21,842 research outputs found
An Analytical Construction of the SRB Measures for Baker-type Maps
For a class of dynamical systems, called the axiom-A systems, Sinai, Ruelle
and Bowen showed the existence of an invariant measure (SRB measure) weakly
attracting the temporal average of any initial distribution that is absolutely
continuous with respect to the Lebesgue measure. Recently, the SRB measures
were found to be related to the nonequilibrium stationary state distribution
functions for thermostated or open systems. Inspite of the importance of these
SRB measures, it is difficult to handle them analytically because they are
often singular functions. In this article, for three kinds of Baker-type maps,
the SRB measures are analytically constructed with the aid of a functional
equation, which was proposed by de Rham in order to deal with a class of
singular functions. We first briefly review the properties of singular
functions including those of de Rham. Then, the Baker-type maps are described,
one of which is non-conservative but time reversible, the second has a
Cantor-like invariant set, and the third is a model of a simple chemical
reaction . For the second example, the
cases with and without escape are considered. For the last example, we consider
the reaction processes in a closed system and in an open system under a flux
boundary condition. In all cases, we show that the evolution equation of the
distribution functions partially integrated over the unstable direction is very
similar to de Rham's functional equation and, employing this analogy, we
explicitly construct the SRB measures.Comment: 53 pages, 10 figures, to appear in CHAO
Persistence effects in deterministic diffusion
In systems which exhibit deterministic diffusion, the gross parameter
dependence of the diffusion coefficient can often be understood in terms of
random walk models. Provided the decay of correlations is fast enough, one can
ignore memory effects and approximate the diffusion coefficient according to
dimensional arguments. By successively including the effects of one and two
steps of memory on this approximation, we examine the effects of
``persistence'' on the diffusion coefficients of extended two-dimensional
billiard tables and show how to properly account for these effects, using walks
in which a particle undergoes jumps in different directions with probabilities
that depend on where they came from.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure
Geometric approach to Fletcher's ideal penalty function
Original article can be found at: www.springerlink.com Copyright Springer. [Originally produced as UH Technical Report 280, 1993]In this note, we derive a geometric formulation of an ideal penalty function for equality constrained problems. This differentiable penalty function requires no parameter estimation or adjustment, has numerical conditioning similar to that of the target function from which it is constructed, and also has the desirable property that the strict second-order constrained minima of the target function are precisely those strict second-order unconstrained minima of the penalty function which satisfy the constraints. Such a penalty function can be used to establish termination properties for algorithms which avoid ill-conditioned steps. Numerical values for the penalty function and its derivatives can be calculated efficiently using automatic differentiation techniques.Peer reviewe
Inverse Cascade Regime in Shell Models of 2-Dimensional Turbulence
We consider shell models that display an inverse energy cascade similar to
2-dimensional turbulence (together with a direct cascade of an enstrophy-like
invariant). Previous attempts to construct such models ended negatively,
stating that shell models give rise to a "quasi-equilibrium" situation with
equipartition of the energy among the shells. We show analytically that the
quasi-equilibrium state predicts its own disappearance upon changing the model
parameters in favor of the establishment of an inverse cascade regime with K41
scaling. The latter regime is found where predicted, offering a useful model to
study inverse cascades.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let
Low incidence of toxoplasma infection during pregnancy and in newborns in Sweden
To estimate the burden of disease due to congenital toxoplasmosis in Sweden the incidence of primary infections during pregnancy and birth prevalence of congenital toxoplasmosis in 40978 children born in two regions in Sweden was determined. Women possibly infected during pregnancy were identified based on: 1, detection of specific IgG based on neonatal screening of the phenylketonuria (PKU) card blood spot followed by retrospective testing of stored prenatal samples to detect women who acquired infection during pregnancy and follow up of their children to 12 months; 2, detection of specific IgM on the PKU blood spot. The birth prevalence of congenital toxoplasmosis was 0·73/10000 (95% CI 0·15–2·14) (3/40978). The incidence of primary infection during pregnancy was 5·1/10000 (95% CI 2·6–8·9) susceptible pregnant women. The seroprevalence in the southern part was 25·7% and in the Stockholm area 14·0%. The incidence of infection during pregnancy was low, as the birth prevalence of congenital toxoplasmosis. Neonatal screening warrants consideration in view of the low cost and feasibility
Validating an adapted questionnaire to measure belongingness of medical students in clinical settings
Introduction: Belongingness is a key factor that influences learner development and wellbeing, but no previous research has been performed to evaluate perceived belongingness in medical students whilst on their placements.
Method: The Belongingness Scale-Clinical Placement Experience (BES-CPE) for nursing students was adapted for use with medical students. Following a face validity assessment, 490 undergraduate medical students in years three to five at a UK university were invited to participate and 302 completed the adapted questionnaire. The factor structure was explored using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) with Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and internal consistency was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha.
Results: A three-component structure was identified (Esteem, Connectedness, and Efficacy), which was aligned to the original theoretical model underpinning the scale, and the instrument had high internal consistency. Four items were discarded and the final adapted version had a total of 30.
Conclusions: The adapted BES-CPE instrument for medical students in our sample of UK undergraduate medical students had an appropriate factor structure and high internal consistency. This context-specific instrument can be used for future research as a valid instrument to measure the role of belongingness in medical education and to support developing belongingness in medical students during clinical placements
Regulating Access to Adult Content (with Privacy Preservation)
In the physical world we have well-established mechanisms for keeping children out of adult-only areas. In the virtual world this is generally replaced by self declaration. Some service providers resort to using heavy-weight identification mechanisms, judging adulthood as a side effect thereof. Collection of identification data arguably constitutes an unwarranted privacy invasion in this context, if carried out merely to perform adulthood estimation. This paper presents a mechanism that exploits the adult's more extensive exposure to public media, relying on the likelihood that they will be able to recall details if cued by a carefully chosen picture. We conducted an online study to gauge the viability of this scheme. With our prototype we were able to predict that the user was a child 99% of the time. Unfortunately the scheme also misclassified too many adults. We discuss our results and suggest directions for future research
An Army of Me: Sockpuppets in Online Discussion Communities
In online discussion communities, users can interact and share information
and opinions on a wide variety of topics. However, some users may create
multiple identities, or sockpuppets, and engage in undesired behavior by
deceiving others or manipulating discussions. In this work, we study
sockpuppetry across nine discussion communities, and show that sockpuppets
differ from ordinary users in terms of their posting behavior, linguistic
traits, as well as social network structure. Sockpuppets tend to start fewer
discussions, write shorter posts, use more personal pronouns such as "I", and
have more clustered ego-networks. Further, pairs of sockpuppets controlled by
the same individual are more likely to interact on the same discussion at the
same time than pairs of ordinary users. Our analysis suggests a taxonomy of
deceptive behavior in discussion communities. Pairs of sockpuppets can vary in
their deceptiveness, i.e., whether they pretend to be different users, or their
supportiveness, i.e., if they support arguments of other sockpuppets controlled
by the same user. We apply these findings to a series of prediction tasks,
notably, to identify whether a pair of accounts belongs to the same underlying
user or not. Altogether, this work presents a data-driven view of deception in
online discussion communities and paves the way towards the automatic detection
of sockpuppets.Comment: 26th International World Wide Web conference 2017 (WWW 2017
The Determination of Nuclear Level Densities from Experimental Information -
A novel Information Theory based method for determining the density of states
from prior information is presented. The energy dependence of the density of
states is determined from the observed number of states per energy interval and
model calculations suggest that the method is sufficiently reliable to
calculate the thermal properties of nuclei over a reasonable temperature range.Comment: 7 pages + 6 eps figures, REVTEX 3.
Primary physical education, coaches and continuing professional development
This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Sport, Education and Society, 16(4), 485 - 505, 2011, copyright @ Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13573322.2011.589645.Physical education (PE) in primary schools has traditionally been taught by qualified primary teachers. More recently, some teaching of PE in primary schools has been undertaken by coaches (mostly football coaches). These coaches hold national governing body awards but do not hold teaching qualifications. Thus, coaches may not be adequately prepared to teach PE in curriculum time. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the perceptions of a group of community-based football coaches working in primary schools for the impact of a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programme on their ability to undertake ‘specified work’ to cover PE in primary schools. The programme focused on four areas identified as important to enable coaches to cover specified work: short- and medium-term planning, pedagogy, knowledge of the curriculum and reflection. Results showed that for the majority of coaches the CPD programme had made them more aware of the importance of these four areas and had helped to develop their knowledge and ability to put this into practice in covering planning, preparation and assessment time. However, further input is still required to develop coaches’ knowledge and understanding in all four areas, but especially their curriculum knowledge, as well as their ability to put these into practice consistently. These findings are discussed in relation to the implications of employing coaches to cover the teaching of PE in primary schools and, if employed, what CPD coaches need to develop the necessary knowledge, skill and understanding for covering specified work in schools
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