21,978 research outputs found
Sea-level change and storm surges in the context of climate change
This paper reviews the latest research in New Zealand surrounding the issues of sea-level rise and extreme sea levels in the context of global warming and variability in the Pacific-wide El Nino– Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Past records of climate, sea level (excluding tides) and sea and air temperatures have shown that they are continuously fluctuating over various long-term timescales of years, decades and centuries. This has made it very difficult to determine whether the anthropogenic
effects such as increased levels of “greenhouse” gases are having an accelerating effect on global sea levels or an increased incidence of extreme storms. Over the past century, global sea level has risen by 10–25 cm, and is in line with the rise in relative sea level at New Zealand’s main ports of +1.7 mm yr –1. What has become very clear is the need to better understand interannual (year-to-year) and decadal variability in sea-level, as these larger signals of the order of 5–15 cm in annual-mean sea level have a significant “flow-on” effect on the long-term trend in sea level. The paper describes sea level variability in northern New Zealand—both long- and short-term—involved in assessing the regional trends in sea level. The paper also discusses the relative contributions of tides, barometric pressure and wind set-up in causing extreme sea levels during storm surges. Some recent research also looked at a related question—Is there any sign of increased storminess, and hence storm surge, in northern New Zealand due to climate change? The paper concludes that, while no one can be completely sure how sea-level and the degree of storminess will respond in the near future, what is clear is that interannual and decadal variability in sea level is
inextricably linked with Pacific-wide ENSO response and longer inter-decadal shifts in the Pacific climate regime, such as the latest shift in 1976
The bimodal spiral galaxy surface brightness distribution
We have assessed the significance of Tully and Verheijen's (1997) bimodal
Ursa Major Cluster spiral galaxy near-infrared surface brightness distribution,
focussing on whether this bimodality is simply an artifact of small number
statistics. A Kolmogorov-Smirnov style of significance test shows that the
total distribution is fairly represented by a single-peaked distribution, but
that their isolated galaxy subsample (with no significant neighbours within a
projected distance of around 80 kpc) is bimodal at the 96 per cent level. We
have also investigated the assumptions underlying the isolated galaxy surface
brightness distribution, finding that the (often large) inclination corrections
used in the construction of this distribution reduce the significance of the
bimodality. We conclude that the Ursa Major Cluster dataset is insufficient to
establish the presence of a bimodal near-infrared surface brightness
distribution: an independent sample of around 100 isolated, low inclination
galaxies is required to establish bimodality at the 99 per cent level.Comment: 5 pages LaTeX; 2 embedded figures; re-submitted to MNRAS after
replying to referee's comment
Disentangling Morphology, Star Formation, Stellar Mass, and Environment in Galaxy Evolution
We present a study of the spectroscopic and photometric properties of
galaxies in six nearby clusters. We perform a partial correlation analysis on
our dataset to investigate whether the correlation between star formation rates
in galaxies and their environment is merely another aspect of correlations of
morphology, stellar mass, or mean stellar age with environment, or whether star
formation rates vary independently of these other correlations. We find a
residual correlation of ongoing star formation with environment, indicating
that even galaxies with similar morphologies, stellar masses, and mean stellar
ages have lower star formation rates in denser environments. Thus, the current
star formation gradient in clusters is not just another aspect of the
morphology-density, stellar mass-density, or mean stellar age-density
relations. Furthermore, the star formation gradient cannot be solely the result
of initial conditions, but must partly be due to subsequent evolution through a
mechanism (or mechanisms) sensitive to environment. Our results constitute a
true ``smoking gun'' pointing to the effect of environment on the later
evolution of galaxies.Comment: 31 pages, including 5 figures; accepted for publication in Ap
Bell Inequalities in Phase Space and their Violation in Quantum Mechanics
We derive ``Bell inequalities'' in four dimensional phase space and prove the
following ``three marginal theorem'' for phase space densities
, thus settling a long standing
conjecture : ``there exist quantum states for which more than three of the
quantum probability distributions for , , and
cannot be reproduced as marginals of a positive
''. We also construct the most
general positive which reproduces
any three of the above quantum probability densities for arbitrary quantum
states. This is crucial for the construction of a maximally realistic quantum
theory.Comment: 11 pages, latex, no figure
An Introduction to Pervasive Interface Automata
Pervasive systems are often context-dependent, component based systems in which components expose interfaces and offer one or more services. These systems may evolve in unpredictable ways, often through component replacement. We present pervasive interface automata as a formalism for modelling components and their composition. Pervasive interface automata are based on the interface automata of Henzinger et al, with several significant differences. We expand their notion of input and output actions to combinations of input, output actions, and callable methods and method calls. Whereas interfaces automata have a refinement relation, we argue the crucial relation in pervasive systems is component replacement, which must include consideration of the services offered by a component and assumptions about the environment. We illustrate pervasive interface autmotata and component replacement with a small case study of a pervasive application for sports predictions
EPR before EPR: a 1930 Einstein-Bohr thought experiment revisited
In 1930 Einstein argued against consistency of the time-energy uncertainty
relation by discussing a thought experiment involving a measurement of mass of
the box which emitted a photon. Bohr seemingly triumphed over Einstein by
arguing that the Einstein's own general theory of relativity saves the
consistency of quantum mechanics. We revisit this thought experiment from a
modern point of view at a level suitable for undergraduate readership and find
that neither Einstein nor Bohr was right. Instead, this thought experiment
should be thought of as an early example of a system demonstrating nonlocal
"EPR" quantum correlations, five years before the famous
Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paper.Comment: 11 pages, revised, accepted for publication in Eur. J. Phy
Symmetry aspects of fermions coupled to torsion and electromagnetic fields
We study and explore the symmetry properties of fermions coupled to dynamical
torsion and electromagnetic fields. The stability of the theory upon radiative
corrections as well as the presence of anomalies are investigated.Comment: 9 pages, LaTe
Dual quantum-correlation paradigms exhibit opposite statistical-mechanical properties
We report opposite statistical mechanical behaviors of the two major
paradigms in which quantum correlation measures are defined, viz., the
entanglement-separability paradigm and the information-theoretic one. We show
this by considering the ergodic properties of such quantum correlation measures
in transverse quantum XY spin-1/2 systems in low dimensions. While entanglement
measures are ergodic in such models, the quantum correlation measures defined
from an information-theoretic perspective can be nonergodic.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, REVTeX 4.1; v2: published version, 9 page
Coastal oceanography and sedimentology in New Zealand, 1967-91.
This paper reviews research that has taken place on physical oceanography and sedimentology on New Zealand's estuaries and the inner shelf since c. 1967. It includes estuarine sedimentation, tidal inlets, beach morphodynamics, nearshore and inner shelf sedimentation, tides and coastal currents, numerical modelling, short-period waves, tsunamis, and storm surges. An extensive reference list covering both published and unpublished material is included. Formal teaching and research programmes dealing with coastal landforms and the processes that shape them were only introduced to New Zealand universities in 1964; the history of the New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research parallels and chronicles the development of physical coastal science in New Zealand, most of which has been accomplished in last 25 years
Operational Classification and Quantification of Multipartite Entangled States
We formalize and extend an operational multipartite entanglement measure
introduced by T. R. Oliveira, G. Rigolin, and M. C. de Oliveira, Phys. Rev. A
73, 010305(R) (2006), through the generalization of global entanglement (GE)
[D. A. Meyer and N. R. Wallach, J. Math. Phys. 43, 4273 (2002)]. Contrarily to
GE the main feature of this measure lies in the fact that we study the mean
linear entropy of all possible partitions of a multipartite system. This allows
the construction of an operational multipartite entanglement measure which is
able to distinguish among different multipartite entangled states that GE
failed to discriminate. Furthermore, it is also maximum at the critical point
of the Ising chain in a transverse magnetic field, being thus able to detect a
quantum phase transition.Comment: 14 pages, RevTex4, published versio
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