47,144 research outputs found

    Instability of human societies as a result of conformity

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    We introduce a new model that mimics the strong and sudden effects induced by conformity in tightly interacting human societies. Such effects range from mere crowd phenomena to dramatic political turmoil. The model is a modified version of the Ising Hamiltonian. We have studied the properties of this Hamiltonian using both a Metropolis simulation and analytical derivations. Our study shows that increasing the value of the conformity parameter, results in a first order phase transition. As a result a majority of people begin honestly to support the idea that may contradict the moral principles of a normal human beings though each individual would support the moral principle without tight interaction with the society. Thus, above some critical level of conformity our society occurs to be instable with respect to ideas that might be doubtful. Our model includes, in a simplified way, human diversity with respect to loyalty to the moral principles.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, accepted in Int. journ of modern physics section

    Reflections On Contributing To “Big Discoveries” About The Fly Clock: Our Fortunate Paths As Post-Docs With 2017 Nobel Laureates Jeff Hall, Michael Rosbash, And Mike Young

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    In the early 1980s Jeff Hall and Michael Rosbash at Brandeis University and Mike Young at Rockefeller University set out to isolate the period (per) gene, which was recovered in a revolutionary genetic screen by Ron Konopka and Seymour Benzer for mutants that altered circadian behavioral rhythms. Over the next 15 years the Hall, Rosbash and Young labs made a series of groundbreaking discoveries that defined the molecular timekeeping mechanism and formed the basis for them being awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Here the authors recount their experiences as post-docs in the Hall, Rosbash and Young labs from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, and provide a perspective of how basic research conducted on a simple model system during that era profoundly influenced the direction of the clocks field and established novel approaches that are now standard operating procedure for studying complex behavior

    Retrograde Accretion and Merging Supermassive Black Holes

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    We investigate whether a circumbinary gas disc can coalesce a supermassive black hole binary system in the centre of a galaxy. This is known to be problematic for a prograde disc. We show that in contrast, interaction with a retrograde circumbinary disc is considerably more effective in shrinking the binary because there are no orbital resonances. The binary directly absorbs negative angular momentum from the circumbinary disc by capturing gas into a disc around the secondary black hole, or discs around both holes if the binary mass ratio is close to unity. In many cases the binary orbit becomes eccentric, shortening the pericentre distance as the eccentricity grows. In all cases the binary coalesces once it has absorbed the angular momentum of a gas mass comparable to that of the secondary black hole. Importantly, this conclusion is unaffected even if the gas inflow rate through the disc is formally super--Eddington for either hole. The coalescence timescale is therefore always ∌M2/M˙\sim M_2/\dot M, where M2M_2 is the secondary black hole mass and M˙\dot M the inflow rate through the circumbinary disc.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS. Movies of the simulations can be found at: http://www.astro.le.ac.uk/users/cjn12/RetroBinaryMovies.htm

    Hopf algebras and characters of classical groups

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    Schur functions provide an integral basis of the ring of symmetric functions. It is shown that this ring has a natural Hopf algebra structure by identifying the appropriate product, coproduct, unit, counit and antipode, and their properties. Characters of covariant tensor irreducible representations of the classical groups GL(n), O(n) and Sp(n) are then expressed in terms of Schur functions, and the Hopf algebra is exploited in the determination of group-subgroup branching rules and the decomposition of tensor products. The analysis is carried out in terms of n-independent universal characters. The corresponding rings, CharGL, CharO and CharSp, of universal characters each have their own natural Hopf algebra structure. The appropriate product, coproduct, unit, counit and antipode are identified in each case.Comment: 9 pages. Uses jpconf.cls and jpconf11.clo. Presented by RCK at SSPCM'07, Myczkowce, Poland, Sept 200

    Bino Dark Matter and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis in the Constrained E6SSM with Massless Inert Singlinos

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    We discuss a new variant of the E6 inspired supersymmetric standard model (E6SSM) in which the two inert singlinos are exactly massless and the dark matter candidate has a dominant bino component. A successful relic density is achieved via a novel mechanism in which the bino scatters inelastically into heavier inert Higgsinos during the time of thermal freeze-out. The two massless inert singlinos contribute to the effective number of neutrino species at the time of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, where the precise contribution depends on the mass of the Z' which keeps them in equilibrium. For example for mZ' > 1300 GeV we find Neff \approx 3.2, where the smallness of the additional contribution is due to entropy dilution. We study a few benchmark points in the constrained E6SSM with massless inert singlinos to illustrate this new scenario.Comment: 24 pages, revised for publication in JHE
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