The Scientific Competitiveness of Nations

We use citation data of scientific articles produced by individual nations in different scientific domains to determine the structure and efficiency of national research systems. We characterize the scientific fitness of each nation (that is, the competitiveness of its research system) and the complexity of each scientific domain by means of a non-linear iterative algorithm able to assess quantitatively the advantage of scientific diversification. We find that technological leading nations, beyond having the largest production of scientific papers and the largest number of citations, do not specialize in a few scientific domains. Rather, they diversify as much as possible their research system. On the other side, less developed nations are competitive only in scientific domains where also many other nations are present. Diversification thus represents the key element that correlates with scientific and technological competitiveness. A remarkable implication of this structure of the scientific competition is that the scientific domains playing the role of "markers" of national scientific competitiveness are those not necessarily of high technological requirements, but rather addressing the most "sophisticated" needs of the society

Biasing in Gaussian random fields and galaxy correlations

In this letter we show that in a Gaussian random field the correlation length, the typical size of correlated structures, does not change with biasing. We interpret the amplification of the correlation functions of subsets identified by different thresholds being due to the increasing sparseness of peaks over threshold. This clarifies an long-standing misconception in the literature. We also argue that this effect does not explain the observed increase of the amplitude of the correlation function xi(r) when galaxies of brighter luminosity or galaxy clusters of increasing richness are considered.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures, minor changes and corrected some typos to match the version in Astrophysical Journal Letters (2000

Complexity in cosmic structures

We discuss correlation properties of a general mass density field introducing a classification of structures based on their complexity. Standard cosmological models for primordial mass fluctuations are characterized by a sort of large-scale stochastic order, that we call super-homogeneity to highlight the fact that mass fluctuations increase as a function of scale in the slowest possible way for any stochastic mass field. On the other hand the galaxy spatial distribution show complex structures with a high degree of inhomogeneity and fractal-like spatial correlations up to some relevant cosmological scale. The theoretical problem of cosmological structure formation should then explain the growth of strongly correlated and non-linear structures from the very uniform field of density fluctuations given as standard initial condition.Comment: 6 pages 5 postscript figures. To be published in the proceedings of the Conference "A non-linear worlds: the real world" Second international conference on Frontier science, (08-12.09.2003, Pavia Italy

Correlation and clustering

In this lecture we clarify the basic difference between the correlation properties for systems characterized by small or large fluctuations. The concepts of correlation length, homogeneity scale, scale invariance and criticality are discussed as well. We relate these concepts to the interpretation of galaxy clsutering.Comment: 10 pages, latex, no figures, to appear proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute ``Astrophysical Sources of High Energy Particles & Radiation'' Erice (Italy) 11-21 November 200

Adaptive Linear Prediction Filtering in DWT Domain for Real-Time Musical Onset Detection

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Real space statistical properties of standard cosmological models

After reviewing some basic relevant properties of stationary stochastic processes (SSP), we discuss the properties of the so-called Harrison-Zeldovich like spectra of mass density perturbations. These correlations are a fundamental feature of all current standard cosmological models. Examining them in real space we note they imply a "sub-poissonian" normalised variance in spheres $\sigma_M^2(R) \sim R^{-4} \ln R$. In particular this latter behaviour is at the limit of the most rapid decay ($\sim R^{-4}$) of this quantity possible for any stochastic distribution (continuous or discrete). In a simple classification of all SSP into three categories, we highlight with the name ``super-homogeneous'' the properties of the class to which models like this, with $P(0)=0$, belong. In statistical physics language they are well described as lattice or glass-like. We illustrate their properties through two simple examples: (i) the ``shuffled'' lattice and the One Component Plasma at thermal equilibrium.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, proceedings of the 7th Granada Seminar of Computational and Statistical Physics (2002, Spain

TOPSEM, TwO Parameters Semi Empirical Model: Galaxy Evolution and Bulge/Disk Dicothomy from Two-Stage Halo Accretion

In recent years, increasing attention has been devoted to semi empirical, data-driven models to tackle some aspects of the complex and still largely debated topic of galaxy formation and evolution. We here present a new semi empirical model whose marking feature is simplicity: it relies on solely two assumptions, one initial condition and two free parameters. Galaxies are connected to evolving dark matter haloes through abundance matching between specific halo accretion rate (sHAR) and specific star formation rate (sSFR). Quenching is treated separately, in a fully empirical way, to marginalize over quiescent galaxies and test our assumption on the sSFR evolution without contaminations from passive objects. Our flexible and transparent model is able to reproduce the observed stellar mass functions up to $z\sim 5$, giving support to our hypothesis of a monotonic relation between sHAR and sSFR. We then exploit the model to test a hypothesis on morphological evolution of galaxies. We attempt to explain the bulge/disk bimodality in terms of the two halo accretion modes: fast and slow accretion. Specifically, we speculate that bulge/spheroidal components might form during the early phase of fast halo growth, while disks form during the later phase of slow accretion. We find excellent agreement with both the observational bulge and elliptical mass functions.Comment: 22 pages, 13 Figure