3,119 research outputs found
Understanding affordances: history and contemporary development of Gibson’s central concept
Gibson developed the affordance concept to complement his theory of direct perception that stands in sharp contrast with the prevalent inferential theories of perception. A comparison of the two approaches shows that the distinction between them also has an ontological aspect. We trace the history and newer formalizations of the notion of affordance and discuss some competing opinions on its scope. Next, empirical work on the affordance concept is reviewed in brief and the relevance of dynamical systems theory to affordance research is demonstrated. Finally, the striking but often neglected convergence of the ideas of Gibson and those of certain Continental philosophers is discussed
Zrozumieć afordancje: przegląd badań nad główną tezą Jamesa J. Gibsona
Gibson rozwinął koncepcję afordancji, uzupełniając za jej pomocą swoją teorię percepcji bezpośredniej, która stoi w wyraźnej opozycji do popularnych teorii percepcji pośredniej. Porównanie ze sobą tych dwóch podejść pokazuje, że różnice pomiędzy nimi dotyczą również ontologii percepcji. W artykule tym przedstawiamy zarówno historię pojęcia afordancji, jak i późniejsze jego formalizacje, omawiając przy tym konkurujące ze sobą sposoby rozumienia tego terminu. Następnie przechodzimy do krótkiego przeglądu badań empirycznych nad zagadnieniem afordancji, wskazując na znaczenie teorii układów dynamicznych w tychże badaniach. W niniejszym tekście nie zabrakło również odniesienia do często pomijanego wątku, czyli do powiązań myśli Gibsona z wybranymi przestawicielami filozofii kontynentalnej
Directed self-organization of graphene nanoribbons on SiC
Realization of post-CMOS graphene electronics requires production of
semiconducting graphene, which has been a labor-intensive process. We present
tailoring of silicon carbide crystals via conventional photolithography and
microelectronics processing to enable templated graphene growth on
4H-SiC{1-10n} (n = 8) crystal facets rather than the customary {0001} planes.
This allows self-organized growth of graphene nanoribbons with dimensions
defined by those of the facet. Preferential growth is confirmed by Raman
spectroscopy and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM)
measurements, and electrical characterization of prototypic graphene devices is
presented. Fabrication of > 10,000 top-gated graphene transistors on a 0.24 cm2
SiC chip demonstrates scalability of this process and represents the highest
density of graphene devices reported to date.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figure
Room Temperature In-plane <100> Magnetic Easy Axis for Fe3O4/SrTiO3(001):Nb Grown by Infrared PLD
We examine the magnetic easy-axis directions of stoichiometric magnetite
films grown on SrTiO3:Nb by infrared pulsed-laser deposition. Spin-polarized
low-energy electron microscopy reveals that the individual magnetic domains are
magnetized along the in-plane film directions. Magneto-optical Kerr
effect measurements show that the maxima of the remanence and coercivity are
also along in-plane film directions. This easy-axis orientation differs
from bulk magnetite and films prepared by other techniques, establishing that
the magnetic anisotropy can be tuned by film growth.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figure
Epidermal Growth Factor–PEG Functionalized PAMAM-Pentaethylenehexamine Dendron for Targeted Gene Delivery Produced by Click Chemistry
Aim of this study was the site-specific conjugation of an epidermal growth factor (EGF)-polyethylene glycol (PEG) chain by click chemistry onto a poly(amido amine) (PAMAM) dendron, as a key step toward defined multifunctional carriers for targeted gene delivery. For this purpose, at first propargyl amine cored PAMAM dendrons with ester ends were synthesized. The chain terminal ester groups were then modified by oligoamines with different secondary amino densities. The oligoamine-modified PAMAM dendrons were well biocompatible, as demonstrated in cytotoxicity assays. Among the different oligoamine-modified dendrons, PAMAM-pentaethylenehexamine (PEHA) dendron polyplexes displayed the best gene transfer ability. Conjugation of PAMAM-PEHA dendron with PEG spacer was conducted via click reaction, which was performed before amidation with PEHA. The resultant PEG-PAMAM-PEHA copolymer was then coupled with EGF ligand. pDNA transfections in HuH-7 hepatocellular carcinoma cells showed a 10-fold higher efficiency with the polyplexes containing conjugated EGF as compared to the ligand-free ones, demonstrating the concept of ligand targeting. Overall gene transfer efficiencies, however, were moderate, suggesting that additional measures for overcoming subsequent intracellular bottlenecks in delivery have to be taken
Non-Equilibrium Large N Yukawa Dynamics: marching through the Landau pole
The non-equilibrium dynamics of a Yukawa theory with N fermions coupled to a
scalar field is studied in the large N limit with the goal of comparing the
dynamics predicted from the renormalization group improved effective potential
to that obtained including the fermionic backreaction. The effective potential
is of the Coleman-Weinberg type. Its renormalization group improvement is
unbounded from below and features a Landau pole. When viewed self-consistently,
the initial time singularity does not arise. The different regimes of the
dynamics of the fully renormalized theory are studied both analytically and
numerically. Despite the existence of a Landau pole in the model, the dynamics
of the mean field is smooth as it passes the location of the pole. This is a
consequence of a remarkable cancellation between the effective potential and
the dynamical chiral condensate. The asymptotic evolution is effectively
described by a quartic upright effective potential. In all regimes, profuse
particle production results in the formation of a dense fermionic plasma with
occupation numbers nearly saturated up to a scale of the order of the mean
field. This can be interpreted as a chemical potential. We discuss the
implications of these results for cosmological preheating.Comment: 36 pages, 14 figures, LaTeX, submitted to Physical Review
The SDSS-IV extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: selecting emission line galaxies using the Fisher discriminant
We present a new selection technique of producing spectroscopic target
catalogues for massive spectroscopic surveys for cosmology. This work was
conducted in the context of the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic
Survey (eBOSS), which will use ~200 000 emission line galaxies (ELGs) at
0.6<zspec<1.0 to obtain a precise baryon acoustic oscillation measurement. Our
proposed selection technique is based on optical and near-infrared broad-band
filter photometry. We used a training sample to define a quantity, the Fisher
discriminant (linear combination of colours), which correlates best with the
desired properties of the target: redshift and [OII] flux. The proposed
selections are simply done by applying a cut on magnitudes and this Fisher
discriminant. We used public data and dedicated SDSS spectroscopy to quantify
the redshift distribution and [OII] flux of our ELG target selections. We
demonstrate that two of our selections fulfil the initial eBOSS/ELG redshift
requirements: for a target density of 180 deg^2, ~70% of the selected objects
have 0.6<zspec<1.0 and only ~1% of those galaxies in the range 0.6<zspec<1.0
are expected to have a catastrophic zspec estimate. Additionally, the stacked
spectra and stacked deep images for those two selections show characteristic
features of star-forming galaxies. The proposed approach using the Fisher
discriminant could, however, be used to efficiently select other galaxy
populations, based on multi-band photometry, providing that spectroscopic
information is available. This technique could thus be useful for other future
massive spectroscopic surveys such as PFS, DESI, and 4MOST.Comment: Version published in A&
A single-photon transistor using nano-scale surface plasmons
It is well known that light quanta (photons) can interact with each other in
nonlinear media, much like massive particles do, but in practice these
interactions are usually very weak. Here we describe a novel approach to
realize strong nonlinear interactions at the single-photon level. Our method
makes use of recently demonstrated efficient coupling between individual
optical emitters and tightly confined, propagating surface plasmon excitations
on conducting nanowires. We show that this system can act as a nonlinear
two-photon switch for incident photons propagating along the nanowire, which
can be coherently controlled using quantum optical techniques. As a novel
application, we discuss how the interaction can be tailored to create a
single-photon transistor, where the presence or absence of a single incident
photon in a ``gate'' field is sufficient to completely control the propagation
of subsequent ``signal'' photons.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figure
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