5,003 research outputs found
The contribution of ecological footprinting to planning policy development: using REAP to evaluate policies for sustainable housing construction
The complexity of the sustainable-development policy goal is such that policy makers are searching for tools to enable them to evaluate and develop policy directions. To date, ecological footprinting has been used mainly for raising awareness of environmental impacts but it also has considerable potential as a policy tool, enabling policy makers in their strategic work. The paper presents an application of a specific ecological footprinting development, the REAP (Resource and Energy Analysis Programme) tool, to a current policy issue, the promotion of sustainable construction. Using the London Plan of the Greater London Authority as a case study, it considers the strengths and weaknesses of this approach and how it can contribute to policy development
Principal components analysis in the space of phylogenetic trees
Phylogenetic analysis of DNA or other data commonly gives rise to a
collection or sample of inferred evolutionary trees. Principal Components
Analysis (PCA) cannot be applied directly to collections of trees since the
space of evolutionary trees on a fixed set of taxa is not a vector space. This
paper describes a novel geometrical approach to PCA in tree-space that
constructs the first principal path in an analogous way to standard linear
Euclidean PCA. Given a data set of phylogenetic trees, a geodesic principal
path is sought that maximizes the variance of the data under a form of
projection onto the path. Due to the high dimensionality of tree-space and the
nonlinear nature of this problem, the computational complexity is potentially
very high, so approximate optimization algorithms are used to search for the
optimal path. Principal paths identified in this way reveal and quantify the
main sources of variation in the original collection of trees in terms of both
topology and branch lengths. The approach is illustrated by application to
simulated sets of trees and to a set of gene trees from metazoan (animal)
species.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/11-AOS915 the Annals of
Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical
Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
An L^2-Index Theorem for Dirac Operators on S^1 * R^3
An expression is found for the -index of a Dirac operator coupled to a
connection on a vector bundle over . Boundary
conditions for the connection are given which ensure the coupled Dirac operator
is Fredholm. Callias' index theorem is used to calculate the index when the
connection is independent of the coordinate on . An excision theorem due
to Gromov, Lawson, and Anghel reduces the index theorem to this special case.
The index formula can be expressed using the adiabatic limit of the
-invariant of a Dirac operator canonically associated to the boundary. An
application of the theorem is to count the zero modes of the Dirac operator in
the background of a caloron (periodic instanton).Comment: 14 pages, Latex, to appear in the Journal of Functional Analysi
Ab-initio elastic tensor of cubic TiAlN alloy: the dependence of the elastic constants on the size and shape of the supercell model
In this study we discuss the performance of approximate SQS supercell models
in describing the cubic elastic properties of B1 (rocksalt)
TiAlN alloy by using a symmetry based projection technique. We
show on the example of TiAlN alloy, that this projection
technique can be used to align the differently shaped and sized SQS structures
for a comparison in modeling elasticity. Moreover, we focus to accurately
determine the cubic elastic constants and Zener's type elastic anisotropy of
TiAlN. Our best supercell model, that captures accurately both
the randomness and cubic elastic symmetry, results in GPa,
GPa and GPa with 3% of error and for Zener's
elastic anisotropy with 6% of error. In addition, we establish the general
importance of selecting proper approximate SQS supercells with symmetry
arguments to reliably model elasticity of alloys. In general, we suggest the
calculation of nine elastic tensor elements - , , ,
, , , , and , to evaluate and
analyze the performance of SQS supercells in predicting elasticity of cubic
alloys via projecting out the closest cubic approximate of the elastic tensor.
The here described methodology is general enough to be applied in discussing
elasticity of substitutional alloys with any symmetry and at arbitrary
composition.Comment: Submitted to Physical Review
The modalities of Iranian soft power: from cultural diplomacy to soft war
Through exploring Iran's public diplomacy at the international level, this article demonstrates how the Islamic Republic's motives should not only be contextualised within the oft-sensationalised, material or ‘hard’ aspects of its foreign policy, but also within the desire to project its cultural reach through ‘softer’ means. Iran's utilisation of culturally defined foreign policy objectives and actions demonstrates its understanding of soft power's potentialities. This article explores the ways in which Iran's public diplomacy is used to promote its soft power and craft its, at times, shifting image on the world stage
Polarization of tightly focused laser beams
The polarization properties of monochromatic light beams are studied. In
contrast to the idealization of an electromagnetic plane wave, finite beams
which are everywhere linearly polarized in the same direction do not exist.
Neither do beams which are everywhere circularly polarized in a fixed plane. It
is also shown that transversely finite beams cannot be purely transverse in
both their electric and magnetic vectors, and that their electromagnetic energy
travels at less than c. The electric and magnetic fields in an electromagnetic
beam have different polarization properties in general, but there exists a
class of steady beams in which the electric and magnetic polarizations are the
same (and in which energy density and energy flux are independent of time).
Examples are given of exactly and approximately linearly polarized beams, and
of approximately circularly polarized beams.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure
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