75 research outputs found
Induced and endogenous acoustic oscillations in granular faults
The frictional properties of disordered systems are affected by external
perturbations. These perturbations usually weaken the system by reducing the
macroscopic friction coefficient. This friction reduction is of particular
interest in the case of disordered systems composed of granular particles
confined between two plates, as this is a simple model of seismic fault.
Indeed, in the geophysical context frictional weakening could explain the
unexpected weakness of some faults, as well as earthquake remote triggering. In
this manuscript we review recent results concerning the response of confined
granular systems to external perturbations, considering the different
mechanisms by which the perturbation could weaken a system, the relevance of
the frictional reduction to earthquakes, as well as discussing the intriguing
scenario whereby the weakening is not monotonic in the perturbation frequency,
so that a re-entrant transition is observed, as the system first enters a
fluidized state and then returns to a frictional state.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figure
Synchronized oscillations and acoustic fluidization in confined granular materials
According to the acoustic fluidization hypothesis, elastic waves at a
characteristic frequency form inside seismic faults even in the absence of an
external perturbation. These waves are able to generate a normal stress which
contrasts the confining pressure and promotes failure. Here, we study the
mechanisms responsible for this wave activation via numerical simulations of a
granular fault model. We observe the particles belonging to the percolating
backbone, which sustains the stress, to perform synchronized oscillations over
ellipticlike trajectories in the fault plane. These oscillations occur at the
characteristic frequency of acoustic fluidization. As the applied shear stress
increases, these oscillations become perpendicular to the fault plane just
before the system fails, opposing the confining pressure, consistently with the
acoustic fluidization scenario. The same change of orientation can be induced
by external perturbations at the acoustic fluidization frequency
Managerial performance incentives and firm risk during economic expansions and recessions
We argue that the relationship between managerial pay-for-performance incentives and risk taking is pro-cyclical. We study the relationship between incentives provided by stock-based compensation and firm risk for US non-financial corporations over the two business cycles between 1992 and 2009. We show that a given level of pay-for-performance incentives results in significantly lower firm risk when the economy is in a downturn. The documented pro-cyclical relationship between incentives and risk taking is consistent with state-dependent risk aversion. Our findings contribute to the literature on the depressive effects of performance incentives on firm risk by documenting the importance of the interaction between performance incentives and risk aversion. © The Authors 2017
Infections are a very dangerous affair: Enterobiasis and death
Background: Enterobiasis or oxyuriasis from Enterobius vermicularis is an infection usually localized in the large bowel and cecum. Generally, the symptoms are characterized by anal itching, and intestinal or nervous disorders. Rarely, it is responsible for death. Methods: A forensic autopsy of a 52-year-old white male inmate who died 5 days after hospitalization was performed. Histological and toxicological analyses were also performed. Results: The death occurred by localization of Enterobius vermicularis in the duodenum and in the proximal ileum, with intestinal haemorrhage, inflammation, and peritonitis documented by histological examination. Conclusion: This is a common infectious disease, and can rarely occur with a fatal outcome, even in advanced populations. The lack of knowledge related to the rarity of death from enterobiasis disease can determine a dangerous concern
Short-time dynamics of a packing of polyhedral grains under horizontal vibrations
We analyze the dynamics of a 3D granular packing composed of particles of
irregular polyhedral shape confined inside a rectangular box with a retaining
wall sub jected to horizontal harmonic forcing. The simulations are performed
by means of the contact dynamics method for a broad set of loading parameters.
We explore the vibrational dynamics of the packing, the evolution of solid
fraction and the scaling of dy- namics with the loading parameters. We show
that the motion of the retaining wall is strongly anharmonic as a result of
jamming and grain rearrangements. It is found that the mean particle
displacement scales with inverse square of frequency, the inverse of the force
amplitude and the square of gravity. The short- time compaction rate grows in
proportion to frequency up to a characteristic frequency, corresponding to
collective particle rearrangements between equilibrium states, and then it
declines in inverse proportion to frequency
High intensity tapping regime in a frustrated lattice gas model of granular compaction
In the frame of a well established lattice gas model for granular compaction,
we investigate the high intensity tapping regime where a pile expands
significantly during external excitation. We find that this model shows the
same general trends as more sophisticated models based on molecular dynamic
type simulations. In particular, a minimum in packing fraction as a function of
tapping strength is observed in the reversible branch of an annealed tapping
protocol.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Glassy states in lattice models with many coexisting crystalline phases
We study the emergence of glassy states after a sudden cooling in lattice
models with short range interactions and without any a priori quenched
disorder. The glassy state emerges whenever the equilibrium model possesses a
sufficient number of coexisting crystalline phases at low temperatures,
provided the thermodynamic limit be taken before the infinite time limit. This
result is obtained through simulations of the time relaxation of the standard
Potts model and some exclusion models equipped with a local stochastic dynamics
on a square lattice.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure
Universal features of correlated bursty behaviour
Inhomogeneous temporal processes, like those appearing in human
communications, neuron spike trains, and seismic signals, consist of
high-activity bursty intervals alternating with long low-activity periods. In
recent studies such bursty behavior has been characterized by a fat-tailed
inter-event time distribution, while temporal correlations were measured by the
autocorrelation function. However, these characteristic functions are not
capable to fully characterize temporally correlated heterogenous behavior. Here
we show that the distribution of the number of events in a bursty period serves
as a good indicator of the dependencies, leading to the universal observation
of power-law distribution in a broad class of phenomena. We find that the
correlations in these quite different systems can be commonly interpreted by
memory effects and described by a simple phenomenological model, which displays
temporal behavior qualitatively similar to that in real systems
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