10,769 research outputs found
Could the classical relativistic electron be a strange attractor?
We review the formulation of the problem of the electromagnetic
self-interaction of a relativistic charged particle in the framework of the
manifestly covariant classical mechanics of Stueckelberg, Horwitz and Piron.
The gauge fields of this theory, in general, cause the mass of the particle to
change. We show that the non-linear Lorentz force equation for the
self-interaction resulting from the expansion of the Green's function has
chaotic solutions. We study the autonomous equation for the off-shell particle
mass here, for which the effective charged particle mass achieves a macroscopic
average value determined by what appears to be a strange attractor.Comment: 19 pages PLain TeX, 1 page Captions, 18 figure (.eps files
When the Milky Way turned off the lights: APOGEE provides evidence of star formation quenching in our Galaxy
Quenching, the cessation of star formation, is one of the most significant
events in the life cycle of galaxies. We show here the first evidence that the
Milky Way experienced a generalised quenching of its star formation at the end
of its thick disk formation 9 Gyr ago. Elemental abundances of stars
studied as part of the APOGEE survey reveal indeed that in less than 2
Gyr the star formation rate in our Galaxy dropped by an order-of-magnitude.
Because of the tight correlation between age and alpha abundance, this event
reflects in the dearth of stars along the inner disk sequence in the
[Fe/H]-[/Fe] plane. Before this phase, which lasted about 1.5 Gyr, the
Milky Way was actively forming stars. Afterwards, the star formation resumed at
a much lower level to form the thin disk. These events are very well matched by
the latest observation of MW-type progenitors at high redshifts. In late type
galaxies, quenching is believed to be related to a long and secular exhaustion
of gas. In our Galaxy, it occurred on a much shorter time scale, while the
chemical continuity before and after the quenching indicates that it was not
due to the exhaustion of the gas. While quenching is generally associated with
spheroids, our results show that it also occurs in galaxies like the Milky Way,
possibly when they are undergoing a morphological transition from thick to thin
disks. Given the demographics of late type galaxies in the local universe, in
which classical bulges are rare, we suggest further that this may hold true
generally in galaxies with mass lower than or approximately , where
quenching could be directly a consequence of thick disk formation. We emphasize
that the quenching phase in the Milky Way could be contemporaneous with, and
related to, the formation of the bar. We sketch a scenario on how a strong bar
may inhibit star formation.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures. Published versio
Random matrix theory, the exceptional Lie groups, and L-functions
There has recently been interest in relating properties of matrices drawn at
random from the classical compact groups to statistical characteristics of
number-theoretical L-functions. One example is the relationship conjectured to
hold between the value distributions of the characteristic polynomials of such
matrices and value distributions within families of L-functions. These
connections are here extended to non-classical groups. We focus on an explicit
example: the exceptional Lie group G_2. The value distributions for
characteristic polynomials associated with the 7- and 14-dimensional
representations of G_2, defined with respect to the uniform invariant (Haar)
measure, are calculated using two of the Macdonald constant term identities. A
one parameter family of L-functions over a finite field is described whose
value distribution in the limit as the size of the finite field grows is
related to that of the characteristic polynomials associated with the
7-dimensional representation of G_2. The random matrix calculations extend to
all exceptional Lie groupsComment: 14 page
Thermodynamics of a black hole in a cavity
We present a unified thermodynamical description of the configurations
consisting on self-gravitating radiation with or without a black hole. We
compute the thermal fluctuations and evaluate where will they induce a
transition from metastable configurations towards stable ones. We show that the
probability of finding such a transition is exponentially small. This indicates
that, in a sequence of quasi equilibrium configurations, the system will remain
in the metastable states till it approaches very closely the critical point
beyond which no metastable configuration exists. Near that point, we relate the
divergence of the local temperature fluctuations to the approach of the
instability of the whole system, thereby generalizing the usual fluctuations
analysis in the cases where long range forces are present. When angular
momentum is added to the cavity, the above picture is slightly modified.
Nevertheless, at high angular momentum, the black hole loses most of its mass
before it reaches the critical point at which it evaporates completely.Comment: 27 pages, latex file, contains 3 figures available on request at
[email protected]
Maximum Mass-Radius Ratios for Charged Compact General Relativistic Objects
Upper limits for the mass-radius ratio and total charge are derived for
stable charged general relativistic matter distributions. For charged compact
objects the mass-radius ratio exceeds the value 4/9 corresponding to neutral
stars. General restrictions for the redshift and total energy (including the
gravitational contribution) are also obtained.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, RevTex. To appear in Europhys. Let
In vitro comparison of conventional film and direct digital imaging in the detection of approximal caries
This is the published version. Copyright 2014 British Institute of Radiology.Objectives:âTo compare the diagnostic accuracy of conventional film, unenhanced direct digital and inversion grayscale direct digital imaging in the detection of approximal caries.
Methods:â150 approximal surfaces of extracted permanent molars and premolars were selected for the study on the basis of varying lesion depth. The teeth were radiographed using Ektaspeed Plus film; digital images were made with a Schick CMOS-APS sensor. 7 examiners evaluated 58 randomized images of each modality. Histological sectioning of the teeth was used to verify the presence and extent of decay.
Results:âNo significant difference was found between the diagnostic accuracies of the three imaging modalities (P=0.226). Analysis of the diagnostic accuracy of the three modalities on lesion depth showed no statistically significant interaction; however, the main effect of the lesion depth was significant (P<0.001, η2=0.936).
Conclusions:âThe overall diagnostic accuracy of the three modalities in the detection of approximal carious lesions was comparable. All three modalities performed poorly in the detection of enamel lesions
Gravastars must have anisotropic pressures
One of the very small number of serious alternatives to the usual concept of
an astrophysical black hole is the "gravastar" model developed by Mazur and
Mottola; and a related phase-transition model due to Laughlin et al. We
consider a generalized class of similar models that exhibit continuous pressure
-- without the presence of infinitesimally thin shells. By considering the
usual TOV equation for static solutions with negative central pressure, we find
that gravastars cannot be perfect fluids -- anisotropic pressures in the
"crust" of a gravastar-like object are unavoidable. The anisotropic TOV
equation can then be used to bound the pressure anisotropy. The transverse
stresses that support a gravastar permit a higher compactness than is given by
the Buchdahl--Bondi bound for perfect fluid stars. Finally we comment on the
qualitative features of the equation of state that gravastar material must have
if it is to do the desired job of preventing horizon formation.Comment: V1: 15 pages; 4 figures; uses iopart.cls; V2: 16 pages; added 3
references and brief discussio
Confidential Boosting with Random Linear Classifiers for Outsourced User-generated Data
User-generated data is crucial to predictive modeling in many applications.
With a web/mobile/wearable interface, a data owner can continuously record data
generated by distributed users and build various predictive models from the
data to improve their operations, services, and revenue. Due to the large size
and evolving nature of users data, data owners may rely on public cloud service
providers (Cloud) for storage and computation scalability. Exposing sensitive
user-generated data and advanced analytic models to Cloud raises privacy
concerns. We present a confidential learning framework, SecureBoost, for data
owners that want to learn predictive models from aggregated user-generated data
but offload the storage and computational burden to Cloud without having to
worry about protecting the sensitive data. SecureBoost allows users to submit
encrypted or randomly masked data to designated Cloud directly. Our framework
utilizes random linear classifiers (RLCs) as the base classifiers in the
boosting framework to dramatically simplify the design of the proposed
confidential boosting protocols, yet still preserve the model quality. A
Cryptographic Service Provider (CSP) is used to assist the Cloud's processing,
reducing the complexity of the protocol constructions. We present two
constructions of SecureBoost: HE+GC and SecSh+GC, using combinations of
homomorphic encryption, garbled circuits, and random masking to achieve both
security and efficiency. For a boosted model, Cloud learns only the RLCs and
the CSP learns only the weights of the RLCs. Finally, the data owner collects
the two parts to get the complete model. We conduct extensive experiments to
understand the quality of the RLC-based boosting and the cost distribution of
the constructions. Our results show that SecureBoost can efficiently learn
high-quality boosting models from protected user-generated data
Privacy Enhanced Access Control for Outsourced Data Sharing
Traditional access control models often assume that the entity enforcing access control policies is also the owner of data and resources. This assumption no longer holds when data is outsourced to a third-party storage provider, such as the cloud. Existing access control solutions mainly focus on preserving confidentiality of stored data from unauthorized access and the storage provider. However, in this setting, access control policies as well as users' access patterns also become privacy sensitive information that should be protected from the cloud. We propose a two-level access control scheme that combines coarse-grained access control enforced at the cloud, which allows to get acceptable communication overhead and at the same time limits the information that the cloud learns from his partial view of the access rules and the access patterns, and fine-grained cryptographic access control enforced at the user's side, which provides the desired expressiveness of the access control policies. Our solution handles both read and write access control
Reconstructing the star formation history of the Milky Way disc(s) from chemical abundances
We develop a chemical evolution model in order to study the star formation
history of the Milky Way. Our model assumes that the Milky Way is formed from a
closed box-like system in the inner regions, while the outer parts of the disc
experience some accretion. Unlike the usual procedure, we do not fix the star
formation prescription (e.g. Kennicutt law) in order to reproduce the chemical
abundance trends. Instead, we fit the abundance trends with age in order to
recover the star formation history of the Galaxy. Our method enables one to
recover with unprecedented accuracy the star formation history of the Milky Way
in the first Gyrs, in both the inner (R9-10kpc) discs as
sampled in the solar vicinity. We show that, in the inner disc, half of the
stellar mass formed during the thick disc phase, in the first 4-5 Gyr. This
phase was followed by a significant dip in the star formation activity (at 8-9
Gyr) and a period of roughly constant lower level star formation for the
remaining 8 Gyr. The thick disc phase has produced as many metals in 4 Gyr as
the thin disc in the remaining 8 Gyr. Our results suggest that a closed box
model is able to fit all the available constraints in the inner disc. A closed
box system is qualitatively equivalent to a regime where the accretion rate, at
high redshift, maintains a high gas fraction in the inner disc. In such
conditions, the SFR is mainly governed by the high turbulence of the ISM. By
z~1 it is possible that most of the accretion takes place in the outer disc,
while the star formation activity in the inner disc is mostly sustained by the
gas not consumed during the thick disc phase, and the continuous ejecta from
earlier generations of stars. The outer disc follows a star formation history
very similar to that of the inner disc, although initiated at z~2, about 2 Gyr
before the onset of the thin disc formation in the inner disc.Comment: 30 pages, 18 figures, 3 tables, accepted by A&A - minor stylistic
change
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