646 research outputs found
How safe are school and bus environments? Parents’ perception of risks and hazards in the emirate of Dubai
© 2020 Institution of Occupational Safety and Health. The increasing numbers of school bus injuries in the United Arab Emirates have generated concerns over children’s safety on school buses and around school premises. A survey was administered on 550 parents or guardians, whose children use the school bus in public and private schools of Dubai. The main objective was to assess parental perceptions of the school bus and school environments. Parents identified several factors that pose a threat to bus safety including speeding cars, poor driving, lack of seat belt use enforcement, lack of supervision, motorists’ lack of understanding of school bus stop law, and children behaviour. Results suggest a deficiency in the communication of information regarding bus safety and behavioural policies. The study also highlights parents’ concerns over safety in relation to the school bus transport and around school premises, and emphasizes the need for safety education, as well as proper provision and communication of safety policies
Kinetics of Ordering in Fluctuation-Driven First-Order Transitions: Simulations and Dynamical Renormalization
Many systems where interactions compete with each other or with constraints
are well described by a model first introduced by Brazovskii. Such systems
include block copolymers, alloys with modulated phases, Rayleigh-Benard Cells
and type-I superconductors. The hallmark of this model is that the fluctuation
spectrum is isotropic and has a minimum at a nonzero wave vector represented by
the surface of a d-dimensional hyper-sphere. It was shown by Brazovskii that
the fluctuations change the free energy structure from a to a
form with the disordered state metastable for all quench depths.
The transition from the disordered to the periodic, lamellar structure changes
from second order to first order and suggests that the dynamics is governed by
nucleation. Using numerical simulations we have confirmed that the equilibrium
free energy function is indeed of a form. A study of the dynamics,
however, shows that, following a deep quench, the dynamics is described by
unstable growth rather than nucleation. A dynamical calculation, based on a
generalization of the Brazovskii calculations shows that the disordered state
can remain unstable for a long time following the quench.Comment: 18 pages, 15 figures submitted to PR
Orbital evolution of a particle around a black hole: II. Comparison of contributions of spin-orbit coupling and the self force
We consider the evolution of the orbit of a spinning compact object in a
quasi-circular, planar orbit around a Schwarzschild black hole in the extreme
mass ratio limit. We compare the contributions to the orbital evolution of both
spin-orbit coupling and the local self force. Making assumptions on the
behavior of the forces, we suggest that the decay of the orbit is dominated by
radiation reaction, and that the conservative effect is typically dominated by
the spin force. We propose that a reasonable approximation for the
gravitational waveform can be obtained by ignoring the local self force, for
adjusted values of the parameters of the system. We argue that this
approximation will only introduce small errors in the astronomical
determination of these parameters.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure
Gravitational waves from eccentric compact binaries: Reduction in signal-to-noise ratio due to nonoptimal signal processing
Inspiraling compact binaries have been identified as one of the most
promising sources of gravitational waves for interferometric detectors. Most of
these binaries are expected to have circularized by the time their
gravitational waves enter the instrument's frequency band. However, the
possibility that some of the binaries might still possess a significant
eccentricity is not excluded. We imagine a situation in which eccentric signals
are received by the detector but not explicitly searched for in the data
analysis, which uses exclusively circular waveforms as matched filters. We
ascertain the likelihood that these filters, though not optimal, will
nevertheless be successful at capturing the eccentric signals. We do this by
computing the loss in signal-to-noise ratio incurred when searching for
eccentric signals with those nonoptimal filters. We show that for a binary
system of a given total mass, this loss increases with increasing eccentricity.
We show also that for a given eccentricity, the loss decreases as the total
mass is increased.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, ReVTeX; minor changes made after referee's
comment
Gravitational waves from inspiralling compact binaries: Parameter estimation using second-post-Newtonian waveforms
The parameters of inspiralling compact binaries can be estimated using
matched filtering of gravitational-waveform templates against the output of
laser-interferometric gravitational-wave detectors. Using a recently calculated
formula, accurate to second post-Newtonian (2PN) order [order , where
is the orbital velocity], for the frequency sweep () induced by
gravitational radiation damping, we study the statistical errors in the
determination of such source parameters as the ``chirp mass'' , reduced
mass , and spin parameters and (related to spin-orbit and
spin-spin effects, respectively). We find that previous results using template
phasing accurate to 1.5PN order actually underestimated the errors in ,
, and . For two inspiralling neutron stars, the measurement errors
increase by less than 16 percent.Comment: 14 pages, ReVTe
Far-infrared transmission studies of c-axis oriented superconducting MgB2 thin film
We reported far-infrared transmission measurements on a c-axis oriented
superconducting MgB thin film in the frequency range of 30 250
cm. We found that these measurements were sensitive to values of
scattering rate and superconducting gap . By fitting the
experimental transmission spectra at 40 K and below, we obtained
(700 1000) cm and 42 cm. These two
quantities suggested that MgB belong to the dirty limit.Comment: submitted at May
Interactive Termination Proofs Using Termination Cores
Abstract. Recent advances in termination analysis have yielded new methods and tools that are highly automatic. However, when they fail, even experts have difficulty understanding why and determining how to proceed. In this paper, we address the issue of building termination analysis engines that are both highly automatic and easy to use in an interactive setting. We consider the problem in the context of ACL2, which has a first-order, functional programming language. We introduce the notion of a termination core, a simplification of the program under consideration which consists of a single loop that the termination engine cannot handle. We show how to extend the Size Change Termination (SCT) algorithm so that it generates termination cores when it fails to prove termination, with no increase to its complexity. We show how to integrate this into the Calling Context Graph (CCG) termination analysis, a powerful SCT-based automatic termination analysis that is part of the ACL2 Sedan. We also present several new, convenient ways of allowing users to interface with the CCG analysis, in order to guide it to a termination proof.
Linear stability analysis of retrieval state in associative memory neural networks of spiking neurons
We study associative memory neural networks of the Hodgkin-Huxley type of
spiking neurons in which multiple periodic spatio-temporal patterns of spike
timing are memorized as limit-cycle-type attractors. In encoding the
spatio-temporal patterns, we assume the spike-timing-dependent synaptic
plasticity with the asymmetric time window. Analysis for periodic solution of
retrieval state reveals that if the area of the negative part of the time
window is equivalent to the positive part, then crosstalk among encoded
patterns vanishes. Phase transition due to the loss of the stability of
periodic solution is observed when we assume fast alpha-function for direct
interaction among neurons. In order to evaluate the critical point of this
phase transition, we employ Floquet theory in which the stability problem of
the infinite number of spiking neurons interacting with alpha-function is
reduced into the eigenvalue problem with the finite size of matrix. Numerical
integration of the single-body dynamics yields the explicit value of the
matrix, which enables us to determine the critical point of the phase
transition with a high degree of precision.Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
Strings on conifolds from strong coupling dynamics, part I
A method to solve various aspects of the strong coupling expansion of the
superconformal field theory duals of AdS_5 x X geometries from first principles
is proposed. The main idea is that at strong coupling the configurations that
dominate the low energy dynamics of the field theory compactified on a three
sphere are given by certain non-trivial semi-classical configurations in the
moduli space of vacua.
We show that this approach is self-consistent and permits one to express most
of the dynamics in terms of an effective N=4 SYM dynamics. This has the
advantage that some degrees of freedom that move the configurations away from
moduli space can be treated perturbatively, unifying the essential low energy
dynamics of all of these theories. We show that with this formalism one can
compute the energies of strings in the BMN limit in the Klebanov-Witten theory
from field theory considerations, matching the functional form of results found
using AdS geometry. This paper also presents various other technical results
for the semiclassical treatment of superconformal field theories.Comment: 52 pages, JHEP3 styl
Spinodal Decomposition in a Binary Polymer Mixture: Dynamic Self Consistent Field Theory and Monte Carlo Simulations
We investigate how the dynamics of a single chain influences the kinetics of
early stage phase separation in a symmetric binary polymer mixture. We consider
quenches from the disordered phase into the region of spinodal instability. On
a mean field level we approach this problem with two methods: a dynamical
extension of the self consistent field theory for Gaussian chains, with the
density variables evolving in time, and the method of the external potential
dynamics where the effective external fields are propagated in time. Different
wave vector dependencies of the kinetic coefficient are taken into account.
These early stages of spinodal decomposition are also studied through Monte
Carlo simulations employing the bond fluctuation model that maps the chains --
in our case with 64 effective segments -- on a coarse grained lattice. The
results obtained through self consistent field calculations and Monte Carlo
simulations can be compared because the time, length, and temperature scales
are mapped onto each other through the diffusion constant, the chain extension,
and the energy of mixing. The quantitative comparison of the relaxation rate of
the global structure factor shows that a kinetic coefficient according to the
Rouse model gives a much better agreement than a local, i.e. wave vector
independent, kinetic factor. Including fluctuations in the self consistent
field calculations leads to a shorter time span of spinodal behaviour and a
reduction of the relaxation rate for smaller wave vectors and prevents the
relaxation rate from becoming negative for larger values of the wave vector.
This is also in agreement with the simulation results.Comment: Phys.Rev.E in prin
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