4,238 research outputs found
Improving the Functional Control of Aged Ferroelectrics using Insights from Atomistic Modelling
We provide a fundamental insight into the microscopic mechanisms of the
ageing processes. Using large scale molecular dynamics simulations of the
prototypical ferroelectric material PbTiO3, we demonstrate that the
experimentally observed ageing phenomena can be reproduced from intrinsic
interactions of defect-dipoles related to dopant-vacancy associates, even in
the absence of extrinsic effects. We show that variation of the dopant
concentration modifies the material's hysteretic response. We identify a
universal method to reduce loss and tune the electromechanical properties of
inexpensive ceramics for efficient technologies.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure
Josephson Coupling through a Quantum Dot
We derive, via fourth order perturbation theory, an expression for the
Josephson current through a gated interacting quantum dot. We analyze our
expression for two different models of the superconductor-dot-superconductor
(SDS) system. When the matrix elements connecting dot and leads are featureless
constants, we compute the Josephson coupling J_c as a function of the gate
voltage and Coulomb interaction. In the diffusive dot limit, we compute the
probability distribution P(J_c) of Josephson couplings. In both cases, pi
junction behavior (J_c < 0) is possible, and is not simply dependent on the
parity of the dot occupancy.Comment: 9 pages; 3 encapsulated PostScript figure
A Comparison of Three Methods for Visually Assessing Reef Fish Communities: Time and Area Compensated
Reef fish assemblage survey results using Transect, Point, and Random in situ visual assessment techniques were evaluated and compared on a coral reef biotope off the southwestern coast of Puerto Rico. Parameters compared were: number of species, number of individuals, and species diversity (H\u27). No significant effect attributable to the time-of-day when the surveys were conducted was noted to occur. Variability in observations between divers was not noted for any of the dependent variables while conducting the Transect method. Divers using the Random technique recorded the highest number of species per survey, while the assemblage parameters recorded using Transect and Point methods were statistically similar for most dependent variables. Point surveys, however, had a higher and less variable species diversity. When the data were adjusted for amount of survey time and area it was determined that divers were more efficient in sampling numbers of individuals when using the Transect method
Optical Flow on Evolving Surfaces with an Application to the Analysis of 4D Microscopy Data
We extend the concept of optical flow to a dynamic non-Euclidean setting.
Optical flow is traditionally computed from a sequence of flat images. It is
the purpose of this paper to introduce variational motion estimation for images
that are defined on an evolving surface. Volumetric microscopy images depicting
a live zebrafish embryo serve as both biological motivation and test data.Comment: The final publication is available at link.springer.co
A law of large numbers approximation for Markov population processes with countably many types
When modelling metapopulation dynamics, the influence of a single patch on
the metapopulation depends on the number of individuals in the patch. Since the
population size has no natural upper limit, this leads to systems in which
there are countably infinitely many possible types of individual. Analogous
considerations apply in the transmission of parasitic diseases. In this paper,
we prove a law of large numbers for rather general systems of this kind,
together with a rather sharp bound on the rate of convergence in an
appropriately chosen weighted norm.Comment: revised version in response to referee comments, 34 page
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