The family history of children with elective mutism: a research report

The family history was studied in children with elective mutism. The samples comprised a series of N = 38 children with elective mutism and a control group of N = 31 children with a similar behavioural phenotype, i.e., the combination of an emotional disorder and a developmental disorder of articulation or expressive language. Interviews were performed with the respective mothers. There was a clear excess of the personality trait of taciturnity in first-, second-, and third-degree relatives. Although mutism was reported almost exclusively in the group of relatives of children that manifested elective mutism, the differences between the two samples were not significant probably due to low frequencies. Disorders of speech and language were quite common in the relatives of subjects in both samples. Psychiatric disorders were more frequently reported in the families with an electively mute child. The study lends some evidence for the assumption that genetic factors may play a role in the etiology of elective mutis

Long-range epidemic spreading with immunization

We study the phase transition between survival and extinction in an epidemic process with long-range interactions and immunization. This model can be viewed as the well-known general epidemic process (GEP) in which nearest-neighbor interactions are replaced by Levy flights over distances r which are distributed as P(r) ~ r^(-d-sigma). By extensive numerical simulations we confirm previous field-theoretical results obtained by Janssen et al. [Eur. Phys. J. B7, 137 (1999)].Comment: LaTeX, 14 pages, 4 eps figure

Contact processes with long-range interactions

A class of non-local contact processes is introduced and studied using mean-field approximation and numerical simulations. In these processes particles are created at a rate which decays algebraically with the distance from the nearest particle. It is found that the transition into the absorbing state is continuous and is characterized by continuously varying critical exponents. This model differs from the previously studied non-local directed percolation model, where particles are created by unrestricted Levy flights. It is motivated by recent studies of non-equilibrium wetting indicating that this type of non-local processes play a role in the unbinding transition. Other non-local processes which have been suggested to exist within the context of wetting are considered as well.Comment: Accepted with minor revisions by Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and experiment

Persistence, extinction and spatio-temporal synchronization of SIRS cellular automata models

Spatially explicit models have been widely used in today's mathematical ecology and epidemiology to study persistence and extinction of populations as well as their spatial patterns. Here we extend the earlier work--static dispersal between neighbouring individuals to mobility of individuals as well as multi-patches environment. As is commonly found, the basic reproductive ratio is maximized for the evolutionary stable strategy (ESS) on diseases' persistence in mean-field theory. This has important implications, as it implies that for a wide range of parameters that infection rate will tend maximum. This is opposite with present results obtained in spatial explicit models that infection rate is limited by upper bound. We observe the emergence of trade-offs of extinction and persistence on the parameters of the infection period and infection rate and show the extinction time having a linear relationship with respect to system size. We further find that the higher mobility can pronouncedly promote the persistence of spread of epidemics, i.e., the phase transition occurs from extinction domain to persistence domain, and the spirals' wavelength increases as the mobility increasing and ultimately, it will saturate at a certain value. Furthermore, for multi-patches case, we find that the lower coupling strength leads to anti-phase oscillation of infected fraction, while higher coupling strength corresponds to in-phase oscillation.Comment: 12page

Confronting the trans-Planckian question of inflationary cosmology with dissipative effects

We provide a class of QFTs which exhibit dissipation above a threshold energy, thereby breaking Lorentz invariance. Unitarity is preserved by coupling the fields to additional degrees of freedom (heavy fields) which introduce the rest frame. Using the Equivalence Principle, we define these theories in arbitrary curved spacetime. We then confront the trans-Planckian question of inflationary cosmology. When dissipation increases with the energy, the quantum field describing adiabatic perturbations is completely damped at the onset of inflation. However it still exists as a composite operator made with the additional fields. And when these are in their ground state, the standard power spectrum obtains if the threshold energy is much larger that the Hubble parameter. In fact, as the energy redshifts below the threshold, the composite operator behaves as if it were a free field endowed with standard vacuum fluctuations. The relationship between our models and the Brane World scenarios studied by Libanov and Rubakov displaying similar effects is discussed. The signatures of dissipation will be studied in a forthcoming paper.Comment: 30 pages, 1 Figure, to appear in CQ

Non-equilibrium Phase Transitions with Long-Range Interactions

This review article gives an overview of recent progress in the field of non-equilibrium phase transitions into absorbing states with long-range interactions. It focuses on two possible types of long-range interactions. The first one is to replace nearest-neighbor couplings by unrestricted Levy flights with a power-law distribution P(r) ~ r^(-d-sigma) controlled by an exponent sigma. Similarly, the temporal evolution can be modified by introducing waiting times Dt between subsequent moves which are distributed algebraically as P(Dt)~ (Dt)^(-1-kappa). It turns out that such systems with Levy-distributed long-range interactions still exhibit a continuous phase transition with critical exponents varying continuously with sigma and/or kappa in certain ranges of the parameter space. In a field-theoretical framework such algebraically distributed long-range interactions can be accounted for by replacing the differential operators nabla^2 and d/dt with fractional derivatives nabla^sigma and (d/dt)^kappa. As another possibility, one may introduce algebraically decaying long-range interactions which cannot exceed the actual distance to the nearest particle. Such interactions are motivated by studies of non-equilibrium growth processes and may be interpreted as Levy flights cut off at the actual distance to the nearest particle. In the continuum limit such truncated Levy flights can be described to leading order by terms involving fractional powers of the density field while the differential operators remain short-ranged.Comment: LaTeX, 39 pages, 13 figures, minor revision

Decay of flux vacua to nothing

We construct instanton solutions describing the decay of flux compactifications of a $6d$ gauge theory by generalizing the Kaluza-Klein bubble of nothing. The surface of the bubble is described by a smooth magnetically charged solitonic brane whose asymptotic flux is precisely that responsible for stabilizing the 4d compactification. We describe several instances of bubble geometries for the various vacua occurring in a $6d$ Einstein-Maxwell theory namely, AdS_4 x S^2, R^{1,3} x S^2, and dS_4 x S^2. Unlike conventional solutions, the bubbles of nothing introduced here occur where a {\em two}-sphere compactification manifold homogeneously degenerates.Comment: 31 pages, 15 figure