Phase II of the ASCE Benchmark Study on SHM

The task group on structural health monitoring of the Dynamic Committee of ASCE was formed in 1999 at the 12 th Engineering Mechanics Conference. The task group has designed a number of analytical studies on a benchmark structure and there are plans to follow these with an experimental program. The first phase of the analytical studies was completed in 2001. The second phase, initiated in the summer of 2001, was formulated in the light of the experience gained on phase I and focuses on increasing realism in the simulation of the discrepancies between the actual structure and the mathematical model used in the analysis. This paper describes the rational that lead the SHM task group to the definition of phase II and presents the details of the cases that are being considered

On the Existence of the Quantum Action

We have previously proposed a conjecture stating that quantum mechanical transition amplitudes can be parametrized in terms of a quantum action. Here we give a proof of the conjecture and establish the existance of a local quantum action in the case of imaginary time in the Feynman-Kac limit (when temperature goes to zero). Moreover we discuss some symmetry properties of the quantum action.Comment: revised version, Text (LaTeX

Direct measurement of penetration length in ultra-thin and/or mesoscopic superconducting structures

We describe a method for direct measurement of the magnetic penetration length in thin (10 - 100 nm) superconducting structures having overall dimensions in the range 1 to 100 micrometers. The method is applicable for broadband magnetic fields from dc to MHz frequencies.Comment: Accepted by Journal of Applied P:hysics (Jun 2006).5 pages, 5 figure

Schubert Polynomials for the affine Grassmannian of the symplectic group

We study the Schubert calculus of the affine Grassmannian Gr of the symplectic group. The integral homology and cohomology rings of Gr are identified with dual Hopf algebras of symmetric functions, defined in terms of Schur's P and Q-functions. An explicit combinatorial description is obtained for the Schubert basis of the cohomology of Gr, and this is extended to a definition of the affine type C Stanley symmetric functions. A homology Pieri rule is also given for the product of a special Schubert class with an arbitrary one.Comment: 45 page

Sustainable Growth and Ethics: a Study of Business Ethics in Vietnam Between Business Students and Working Adults

Sustainable growth is not only the ultimate goal of business corporations but also the primary target of local governments as well as regional and global economies. One of the cornerstones of sustainable growth is ethics. An ethical organizational culture provides support to achieve sustainable growth. Ethical leaders and employees have great potential for positive influence on decisions and behaviors that lead to sustainability. Ethical behavior, therefore, is expected of everyone in the modern workplace. As a result, companies devote many resources and training programs to make sure their employees live according to the high ethical standards. This study provides an analysis of Vietnamese business students’ level of ethical maturity based on gender, education, work experience, and ethics training. The results of data from 260 business students compared with 704 working adults in Vietnam demonstrate that students have a significantly higher level of ethical maturity. Furthermore, gender and work experience are significant factors in ethical maturity. While more educated respondents and those who had completed an ethics course did have a higher level of ethical maturity, the results were not statistically significant. Analysis of the results along with suggestions and implications are provided

Implementing Unitarity in Perturbation Theory

Unitarity cannot be perserved order by order in ordinary perturbation theory because the constraint UU^\dagger=\1 is nonlinear. However, the corresponding constraint for $K=\ln U$, being $K=-K^\dagger$, is linear so it can be maintained in every order in a perturbative expansion of $K$. The perturbative expansion of $K$ may be considered as a non-abelian generalization of the linked-cluster expansion in probability theory and in statistical mechanics, and possesses similar advantages resulting from separating the short-range correlations from long-range effects. This point is illustrated in two QCD examples, in which delicate cancellations encountered in summing Feynman diagrams of are avoided when they are calculated via the perturbative expansion of $K$. Applications to other problems are briefly discussed.Comment: to appear in Phys. Rev.

Multiple Reggeon Exchange from Summing QCD Feynman Diagrams

Multiple reggeon exchange supplies subleading logs that may be used to restore unitarity to the Low-Nussinov Pomeron, provided it can be proven that the sum of Feynman diagrams to all orders gives rise to such multiple regge exchanges. This question cannot be easily tackled in the usual way except for very low-order diagrams, on account of delicate cancellations present in the sum which necessitate individual Feynman diagrams to be computed to subleading orders. Moreover, it is not clear that sums of high-order Feynman diagrams with complicated criss-crossing of lines can lead to factorization implied by the multi-regge scenario. Both of these difficulties can be overcome by using the recently developed nonabelian cut diagrams. We are then able to show that the sum of $s$-channel-ladder diagrams to all orders does lead to such multiple reggeon exchanges.Comment: uu-encoded latex file with 11 postscript figures (20 pages

Dynamin-related protein 1 is required for normal mitochondrial bioenergetic and synaptic function in CA1 hippocampal neurons.

Disrupting particular mitochondrial fission and fusion proteins leads to the death of specific neuronal populations; however, the normal functions of mitochondrial fission in neurons are poorly understood, especially in vivo, which limits the understanding of mitochondrial changes in disease. Altered activity of the central mitochondrial fission protein dynamin-related protein 1 (Drp1) may contribute to the pathophysiology of several neurologic diseases. To study Drp1 in a neuronal population affected by Alzheimer's disease (AD), stroke, and seizure disorders, we postnatally deleted Drp1 from CA1 and other forebrain neurons in mice (CamKII-Cre, Drp1lox/lox (Drp1cKO)). Although most CA1 neurons survived for more than 1 year, their synaptic transmission was impaired, and Drp1cKO mice had impaired memory. In Drp1cKO cell bodies, we observed marked mitochondrial swelling but no change in the number of mitochondria in individual synaptic terminals. Using ATP FRET sensors, we found that cultured neurons lacking Drp1 (Drp1KO) could not maintain normal levels of mitochondrial-derived ATP when energy consumption was increased by neural activity. These deficits occurred specifically at the nerve terminal, but not the cell body, and were sufficient to impair synaptic vesicle cycling. Although Drp1KO increased the distance between axonal mitochondria, mitochondrial-derived ATP still decreased similarly in Drp1KO boutons with and without mitochondria. This indicates that mitochondrial-derived ATP is rapidly dispersed in Drp1KO axons, and that the deficits in axonal bioenergetics and function are not caused by regional energy gradients. Instead, loss of Drp1 compromises the intrinsic bioenergetic function of axonal mitochondria, thus revealing a mechanism by which disrupting mitochondrial dynamics can cause dysfunction of axons

A total variation regularization based super-resolution reconstruction algorithm for digital video

Super-resolution (SR) reconstruction technique is capable of producing a high-resolution image from a sequence of low-resolution images. In this paper, we study an efficient SR algorithm for digital video. To effectively deal with the intractable problems in SR video reconstruction, such as inevitable motion estimation errors, noise, blurring, missing regions, and compression artifacts, the total variation (TV) regularization is employed in the reconstruction model. We use the fixed-point iteration method and preconditioning techniques to efficiently solve the associated nonlinear Euler-Lagrange equations of the corresponding variational problem in SR. The proposed algorithm has been tested in several cases of motion and degradation. It is also compared with the Laplacian regularization-based SR algorithm and other TV-based SR algorithms. Experimental results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.£.published_or_final_versio

The metaphysics of Machian frame-dragging

The paper investigates the kind of dependence relation that best portrays Machian frame-dragging in general relativity. The question is tricky because frame-dragging relates local inertial frames to distant distributions of matter in a time-independent way, thus establishing some sort of non-local link between the two. For this reason, a plain causal interpretation of frame-dragging faces huge challenges. The paper will shed light on the issue by using a generalized structural equation model analysis in terms of manipulationist counterfactuals recently applied in the context of metaphysical enquiry by Schaffer (2016) and Wilson (2017). The verdict of the analysis will be that frame-dragging is best understood in terms of a novel type of dependence relation that is half-way between causation and grounding