630 research outputs found
Experimental identification of the lateral humanâstructure interaction mechanism and assessment of the inverted-pendulum biomechanical model
Within the context of crowd-induced lateral bridge vibration, humanâstructure interaction (HSI) is a widely studied phenomenon. Central to this study is the self-excited component of the ground reaction force (GRF). This force harmonic, induced by a walking pedestrian, resonates with lateral deck motion, irrespective of the pedestrianŚłs pacing frequency. Its presence can lead to positive feedback between pedestrian GRFs and structural motion. Characterisation of the self-excited force as equivalent structural mass and damping has greatly improved the understanding of HSI and its role in developing lateral dynamic instability. However, despite this evolving understanding, a key question has remained unanswered; what are the features of a pedestrianŚłs balance response to base motion that gives rise to the self-excited force? The majority of the literature has focussed on the effects of HSI with the underlying mechanism receiving comparatively little attention. This paper presents data from experimental testing in which 10 subjects walked individually on a laterally oscillating treadmill. Lateral deck motion as well as the GRFs imposed by the subject was recorded. Three-dimensional motion capture equipment was used to track the position of visual markers mounted on the subject. Thus whole body response to base motion was captured in addition to the GRFs generated. The data presented herein supports the authorsâ previous findings that the self-excited force is a frequency sideband harmonic resulting from amplitude modulation of the lateral GRF. The gait behaviour responsible for this amplitude modulation is a periodic modulation of stride width in response to a sinusoidally varying inertia force induced by deck motion. In a separate analysis the validity of the passive inverted pendulum model, stabilised by active control of support placement was confirmed. This was established through comparison of simulated and observed frontal plane CoM motion. Despite the relative simplicity of this biomechanical model, remarkable agreement was observed
Finite-temperature scalar fields and the cosmological constant in an Einstein universe
We study the back reaction effect of massless minimally coupled scalar field
at finite temperatures in the background of Einstein universe. Substituting for
the vacuum expectation value of the components of the energy-momentum tensor on
the RHS of the Einstein equation, we deduce a relationship between the radius
of the universe and its temperature. This relationship exhibit a maximum
temperature, below the Planck scale, at which the system changes its behaviour
drastically. The results are compared with the case of a conformally coupled
field. An investigation into the values of the cosmological constant exhibit a
remarkable difference between the conformally coupled case and the minimally
coupled one.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure
Propagators and WKB-exactness in the plane wave limit of AdSxS
Green functions for the scalar, spinor and vector fields in a plane wave
geometry arising as a Penrose limit of are obtained. The
Schwinger-DeWitt technique directly gives the results in the plane wave
background, which turns out to be WKB-exact. Therefore the structural
similarity with flat space results is unveiled. In addition, based on the local
character of the Penrose limit, it is claimed that for getting the correct
propagators in the limit one can rely on the first terms of the direct geodesic
contribution in the Schwinger-DeWitt expansion of the original propagators .
This is explicitly shown for the Einstein Static Universe, which has the same
Penrose limit as with equal radii, and for a number of other
illustrative cases.Comment: 18 pages, late
Model for a Universe described by a non-minimally coupled scalar field and interacting dark matter
In this work it is investigated the evolution of a Universe where a scalar
field, non-minimally coupled to space-time curvature, plays the role of
quintessence and drives the Universe to a present accelerated expansion. A
non-relativistic dark matter constituent that interacts directly with dark
energy is also considered, where the dark matter particle mass is assumed to be
proportional to the value of the scalar field. Two models for dark matter
pressure are considered: the usual one, pressureless, and another that comes
from a thermodynamic theory and relates the pressure with the coupling between
the scalar field and the curvature scalar. Although the model has a strong
dependence on the initial conditions, it is shown that the mixture consisted of
dark components plus baryonic matter and radiation can reproduce the expected
red-shift behavior of the deceleration parameter, density parameters and
luminosity distance.Comment: 11 pages and 6 figures. To appear in GR
Constraining the dark energy with galaxy clusters X-ray data
The equation of state characterizing the dark energy component is constrained
by combining Chandra observations of the X-ray luminosity of galaxy clusters
with independent measurements of the baryonic matter density and the latest
measurements of the Hubble parameter as given by the HST key project. By
assuming a spatially flat scenario driven by a "quintessence" component with an
equation of state we place the following limits on the
cosmological parameters and : (i) and (1) if the
equation of state of the dark energy is restricted to the interval (\emph{usual} quintessence) and (ii) and
() if violates the null energy condition and assume values (\emph{extended} quintessence or ``phantom'' energy). These results are in
good agreement with independent studies based on supernovae observations,
large-scale structure and the anisotropies of the cosmic background radiation.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, LaTe
Shapes, contact angles, and line tensions of droplets on cylinders
Using an interface displacement model we calculate the shapes of
nanometer-size liquid droplets on homogeneous cylindrical surfaces. We
determine effective contact angles and line tensions, the latter defined as
excess free energies per unit length associated with the two contact lines at
the ends of the droplet. The dependences of these quantities on the cylinder
radius and on the volume of the droplets are analyzed.Comment: 26 pages, RevTeX, 10 Figure
Role of Salmonella enterica serovar typhimurium two-component system PreA/PreB in modulating PmrA-regulated gene transcription
The PmrA/PmrB two-component system encoded by the pmrCAB operon regulates the modification of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium lipopolysaccharide leading to polymyxin B resistance. PmrA and PhoP are the only known activators of pmrCAB. A transposon mutagenesis screen for additional regulators of a pmrC::MudJ fusion led to the identification of a two-component system, termed PreA/PreB (pmrCAB regulators A and B), that controls the transcription of the pmrCAB operon in response to unknown signals. The initial observations indicated that insertions in, or a deletion of, the preB sensor, but not the preA response regulator, caused upregulation of pmrCAB. Interestingly, the expression of pmrCAB was not upregulated in a preAB mutant grown in LB broth, implicating PreA in the increased expression of pmrCAB in the preB strain. This was confirmed by overexpression of preA+ in preAB or preB backgrounds, which resulted in significant upregulation or further upregulation of pmrCAB. No such effect was observed in any tested preB+ backgrounds. Additionally, an ectopic construct expressing a preA[D51A] allele also failed to upregulate pmrC in any of the pre backgrounds tested, which implies that there is a need for phosphorylation in the activation of the target genes. The observed upregulation of pmrCAB occurred independently of the response regulators PmrA and PhoP. Although a preB mutation led to increased transcription of pmrCAB, this did not result in a measurable effect on polymyxin B resistance. Our genetic data support a model of regulation whereby, in response to unknown signals, the PreB sensor activates PreA, which in turn indirectly upregulates pmrCAB transcription
A Way to Reopen the Window for Electroweak Baryogenesis
We reanalyse the sphaleron bound of electroweak baryogenesis when allowing
deviations to the Friedmann equation. These modifications are well motivated in
the context of brane cosmology where they appear without being in conflict with
major experimental constraints on four-dimensional gravity. While suppressed at
the time of nucleosynthesis, these corrections can dominate at the time of the
electroweak phase transition and in certain cases provide the amount of
expansion needed to freeze out the baryon asymmetry without requiring a
strongly first order phase transition. The sphaleron bound is substantially
weakened and can even disappear so that the constraints on the higgs and stop
masses do not apply anymore. Such modification of cosmology at early times
therefore reopens the parameter space allowing electroweak baryogenesis which
had been reduced substantially given the new bound on the higgs mass imposed by
LEP. In contrast with previous attempts to turn around the sphaleron bound
using alternative cosmologies, we are still considering that the electroweak
phase transition takes place in a radiation dominated universe. The universe is
expanding fast because of the modification of the Friedmann equation itself
without the need for a scalar field and therefore evading the problem of the
decay of this scalar field after the completion of the phase transition and the
risk that its release of entropy dilutes the baryon asymmetry produced at the
transition.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figures; v2: minor changes, remark added at end of
section 5 and in caption of figure 1; v3: references added, version to be
publishe
Thermal Decay of the Cosmological Constant into Black Holes
We show that the cosmological constant may be reduced by thermal production
of membranes by the cosmological horizon, analogous to a particle ``going over
the top of the potential barrier", rather than tunneling through it. The
membranes are endowed with charge associated with the gauge invariance of an
antisymmetric gauge potential. In this new process, the membrane collapses into
a black hole, thus the net effect is to produce black holes out of the vacuum
energy associated with the cosmological constant. We study here the
corresponding Euclidean configurations ("thermalons"), and calculate the
probability for the process in the leading semiclassical approximation.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures. Minor correction
Revisiting Cardassian Model and Cosmic Constraint
In this paper, we revisit the Cardassian model in which the radiation energy
component is included. It is important for early epoch when the radiation
cannot be neglected because the equation of state (EoS) of the effective dark
energy becomes time variable. Therefore, it is not equivalent to the
quintessence model with a constant EoS anymore. This situation was almost
overlooked in the literature. By using the recent released Union2 557 of type
Ia supernovae (SN Ia), the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) from Sloan Digital
Sky Survey and the WiggleZ data points, the full information of cosmic
microwave background (CMB) measurement given by the seven-year Wilkinson
Microwave Anisotropy Probe observation, we constrain the Cardassian model via
the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method. A tight constraint is obtained: in regions. The
deviation of Cardassian model from quintessence model is shown in CMB
anisotropic power spectra at high l's parts due to the evolution of EoS. But it
is about the order of 0.1% which cannot be discriminated by current data sets.
The Cardassian model is consistent with current cosmic observational data sets.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, match the published versio
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