19,248 research outputs found
The first-mover advantage in scientific publication
Mathematical models of the scientific citation process predict a strong
"first-mover" effect under which the first papers in a field will, essentially
regardless of content, receive citations at a rate enormously higher than
papers published later. Moreover papers are expected to retain this advantage
in perpetuity -- they should receive more citations indefinitely, no matter how
many other papers are published after them. We test this conjecture against
data from a selection of fields and in several cases find a first-mover effect
of a magnitude similar to that predicted by the theory. Were we wearing our
cynical hat today, we might say that the scientist who wants to become famous
is better off -- by a wide margin -- writing a modest paper in next year's
hottest field than an outstanding paper in this year's. On the other hand,
there are some papers, albeit only a small fraction, that buck the trend and
attract significantly more citations than theory predicts despite having
relatively late publication dates. We suggest that papers of this kind, though
they often receive comparatively few citations overall, are probably worthy of
our attention.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure
CSO validator: improving manual curation workflow for biological pathways
Summary: Manual curation and validation of large-scale biological pathways are required to obtain high-quality pathway databases. In a typical curation process, model validation and model update based on appropriate feedback are repeated and requires considerable cooperation of scientists. We have developed a CSO (Cell System Ontology) validator to reduce the repetition and time during the curation process. This tool assists in quickly obtaining agreement among curators and domain experts and in providing a consistent and accurate pathway database
Rules for Computing Symmetry, Density and Stoichiometry in a Quasi-Unit-Cell Model of Quasicrystals
The quasi-unit cell picture describes the atomic structure of quasicrystals
in terms of a single, repeating cluster which overlaps neighbors according to
specific overlap rules. In this paper, we discuss the precise relationship
between a general atomic decoration in the quasi-unit cell picture atomic
decorations in the Penrose tiling and in related tiling pictures. Using these
relations, we obtain a simple, practical method for determining the density,
stoichiometry and symmetry of a quasicrystal based on the atomic decoration of
the quasi-unit cell taking proper account of the sharing of atoms between
clusters.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figure
Determination of from Gross-Llewellyn Smith sum rule by accounting for infrared renormalon
We recapitulate the method which resums the truncated perturbation series of
a physical observable in a way which takes into account the structure of the
leading infrared renormalon. We apply the method to the Gross-Llewellyn Smith
(GLS) sum rule. By confronting the obtained result with the experimentally
extracted GLS value, we determine the value of the QCD coupling parameter which
turns out to agree with the present world average.Comment: invited talk by G.C. in WG3 of NuFact02, July 1-6, 2002, London; 4
pages, revte
Breakdown of metastable step-flow growth on vicinal surfaces induced by nucleation
We consider the growth of a vicinal crystal surface in the presence of a
step-edge barrier. For any value of the barrier strength, measured by the
length l_es, nucleation of islands on terraces is always able to destroy
asymptotically step-flow growth. The breakdown of the metastable step-flow
occurs through the formation of a mound of critical width proportional to
L_c=1/sqrt(l_es), the length associated to the linear instability of a
high-symmetry surface. The time required for the destabilization grows
exponentially with L_c. Thermal detachment from steps or islands, or a steeper
slope increase the instability time but do not modify the above picture, nor
change L_c significantly. Standard continuum theories cannot be used to
evaluate the activation energy of the critical mound and the instability time.
The dynamics of a mound can be described as a one dimensional random walk for
its height k: attaining the critical height (i.e. the critical size) means that
the probability to grow (k->k+1) becomes larger than the probability for the
mound to shrink (k->k-1). Thermal detachment induces correlations in the random
walk, otherwise absent.Comment: 10 pages. Minor changes. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
Growing Perfect Decagonal Quasicrystals by Local Rules
A local growth algorithm for a decagonal quasicrystal is presented. We show
that a perfect Penrose tiling (PPT) layer can be grown on a decapod tiling
layer by a three dimensional (3D) local rule growth. Once a PPT layer begins to
form on the upper layer, successive 2D PPT layers can be added on top resulting
in a perfect decagonal quasicrystalline structure in bulk with a point defect
only on the bottom surface layer. Our growth rule shows that an ideal
quasicrystal structure can be constructed by a local growth algorithm in 3D,
contrary to the necessity of non-local information for a 2D PPT growth.Comment: 4pages, 2figure
Purification and detection of entangled coherent states
In [J. C. Howell and J. A. Yeazell, Phys. Rev. A 62, 012102 (2000)], a
proposal is made to generate entangled macroscopically distinguishable states
of two spatially separated traveling optical modes. We model the decoherence
due to light scattering during the propagation along an optical transmission
line and propose a setup allowing an entanglement purification from a number of
preparations which are partially decohered due to transmission. A purification
is achieved even without any manual intervention. We consider a nondemolition
configuration to measure the purity of the state as contrast of interference
fringes in a double-slit setup. Regarding the entangled coherent states as a
state of a bipartite quantum system, a close relationship between purity and
entanglement of formation can be obtained. In this way, the contrast of
interference fringes provides a direct means to measure entanglement.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, using Revtex
Generating a Schr\"odinger-cat-like state via a coherent superposition of photonic operations
We propose an optical scheme to generate a superposition of coherent states
with enhanced size adopting an interferometric setting at the single-photon
level currently available in the laboratory. Our scheme employs a nondegenerate
optical parametric amplifier together with two beam splitters so that the
detection of single photons at the output conditionally implements the desired
superposition of second-order photonic operations. We analyze our proposed
scheme by considering realistic on-off photodetectors with nonideal efficiency
in heralding the success of conditional events. A high-quality performance of
our scheme is demonstrated in view of various criteria such as quantum
fidelity, mean output energy, and measure of quantum interference
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