1,371 research outputs found
Generic Twistless Bifurcations
We show that in the neighborhood of the tripling bifurcation of a periodic
orbit of a Hamiltonian flow or of a fixed point of an area preserving map,
there is generically a bifurcation that creates a ``twistless'' torus. At this
bifurcation, the twist, which is the derivative of the rotation number with
respect to the action, vanishes. The twistless torus moves outward after it is
created, and eventually collides with the saddle-center bifurcation that
creates the period three orbits. The existence of the twistless bifurcation is
responsible for the breakdown of the nondegeneracy condition required in the
proof of the KAM theorem for flows or the Moser twist theorem for maps. When
the twistless torus has a rational rotation number, there are typically
reconnection bifurcations of periodic orbits with that rotation number.Comment: 29 pages, 9 figure
Methods of exposure assessment: lead-contaminated dust in Philadelphia schools.
This study was conducted to develop a method that would accurately assess children's exposure to lead in schools in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We examined three wipe sample protocols: one included accessible surfaces such as desktops and windowsills, the second included inaccessible surfaces such as the top of filing cabinets and light fixtures, and the third included hand wipes of the study participants. Surface wipes were collected at 10 locations from accessible and inaccessible classroom surfaces (n = 11 at each location) and from the palms of student subjects in the same locations (n = 168). We found a significant difference in lead dust concentrations determined by the three protocols (F = 4.619; 2,27 degrees of freedom; p = 0.019). Lead dust concentrations were significantly elevated at the inaccessible surfaces yet they were uniformly low on the accessible surfaces and the children's palms. These findings were consistent with observed changes in blood lead levels of study participants: after 6 months of exposure to the study locations, 156 of 168 children experienced no change in blood lead level, whereas 12 experienced only a minimal change of 1-2 microg/dL. The mere presence of lead in inaccessible dust in the school environment does not automatically constitute a health hazard because there may not be a completed exposure pathway
String tension in gonihedric 3D Ising models
For the 3D gonihedric Ising models defined by Savvidy and Wegner the bare
string tension is zero and the energy of a spin interface depends only on the
number of bends and self-intersections, in antithesis to the standard
nearest-neighbour 3D Ising action. When the parameter kappa weighting the
self-intersections is small the model has a first order transition and when it
is larger the transition is continuous.
In this paper we investigate the scaling of the renormalized string tension,
which is entirely generated by fluctuations, using Monte Carlo simulations This
allows us to obtain an estimate for the critical exponents alpha and nu using
both finite-size-scaling and data collapse for the scaling function.Comment: Latex + postscript figures. 8 pages text plus 7 figures, spurious
extra figure now removed
Lattice Boltzmann Thermohydrodynamics
We introduce a lattice Boltzmann computational scheme capable of modeling
thermohydrodynamic flows of monatomic gases. The parallel nature of this
approach provides a numerically efficient alternative to traditional methods of
computational fluid dynamics. The scheme uses a small number of discrete
velocity states and a linear, single-time-relaxation collision operator.
Numerical simulations in two dimensions agree well with exact solutions for
adiabatic sound propagation and Couette flow with heat transfer.Comment: 11 pages, Physical Review E: Rapid Communications, in pres
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