246 research outputs found
France and SDI
Those critics who argue that the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) will divide the Atlantic alliance, frequently cite the French Government\u27s opposition as evidence. The French view of SDI, however, is neither simple nor monolithic
Reformulating the Schrodinger equation as a Shabat-Zakharov system
We reformulate the second-order Schrodinger equation as a set of two coupled
first order differential equations, a so-called "Shabat-Zakharov system",
(sometimes called a "Zakharov-Shabat" system). There is considerable
flexibility in this approach, and we emphasise the utility of introducing an
"auxiliary condition" or "gauge condition" that is used to cut down the degrees
of freedom. Using this formalism, we derive the explicit (but formal) general
solution to the Schrodinger equation. The general solution depends on three
arbitrarily chosen functions, and a path-ordered exponential matrix. If one
considers path ordering to be an "elementary" process, then this represents
complete quadrature, albeit formal, of the second-order linear ODE.Comment: 18 pages, plain LaTe
Semiclassical wave equation and exactness of the WKB method
The exactness of the semiclassical method for three-dimensional problems in
quantum mechanics is analyzed. The wave equation appropriate in the
quasiclassical region is derived. It is shown that application of the standard
leading-order WKB quantization condition to this equation reproduces exact
energy eigenvalues for all solvable spherically symmetric potentials.Comment: 13 page
Semiclassical Solution of the Quantum Hydrodynamic Equation for Trapped Bose-condensed Gas in the l=0 Case
In this paper the quantum hydrodynamic equation describing the collective,
low energy excitations of a dilute atomic Bose gas in a given trapping
potential is investigated with the JWKB semiclassical method. In the case of
spherically symmetric harmonic confining potential a good agreement is shown
between the semiclassical and the exact energy eigenvalues as well as wave
functions. It is also demonstrated that for larger quantum numbers the
calculation of the semiclassical wave function is numerically more stable than
the exact polynomial with large alternating coefficients.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure
Accuracy of Semiclassical Methods for Shape Invariant Potentials
We study the accuracy of several alternative semiclassical methods by
computing analytically the energy levels for many large classes of exactly
solvable shape invariant potentials. For these potentials, the ground state
energies computed via the WKB method typically deviate from the exact results
by about 10%, a recently suggested modification using nonintegral Maslov
indices is substantially better, and the supersymmetric WKB quantization method
gives exact answers for all energy levels.Comment: 7 pages, Latex, and two tables in postscrip
A latent trait approach to measuring HIV/AIDS related stigma in healthcare professionals: application of mokken scaling technique
The attitudes of healthcare professionals towards HIV positive patients and high risk groups are central to the quality of care and therefore to the management of HIV/AIDS related stigma in health settings. Extant HIV/AIDS stigma scales that measure stigmatising attitudes towards people living with HIV/AIDS have been developed using scaling techniques such as principal component analysis. This approach has resulted in instruments that are often long. Mokken scale analysis is a nonparametric hierarchical scaling technique that can be used to develop unidimensional cumulative scales. This technique is advantageous over the other approaches; as the scales are usually shorter, while retaining acceptable psychometric properties. Moreover, Mokken scales also make no distributional assumptions about the underlying data, other than that the data are capable of being ordered by item and by person. In this study we aimed at developing a precise and concise measure of HIV/AIDS related stigma among health care professionals, using Mokken scale analysis
Energy landscape, two-level systems and entropy barriers in Lennard-Jones clusters
We develop an efficient numerical algorithm for the identification of a large
number of saddle points of the potential energy function of Lennard- Jones
clusters. Knowledge of the saddle points allows us to find many thousand
adjacent minima of clusters containing up to 80 argon atoms and to locate many
pairs of minima with the right characteristics to form two-level systems (TLS).
The true TLS are singled out by calculating the ground-state tunneling
splitting. The entropic contribution to all barriers is evaluated and
discussed.Comment: 4 pages, RevTex, 2 PostScript figure
Competences for democratic culture: An empirical study of an intercultural citizenship project in language pedagogy
This article reports on a pedagogical intervention in foreign language teaching in higher education. It analizes the competences developed by Argentinian and UK-based students as they used Skype to design a leaflet that addressed a real world issue: the Argentinian military dictatorship and its manipulation of the 1978 Football World Cup. The data consists of studentsâ discussions of this highly disturbing human rights issue. A first level of analysis focused on identifying evidence of competences using the Council of Europeâs conceptual model of âcompetences for democratic cultureâ (2016). In a second level of analysis, the data was categorized within the framework of Article 2.2 of the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training (2011). This research study provides an empirical test of these two frameworks in the field of language education, an aspect that has not been investigated before. It also contributes to our understanding of the potential of intercultural citizenship projects in achieving the goals of human rights education in foreign language teaching. Results indicate the development of substantial competences for democratic culture defined in the Council of Europeâs model
Competences for democratic culture: An empirical study of an intercultural citizenship project in language pedagogy
This article reports on a pedagogical intervention in foreign language teaching in higher education. It analizes the competences developed by Argentinian and UK-based students as they used Skype to design a leaflet that addressed a real world issue: the Argentinian military dictatorship and its manipulation of the 1978 Football World Cup. The data consists of studentsâ discussions of this highly disturbing human rights issue. A first level of analysis focused on identifying evidence of competences using the Council of Europeâs conceptual model of âcompetences for democratic cultureâ (2016). In a second level of analysis, the data was categorized within the framework of Article 2.2 of the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training (2011). This research study provides an empirical test of these two frameworks in the field of language education, an aspect that has not been investigated before. It also contributes to our understanding of the potential of intercultural citizenship projects in achieving the goals of human rights education in foreign language teaching. Results indicate the development of substantial competences for democratic culture defined in the Council of Europeâs model
Sperm design and variation in the New World blackbirds (Icteridae)
Post-copulatory sexual selection (PCSS) is thought to be one of the evolutionary forces responsible for the rapid and divergent evolution of sperm design. However, whereas in some taxa particular sperm traits are positively associated with PCSS, in other taxa, these relationships are negative, and the causes of these different patterns across taxa are poorly understood. In a comparative study using New World blackbirds (Icteridae), we tested whether sperm design was influenced by the level of PCSS and found significant positive associations with the level of PCSS for all sperm components but head length. Additionally, whereas the absolute length of sperm components increased, their variation declined with the intensity of PCSS, indicating stabilizing selection around an optimal sperm design. Given the diversity of, and strong selection on, sperm design, it seems likely that sperm phenotype may influence sperm velocity within species. However, in contrast to other recent studies of passerine birds, but consistent with several other studies, we found no significant link between sperm design and velocity, using four different species that vary both in sperm design and PCSS. Potential reasons for this discrepancy between studies are discussed
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