45,775 research outputs found
A hermeneutic inquiry into user-created personas in different Namibian locales
Persona is a tool broadly used in technology design to support communicational interactions between designers and users. Different Persona types and methods have evolved mostly in the Global North, and been partially deployed in the Global South every so often in its original User-Centred Design methodology. We postulate persona conceptualizations are expected to differ across cultures. We demonstrate this with an exploratory-case study on user-created persona co-designed with four Namibian ethnic groups: ovaHerero, Ovambo, ovaHimba and Khoisan. We follow a hermeneutic inquiry approach to discern cultural nuances from diverse human conducts. Findings reveal diverse self-representations whereby for each ethnic group results emerge in unalike fashions, viewpoints, recounts and storylines. This paper ultimately argues User-Created Persona as a potentially valid approach for pursuing cross-cultural depictions of personas that communicate cultural features and user experiences paramount to designing acceptable and gratifying technologies in dissimilar locales
Quantum states far from the energy eigenstates of any local Hamiltonian
What quantum states are possible energy eigenstates of a many-body
Hamiltonian? Suppose the Hamiltonian is non-trivial, i.e., not a multiple of
the identity, and L-local, in the sense of containing interaction terms
involving at most L bodies, for some fixed L. We construct quantum states \psi
which are ``far away'' from all the eigenstates E of any non-trivial L-local
Hamiltonian, in the sense that |\psi-E| is greater than some constant lower
bound, independent of the form of the Hamiltonian.Comment: 4 page
The Spectral Dimension of 2D Quantum Gravity
We show that the spectral dimension d_s of two-dimensional quantum gravity
coupled to Gaussian fields is two for all values of the central charge c <= 1.
The same arguments provide a simple proof of the known result d_s= 4/3 for
branched polymers.Comment: 7 pages, Late
Ecology of Thioploca spp.: Nitrate and sulfur storage in relation to chemical microgradients and influence of Thioploca spp. on the sedimentary nitrogen cycle
Microsensors, including a recently developed NO3 − biosensor, were applied to measure O2 and NO3 − profiles in marine sediments from the upwelling area off central Chile and to investigate the influence of Thioploca spp. on the sedimentary nitrogen metabolism. The studies were performed in undisturbed sediment cores incubated in a small laboratory flume to simulate the environmental conditions of low O2, high NO3 −, and bottom water current. On addition of NO3 −and NO2 −, Thioploca spp. exhibited positive chemotaxis and stretched out of the sediment into the flume water. In a core densely populated with Thioploca, the penetration depth of NO3 − was only 0.5 mm and a sharp maximum of NO3 − uptake was observed 0.5 mm above the sediment surface. In sediments with only fewThioploca spp., NO3 − was detectable down to a depth of 2 mm and the maximum consumption rates were observed within the sediment. No chemotaxis toward nitrous oxide (N2O) was observed, which is consistent with the observation that Thioploca does not denitrify but reduces intracellular NO3 − to NH4 +. Measurements of the intracellular NO3 − and S0 pools inThioploca filaments from various depths in the sediment gave insights into possible differences in the migration behavior between the different species. Living filaments containing significant amounts of intracellular NO3 − were found to a depth of at least 13 cm, providing final proof for the vertical shuttling of Thioploca spp. and nitrate transport into the sediment
Gravitational Lorentz anomaly from the overlap formula in 2-dimensions
In this letter we show that the overlap formulation of chiral gauge theories
correctly reproduces the gravitational Lorentz anomaly in 2-dimensions. This
formulation has been recently suggested as a solution to the fermion doubling
problem on the lattice. The well known response to general coordinate
transformations of the effective action of Weyl fermions coupled to gravity in
2-dimensions can also be recovered.Comment: 7 pages, late
Calculation of compressible turbulent boundary layers with pressure gradients and heat transfer
Calculation of compressible turbulent boundary layers with pressure gradients and heat transfe
Calculation of laminar boundary layer-shock wave interaction on cooled walls by the method of integral relations
Calculation of laminar boundary layer shock wave interaction on cooled walls by method of integral relatio
Rotational splitting as a function of mode frequency for six Sun-like stars
Asteroseismology offers the prospect of constraining differential rotation in
Sun-like stars. Here we have identified six high signal-to-noise main-sequence
Sun-like stars in the Kepler field, which all have visible signs of rotational
splitting of their p-mode frequencies. For each star, we extract the rotational
frequency splitting and inclination angle from separate mode sets (adjacent
modes with l=2, 0, and 1) spanning the p-mode envelope. We use a Markov chain
Monte Carlo method to obtain the best fit and errors associated with each
parameter. We are able to make independent measurements of rotational
splittings of ~8 radial orders for each star. For all six stars, the measured
splittings are consistent with uniform rotation, allowing us to exclude large
radial differential rotation. This work opens the possibility of constraining
internal rotation of Sun-like stars.Comment: Published in Astronomy and Astrophysics. 4 pages, 3 figure
Characterization of two-qubit perfect entanglers
Here we consider perfect entanglers from another perspective. It is shown
that there are some {\em special} perfect entanglers which can maximally
entangle a {\em full} product basis. We have explicitly constructed a
one-parameter family of such entanglers together with the proper product basis
that they maximally entangle. This special family of perfect entanglers
contains some well-known operators such as {\textsc{cnot}} and
{\textsc{dcnot}}, but {\em not} {\small{\sqrt{\rm{\textsc{swap}}}}}. In
addition, it is shown that all perfect entanglers with entangling power equal
to the maximal value, 2/9, are also special perfect entanglers. It is proved
that the one-parameter family is the only possible set of special perfect
entanglers. Also we provide an analytic way to implement any arbitrary
two-qubit gate, given a proper special perfect entangler supplemented with
single-qubit gates. Such these gates are shown to provide a minimum universal
gate construction in that just two of them are necessary and sufficient in
implementation of a generic two-qubit gate.Comment: 6 pages, 1 eps figur
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