17,075 research outputs found
HACCP based quality assurance systems for organic food production systems
HACCP provides an effective, logical and structured means of assuring food safety. Although first used in food manufacturing operations, HACCP can be – and, increasingly is – applied to food production and handling operations at all stages in the food chain. This includes the primary production sector. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how the principles of HACCP can be applied to organic production with special reference to the primary sector
Three osculating walkers
We consider three directed walkers on the square lattice, which move
simultaneously at each tick of a clock and never cross. Their trajectories form
a non-crossing configuration of walks. This configuration is said to be
osculating if the walkers never share an edge, and vicious (or:
non-intersecting) if they never meet. We give a closed form expression for the
generating function of osculating configurations starting from prescribed
points. This generating function turns out to be algebraic. We also relate the
enumeration of osculating configurations with prescribed starting and ending
points to the (better understood) enumeration of non-intersecting
configurations. Our method is based on a step by step decomposition of
osculating configurations, and on the solution of the functional equation
provided by this decomposition
Numerical investigation of the Rayleigh hypothesis for electromagnetic scattering by a particle
The validity of the Rayleigh hypothesis has been a long-standing issue in the applicability of the T-matrix method to near-field calculations, and despite numerous theoretical works, the practical consequences for numerical simulations have remained unclear. Such calculations are increasingly important in the field of nanooptics, for which accurate and efficient modeling tools are in high demand. We here tackle this challenge by investigating numerically the convergence behavior of series expansions of the electric field around spheroidal particles, which provides us with unambiguous examples to clarify the conditions of convergence. This study is made possible by the combination of alternative methods to compute near-fields accurately, and crucially, the recent improvements in the calculation of T-matrix elements free from numerical instabilities, as such errors would otherwise obfuscate the intrinsic convergence properties of the field series. The resulting numerical confirmation for the range of validity of the Rayleigh hypothesis, complemented by a better understanding of the convergence behavior of the field expansions, is a crucial step toward future developments
Molecular dynamics simulations of oxide memristors: crystal field effects
We present molecular-dynamic simulations of memory resistors (memristors)
including the crystal field effects on mobile ionic species such as oxygen
vacancies appearing during operation of the device. Vacancy distributions show
different patterns depending on the ratio of a spatial period of the crystal
field to a characteristic radius of the vacancy-vacancy interaction. There are
signatures of the orientational order and of spatial voids in the vacancy
distributions for some crystal field potentials. The crystal field stabilizes
the patterns after they are formed, resulting in a non-volatile switching of
the simulated devices.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure
Affine and toric hyperplane arrangements
We extend the Billera-Ehrenborg-Readdy map between the intersection lattice
and face lattice of a central hyperplane arrangement to affine and toric
hyperplane arrangements. For arrangements on the torus, we also generalize
Zaslavsky's fundamental results on the number of regions.Comment: 32 pages, 4 figure
Methods for measuring the citations and productivity of scientists across time and discipline
Publication statistics are ubiquitous in the ratings of scientific
achievement, with citation counts and paper tallies factoring into an
individual's consideration for postdoctoral positions, junior faculty, tenure,
and even visa status for international scientists. Citation statistics are
designed to quantify individual career achievement, both at the level of a
single publication, and over an individual's entire career. While some academic
careers are defined by a few significant papers (possibly out of many), other
academic careers are defined by the cumulative contribution made by the
author's publications to the body of science. Several metrics have been
formulated to quantify an individual's publication career, yet none of these
metrics account for the dependence of citation counts and journal size on time.
In this paper, we normalize publication metrics across both time and discipline
in order to achieve a universal framework for analyzing and comparing
scientific achievement. We study the publication careers of individual authors
over the 50-year period 1958-2008 within six high-impact journals: CELL, the
New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), Nature, the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Science (PNAS), Physical Review Letters (PRL), and Science. In
comparing the achievement of authors within each journal, we uncover
quantifiable statistical regularity in the probability density function (pdf)
of scientific achievement across both time and discipline. The universal
distribution of career success within these arenas for publication raises the
possibility that a fundamental driving force underlying scientific achievement
is the competitive nature of scientific advancement.Comment: 25 pages in 1 Column Preprint format, 7 Figures, 4 Tables. Version
II: changes made in response to referee comments. Note: change in definition
of "Paper shares.
Rapid and robust spin state amplification
Electron and nuclear spins have been employed in many of the early
demonstrations of quantum technology (QT). However applications in real world
QT are limited by the difficulty of measuring single spins. Here we show that
it is possible to rapidly and robustly amplify a spin state using a lattice of
ancillary spins. The model we employ corresponds to an extremely simple
experimental system: a homogenous Ising-coupled spin lattice in one, two or
three dimensions, driven by a continuous microwave field. We establish that the
process can operate at finite temperature (imperfect initial polarisation) and
under the effects of various forms of decoherence.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure
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