549 research outputs found
Extracting Spooky-activation-at-a-distance from Considerations of Entanglement
Following an early claim by Nelson & McEvoy \cite{Nelson:McEvoy:2007}
suggesting that word associations can display `spooky action at a distance
behaviour', a serious investigation of the potentially quantum nature of such
associations is currently underway. This paper presents a simple quantum model
of a word association system. It is shown that a quantum model of word
entanglement can recover aspects of both the Spreading Activation equation and
the Spooky-activation-at-a-distance equation, both of which are used to model
the activation level of words in human memory.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures; To appear in Proceedings of the Third Quantum
Interaction Symposium, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, vol 5494,
Springer, 200
Standardization and validation of a novel and simple method to assess lumbar dural sac size
AimTo develop and validate a simple, reproducible method to assess dural sac size using standard imaging technology.Materials and methodsThis study was institutional review board-approved. Two readers, blinded to the diagnoses, measured anteriorâposterior (AP) and transverse (TR) dural sac diameter (DSD), and AP vertebral body diameter (VBD) of the lumbar vertebrae using MRI images from 53 control patients with pre-existing MRI examinations, 19 prospectively MRI-imaged healthy controls, and 24 patients with Marfan syndrome with prior MRI or CT lumbar spine imaging. Statistical analysis utilized linear and logistic regression, Pearson correlation, and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves.ResultsAP-DSD and TR-DSD measurements were reproducible between two readers (r = 0.91 and 0.87, respectively). DSD (L1âL5) was not different between male and female controls in the AP or TR plane (p = 0.43; p = 0.40, respectively), and did not vary by age (p = 0.62; p = 0.25) or height (p = 0.64; p = 0.32). AP-VBD was greater in males versus females (p = 1.5 Ă 10â8), resulting in a smaller dural sac ratio (DSR) (DSD/VBD) in males (p = 5.8 Ă 10â6). Marfan patients had larger AP-DSDs and TR-DSDs than controls (p = 5.9 Ă 10â9; p = 6.5 Ă 10â9, respectively). Compared to DSR, AP-DSD and TR-DSD better discriminate Marfan from control subjects based on area under the curve (AUC) values from unadjusted ROCs (AP-DSD p < 0.01; TR-DSD p = 0.04).ConclusionIndividual vertebrae and L1âL5 (average) AP-DSD and TR-DSD measurements are simple, reliable, and reproducible for quantitating dural sac size without needing to control for gender, age, or height
Melting as a String-Mediated Phase Transition
We present a theory of the melting of elemental solids as a
dislocation-mediated phase transition. We model dislocations near melt as
non-interacting closed strings on a lattice. In this framework we derive simple
expressions for the melting temperature and latent heat of fusion that depend
on the dislocation density at melt. We use experimental data for more than half
the elements in the Periodic Table to determine the dislocation density from
both relations. Melting temperatures yield a dislocation density of (0.61\pm
0.20) b^{-2}, in good agreement with the density obtained from latent heats,
(0.66\pm 0.11) b^{-2}, where b is the length of the smallest
perfect-dislocation Burgers vector. Melting corresponds to the situation where,
on average, half of the atoms are within a dislocation core.Comment: 18 pages, LaTeX, 3 eps figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Dynamic nuclear polarization and spin-diffusion in non-conducting solids
There has been much renewed interest in dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP),
particularly in the context of solid state biomolecular NMR and more recently
dissolution DNP techniques for liquids. This paper reviews the role of spin
diffusion in polarizing nuclear spins and discusses the role of the spin
diffusion barrier, before going on to discuss some recent results.Comment: submitted to Applied Magnetic Resonance. The article should appear in
a special issue that is being published in connection with the DNP Symposium
help in Nottingham in August 200
Statistical Theory of Spin Relaxation and Diffusion in Solids
A comprehensive theoretical description is given for the spin relaxation and
diffusion in solids. The formulation is made in a general
statistical-mechanical way. The method of the nonequilibrium statistical
operator (NSO) developed by D. N. Zubarev is employed to analyze a relaxation
dynamics of a spin subsystem. Perturbation of this subsystem in solids may
produce a nonequilibrium state which is then relaxed to an equilibrium state
due to the interaction between the particles or with a thermal bath (lattice).
The generalized kinetic equations were derived previously for a system weakly
coupled to a thermal bath to elucidate the nature of transport and relaxation
processes. In this paper, these results are used to describe the relaxation and
diffusion of nuclear spins in solids. The aim is to formulate a successive and
coherent microscopic description of the nuclear magnetic relaxation and
diffusion in solids. The nuclear spin-lattice relaxation is considered and the
Gorter relation is derived. As an example, a theory of spin diffusion of the
nuclear magnetic moment in dilute alloys (like Cu-Mn) is developed. It is shown
that due to the dipolar interaction between host nuclear spins and impurity
spins, a nonuniform distribution in the host nuclear spin system will occur and
consequently the macroscopic relaxation time will be strongly determined by the
spin diffusion. The explicit expressions for the relaxation time in certain
physically relevant cases are given.Comment: 41 pages, 119 Refs. Corrected typos, added reference
Effects of coastal urbanization on salt-marsh faunal assemblages in the northern Gulf of Mexico
Author Posting. © American Fisheries Society, 2014. This article is posted here by permission of American Fisheries Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Marine and Coastal Fisheries: Dynamics, Management, and Ecosystem Science 6 (2014): 89-107, doi:10.1080/19425120.2014.893467.Coastal landscapes in the northern Gulf of Mexico, specifically the Mississippi coast, have undergone rapid urbanization that may impact the suitability of salt-marsh ecosystems for maintaining and regulating estuarine faunal communities. We used a landscape ecology approach to quantify the composition and configuration of salt-marsh habitats and developed surfaces at multiple spatial scales surrounding three small, first-order salt-marsh tidal creeks arrayed along a gradient of urbanization in two river-dominated estuaries. From May 3 to June 4, 2010, nekton and macroinfauna were collected weekly at all six sites. Due to the greater abundance of grass shrimp Palaemonetes spp., brown shrimp Farfantepenaeus aztecus, blue crab Callinectes sapidus, Gulf Menhaden Brevoortia patronus, and Spot Leiostomus xanthurus, tidal creeks in intact natural (IN) salt-marsh landscapes supported a nekton assemblage that was significantly different from those in partially urbanized (PU) or completely urbanized (CU) salt-marsh landscapes. However, PU landscapes still supported an abundant nekton assemblage. In addition, the results illustrated a linkage between life history traits and landscape characteristics. Resident and transient nekton species that have specific habitat requirements are more likely to be impacted in urbanized landscapes than more mobile species that are able to exploit multiple habitats. Patterns were less clear for macroinfaunal assemblages, although they were comparatively less abundant in CU salt-marsh landscapes than in either IN or PU landscapes. The low abundance or absence of several macroinfaunal taxa in CU landscapes may be viewed as an additional indicator of poor habitat quality for nekton. The observed patterns also suggested that benthic sediments in the CU salt-marsh landscapes were altered in comparison with IN or PU landscapes. The amount of developed shoreline and various metrics related to salt marsh fragmentation were important drivers of observed patterns in nekton and macroinfaunal assemblages
Large enhancement of deuteron polarization with frequency modulated microwaves
We report a large enhancement of 1.7 in deuteron polarization up to values of
0.6 due to frequency modulation of the polarizing microwaves in a two liters
polarized target using the method of dynamic nuclear polarization. This target
was used during a deep inelastic polarized muon-deuteron scattering experiment
at CERN. Measurements of the electron paramagnetic resonance absorption spectra
show that frequency modulation gives rise to additional microwave absorption in
the spectral wings. Although these results are not understood theoretically,
they may provide a useful testing ground for the deeper understanding of
dynamic nuclear polarization.Comment: 10 pages, including the figures coming in uuencoded compressed tar
files in poltar.uu, which also brings cernart.sty and crna12.sty files neede
Intraâclinothem variability in sedimentary texture and process regime recorded down slope profiles
Shelfâmargin clinothem successions can archive process interactions at the shelf to slope transition, and their architecture provides constraints on the interplay of factors that control basinâmargin evolution. However, detailed textural analysis and facies distributions from shelf to slope transitions remain poorly documented. This study uses quantitative grainâsize and sorting data from coeval shelf and slope deposits of a single clinothem that crops out along a 5 km long, dipâparallel transect of the Eocene Sobrarbe Deltaic Complex (Ainsa Basin, southâcentral Pyrenees, Spain). Systematic sampling of sandstone beds tied to measured sections has captured vertical and basinward changes in sedimentary texture and facies distributions at an intraâclinothem scale. Two types of hyperpycnal flowârelated slope deposits, both rich in mica and terrestrial organic matter, are differentiated according to grain size, sorting and bed geometry: (i) sustained hyperpycnal flow deposits, which are physically linked to coarse channelized sediments in the shelf setting and which deposit sand down the complete slope profile; (ii) episodic hyperpycnal flow deposits, which are disconnected from, and incise into, shelf sands and which are associated with sediment bypass of the proximal slope and coarseâgrained sand deposition on the medial and distal slope. Both types of hyperpycnites are interbedded with relatively homogenous, organicâfree and micaâfree, wellâsorted, very fineâgrained sandstones, which are interpreted to be remobilized from waveâdominated shelf environments; these waveâdominated deposits are found only on the proximal and medial slope. Coarseâgrained sediment bypass into the deeperâwater slope settings is therefore dominated by episodic hyperpycnal flows, whilst sustained hyperpycnal flows and turbidity currents remobilizing waveâdominated shelf deposits are responsible for the full range of grain sizes in the proximal and medial slope, thus facilitating clinoform progradation. This novel dataset highlights previously undocumented intraâclinothem variability related to updip changes in the shelf processâregime, which is therefore a key factor controlling downdip architecture and resulting sedimentary texture
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