6,470 research outputs found
Constitutive acoustic-emission elastic-stress behavior of magnesium alloy
Repeated laoding and unloading of a magnesium alloy below the macroscopic yield stress result in continuous acoustic emissions which are generally repeatable for a given specimen and which are reproducible between different specimens having the same load history. An acoustic emission Bauschinger strain model is proposed to describe the unloading emission behavior. For the limited range of stress examined, loading and unloading stress delays of the order of 50 MN/sq m are observed, and they appear to be dependent upon the direction of loading, the stress rate, and the stress history. The stress delay is hypothesized to be the manifestation of an effective friction stress. The existence of acoustic emission elastic stress constitutive relations is concluded, which provides support for a previously proposed concept for the monitoring of elastic stresses by acoustic emission
Visual, Motor and Attentional Influences on Proprioceptive Contributions to Perception of Hand Path Rectilinearity during Reaching
We examined how proprioceptive contributions to perception of hand path straightness are influenced by visual, motor and attentional sources of performance variability during horizontal planar reaching. Subjects held the handle of a robot that constrained goal-directed movements of the hand to the paths of controlled curvature. Subjects attempted to detect the presence of hand path curvature during both active (subject driven) and passive (robot driven) movements that either required active muscle force production or not. Subjects were less able to discriminate curved from straight paths when actively reaching for a target versus when the robot moved their hand through the same curved paths. This effect was especially evident during robot-driven movements requiring concurrent activation of lengthening but not shortening muscles. Subjects were less likely to report curvature and were more variable in reporting when movements appeared straight in a novel âvisual channelâ condition previously shown to block adaptive updating of motor commands in response to deviations from a straight-line hand path. Similarly, compromised performance was obtained when subjects simultaneously performed a distracting secondary task (key pressing with the contralateral hand). The effects compounded when these last two treatments were combined. It is concluded that environmental, intrinsic and attentional factors all impact the ability to detect deviations from a rectilinear hand path during goal-directed movement by decreasing proprioceptive contributions to limb state estimation. In contrast, response variability increased only in experimental conditions thought to impose additional attentional demands on the observer. Implications of these results for perception and other sensorimotor behaviors are discussed
Convergence Conditions for Random Quantum Circuits
Efficient methods for generating pseudo-randomly distributed unitary
operators are needed for the practical application of Haar distributed random
operators in quantum communication and noise estimation protocols. We develop a
theoretical framework for analyzing pseudo-random ensembles generated through a
random circuit composition. We prove that the measure over random circuits
converges exponentially (with increasing circuit length) to the uniform (Haar)
measure on the unitary group and describe how the rate of convergence may be
calculated for specific applications.Comment: 4 pages (revtex), comments welcome. v2: reference added, title
changed; v3: published version, minor changes, references update
An Energy-Minimization Finite-Element Approach for the Frank-Oseen Model of Nematic Liquid Crystals: Continuum and Discrete Analysis
This paper outlines an energy-minimization finite-element approach to the
computational modeling of equilibrium configurations for nematic liquid
crystals under free elastic effects. The method targets minimization of the
system free energy based on the Frank-Oseen free-energy model. Solutions to the
intermediate discretized free elastic linearizations are shown to exist
generally and are unique under certain assumptions. This requires proving
continuity, coercivity, and weak coercivity for the accompanying appropriate
bilinear forms within a mixed finite-element framework. Error analysis
demonstrates that the method constitutes a convergent scheme. Numerical
experiments are performed for problems with a range of physical parameters as
well as simple and patterned boundary conditions. The resulting algorithm
accurately handles heterogeneous constant coefficients and effectively resolves
configurations resulting from complicated boundary conditions relevant in
ongoing research.Comment: 31 pages, 3 figures, 3 table
NGC1333/IRAS4: A multiple star formation laboratory
We present SCUBA observations of the protomultiple system NGC1333/IRAS4 at
450um and 850um. The 850um map shows significant extended emission which is
most probably a remnant of the initial cloud core. At 450um, the component 4A
is seen to have an elongated shape suggestive of a disk. Also we confirm that
in addition to the 4A and 4B system, there exists another component 4C, which
appears to lie out of the plane of the system and of the extended emission.
Deconvolution of the beam reveals a binary companion to IRAS4B. Simple
considerations of binary dynamics suggest that this triple 4A-4BI-4BII system
is unstable and will probably not survive in its current form. Thus IRAS4
provides evidence that systems can evolve from higher to lower multiplicity as
they move towards the main sequence. We construct a map of spectral index from
the two wavelengths, and comment on the implications of this for dust evolution
and temperature differences across the map. There is evidence that in the
region of component 4A the dust has evolved, probably by coagulating into
larger or more complex grains. Furthermore, there is evidence from the spectral
index maps that dust from this object is being entrained in its associated
outflow.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures. To appear in MNRAS. Uses mn.sty. Also available
at http://www.astro.phys.ethz.ch/papers/smith/smith_p_m.htm
Organ failure, outcomes and deprivation status among critically ill cirrhosis patients â a one-year cohort study
No abstract available
Randomized benchmarking of single and multi-qubit control in liquid-state NMR quantum information processing
Being able to quantify the level of coherent control in a proposed device
implementing a quantum information processor (QIP) is an important task for
both comparing different devices and assessing a device's prospects with
regards to achieving fault-tolerant quantum control. We implement in a
liquid-state nuclear magnetic resonance QIP the randomized benchmarking
protocol presented by Knill et al (PRA 77: 012307 (2008)). We report an error
per randomized pulse of with a
single qubit QIP and show an experimentally relevant error model where the
randomized benchmarking gives a signature fidelity decay which is not possible
to interpret as a single error per gate. We explore and experimentally
investigate multi-qubit extensions of this protocol and report an average error
rate for one and two qubit gates of for a three
qubit QIP. We estimate that these error rates are still not decoherence limited
and thus can be improved with modifications to the control hardware and
software.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, submitted versio
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