Ten Simple Rules for Searching and Organizing the Scientific Literature

The exponentially increasing number of published papers (1.4 million per year by one estimate) makes it more and more difficult for us to manage the flood of scientific information. Each of us has acquired some protocol to find and organize journal articles and other references over the course of our careers. Most of those protocols are likely to have been formed by old routines or idleness rather than a structured approach to save time and frustration over the long run. Furthermore, with the Web 2.0 revolution, new ways of handling information are emerging (O’Reilly 2005). For example, traditional standalone tools for reference management like EndNote are being supplemented by centralized resources like RefWorks and social bookmarking sites as described subsequently. This fusion of personal and public information offers the promise of efficiency through better organization, which in turn leads to better science.

How can seasoned scientists do better using these tools and those newer to the field start off in the right way? To start to answer that question, I present ten simple rules to master the search and organization of new literature. This is not meant to be comprehensive. It represents the experiences of a few and I welcome your thoughts, through comments to this article, on what you do to keep your references organized.

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A simple asymmetric evolving random network

We introduce a new oriented evolving graph model inspired by biological networks. A node is added at each time step and is connected to the rest of the graph by random oriented edges emerging from older nodes. This leads to a statistical asymmetry between incoming and outgoing edges. We show that the model exhibits a percolation transition and discuss its universality. Below the threshold, the distribution of component sizes decreases algebraically with a continuously varying exponent depending on the average connectivity. We prove that the transition is of infinite order by deriving the exact asymptotic formula for the size of the giant component close to the threshold. We also present a thorough analysis of aging properties. We compute local-in-time profiles for the components of finite size and for the giant component, showing in particular that the giant component is always dense among the oldest nodes but invades only an exponentially small fraction of the young nodes close to the threshold.Comment: 33 pages, 3 figures, to appear in J. Stat. Phy

Sailing the Deep Blue Sea of Decaying Burgers Turbulence

We study Lagrangian trajectories and scalar transport statistics in decaying Burgers turbulence. We choose velocity fields, solutions of the inviscid Burgers equation, whose probability distributions are specified by Kida's statistics. They are time-correlated, not time-reversal invariant and not Gaussian. We discuss in some details the effect of shocks on trajectories and transport equations. We derive the inviscid limit of these equations using a formalism of operators localized on shocks. We compute the probability distribution functions of the trajectories although they do not define Markov processes. As physically expected, these trajectories are statistically well-defined but collapse with probability one at infinite time. We point out that the advected scalars enjoy inverse energy cascades. We also make a few comments on the connection between our computations and persistence problems.Comment: 18 pages, one figure in eps format, Latex, published versio

On Root Multiplicities of Some Hyperbolic Kac-Moody Algebras

Using the coset construction, we compute the root multiplicities at level three for some hyperbolic Kac-Moody algebras including the basic hyperbolic extension of $A_1^{(1)}$ and $E_{10}$.Comment: 10 pages, LaTe

Loewner Chains

These lecture notes on 2D growth processes are divided in two parts. The first part is a non-technical introduction to stochastic Loewner evolutions (SLEs). Their relationship with 2D critical interfaces is illustrated using numerical simulations. Schramm's argument mapping conformally invariant interfaces to SLEs is explained. The second part is a more detailed introduction to the mathematically challenging problems of 2D growth processes such as Laplacian growth, diffusion limited aggregation (DLA), etc. Their description in terms of dynamical conformal maps, with discrete or continuous time evolution, is recalled. We end with a conjecture based on possible dendritic anomalies which, if true, would imply that the Hele-Shaw problem and DLA are in different universality classes.Comment: 46 pages, 21 figure

Spikes in quantum trajectories

A quantum system subjected to a strong continuous monitoring undergoes quantum jumps. This very well known fact hides a neglected subtlety: sharp scale-invariant fluctuations invariably decorate the jump process even in the limit where the measurement rate is very large. This article is devoted to the quantitative study of these remaining fluctuations, which we call spikes, and to a discussion of their physical status. We start by introducing a classical model where the origin of these fluctuations is more intuitive and then jump to the quantum realm where their existence is less intuitive. We compute the exact distribution of the spikes for a continuously monitored qubit. We conclude by discussing their physical and operational relevance.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure

Zooming in on Quantum Trajectories

We propose to use the effect of measurements instead of their number to study the time evolution of quantum systems under monitoring. This time redefinition acts like a microscope which blows up the inner details of seemingly instantaneous transitions like quantum jumps. In the simple example of a continuously monitored qubit coupled to a heat bath, we show that this procedure provides well defined and simple evolution equations in an otherwise singular strong monitoring limit. We show that there exists anomalous observable localised on sharp transitions which can only be resolved with our new effective time. We apply our simplified description to study the competition between information extraction and dissipation in the evolution of the linear entropy. Finally, we show that the evolution of the new time as a function of the real time is closely related to a stable Levy process of index 1/2.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure