Stability of Mine Car Motion in Curves of Invariable and Variable Radii

We discuss our experiences adapting three recent algorithms for maximum common (connected) subgraph problems to exploit multi-core parallelism. These algorithms do not easily lend themselves to parallel search, as the search trees are extremely irregular, making balanced work distribution hard, and runtimes are very sensitive to value-ordering heuristic behaviour. Nonetheless, our results show that each algorithm can be parallelised successfully, with the threaded algorithms we create being clearly better than the sequential ones. We then look in more detail at the results, and discuss how speedups should be measured for this kind of algorithm. Because of the difficulty in quantifying an average speedup when so-called anomalous speedups (superlinear and sublinear) are common, we propose a new measure called aggregate speedup

Shaping electron wave functions in a carbon nanotube with a parallel magnetic field

A magnetic field, through its vector potential, usually causes measurable changes in the electron wave function only in the direction transverse to the field. Here we demonstrate experimentally and theoretically that in carbon nanotube quantum dots, combining cylindrical topology and bipartite hexagonal lattice, a magnetic field along the nanotube axis impacts also the longitudinal profile of the electronic states. With the high (up to 17T) magnetic fields in our experiment the wave functions can be tuned all the way from "half-wave resonator" shape, with nodes at both ends, to "quarter-wave resonator" shape, with an antinode at one end. This in turn causes a distinct dependence of the conductance on the magnetic field. Our results demonstrate a new strategy for the control of wave functions using magnetic fields in quantum systems with nontrivial lattice and topology.Comment: 5 figure

Pseudovector vs. pseudoscalar coupling in one-boson exchange NN potentials

We examine the effects of pseudoscalar and pseudovector coupling of the pi and eta mesons in one-boson exchange models of the NN interaction using two approaches: time-ordered perturbation theory unitarized with the relativistic Lippmann-Schwinger equation, and a reduced Bethe-Salpeter equation approach using the Thompson equation. Contact terms in the one-boson exchange amplitudes in time-ordered perturbation theory lead naturally to the introduction of s-channel nucleonic cutoffs for the interaction, which strongly suppresses the far off-shell behavior of the amplitudes in both approaches. Differences between the resulting NN predictions of the various models are found to be small, and particularly so when coupling constants of the other mesons are readjusted within reasonable limits.Comment: 24 pages, 4 figure

Experimental Evaluation of Subgraph Isomorphism Solvers

International audienceSubgraph Isomorphism (SI) is an NP-complete problem which is at the heart of many structural pattern recognition tasks as it involves finding a copy of a pattern graph into a target graph. In the pattern recognition community, the most well-known SI solvers are VF2, VF3, and RI. SI is also widely studied in the constraint programming community, and many constraint-based SI solvers have been proposed since Ullman, such as LAD and Glasgow, for example. All these SI solvers can solve very quickly some large SI instances, that involve graphs with thousands of nodes. However, McCreesh et al. have recently shown how to randomly generate SI instances the hardness of which can be controlled and predicted, and they have built small instances which are computationally challenging for all solvers. They have also shown that some small instances, which are predicted to be easy and are easily solved by constraint-based solvers, appear to be challenging for VF2 and VF3. In this paper, we widen this study by considering a large test suite coming from eight benchmarks. We show that, as expected for an NP-complete problem, the solving time of an instance does not depend on its size, and that some small instances coming from real applications are not solved by any of the considered solvers. We also show that, if RI and VF3 can solve very quickly a large number of easy instances, for which Glasgow or LAD need more time, they fail at solving some other instances that are quickly solved by Glasgow or LAD, and they are clearly outperformed by Glasgow on hard instances. Finally, we show that we can easily combine solvers to take benefit of their complementarity

Institutions as constraints and resources: explaining cross-national divergence in performance management

This article compares performance management practices in call centres from four telecommunications firms in the UK, France, Denmark, and Germany. Findings show that different combinations of institutional constraints, such as strong job security protections, and participation resources supporting worker voice were influential in shaping choices among HRM policies to motivate and discipline workers. Performance management most closely approached a high involvement model where both constraints and resources were high: where worker representatives were able both to restrict management’s use of sanctions and to establish procedures that improved the perceived fairness of incentives. Findings contribute to debates concerning the role of contextual factors in the design and effectiveness of HRM

Comment on the letter of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) dated April 21, 2020 regarding 'Fossils from conflict zones and reproducibility of fossil‑based scientific data': Myanmar amber

Recently, the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) has sent around a letter, dated 21st April, 2020 to more than 300 palaeontological journals, signed by the President, Vice President and a former President of the society (Rayfield et al. 2020). The signatories of this letter request significant changes to the common practices in palaeontology. With our present, multi-authored comment, we aim to argue why these suggestions will not lead to improvement of both practice and ethics of palaeontological research but, conversely, hamper its further development. Although we disagree with most contents of the SVP letter, we appreciate this initiative to discuss scientific practices and the underlying ethics. Here, we consider different aspects of the suggestions by Rayfield et al. (2020) in which we see weaknesses and dangers. It is our intent to compile views from many different fields of palaeontology, as our discipline is (and should remain) pluralistic. This contribution deals with the aspects concerning Myanmar amber. Reference is made to Haug et al. (2020a) for another comment on aspects concerning amateur palaeontologists/citizen scientists/private collectors