality in understudied contexts and inform the debate between universal models (with their lure of cross-cultural comparability) and indigenous models (with their claim to ecological validity)

Development of the South African Personality Inventory: A cross-cultural design in a non-Western society: Lessons learned and generalizability to other parts of the world

The usual operationalization of the psycholexical approach to personality becomes inefficient when dealing with languages with a limited lexicography or languages that are inaccessible to the investigator. These conditions, which probably hold for most of the world’s languages, call for different approaches to uncover the complexities of personality. This chapter describes the mixed-method approach in designing the South African Personality Inventory (SAPI). We describe (1) the dynamics and lessons learned from the extensive qualitative research conducted in 11 languages, (2) the challenges of item development and reduction with a focus on cultural comparability and validity, and (3) the complexities in extracting and validating the SAPI factor structure across language versions. We discuss how the diversification of methods can enrich the understanding of personality in understudied contexts and inform the debate between universal models (with their lure of cross-cultural comparability) and indigenous models (with their claim to ecological validity)