Actors and factors - bridging social science findings and urban land use change modeling

Recent uneven land use dynamics in urban areas resulting from demographic change, economic pressure and the cities’ mutual competition in a globalising world challenge both scientists and practitioners, among them social scientists, modellers and spatial planners. Processes of growth and decline specifically affect the urban environment, the requirements of the residents on social and natural resources. Social and environmental research is interested in a better understanding and ways of explaining the interactions between society and landscape in urban areas. And it is also needed for making life in cities attractive, secure and affordable within or despite of uneven dynamics.\ud The position paper upon “Actors and factors – bridging social science findings and urban land use change modeling” presents approaches and ideas on how social science findings on the interaction of the social system (actors) and the land use (factors) are taken up and formalised using modelling and gaming techniques. It should be understood as a first sketch compiling major challenges and proposing exemplary solutions in the field of interest

Transport of Bose-Einstein Condensates with Optical Tweezers

We have transported gaseous Bose-Einstein condensates over distances up to 44 cm. This was accomplished by trapping the condensate in the focus of an infrared laser and translating the location of the laser focus with controlled acceleration. Condensates of order 1 million atoms were moved into an auxiliary chamber and loaded into a magnetic trap formed by a Z-shaped wire. This transport technique avoids the optical and mechanical access constraints of conventional condensate experiments and creates many new scientific opportunities.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Phase Separation and the Phase Diagram in Cuprates Superconductors

We show that the main features of the cuprates superconductors phase diagram can be derived considering the disorder as a key property of these materials. Our basic point is that the high pseudogap line is an onset of phase separation which generates compounds made up of regions with distinct doping levels. We calculate how this continuous temperature dependent phase separation process occurs in high critical temperature superconductors (HTSC) using the Cahn-Hilliard approach, originally applied to study alloys. Since the level of phase separation varies for different cuprates, it is possible that different systems with average doping level pm exhibit different degrees of charge and spin segregation. Calculations on inhomogeneous charge distributions in form of stripes in finite clusters performed by the Bogoliubov-deGennes superconducting approach yield good agreement to the pseudogap temperature T*(pm), the onset of local pairing amplitudes with phase locked and concomitantly, how they develop at low temperatures into the superconducting phase at Tc(pm) by percolation.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures. Submitted to Phys. Rev.

Multi-variate analyses of flood loss in Can Tho city, Mekong delta

Floods in the Mekong delta are recurring events and cause substantial losses to the economy. Sea level rise and increasing precipitation during the wet season result in more frequent floods. For effective flood risk management, reliable losses and risk analyses are necessary. However, knowledge about damaging processes and robust assessments of flood losses in the Mekong delta are scarce. In order to fill this gap, we identify and quantify the effects of the most important variables determining flood losses in Can Tho city through multi-variate statistical analyses. Our analysis is limited to the losses of residential buildings and contents. Results reveal that under the specific flooding characteristics in the Mekong delta with relatively well-adapted households, long inundation durations and shallow water depths, inundation duration is more important than water depth for the resulting loss. However, also building and content values, floor space of buildings and building quality are important loss-determining variables. Human activities like undertaking precautionary measures also influence flood losses. The results are important for improving flood loss modelling and, consequently, flood risk assessments in the Mekong delta

NMR Imaging of the honeybee brain

NMR microscopy provides non-invasively distinct soft-tissue contrast in small biological samples. We were able to visualize the three-dimensional structure of the honeybee brain in its natural shape in the intact head capsule. Thus, in addition to acquiring detailed information about the shapes and volumes of the different brain compartments, we were able to show their relative orientations toward each other within the head capsule. Since the brain was lightly fixed but not dehydrated, and stayed attached to the head capsule and its internal structures, the NMR experiments exhibited larger volumes and a more natural stereo geometry of the various brain structures compared to confocal laser microscopy experiments on dissected, dehydrated and cleared brains. Abbreviation: / CLM: confocal laser microscopy NMR: nuclear magnetic resonanc

Solution of the local field equations for self-generated glasses

We present a self-consistent local approach to self generated glassiness which is based on the concept of the dynamical mean field theory to many body systems. Using a replica approach to self generated glassiness, we map the problem onto an effective local problem which can be solved exactly. Applying the approach to the Brazovskii-model, relevant to a large class of systems with frustrated micro-phase separation, we are able to solve the self-consistent local theory without using additional approximations. We demonstrate that a glassy state found earlier in this model is generic and does not arise from the use of perturbative approximations. In addition we demonstrate that the glassy state depends strongly on the strength of the frustrated phase separation in that model.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure