45 research outputs found
Can a combination of the conformal thin-sandwich and puncture methods yield binary black hole solutions in quasi-equilibrium?
We consider combining two important methods for constructing
quasi-equilibrium initial data for binary black holes: the conformal
thin-sandwich formalism and the puncture method. The former seeks to enforce
stationarity in the conformal three-metric and the latter attempts to avoid
internal boundaries, like minimal surfaces or apparent horizons. We show that
these two methods make partially conflicting requirements on the boundary
conditions that determine the time slices. In particular, it does not seem
possible to construct slices that are quasi-stationary and avoid physical
singularities and simultaneously are connected by an everywhere positive lapse
function, a condition which must obtain if internal boundaries are to be
avoided. Some relaxation of these conflicting requirements may yield a soluble
system, but some of the advantages that were sought in combining these
approaches will be lost.Comment: 8 pages, LaTeX2e, 2 postscript figure
Treating instabilities in a hyperbolic formulation of Einstein's equations
We have recently constructed a numerical code that evolves a spherically
symmetric spacetime using a hyperbolic formulation of Einstein's equations. For
the case of a Schwarzschild black hole, this code works well at early times,
but quickly becomes inaccurate on a time scale of 10-100 M, where M is the mass
of the hole. We present an analytic method that facilitates the detection of
instabilities. Using this method, we identify a term in the evolution equations
that leads to a rapidly-growing mode in the solution. After eliminating this
term from the evolution equations by means of algebraic constraints, we can
achieve free evolution for times exceeding 10000M. We discuss the implications
for three-dimensional simulations.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures. To appear in Phys. Rev.
Classical and Quantum Nambu Mechanics
The classical and quantum features of Nambu mechanics are analyzed and
fundamental issues are resolved. The classical theory is reviewed and developed
utilizing varied examples. The quantum theory is discussed in a parallel
presentation, and illustrated with detailed specific cases. Quantization is
carried out with standard Hilbert space methods. With the proper physical
interpretation, obtained by allowing for different time scales on different
invariant sectors of a theory, the resulting non-Abelian approach to quantum
Nambu mechanics is shown to be fully consistent.Comment: 44 pages, 1 figure, 1 table Minor changes to conform to journal
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Conducting Molecular Epidemiological Research in the Age of HIPAA: A Multi-Institutional Case-Control Study of Breast Cancer in African-American and European-American Women
Breast cancer in African-American (AA) women occurs at an earlier age than in European-American (EA) women and is more likely to have aggressive features associated with poorer prognosis, such as high-grade and negative estrogen receptor (ER) status. The mechanisms underlying these differences are unknown. To address this, we conducted a case-control study to evaluate risk factors for high-grade ER- disease in both AA and EA women.
With the onset of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, creative measures were needed to adapt case ascertainment and contact procedures to this new environment of patient privacy. In this paper, we report on our approach to establishing a multicenter study of breast cancer in New York and New Jersey, provide preliminary distributions of demographic and pathologic characteristics among case and control participants by race, and contrast participation rates by approaches to case ascertainment, with discussion of strengths and weaknesses
Cultural Phylogenetics of the Tupi Language Family in Lowland South America
Background: Recent advances in automated assessment of basic vocabulary lists allow the construction of linguistic phylogenies useful for tracing dynamics of human population expansions, reconstructing ancestral cultures, and modeling transition rates of cultural traits over time. Methods: Here we investigate the Tupi expansion, a widely-dispersed language family in lowland South America, with a distance-based phylogeny based on 40-word vocabulary lists from 48 languages. We coded 11 cultural traits across the diverse Tupi family including traditional warfare patterns, post-marital residence, corporate structure, community size, paternity beliefs, sibling terminology, presence of canoes, tattooing, shamanism, men’s houses, and lip plugs. Results/Discussion: The linguistic phylogeny supports a Tupi homeland in west-central Brazil with subsequent major expansions across much of lowland South America. Consistently, ancestral reconstructions of cultural traits over the linguistic phylogeny suggest that social complexity has tended to decline through time, most notably in the independent emergence of several nomadic hunter-gatherer societies. Estimated rates of cultural change across the Tupi expansion are on the order of only a few changes per 10,000 years, in accord with previous cultural phylogenetic results in other languag
Low diversity Cryptococcus neoformans variety grubii multilocus sequence types from Thailand are consistent with an ancestral African origin.
Published versio
Lawson criterion for ignition exceeded in an inertial fusion experiment
For more than half a century, researchers around the world have been engaged in attempts to achieve fusion ignition as a proof of principle of various fusion concepts. Following the Lawson criterion, an ignited plasma is one where the fusion heating power is high enough to overcome all the physical processes that cool the fusion plasma, creating a positive thermodynamic feedback loop with rapidly increasing temperature. In inertially confined fusion, ignition is a state where the fusion plasma can begin "burn propagation" into surrounding cold fuel, enabling the possibility of high energy gain. While "scientific breakeven" (i.e., unity target gain) has not yet been achieved (here target gain is 0.72, 1.37 MJ of fusion for 1.92 MJ of laser energy), this Letter reports the first controlled fusion experiment, using laser indirect drive, on the National Ignition Facility to produce capsule gain (here 5.8) and reach ignition by nine different formulations of the Lawson criterion