12,763 research outputs found
Field behavior of an Ising model with aperiodic interactions
We derive exact renormalization-group recursion relations for an Ising model,
in the presence of external fields, with ferromagnetic nearest-neighbor
interactions on Migdal-Kadanoff hierarchical lattices. We consider layered
distributions of aperiodic exchange interactions, according to a class of
two-letter substitutional sequences. For irrelevant geometric fluctuations, the
recursion relations in parameter space display a nontrivial uniform fixed point
of hyperbolic character that governs the universal critical behavior. For
relevant fluctuations, in agreement with previous work, this fixed point
becomes fully unstable, and there appears a two-cycle attractor associated with
a new critical universality class.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figure (included). Accepted for publication in Int. J.
Mod. Phys.
On Negotiation as Concurrency Primitive
We introduce negotiations, a model of concurrency close to Petri nets, with
multiparty negotiation as primitive. We study the problems of soundness of
negotiations and of, given a negotiation with possibly many steps, computing a
summary, i.e., an equivalent one-step negotiation. We provide a complete set of
reduction rules for sound, acyclic, weakly deterministic negotiations and show
that, for deterministic negotiations, the rules compute the summary in
polynomial time
Critical properties of an aperiodic model for interacting polymers
We investigate the effects of aperiodic interactions on the critical behavior
of an interacting two-polymer model on hierarchical lattices (equivalent to the
Migadal-Kadanoff approximation for the model on Bravais lattices), via
renormalization-group and tranfer-matrix calculations. The exact
renormalization-group recursion relations always present a symmetric fixed
point, associated with the critical behavior of the underlying uniform model.
If the aperiodic interactions, defined by s ubstitution rules, lead to relevant
geometric fluctuations, this fixed point becomes fully unstable, giving rise to
novel attractors of different nature. We present an explicit example in which
this new attractor is a two-cycle, with critical indices different from the
uniform model. In case of the four-letter Rudin-Shapiro substitution rule, we
find a surprising closed curve whose points are attractors of period two,
associated with a marginal operator. Nevertheless, a scaling analysis indicates
that this attractor may lead to a new critical universality class. In order to
provide an independent confirmation of the scaling results, we turn to a direct
thermodynamic calculation of the specific-heat exponent. The thermodynamic free
energy is obtained from a transfer matrix formalism, which had been previously
introduced for spin systems, and is now extended to the two-polymer model with
aperiodic interactions.Comment: 19 pages, 6 eps figures, to appear in J. Phys A: Math. Ge
Occupational safety considerations with hydrazine fuels
A simple pharmacokinetic model and a specially designed dermal vapor exposure chamber which provides respiratory protection were used to determine the rate of penetration of hydrazine and 1,1-dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) vapor through the skin of rats. Parameters for the pharmacokinetic model were determined from intravenous and inhalation exposure data. The model was then used to estimate the skin permeation coefficient for hydrazine or UDMH vapor from the dermal-vapor exposure data. This analysis indicates that UDMH vapor has a relatively high permeability through skin (0.7 cm/hr), a value somewhat higher than was obtained for hydrazine by the same procedure (0.09 cm/hr). Based on these skin permeability results, a skin-only vapor exposure limit giving protection equivalent to the inhalation Threshold Limit Value (TLV) could be calculated. The current TLV's for UDMH and hydrazine are 0.5 and 0.1 ppm, respectively. The corresponding skin-only TLV equivalents, for personnel wearing respiratory protection, are 32 ppm for UDMH and 48 ppm for hydrazine. Should the proposed lowering to the TLV's for these compounds to 0.01 ppm be adopted, the equivalent skin-only TLV's would become 0.64 ppm for UDMH and 4.8 for hydrazine
Structural Interdependence among Colombian Departments
This paper advances on the analysis of the structural interdependence among Colombian departments. The results show that Bogotá has a large influence in the other regional economies through its purchasing power. Additionally, it can be observed a centerperiphery pattern in the spatial concentration of the effects of the hypothetical extraction of any territory. From a policy point of view, the main findings reaffirm the role played by Bogotá in the polarization process observed in the regional economies in Colombia in the last years. Any policy action oriented to reduce these regional disparities should take into account that, given the structural interdependence among Colombian departments, new investment in the lagged regions would flow through Bogotá and the major regional economies.Input-output; extraction method; Colombia Classification JEL: R12; R15.
First measurements of the flux integral with the NIST-4 watt balance
In early 2014, construction of a new watt balance, named NIST-4, has started
at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). In a watt
balance, the gravitational force of an unknown mass is compensated by an
electromagnetic force produced by a coil in a magnet system. The
electromagnetic force depends on the current in the coil and the magnetic flux
integral. Most watt balances feature an additional calibration mode, referred
to as velocity mode, which allows one to measure the magnetic flux integral to
high precision. In this article we describe first measurements of the flux
integral in the new watt balance. We introduce measurement and data analysis
techniques to assess the quality of the measurements and the adverse effects of
vibrations on the instrument.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in IEEE Trans. Instrum.
Meas. This Journal can be found online at
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=1
Relativistic linear stability equations for the nonlinear Dirac equation in Bose-Einstein condensates
We present relativistic linear stability equations (RLSE) for
quasi-relativistic cold atoms in a honeycomb optical lattice. These equations
are derived from first principles and provide a method for computing
stabilities of arbitrary localized solutions of the nonlinear Dirac equation
(NLDE), a relativistic generalization of the nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation.
We present a variety of such localized solutions: skyrmions, solitons,
vortices, and half-quantum vortices, and study their stabilities via the RLSE.
When applied to a uniform background, our calculations reveal an experimentally
observable effect in the form of Cherenkov radiation. Remarkably, the Berry
phase from the bipartite structure of the honeycomb lattice induces a
boson-fermion transmutation in the quasi-particle operator statistics.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure
Training deep neural density estimators to identify mechanistic models of neural dynamics
Mechanistic modeling in neuroscience aims to explain observed phenomena in terms of underlying causes. However, determining which model parameters agree with complex and stochastic neural data presents a significant challenge. We address this challenge with a machine learning tool which uses deep neural density estimators-- trained using model simulations-- to carry out Bayesian inference and retrieve the full space of parameters compatible with raw data or selected data features. Our method is scalable in parameters and data features, and can rapidly analyze new data after initial training. We demonstrate the power and flexibility of our approach on receptive fields, ion channels, and Hodgkin-Huxley models. We also characterize the space of circuit configurations giving rise to rhythmic activity in the crustacean stomatogastric ganglion, and use these results to derive hypotheses for underlying compensation mechanisms. Our approach will help close the gap between data-driven and theory-driven models of neural dynamics
Predicting Intermediate Storage Performance for Workflow Applications
Configuring a storage system to better serve an application is a challenging
task complicated by a multidimensional, discrete configuration space and the
high cost of space exploration (e.g., by running the application with different
storage configurations). To enable selecting the best configuration in a
reasonable time, we design an end-to-end performance prediction mechanism that
estimates the turn-around time of an application using storage system under a
given configuration. This approach focuses on a generic object-based storage
system design, supports exploring the impact of optimizations targeting
workflow applications (e.g., various data placement schemes) in addition to
other, more traditional, configuration knobs (e.g., stripe size or replication
level), and models the system operation at data-chunk and control message
level.
This paper presents our experience to date with designing and using this
prediction mechanism. We evaluate this mechanism using micro- as well as
synthetic benchmarks mimicking real workflow applications, and a real
application.. A preliminary evaluation shows that we are on a good track to
meet our objectives: it can scale to model a workflow application run on an
entire cluster while offering an over 200x speedup factor (normalized by
resource) compared to running the actual application, and can achieve, in the
limited number of scenarios we study, a prediction accuracy that enables
identifying the best storage system configuration
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