12,907 research outputs found
Participatory, Visible and Sustainable. Designing a Community Website for a Minority Group
This paper tackles three aspects of community-based technological initiatives aimed to support minority groupsâ public expression and communication: participation, visibility and sustainability. Participation requires\ud
the active involvement of the community members in various project phases (from design to evaluation), sharing decisional power with project leaders. Visibility\ud
refers to the capacity of community messages to reach a relevant audience outside the boundaries of the community itself. Sustainability indicates the capacity of a project to continue, under the control and management of the local community, beyond its âsupportedâ lifetime. The mutual influence of these three dimensions is examined in general and also in the light of a specific case study: an initiative involving a Romani community in rural Romania, having as main outcome the development of a community website (www.romanivoices.com/podoleni)
Preconditioned fully implicit PDE solvers for monument conservation
Mathematical models for the description, in a quantitative way, of the
damages induced on the monuments by the action of specific pollutants are often
systems of nonlinear, possibly degenerate, parabolic equations. Although some
the asymptotic properties of the solutions are known, for a short window of
time, one needs a numerical approximation scheme in order to have a
quantitative forecast at any time of interest. In this paper a fully implicit
numerical method is proposed, analyzed and numerically tested for parabolic
equations of porous media type and on a systems of two PDEs that models the
sulfation of marble in monuments. Due to the nonlinear nature of the underlying
mathematical model, the use of a fixed point scheme is required and every step
implies the solution of large, locally structured, linear systems. A special
effort is devoted to the spectral analysis of the relevant matrices and to the
design of appropriate iterative or multi-iterative solvers, with special
attention to preconditioned Krylov methods and to multigrid procedures.
Numerical experiments for the validation of the analysis complement this
contribution.Comment: 26 pages, 13 figure
Deflation for semismooth equations
Variational inequalities can in general support distinct solutions. In this
paper we study an algorithm for computing distinct solutions of a variational
inequality, without varying the initial guess supplied to the solver. The
central idea is the combination of a semismooth Newton method with a deflation
operator that eliminates known solutions from consideration. Given one root of
a semismooth residual, deflation constructs a new problem for which a
semismooth Newton method will not converge to the known root, even from the
same initial guess. This enables the discovery of other roots. We prove the
effectiveness of the deflation technique under the same assumptions that
guarantee locally superlinear convergence of a semismooth Newton method. We
demonstrate its utility on various finite- and infinite-dimensional examples
drawn from constrained optimization, game theory, economics and solid
mechanics.Comment: 24 pages, 3 figure
Classical analogs for Rabi-oscillations, Ramsey-fringes, and spin-echo in Josephson junctions
We investigate the results of recently published experiments on the quantum
behavior of Josephson circuits in terms of the classical modelling based on the
resistively and capacitively-shunted (RCSJ) junction model. Our analysis shows
evidence for a close analogy between the nonlinear behavior of a pulsed
microwave-driven Josephson junction at low temperature and low dissipation and
the experimental observations reported for the Josephson circuits.
Specifically, we demonstrate that Rabi-oscillations, Ramsey-fringes, and
spin-echo observations are not phenomena with a unique quantum interpretation.
In fact, they are natural consequences of transients to phase-locking in
classical nonlinear dynamics and can be observed in a purely classical model of
a Josephson junction when the experimental recipe for the application of
microwaves is followed and the experimental detection scheme followed. We
therefore conclude that classical nonlinear dynamics can contribute to the
understanding of relevant experimental observations of Josephson response to
various microwave perturbations at very low temperature and low dissipation.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figure
Dissecting the 3D structure of elliptical galaxies with gravitational lensing and stellar kinematics
The combination of strong gravitational lensing and stellar kinematics
provides a powerful and robust method to investigate the mass and dynamical
structure of early-type galaxies. We demonstrate this approach by analysing two
massive ellipticals from the XLENS Survey for which both high-resolution HST
imaging and X-Shooter spectroscopic observations are available. We adopt a
flexible axisymmetric two-component mass model for the lens galaxies,
consisting of a generalised NFW dark halo and a realistic self-gravitating
stellar mass distribution. For both systems, we put constraints on the dark
halo inner structure and flattening, and we find that they are dominated by the
luminous component within one effective radius. By comparing the tight
inferences on the stellar mass from the combined lensing and dynamics analysis
with the values obtained from stellar population studies, we conclude that both
galaxies are characterised by a Salpeter-like stellar initial mass function.Comment: Proceedings of the IAU Symposium 309, Contributed Talk, Vienna, July
2014; 4 pages, 2 figure
Efficient white noise sampling and coupling for multilevel Monte Carlo with non-nested meshes
When solving stochastic partial differential equations (SPDEs) driven by
additive spatial white noise, the efficient sampling of white noise
realizations can be challenging. Here, we present a new sampling technique that
can be used to efficiently compute white noise samples in a finite element
method and multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) setting. The key idea is to exploit
the finite element matrix assembly procedure and factorize each local mass
matrix independently, hence avoiding the factorization of a large matrix.
Moreover, in a MLMC framework, the white noise samples must be coupled between
subsequent levels. We show how our technique can be used to enforce this
coupling even in the case of non-nested mesh hierarchies. We demonstrate the
efficacy of our method with numerical experiments. We observe optimal
convergence rates for the finite element solution of the elliptic SPDEs of
interest in 2D and 3D and we show convergence of the sampled field covariances.
In a MLMC setting, a good coupling is enforced and the telescoping sum is
respected.Comment: 28 pages, 10 figure
Two-temperature coronae in active galactic nuclei
We show that coronal magnetic dissipation in thin active sheets that sandwich
standard thin accretion disks in active galactic nuclei may account for
canonical electron temperatures of a few K if protons acquire most
of the dissipated energy. Coulomb collisions transfer energy from the ions to
the electrons, which subsequently cool rapidly by inverse-Compton scattering.
In equilibrium, the proton energy density likely exceeds that of the magnetic
field and both well exceed the electron and photon energy densities. The
Coulomb energy transfer from protons to electrons is slow enough to maintain a
high proton temperature, but fast enough to explain observed rapid X-ray
variabilities in Seyferts. The K electron temperature is insensitive
to the proton temperature when the latter is K.Comment: 5 pages LaTex, and 2 .ps figures, submitted to MNRAS, 4/9
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