Final report of the Committee on Depreciation; Dissenting opinion to the final report of the Committee on Depreciation

Losses of value which are complete, and fully demonstrated by proper abandonment or necessary replacement of the whole or a unit part of a property, are a matter of history and fact, and require only proper accounting to determine their occurrence and amount. Losses of value, which are partial or incomplete, always require prophecy as to future need, usefulness, and service, in order to properly divide that portion of the value which still exists from that which is lost. This function necessitates much more judgment than accounting. It requires the careful analysis of a broadly trained, experienced, and practical mind, thoroughly familiar with the business in question. Original item in Boxno. 0409

Born-Oppenheimer Approximation near Level Crossing

We consider the Born-Oppenheimer problem near conical intersection in two dimensions. For energies close to the crossing energy we describe the wave function near an isotropic crossing and show that it is related to generalized hypergeometric functions 0F3. This function is to a conical intersection what the Airy function is to a classical turning point. As an application we calculate the anomalous Zeeman shift of vibrational levels near a crossing.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure, Lette

Neural Filters for Jet Analysis

We study the efficiency of a neural-net filter and deconvolution method for estimating jet energies and spectra in high-background reactions such as nuclear collisions at the relativistic heavy-ion collider and the large hadron collider. The optimal network is shown to be surprisingly close but not identical to a linear high-pass filter. A suitably constrained deconvolution method is shown to uncover accurately the underlying jet distribution in spite of the broad network response. Finally, we show that possible changes of the jet spectrum in nuclear collisions can be analyzed quantitatively, in terms of an effective energy loss with the proposed method. {} {Dong D W and Gyulassy M 1993}{Neural filters for jet analysis} {(LBL-31560) Physical Review E Vol~47(4) pp~2913-2922}Comment: 21 pages of Postscript, (LBL-31560

Schottky-based band lineups for refractory semiconductors

An overview is presented of band alignments for small-lattice parameter, refractory semiconductors. The band alignments are estimated empirically through the use of available Schottky barrier height data, and are compared to theoretically predicted values. Results for tetrahedrally bonded semiconductors with lattice constant values in the range from C through ZnSe are presented. Based on the estimated band alignments and the recently demonstrated p-type dopability of GaN, we propose three novel heterojunction schemes which seek to address inherent difficulties in doping or electrical contact to wide-gap semiconductors such as ZnO, ZnSe, and ZnS

Kaitiakitanga - Active guardianship, responsibilities and relationships with the world: Towards a bio-cultural future In early childhood education

The world is a vast family, and humans are children of the earth and sky, and cousins to all living things. Such unity means that nature is the ultimate teacher about life (Royal 2010, p. 9). For Māori (indigenous peoples of Aotearoa New Zealand) the term kaitiakitanga (pronounced, kye-tee-ah-key-tar-ngah) is often used to refer to the active guardianship and management of natural organisms and their environments. Mātauranga Māori or Māori knowledge positions humans within nature and focuses on ways in which cultural understandings and intergenerational connections between people and their biophysical contexts assist in the retention and protection of biodiversity and ecologically sustainable ecosystems. This entry critically reflects notions of kaitiakitanga and bio-cultural connectivity as important and meaningful contributors for young children and their relationships with and for the world

Electrodynamics of balanced charges

In this work we modify the wave-corpuscle mechanics for elementary charges introduced by us recently. This modification is designed to better describe electromagnetic (EM) phenomena at atomic scales. It includes a modification of the concept of the classical EM field and a new model for the elementary charge which we call a balanced charge (b-charge). A b-charge does not interact with itself electromagnetically, and every b-charge possesses its own elementary EM field. The EM energy is naturally partitioned as the interaction energy between pairs of different b-charges. We construct EM theory of b-charges (BEM) based on a relativistic Lagrangian with the following properties: (i) b-charges interact only through their elementary EM potentials and fields; (ii) the field equations for the elementary EM fields are exactly the Maxwell equations with proper currents; (iii) a free charge moves uniformly preserving up to the Lorentz contraction its shape; (iv) the Newton equations with the Lorentz forces hold approximately when charges are well separated and move with non-relativistic velocities. The BEM theory can be characterized as neoclassical one which covers the macroscopic as well as the atomic spatial scales, it describes EM phenomena at atomic scale differently than the classical EM theory. It yields in macroscopic regimes the Newton equations with Lorentz forces for centers of well separated charges moving with nonrelativistic velocities. Applied to atomic scales it yields a hydrogen atom model with a frequency spectrum matching the same for the Schrodinger model with any desired accuracy.Comment: Manuscript was edited to improve the exposition and to remove noticed typo

Consistency Conditions for Fundamentally Discrete Theories

The dynamics of physical theories is usually described by differential equations. Difference equations then appear mainly as an approximation which can be used for a numerical analysis. As such, they have to fulfill certain conditions to ensure that the numerical solutions can reliably be used as approximations to solutions of the differential equation. There are, however, also systems where a difference equation is deemed to be fundamental, mainly in the context of quantum gravity. Since difference equations in general are harder to solve analytically than differential equations, it can be helpful to introduce an approximating differential equation as a continuum approximation. In this paper implications of this change in view point are analyzed to derive the conditions that the difference equation should satisfy. The difference equation in such a situation cannot be chosen freely but must be derived from a fundamental theory. Thus, the conditions for a discrete formulation can be translated into conditions for acceptable quantizations. In the main example, loop quantum cosmology, we show that the conditions are restrictive and serve as a selection criterion among possible quantization choices.Comment: 33 page

Calculation of Densities of States and Spectral Functions by Chebyshev Recursion and Maximum Entropy

We present an efficient algorithm for calculating spectral properties of large sparse Hamiltonian matrices such as densities of states and spectral functions. The combination of Chebyshev recursion and maximum entropy achieves high energy resolution without significant roundoff error, machine precision or numerical instability limitations. If controlled statistical or systematic errors are acceptable, cpu and memory requirements scale linearly in the number of states. The inference of spectral properties from moments is much better conditioned for Chebyshev moments than for power moments. We adapt concepts from the kernel polynomial approximation, a linear Chebyshev approximation with optimized Gibbs damping, to control the accuracy of Fourier integrals of positive non-analytic functions. We compare the performance of kernel polynomial and maximum entropy algorithms for an electronic structure example.Comment: 8 pages RevTex, 3 postscript figure