Topological Density and Instantons on a Lattice

We present an update on the study of topological structure of QCD. Issues addressed include a comparison between the plaquette and the geometric methods of calculating the topological density. We show that the improved gauge action based on sqrt(3) blocking transformation suppresses the formation of topologically charged dislocations with low action. Using a cooling method we identify the instantons' location, estimate their size and density, and calculate the renormalization constant Z_Q for the plaquette method.Comment: 3 Pages, submitted to Proceedings of XII International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (Lattice 94, Bielefeld). uuencoded tar file includes figures as TeXDraw (.tex) file

Geometric Measurement of Topological Susceptibility on Large Lattices

The topological susceptibility of the quenched QCD vacuum is measured on large lattices for three $\beta$ values from $6.0$ to $6.4$. Charges possibly induced by $O(a)$ dislocations are identified and shown to have little effect on the measured susceptibility. As $\beta$ increases, fewer such questionable charges are found. Scaling is checked by examining the ratios of the susceptibility to previously existing values of the rho mass, string tension, F-pi, and lambda-lattice.Comment: LaTeX article, 3 pages, uuencoded compressed tar file, 2 figures included as tex files using axismacros, DVIPS driver required to show figures. Talk presented by Jeffrey Grandy at Lattice 93, Dallas, Texas. Los Alamos Preprint number pendin

Pengintegrasian Kansei Engineering dan Customer Relationship Management untuk Meningkatkan Kualitas Layanan di Mall Ciputra World Surabaya

Saat ini dengan semakin berkembangnya pembangunan mall membuat banyak mall bersaing dalam memberikan pelayanan dan menyediakan fasilitas bagi para pengunjungnya. Tren abad ke-21 adalah hedonisme, kesenangan dan individualitas dimana tren ini mencoba mengambil alih aspek fungsi dari produk maupun jasa tersebut bukan merupakan hal pokok yang dicari konsumen. Konsumen mencari suatu produk atau jasa yang menawarkan nilai lebih dari fungsi tersebut. Suatu metode Kansei Engineering (KE) melihat sisi fisiologis dan emosional dari customer ketika melihat suatu objek. KE ini memiliki kemampuan yang kuat untuk menghadapi tren tersebut dan untuk mengakomodasi kebutuhan emosi pelanggan dan menerjemahkan kebutuhan emosional pelanggan ke dalam parameter desain melalui rekayasa. Selain KE, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) juga ditujukan untuk memahami kebutuhan pelanggan sehingga dapat meningkatkan keuntungan Perusahaan dalam jangka panjang. Tujuan yang ingin dicapai dalam penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui faktor-faktor apa saja yang mempengaruhi emosi konsumen saat datang dan mengunjungi mall tersebut, kondisi desain dan fasilitas layanan yang diberikan sekarang, dan mendapatkan suatu guideline yang dapat digunakan untuk membantu penyedia layanan mall dalam mendukung perbaikan secara terus menerus dalam CRM yang mereka terapkan. Untuk mendapatkan tujuan tersebut, langkah awal yang dilakukan adalah melakukan wawancara kepada para pengunjung yang pernah mengunjungi Ciputra World (CW). Setelah itu, data hasil wawancara akan digunakan dan dikembangkan untuk dibuat kuisioner. Dari hasil kuisioner didapatkan profil responden, penilaian tingkat kepentingan dan tingkat kepuasan dari tiap atribut layanan (Service Quality) serta perasaan responden yang diwakilkan dalam Kansei Words. Setelah itu dilakukan analisis kuadran dari data atribut Service Quality yang sudah memiliki nilai tingkat kepentingan dan kepuasan untuk mengetahui atribut mana yang perlu diperbaiki. Data atribut ini selanjutnya juga diuji dengan uji regresi linier berganda untuk melihat hubungan yang signifikan antara atribut layanan dengan Kansei Words. Selain itu dilakukan juga uji regresi linier logistik kepada variabel loyalitas pelanggan yang terbagi dalam 4 bagian yaitu hardcore, softcore, shifting dan switcher beserta tingkat hubungannya dengan pelanggan untuk mengetahui pengaruhnya apakah signifikan dengan Kansei Words responden. Dari hasil uji linier berganda, didapatkan hanya lima belas (15) dari dua puluh tiga (23) atribut layanan yang berpengaruh terhadap Kansei Words responden. Selain itu, ke-lima belas (15) Kansei Words setelah diuji dengan loyalitas pelanggan dan tingkat hubungannya dengan pelanggan hanya terdapat lima Kansei Words yang signifikan. Kansei Words tersebut adalah “elegan” (p-value 0.037), “percaya” (p-value 0.034), “keren” (p-value 0.039), “luas” (p-value 0.037) dan “ingin tahu” (p-value 0.000). Prioritas perbaikan dilakukan dengan melihat gap yang paling negatif dan memiliki hubungan dengan Kansei Words dengan jumlah yang banyak. Jika jumlah Kansei Words sama, maka dilihat nilai gap yang paling negatif untuk lebih diutamakan perbaikannya. Perbaikan ini dilakukan pada atribut “Pelayanan yang diberikan tanpa membedakan status ”( gap -0.85), “Kecermatan karyawan mall seperti tukang parkir, cleaning service dan satpam dalam melayani pengunjung”( gap-0.63), “Kepekaan karyawan terhadap kebutuhan pengunjung”( gap-0.58), “Kenyamanan tempat parkir dan petunjuk parkir yang jelas”( gap -0.92), “Ketersediaan jenis makanan dan minuman yang ada di area foodcourt”( gap-0.75), “Event-event yang diadakan disana menarik ”( gap -0.32) dan “Penampilan karyawan rapi dan menarik”( gap -0.42). Beberapa perbaikan yang dapat dilakukan adalah penanaman suatu kata dalam pikiran bahwa “Pembeli atau Pengunjung adalah Raja” dapat diberikan agar pengunjung dapat dilayani dengan baik dan merasa nyaman berbelanja di CW, mempercepat pembangunan lahan parkir yang baru dan memperhatikan segala hal dalam pembangunan ini sehingga tidak membahayakan pengunjung dan kendaraannya, memberikan petunjuk anak panah yang jelas arah menuju pintu masuk mall di area parkiran serta menyediakan stan-stan dan toko yang diinginkan oleh pengunjung

Development of a Carbon Mesh Supported Thin Film Microextraction Membrane As a Means to Lower the Detection Limits of Benchtop and Portable GC/MS Instrumentation

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in Analytical Chemistry, copyright © American Chemical Society after peer review and technical editing by the publisher. To access the final edited and published work see http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.analchem.5b04008.In this work, a durable and easy to handle thin film microextraction (TFME) device is reported. The membrane is comprised of poly(divinylbenzene) (DVB) resin particles suspended in a high-density polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) glue, which is spread onto a carbon fiber mesh. The currently presented membrane was shown to exhibit a substantially lesser amount of siloxane bleed during thermal desorption, while providing a statistically similar extraction efficiency toward a broad spectrum of analytes varying in polarity when compared to an unsupported DVB/PDMS membrane of similar shape and size which was prepared with previously published methods. With the use of hand-portable GC-TMS instrumentation, membranes cut with dimensions 40 mm long by 4.85 mm wide and 40 ± 5 μm thick (per side) were shown to extract 21.2, 19.8, 18.5, 18,4, 26.8, and 23.7 times the amount of 2,4 dichlorophenol, 2,4,6 trichlorophenol, phorate D10, fonofos, chloropyrifos, and parathion, respectively, within 15 min from a 10 ppb aqueous solution as compared to a 65 μm DVB/PDMS solid phase microextraction (SPME) fiber. A portable high volume desorption module prototype was also evaluated and shown to be appropriate for the desorption of analytes with a volatility equal to or lesser than benzene when employed in conjunction with TFME membranes. Indeed, the coupling of these TFME devices to hand-portable gas chromatography toroidial ion trap mass spectrometry (GC-TMS) instrumentation was shown to push detection limits for these pesticides down to the hundreds of ppt levels, nearing that which can be achieved with benchtop instrumentation. Where these membranes can also be coupled to benchtop instrumentation it is reasonable to assume that detection limits could be pushed down even further. As a final proof of the concept, the first ever, entirely on-site TFME-GC-TMS analysis was performed at a construction impacted lake. Results had indicated the presence of contaminants such as toluene, ethylbenzene, xylene, 2,2,4-trimethyl-1,3-pentanediol diisobutyrate, and tris(1-chloro-2-propyl)phosphate, which stood out from other naturally occurring compounds detected.the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC

First Physics from HotQCD Collaboration

The following pages show results from the first series of runs on BG/L using the unoptimized code from the MILC collaboration. The calculations were run with the AsqTad improved staggered fermion action and the RHMC algorithm on a 32{sup 3} x 8 lattice. The jobs were run mostly during October, 2006 on approximately 5% of the machine. The run consisted of approximately 1000 trajectories per beta value, spanning beta = 6.458 to 6.85, covering a temperature range of 140-210 MeV

Stoichiometrically coupled carbon and nitrogen cycling in the MIcrobial-MIneral Carbon Stabilization model version 1.0 (MIMICS-CN v1.0)

Explicit consideration of microbial physiology in soil biogeochemical models that represent coupled carbon–nitrogen dynamics presents opportunities to deepen understanding of ecosystem responses to environmental change. The MIcrobial-MIneral Carbon Stabilization (MIMICS) model explicitly represents microbial physiology and physicochemical stabilization of soil carbon (C) on regional and global scales. Here we present a new version of MIMICS with coupled C and nitrogen (N) cycling through litter, microbial, and soil organic matter (SOM) pools. The model was parameterized and validated against C and N data from the Long-Term Inter-site Decomposition Experiment Team (LIDET; six litter types, 10 years of observations, and 13 sites across North America). The model simulates C and N losses from litterbags in the LIDET study with reasonable accuracy (C: R2=0.63; N: R2=0.29), which is comparable with simulations from the DAYCENT model that implicitly represents microbial activity (C: R2=0.67; N: R2=0.30). Subsequently, we evaluated equilibrium values of stocks (total soil C and N, microbial biomass C and N, inorganic N) and microbial process rates (soil heterotrophic respiration, N mineralization) simulated by MIMICS-CN across the 13 simulated LIDET sites against published observations from other continent-wide datasets. We found that MIMICS-CN produces equilibrium values in line with measured values, showing that the model generates plausible estimates of ecosystem soil biogeochemical dynamics across continental-scale gradients. MIMICS-CN provides a platform for coupling C and N projections in a microbially explicit model, but experiments still need to identify the physiological and stoichiometric characteristics of soil microbes, especially under environmental change scenarios

Applying population and community ecology theory to advance understanding of belowground biogeochemistry

Approaches to quantifying and predicting soil biogeochemical cycles mostly consider microbial biomass and community composition as products of the abiotic environment. Current numerical approaches then primarily emphasise the importance of microbe–environment interactions and physiology as controls on biogeochemical cycles. Decidedly less attention has been paid to understanding control exerted by community dynamics and biotic interactions. Yet a rich literature of theoretical and empirical contributions highlights the importance of considering how variation in microbial population ecology, especially biotic interactions, is related to variation in key biogeochemical processes like soil carbon formation. We demonstrate how a population and community ecology perspective can be used to (1) understand the impact of microbial communities on biogeochemical cycles and (2) reframe current theory and models to include more detailed microbial ecology. Through a series of simulations we illustrate how density dependence and key biotic interactions, such as competition and predation, can determine the degree to which microbes regulate soil biogeochemical cycles. The ecological perspective and model simulations we present lay the foundation for developing empirical research and complementary models that explore the diversity of ecological mechanisms that operate in microbial communities to regulate biogeochemical processes