South Georgia microcontinent: displaced fragment of the southernmost Andes

The mountainous, glaciated island of South Georgia is the crest of one of the most isolated fragments of continental crust on Earth. It is located approximately 1700 km east of the southern termination of the Andean Cordillera of South America. The island is primarily composed of Lower Cretaceous turbidites, the infill of a marginal basin floored by stretched continental and ophiolitic crust. Remnants of a volcanic arc are preserved on offshore islands to the southwest. The Pacific hinterland of the southernmost Andes is missing in Tierra del Fuego, terminating at a submarine escarpment forming the continental margin immediately east of Cape Horn. The arc and back-arc basin infill rocks of South Georgia correspond exactly to part of the missing Cordilleran hinterland. The mechanism of transport of the South Georgia microcontinent eastward relative to South America remains obscure, but likely involved some form of ‘escape tectonics’ during mid- to Late Cretaceous counterclockwise rotation of the arc that led to closure and inversion of the marginal basin

Development of mathematical models to control the technological properties of cement slurries

Oil and gas producing enterprises are making increasingly high demands on well casing quality, including the actual process of injection and displacement of cement slurry, taking into account requirements for the annular cement level, eliminating possible hydraulic fracturing, with developing a hydraulic cementing program. It is necessary to prevent deep invasion of cement slurry filtrate into the formation to exclude bridging of productive layers. It is impossible to fulfill all these requirements at the same time without application of modifying additives; complex cement compositions are being developed and applied more often. Furthermore, need to adjust cement slurries recipes appears for almost every particular well. In order to select and justify cement slurries recipes and their prompt adjustment, taking into account requirements of well construction project, as well as geological and technical conditions for cementing casing strings, mathematical models of the main technological properties of cement slurries for cementing production casing strings in the Perm Region were developed. Analysis of the effect of polycarboxylic plasticizer (Pl) and a filtration reducer (fluid loss additive) based on hydroxyethyl cellulose (FR) on plastic viscosity (V), spreadability (S) and filtration (F) of cement slurries is conducted. Development of mathematical models is performed according to more than 90 measurements

Symmetrized models of last passage percolation and non-intersecting lattice paths

It has been shown that the last passage time in certain symmetrized models of directed percolation can be written in terms of averages over random matrices from the classical groups $U(l)$, $Sp(2l)$ and $O(l)$. We present a theory of such results based on non-intersecting lattice paths, and integration techniques familiar from the theory of random matrices. Detailed derivations of probabilities relating to two further symmetrizations are also given.Comment: 21 pages, 5 figure

Extended Seiberg-Witten Theory and Integrable Hierarchy

The prepotential of the effective N=2 super-Yang-Mills theory perturbed in the ultraviolet by the descendents of the single-trace chiral operators is shown to be a particular tau-function of the quasiclassical Toda hierarchy. In the case of noncommutative U(1) theory (or U(N) theory with 2N-2 fundamental hypermultiplets at the appropriate locus of the moduli space of vacua) or a theory on a single fractional D3 brane at the ADE singularity the hierarchy is the dispersionless Toda chain. We present its explicit solutions. Our results generalize the limit shape analysis of Logan-Schepp and Vershik-Kerov, support the prior work hep-th/0302191 which established the equivalence of these N=2 theories with the topological A string on CP^1 and clarify the origin of the Eguchi-Yang matrix integral. In the higher rank case we find an appropriate variant of the quasiclassical tau-function, show how the Seiberg-Witten curve is deformed by Toda flows, and fix the contact term ambiguity.Comment: 49 page

Thermodynamic and Tunneling Density of States of the Integer Quantum Hall Critical State

We examine the long wave length limit of the self-consistent Hartree-Fock approximation irreducible static density-density response function by evaluating the charge induced by an external charge. Our results are consistent with the compressibility sum rule and inconsistent with earlier work that did not account for consistency between the exchange-local-field and the disorder potential. We conclude that the thermodynamic density of states is finite, in spite of the vanishing tunneling density of states at the critical energy of the integer quantum Hall transition.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, minor revisions, published versio

Logarithmic and complex constant term identities

In recent work on the representation theory of vertex algebras related to the Virasoro minimal models M(2,p), Adamovic and Milas discovered logarithmic analogues of (special cases of) the famous Dyson and Morris constant term identities. In this paper we show how the identities of Adamovic and Milas arise naturally by differentiating as-yet-conjectural complex analogues of the constant term identities of Dyson and Morris. We also discuss the existence of complex and logarithmic constant term identities for arbitrary root systems, and in particular prove complex and logarithmic constant term identities for the root system G_2.Comment: 26 page

Highly deformed 40^{40}Ca configurations in 28^{28}Si + 12^{12}C

The possible occurrence of highly deformed configurations in the $^{40}$Ca di-nuclear system formed in the $^{28}$Si + $^{12}$C reaction is investigated by analyzing the spectra of emitted light charged particles. Both inclusive and exclusive measurements of the heavy fragments (A $\geq$ 10) and their associated light charged particles (protons and $\alpha$ particles) have been made at the IReS Strasbourg {\sc VIVITRON} Tandem facility at bombarding energies of $E_{lab} (^{28}$Si) = 112 MeV and 180 MeV by using the {\sc ICARE} charged particle multidetector array. The energy spectra, velocity distributions, and both in-plane and out-of-plane angular correlations of light charged particles are compared to statistical-model calculations using a consistent set of parameters with spin-dependent level densities. The analysis suggests the onset of large nuclear deformation in $^{40}$Ca at high spin.Comment: 33 pages, 11 figure

Macdonald Polynomials from Sklyanin Algebras: A Conceptual Basis for the pp-Adics-Quantum Group Connection

We establish a previously conjectured connection between $p$-adics and quantum groups. We find in Sklyanin's two parameter elliptic quantum algebra and its generalizations, the conceptual basis for the Macdonald polynomials, which ``interpolate'' between the zonal spherical functions of related real and $p$\--adic symmetric spaces. The elliptic quantum algebras underlie the $Z_n$\--Baxter models. We show that in the n \air \infty limit, the Jost function for the scattering of {\em first} level excitations in the $Z_n$\--Baxter model coincides with the Harish\--Chandra\--like $c$\--function constructed from the Macdonald polynomials associated to the root system $A_1$. The partition function of the $Z_2$\--Baxter model itself is also expressed in terms of this Macdonald\--Harish\--Chandra\ $c$\--function, albeit in a less simple way. We relate the two parameters $q$ and $t$ of the Macdonald polynomials to the anisotropy and modular parameters of the Baxter model. In particular the $p$\--adic ``regimes'' in the Macdonald polynomials correspond to a discrete sequence of XXZ models. We also discuss the possibility of ``$q$\--deforming'' Euler products.Comment: 25 page

Chiral Rings and Phases of Supersymmetric Gauge Theories

We solve for the expectation values of chiral operators in supersymmetric U(N) gauge theories with matter in the adjoint, fundamental and anti-fundamental representations. A simple geometric picture emerges involving a description by a meromorphic one-form on a Riemann surface. The equations of motion are equivalent to a condition on the integrality of periods of this form. The solution indicates that all semiclassical phases with the same number of U(1) factors are continuously connected.Comment: 55 page

‘Slappers like you don’t belong in this school’: the educational inclusion/exclusion of pregnant schoolgirls

Policy in England identifies pregnant schoolgirls as a particularly vulnerable group and emphasises the importance of education as a way of improving the life chances of those who become pregnant while young. This paper draws on repeat interviews conducted over a twelve-month period to compare and contrast the stories of four young women. The narratives show that despite a common policy framework, there is great variability between schools in staff attitudes towards and responses to pupil pregnancy which produce different accommodations and support for pregnant girls, and seem likely to produce very different outcomes. We mobilise Iris Marion Young’s five faces of oppression to conduct a second reading of the stories. This situates the specificity of the girls’ school experiences into a wider socio-cultural and economic framing and indicates what might be involved in actually initiating and implementing the kinds of changes that the first ‘face value’ reading suggests are necessary