183 research outputs found
Furthering Scientific Inquiry for Weight Loss Maintenance: Assessing the Psychological Processes Impacted by a Low intensity Technology-Assisted Intervention (NULevel Trial)
\ua9 The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society of Behavioral Medicine.Background NULevel was a randomized control trial to evaluate a technology-assisted weight loss maintenance (WLM) program in the UK. The program included: (a) a face-to-face goal-setting session; (b) an internet platform, a pedometer, and wirelessly connected scales to monitor and report diet, physical activity, and weight, and; (c) regular automated feedback delivered by mobile phone, tailored to participants’ progress. Components were designed to target psychological processes linked to weight-related behavior. Though intervention participants showed increased physical activity, there was no difference in WLM between the intervention and control groups after 12 months (Sniehotta FF, Evans EH, Sainsbury K, et al. Behavioural intervention for weight loss maintenance versus standard weight advice in adults with obesity: A randomized controlled trial in the UK (NULevelTrial). PLoS Med. 2019; 16(5):e1002793. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1002793). It is unclear whether the program failed to alter targeted psychological processes, or whether changes in these processes failed to influence WLM. Purpose We evaluate whether the program influenced 16 prespecified psychological processes (e.g., self-efficacy and automaticity toward diet and physical activity), and whether these processes (at 6 months) were associated with successful WLM (at 12 months). Methods 288 adults who had previously lost weight were randomized to the intervention or control groups.The control group received wireless scales and standard advice via newsletters. Assessments occurred in person at 0, 6, and 12 months. Results The intervention significantly altered 10 of the 16 psychological processes, compared with the control group. However, few processes were associated with WLM, leading to no significant indirect effects of the intervention via the processes on WLM. Conclusions Changes in targeted processes were insufficient to support WLM. Future efforts may more closely examine the sequence of effects between processes, behavior, and WLM
The Impact of Non-Equipartition on Cosmological Parameter Estimation from Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Surveys
The collisionless accretion shock at the outer boundary of a galaxy cluster
should primarily heat the ions instead of electrons since they carry most of
the kinetic energy of the infalling gas. Near the accretion shock, the density
of the intracluster medium is very low and the Coulomb collisional timescale is
longer than the accretion timescale. Electrons and ions may not achieve
equipartition in these regions. Numerical simulations have shown that the
Sunyaev-Zel'dovich observables (e.g., the integrated Comptonization parameter
Y) for relaxed clusters can be biased by a few percent. The Y-mass relation can
be biased if non-equipartition effects are not properly taken into account.
Using a set of hydrodynamical simulations, we have calculated three potential
systematic biases in the Y-mass relations introduced by non-equipartition
effects during the cross-calibration or self-calibration when using the galaxy
cluster abundance technique to constraint cosmological parameters. We then use
a semi-analytic technique to estimate the non-equipartition effects on the
distribution functions of Y (Y functions) determined from the extended
Press-Schechter theory. Depending on the calibration method, we find that
non-equipartition effects can induce systematic biases on the Y functions, and
the values of the cosmological parameters Omega_8, sigma_8, and the dark energy
equation of state parameter w can be biased by a few percent. In particular,
non-equipartition effects can introduce an apparent evolution in w of a few
percent in all of the systematic cases we considered. Techniques are suggested
to take into account the non-equipartition effect empirically when using the
cluster abundance technique to study precision cosmology. We conclude that
systematic uncertainties in the Y-mass relation of even a few percent can
introduce a comparable level of biases in cosmological parameter measurements.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical
Journal, abstract abridged slightly. Typos corrected in version
Three qubit entanglement within graphical Z/X-calculus
The compositional techniques of categorical quantum mechanics are applied to
analyse 3-qubit quantum entanglement. In particular the graphical calculus of
complementary observables and corresponding phases due to Duncan and one of the
authors is used to construct representative members of the two genuinely
tripartite SLOCC classes of 3-qubit entangled states, GHZ and W. This nicely
illustrates the respectively pairwise and global tripartite entanglement found
in the W- and GHZ-class states. A new concept of supplementarity allows us to
characterise inhabitants of the W class within the abstract diagrammatic
calculus; these method extends to more general multipartite qubit states.Comment: In Proceedings HPC 2010, arXiv:1103.226
The fusion algebra of bimodule categories
We establish an algebra-isomorphism between the complexified Grothendieck
ring F of certain bimodule categories over a modular tensor category and the
endomorphism algebra of appropriate morphism spaces of those bimodule
categories. This provides a purely categorical proof of a conjecture by Ostrik
concerning the structure of F.
As a by-product we obtain a concrete expression for the structure constants
of the Grothendieck ring of the bimodule category in terms of endomorphisms of
the tensor unit of the underlying modular tensor category.Comment: 16 page
Picturing classical and quantum Bayesian inference
We introduce a graphical framework for Bayesian inference that is
sufficiently general to accommodate not just the standard case but also recent
proposals for a theory of quantum Bayesian inference wherein one considers
density operators rather than probability distributions as representative of
degrees of belief. The diagrammatic framework is stated in the graphical
language of symmetric monoidal categories and of compact structures and
Frobenius structures therein, in which Bayesian inversion boils down to
transposition with respect to an appropriate compact structure. We characterize
classical Bayesian inference in terms of a graphical property and demonstrate
that our approach eliminates some purely conventional elements that appear in
common representations thereof, such as whether degrees of belief are
represented by probabilities or entropic quantities. We also introduce a
quantum-like calculus wherein the Frobenius structure is noncommutative and
show that it can accommodate Leifer's calculus of `conditional density
operators'. The notion of conditional independence is also generalized to our
graphical setting and we make some preliminary connections to the theory of
Bayesian networks. Finally, we demonstrate how to construct a graphical
Bayesian calculus within any dagger compact category.Comment: 38 pages, lots of picture
Bicategories for boundary conditions and for surface defects in 3-d TFT
We analyze topological boundary conditions and topological surface defects in
three-dimensional topological field theories of Reshetikhin-Turaev type based
on arbitrary modular tensor categories. Boundary conditions are described by
central functors that lift to trivializations in the Witt group of modular
tensor categories. The bicategory of boundary conditions can be described
through the bicategory of module categories over any such trivialization. A
similar description is obtained for topological surface defects. Using string
diagrams for bicategories we also establish a precise relation between special
symmetric Frobenius algebras and Wilson lines involving special defects. We
compare our results with previous work of Kapustin-Saulina and of Kitaev-Kong
on boundary conditions and surface defects in abelian Chern-Simons theories and
in Turaev-Viro type TFTs, respectively.Comment: 34 pages, some figures. v2: references added. v3: typos corrected and
biliography update
From Atiyah Classes to Homotopy Leibniz Algebras
A celebrated theorem of Kapranov states that the Atiyah class of the tangent
bundle of a complex manifold makes into a Lie algebra object in
, the bounded below derived category of coherent sheaves on .
Furthermore Kapranov proved that, for a K\"ahler manifold , the Dolbeault
resolution of is an
algebra. In this paper, we prove that Kapranov's theorem holds in much wider
generality for vector bundles over Lie pairs. Given a Lie pair , i.e. a
Lie algebroid together with a Lie subalgebroid , we define the Atiyah
class of an -module (relative to ) as the obstruction to
the existence of an -compatible -connection on . We prove that the
Atiyah classes and respectively make and
into a Lie algebra and a Lie algebra module in the bounded below
derived category , where is the abelian
category of left -modules and is the universal
enveloping algebra of . Moreover, we produce a homotopy Leibniz algebra and
a homotopy Leibniz module stemming from the Atiyah classes of and ,
and inducing the aforesaid Lie structures in .Comment: 36 page
Trace as an alternative decategorification functor
Categorification is a process of lifting structures to a higher categorical
level. The original structure can then be recovered by means of the so-called
"decategorification" functor. Algebras are typically categorified to additive
categories with additional structure and decategorification is usually given by
the (split) Grothendieck group. In this expository article we study an
alternative decategorification functor given by the trace or the zeroth
Hochschild--Mitchell homology. We show that this form of decategorification
endows any 2-representation of the categorified quantum sl(n) with an action of
the current algebra U(sl(n)[t]) on its center.Comment: 47 pages with tikz figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with
arXiv:1405.5920 by other author
Physics, Topology, Logic and Computation: A Rosetta Stone
In physics, Feynman diagrams are used to reason about quantum processes. In
the 1980s, it became clear that underlying these diagrams is a powerful analogy
between quantum physics and topology: namely, a linear operator behaves very
much like a "cobordism". Similar diagrams can be used to reason about logic,
where they represent proofs, and computation, where they represent programs.
With the rise of interest in quantum cryptography and quantum computation, it
became clear that there is extensive network of analogies between physics,
topology, logic and computation. In this expository paper, we make some of
these analogies precise using the concept of "closed symmetric monoidal
category". We assume no prior knowledge of category theory, proof theory or
computer science.Comment: 73 pages, 8 encapsulated postscript figure
- …