1,342 research outputs found
Self-Organized Criticality in a Fibre-Bundle type model
The dynamics of a fibre-bundle type model with equal load sharing rule is
numerically studied. The system, formed by N elements, is driven by a slow
increase of the load upon it which is removed in a novel way through internal
transfers to the elements broken during avalanches. When an avalanche ends,
failed elements are regenerated with strengths taken from a probability
distribution. For a large enough N and certain restrictions on the distribution
of individual strengths, the system reaches a self-organized critical state
where the spectrum of avalanche sizes is a power law with an exponent
.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures. To be published in Physica
Rotation and twist regular modes for trapped ghosts
A parameter-independent notion of stationary slow motion is formulated then
applied to the case of stationary rotation of massless trapped ghosts. The
excitations correspond to a rotation mode with angular momentum and
twist modes. It is found that the rotation mode, which has no parity, causes
excess in the angular velocity of dragged distant coordinate frames in one
sheet of the wormhole while in the other sheet the angular velocity of the
ghosts is that of rotating stars: . As to the twist modes, which all
have parity, they cause excess in the angular velocity of one of the throat's
poles with respect to the other.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures; General Relativity and Gravitation - 201
Epidemic Incidence in Correlated Complex Networks
We introduce a numerical method to solve epidemic models on the underlying
topology of complex networks. The approach exploits the mean-field like rate
equations describing the system and allows to work with very large system
sizes, where Monte Carlo simulations are useless due to memory needs. We then
study the SIR epidemiological model on assortative networks, providing
numerical evidence of the absence of epidemic thresholds. Besides, the time
profiles of the populations are analyzed. Finally, we stress that the present
method would allow to solve arbitrary epidemic-like models provided that they
can be described by mean-field rate equations.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. Final version published in PR
Revolutionising Fish Ageing: Using Near Infrared Spectroscopy to Age Fish
The project aimed to evaluate the innovative application of NIRS as a reliable, repeatable, and cost-effective method of ageing fish, using otoliths of Barramundi and Snapper as study species. Specific research questions included assessing how geographic and seasonal variation in otoliths affects NIRS predictive models of fish age, as well as how the NIR spectra of otoliths change in the short-term (i.e., <12 months) and long-term (i.e., historical otolith collections) and what effect this has on the predictive ability of NIRS models. The cost-effectiveness of using NIRS to supplement standard fish ageing methods was also evaluated using a hypothetical case study of Barramundi
Large-scale structure of a nation-wide production network
Production in an economy is a set of firms' activities as suppliers and
customers; a firm buys goods from other firms, puts value added and sells
products to others in a giant network of production. Empirical study is lacking
despite the fact that the structure of the production network is important to
understand and make models for many aspects of dynamics in economy. We study a
nation-wide production network comprising a million firms and millions of
supplier-customer links by using recent statistical methods developed in
physics. We show in the empirical analysis scale-free degree distribution,
disassortativity, correlation of degree to firm-size, and community structure
having sectoral and regional modules. Since suppliers usually provide credit to
their customers, who supply it to theirs in turn, each link is actually a
creditor-debtor relationship. We also study chains of failures or bankruptcies
that take place along those links in the network, and corresponding
avalanche-size distribution.Comment: 17 pages with 8 figures; revised section VI and references adde
Patella malalignment, pain and patellofemoral progression: the Health ABC Study
SummaryObjectivePatellofemoral (PF) joint osteoarthritis (OA) is strongly correlated with lower extremity disability and knee pain. Risk factors for pain and structural progression in PF OA are poorly understood. Our objective was to determine the association between patella malalignment and its relation to pain severity, and PF OA disease progression.MethodsWe conducted an analysis of data from the Health ABC knee OA study. Health ABC is a community based, multi-center cohort study of 3075 Caucasian and Black men and women aged 70–79 at enrollment. Weight bearing skyline knee X-rays were obtained in a subset (595) of subjects, with and without knee pain, at year 2 and year 5 (mean follow-up 36 months). Films were read paired, and PF osteophytes (OST) and joint space narrowing (JSN) were scored on a 0–3 scale using the Osteoarthritis Research Society International atlas. We defined progression of PF OA as any increase in JSN score. Three measures of patella malalignment were made: sulcus angle; patella tilt angle; and patella subluxation medially or laterally (bisect offset). Knee symptoms were assessed using a knee specific Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) knee pain subscale. We assessed the relationship between baseline patella malalignment and pain severity (linear regression for WOMAC) and compartment specific PF OA progression (logistic regression for dichotomous outcomes). We classified continuous measures of patella alignment into quartile groups. We performed multivariable adjusted logistic regression models, including age, gender and body mass index (BMI) to assess the relation of baseline patella alignment to the occurrence of PF JSN progression using generalized estimating equations (GEE).ResultsThe subjects had a mean age 73.6 (SD 2.9), BMI 28.8 (SD 4.9), 40.3% male, and 46% were Black. Medial displacement of the patella predisposed to medial JSN progression; odds for each quartile 1, 1.2, 1.2, 2.2 (P for trend=0.03), whilst protecting from lateral JSN progression; odds for each quartile 1, 0.7, 0.6, 0.4 (P for trend=0.0004). Increasing patella tilt protected from medial JSN progression; odds for each quartile 1, 0.8, 0.5, 0.2 (P<0.0001) and trended to increasing pain severity (P=0.09).ConclusionPatella malalignment is associated with PF disease progression. Medial displacement and tilt of the patella predisposes to medial JSN progression, whilst lateral displacement is predictive of lateral JSN progression. The influence of patella malalignment has important implications since it is potentially modifiable through footwear, taping and/or knee bracing
Obtaining a class of Type O pure radiation metrics with a cosmological constant, using invariant operators
Using the generalised invariant formalism we derive a class of conformally
flat spacetimes whose Ricci tensor has a pure radiation and a Ricci scalar
component. The method used is a development of the methods used earlier for
pure radiation spacetimes of Petrov types O and N respectively. In this paper
we demonstrate how to handle, in the generalised invariant formalism,
spacetimes with isotropy freedom and rich Killing vector structure. Once the
spacetimes have been constructed, it is straightforward to deduce their
Karlhede classification: the Karlhede algorithm terminates at the fourth
derivative order, and the spacetimes all have one degree of null isotropy and
three, four or five Killing vectors.Comment: 29 page
Type O pure radiation metrics with a cosmological constant
In this paper we complete the integration of the conformally flat pure
radiation spacetimes with a non-zero cosmological constant , and , by considering the case . This is a
further demonstration of the power and suitability of the generalised invariant
formalism (GIF) for spacetimes where only one null direction is picked out by
the Riemann tensor. For these spacetimes, the GIF picks out a second null
direction, (from the second derivative of the Riemann tensor) and once this
spinor has been identified the calculations are transferred to the simpler GHP
formalism, where the tetrad and metric are determined. The whole class of
conformally flat pure radiation spacetimes with a non-zero cosmological
constant (those found in this paper, together with those found earlier for the
case ) have a rich variety of subclasses with zero,
one, two, three, four or five Killing vectors
Pause Point Spectra in DNA Constant-Force Unzipping
Under constant applied force, the separation of double-stranded DNA into two
single strands is known to proceed through a series of pauses and jumps. Given
experimental traces of constant-force unzipping, we present a method whereby
the locations of pause points can be extracted in the form of a pause point
spectrum. A simple theoretical model of DNA constant-force unzipping is
demonstrated to produce good agreement with the experimental pause point
spectrum of lambda phage DNA. The locations of peaks in the experimental and
theoretical pause point spectra are found to be nearly coincident below 6000
bp. The model only requires the sequence, temperature and a set of empirical
base pair binding and stacking energy parameters, and the good agreement with
experiment suggests that pause points are primarily determined by the DNA
sequence. The model is also used to predict pause point spectra for the
BacterioPhage PhiX174 genome. The algorithm for extracting the pause point
spectrum might also be useful for studying related systems which exhibit
pausing behavior such as molecular motors.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figure
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