2,932 research outputs found
Some examples of exponentially harmonic maps
The aim of this paper is to study some examples of exponentially harmonic
maps. We study such maps firstly on flat euclidean and Minkowski spaces and
secondly on Friedmann-Lema\^ itre universes. We also consider some new models
of exponentially harmonic maps which are coupled with gravity which happen to
be based on a generalization of the lagrangian for bosonic strings coupled with
dilatonic field.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure
Social network dynamics of face-to-face interactions
The recent availability of data describing social networks is changing our
understanding of the "microscopic structure" of a social tie. A social tie
indeed is an aggregated outcome of many social interactions such as
face-to-face conversations or phone-calls. Analysis of data on face-to-face
interactions shows that such events, as many other human activities, are
bursty, with very heterogeneous durations. In this paper we present a model for
social interactions at short time scales, aimed at describing contexts such as
conference venues in which individuals interact in small groups. We present a
detailed anayltical and numerical study of the model's dynamical properties,
and show that it reproduces important features of empirical data. The model
allows for many generalizations toward an increasingly realistic description of
social interactions. In particular in this paper we investigate the case where
the agents have intrinsic heterogeneities in their social behavior, or where
dynamic variations of the local number of individuals are included. Finally we
propose this model as a very flexible framework to investigate how dynamical
processes unfold in social networks.Comment: 20 pages, 25 figure
A note on entropic uncertainty relations of position and momentum
We consider two entropic uncertainty relations of position and momentum
recently discussed in literature. By a suitable rescaling of one of them, we
obtain a smooth interpolation of both for high-resolution and low-resolution
measurements respectively. Because our interpolation has never been mentioned
in literature before, we propose it as a candidate for an improved entropic
uncertainty relation of position and momentum. Up to now, the author has
neither been able to falsify nor prove the new inequality. In our opinion it is
a challenge to do either one.Comment: 2 pages, 2 figures, 2 references adde
Proof of a conjecture of Polya on the zeros of successive derivatives of real entire functions
We prove Polya's conjecture of 1943: For a real entire function of order
greater than 2, with finitely many non-real zeros, the number of non-real zeros
of the n-th derivative tends to infinity with n. We use the saddle point method
and potential theory, combined with the theory of analytic functions with
positive imaginary part in the upper half-plane.Comment: 26 page
Patterns of dominant flows in the world trade web
The large-scale organization of the world economies is exhibiting
increasingly levels of local heterogeneity and global interdependency.
Understanding the relation between local and global features calls for
analytical tools able to uncover the global emerging organization of the
international trade network. Here we analyze the world network of bilateral
trade imbalances and characterize its overall flux organization, unraveling
local and global high-flux pathways that define the backbone of the trade
system. We develop a general procedure capable to progressively filter out in a
consistent and quantitative way the dominant trade channels. This procedure is
completely general and can be applied to any weighted network to detect the
underlying structure of transport flows. The trade fluxes properties of the
world trade web determines a ranking of trade partnerships that highlights
global interdependencies, providing information not accessible by simple local
analysis. The present work provides new quantitative tools for a dynamical
approach to the propagation of economic crises
The Emerging Aversion to Inequality: Evidence from Poland 1992-2005
This paper provides an illustration of the changing tolerance for inequality in a context of radical political and economic transformation and rapid economic growth. We focus on the Polish experience of transition and explore self-declared attitudes of the citizens. Using monthly representative surveys of the population, realized by the Polish poll institute (CBOS) from 1992 to 2005, we identify a structural break in the relation between income inequality and subjective evaluation of well-being. The downturn in the tolerance for inequality (1997) coincides with the increasing distrust of political elites.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/64387/1/wp919.pd
Binge flying: Behavioural addiction and climate change
Recent popular press suggests that âbinge flyingâ constitutes a new site of behavioural addiction. We theoretically appraise and empirically support this proposition through interviews with consumers in Norway and the United Kingdom conducted in 2009. Consistent findings from across two national contexts evidence a growing negative discourse towards frequent short-haul tourist air travel and illustrate strategies of guilt suppression and denial used to span a cognitive dissonance between the short-term personal benefits of tourism and the air travelâs associated long-term consequences for climate change. Tensions between tourism consumption and changing social norms towards acceptable flying practice exemplify how this social group is beginning to (re)frame what constitutes âexcessiveâ holiday flying, despite concomitantly continuing their own frequent air travels
Asymptotics of Toeplitz Determinants and the Emptiness Formation Probability for the XY Spin Chain
We study an asymptotic behavior of a special correlator known as the
Emptiness Formation Probability (EFP) for the one-dimensional anisotropic XY
spin-1/2 chain in a transverse magnetic field. This correlator is essentially
the probability of formation of a ferromagnetic string of length in the
antiferromagnetic ground state of the chain and plays an important role in the
theory of integrable models. For the XY Spin Chain, the correlator can be
expressed as the determinant of a Toeplitz matrix and its asymptotical
behaviors for throughout the phase diagram are obtained using
known theorems and conjectures on Toeplitz determinants. We find that the decay
is exponential everywhere in the phase diagram of the XY model except on the
critical lines, i.e. where the spectrum is gapless. In these cases, a power-law
prefactor with a universal exponent arises in addition to an exponential or
Gaussian decay. The latter Gaussian behavior holds on the critical line
corresponding to the isotropic XY model, while at the critical value of the
magnetic field the EFP decays exponentially. At small anisotropy one has a
crossover from the Gaussian to the exponential behavior. We study this
crossover using the bosonization approach.Comment: 40 pages, 9 figures, 1 table. The poor quality of some figures is due
to arxiv space limitations. If You would like to see the pdf with good
quality figures, please contact Fabio Franchini at
"[email protected]
Gene and protein nomenclature in public databases
BACKGROUND: Frequently, several alternative names are in use for biological objects such as genes and proteins. Applications like manual literature search, automated text-mining, named entity identification, gene/protein annotation, and linking of knowledge from different information sources require the knowledge of all used names referring to a given gene or protein. Various organism-specific or general public databases aim at organizing knowledge about genes and proteins. These databases can be used for deriving gene and protein name dictionaries. So far, little is known about the differences between databases in terms of size, ambiguities and overlap. RESULTS: We compiled five gene and protein name dictionaries for each of the five model organisms (yeast, fly, mouse, rat, and human) from different organism-specific and general public databases. We analyzed the degree of ambiguity of gene and protein names within and between dictionaries, to a lexicon of common English words and domain-related non-gene terms, and we compared different data sources in terms of size of extracted dictionaries and overlap of synonyms between those. The study shows that the number of genes/proteins and synonyms covered in individual databases varies significantly for a given organism, and that the degree of ambiguity of synonyms varies significantly between different organisms. Furthermore, it shows that, despite considerable efforts of co-curation, the overlap of synonyms in different data sources is rather moderate and that the degree of ambiguity of gene names with common English words and domain-related non-gene terms varies depending on the considered organism. CONCLUSION: In conclusion, these results indicate that the combination of data contained in different databases allows the generation of gene and protein name dictionaries that contain significantly more used names than dictionaries obtained from individual data sources. Furthermore, curation of combined dictionaries considerably increases size and decreases ambiguity. The entries of the curated synonym dictionary are available for manual querying, editing, and PubMed- or Google-search via the ProThesaurus-wiki. For automated querying via custom software, we offer a web service and an exemplary client application
Income Comparison, Income Formation, and Subjective Well-Being: New Evidence on Envy versus Signaling
Drawing on the distinction between envy and signaling effects in income comparison, this paper uses 307,465 observations for subjective well-being and its covariates from Germany, 1990-2009, to study whether the nature of income comparison has changed in the process of economic development, and how such changes are related to changes in the nature of income formation. By conceptualizing a person's comparison income as the income predicted by an earnings equation, we find that, while in 1990-1999 envy has been the dominant concern in West Germany and signaling the dominant factor in East Germany, income comparison was non-existing in 2000-2009. We also find that the earnings equation reflects people's ability more accurately in the second than in the first period. Together, these findings suggest that comparing one's income with people of the same ability is important only when ability is insufficiently reflected in own income
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