6,563 research outputs found
The Economic Rationale for Agricultural Regeneration and Rural Infrastructure Investment in South Africa
This paper informs government policy insofar as it relates to the agricultural and rural de- velopment sectors and infrastructure investment within these sectors. The paper first quantfies the role of agriculture in the South African economy. This is done within the context of, inter alia, food security, agriculture's contribution to gross domestic product (GDP), economic link- ages and multipliers with respect to the agricultural sector, as well as agriculture's employment creation and external stabilisation capacity. Investment in the agricultural and rural sectors are then analysed with a view of supporting the argument that agriculture's role in the economy is su¢ ciently important to warrant regenerative strategies, including renewed emphasis on agricul- tural and rural infrastructure investment by South African policy makers. The quantification of the agricultural sector in relation to the total economy and that of agricultural and rural infrastructure investment are investigated against the backdrop of declining government sup- port, increasing production risks due to a variety of exogenous events like climate change, and increasing dynamic trade impacts. In this paper, the authors offer both supporting arguments in terms of current economic policy and recommendations for more decisive policy measures aimed at agricultural regeneration and rural infrastructure investment.
Classifying -algebras with both finite and infinite subquotients
We give a classification result for a certain class of -algebras
over a finite topological space in which there exists an
open set of such that separates the finite and infinite
subquotients of . We will apply our results to -algebras
arising from graphs.Comment: Version III: No changes to the text. We only report that Lemma 4.5 is
not correct as stated. See arXiv:1505.05951 for the corrected version of
Lemma 4.5. As noted in arXiv:1505.05951, the main results of this paper are
true verbatim. Version II: Improved some results in Section 3 and loosened
the assumptions in Definition 4.
Quantum Parrondo's Games
Parrondo's Paradox arises when two losing games are combined to produce a
winning one. A history dependent quantum Parrondo game is studied where the
rotation operators that represent the toss of a classical biased coin are
replaced by general SU(2) operators to transform the game into the quantum
domain. In the initial state, a superposition of qubits can be used to couple
the games and produce interference leading to quite different payoffs to those
in the classical case.Comment: LateX, 10 pages, 2 figures, submitted to Physica A special issue
(Gene Stanley Conference, Sicily, 2001), v2 minor correction to equations, v3
corrections to results section and table, acknowledgement adde
VLBI imaging of a flare in the Crab Nebula: More than just a spot
We report on very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) observations of the
radio emission from the inner region of the Crab Nebula, made at 1.6 GHz and 5
GHz after a recent high-energy flare in this object. The 5 GHz data have
provided only upper limits of 0.4 milli-Jansky (mJy) on the flux density of the
pulsar and 0.4 mJy/beam on the brightness of the putative flaring region. The
1.6 GHz data have enabled imaging the inner regions of the nebula on scales of
up to ~40". The emission from the inner "wisps" is detected for the first time
with VLBI observations. A likely radio counterpart (designated "C1") of the
putative flaring region observed with Chandra and HST is detected in the radio
image, with an estimated flux density of \,mJy and a size of
0.2-0.6". Another compact feature ("C2") is also detected in the VLBI image
closer to the pulsar, with an estimated flux density of 0.4 +- 0.2 mJy and a
size smaller than 0{\farcs}2. Combined with the broad-band SED of the flare,
the radio properties of C1 yield a lower limit of ~0.5 mG for the magnetic
field and a total minimum energy of 1.2*10^41 ergs vested in the flare
(corresponding to using about 0.2% of the pulsar spin-down power). The 1.6 GHz
observations provide upper limits for the brightness (0.2 mJy/beam) and total
flux density (0.4 mJy) of the optical Knot 1 located at 0.6" from the pulsar.
The absolute position of the Crab pulsar is determined, and an estimate of the
pulsar proper motion is obtained.Comment: Astronomy & Astrophysics; accepted; 10 pages, 8 figure
pyPcazip: A PCA-based toolkit for compression and analysis of molecular simulation data
AbstractThe biomolecular simulation community is currently in need of novel and optimised software tools that can analyse and process, in reasonable timescales, the large generated amounts of molecular simulation data. In light of this, we have developed and present here pyPcazip: a suite of software tools for compression and analysis of molecular dynamics (MD) simulation data. The software is compatible with trajectory file formats generated by most contemporary MD engines such as AMBER, CHARMM, GROMACS and NAMD, and is MPI parallelised to permit the efficient processing of very large datasets. pyPcazip is a Unix based open-source software (BSD licenced) written in Python
Localization dynamics in a centrally coupled system
In systems where interactions couple a central degree of freedom and a bath,
one would expect signatures of the bath's phase to be reflected in the dynamics
of the central degree of freedom. This has been recently explored in connection
with many-body localized baths coupled with a central qubit or a single cavity
mode -- systems with growing experimental relevance in various platforms. Such
models also have an interesting connection with Floquet many-body localization
via quantizing the external drive, although this has been relatively
unexplored. Here we adapt the multilayer multiconfigurational time-dependent
Hartree (ML-MCTDH) method, a well-known tree tensor network algorithm, to
numerically simulate the dynamics of a central degree of freedom, represented
by a -level system (qudit), coupled to a disordered interacting 1D spin
bath. ML-MCTDH allows us to reach lattice sites, a far larger
system size than what is feasible with exact diagonalization or kernel
polynomial methods. From the intermediate time dynamics, we find a well-defined
thermodynamic limit for the qudit dynamics upon appropriate rescaling of the
system-bath coupling. The spin system shows similar scaling collapse in the
Edward-Anderson spin glass order parameter or entanglement entropy at
relatively short times. At longer time scales, we see slow growth of the
entanglement, which may arise from dephasing mechanisms in the localized system
or long-range interactions mediated by the central degree of freedom. Similar
signs of localization are shown to appear as well with unscaled system-bath
coupling
Driving forces for Ag-induced periodic faceting of vicinal Cu(111)
Adsorption of submonolayer amounts of Ag on vicinal Cu(111) induces periodic
faceting. The equilibrium structure is characterized by Ag-covered facets that
alternate with clean Cu stripes. In the atomic scale, the driving force is the
matching of Ag(111)-like packed rows with Cu(111) terraces underneath. This
determines the preference for the facet orientation and the evolution of
different phases as a function of coverage. Both Cu and Ag stripe widths can be
varied smoothly in the 3-30 nm range by tuning Ag coverage, allowing to test
theoretical predictions of elastic theories.Comment: 1 text, 4 figure
Experimental observation of nonlinear Thomson scattering
A century ago, J. J. Thomson showed that the scattering of low-intensity
light by electrons was a linear process (i.e., the scattered light frequency
was identical to that of the incident light) and that light's magnetic field
played no role. Today, with the recent invention of ultra-high-peak-power
lasers it is now possible to create a sufficient photon density to study
Thomson scattering in the relativistic regime. With increasing light intensity,
electrons quiver during the scattering process with increasing velocity,
approaching the speed of light when the laser intensity approaches 10^18
W/cm^2. In this limit, the effect of light's magnetic field on electron motion
should become comparable to that of its electric field, and the electron mass
should increase because of the relativistic correction. Consequently, electrons
in such high fields are predicted to quiver nonlinearly, moving in figure-eight
patterns, rather than in straight lines, and thus to radiate photons at
harmonics of the frequency of the incident laser light, with each harmonic
having its own unique angular distribution. In this letter, we report the first
ever direct experimental confirmation of these predictions, a topic that has
previously been referred to as nonlinear Thomson scattering. Extension of these
results to coherent relativistic harmonic generation may eventually lead to
novel table-top x-ray sources.Comment: including 4 figure
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