419 research outputs found
Existence of families of spacetimes with a Newtonian limit
J\"urgen Ehlers developed \emph{frame theory} to better understand the
relationship between general relativity and Newtonian gravity. Frame theory
contains a parameter , which can be thought of as , where
is the speed of light. By construction, frame theory is equivalent to general
relativity for , and reduces to Newtonian gravity for .
Moreover, by setting \ep=\sqrt{\lambda}, frame theory provides a framework to
study the Newtonian limit \ep \searrow 0 (i.e. ). A number of
ideas relating to frame theory that were introduced by J\"urgen have
subsequently found important applications to the rigorous study of both the
Newtonian limit and post-Newtonian expansions. In this article, we review frame
theory and discuss, in a non-technical fashion, some of the rigorous results on
the Newtonian limit and post-Newtonian expansions that have followed from
J\"urgen's work
Wave attenuation at a salt marsh margin: A case study of an exposed coast on the Yangtze estuary
To quantify wave attenuation by (introduced) Spartina alterniflora vegetation at an exposed macrotidal coast in the Yangtze Estuary, China, wave parameters and water depth were measured during 13 consecutive tides at nine locations ranging from 10 m seaward to 50 m landward of the low marsh edge. During this period, the incident wave height ranged from <0.1 to 1.5 m, the maximum of which is much higher than observed in other marsh areas around the world. Our measurements and calculations showed that the wave attenuation rate per unit distance was 1 to 2 magnitudes higher over the marsh than over an adjacent mudflat. Although the elevation gradient of the marsh margin was significantly higher than that of the adjacent mudflat, more than 80% of wave attenuation was ascribed to the presence of vegetation, suggesting that shoaling effects were of minor importance. On average, waves reaching the marsh were eliminated over a distance of similar to 80 m, although a marsh distance of >= 100 m was needed before the maximum height waves were fully attenuated during high tides. These attenuation distances were longer than those previously found in American salt marshes, mainly due to the macrotidal and exposed conditions at the present site. The ratio of water depth to plant height showed an inverse correlation with wave attenuation rate, indicating that plant height is a crucial factor determining the efficiency of wave attenuation. Consequently, the tall shoots of the introduced S. alterniflora makes this species much more efficient at attenuating waves than the shorter, native pioneer species in the Yangtze Estuary, and should therefore be considered as a factor in coastal management during the present era of sea-level rise and global change. We also found that wave attenuation across the salt marsh can be predicted using published models when a suitable coefficient is incorporated to account for drag, which varies in place and time due to differences in plant characteristics and abiotic conditions (i.e., bed gradient, initial water depth, and wave action).
The Nonlinear Future-Stability of the FLRW Family of Solutions to the Euler-Einstein System with a Positive Cosmological Constant
In this article, we study small perturbations of the family of
Friedmann-Lema\^itre-Robertson-Walker cosmological background solutions to the
1 + 3 dimensional Euler-Einstein system with a positive cosmological constant.
These background solutions describe an initially uniform quiet fluid of
positive energy density evolving in a spacetime undergoing accelerated
expansion. Our nonlinear analysis shows that under the equation of state
pressure = c_s^2 * energy density, with 0 < c_s^2 < 1/3, the background
solutions are globally future-stable. In particular, we prove that the
perturbed spacetime solutions, which have the topological structure [0,infty) x
T^3, are future causally geodesically complete. These results are extensions of
previous results derived by the author in a collaboration with I. Rodnianski,
in which the fluid was assumed to be irrotational. Our novel analysis of a
fluid with non-zero vorticity is based on the use of suitably-defined energy
currents.Comment: Accepted for publication in Selecta Mathematica, 78 pages. arXiv
admin note: significant text overlap with arXiv:0911.550
Photoexcitation of low-lying dipole transitions in 236U
Nuclear resonance fluorescence experiments have been performed on the deformed actinide nucleus 236U. Bremsstrahlung of 3.9 MeV endpoint energy has been used as the photon source. The scattered photons were detected by three high resolution Ge- gamma -spectrometers installed at scattering angles of 92°, 128°, and 150°, respectively. Precise excitation energies, decay branching ratios, and ground state decay widths of numerous previously unknown spin 1 states in the excitation energy range 1.8-3.2 MeV have been extracted. The dipole strength has been found to be concentrated in the energy range 2.1-2.5 MeV. The systematics of the so-called scissors mode observed as a result of the previous ( gamma , gamma ') and (e,e') experiments on 232Th and 238U and, in particular, their combined analysis suggests likewise to attribute these new dipole excitations in 236U to the orbital M1 scissors mode
Knowledge-based energy functions for computational studies of proteins
This chapter discusses theoretical framework and methods for developing
knowledge-based potential functions essential for protein structure prediction,
protein-protein interaction, and protein sequence design. We discuss in some
details about the Miyazawa-Jernigan contact statistical potential,
distance-dependent statistical potentials, as well as geometric statistical
potentials. We also describe a geometric model for developing both linear and
non-linear potential functions by optimization. Applications of knowledge-based
potential functions in protein-decoy discrimination, in protein-protein
interactions, and in protein design are then described. Several issues of
knowledge-based potential functions are finally discussed.Comment: 57 pages, 6 figures. To be published in a book by Springe
Superhard Phases of Simple Substances and Binary Compounds of the B-C-N-O System: from Diamond to the Latest Results (a Review)
The basic known and hypothetic one- and two-element phases of the B-C-N-O
system (both superhard phases having diamond and boron structures and
precursors to synthesize them) are described. The attention has been given to
the structure, basic mechanical properties, and methods to identify and
characterize the materials. For some phases that have been recently described
in the literature the synthesis conditions at high pressures and temperatures
are indicated.Comment: Review on superhard B-C-N-O phase
Estimation of Relevant Variables on High-Dimensional Biological Patterns Using Iterated Weighted Kernel Functions
BACKGROUND
The analysis of complex proteomic and genomic profiles involves the identification of significant markers within a set of hundreds or even thousands of variables that represent a high-dimensional problem space. The occurrence of noise, redundancy or combinatorial interactions in the profile makes the selection of relevant variables harder.
METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS
Here we propose a method to select variables based on estimated relevance to hidden patterns. Our method combines a weighted-kernel discriminant with an iterative stochastic probability estimation algorithm to discover the relevance distribution over the set of variables. We verified the ability of our method to select predefined relevant variables in synthetic proteome-like data and then assessed its performance on biological high-dimensional problems. Experiments were run on serum proteomic datasets of infectious diseases. The resulting variable subsets achieved classification accuracies of 99% on Human African Trypanosomiasis, 91% on Tuberculosis, and 91% on Malaria serum proteomic profiles with fewer than 20% of variables selected. Our method scaled-up to dimensionalities of much higher orders of magnitude as shown with gene expression microarray datasets in which we obtained classification accuracies close to 90% with fewer than 1% of the total number of variables.
CONCLUSIONS
Our method consistently found relevant variables attaining high classification accuracies across synthetic and biological datasets. Notably, it yielded very compact subsets compared to the original number of variables, which should simplify downstream biological experimentation
Exactly Soluble Sector of Quantum Gravity
Cartan's spacetime reformulation of the Newtonian theory of gravity is a
generally-covariant Galilean-relativistic limit-form of Einstein's theory of
gravity known as the Newton-Cartan theory. According to this theory, space is
flat, time is absolute with instantaneous causal influences, and the degenerate
`metric' structure of spacetime remains fixed with two mutually orthogonal
non-dynamical metrics, one spatial and the other temporal. The spacetime
according to this theory is, nevertheless, curved, duly respecting the
principle of equivalence, and the non-metric gravitational connection-field is
dynamical in the sense that it is determined by matter distributions. Here,
this generally-covariant but Galilean-relativistic theory of gravity with a
possible non-zero cosmological constant, viewed as a parameterized gauge theory
of a gravitational vector-potential minimally coupled to a complex
Schroedinger-field (bosonic or fermionic), is successfully cast -- for the
first time -- into a manifestly covariant Lagrangian form. Then, exploiting the
fact that Newton-Cartan spacetime is intrinsically globally-hyperbolic with a
fixed causal structure, the theory is recast both into a constraint-free
Hamiltonian form in 3+1-dimensions and into a manifestly covariant reduced
phase-space form with non-degenerate symplectic structure in 4-dimensions.
Next, this Newton-Cartan-Schroedinger system is non-perturbatively quantized
using the standard C*-algebraic technique combined with the geometric procedure
of manifestly covariant phase-space quantization. The ensuing unitary quantum
field theory of Newtonian gravity coupled to Galilean-relativistic matter is
not only generally-covariant, but also exactly soluble.Comment: 83 pages (TeX). A note is added on the early work of a remarkable
Soviet physicist called Bronstein, especially on his insightful contribution
to "the cube of theories" (Fig. 1) -- see "Note Added to Proof" on pages 71
and 72, together with the new references [59] and [61
Excited-State Electronic Structure with Configuration Interaction Singles and Tamm–Dancoff Time-Dependent Density Functional Theory on Graphical Processing Units
Excited-state calculations are implemented in a development version of the GPU-based TeraChem software package using the configuration interaction singles (CIS) and adiabatic linear response Tamm–Dancoff time-dependent density functional theory (TDA-TDDFT) methods. The speedup of the CIS and TDDFT methods using GPU-based electron repulsion integrals and density functional quadrature integration allows full ab initio excited-state calculations on molecules of unprecedented size. CIS/6-31G and TD-BLYP/6-31G benchmark timings are presented for a range of systems, including four generations of oligothiophene dendrimers, photoactive yellow protein (PYP), and the PYP chromophore solvated with 900 quantum mechanical water molecules. The effects of double and single precision integration are discussed, and mixed precision GPU integration is shown to give extremely good numerical accuracy for both CIS and TDDFT excitation energies (excitation energies within 0.0005 eV of extended double precision CPU results)
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