Component and cladding wind loads for low-slope roofs on low-rise buildings

The component and cladding wind load provisions for low-sloped roofs on low-rise buildings in ASCE 7-10 were examined using measured pressure data from an aerodynamic database. It was found that both the design pressure coefficients and size of the roof zones in ASCE 7-10 are much smaller in magnitude than indicated by the data. The data indicate that building height is the most significant parameter affecting the size of the roof zones, while plan dimensions have a limited impact on this class of buildings. Recommendations for revised roof zones are developed, which include a modification to the shape of the corner zone, the addition of a new interior zone far from the roof edges, and a zone size definition that depends only on building height. However, even with increased roof zone sizes, the measured data indicate that the design pressure coefficients must also be increased in the corners and edges

The Uncertainty of Fluxes

In the ordinary quantum Maxwell theory of a free electromagnetic field, formulated on a curved 3-manifold, we observe that magnetic and electric fluxes cannot be simultaneously measured. This uncertainty principle reflects torsion: fluxes modulo torsion can be simultaneously measured. We also develop the Hamilton theory of self-dual fields, noting that they are quantized by Pontrjagin self-dual cohomology theories and that the quantum Hilbert space is Z/2-graded, so typically contains both bosonic and fermionic states. Significantly, these ideas apply to the Ramond-Ramond field in string theory, showing that its K-theory class cannot be measured.Comment: 33 pages; minor modifications for publication in Commun. Math. Phy

Optimization of photomixers and antennas for continuous-wave terahertz emission

We have studied terahertz emission from interdigitated finger photomixers coupled to planar antenna structures. Using both pulsed and continuous-wave excitation, polarization measurements reveal that the antenna design dominates the properties of the radiated output at frequencies below 0.6 THz, while the efficiency at higher frequencies is additionally dependent on the design of the photomixer fingers. We have produced terahertz maps of the device, characterizing the photomixer by measuring the generated power as a function of the excitation position. Together, these measurements have allowed us to understand better the distinct roles of the photomixer and antenna in emission at different fre

Classical and Thermodynamic Stability of Black Branes

It is argued that many non-extremal black branes exhibit a classical Gregory-Laflamme instability if, and only if, they are locally thermodynamically unstable. For some black branes, the Gregory-Laflamme instability must therefore disappear near extremality. For the black $p$-branes of the type II supergravity theories, the Gregory-Laflamme instability disappears near extremality for $p=1,2,4$ but persists all the way down to extremality for $p=5,6$ (the black D3-brane is not covered by the analysis of this paper). This implies that the instability also vanishes for the near-extremal black M2 and M5-brane solutions.Comment: 21 pages, LaTeX. v2: Various points clarified, typos corrected and reference adde

Associations between tactile intimacy and sleep quality in healthy adults: a systematic review

Prior research suggests that different types of touch can affect sleep, but whether there is a consistent association between tactile intimacy and sleep quality is unclear. Here, we report a pre-registered systematic review (PROSPERO - CRD42020158683) of studies examining the association between tactile intimacy and sleep quality in healthy adults. The databases PsycINFO, PubMed, Web of Science, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials and EMBASE were searched on August 7th, 2020. 13 studies met the inclusion criteria and were synthesised qualitatively. Most commonly, articles researched sexual intimacy in relation to sleep quality, but some studies also investigated nonsexual affective touch and emotionally neutral touch. Some evidence for a connection between sexual function, sexual satisfaction and masturbation with sleep quality was found, however, no evidence for an association between sexual frequency or sexual positions and sleep was found. Interestingly, studies employing more subjective approaches were more likely to report an association between touch and sleep, potentially highlighting a discrepancy between self-reported and the objectively measurable association between touch and sleep

Path integral formulation of Hodge duality on the brane

In the warped compactification with a single Randall-Sundrum brane, a puzzling claim has been made that scalar fields can be bound to the brane but their Hodge dual higher-rank anti-symmetric tensors cannot. By explicitly requiring the Hodge duality, a prescription to resolve this puzzle was recently proposed by Duff and Liu. In this note, we implement the Hodge duality via path integral formulation in the presence of the background gravity fields of warped compactifications. It is shown that the prescription of Duff and Liu can be naturally understood within this framework.Comment: 7 pages, LaTe

On the existence of a static black hole on a brane

We study a static black hole localized on a brane in the Randall-Sundrum (RS) II braneworld scenario. To solve this problem numerically, we develop a code having the almost 4th-order accuracy. This code derives the highly accurate result for the case where the brane tension is zero, i.e., the spherically symmetric case. However, a nonsystematic error is detected in the cases where the brane tension is nonzero. This error is irremovable by any systematic methods such as increasing the resolution, setting the outer boundary at more distant location, or improving the convergence of the numerical relaxation. We discuss the possible origins for the nonsystematic error, and conclude that our result is naturally interpreted as the evidence for the nonexistence of solutions to this setup, although an "approximate" solution exists for sufficiently small brane tension. We discuss the possibility that the black holes produced on a brane may be unstable and lead to two interesting consequences: the event horizon pinch and the brane pinch.Comment: 26 pages, 9 figures, submitted to JHE

CFT driven cosmology and the DGP/CFT correspondence

We present a dual 5D braneworld picture of a recently suggested model for a microcanonical description of a 4D cosmology driven by a conformal field theory with a large number of quantum fields. The 5D side of the duality relation is represented by a generalized brane induced gravity model in a Schwarzschild-de Sitter bulk. The values of the bulk cosmological and the induced 4D cosmological constants are determined by requiring the absence of conical singularity at the de Sitter horizon of the Euclidean Schwarzschild-de Sitter bulk. Those values belong to the vicinity of the upper bound of a range of admissible values for the cosmological constant. This upper bound is enforced by the 4D CFT and coincides with the natural gravitational cutoff in a theory with many quantum species. The resulting DGP/CFT duality suggests the possibility of a new type of {\em background independent} correspondence. A mechanism for inverting the sign of the effective cosmological constant is found, which might reconcile a negative value of the primordial cosmological constant compatible with supersymmetry with the one required by inflationary cosmology.Comment: LaTeX, 23 pages, 3 figure