1,169 research outputs found
Superconductivity in the Kondo lattice model
We study the Kondo lattice model with additional attractive interaction
between the conduction electrons within the dynamical mean-field theory using
the numerical renormalization group to solve the effective quantum impurity
problem. In addition to normal-state and magnetic phases we also allow for the
occurrence of a superconducting phase. In the normal phase we observe a very
sensitive dependence of the low-energy scale on the conduction-electron
interaction. We discuss the dependence of the superconducting transition on the
interplay between attractive interaction and Kondo exchange.Comment: Submitted to ICM 2009 Conference Proceeding
Outcomes of Rotator Cuff Surgery in Utah Workers’ Compensation Patients
Currently, rotator cuff injuries are the most common problem for the shoulder and accounted for 4.1 million physicians visits. Partial and full thickness tears are more common in people over the age of 50. The increased prevalence of rotator cuff injuries in the United States population certainly affects the working population and often represents a significant economic burden for employers. Few studies have examined outcomes in worker compensation patients or considered biopsychosocial predictive variables for rotator cuff repairs. The current study aimed to characterize injured workers who have undergone rotator cuff repairs across a number of pre- and postprocedural variables, evaluate multidimensional functional and quality of life outcomes, and examine biopsychosocial variables predictive of success and failure in this sample.
The current study examined 93 injured workers who had undergone at least one rotator cuff repair within the past five years. Participants were solicited through the Worker’s Compensation Fund of Utah (WCF) computerized database. The current study used a retrospective cohort design, patients’ medical charts were reviewed, and various preprocedural variables were coded for analysis including age at the time of the rotator cuff repair, lawyer involvement in the claim, prior shoulder surgery history, and quantity of other compensation claims. Of the total sample, 47 patients (50.5%) were contacted and completed outcome surveys that assessed patient satisfaction, shoulder functional impairment, disability status, and general physical and mental health functioning.
Findings revealed that approximately one third of the patients were totally disabled (29.8%), had poor shoulder specific functioning (36.2%), and were dissatisfied with their current shoulder condition (31.7%). A multivariate regression model was utilized in predicting patient outcomes. Specifically, the number of WCF claims of the patient was a robust predictor of multidimensional outcomes, while age and gender were less predictive of outcomes, and the presence of a prior shoulder surgery reflected no predictive power. Results of descriptive, correlational, and regression analyses are compared to existing data for rotator cuff repair patients when available or to other surgical procedures with similar populations. The study limitations are discussed, such as small sample size, the retrospective design, and lack of matched controls
Conserving approximations in direct perturbation theory: new semianalytical impurity solvers and their application to general lattice problems
For the treatment of interacting electrons in crystal lattices approximations
based on the picture of effective sites, coupled in a self-consistent fashion,
have proven very useful. Particularly in the presence of strong local
correlations, a local approach to the problem, combining a powerful method for
the short ranged interactions with the lattice propagation part of the
dynamics, determines the quality of results to a large extent. For a
considerable time the non crossing approximation (NCA) in direct perturbation
theory, an approach originally developed by Keiter for the Anderson impurity
model, built a standard for the description of the local dynamics of
interacting electrons. In the last couple of years exact methods like the
numerical renormalization group (NRG) as pioneered by Wilson, have surpassed
this approximation as regarding the description of the low energy regime. We
present an improved approximation level of direct perturbation theory for
finite Coulomb repulsion U, the crossing approximation one (CA1) and discuss
its connections with other generalizations of NCA. CA1 incorporates all
processes up to fourth order in the hybridization strength V in a
self-consistent skeleton expansion, retaining the full energy dependence of the
vertex functions. We reconstruct the local approach to the lattice problem from
the point of view of cumulant perturbation theory in a very general way and
discuss the proper use of impurity solvers for this purpose. Their reliability
can be tested in applications to e.g. the Hubbard model and the
Anderson-lattice model. We point out shortcomings of existing impurity solvers
and improvements gained with CA1 in this context.
This paper is dedicated to the memory of Hellmut Keiter.Comment: 45 pages, 22 figure
A new tool in the toolbox for large-scale, high-throughput fisheries mark-recapture studies using genetic identification
Self-Consistent Perturbation Theory for Thermodynamics of Magnetic Impurity Systems
Integral equations for thermodynamic quantities are derived in the framework
of the non-crossing approximation (NCA). Entropy and specific heat of 4f
contribution are calculated without numerical differentiations of thermodynamic
potential. The formulation is applied to systems such as PrFe4P12 with
singlet-triplet crystalline electric field (CEF) levels.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures, proc. ASR-WYP-2005 (JAERI
Inelastic Neutron scattering in CeSi_{2-x}Ga_x ferromagnetic Kondo lattice compounds
Inelastic neutron scattering investigation on ferromagnetic Kondo lattice
compounds belonging to CeSi_{2-x}Ga_{x}, x = 0.7, 1.0 and 1.3, system is
reported. The thermal evolution of the quasielastic response shows that the
Kondo interactions dominate over the RKKY interactions with increase in Ga
concentration from 0.7 to 1.3. This is related to the increase in k-f
hybridization with increasing Ga concentration. The high energy response
indicates the ground state to be split by crystal field in all three compounds.
Using the experimental results we have calculated the crystal field parameters
in all three compounds studied here.Comment: 12 Pages Revtex, 2 eps figures
Role of climate feedback on methane and ozone studied with a coupled ocean-atmosphere-chemistry model.
The emergence of the unmarked: A new perspective on the language-specific function of Broca's Area
A number of neuroimaging studies have implicated an involvement of Broca's area, particularly of the pars opercularis of the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), in the processing of complex (permuted) sentences. However, functional interpretations of this region's role range from very general (e.g., in terms of working memory) to highly specific (e.g., as supporting particular types of syntactic operations). A dissociation of these competing accounts is often impossible because in most cases, the language internal complexity of permuted sentence structures is accompanied invariably by increasing costs of a more general cognitive nature (e.g., working memory, task difficulty, and acceptability). We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to explore the precise nature of the pars opercularis activation in the processing of permuted sentences by examining the permutation of pronouns in German. Although clearly involving a permutation operation, sentences with an initial object pronoun behave like simple, subject-initial sentences (e.g., in terms of acceptability) because of a rule stating that pronouns should generally precede non-pro-nominal arguments. The results of the experiment show that in contrast to non-pro-nominal permutations, sentences with a permuted pronoun do not engender enhanced pars opercularis activation. Our findings therefore speak against both language-related working memory and transformation-based accounts of this region's role in sentence comprehension. Rather, we argue that the pars opercularis of the left IFG supports the language-specific linearization of hierarchical linguistic dependencies
Minimizing Control for Credit Assignment with Strong Feedback
The success of deep learning ignited interest in whether the brain learns hierarchical representations using gradient-based learning. However, current biologically plausible methods for gradient-based credit assignment in deep neural networks need infinitesimally small feedback signals, which is problematic in biologically realistic noisy environments and at odds with experimental evidence in neuroscience showing that top-down feedback can significantly influence neural activity. Building upon deep feedback control (DFC), a recently proposed credit assignment method, we combine strong feedback influences on neural activity with gradient-based learning and show that this naturally leads to a novel view on neural network optimization. Instead of gradually changing the network weights towards configurations with low output loss, weight updates gradually minimize the amount of feedback required from a controller that drives the network to the supervised output label. Moreover, we show that the use of strong feedback in DFC allows learning forward and feedback connections simultaneously, using learning rules fully local in space and time. We complement our theoretical results with experiments on standard computer-vision benchmarks, showing competitive performance to backpropagation as well as robustness to noise. Overall, our work presents a fundamentally novel view of learning as control minimization, while sidestepping biologically unrealistic assumptions
A New Heavy-Fermion Superconductor CeIrIn5: Relative of the Cuprates?
CeIrIn5 is a member of a new family of heavy-fermion compounds and has a
Sommerfeld specific heat coefficient of 720 mJ/mol-K2. It exhibits a bulk,
thermodynamic transition to a superconducting state at Tc=0.40 K, below which
the specific heat decreases as T2 to a small residual T-linear value.
Surprisingly, the electrical resistivity drops below instrumental resolution at
a much higher temperature T0=1.2 K. These behaviors are highly reproducible and
field-dependent studies indicate that T0 and Tc arise from the same underlying
electronic structure. The layered crystal structure of CeIrIn5 suggests a
possible analogy to the cuprates in which spin/charge pair correlations develop
well above Tc
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