1,318 research outputs found
Environmental Education: A Community /University Approach
The current reassessment of higher education [1-4], coupled with increasing concern for our environment, has indicated several shortcomings in science-oriented curricula. Perhaps the most obvious one is that most basic courses in physics and chemistry focus the primary learning experience in the classroom. This isolation from the real world is further enforced by laboratory experiments which are primarily pedagogical exercises with little or no direct application to existing problems~only the techniques and principles Which are learned can be carried over, and often this can be done only indirectly
Compound transfer matrices: Constructive and destructive interference
Scattering from a compound barrier, one composed of a number of distinct
non-overlapping sub-barriers, has a number of interesting and subtle
mathematical features. If one is scattering classical particles, where the wave
aspects of the particle can be ignored, the transmission probability of the
compound barrier is simply given by the product of the transmission
probabilities of the individual sub-barriers. In contrast if one is scattering
waves (whether we are dealing with either purely classical waves or quantum
Schrodinger wavefunctions) each sub-barrier contributes phase information (as
well as a transmission probability), and these phases can lead to either
constructive or destructive interference, with the transmission probability
oscillating between nontrivial upper and lower bounds. In this article we shall
study these upper and lower bounds in some detail, and also derive bounds on
the closely related process of quantum excitation (particle production) via
parametric resonance.Comment: V1: 28 pages. V2: 21 pages. Presentation significantly streamlined
and shortened. This version accepted for publication in the Journal of
Mathematical Physic
The development of the current state buffer.
This thesis examines a component of Short Term Memory that is responsible for
automatically tracking important stimuli in our immediate environment. The component
has been termed the "Current State Buffer" (Abeles and Morton, submitted; Barreau,
1997; Barreau and Morton, submitted-, Morton, 1997), and it is argued that current
conceptions of the Working Memory model (e. g. Baddeley & Hitch, 1993) do not
adequately specify its role as a separate functional element of Short Term Memory.
A Developmental perspective was adopted for investigating the Current State Buffer
experimentally. The data was collected through the implementation of a novel task (the
"Tidy Emu Paradigm"), which involved pre-school children watching an Emu glove
puppet tidy away toys into receptacles. The paradigm employed dual-task
methodology, consistent with many other studies of Working Memory.
The empirical work reported falls into three principal stages. The first demonstrates the
Current State Buffer's existence as independent to Working Memory. The lack of
interference between performance on a Current State Buffer task and a Visuospatial
Sketchpad task was taken as evidence for this. Other explanations for the finding are
considered, and further experiments replicate the basic finding.
The second stage analyses the architecture of a system that comprises a Current State
Buffer and Working Memory. In brief, the data are best described by an architecture
where information enters an Environmental Input Buffer, and depending on the nature
of the stimulus, it passes either into the Current State Buffer, or into an Interpreter
Buffer (Working Memory). At retrieval, the contents of these buffers can independently
proceed to an Output Buffer.
The final stage explores the effects of increasing the load of the Current State Buffer
task. This revealed age-related capacity limitations in Current State Buffer function, and
that subjects used age-related strategies to deal with the increase in character load,
involving interactions between the Current State Buffer and Working Memory
Parity Effects in Stacked Nanoscopic Quantum Rings
The ground state and the dielectric response of stacked quantum rings are
investigated in the presence of an applied magnetic field along the ring axis.
For odd number of rings and an electric field perpendicular to the axis, a
linear Stark effect occurs at distinct values of the magnetic field. At those
fields energy levels cross in the absence of electric field. For even values of
a quadratic Stark effect is expected in all cases, but the induced electric
polarization is discontinuous at those special magnetic fields. Experimental
consequences for related nanostructures are discussed.Comment: typos corrected, to appear Phys. Rev. B (Rapid Communication) 15 Au
Exact solution of a linear molecular motor model driven by two-step fluctuations and subject to protein friction
We investigate by analytical means the stochastic equations of motion of a
linear molecular motor model based on the concept of protein friction. Solving
the coupled Langevin equations originally proposed by Mogilner et al. (A.
Mogilner et al., Phys. Lett. {\bf 237}, 297 (1998)), and averaging over both
the two-step internal conformational fluctuations and the thermal noise, we
present explicit, analytical expressions for the average motion and the
velocity-force relationship. Our results allow for a direct interpretation of
details of this motor model which are not readily accessible from numerical
solutions. In particular, we find that the model is able to predict
physiologically reasonable values for the load-free motor velocity and the
motor mobility.Comment: 12 pages revtex, 6 eps-figure
Supermode suppression to below-130 dBc/Hz in a 10 GHz harmonically mode-locked external sigma cavity semiconductor laser
We demonstrate supermode suppression to levels below - 125 dBc/Hz and - 132 dBc/Hz using Fabry-Perot etalons with finesse values of 180 and 650, respectively, for a 10 GHz harmonically mode-locked external sigma cavity semiconductor laser. The laser was hybridly mode-locked using direct electrical modulation in a compact package without the need for an external modulator
Stable Propagation of a Burst Through a One-Dimensional Homogeneous Excitatory Chain Model of Songbird Nucleus HVC
We demonstrate numerically that a brief burst consisting of two to six spikes
can propagate in a stable manner through a one-dimensional homogeneous
feedforward chain of non-bursting neurons with excitatory synaptic connections.
Our results are obtained for two kinds of neuronal models, leaky
integrate-and-fire (LIF) neurons and Hodgkin-Huxley (HH) neurons with five
conductances. Over a range of parameters such as the maximum synaptic
conductance, both kinds of chains are found to have multiple attractors of
propagating bursts, with each attractor being distinguished by the number of
spikes and total duration of the propagating burst. These results make
plausible the hypothesis that sparse precisely-timed sequential bursts observed
in projection neurons of nucleus HVC of a singing zebra finch are intrinsic and
causally related.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figure
Longitudinal and transversal piezoresistive response of granular metals
In this paper, we study the piezoresistive response and its anisotropy for a
bond percolation model of granular metals. Both effective medium results and
numerical Monte Carlo calculations of finite simple cubic networks show that
the piezoresistive anisotropy is a strongly dependent function of bond
probability p and of bond conductance distribution width \Delta g. We find that
piezoresistive anisotropy is strongly suppressed as p is reduced and/or \Delta
g is enhanced and that it vanishes at the percolation thresold p=p_c. We argue
that a measurement of the piezoresistive anisotropy could be a sensitive tool
to estimate critical metallic concentrations in real granular metals.Comment: 14 pages, 7 eps figure
Charging Effects and Quantum Crossover in Granular Superconductors
The effects of the charging energy in the superconducting transition of
granular materials or Josephson junction arrays is investigated using a
pseudospin one model. Within a mean-field renormalization-group approach, we
obtain the phase diagram as a function of temperature and charging energy. In
contrast to early treatments, we find no sign of a reentrant transition in
agreement with more recent studies. A crossover line is identified in the
non-superconducting side of the phase diagram and along which we expect to
observe anomalies in the transport and thermodynamic properties. We also study
a charge ordering phase, which can appear for large nearest neighbor Coulomb
interaction, and show that it leads to first-order transitions at low
temperatures. We argue that, in the presence of charge ordering, a non
monotonic behavior with decreasing temperature is possible with a maximum in
the resistance just before entering the superconducting phase.Comment: 15 pages plus 4 fig. appended, Revtex, INPE/LAS-00
Immunopathogenesis of primary biliary cirrhosis: an old wives' tale
Primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) is a cholestatic liver disease characterised by the autoimmune destruction of the small intrahepatic bile ducts. The disease has an unpredictable clinical course, but may progress to fibrosis and cirrhosis. Although medical treatment with urseodeoxycholic acid is largely successful, some patients may progress to liver failure requiring liver transplantation. PBC is characterised by the presence of disease specific anti-mitochondrial (AMA) antibodies, which are pathognomonic for PBC development. The disease demonstrates an overwhelming female preponderance and virtually all women with PBC present in middle age. The reasons for this are unknown; however several environmental and immunological factors may be involved. As the immune systems ages, it become less self tolerant, and mounts a weaker response to pathogens, possibly leading to cross reactivity or molecular mimicry. Some individuals display immunological changes which encourage the development of autoimmune disease. Risk factors implicated in PBC include recurrent urinary tract infection in females, as well as an increased prevalence of reproductive complications. These risk factors may work in concert with and possibly even accelerate, immune system ageing, contributing to PBC development. This review will examine the changes that occur in the immune system with ageing, paying particular attention to those changes which contribute to the development of autoimmune disease with increasing age. The review also discusses risk factors which may account for the increased female predominance of PBC, such as recurrent UTI and oestrogens
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