1,165 research outputs found
The Case for Enlarging the House of Representatives
This report makes the case for expanding the House of Representatives to bring the American people a little closer to their government, and their government closer to them. The Case for Enlarging the House of Representatives is an independent byproduct of Our Common Purpose: Reinventing American Democracy for the 21st Century, the final report of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences' Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship. The Commission represents a cross-partisan cohort of leaders from academia, civil society, philanthropy, and the policy sphere who reached unanimous agreement on thirty-one recommendations to improve American democracy. The report takes as a premise that political institutions, civic culture, and civil society reinforce one another. A nation may have impeccably designed bodies of government, but it also needs an engaged citizenry to ensure these institutions function as intended. As a result, Our Common Purpose argues that reforming only one of these areas is insufficient. Progress must be made across all three. To build a better democracy, the United States needs better-functioning institutions as well as a healthier political culture and a more resilient civil society
Metaphoric coherence: Distinguishing verbal metaphor from `anomaly\u27
Theories and computational models of metaphor comprehension generally circumvent the question of metaphor versus “anomaly” in favor of a treatment of metaphor versus literal language. Making the distinction between metaphoric and “anomalous” expressions is subject to wide variation in judgment, yet humans agree that some potentially metaphoric expressions are much more comprehensible than others. In the context of a program which interprets simple isolated sentences that are potential instances of cross‐modal and other verbal metaphor, I consider some possible coherence criteria which must be satisfied for an expression to be “conceivable” metaphorically. Metaphoric constraints on object nominals are represented as abstracted or extended along with the invariant structural components of the verb meaning in a metaphor. This approach distinguishes what is preserved in metaphoric extension from that which is “violated”, thus referring to both “similarity” and “dissimilarity” views of metaphor. The role and potential limits of represented abstracted properties and constraints is discussed as they relate to the recognition of incoherent semantic combinations and the rejection or adjustment of metaphoric interpretations
Incoherent Pair Tunneling as a Probe of the Cuprate Pseudogap
We argue that incoherent pair tunneling in a cuprate superconductor junction
with an optimally doped superconducting and an underdoped normal lead can be
used to detect the presence of pairing correlations in the pseudogap phase of
the underdoped lead. We estimate that the junction characteristics most
suitable for studying the pair tunneling current are close to recently
manufactured cuprate tunneling devices.Comment: ReVTeX 3.1; 4 pages, 2 EPS figures (included
Formation of Ionization-Cone Structures in Active Galactic Nuclei: I. Stationary Model and Linear Stability Analysis
We discuss causes of the formation of the observed kinematics and morphology
of cones of ionized matter in the neighborhood of the nuclei of Seyfert
galaxies. The results of linear stability analysis of an optically thin conic
jet where radiation cooling and gravity play an important part are reported.
The allowance for radiation cooling is shown to result in strong damping of all
acoustic modes and to have insignificant effect on unstable surface
Kelvin--Helmholtz modes. In the case of waveguide--resonance internal gravity
modes radiative cooling suppresses completely the instability of waves
propagating away from the ejection source and, vice versa, reduces
substantially the growth time scale of unstable sourceward propagating modes.
The results obtained can be used to study ionization cones in Seyfert galaxies
with radio jets. In particular, our analysis shows that surface
Kelvin--Helmholtz modes and volume harmonics are capable of producing regular
features observed in optical emission-line images of such galaxies.Comment: 13 pages, published in Astrophysical Bulleti
Superconducting phase coherence in the presence of a pseudogap: Relation to specific heat, tunneling and vortex core spectroscopies
In this paper we demonstrate how, using a natural generalization of BCS
theory, superconducting phase coherence manifests itself in phase insensitive
measurements, when there is a smooth evolution of the excitation gap \Delta
from above to below Tc. In this context, we address the underdoped cuprates.
Our premise is that just as Fermi liquid theory is failing above Tc, BCS theory
is failing below. The order parameter \Delta_{sc} is different from the
excitation gap \Delta. Equivalently there is a (pseudo)gap in the excitation
spectrum above Tc which is also present in the underlying normal state of the
superconducting phase, and can be directly inferred from specific heat and
vortex core experiments. At the same time many features of BCS theory, e.g.,
fermionic quasiparticles below Tc, are clearly present. These observations can
be reconciled by a natural extension of BCS theory, which includes finite
center-of-mass momentum pair excitations, in addition to the usual fermionic
quasiparticles. Applying this theory we find that the Bose condensation of
Cooper pairs, which is reflected in \Delta_{sc}, leads to sharp peaks in the
spectral function once . These are manifested in ARPES spectra as
well as in specific heat jumps, which become more like the behavior in a
\lambda transition as the pseudogap develops. We end with a discussion of
tunneling experiments and condensation energy issues. Comparison between
theoretical and experimental plots of C_v, and of tunneling and vortex core
spectroscopy measurements is good.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures, ReVTeX 3.
A Theory of Magnets with Competing Double Exchange and Superexchange Interactions
We study the competition between ferromagnetic double exchange (DE) and
nearest-neighbour antiferromagnetic exchange in CMR materials. Towards this
end, a single site mean field theory is proposed which emphasizes the
hopping-mediated nature of the DE contribution. We find that the competition
between these two exchange interactions leads to ferro- or antiferromagnetic
order with incomplete saturation of the (sub)lattice magnetization. This
conclusion is in contrast to previous results in the literature which find a
canted spin arrangement under similar circumstances. We attribute this
difference to the highly anisotropic exchange interactions used elsewhere. The
associated experimental implications are discussed.Comment: 4 pages, Latex-Revtex, 3 PostScript figures. Please see report
cond-mat/980523
Role of Van Hove Singularities and Momentum Space Structure in High-Temperature Superconductivity
There is a great deal of interest in attributing the high critical
temperatures of the cuprates to either the proximity of the Fermi level to a
van Hove singularity or to structure of the superconducting pairing potential
in momentum space far from the Fermi surface. We examine these ideas by
calculating the critical temperature Tc for model Einstein-phonon- and
spin-fluctuation-mediated superconductors within both the standard,
Fermi-surface-restricted Eliashberg theory and the exact mean field theory,
which accounts for the full momentum structure of the pairing potential and the
energy dependence of the density of states. By using two models of
spin-fluctuation-mediated pairing in the cuprates, we demonstrate that our
results are independent of the details of the dynamical susceptibility, which
is taken to be the pairing potential. We also compare these two models against
available neutron scattering data, since these data provide the most direct
constraints on the susceptibility. We conclude that the van Hove singularity
does not drastically alter Tc from its value when the density of states is
constant and that the effect of momentum structure is significant but secondary
in importance to that of the energy dependence in the density of states.Comment: 23 pages, 6 figures upon request, revtex version 2, vHs-
Superconducting transitions from the pseudogap state: d-wave symmetry, lattice, and low-dimensional effects
We investigate the behavior of the superconducting transition temperature
within a previously developed BCS-Bose Einstein crossover picture. This
picture, based on a decoupling scheme of Kadanoff and Martin, further extended
by Patton, can be used to derive a simple form for the superconducting
transition temperature in the presence of a pseudogap. We extend previous work
which addressed the case of s-wave pairing in jellium, to explore the solutions
for T_c as a function of variable coupling in more physically relevant
situations. We thereby ascertain the effects of reduced dimensionality,
periodic lattices and a d-wave pairing interaction. Implications for the
cuprate superconductors are discussed.Comment: REVTeX, 11 pages, 6 EPS figures included, Replace with published
versio
Quantitative cross-species extrapolation between humans and fish: The case of the anti-depressant fluoxetine
This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Fish are an important model for the pharmacological and toxicological characterization of human pharmaceuticals in drug discovery, drug safety assessment and environmental toxicology. However, do fish respond to pharmaceuticals as humans do? To address this question, we provide a novel quantitative cross-species extrapolation approach (qCSE) based on the hypothesis that similar plasma concentrations of pharmaceuticals cause comparable target-mediated effects in both humans and fish at similar level of biological organization (Read-Across Hypothesis). To validate this hypothesis, the behavioural effects of the anti-depressant drug fluoxetine on the fish model fathead minnow (Pimephales promelas) were used as test case. Fish were exposed for 28 days to a range of measured water concentrations of fluoxetine (0.1, 1.0, 8.0, 16, 32, 64 μg/L) to produce plasma concentrations below, equal and above the range of Human Therapeutic Plasma Concentrations (HTPCs). Fluoxetine and its metabolite, norfluoxetine, were quantified in the plasma of individual fish and linked to behavioural anxiety-related endpoints. The minimum drug plasma concentrations that elicited anxiolytic responses in fish were above the upper value of the HTPC range, whereas no effects were observed at plasma concentrations below the HTPCs. In vivo metabolism of fluoxetine in humans and fish was similar, and displayed bi-phasic concentration-dependent kinetics driven by the auto-inhibitory dynamics and saturation of the enzymes that convert fluoxetine into norfluoxetine. The sensitivity of fish to fluoxetine was not so dissimilar from that of patients affected by general anxiety disorders. These results represent the first direct evidence of measured internal dose response effect of a pharmaceutical in fish, hence validating the Read-Across hypothesis applied to fluoxetine. Overall, this study demonstrates that the qCSE approach, anchored to internal drug concentrations, is a powerful tool to guide the assessment of the sensitivity of fish to pharmaceuticals, and strengthens the translational power of the cross-species extrapolation
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