7,603 research outputs found
Comment on "Jamming at zero temperature and zero applied stress: The epitome of disorder"
O'Hern, Silbert, Liu and Nagel [Phys. Rev. E. 68, 011306 (2003)] (OSLN) claim
that a special point of a "jamming phase diagram" (in density, temperature,
stress space) is related to random close packing of hard spheres, and that it
represents, for their suggested definitions of jammed and random, the recently
introduced maximally random jammed state. We point out several difficulties
with their definitions and question some of their claims. Furthermore, we
discuss the connections between their algorithm and other hard-sphere packing
algorithms in the literature.Comment: 4 pages of text, already publishe
Epitaxial Frustration in Deposited Packings of Rigid Disks and Spheres
We use numerical simulation to investigate and analyze the way that rigid
disks and spheres arrange themselves when compressed next to incommensurate
substrates. For disks, a movable set is pressed into a jammed state against an
ordered fixed line of larger disks, where the diameter ratio of movable to
fixed disks is 0.8. The corresponding diameter ratio for the sphere simulations
is 0.7, where the fixed substrate has the structure of a (001) plane of a
face-centered cubic array. Results obtained for both disks and spheres exhibit
various forms of density-reducing packing frustration next to the
incommensurate substrate, including some cases displaying disorder that extends
far from the substrate. The disk system calculations strongly suggest that the
most efficient (highest density) packings involve configurations that are
periodic in the lateral direction parallel to the substrate, with substantial
geometric disruption only occurring near the substrate. Some evidence has also
emerged suggesting that for the sphere systems a corresponding structure doubly
periodic in the lateral directions would yield the highest packing density;
however all of the sphere simulations completed thus far produced some residual
"bulk" disorder not obviously resulting from substrate mismatch. In view of the
fact that the cases studied here represent only a small subset of all that
eventually deserve attention, we end with discussion of the directions in which
first extensions of the present simulations might profitably be pursued.Comment: 28 pages, 14 figures; typos fixed; a sentence added to 4th paragraph
of sect 5 in responce to a referee's comment
Locked and Unlocked Chains of Planar Shapes
We extend linkage unfolding results from the well-studied case of polygonal
linkages to the more general case of linkages of polygons. More precisely, we
consider chains of nonoverlapping rigid planar shapes (Jordan regions) that are
hinged together sequentially at rotatable joints. Our goal is to characterize
the families of planar shapes that admit locked chains, where some
configurations cannot be reached by continuous reconfiguration without
self-intersection, and which families of planar shapes guarantee universal
foldability, where every chain is guaranteed to have a connected configuration
space. Previously, only obtuse triangles were known to admit locked shapes, and
only line segments were known to guarantee universal foldability. We show that
a surprisingly general family of planar shapes, called slender adornments,
guarantees universal foldability: roughly, the distance from each edge along
the path along the boundary of the slender adornment to each hinge should be
monotone. In contrast, we show that isosceles triangles with any desired apex
angle less than 90 degrees admit locked chains, which is precisely the
threshold beyond which the inward-normal property no longer holds.Comment: 23 pages, 25 figures, Latex; full journal version with all proof
details. (Fixed crash-induced bugs in the abstract.
Rigidity and volume preserving deformation on degenerate simplices
Given a degenerate -simplex in a -dimensional space
(Euclidean, spherical or hyperbolic space, and ), for each , , Radon's theorem induces a partition of the set of -faces into two
subsets. We prove that if the vertices of the simplex vary smoothly in
for , and the volumes of -faces in one subset are constrained only to
decrease while in the other subset only to increase, then any sufficiently
small motion must preserve the volumes of all -faces; and this property
still holds in for if an invariant of
the degenerate simplex has the desired sign. This answers a question posed by
the author, and the proof relies on an invariant we discovered
for any -stress on a cell complex in . We introduce a
characteristic polynomial of the degenerate simplex by defining
, and prove that the roots
of are real for the Euclidean case. Some evidence suggests the same
conjecture for the hyperbolic case.Comment: 27 pages, 2 figures. To appear in Discrete & Computational Geometr
A software development environment utilizing PAMELA
Hardware capability and efficiency has increased dramatically since the invention of the computer, while software programmer productivity and efficiency has remained at a relatively low level. A user-friendly, adaptable, integrated software development environment is needed to alleviate this problem. The environment should be designed around the Ada language and a design methodology which takes advantage of the features of the Ada language as the Process Abstraction Method for Embedded Large Applications (PAMELA)
Improving Breastfeeding Education Among Hospital Nurses
Breastfeeding is well-documented as the most beneficial method of infant feeding worldwide. There are numerous national initiatives present to improve breastfeeding outcomes. Despite knowledge and health care organization efforts, the recommendations of exclusive breastfeeding through six months of life with continued breastfeeding through one year of age are not being met. The purpose of this DNP project is to determine if a structured self-study educational program on breastfeeding recommendations, the 4th Edition of the Lactation Management Self-Study Modules created by Wellstart Internationalâ˘, provided to hospital nurses on a maternity unit in Central, New York with a Level One nursery, will improve nursing knowledge of appropriate breastfeeding practices, decrease variations in breastfeeding education provided to patients, and improve breastfeeding outcomes for the facility. The research study used a quasi-experimental design to determine how an educational program provided to hospital nurses impacts both their knowledge of breastfeeding as well as the breastfeeding outcomes for the hospital. This DNP project, along with the growing body of literature, supports the need for continued provision of education related to breastfeeding among nurses in direct care of breastfeeding mothers, and expresses a need for further research on this topic to optimize breastfeeding outcomes worldwide
Hypoconstrained Jammed Packings of Nonspherical Hard Particles: Ellipses and Ellipsoids
Continuing on recent computational and experimental work on jammed packings
of hard ellipsoids [Donev et al., Science, vol. 303, 990-993] we consider
jamming in packings of smooth strictly convex nonspherical hard particles. We
explain why the isocounting conjecture, which states that for large disordered
jammed packings the average contact number per particle is twice the number of
degrees of freedom per particle (\bar{Z}=2d_{f}), does not apply to
nonspherical particles. We develop first- and second-order conditions for
jamming, and demonstrate that packings of nonspherical particles can be jammed
even though they are hypoconstrained (\bar{Z}<2d_{f}). We apply an algorithm
using these conditions to computer-generated hypoconstrained ellipsoid and
ellipse packings and demonstrate that our algorithm does produce jammed
packings, even close to the sphere point. We also consider packings that are
nearly jammed and draw connections to packings of deformable (but stiff)
particles. Finally, we consider the jamming conditions for nearly spherical
particles and explain quantitatively the behavior we observe in the vicinity of
the sphere point.Comment: 33 pages, third revisio
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