3,074 research outputs found
Inference with interference between units in an fMRI experiment of motor inhibition
An experimental unit is an opportunity to randomly apply or withhold a
treatment. There is interference between units if the application of the
treatment to one unit may also affect other units. In cognitive neuroscience, a
common form of experiment presents a sequence of stimuli or requests for
cognitive activity at random to each experimental subject and measures
biological aspects of brain activity that follow these requests. Each subject
is then many experimental units, and interference between units within an
experimental subject is likely, in part because the stimuli follow one another
quickly and in part because human subjects learn or become experienced or
primed or bored as the experiment proceeds. We use a recent fMRI experiment
concerned with the inhibition of motor activity to illustrate and further
develop recently proposed methodology for inference in the presence of
interference. A simulation evaluates the power of competing procedures.Comment: Published by Journal of the American Statistical Association at
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01621459.2012.655954 . R package
cin (Causal Inference for Neuroscience) implementing the proposed method is
freely available on CRAN at https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=ci
Head-on collision of unequal mass black holes: close-limit predictions
The close-limit method has given approximations in excellent agreement with
those of numerical relativity for collisions of equal mass black holes. We
consider here colliding holes with unequal mass, for which numerical relativity
results are not available. We try to ask two questions: (i) Can we get
approximate answers to astrophysical questions (ideal mass ratio for energy
production, maximum recoil velocity, etc.), and (ii) can we better understand
the limitations of approximation methods. There is some success in answering
the first type of question, but more with the second, especially in connection
with the issue of measures of the intrinsic mass of the colliding holes, and of
the range of validity of the method.Comment: 19 pages, RevTeX + 9 postscript figure
Black hole collisions from Brill-Lindquist initial data: predictions of perturbation theory
The Misner initial value solution for two momentarily stationary black holes
has been the focus of much numerical study. We report here analytic results for
an astrophysically similar initial solution, that of Brill and Lindquist (BL).
Results are given from perturbation theory for initially close holes and are
compared with available numerical results. A comparison is made of the
radiation generated from the BL and the Misner initial values, and the physical
meaning is discussed.Comment: 11 pages, revtex3.0, 5 figure
Traversable Wormholes in Geometries of Charged Shells
We construct a static axisymmetric wormhole from the gravitational field of
two charged shells which are kept in equilibrium by their electromagnetic
repulsion. For large separations the exterior tends to the Majumdar-Papapetrou
spacetime of two charged particles. The interior of the wormhole is a
Reissner-Nordstr\"om black hole matching to the two shells. The wormhole is
traversable and connects to the same asymptotics without violation of energy
conditions. However, every point in the Majumdar-Papapetrou region lies on a
closed timelike curve.Comment: 9 pages, LaTeX, 1 figur
Bulk gravitons from a cosmological brane
We investigate the emission of gravitons by a cosmological brane into an Anti
de Sitter five-dimensional bulk spacetime. We focus on the distribution of
gravitons in the bulk and the associated production of `dark radiation' in this
process. In order to evaluate precisely the amount of dark radiation in the
late low-energy regime, corresponding to standard cosmology, we study
numerically the emission, propagation and bouncing off the brane of bulk
gravitons.Comment: 27 pages, 5 figures, minor corrections. Final versio
Capture Velocity for a Magneto-Optical Trap in a Broad Range of Light Intensity
In a recent paper, we have used the dark-spot Zeeman tuned slowing technique
[Phys. Rev. A 62, 013404-1, (2000)] to measure the capture velocity as a
function of laser intensity for a sodium magneto optical trap. Due to technical
limitation we explored only the low light intensity regime, from 0 to 27
mW/cm^2. Now we complement that work measuring the capture velocity in a
broader range of light intensities (from 0 to 400 mW/cm^2). New features,
observed in this range, are important to understant the escape velocity
behavior, which has been intensively used in the interpretation of cold
collisions. In particular, we show in this brief report that the capture
velocity has a maximum as function of the trap laser intensity, which would
imply a minimum in the trap loss rates.Comment: 2 pages, 2 figure
Generalized Vaidya Solutions
A large family of solutions, representing, in general, spherically symmetric
Type II fluid, is presented, which includes most of the known solutions to the
Einstein field equations, such as, the monopole-de Sitter-charged Vaidya ones.Comment: Gen. Relativ. Grav. 31 (1), 107-114 (1999
Head--on Collision of Two Unequal Mass Black Holes
We present results from the first fully nonlinear numerical calculations of
the head--on collision of two unequal mass black holes. Selected waveforms of
the most dominant l=2, 3 and 4 quasinormal modes are shown, as are the total
radiated energies and recoil velocities for a range of mass ratios and initial
separations. Our results validate the close and distant separation limit
perturbation studies, and suggest that the head--on collision scenario is not
likely to produce an astrophysically significant recoil effect.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
Understanding initial data for black hole collisions
Numerical relativity, applied to collisions of black holes, starts with
initial data for black holes already in each other's strong field. The initial
hypersurface data typically used for computation is based on mathematical
simplifying prescriptions, such as conformal flatness of the 3-geometry and
longitudinality of the extrinsic curvature. In the case of head on collisions
of equal mass holes, there is evidence that such prescriptions work reasonably
well, but it is not clear why, or whether this success is more generally valid.
Here we study these questions by considering the ``particle limit'' for head on
collisions of nonspinning holes. Einstein's equations are linearized in the
mass of the small hole, and described by a single gauge invariant spacetime
function psi, for each multipole. The resulting equations have been solved by
numerical evolution for collisions starting from various initial separations,
and the evolution is studied on a sequence of hypersurfaces. In particular, we
extract hypersurface data, that is psi and its time derivative, on surfaces of
constant background Schwarzschild time. These evolved data can then be compared
with ``prescribed'' data, evolved data can be replaced by prescribed data on
any hypersurface, and evolved further forward in time, a gauge invariant
measure of deviation from conformal flatness can be evaluated, etc. The main
findings of this study are: (i) For holes of unequal mass the use of prescribed
data on late hypersurfaces is not successful. (ii) The failure is likely due to
the inability of the prescribed data to represent the near field of the smaller
hole. (iii) The discrepancy in the extrinsic curvature is more important than
in the 3-geometry. (iv) The use of the more general conformally flat
longitudinal data does not notably improve this picture.Comment: 20 pages, REVTEX, 26 PS figures include
Effective Action and Thermodynamics of Radiating Shells in General Relativity
An effective action is obtained for the area and mass aspect of a thin shell
of radiating self-gravitating matter. On following a mini-superspace approach,
the geometry of the embedding space-time is not dynamical but fixed to be
either Minkowski or Schwarzschild inside the shell and Vaidya in the external
space filled with radiation. The Euler-Lagrange equations of motion are
discussed and shown to entail the expected invariance of the effective
Lagrangian under time-reparametrization. They are equivalent to the usual
junction equations and suggest a macroscopic quasi-static thermodynamic
description.Comment: LATeX, 20 pages, 2 Fig
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