16,531 research outputs found
The Neuroscience of Moral Judgment: Empirical and Philosophical Developments
We chart how neuroscience and philosophy have together advanced our understanding of moral judgment with implications for when it goes well or poorly. The field initially focused on brain areas associated with reason versus emotion in the moral evaluations of sacrificial dilemmas. But new threads of research have studied a wider range of moral evaluations and how they relate to models of brain development and learning. By weaving these threads together, we are developing a better understanding of the neurobiology of moral judgment in adulthood and to some extent in childhood and adolescence. Combined with rigorous evidence from psychology and careful philosophical analysis, neuroscientific evidence can even help shed light on the extent of moral knowledge and on ways to promote healthy moral development
Constructions of biangular tight frames and their relationships with equiangular tight frames
We study several interesting examples of Biangular Tight Frames (BTFs) -
basis-like sets of unit vectors admitting exactly two distinct frame angles
(ie, pairwise absolute inner products) - and examine their relationships with
Equiangular Tight Frames (ETFs) - basis-like systems which admit exactly one
frame angle.
We demonstrate a smooth parametrization BTFs, where the corresponding frame
angles transform smoothly with the parameter, which "passes through" an ETF
answers two questions regarding the rigidity of BTFs. We also develop a general
framework of so-called harmonic BTFs and Steiner BTFs - which includes the
equiangular cases, surprisingly, the development of this framework leads to a
connection with the famous open problem(s) regarding the existence of Mersenne
and Fermat primes. Finally, we construct a (chordally) biangular tight set of
subspaces (ie, a tight fusion frame) which "Pl\"ucker embeds" into an ETF.Comment: 19 page
Entanglement Entropy in the Two-Dimensional Random Transverse Field Ising Model
The scaling behavior of the entanglement entropy in the two-dimensional
random transverse field Ising model is studied numerically through the strong
disordered renormalization group method. We find that the leading term of the
entanglement entropy always scales linearly with the block size. However,
besides this \emph{area law} contribution, we find a subleading logarithmic
correction at the quantum critical point. This correction is discussed from the
point of view of an underlying percolation transition, both at finite and at
zero temperature.Comment: 4.3 pages, 4 figure
Low-Energy Properties of Antiferromagnetic Spin-1/2 Heisenberg Ladders with an Odd Number of Legs
An effective low-energy description for multi-leg spin-1/2 Heisenberg ladders
with an odd number of legs is proposed. Using a newly developed Monte Carlo
loop algorithm and exact diagonalization techniques, the uniform and staggered
magnetic susceptibility and the entropy are calculated for ladders with 1, 3,
and 5 legs. These systems show a low-temperature scaling behavior similar to
spin-1/2 chains with longer ranged unfrustrated exchange interactions. The
spinon velocity does not change as the number of legs increases, but the energy
scale parameter decreases markedly.Comment: 4 pages and 5 figure
Jacobi Structures in
The most general Jacobi brackets in are constructed after
solving the equations imposed by the Jacobi identity. Two classes of Jacobi
brackets were identified, according to the rank of the Jacobi structures. The
associated Hamiltonian vector fields are also constructed
Measuring spike train synchrony
Estimating the degree of synchrony or reliability between two or more spike
trains is a frequent task in both experimental and computational neuroscience.
In recent years, many different methods have been proposed that typically
compare the timing of spikes on a certain time scale to be fixed beforehand.
Here, we propose the ISI-distance, a simple complementary approach that
extracts information from the interspike intervals by evaluating the ratio of
the instantaneous frequencies. The method is parameter free, time scale
independent and easy to visualize as illustrated by an application to real
neuronal spike trains obtained in vitro from rat slices. In a comparison with
existing approaches on spike trains extracted from a simulated Hindemarsh-Rose
network, the ISI-distance performs as well as the best time-scale-optimized
measure based on spike timing.Comment: 11 pages, 13 figures; v2: minor modifications; v3: minor
modifications, added link to webpage that includes the Matlab Source Code for
the method (http://inls.ucsd.edu/~kreuz/Source-Code/Spike-Sync.html
The disordered-free-moment phase: a low-field disordered state in spin-gap antiferromagnets with site dilution
Site dilution of spin-gapped antiferromagnets leads to localized free
moments, which can order antiferromagnetically in two and higher dimensions.
Here we show how a weak magnetic field drives this order-by-disorder state into
a novel disordered-free-moment phase, characterized by the formation of local
singlets between neighboring moments and by localized moments aligned
antiparallel to the field. This disordered phase is characterized by the
absence of a gap, as it is the case in a Bose glass. The associated
field-driven quantum phase transition is consistent with the universality of a
superfluid-to-Bose-glass transition. The robustness of the
disordered-free-moment phase and its prominent features, in particular a series
of pseudo-plateaus in the magnetization curve, makes it accessible and relevant
to experiments.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Properties of neutral mesons in a hot and magnetized quark matter
The properties of non-interacting and mesons are studied
at finite temperature, chemical potential and in the presence of a constant
magnetic field. To do this, the energy dispersion relations of these particles,
including nontrivial form factors, are derived using a derivative expansion of
the effective action of a two-flavor, hot and magnetized Nambu--Jona-Lasinio
(NJL) model up to second order. The temperature dependence of the pole and
screening masses as well as the directional refraction indices of magnetized
neutral mesons are explored for fixed magnetic fields and chemical potentials.
It is shown that, because of the explicit breaking of the Lorentz invariance by
the magnetic field, the refraction index and the screening mass of neutral
mesons exhibit a certain anisotropy in the transverse and longitudinal
directions with respect to the direction of the external magnetic field. In
contrast to their longitudinal refraction indices, the transverse indices of
the neutral mesons are larger than unity.Comment: V1: 26 pages, 15 figures; V2: Discussions improved, references added.
Version accepted for publication in PR
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