Simulations of magnetized multiphase galactic disk regulated by supernovae explosions

What exactly controls star formation in the Galaxy remains controversial. In particular, the role of feedback and magnetic field are still partially understood. We investigate the role played by supernovae feedback and magnetic field onto the star formation and the structure of the Galactic disk. We perform numerical simulations of the turbulent, magnetized, self-gravitating, multi-phase, supernovae regulated ISM within a 1 kpc stratified box. We implemented various schemes for the supernovae. This goes from a random distribution at a fixed rate to distributions for which the supernovae are spatially and temporally correlated to the formation of stars. To study the influence of magnetic field on star formation, we perform both hydrodynamical and magneto-hydrodynamical simulations. We find that supernovae feedback has a drastic influence on the galactic evolution. The supernovae distribution is playing a very significant role. When the supernovae are not correlated with star formation events, they do not modify significantly the very high star formation rate obtained without feedback. When the supernovae follow the accretion, the star formation rate can be reduced by a factor up to 30. Magnetic field is also playing a significant role. It reduces the star formation rate by a factor up to 2-3 and reduces the number of collapse sites by a factor of about 2. The exact correlation between the supernovae and the dense gas appears to have significant consequences on the galactic disk evolution and the star formation. This implies that small scale studies are necessary to understand and quantify the feedback efficiency. Magnetic field does influence the star formation at galactic scales by reducing the star formation rate and the number of star formation sites.Comment: to be published in A&

Structuring and Restructuring Sovereign Debt: The Role of Seniority

In an environment characterized by weak contractual enforcement, sovereign lenders can enhance the likelihood of repayment by making their claims more difficult to restructure. We show within a simple model how competition for repayment between lenders may result in sovereign debt that is excessively difficult to restructure in equilibrium. Alleviating this inefficiency requires a sovereign debt restructuring mechanism that fulfills some of the functions of corporate bankruptcy regimes, in particular the enforcement of seniority and subordination clauses in debt contracts.

Promoting information literacy through a student video contest

This presentation discusses the concept of user-generated content and fansourcing/crowdsourcing, using a video contest, to encourage student participation in the area of information literacy and library instruction. The activity can be a strategy to position the library within campus life and offers an opportunity for constructivist learning

The supersymmetric Ruijsenaars-Schneider model

An integrable supersymmetric generalization of the trigonometric Ruijsenaars-Schneider model is presented whose symmetry algebra includes the super Poincar\'e algebra. Moreover, its Hamiltonian is showed to be diagonalized by the recently introduced Macdonald superpolynomials. Somewhat surprisingly, the consistency of the scalar product forces the discreteness of the Hilbert space.Comment: v1: 11 pages, 1 figure. v2: new format, 5 pages, short section added at the end of the article addressing the problem of consistency of the scalar product (e.g., positivity of the weight functions and the normalization of the ground state wave function). To appear in Physical Review Letter

Towards efficient decoding of classical-quantum polar codes

Known strategies for sending bits at the capacity rate over a general channel with classical input and quantum output (a cq channel) require the decoder to implement impractically complicated collective measurements. Here, we show that a fully collective strategy is not necessary in order to recover all of the information bits. In fact, when coding for a large number N uses of a cq channel W, N I(W_acc) of the bits can be recovered by a non-collective strategy which amounts to coherent quantum processing of the results of product measurements, where I(W_acc) is the accessible information of the channel W. In order to decode the other N (I(W) - I(W_acc)) bits, where I(W) is the Holevo rate, our conclusion is that the receiver should employ collective measurements. We also present two other results: 1) collective Fuchs-Caves measurements (quantum likelihood ratio measurements) can be used at the receiver to achieve the Holevo rate and 2) we give an explicit form of the Helstrom measurements used in small-size polar codes. The main approach used to demonstrate these results is a quantum extension of Arikan's polar codes.Comment: 21 pages, 2 figures, submission to the 8th Conference on the Theory of Quantum Computation, Communication, and Cryptograph

The effect of masonry infill walls on the reinforced concrete frames behavior under lateral load

The reinforced concrete structures with masonry infill walls are widely used to construct buildings in Algeria, as in many parts of the world. According to earthquake analysis, this type of construction can undergo serious damage under seismic load. The interaction between the infill wall and the surrounding reinforced concrete structure is considered a key parameter, which could trigger damage and even collapse in self-stable frame buildings. To study the behavior of this type of structures and the wall–frame interaction, four half-scale single-storey, single-bay reinforced concrete unfilled and unfilled frames were constructed and tested under in-plane lateral load. Furthermore, the experimental results were analyzed using the Digital Image Correlation (DIC) technique giving a detailed analysis of displacement and strain fields. The wall–frame interaction was evaluated in terms of displacement field evolution and interface slip in the contact contour. The masonry infill wall demonstrated a significant influence on the in-plane lateral response of this type of structure. The analysis of the results of the experiment are discussed in this paper

Validation of a recommender system for prompting omitted foods in online dietary assessment surveys

Recall assistance methods are among the key aspects that improve the accuracy of online dietary assessment surveys. These methods still mainly rely on experience of trained interviewers with nutritional background, but data driven approaches could improve cost-efficiency and scalability of automated dietary assessment. We evaluated the effectiveness of a recommender algorithm developed for an online dietary assessment system called Intake24, that automates the multiple-pass 24-hour recall method. The recommender builds a model of eating behavior from recalls collected in past surveys. Based on foods they have already selected, the model is used to remind respondents of associated foods that they may have omitted to report. The performance of prompts generated by the model was compared to that of prompts hand-coded by nutritionists in two dietary studies. The results of our studies demonstrate that the recommender system is able to capture a higher number of foods omitted by respondents of online dietary surveys than prompts hand-coded by nutritionists. However, the considerably lower precision of generated prompts indicates an opportunity for further improvement of the system

Localized Modes in a Finite-Size Open Disordered Microwave Cavity

We present measurements of the spatial intensity distribution of localized modes in a two-dimensional open microwave cavity randomly filled with cylindrical dielectric scatterers. We show that each of these modes displays a range of localization lengths and successfully relate the largest value to the measured leakage rate at the boundary. These results constitute unambiguous signatures of the existence of strongly localized electromagnetic modes in two-dimensionnal open random media