Astrophysical and Cosmological Tests of Quantum Theory

We discuss several proposals for astrophysical and cosmological tests of quantum theory. The tests are motivated by deterministic hidden-variables theories, and in particular by the view that quantum physics is merely an effective theory of an equilibrium state. The proposed tests involve searching for nonequilibrium violations of quantum theory in: primordial inflaton fluctuations imprinted on the cosmic microwave background, relic cosmological particles, Hawking radiation, photons with entangled partners inside black holes, neutrino oscillations, and particles from very distant sources.Comment: 25 pages. Amendment to section 7. Contribution to: "The Quantum Universe", special issue of Journal of Physics A, dedicated to Prof. G.-C. Ghirardi on the occasion of his seventieth birthda

Cepstral analysis based on the Glimpse proportion measure for improving the intelligibility of HMM-based synthetic speech in noise

In this paper we introduce a new cepstral coefficient extraction method based on an intelligibility measure for speech in noise, the Glimpse Proportion measure. This new method aims to increase the intelligibility of speech in noise by modifying the clean speech, and has applications in scenarios such as public announcement and car navigation systems. We first explain how the Glimpse Proportion measure operates and further show how we approximated it to integrate it into an existing spectral envelope parameter extraction method commonly used in the HMM-based speech synthesis framework. We then demonstrate how this new method changes the modelled spectrum according to the characteristics of the noise and show results for a listening test with vocoded and HMM-based synthetic speech. The test indicates that the proposed method can significantly improve intelligibility of synthetic speech in speech shaped noise. Index Terms — cepstral coefficient extraction, objective measure for speech intelligibility, Lombard speech, HMM-based speech synthesis 1

Radiation reaction and quantum damped harmonic oscillator

By taking a Klein-Gordon field as the environment of an harmonic oscillator and using a new method for dealing with quantum dissipative systems (minimal coupling method), the quantum dynamics and radiation reaction for a quantum damped harmonic oscillator investigated. Applying perturbation method, some transition probabilities indicating the way energy flows between oscillator, reservoir and quantum vacuum, obtainedComment: 12 pages. Accepted for publication in Mod. Phys. Lett.

Comparative measurements of carbon dioxide fluxes from two nearby towers in a central Amazonian rainforest: the Manaus LBA site

Forests around Manaus have staged the oldest and the longest forest-atmosphere CO2 exchange studies made anywhere in the Amazon. Since July 1999 the exchange of CO2, water, and energy, as well as weather variables, have been measured almost continuously over two forests, 11 km apart, in the Cuieiras reserve near Manaus, Brazil. This paper presents the sites and climatology of the region based upon the new data sets. The landscape consists of plateaus dissected by often waterlogged valleys, and the two sites differ in terms of the relative areas of those two landscape components represented in the tower footprints. The radiation and wind climate was similar to both towers. Generally, both the long-wave and short-wave radiation input was less in the wet than in the dry season. The energy balance closure was imperfect (on average 80%) in both towers, with little variation in energy partitioning between the wet and dry seasons; likely a result of anomalously high rainfall in the 1999 dry season. Fluxes of CO2 also showed little seasonal variation except for a slightly shorter daytime uptake duration and somewhat lower respiratory fluxes in the dry season. The net effect is one of lower daily net ecosystem exchange (NEE) in the dry season. The tower, which has less waterlogged valley areas in its footprint, measured a higher overall CO2 uptake rate. We found that on first sight, NEE is underestimated during calm nights, as was observed in many other tower sites before. However, a closer inspection of the diurnal variation of CO2 storage fluxes and NEE suggests that at least part of the nighttime deficits is recovered from either lateral influx of CO2 from valleys or outgassing of soil storage. Therefore there is a high uncertainty in the magnitude of nocturnal NEE, and consequently preliminary estimates of annual carbon uptake reflecting this range from 1 to 8 T ha-1 y-1, with an even higher upper range for the less waterlogged area. The high uptake rates are clearly unsustainable and call for further investigations into the integral carbon balance of Amazon landscapes

Airborne LiDAR detects selectively logged tropical forest even in an advanced stage of recovery

Identifying historical forest disturbances is difficult, especially in selectively logged areas. LiDAR is able to measure fine-scale variations in forest structure over multiple kilometers. We use LiDAR data from ca. 16 km2 of forest in Sierra Leone, West Africa, to discriminate areas of old-growth from areas recovering from selective logging for 23 years. We examined canopy height variation and gap size distributions. We found that though recovering blocks of forest differed little in height from old-growth forest (up to 3 m) they had a greater area of canopy gaps (average 10.2% gap fraction in logged areas, compared to 5.6% in unlogged area); and greater numbers of gaps penetrating to the forest floor (162 gaps at 2 m height in logged blocks, and 101 in an unlogged block). Comparison of LiDAR measurements with field data demonstrated that LiDAR delivered accurate results. We found that gap size distributions deviated from power-laws reported previously, with substantially fewer large gaps than predicted by power-law functions. Our analyses demonstrate that LiDAR is a useful tool for distinguishing structural differences between old-growth and old-secondary forests. That makes LiDAR a powerful tool for REDD+ (Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) programs implementation and conservation planning.This research was funded by the European Union under the EuropeAid Programme, as a part of the Across the River Transboundary Peace Park Project DCI/ENV/2008/151-577; by a Cambridge Conservation Initiative Collaborative Fund grant “Applications of airborne remote sensing to the conservation management of a West African National Park”; and by the ERC grant Africa GHG #247349. We would also like to thank the British Technion Society for the generous funding of the post-doctoral Coleman-Cohen fellowship of R. Kent.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from MDPI via http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rs7070834

Review about comorbidities of behavioural disorders in children and adolescents: The focus on attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

Disruptive behavior disorders (DBD) present high comorbidity rate mainly for opposite-defiant disorders that are frequent among children, adolescents and adults affected by with attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), probably as result of common temperamental risk factors such as attention, distraction, impulsivity. ADHD tend to manifest in about 50% of individuals diagnosed as disruptive behavioral disorders

Does degradation from selective logging and illegal activities differently impact forest resources? A case study in Ghana

Degradation, a reduction of the ecosystem’s capacity to supply goods and services, is widespread in tropical forests and mainly caused by human disturbance. To maintain the full range of forest ecosystem services and support the development of effective conservation policies, we must understand the overall impact of degradation on different forest resources. This research investigates the response to disturbance of forest structure using several indicators: soil carbon content, arboreal richness and biodiversity, functional composition (guild and wood density), and productivity. We drew upon large field and remote sensing datasets from different forest types in Ghana, characterized by varied protection status, to investigate impacts of selective logging, and of illegal land use and resources extraction, which are the main disturbance causes in West Africa. Results indicate that functional composition and the overall number of species are less affected by degradation, while forest structure, soil carbon content and species abundance are seriously impacted, with resources distribution reflecting the protection level of the areas. Remote sensing analysis showed an increase in productivity in the last three decades, with higher resiliency to change in drier forest types, and stronger productivity correlation with solar radiation in the short dry season. The study region is affected by growing anthropogenic pressure on natural resources and by an increased climate variability: possible interactions of disturbance with climate are also discussed, together with the urgency to reduce degradation in order to preserve the full range of ecosystem functions

Energy Efficiency Improvements in Dry Drilling with Optimised Diamond-Like Carbon Coating

We demonstrate enhancements of performance and energy efficiency of cutting tools by deposition of diamond-like carbon (DLC) coatings on machine parts. DLC was deposited on steel drill bits, using plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) with the acetylene precursor diluted with argon, to produce a surface with low friction and low wear rate. Drill bit performance in dry drilling of aluminium was quantified by analysis of power consumption and swarf flow. Optimised deposition conditions produced drill bits with greatly enhanced performance over uncoated drill bits, showing a 25% reduction in swarf clogging, a 36% reduction in power consumption and a greater than five-fold increase in lifetime. Surface analysis with scanning electron microscopy shows that DLC coated drills exhibit much lower aluminium build up on the trailing shank of the drill, enhancing the anti-adhering properties of the drill and reducing heat generation during operation, resulting in the observed improvements in efficiency. Variation of drilling efficiency with argon dilution of precursor is related to changes in the microstructure of the DLC coating

The behavioral parenting interventions (BPT) for support and mandatory integrative therapy for children and adolescents affected by disruptive behavioural disorders: A brief review

The behavioral parenting interventions (BPT), commonly abbreviated as parent training, is a program conducted by an expert with the specific purpose of improving or modifying parental practices in order to promote the child's well-being, increasing parenting skills in the daily management of the child, problem solving and reducing the level of parenting and family stress. BPT presents many positive effects on children or adolescents affected by neurodevelopmental disorder such as ADHD, autism and cognitive dysfunction but BPT appears to improve also other proximal outcomes such as parenting competence and parenting stress