27,267 research outputs found
Gravitational Thermodynamics of Space-time Foam in One-loop Approximation
We show from one-loop quantum gravity and statistical thermodynamics that the
thermodynamics of quantum foam in flat space-time and Schwarzschild space-time
is exactly the same as that of Hawking-Unruh radiation in thermal equilibrium.
This means we show unambiguously that Hawking-Unruh thermal radiation should
contain thermal gravitons or the contribution of quantum space-time foam. As a
by-product, we give also the quantum gravity correction in one-loop
approximation to the classical black hole thermodynamics.Comment: 7 pages, revte
A blind deconvolution approach to recover effective connectivity brain networks from resting state fMRI data
A great improvement to the insight on brain function that we can get from
fMRI data can come from effective connectivity analysis, in which the flow of
information between even remote brain regions is inferred by the parameters of
a predictive dynamical model. As opposed to biologically inspired models, some
techniques as Granger causality (GC) are purely data-driven and rely on
statistical prediction and temporal precedence. While powerful and widely
applicable, this approach could suffer from two main limitations when applied
to BOLD fMRI data: confounding effect of hemodynamic response function (HRF)
and conditioning to a large number of variables in presence of short time
series. For task-related fMRI, neural population dynamics can be captured by
modeling signal dynamics with explicit exogenous inputs; for resting-state fMRI
on the other hand, the absence of explicit inputs makes this task more
difficult, unless relying on some specific prior physiological hypothesis. In
order to overcome these issues and to allow a more general approach, here we
present a simple and novel blind-deconvolution technique for BOLD-fMRI signal.
Coming to the second limitation, a fully multivariate conditioning with short
and noisy data leads to computational problems due to overfitting. Furthermore,
conceptual issues arise in presence of redundancy. We thus apply partial
conditioning to a limited subset of variables in the framework of information
theory, as recently proposed. Mixing these two improvements we compare the
differences between BOLD and deconvolved BOLD level effective networks and draw
some conclusions
Keck Spectroscopy of distant GOODS Spheroidal Galaxies: Downsizing in a Hierarchical Universe
We analyze the evolution of the Fundamental Plane for 141 field spheroidal
galaxies in the redshift range 0.2<z<1.2, selected morphologically to a
magnitude limit F850LP=22.43 in the northern field of the Great Observatories
Origin Survey. For massive galaxies we find that the bulk of the star formation
was completed prior to z=2. However, for the lower mass galaxies, the
luminosity-weighted ages are significantly younger. The differential change in
mass-to-light ratio correlates closely with rest-frame color, consistent with
recent star formation and associated growth. Our data are consistent with mass
rather than environment governing the overall growth, contrary to the
expectations of hierarchical assembly. We discuss how feedback, conduction, and
galaxy interactions may explain the downsizing trends seen within our large
sample.Comment: ApJ Letters, in press. 4 figure
Hole burning in a nanomechanical resonator coupled to a Cooper pair box
We propose a scheme to create holes in the statistical distribution of
excitations of a nanomechanical resonator. It employs a controllable coupling
between this system and a Cooper pair box. The success probability and the
fidelity are calculated and compared with those obtained in the atom-field
system via distinct schemes. As an application we show how to use the
hole-burning scheme to prepare (low excited) Fock states.Comment: 7 pages, 10 figure
A novel ingress node design for video streaming over optical burst switching networks
This paper introduces a novel ingress node design which takes advantage of video data partitioning in order to deliver enhanced video streaming quality when using H.264/AVC codec over optical burst switching networks. Ns2 simulations show that the proposed scheme delivers improved video traffic quality without affecting other traffic, such as best effort traffic. Although the extra network load is comparatively small, the average gain in video PSNR was 5 dB over existing burst cloning schemes, with a maximum end-to-end delay of 17 ms, and jitter of less than 0.35 ms
The decay and collisions of dark solitons in superfluid Fermi gases
We study soliton collisions and the decay of solitons into sound in
superfluid Fermi gases across the Bose-Einstein condensate to
Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BEC-BCS) crossover by performing numerical
simulations of the time-dependent Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations. This decay
process occurs when the solitons are accelerated to the bulk pair-breaking
speed by an external potential. A similar decay process may occur when solitons
are accelerated by an inelastic collision with another soliton. We find that
soliton collisions become increasingly inelastic as we move from the BEC to BCS
regimes, and the excess energy is converted into sound. We interpret this
effect as being due to evolution of Andreev bound states localized within the
soliton.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure
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