49,876 research outputs found
Donât Demean âInvasivesâ: Conservation and Wrongful Species Discrimination
It is common for conservationists to refer to non-native species that have undesirable impacts on humans as âinvasiveâ. We argue that the classification of any species as âinvasiveâ constitutes wrongful discrimination. Moreover, we argue that its being wrong to categorize a species as invasive is perfectly compatible with it being morally permissible to kill animalsâassuming that conservationists âkill equallyâ. It simply is not compatible with the double standard that conservationists tend to employ in their decisions about who lives and who dies
VR/Urban: spread.gun - design process and challenges in developing a shared encounter for media façades
Designing novel interaction concepts for urban environments is not only a technical challenge in terms of scale, safety, portability and deployment, but also a challenge of designing for social configurations and spatial settings. To outline what it takes to create a consistent and interactive experience in urban space, we describe the concept and multidisciplinary design process of VR/Urban's media intervention tool called Spread.gun, which was created for the Media Façade Festival 2008 in Berlin. Main design aims were the anticipation of urban space, situational system configuration and embodied interaction. This case study also reflects on the specific technical, organizational and infrastructural challenges encountered when developing media façade installations
JPEG2000 Image Compression on Solar EUV Images
For future solar missions as well as ground-based telescopes, efficient ways
to return and process data have become increasingly important. Solar Orbiter,
e.g., which is the next ESA/NASA mission to explore the Sun and the
heliosphere, is a deep-space mission, which implies a limited telemetry rate
that makes efficient onboard data compression a necessity to achieve the
mission science goals. Missions like the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and
future ground-based telescopes such as the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, on
the other hand, face the challenge of making petabyte-sized solar data archives
accessible to the solar community. New image compression standards address
these challenges by implementing efficient and flexible compression algorithms
that can be tailored to user requirements. We analyse solar images from the
Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument onboard SDO to study the effect
of lossy JPEG2000 (from the Joint Photographic Experts Group 2000) image
compression at different bit rates. To assess the quality of compressed images,
we use the mean structural similarity (MSSIM) index as well as the widely used
peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) as metrics and compare the two in the context
of solar EUV images. In addition, we perform tests to validate the scientific
use of the lossily compressed images by analysing examples of an on-disk and
off-limb coronal-loop oscillation time-series observed by AIA/SDO.Comment: 25 pages, published in Solar Physic
The nonrelativistic limit of Dirac-Fock codes: the role of Brillouin configurations
We solve a long standing problem with relativistic calculations done with the
widely used Multi-Configuration Dirac-Fock Method (MCDF). We show, using
Relativistic Many-Body Perturbation Theory (RMBPT), how even for relatively
high-, relaxation or correlation causes the non-relativistic limit of states
of different total angular momentum but identical orbital angular momentum to
have different energies. We show that only large scale calculations that
include all single excitations, even those obeying the Brillouin's theorem have
the correct limit. We reproduce very accurately recent high-precision
measurements in F-like Ar, and turn then into precise test of QED. We obtain
the correct non-relativistic limit not only for fine structure but also for
level energies and show that RMBPT calculations are not immune to this problem.Comment: AUgust 9th, 2004 Second version Nov. 18th, 200
Thermal Conductivity of Single Wall Carbon Nanotubes: Diameter and Annealing Dependence
The thermal conductivity, k(T), of bulk single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWNT's)
displays a linear temperature dependence at low T that has been attributed to
1D quantization of phonons. To explore this issue further, we have measured the
k(T) of samples with varying average tube diameters. We observe linear k(T) up
to higher temperatures in samples with smaller diameters, in agreement with a
quantization picture. In addition, we have examined the effect of annealing on
k(T). We observe an enhancement in k(T) for annealed samples which we attribute
to healing of defects and removal of impurities. These measurements demonstrate
how the thermal properties of an SWNT material can be controlled by
manipulating its intrinsic nanoscale properties.Comment: Proc. of the XV. Int. Winterschool on Electronic Properties of Novel
Materials, Kirchberg/Tirol, Austria, 200
The correlation energy functional within the GW-RPA approximation: exact forms, approximate forms and challenges
In principle, the Luttinger-Ward Green's function formalism allows one to
compute simultaneously the total energy and the quasiparticle band structure of
a many-body electronic system from first principles. We present approximate and
exact expressions for the correlation energy within the GW-RPA approximation
that are more amenable to computation and allow for developing efficient
approximations to the self-energy operator and correlation energy. The exact
form is a sum over differences between plasmon and interband energies. The
approximate forms are based on summing over screened interband transitions. We
also demonstrate that blind extremization of such functionals leads to
unphysical results: imposing physical constraints on the allowed solutions
(Green's functions) is necessary. Finally, we present some relevant numerical
results for atomic systems.Comment: 3 figures and 3 tables, under review at Physical Review
Observations of solar small-scale magnetic flux-sheet emergence
Aims. Moreno-Insertis et al. (2018) recently discovered two types of flux
emergence in their numerical simulations: magnetic loops and magnetic sheet
emergence. Whereas magnetic loop emergence has been documented well in the last
years, by utilising high-resolution full Stokes data from ground-based
telescopes as well as satellites, magnetic sheet emergence is still an
understudied process. We report here on the first clear observational evidence
of a magnetic sheet emergence and characterise its development.
Methods. Full Stokes spectra from the Hinode spectropolarimeter were inverted
with the SIR code to obtain solar atmospheric parameters such as temperature,
line-of-sight velocities and full magnetic field vector information.
Results. We analyse a magnetic flux emergence event observed in the quiet-sun
internetwork. After a large scale appearance of linear polarisation, a magnetic
sheet with horizontal magnetic flux density of up to 194 Mx/cm hovers in
the low photosphere spanning a region of 2 to 3 arcsec. The magnetic field
azimuth obtained through Stokes inversions clearly shows an organised structure
of transversal magnetic flux density emerging. The granule below the magnetic
flux-sheet tears the structure apart leaving the emerged flux to form several
magnetic loops at the edges of the granule.
Conclusions. A large amount of flux with strong horizontal magnetic fields
surfaces through the interplay of buried magnetic flux and convective motions.
The magnetic flux emerges within 10 minutes and we find a longitudinal magnetic
flux at the foot points of the order of Mx. This is one to two
orders of magnitude larger than what has been reported for small-scale magnetic
loops. The convective flows feed the newly emerged flux into the pre-existing
magnetic population on a granular scale.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, accepted as a letter in A&
Eluate derived by extracorporal antibody-based immunoadsorption elevates the cytosolic Ca2+ concentration in podocytes via B-2 kinin receptors
Background/Aim: Patients with idiopathic focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS) often develop a recurrence of the disease after kidney transplantation. In a number of FSGS patients, plasmapheresis and immunoadsorption procedures have been shown to transiently reduce proteinuria and are thought to do this by eliminating a circulating factor. Direct cellular effects of eluates from immunoadsorption procedures on podocytes, the primary target of injury in FSGS, have not yet been reported. Methods: Eluates were derived from antibody-based immunoadsorption of a patient suffering from primary FSGS, a patient with systemic lupus erythematosus, and a healthy volunteer. The cytosolic free Ca2+ concentration ({[}Ca2+](i)) of differentiated podocytes was measured by single-cell fura-2 microfluorescence measurements. Free and total immunoreactive kinin levels were measured by radioimmunoassay. Results: FSGS eluates increased the {[}Ca2+](i) levels concentration dependently (EC50 0.14 mg/ml; n = 3-19). 1 mg/ml eluate increased the {[}Ca2+](i) values reversibly from 82 +/- 12 to 1,462 +/- 370 nmol/l, and then they returned back to 100 16 nmol/l (n = 19). The eluate-induced increase of {[}Ca2+](i) consisted of an initial Ca2+ peak followed by a Ca2+ plateau which depended on the extracellular Ca2+ concentration. The eluate-induced increase of {[}Ca2+](i) was inhibited by the specific B-2 kinin receptor antagonist Hoe 140 in a concentration-dependent manner (IC50 2.47 nmol/l). In addition, prior repetitive application of bradykinin desensitized the effect of eluate on {[}Ca2+](i). A colonic epithelial cell line not reacting to bradykinin did not respond to eluate either (n = 6). Similar to FSGS eluates, the eluate preparations of both the systemic lupus patient and the healthy volunteer led to a biphasic, concentration-dependent {[}Ca2+](i) increase in poclocytes which again was inhibited by Hoe 140. Free kinins were detected in all eluate preparations. Conclusion: The procedure of antibody-based immunoadsorption leads to kinin in the eluate which elevates the {[}Ca2+](i) level of podocytes via B-2 kinin receptors. Copyright (C) 2002 S. Karger AG, Basel
Fluids with quenched disorder: Scaling of the free energy barrier near critical points
In the context of Monte Carlo simulations, the analysis of the probability
distribution of the order parameter , as obtained in simulation
boxes of finite linear extension , allows for an easy estimation of the
location of the critical point and the critical exponents. For Ising-like
systems without quenched disorder, becomes scale invariant at the
critical point, where it assumes a characteristic bimodal shape featuring two
overlapping peaks. In particular, the ratio between the value of at
the peaks () and the value at the minimum in-between ()
becomes -independent at criticality. However, for Ising-like systems with
quenched random fields, we argue that instead should be observed, where is the
"violation of hyperscaling" exponent. Since is substantially non-zero,
the scaling of with system size should be easily detectable in
simulations. For two fluid models with quenched disorder, versus
was measured, and the expected scaling was confirmed. This provides further
evidence that fluids with quenched disorder belong to the universality class of
the random-field Ising model.Comment: sent to J. Phys. Cond. Mat
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