The Anatomy of a Scientific Rumor

The announcement of the discovery of a Higgs boson-like particle at CERN will be remembered as one of the milestones of the scientific endeavor of the 21st century. In this paper we present a study of information spreading processes on Twitter before, during and after the announcement of the discovery of a new particle with the features of the elusive Higgs boson on 4th July 2012. We report evidence for non-trivial spatio-temporal patterns in user activities at individual and global level, such as tweeting, re-tweeting and replying to existing tweets. We provide a possible explanation for the observed time-varying dynamics of user activities during the spreading of this scientific "rumor". We model the information spreading in the corresponding network of individuals who posted a tweet related to the Higgs boson discovery. Finally, we show that we are able to reproduce the global behavior of about 500,000 individuals with remarkable accuracy.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figure

Interacting dark energy in f(R)f(R) gravity

The field equations in $f(R)$ gravity derived from the Palatini variational principle and formulated in the Einstein conformal frame yield a cosmological term which varies with time. Moreover, they break the conservation of the energy--momentum tensor for matter, generating the interaction between matter and dark energy. Unlike phenomenological models of interacting dark energy, $f(R)$ gravity derives such an interaction from a covariant Lagrangian which is a function of a relativistically invariant quantity (the curvature scalar $R$). We derive the expressions for the quantities describing this interaction in terms of an arbitrary function $f(R)$, and examine how the simplest phenomenological models of a variable cosmological constant are related to $f(R)$ gravity. Particularly, we show that $\Lambda c^2=H^2(1-2q)$ for a flat, homogeneous and isotropic, pressureless universe. For the Lagrangian of form $R-1/R$, which is the simplest way of introducing current cosmic acceleration in $f(R)$ gravity, the predicted matter--dark energy interaction rate changes significantly in time, and its current value is relatively weak (on the order of 1% of $H_0$), in agreement with astronomical observations.Comment: 8 pages; published versio

Studies of the photoionization cross sections of CH_4

We present cross sections and asymmetry parameters for photoionization of the 1t_2 orbital of CH_4 using static‐exchange continuum orbitals of CH^+_4 to represent the photoelectron wave function. The calculations are done in the fixed‐nuclei approximation at a single internuclear geometry. To approximate the near‐threshold behavior of these cross sections, we assumed that the photoelectron spectrum is a composite of three electronic bands associated with the Jahn–Teller components of the distorted ion. The resulting cross sections reproduce the sharp rise seen at threshold in the experimental data and are in good agreement with experiment at higher energy. The agreement between the calculated and measured photoelectron asymmetry parameters is, however, less satisfactory

Comparison of Ising magnet on directed versus undirected Erdos-Renyi and scale-free network

Scale-free networks are a recently developed approach to model the interactions found in complex natural and man-made systems. Such networks exhibit a power-law distribution of node link (degree) frequencies n(k) in which a small number of highly connected nodes predominate over a much greater number of sparsely connected ones. In contrast, in an Erdos-Renyi network each of N sites is connected to every site with a low probability p (of the orde r of 1/N). Then the number k of neighbors will fluctuate according to a Poisson distribution. One can instead assume that each site selects exactly k neighbors among the other sites. Here we compare in both cases the usual network with the directed network, when site A selects site B as a neighbor, and then B influences A but A does not influence B. As we change from undirected to directed scale-free networks, the spontaneous magnetization vanishes after an equilibration time following an Arrhenius law, while the directed ER networks have a positive Curie temperature.Comment: 10 pages including all figures, for Int. J, Mod. Phys. C 1

Gauge Invariance and Fractional Statistics

We present a new $(2+1)$-dimensional field theory showing exotic statistics and fractional spin. This theory is achieved through a redefinition of the gauge field $A_{\mu}$. New properties are found. Another way to implement the field redefinition is used with the same results obtained.Comment: 5 page

Comportamento do tamarix (Tamarix sp. - Tamaricaceae) na recuperação de áreas degradadas por mineração.

As atividades de mineração alteram as áreas naturais pelo acúmulo de rejeitos finos e estéreis e pela retirada da camada superior de solo, causando impactos ambientais indesejáveis. Para reduzir estes danos, vem sendo realizado o plantio de espécies arbóreas e arbustivas para a recuperação das áreas degradadas. O presente trabalho teve como objetivo, avaliar o comportamento do tamarix (Tamarixsp.) em ensaio de seleção de espécies florestais na recuperação de área da barragem de rejeito da Mineração Caraíba S/A, situada no município de Jaguarari, Bahia, região semi-árida do Nordeste do Brasil. O tamarix foi introduzido do Peru, pela Embrapa Semi-Árido na década de 80, sendo utilizado na formação de quebra-ventos em regiões desérticas

Thermodynamics of Decaying Vacuum Cosmologies

The thermodynamic behavior of vacuum decaying cosmologies is investigated within a manifestly covariant formulation. Such a process corresponds to a continuous irreversible energy flow from the vacuum component to the created matter constituents. It is shown that if the specific entropy per particle remains constant during the process, the equilibrium relations are preserved. In particular, if the vacuum decays into photons, the energy density $\rho$ and average number density of photons $n$ scale with the temperature as $\rho \sim T^{4}$ and $n \sim T^{3}$. The temperature law is determined and a generalized Planckian type form of the spectrum, which is preserved in the course of the evolution, is also proposed. Some consequences of these results for decaying vacuum FRW type cosmologies as well as for models with ``adiabatic'' photon creation are discussed.Comment: 21 pages, uses LATE