9,978 research outputs found
Flash of photons from the early stage of heavy-ion collisions
The dynamics of partonic cascades may be an important aspect for particle
production in relativistic collisions of nuclei at CERN SPS and BNL RHIC
energies. Within the Parton-Cascade Model, we estimate the production of single
photons from such cascades due to scattering of quarks and gluons q g -> q
gamma, quark-antiquark annihilation q qbar -> g gamma, or gamma gamma, and from
electromagnetic brems-strahlung of quarks q -> q gamma. We find that the latter
QED branching process plays the dominant role for photon production, similarly
as the QCD branchings q -> q g and g -> g g play a crucial role for parton
multiplication. We conclude therefore that photons accompanying the parton
cascade evolution during the early stage of heavy-ion collisions shed light on
the formation of a partonic plasma.Comment: 4 pages including 3 postscript figure
A case study of effective practice in mathematics teaching and learning informed by Valsiner’s zone theory
The characteristics that typify an effective teacher of mathematics and the environments that support effective teaching practices have been a long-term focus of educational research. In this article we report on an aspect of a larger study that investigated ‘best practice’ in mathematics teaching and learning across all Australian states and territories. A case study from one Australian state was developed from data collected via classroom observations and semi-structured interviews with school leaders and teachers and analysed using Valsiner’s zone theory. A finding of the study is that ‘successful’ practice is strongly tied to school context and the cultural practices that have been developed by school leaders and teachers to optimise student learning opportunities. We illustrate such an alignment of school culture and practice through a vignette based on a case of one ‘successful’ school
Parton cascade description of relativistic heavy-ion collisions at CERN SPS energies ?
We examine Pb+Pb collisions at CERN SPS energy 158 A GeV, by employing the
earlier developed and recently refined parton-cascade/cluster-hadronization
model and its Monte Carlo implementation. This space-time model involves the
dynamical interplay of perturbative QCD parton production and evolution, with
non-perturbative parton-cluster formation and hadron production through cluster
decays. Using computer simulations, we are able to follow the entwined
time-evolution of parton and hadron degrees of freedom in both position and
momentum space, from the instant of nuclear overlap to the final yield of
particles. We present and discuss results for the multiplicity distributions,
which agree well with the measured data from the CERN SPS, including those for
K mesons. The transverse momentum distributions of the produced hadrons are
also found to be in good agreement with the preliminary data measured by the
NA49 and the WA98 collaboration for the collision of lead nuclei at the CERN
SPS. The analysis of the time evolution of transverse energy deposited in the
collision zone and the energy density suggests an existence of partonic matter
for a time of more than 5 fm.Comment: 16 pages including 7 postscript figure
Intelligent redundant actuation system requirements and preliminary system design
Several redundant actuation system configurations were designed and demonstrated to satisfy the stringent operational requirements of advanced flight control systems. However, this has been accomplished largely through brute force hardware redundancy, resulting in significantly increased computational requirements on the flight control computers which perform the failure analysis and reconfiguration management. Modern technology now provides powerful, low-cost microprocessors which are effective in performing failure isolation and configuration management at the local actuator level. One such concept, called an Intelligent Redundant Actuation System (IRAS), significantly reduces the flight control computer requirements and performs the local tasks more comprehensively than previously feasible. The requirements and preliminary design of an experimental laboratory system capable of demonstrating the concept and sufficiently flexible to explore a variety of configurations are discussed
Taking Aim: New Documentary and War
This essay examines some of the contours of new documentary and its relationship to war, first characterizing historical and theoretical frameworks while considering the social and spectatorial impact of moving images that have engaged with war themes and imagery. The focus falls on new documentary and representations of the war in Iraq, asking if these cultural mediations of war might indicate shades of an Iraq syndrome in the making. Finally, a close reading of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 considers the film in light of social and representational issues facing new documentary, marking the film's postmodernist and surrealist tendencies. I argue that Moore?s film ends up projecting ambiguous and perhaps self-contradictory conclusions about the US reliance on war as a mechanism for advancing its global social, ideological, and economic agendas. At the same time, the film manages to capture elements of the heterogeneity and instability of Americans' own national and patriotic self-perceptions
Deep Convolutional Neural Networks as strong gravitational lens detectors
Future large-scale surveys with high resolution imaging will provide us with
a few new strong galaxy-scale lenses. These strong lensing systems
however will be contained in large data amounts which are beyond the capacity
of human experts to visually classify in a unbiased way. We present a new
strong gravitational lens finder based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs).
The method was applied to the Strong Lensing challenge organised by the Bologna
Lens Factory. It achieved first and third place respectively on the space-based
data-set and the ground-based data-set. The goal was to find a fully automated
lens finder for ground-based and space-based surveys which minimizes human
inspect. We compare the results of our CNN architecture and three new
variations ("invariant" "views" and "residual") on the simulated data of the
challenge. Each method has been trained separately 5 times on 17 000 simulated
images, cross-validated using 3 000 images and then applied to a 100 000 image
test set. We used two different metrics for evaluation, the area under the
receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) score and the recall with no
false positive (). For ground based data our
best method achieved an AUC score of and a
of . For space-based data our best
method achieved an AUC score of and a
of . On space-based data adding dihedral invariance to the CNN
architecture diminished the overall score but achieved a higher no
contamination recall. We found that using committees of 5 CNNs produce the best
recall at zero contamination and consistenly score better AUC than a single
CNN. We found that for every variation of our CNN lensfinder, we achieve AUC
scores close to within .Comment: 9 pages, accepted to A&
Out of Equilibrium Non-perturbative Quantum Field Dynamics in Homogeneous External Fields
The quantum dynamics of the symmetry broken lambda (Phi^2)^2 scalar field
theory in the presence of an homogeneous external field is investigated in the
large N limit. We choose as initial state the ground state for a constant
external field J .The sign of the external field is suddenly flipped from
J to - J at a given time and the subsequent quantum dynamics calculated.
Spinodal instabilities and parametric resonances produce large quantum
fluctuations in the field components transverse to the external field. This
allows the order parameter to turn around the maximum of the potential for
intermediate times. Subsequently, the order parameter starts to oscillate near
the global minimum for external field - J, entering a novel quasi-periodic
regime.Comment: LaTex, 30 pages, 12 .ps figures, improved version to appear in Phys
Rev
Criticality for branching processes in random environment
We study branching processes in an i.i.d. random environment, where the
associated random walk is of the oscillating type. This class of processes
generalizes the classical notion of criticality. The main properties of such
branching processes are developed under a general assumption, known as
Spitzer's condition in fluctuation theory of random walks, and some additional
moment condition. We determine the exact asymptotic behavior of the survival
probability and prove conditional functional limit theorems for the generation
size process and the associated random walk. The results rely on a stimulating
interplay between branching process theory and fluctuation theory of random
walks.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/009117904000000928 in the
Annals of Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aop/) by the Institute of
Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
Analysis of reaction dynamics at RHIC in a combined parton/hadron transport approach
We introduce a transport approach which combines partonic and hadronic
degrees of freedom on an equal footing and discuss the resulting reaction
dynamics. The initial parton dynamics is modeled in the framework of the parton
cascade model, hadronization is performed via a cluster hadronization model and
configuration space coalescence, and the hadronic phase is described by a
microscopic hadronic transport approach. The resulting reaction dynamics
indicates a strong influence of hadronic rescattering on the space-time pattern
of hadronic freeze-out and on the shape of transverse mass spectra. Freeze-out
times and transverse radii increase by factors of 2 - 3 depending on the hadron
species.Comment: 10 pages, 4 eps figures include
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