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Changing the way we learn: towards agile learning and co-operation
This paper addresses the need for learning and competence development in industrial organizations. The people that enter professional organizations today are part of a gamer generation that have some or much experience with on-line games. Therefore they are more open to e-learning and in general more open to access anything on-line. At the same time industrial organizations experience a pressure on their ability to train employees faster due to the increase in complexity. We argue that games are not yet mature enough to support this training challenge as stand alone efforts. But games can support the training and competence development in a synchronized setup with other means
An improved 2.5 GHz electron pump: single-electron transport through shallow-etched point contacts driven by surface acoustic waves
We present an experimental study of a 2.5 GHz electron pump based on the
quantized acoustoelectric current driven by surface acoustic waves (SAWs)
through a shallow-etched point contact in a GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure. At low
temperatures and with an additional counter-propagating SAW beam, up to n = 20
current plateaus at I=nef could be resolved, where n is an integer, e the
electron charge, and f the SAW frequency. In the best case the accuracy of the
first plateau at 0.40 nA was estimated to be dI/I = +/- 25 ppm over 0.25 mV in
gate voltage, which is better than previous results.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure
Bifurcations and Complete Chaos for the Diamagnetic Kepler Problem
We describe the structure of bifurcations in the unbounded classical
Diamagnetic Kepler problem. We conjecture that this system does not have any
stable orbits and that the non-wandering set is described by a complete trinary
symbolic dynamics for scaled energies larger then .Comment: 15 pages PostScript uuencoded with figure
An interior point algorithm for minimum sum-of-squares clustering
Copyright @ 2000 SIAM PublicationsAn exact algorithm is proposed for minimum sum-of-squares nonhierarchical clustering, i.e., for partitioning a given set of points from a Euclidean m-space into a given number of clusters in order to minimize the sum of squared distances from all points to the centroid of the cluster to which they belong. This problem is expressed as a constrained hyperbolic program in 0-1 variables. The resolution method combines an interior point algorithm, i.e., a weighted analytic center column generation method, with branch-and-bound. The auxiliary problem of determining the entering column (i.e., the oracle) is an unconstrained hyperbolic program in 0-1 variables with a quadratic numerator and linear denominator. It is solved through a sequence of unconstrained quadratic programs in 0-1 variables. To accelerate resolution, variable neighborhood search heuristics are used both to get a good initial solution and to solve quickly the auxiliary problem as long as global optimality is not reached. Estimated bounds for the dual variables are deduced from the heuristic solution and used in the resolution process as a trust region. Proved minimum sum-of-squares partitions are determined for the rst time for several fairly large data sets from the literature, including Fisher's 150 iris.This research was supported by the Fonds
National de la Recherche Scientifique Suisse, NSERC-Canada, and FCAR-Quebec
Dielectric response of a polar fluid trapped in a spherical nanocavity
We present extensive Molecular Dynamics simulation results for the structure,
static and dynamical response of a droplet of 1000 soft spheres carrying
extended dipoles and confined to spherical cavities of radii , 3, and 4
nm embedded in a dielectric continuum of permittivity . The
polarisation of the external medium by the charge distribution inside the
cavity is accounted for by appropriate image charges. We focus on the influence
of the external permittivity on the static and dynamic properties
of the confined fluid. The density profile and local orientational order
parameter of the dipoles turn out to be remarkably insensitive to .
Permittivity profiles inside the spherical cavity are calculated
from a generalised Kirkwood formula. These profiles oscillate in phase with the
density profiles and go to a ``bulk'' value away from the
confining surface; is only weakly dependent on , except
for (vacuum), and is strongly reduced compared to the
permittivity of a uniform (bulk) fluid under comparable thermodynamic
conditions.
The dynamic relaxation of the total dipole moment of the sample is found to
be strongly dependent on , and to exhibit oscillatory behaviour when
; the relaxation is an order of magnitude faster than in the bulk.
The complex frequency-dependent permittivity is sensitive to
at low frequencies, and the zero frequency limit
is systematically lower than the ``bulk'' value
of the static primitivity.Comment: 12 pages including 17 figure
How `sticky' are short-range square-well fluids?
The aim of this work is to investigate to what extent the structural
properties of a short-range square-well (SW) fluid of range at a
given packing fraction and reduced temperature can be represented by those of a
sticky-hard-sphere (SHS) fluid at the same packing fraction and an effective
stickiness parameter . Such an equivalence cannot hold for the radial
distribution function since this function has a delta singularity at contact in
the SHS case, while it has a jump discontinuity at in the SW case.
Therefore, the equivalence is explored with the cavity function .
Optimization of the agreement between y_{\sw} and y_{\shs} to first order
in density suggests the choice for . We have performed Monte Carlo (MC)
simulations of the SW fluid for , 1.02, and 1.01 at several
densities and temperatures such that , 0.2, and 0.5. The
resulting cavity functions have been compared with MC data of SHS fluids
obtained by Miller and Frenkel [J. Phys: Cond. Matter 16, S4901 (2004)].
Although, at given values of and , some local discrepancies
between y_{\sw} and y_{\shs} exist (especially for ), the SW
data converge smoothly toward the SHS values as decreases. The
approximate mapping y_{\sw}\to y_{\shs} is exploited to estimate the internal
energy and structure factor of the SW fluid from those of the SHS fluid. Taking
for y_{\shs} the solution of the Percus--Yevick equation as well as the
rational-function approximation, the radial distribution function of the
SW fluid is theoretically estimated and a good agreement with our MC
simulations is found. Finally, a similar study is carried out for short-range
SW fluid mixtures.Comment: 14 pages, including 3 tables and 14 figures; v2: typo in Eq. (5.1)
corrected, Fig. 14 redone, to be published in JC
On the nonlocal viscosity kernel of mixtures
In this report we investigate the multiscale hydrodynamical response of a
liquid as a function of mixture composition. This is done via a series of
molecular dynamics simulations where the wave vector dependent viscosity kernel
is computed for three mixtures each with 7-15 different compositions. We
observe that the nonlocal viscosity kernel is dependent on composition for
simple atomic mixtures for all the wave vectors studied here, however, for a
model polymer melt mixture the kernel is independent of composition for large
wave vectors. The deviation from ideal mixing is also studied. Here it is shown
that a Lennard-Jones mixture follows the ideal mixing rule surprisingly well
for a large range of wave vectors, whereas for both the Kob-Andersen mixture
and the polymer melt large deviations are found. Furthermore, for the polymer
melt the deviation is wave vector dependent such that there exists a critical
length scale at which the ideal mixing goes from under-estimating to
over-estimating the viscosity
Different quantization mechanisms in single-electron pumps driven by surface acoustic waves
We have studied the acoustoelectric current in single-electron pumps driven
by surface acoustic waves. We have found that in certain parameter ranges two
different sets of quantized steps dominate the acoustoelectric current versus
gate-voltage characteristics. In some cases, both types of quantized steps
appear simultaneously though at different current values, as if they were
superposed on each other. This could indicate two independent quantization
mechanisms for the acoustoelectric current.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure
Three-body interactions in complex fluids: virial coefficients from simulation finite-size effects
A simulation technique is described for quantifying the contribution of
three-body interactions to the thermodynamical properties of coarse-grained
representations of complex fluids. The method is based on comparing the third
virial coefficient for a complex fluid with that of an approximate
coarse-grained model described by a pair potential. To obtain we
introduce a new technique which expresses its value in terms of the measured
volume-dependent asymptote of a certain structural function. The strategy is
applicable to both Molecular Dynamics and Monte Carlo simulation. Its utility
is illustrated via measurements of three-body effects in models of star polymer
and highly size-asymmetrical colloid-polymer mixtures.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure
Time scale for the onset of Fickian diffusion in supercooled liquids
We propose a quantitative measure of a time scale on which Fickian diffusion
sets in for supercooled liquids and use Brownian Dynamics computer simulations
to determine the temperature dependence of this onset time in a Lennard-Jones
binary mixture. The time for the onset of Fickian diffusion ranges between 6.5
and 31 times the relaxation time (the relaxation time is the
characteristic relaxation time of the incoherent intermediate scattering
function). The onset time increases faster with decreasing temperature than the
relaxation time. Mean squared displacement at the onset time increases
with decreasing temperature
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