25,423 research outputs found
Geometry in the Transition from Primary to Post-Primary
This article is intended as a kind of precursor to the document Geometry for
Post-primary School Mathematics, part of the Mathematics Syllabus for Junior
Certicate issued by the Irish National Council for Curriculum and Assessment in
the context of Project Maths.
Our purpose is to place that document in the context of an overview of plane
geometry, touching on several important pedagogical and historical aspects, in
the hope that this will prove useful for teachers.Comment: 19 page
Monte Carlo Simulation of Deffuant opinion dynamics with quality differences
In this work the consequences of different opinion qualities in the Deffuant
model were examined. If these qualities are randomly distributed, no different
behavior was observed. In contrast to that, systematically assigned qualities
had strong effects to the final opinion distribution. There was a high
probability that the strongest opinion was one with a high quality.
Furthermore, under the same conditions, this major opinion was much stronger
than in the models without systematic differences. Finally, a society with
systematic quality differences needed more tolerance to form a complete
consensus than one without or with unsystematic ones.Comment: 8 pages including 5 space-consuming figures, fir Int. J. Mod. Phys. C
15/1
Structural Covariance in the Hard Sphere Fluid
We study the joint variability of structural information in a hard sphere
fluid biased to avoid crystallisation and form fivefold symmetric geometric
motifs. We show that the structural covariance matrix approach, originally
proposed for on-lattice liquids [Ronceray and Harrowell, JCP 2016], can be
meaningfully employed to understand structural relationships between different
motifs and can predict, within the linear-response regime, structural changes
related to motifs distinct from that used to bias the system
Upper limits on gravitational-wave signals based on loudest events
Searches for gravitational-wave bursts have often focused on the loudest
event(s) in searching for detections and in determining upper limits on
astrophysical populations. Typical upper limits have been reported on event
rates and event amplitudes which can then be translated into constraints on
astrophysical populations. We describe the mathematical construction of such
upper limits.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figur
Propagation and organization in lattice random media
We show that a signal can propagate in a particular direction through a model
random medium regardless of the precise state of the medium. As a prototype, we
consider a point particle moving on a one-dimensional lattice whose sites are
occupied by scatterers with the following properties: (i) the state of each
site is defined by its spin (up or down); (ii) the particle arriving at a site
is scattered forward (backward) if the spin is up (down); (iii) the state of
the site is modified by the passage of the particle, i.e. the spin of the site
where a scattering has taken place, flips (). We consider one dimensional and triangular lattices, for which we give a
microscopic description of the dynamics, prove the propagation of a particle
through the scatterers, and compute analytically its statistical properties. In
particular we prove that, in one dimension, the average propagation velocity is
, with the probability that a site has a spin
, and, in the triangular lattice, the average propagation velocity is
independent of the scatterers distribution: . In both cases, the
origin of the propagation is a blocking mechanism, restricting the motion of
the particle in the direction opposite to the ultimate propagation direction,
and there is a specific re-organization of the spins after the passage of the
particle. A detailed mathematical analysis of this phenomenon is, to the best
of our knowledge, presented here for the first time.Comment: 30 pages, 15 separate figures (in PostScript); submitted to J. Stat.
Phy
Comparing the yield of Staphylococcus aureus recovery with static versus agitated broth incubation
Given the lack of standardization of methodologies for microbial recovery from built environments, we sought to compare the yield of Staphylococcus aureus with a broth enrichment method when incubated in agitated versus static conditions. Five unique strains of S. aureus at five different concentrations were cultured to compare direct plating, agitated broth enrichment, and static broth enrichment culture methods. All samples were incubated at 35° in ambient air. The lowest concentration recovered across three replicates and five strains did not differ between culture methods (Fisher’s exact test, p=0.50); notably, recovery of S. aureus was equivalent between static and agitated broth incubation. When broth enrichment was used (both static and agitated), the burden of S. aureus growth was higher (by semiquantitative assessment of 4-quadrant streaking) compared to the direct plating culture method. Optimizing strategies for microbial recovery is essential, particularly in areas of lower biomass, given the paucity of research concerning microbial communities of built environments. The results of this study, in conjunction with other experiments investigating microbiomes of built environments, can help inform protocols for standardizing culturing methods within built environments
Heart enhancers with deeply conserved regulatory activity are established early in zebrafish development.
During the phylotypic period, embryos from different genera show similar gene expression patterns, implying common regulatory mechanisms. Here we set out to identify enhancers involved in the initial events of cardiogenesis, which occurs during the phylotypic period. We isolate early cardiac progenitor cells from zebrafish embryos and characterize 3838 open chromatin regions specific to this cell population. Of these regions, 162 overlap with conserved non-coding elements (CNEs) that also map to open chromatin regions in human. Most of the zebrafish conserved open chromatin elements tested drive gene expression in the developing heart. Despite modest sequence identity, human orthologous open chromatin regions recapitulate the spatial temporal expression patterns of the zebrafish sequence, potentially providing a basis for phylotypic gene expression patterns. Genome-wide, we discover 5598 zebrafish-human conserved open chromatin regions, suggesting that a diverse repertoire of ancient enhancers is established prior to organogenesis and the phylotypic period
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