2,110 research outputs found
Practical Student Self-affirmation
This research paper focuses on student peer interactional relationships in a tertiary level classroom setting in Japan. The research is based on the use of one piece of technology, Microsoft PowerPoint, to illustrate student peer interactional relationships during presentation tasks throughout the 2015 Spring Semester. The application of the particular software used in this research is of little importance, in that any piece of software could be used to investigate student interaction. The important findings of this research indicate that students can be made aware of their self-affirmation through an application of sociolinguistics and an introduction of critical pedagogy that encompasses a significant reduction in the influence of the traditional ‘teacher’ role to the benefit of student empowerment. The role of the student changes from being the passive object to that of a more active Subject role, as that of the ‘teacher,’ or better termed ‘facilitator,’ dispenses their traditional paternalistic, authoritative Subject position, in favor of being one that helps to bring about ‘…an outcome (as learning, productivity, or communication) by providing indirect or unobtrusive assistance, guidance, or supervision,’ on the part of the ‘facilitator,’ as it is defined in the Miriam-Webster dictionary (2015). For students to adopt a more active role requires a change in study habits, which requires more effort. However, this adheres perfectly to the Kyoai College motto; ‘You can develop your ability though it might be hard’ (Kyoai, 2015)
The Nordic Seas carbon budget: Sources, sinks, and uncertainties
A carbon budget for the Nordic Seas is derived by combining recent inorganic carbon data from the CARINA database with relevant volume transports. Values of organic carbon in the Nordic Seas' water masses, the amount of carbon input from river runoff, and the removal through sediment burial are taken from the literature. The largest source of carbon to the Nordic Seas is the Atlantic Water that enters the area across the Greenland-Scotland Ridge; this is in particular true for the anthropogenic CO2. The dense overflows into the deep North Atlantic are the main sinks of carbon from the Nordic Seas. The budget show that presently 12.3 ± 1.4 Gt C yr−1 is transported into the Nordic Seas and that 12.5 ± 0.9 Gt C yr−1 is transported out, resulting in a net advective carbon transport out of the Nordic Seas of 0.17 ± 0.06 Gt C yr−1. Taking storage into account, this implies a net air-to-sea CO2 transfer of 0.19 ± 0.06 Gt C yr−1 into the Nordic Seas. The horizontal transport of carbon through the Nordic Seas is thus approximately two orders of magnitude larger than the CO2 uptake from the atmosphere. No difference in CO2 uptake was found between 2002 and the preindustrial period, but the net advective export of carbon from the Nordic Seas is smaller at present due to the accumulation of anthropogenic CO2
Near real-time GPS applications for tsunami early warning systems
GPS (Global Positioning System) technology is widely used for positioning applications. Many of them have high requirements with respect to precision, reliability or fast product delivery, but usually not all at the same time as it is the case for early warning applications. The tasks for the GPS-based components within the GITEWS project (German Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System, Rudloff et al., 2009) are to support the determination of sea levels (measured onshore and offshore) and to detect co-seismic land mass displacements with the lowest possible latency (design goal: first reliable results after 5 min). The completed system was designed to fulfil these tasks in near real-time, rather than for scientific research requirements. The obtained data products (movements of GPS antennas) are supporting the warning process in different ways. The measurements from GPS instruments on buoys allow the earliest possible detection or confirmation of tsunami waves on the ocean. Onshore GPS measurements are made collocated with tide gauges or seismological stations and give information about co-seismic land mass movements as recorded, e.g., during the great Sumatra-Andaman earthquake of 2004 (Subarya et al., 2006). This information is important to separate tsunami-caused sea height movements from apparent sea height changes at tide gauge locations (sensor station movement) and also as additional information about earthquakes' mechanisms, as this is an essential information to predict a tsunami (Sobolev et al., 2007). <br><br> This article gives an end-to-end overview of the GITEWS GPS-component system, from the GPS sensors (GPS receiver with GPS antenna and auxiliary systems, either onshore or offshore) to the early warning centre displays. We describe how the GPS sensors have been installed, how they are operated and the methods used to collect, transfer and process the GPS data in near real-time. This includes the sensor system design, the communication system layout with real-time data streaming, the data processing strategy and the final products of the GPS-based early warning system components
Characterizing the contaminating distance distribution for Bayesian supernova cosmology
Measurements of the equation of state of dark energy from surveys of
thousands of Type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia) will be limited by spectroscopic
follow-up and must therefore rely on photometric identification, increasing the
chance that the sample is contaminated by Core Collapse Supernovae (CC SNe).
Bayesian methods for supernova cosmology can remove contamination bias while
maintaining high statistical precision but are sensitive to the choice of
parameterization of the contaminating distance distribution. We use simulations
to investigate the form of the contaminating distribution and its dependence on
the absolute magnitudes, light curve shapes, colors, extinction, and redshifts
of core collapse supernovae. We find that the CC luminosity function dominates
the distance distribution function, but its shape is increasingly distorted as
the redshift increases and more CC SNe fall below the survey magnitude limit.
The shapes and colors of the CC light curves generally shift the distance
distribution, and their effect on the CC distances is correlated. We compare
the simulated distances to the first year results of the SDSS-II SN survey and
find that the SDSS distance distributions can be reproduced with simulated CC
SNe that are ~1 mag fainter than the standard Richardson et al. (2002)
luminosity functions, which do not produce a good fit. To exploit the full
power of the Bayesian parameter estimation method, parameterization of the
contaminating distribution should be guided by the current knowledge of the CC
luminosity functions, coupled with the effects of the survey selection and
magnitude-limit, and allow for systematic shifts caused by the parameters of
the distance fit.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures; accepted for publication in the Astrophysical
Journa
Nonminimal Supersymmetric Standard Model with Baryon and Lepton Number Violation
We carry out a comprehensive analysis of the nonminimal supersymmetric
standard model (NMSSM) with baryon and lepton number violation. We catalogue
the baryon and lepton number violating dimension four and five operators of the
model. We then study the renormalization group evolution and infrared stable
fixed points of the Yukawa couplings and the soft supersymmetry breaking
trilinear couplings of this model with baryon and lepton number (and R-parity)
violation involving the heaviest generations. We show analytically that in the
Yukawa sector of the NMSSM there is only one infrared stable fixed point. This
corresponds to a non-trivial fixed point for the top-, bottom-quark Yukawa
couplings and the violating coupling , and a trivial one
for all other couplings. All other possible fixed points are either unphysical
or unstable in the infrared region. We also carry out an analysis of the
renormalization group equations for the soft supersymmetry breaking trilinear
couplings, and determine the corresponding fixed points for these couplings. We
then study the quasi-fixed point behaviour, both of the third generation Yukawa
couplings and the baryon number violating coupling, and those of the soft
supersymmetry breaking trilinear couplings. From the analysis of the fixed
point behaviour, we obtain upper and lower bounds on the baryon number
violating coupling , as well as on the soft supersymmetry
breaking trilinear couplings. Our analysis shows that the infrared fixed point
behavior of NMSSM with baryon and lepton number violation is similar to that of
MSSM.Comment: 35 pages, Revtex, 6 eps fig
Optical conductivity of CuO_2 infinite-layer films
The infrared conductivity of CaCuO_2, SrCuO_{2-y}, and
Sr_{0.85}Nd_{0.15}CuO_2 infinite-layer films is obtained from reflectivity
measurements by taking into account the substrate contribution. SrCuO_{2-y} and
Sr_{0.85}Nd_{0.15}CuO_2 exhibit extra-phonon modes and structured bands in the
midinfrared, not found in stoichiometric CaCuO_2. These features mirror those
observed in the perovskitic cuprates, thus showing that the polaronic
properties of high-T_c superconductors are intrinsic to the CuO_2 planes.Comment: File latex, 5 p. incl. 4 fig. in epsf. Submitted to Solid State Com
Correlated particle dynamics in concentrated quasi-two-dimensional suspensions
We investigate theoretically and experimentally how the hydrodynamically
correlated lateral motion of particles in a suspension confined between two
surfaces is affected by the suspension concentration. Despite the long range of
the correlations (decaying as 1/r^2 with the inter-particle distance r), the
concentration effect is present only at short inter-particle distances for
which the static pair correlation is nonuniform. This is in sharp contrast with
the effect of hydrodynamic screening present in unconfined suspensions, where
increasing the concentration changes the prefactor of the large-distance
correlation.Comment: 13 page
Photometric Supernova Cosmology with BEAMS and SDSS-II
Supernova cosmology without spectroscopic confirmation is an exciting new
frontier which we address here with the Bayesian Estimation Applied to Multiple
Species (BEAMS) algorithm and the full three years of data from the Sloan
Digital Sky Survey II Supernova Survey (SDSS-II SN). BEAMS is a Bayesian
framework for using data from multiple species in statistical inference when
one has the probability that each data point belongs to a given species,
corresponding in this context to different types of supernovae with their
probabilities derived from their multi-band lightcurves. We run the BEAMS
algorithm on both Gaussian and more realistic SNANA simulations with of order
10^4 supernovae, testing the algorithm against various pitfalls one might
expect in the new and somewhat uncharted territory of photometric supernova
cosmology. We compare the performance of BEAMS to that of both mock
spectroscopic surveys and photometric samples which have been cut using typical
selection criteria. The latter typically are either biased due to contamination
or have significantly larger contours in the cosmological parameters due to
small data-sets. We then apply BEAMS to the 792 SDSS-II photometric supernovae
with host spectroscopic redshifts. In this case, BEAMS reduces the area of the
(\Omega_m,\Omega_\Lambda) contours by a factor of three relative to the case
where only spectroscopically confirmed data are used (297 supernovae). In the
case of flatness, the constraints obtained on the matter density applying BEAMS
to the photometric SDSS-II data are \Omega_m(BEAMS)=0.194\pm0.07. This
illustrates the potential power of BEAMS for future large photometric supernova
surveys such as LSST.Comment: 25 pages, 15 figures, submitted to Ap
A Precision Calculation of the Next-to-Leading Order Energy-Energy Correlation Function
The O(alpha_s^2) contribution to the Energy-Energy Correlation function (EEC)
of e+e- -> hadrons is calculated to high precision and the results are shown to
be larger than previously reported. The consistency with the leading logarithm
approximation and the accurate cancellation of infrared singularities exhibited
by the new calculation suggest that it is reliable. We offer evidence that the
source of the disagreement with previous results lies in the regulation of
double singularities.Comment: 6 pages, uuencoded LaTeX and one eps figure appended Complete paper
as PostScript file (125 kB) available at:
http://www.phys.washington.edu/~clay/eecpaper1/paper.htm
The Electron-Phonon Interaction in the Presence of Strong Correlations
We investigate the effect of strong electron-electron repulsion on the
electron-phonon interaction from a Fermi-liquid point of view: the strong
interaction is responsible for vertex corrections, which are strongly dependent
on the ratio. These corrections generically lead to a strong
suppression of the effective coupling between quasiparticles mediated by a
single phonon exchange in the limit. However, such effect
is not present when . Analyzing the Landau stability
criterion, we show that a sizable electron-phonon interaction can push the
system towards a phase-separation instability. A detailed analysis is then
carried out using a slave-boson approach for the infinite-U three-band Hubbard
model. In the presence of a coupling between the local hole density and a
dispersionless optical phonon, we explicitly confirm the strong dependence of
the hole-phonon coupling on the transferred momentum versus frequency ratio. We
also find that the exchange of phonons leads to an unstable phase with negative
compressibility already at small values of the bare hole-phonon coupling. Close
to the unstable region, we detect Cooper instabilities both in s- and d-wave
channels supporting a possible connection between phase separation and
superconductivity in strongly correlated systems.Comment: LateX 3.14, 04.11.1994 Preprint no.101
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