5,053 research outputs found
Roberto Marco y el sarcómero del músculo de vuelo
La traducción de este artículo al español ha sido realizada por Raúl Herranz. La versión original en inglés se puede encontrar en la página web de esta revista: www.encuentros-multidisciplinares.or
Determinants of the demand for regular farm labour in South Africa, 1960-2002
This paper estimates long-run price (wage) elasticities of demand for regular farm labour in South Africa using both Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression and a Two-stage Least Squares (2SLS) simultaneous-equation model for the period 1960-2002. Both models include a piecewise interactive slope dummy variable with 1991 as the threshold year to reflect South African (SA) commercial farmers’ expectations that farm labour costs would increase as new labour legislation was introduced from the early 1990s onwards. The long-run price (wage) elasticity of demand for regular farm labour in South Africa during 1960-1990 was estimated as -0.25 for OLS and -0.23 for 2SLS regression, respectively. For the period 1991-2002, this elasticity estimate rose to -1.32 and -1.34 for OLS and 2SLS regression, respectively. These results suggest that a marked structural decline in the demand for regular labour has occurred since 1991 that raises questions about the appropriateness of labour laws and minimum wage legislation that have increased the cost of regular farm labour in South Africa.Regular farm labour, SA agriculture, price (wage) elasticities of demand, Farm Management, Labor and Human Capital,
Stabilizing unstable periodic orbits in the Lorenz equations using time-delayed feedback control
For many years it was believed that an unstable periodic orbit with an odd
number of real Floquet multipliers greater than unity cannot be stabilized by
the time-delayed feedback control mechanism of Pyragus. A recent paper by
Fiedler et al uses the normal form of a subcritical Hopf bifurcation to give a
counterexample to this theorem. Using the Lorenz equations as an example, we
demonstrate that the stabilization mechanism identified by Fiedler et al for
the Hopf normal form can also apply to unstable periodic orbits created by
subcritical Hopf bifurcations in higher-dimensional dynamical systems. Our
analysis focuses on a particular codimension-two bifurcation that captures the
stabilization mechanism in the Hopf normal form example, and we show that the
same codimension-two bifurcation is present in the Lorenz equations with
appropriately chosen Pyragus-type time-delayed feedback. This example suggests
a possible strategy for choosing the feedback gain matrix in Pyragus control of
unstable periodic orbits that arise from a subcritical Hopf bifurcation of a
stable equilibrium. In particular, our choice of feedback gain matrix is
informed by the Fiedler et al example, and it works over a broad range of
parameters, despite the fact that a center-manifold reduction of the
higher-dimensional problem does not lead to their model problem.Comment: 21 pages, 8 figures, to appear in PR
Matrix Quantization of Turbulence
Based on our recent work on Quantum Nambu Mechanics \cite{af2}, we provide
an explicit quantization of the Lorenz chaotic attractor through the
introduction of Non-commutative phase space coordinates as Hermitian matrices in . For the volume preserving part, they satisfy the
commutation relations induced by one of the two Nambu Hamiltonians, the second
one generating a unique time evolution. Dissipation is incorporated quantum
mechanically in a self-consistent way having the correct classical limit
without the introduction of external degrees of freedom. Due to its volume
phase space contraction it violates the quantum commutation relations. We
demonstrate that the Heisenberg-Nambu evolution equations for the Matrix Lorenz
system develop fast decoherence to N independent Lorenz attractors. On the
other hand there is a weak dissipation regime, where the quantum mechanical
properties of the volume preserving non-dissipative sector survive for long
times.Comment: 14 pages, Based on invited talks delivered at: Fifth Aegean Summer
School, "From Gravity to Thermal Gauge theories and the AdS/CFT
Correspondance", September 2009, Milos, Greece; the Intern. Conference on
Dynamics and Complexity, Thessaloniki, Greece, 12 July 2010; Workshop on
"AdS4/CFT3 and the Holographic States of Matter", Galileo Galilei Institute,
Firenze, Italy, 30 October 201
A generalised multi-factor deep learning electricity load forecasting model for wildfire-prone areas
This paper proposes a generalised and robust multi-factor Gated Recurrent
Unit (GRU) based Deep Learning (DL) model to forecast electricity load in
distribution networks during wildfire seasons. The flexible modelling methods
consider data input structure, calendar effects and correlation-based leading
temperature conditions. Compared to the regular use of instantaneous
temperature, the Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) is decreased by 30.73%
by using the proposed input feature selection and leading temperature
relationships. Our model is generalised and applied to eight real distribution
networks in Victoria, Australia, during the wildfire seasons of 2015-2020. We
demonstrate that the GRU-based model consistently outperforms another DL model,
Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), at every step, giving average improvements in
Mean Squared Error (MSE) and MAPE of 10.06% and 12.86%, respectively. The
sensitivity to large-scale climate variability in training data sets, e.g. El
Ni\~no or La Ni\~na years, is considered to understand the possible
consequences for load forecasting performance stability, showing minimal
impact. Other factors such as regional poverty rate and large-scale off-peak
electricity use are potential factors to further improve forecast performance.
The proposed method achieves an average forecast MAPE of around 3%, giving a
potential annual energy saving of AU\$80.46 million for the state of Victoria
Response of Microorganisms to Hot Crude Oil Spills on a Subarctic Taiga Soil
This study was conducted on the short-term effects of seasonal spills of hot Prudhoe Bay crude oil on microorganisms in a taiga soil in interior Alaska. Following a winter spill, the filamentous fungal populations were inhibited whereas the heterotrophic bacterial populations were stimulated. After a summer spill there was an initial depression of both the filamentous fungal and bacterial populations followed by a general enhancement. In both oil spill plots, yeasts; along with the denitrifying, proteolytic, oil-utilizing, and cellulose-utilizing microorganisms; were favorably affected by the oil. Soil respiration was also enhanced in the oiled plots. An extended period of study is required to fully evaluate the impact of oil on the soil microflora and the role of these microorganisms in recovery of oil-inundated areas in subarctic ecosystems
Remittances, liquidity constraints and human capital investments in Ecuador.
Over the last decade Ecuador has experienced a strong increase in financial transfers from migrated workers. This paper investigates how remittances via trans-national networks affect
human capital investments through relaxing resource constraints and facilitate households in consumption smoothing by reducing vulnerability to economic shocks. Our results show that remittances
increase school enrolment and decrease incidence of child work, especially for girls and in rural areas. Furthermore, we find that aggregate shocks are associated with increased work activities,
while remittances are used to finance education when households are faced with these shocks
100 GHz electrically tunable planar Bragg grating via nematic liquid crystal overlay towards reconfigurable WDM networks
Novel liquid crystal-based integrated optical devices with >140GHz electrical tuning are presented for application towards reconfigurable wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) networks. Initial results with Bragg wavelength tuning covering five 25GHz WDM channel spacing have been achieved with 170V (peak-to-peak) sinusoidal voltages applied across electro-patterned ITO-covered glass electrodes placed 60µm apart. These prototype devices were fabricated using direct UV grating writing, with an evanescent field coupling into a liquid crystal overlay through an etched window. Electrically controlled liquid crystal birefringence modifies the waveguide effective index, resulting in Bragg wavelength shift. Merck 18523 nematic liquid crystals are used, exhibiting compatible refractive index values to that of silica (no=1.44, ne=1.49 at lambda=1550nm). Homeotropic alignment of the liquid crystal is provided by application of a surfactant layer.The inherent refractive index sensitivity of our etched direct-UV-written structures allows observation of previously unreported liquid crystal surface-behaviour, such as multi-threshold points during variation of the applied field. Continued optimisation based on evanescent field penetration, electrode layout, and surface interaction will allow implementation towards a variety of novel liquid crystal applications and devices. For example, a cascaded architecture of these integrated liquid crystal devices operating at different Bragg wavelengths would pave the way towards true colorless add/drop modules for dense optical networks
Scaling and synchronization in a ring of diffusively coupled nonlinear oscillators
Chaos synchronization in a ring of diffusively coupled nonlinear oscillators
driven by an external identical oscillator is studied. Based on numerical
simulations we show that by introducing additional couplings at -th
oscillators in the ring, where is an integer and is the maximum
number of synchronized oscillators in the ring with a single coupling, the
maximum number of oscillators that can be synchronized can be increased
considerably beyond the limit restricted by size instability. We also
demonstrate that there exists an exponential relation between the number of
oscillators that can support stable synchronization in the ring with the
external drive and the critical coupling strength with a scaling
exponent . The critical coupling strength is calculated by numerically
estimating the synchronization error and is also confirmed from the conditional
Lyapunov exponents (CLEs) of the coupled systems. We find that the same scaling
relation exists for couplings between the drive and the ring. Further, we
have examined the robustness of the synchronous states against Gaussian white
noise and found that the synchronization error exhibits a power-law decay as a
function of the noise intensity indicating the existence of both noise-enhanced
and noise-induced synchronizations depending on the value of the coupling
strength . In addition, we have found that shows an
exponential decay as a function of the number of additional couplings. These
results are demonstrated using the paradigmatic models of R\"ossler and Lorenz
oscillators.Comment: Accepted for Publication in Physical Review
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