910 research outputs found
Geometrical Phase Transition on WO Surface
A topographical study on an ensemble of height profiles obtained from atomic
force microscopy techniques on various independently grown samples of tungsten
oxide WO is presented by using ideas from percolation theory. We find that
a continuous 'geometrical' phase transition occurs at a certain critical
level-height below which an infinite island appears. By using the
finite-size scaling analysis of three independent percolation observables i.e.,
percolation probability, percolation strength and the mean island-size, we
compute some critical exponents which characterize the transition. Our results
are compatible with those of long-range correlated percolation. This method can
be generalized to a topographical classification of rough surface models.Comment: 3 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Applied Physics Letters (2010
Spectra for the product of Gaussian noises
Products of Gaussian noises often emerge as the result of non-linear
detection techniques or as a parasitic effect, and their proper handling is
important in many practical applications, including in fluctuation-enhanced
sensing, indoor air or environmental quality monitoring, etc. We use Rice's
random phase oscillator formalism to calculate the power density spectra
variance for the product of two Gaussian band-limited white noises with
zero-mean and the same bandwidth W. The ensuing noise spectrum is found to
decrease linearly from zero frequency to 2W, and it is zero for frequencies
greater than 2W. Analogous calculations performed for the square of a single
Gaussian noise confirm earlier results. The spectrum at non-zero frequencies,
and the variance of the square of a noise, is amplified by a factor two as a
consequence of correlation effects between frequency products. Our analytic
results is corroborated by computer simulations.Comment: submitted for publicatio
Fluctuation-enhanced sensing
We present a short survey on fluctuation-enhanced gas sensing. We compare
some of its main characteristics with those of classical sensing. We address
the problem of linear response, information channel capacity, missed alarms and
false alarms.Comment: Keynote Talk at SPIE's 4th international symposium on Fluctuations
and Noise, Conference Noise and Fluctuations in Circuits, Devices and
Materials, Florence, Italy, May 20-24, 200
Conformal Curves on Surface
We have studied the iso-height lines on the surface as a
physical candidate for conformally invariant curves. We have shown that these
lines are conformally invariant with the same statistics of domain walls in the
critical Ising model. They belong to the family of conformal invariant curves
called Schramm-Loewner evolution (or ), with diffusivity of
. This can be regarded as the first experimental observation of
SLE curves. We have also argued that Ballistic Deposition (BD) can serve as a
growth model giving rise to contours with similar statistics at large scales.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures. accepted in PR
Energy Requirement of Control: Comments on Szilard's Engine and Maxwell's Demon
In mathematical physical analyses of Szilard's engine and Maxwell's demon, a
general assumption (explicit or implicit) is that one can neglect the energy
needed for relocating the piston in Szilard's engine and for driving the trap
door in Maxwell's demon. If this basic assumption is wrong, then the
conclusions of a vast literature on the implications of the Second Law of
Thermodynamics and of Landauer's erasure theorem are incorrect too. Our
analyses of the fundamental information physical aspects of various type of
control within Szilard's engine and Maxwell's demon indicate that the entropy
production due to the necessary generation of information yield much greater
energy dissipation than the energy Szilard's engine is able to produce even if
all sources of dissipation in the rest of these demons (due to measurement,
decision, memory, etc) are neglected.Comment: New, simpler and more fundamental approach utilizing the physical
meaning of control-information and the related entropy production. Criticism
of recent experiments adde
Memory-reliant Post-error Slowing Is Associated with Successful Learning and Fronto-occipital Activity
Negative feedback after an action in a cognitive task can lead to devaluing that action on future trials as well as to more cautious responding when encountering that same choice again. These phenomena have been explored in the past by reinforcement learning theories and cognitive control accounts, respectively. Yet, how cognitive control interacts with value updating to give rise to adequate adaptations under uncertainty is less clear. In this fMRI study, we investigated cognitive control-based behavioral adjustments during a probabilistic reinforcement learning task and studied their influence on performance in a later test phase in which the learned value of items is tested. We provide support for the idea that functionally relevant and memory-reliant behavioral adjustments in the form of post-error slowing during reinforcement learning are associated with test performance. Adjusting response speed after negative feedback was correlated with BOLD activity in right inferior frontal gyrus and bilateral middle occipital cortex during the event of receiving the feedback. Bilateral middle occipital cortex activity overlapped partly with activity reflecting feedback deviance from expectations as measured by unsigned prediction error. These results suggest that cognitive control and feature processing cortical regions interact to implement feedback-congruent adaptations beneficial to learning
Fluctuation-enhanced gas sensing
AbstractThe sensitivity of gas sensors was earlier measured by classical method-comparison the resistance of sensors in gas media and air. Here we reported results of the study of low-frequency noise characteristics of sensors. We compare data for different Figaro TGS sensors as well as our sol-gel H2 tin dioxide and porous silicon sensors. The study was performed in dry air and in a mix of dry air with carbon monoxide, hydrogen and alcohol of different concentrations. Higher sensitivity of spectral dependence of noise (SDN) to gas concentration in comparison with classical method of the measurements of gas sensing by a change in the Ohmic resistance part of current-voltage characteristics of samples allows using such SND powerful method for determination of gas concentration in the air or environment
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