Is There a Difference between ‘You’ and ‘I’? A Psycholinguistic Investigation of the Chinese Reflexive Ziji

We report two experiments examining first/second-person blocking effects on the Chinese long-distance reflexive ziji during on-line processing. Participants read sentences with varying matrix and embedded subjects (Exp1: 1st-person pronoun/3rd-person name; Exp2: 2nd-person pronoun/3rd-person name) and answered comprehension questions probing their interpretations of ziji. Work on English found that structurally inaccessible referents can cause competition at the reflexive, indicated by reading-time slowdowns (Badecker and Straub 2002). In Exp1, the 1st-person blocking condition (3rd-person matrix/1st-person embedded) exhibited slowdowns and a higher-than-expected rate of matrix-subject-interpretations, suggesting 1st-person blocking is not consistently effective. However, the subset of trials with effective blocking (local-antecedent interpretations) revealed no slowdowns. In Exp2, the 2nd-person blocking condition (3rd-person matrix/2nd-person embedded) showed consistent blocking and no significant slowdowns. Our results suggest that referents’ ability to compete depends not only on prominence (Badecker and Straub 2002) but also how it is blocked (person-feature vs. syntactic barrier). Building upon Brunyé et al.’s (2009) finding that 2nd-person pronouns are more effective at triggering perspective-taking than 1st-person pronouns, we suggest that the difference between first- and second- person blocking may be attributable to perspective taking: Identifying with the 2nd-person addressee leads comprehenders to more consistently interpret the reflexive as referring to the local 2nd-person subject, resulting in a consistent blocking effect

Electric/magnetic reciprocity in premetric electrodynamics with and without magnetic charge, and the complex electromagnetic field

We extend an axiomatic approach to classical electrodynamics, which we developed recently, to the case of non-vanishing magnetic charge. Then two axioms, namely those of the existence of the Lorentz force (Axiom 2) and of magnetic flux conservation (Axiom 3) have to be generalized. Electric/magnetic reciprocity constitutes a guiding principle for this undertaking. The extension of the axioms can be implemented at a premetric stage, i.e., when metric and connection of spacetime don't play a role. Complex Riemann-Silberstein fields of the form $(E\pm i {\cal H},{\cal D}\pm i B)$ have a natural place in the theory, independent of the Hodge duality mapping defined by any particular metric.Comment: 13 pages in latex, 3 references added, text slightly revise

A Parameter-free Statistical Measurement of Halos with Power Spectra

We show that, in the halo model of large-scale structure formation, the difference between the Fourier and the DWT (discrete wavelet transform) power spectra provides a statistical measurement of the halos. This statistical quantity is free from parameters related to the shape of the mass profile and the identification scheme of halos. That is, the statistical measurement is invariant in the sense that models with reasonably defined and selected parameters of the halo models should yield the same difference of the Fourier and DWT spectra. This feature is useful to extract ensemble averaged properties of halos, which cannot be obtained with the identification of individual halo. To demonstrate this point, we show with WIGEON hydrodynamical simulation samples that the spectrum difference provides a quantitative measurement of the discrepancy of the distribution of baryonic gas from that of the underlying dark matter field within halos. We also show that the mass density profile of halos in physical space can be reconstructed with this statistical measurement. This profile essentially is the average over an ensemble of halos, including well virialized halos as well as halos with significant internal substructures. Moreover, this reconstruction is sensitive to the tail of the mass density profile. We showed that the profile with $1/r^3$ tail gives very different result from that of $1/r^2$. Other possible applications of this method are discussed as well.Comment: To appear in ApJ, final versio

Rapid contextualization of fragmented scene information in the human visual system

Real-world environments are extremely rich in visual information. At any given moment in time, only a fraction of this information is available to the eyes and the brain, rendering naturalistic vision a collection of incomplete snapshots. Previous research suggests that in order to successfully contextualize this fragmented information, the visual system sorts inputs according to spatial schemata, that is knowledge about the typical composition of the visual world. Here, we used a large set of 840 different natural scene fragments to investigate whether this sorting mechanism can operate across the diverse visual environments encountered during real-world vision. We recorded brain activity using electroencephalography (EEG) while participants viewed incomplete scene fragments at fixation. Using representational similarity analysis on the EEG data, we tracked the fragments' cortical representations across time. We found that the fragments' typical vertical location within the environment (top or bottom) predicted their cortical representations, indexing a sorting of information according to spatial schemata. The fragments' cortical representations were most strongly organized by their vertical location at around 200ms after image onset, suggesting rapid perceptual sorting of information according to spatial schemata. In control analyses, we show that this sorting is flexible with respect to visual features: it is neither explained by commonalities between visually similar indoor and outdoor scenes, nor by the feature organization emerging from a deep neural network trained on scene categorization. Demonstrating such a flexible sorting across a wide range of visually diverse scenes suggests a contextualization mechanism suitable for complex and variable real-world environments

X-ray Emission of Baryonic Gas in the Universe: Luminosity-Temperature Relationship and Soft-Band Background

We study the X-ray emission of baryon fluid in the universe using the WIGEON cosmological hydrodynamic simulations. It has been revealed that cosmic baryon fluid in the nonlinear regime behaves like Burgers turbulence, i.e. the fluid field consists of shocks. Like turbulence in incompressible fluid, the Burgers turbulence plays an important role in converting the kinetic energy of the fluid to thermal energy and heats the gas. We show that the simulation sample of the $\Lambda$CDM model without adding extra heating sources can fit well the observed distributions of X-ray luminosity versus temperature ($L_{\rm x}$ vs. $T$) of galaxy groups and is also consistent with the distributions of X-ray luminosity versus velocity dispersion ($L_{\rm x}$ vs. $\sigma$). Because the baryonic gas is multiphase, the $L_{\rm x}-T$ and $L_{\rm x}-\sigma$ distributions are significantly scattered. If we describe the relationships by power laws $L_{\rm x}\propto T^{\alpha_{LT}}$ and $L_{\rm x}\propto \sigma^{\alpha_{LV}}$, we find $\alpha_{LT}>2.5$ and $\alpha_{LV}>2.1$. The X-ray background in the soft $0.5-2$ keV band emitted by the baryonic gas in the temperature range $10^5<T<10^7$ K has also been calculated. We show that of the total background, (1) no more than 2% comes from the region with temperature less than $10^{6.5}$ K, and (2) no more than 7% is from the region of dark matter with mass density $\rho_{\rm dm}<50 \bar{\rho}_{\rm dm}$. The region of $\rho_{\rm dm}>50\bar{\rho}_{\rm dm}$ is generally clustered and discretely distributed. Therefore, almost all of the soft X-ray background comes from clustered sources, and the contribution from truly diffuse gas is probably negligible. This point agrees with current X-ray observations.Comment: 32 pages including 14 figures and 2 tables. Final version for publication in Ap

CP Violation in Hyperon Nonleptonic Decays within the Standard Model

We calculate the CP-violating asymmetries A(Lambda_-^0) and A(Xi_-^-) in nonleptonic hyperon decay within the Standard Model using the framework of heavy-baryon chiral perturbation theory (chiPT). We identify those terms that correspond to previous calculations and discover several errors in the existing literature. We present a new result for the lowest-order (in chiPT) contribution of the penguin operator to these asymmetries, as well as an estimate for the uncertainty of our result that is based on the calculation of the leading nonanalytic corrections.Comment: 21 pages, 2 figures; discussion clarified, results & conclusions unchanged, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Unbroken supersymmetry in the Aharonov-Casher effect

We consider the problem of the bound states of a spin 1/2 chargless particle in a given Aharonov-Casher configuration. To this end we recast the description of the system in a supersymmetric form. Then the basic physical requirements for unbroken supersymmetry are established. We comment on the possibility of neutron confinement in this system

New Physics and CP Violation in Hyperon Nonleptonic Decays

The sum of the CP-violating asymmetries A(Lambda_-^0) and A(Xi_-^-) in hyperon nonleptonic decays is presently being measured by the E871 experiment. We evaluate contributions to the asymmetries induced by chromomagnetic-penguin operators, whose coefficients can be enhanced in certain models of new physics. Incorporating recent information on the strong phases in Xi->Lambda pi decay, we show that new-physics contributions to the two asymmetries can be comparable. We explore how the upcoming results of E871 may constrain the coefficients of the operators. We find that its preliminary measurement is already better than the epsilon parameter of K-Kbar mixing in bounding the parity-conserving contributions.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figure