Rigidly Rotating Strings in Stationary Spacetimes

In this paper we study the motion of a rigidly rotating Nambu-Goto test string in a stationary axisymmetric background spacetime. As special examples we consider the rigid rotation of strings in flat spacetime, where explicit analytic solutions can be obtained, and in the Kerr spacetime where we find an interesting new family of test string solutions. We present a detailed classification of these solutions in the Kerr background.Comment: 19 pages, Latex, 9 figures, revised for publication in Classical and Quantum Gravit

Quantum integrability of quadratic Killing tensors

Quantum integrability of classical integrable systems given by quadratic Killing tensors on curved configuration spaces is investigated. It is proven that, using a "minimal" quantization scheme, quantum integrability is insured for a large class of classic examples.Comment: LaTeX 2e, no figure, 35 p., references added, minor modifications. To appear in the J. Math. Phy

Search Tracker: Human-derived object tracking in-the-wild through large-scale search and retrieval

Humans use context and scene knowledge to easily localize moving objects in conditions of complex illumination changes, scene clutter and occlusions. In this paper, we present a method to leverage human knowledge in the form of annotated video libraries in a novel search and retrieval based setting to track objects in unseen video sequences. For every video sequence, a document that represents motion information is generated. Documents of the unseen video are queried against the library at multiple scales to find videos with similar motion characteristics. This provides us with coarse localization of objects in the unseen video. We further adapt these retrieved object locations to the new video using an efficient warping scheme. The proposed method is validated on in-the-wild video surveillance datasets where we outperform state-of-the-art appearance-based trackers. We also introduce a new challenging dataset with complex object appearance changes.Comment: Under review with the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technolog

The XMM-Newton EPIC Background and the production of Background Blank Sky Event Files

We describe in detail the nature of XMM-Newton EPIC background and its various complex components, summarising the new findings of the XMM-Newton EPIC background working group, and provide XMM-Newton background blank sky event files for use in the data analysis of diffuse and extended sources. Blank sky event file data sets are produced from the stacking of data, taken from 189 observations resulting from the Second XMM-Newton Serendipitous Source Catalogue (2XMMp) reprocessing. The data underwent several filtering steps, using a revised and improved method over previous work, which we describe in detail. We investigate several properties of the final blank sky data sets. The user is directed to the location of the final data sets. There is a final data set for each EPIC instrument-filter-mode combination.Comment: Paper accepted by A&A 22 December 2006. 14 pages, 8 figures. Paper can also be found at http://www.star.le.ac.uk/~jac48/publications

Propagation of perturbations along strings

A covariant formalism for physical perturbations propagating along a string in an arbitrary curved spacetime is developed. In the case of a stationary string in a static background the propagation of the perturbations is described by a wave-equation with a potential consisting of 2 terms: The first term describing the time-dilation and the second is connected with the curvature of space. As applications of the developed approach the propagation of perturbations along a stationary string in Rindler, de Sitter, Schwarzschild and Reissner-Nordstrom spacetimes are investigated.Comment: 18 pages, LaTeX, Nordita-93/17

Critical Points in the QCD Phase Diagram with Two Flavors of Quarks

We employ the linear sigma model to study the chiral dynamics of two flavors of quarks at finite temperature and density. Our calculations include thermal fluctuations of both the bosonic and fermionic fields. In particular, we determine the phase diagram in the plane of temperature and baryon chemical potential as a function of the pion mass. An interesting phase structure occurs that results in zero, one, or two critical points depending on the value of the vacuum pion mass.Comment: 4 pages, Quark Matter 2009 proceeding

MHC-I genotype drives early immune selection of oncogenic mutations.

MHC-I exposes the intracellular contents to immune cells for surveillance of cellular health. Due to high genomic variation, individuals' immune systems differ in their ability to expose and eliminate cancer-causing mutations. These personalized immune blind spots create specific oncogenic mutation predispositions within patients and influence their prevalence across populations

Fermionic massive modes along cosmic strings

The influence on cosmic string dynamics of fermionic massive bound states propagating in the vortex, and getting their mass only from coupling to the string forming Higgs field, is studied. Such massive fermionic currents are numerically found to exist for a wide range of model parameters and seen to modify drastically the usual string dynamics coming from the zero mode currents alone. In particular, by means of a quantization procedure, a new equation of state describing cosmic strings with any kind of fermionic current, massive or massless, is derived and found to involve, at least, one state parameter per trapped fermion species. This equation of state exhibits transitions from subsonic to supersonic regimes while the massive modes are filled.Comment: 27 pages, 15 figures, uses ReVTeX. Shortened version, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Cooperative mixing induced surface roughening in bilayer metals: a possible novel surface damage mechanism

Molecular dynamics simulations have been used to study a collective atomic transport phenomenon by repeated Ar$^+$ irradiations in the Ti/Pt interfacial system. The ion-induced injection of surface atoms to the bulk, the ejection of bulk atoms to the top layers together with surface erosion is strongly enhanced by interfacial mixing. This process leads to a dense interfacial material, and broadening of the interface region. The process scales with the relative difference of the atomic masses. We find that surface roughening and interfacial mixing is strongly coupled via an enhanced counterflow material transport normal to the surface which might be a novel surface damage mechanism. This cooperative phenomenon is active when the bilayer system is subjected to a high dose ion irradiation (multiple ion irradiations) and leads to surface cavity growth.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures. accepted in Nucl. Instrum. Meth.

Impact of schizophrenia on anterior and posterior hippocampus during memory for complex scenes.

ObjectivesHippocampal dysfunction has been proposed as a mechanism for memory deficits in schizophrenia. Available evidence suggests that the anterior and posterior hippocampus could be differentially affected. Accordingly, we used fMRI to test the hypothesis that activity in posterior hippocampus is disproportionately reduced in schizophrenia, particularly during spatial memory retrieval.Methods26 healthy participants and 24 patients with schizophrenia from the UC Davis Early Psychosis Program were studied while fMRI was acquired on a 3 Tesla Siemens scanner. During encoding, participants were oriented to critical items through questions about item features (e.g., "Does the lamp have a square shade?") or spatial location (e.g., "Is the lamp on the table next to the couch?"). At test, participants determined whether scenes were changed or unchanged. fMRI analyses contrasted activation in a priori regions of interest (ROI) in anterior and posterior hippocampus during correct recognition of item changes and spatial changes.ResultsAs predicted, patients with schizophrenia exhibited reduced activation in the posterior hippocampus during detection of spatial changes but not during detection of item changes. Unexpectedly, patients exhibited increased activation of anterior hippocampus during detection of item changes. Whole brain analyses revealed reduced fronto-parietal and striatal activation in patients for spatial but not for item change trials.ConclusionsResults suggest a gradient of hippocampal dysfunction in which posterior hippocampus - which is necessary for processing fine-grained spatial relationships - is underactive, and anterior hippocampus - which may process context more globally - is overactive