3,289 research outputs found
Antimatter production in proton-proton and heavy-ion collisions at ultrarelativistic energies
One of the striking features of particle production at high beam energies is
the near equal abundance of matter and antimatter in the central rapidity
region. In this paper we study how this symmetry is reached as the beam energy
is increased. In particular, we quantify explicitly the energy dependence of
the approach to matter/antimatter symmetry in proton-proton and in heavy-ion
collisions. Expectations are presented also for the production of more complex
forms of antimatter like antihypernuclei.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure
Quantifying the Energetics and Length Scales of Carbon Segregation to Fe Symmetric Tilt Grain Boundaries Using Atomistic Simulations
Segregation of impurities to grain boundaries plays an important role in both
the stability and macroscopic behavior of polycrystalline materials. The
research objective in this work is to better characterize the energetics and
length scales involved with the process of solute and impurity segregation to
grain boundaries. Molecular dynamics simulations are used to calculate the
segregation energies for carbon within multiple grain boundary sites over a
database of 125 symmetric tilt grain boundaries in Fe. The simulation results
show that the majority of atomic sites near the grain boundary have segregation
energies lower than in the bulk. Moreover, depending on the boundary, the
segregation energies approach the bulk value approximately 5-12 \AA\ away from
the center of the grain boundary, providing an energetic length scale for
carbon segregation. A subsequent data reduction and statistical representation
of this dataset provides critical information such as about the mean
segregation energy and the associated energy distributions for carbon atoms as
a function of distance from the grain boundary, which quantitatively informs
higher scale models with energetics and length scales necessary for capturing
the segregation behavior of impurities in Fe. The significance of this research
is the development of a methodology capable of ascertaining segregation
energies over a wide range of grain boundary character (typical of that
observed in polycrystalline materials), which herein has been applied to carbon
segregation in a specific class of grain boundaries in iron
Breaking quantum linearity: constraints from human perception and cosmological implications
Resolving the tension between quantum superpositions and the uniqueness of
the classical world is a major open problem. One possibility, which is
extensively explored both theoretically and experimentally, is that quantum
linearity breaks above a given scale. Theoretically, this possibility is
predicted by collapse models. They provide quantitative information on where
violations of the superposition principle become manifest. Here we show that
the lower bound on the collapse parameter lambda, coming from the analysis of
the human visual process, is ~ 7 +/- 2 orders of magnitude stronger than the
original bound, in agreement with more recent analysis. This implies that the
collapse becomes effective with systems containing ~ 10^4 - 10^5 nucleons, and
thus falls within the range of testability with present-day technology. We also
compare the spectrum of the collapsing field with those of known cosmological
fields, showing that a typical cosmological random field can yield an efficient
wave function collapse.Comment: 13 pages, LaTeX, 3 figure
Current challenges of implementing anthropogenic land-use and land-cover change in models contributing to climate change assessments
This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from European Geosciences Union (EGU) via the DOI in this record.Land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) represents one of the key drivers of global environmental change. However, the processes and drivers of anthropogenic land-use activity are still overly simplistically implemented in terrestrial biosphere models (TBMs). The published results of these models are used in major assessments of processes and impacts of global environmental change, such as the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Fully coupled models of climate, land use and biogeochemical cycles to explore land use-climate interactions across spatial scales are currently not available. Instead, information on land use is provided as exogenous data from the land-use change modules of integrated assessment models (IAMs) to TBMs. In this article, we discuss, based on literature review and illustrative analysis of empirical and modeled LULCC data, three major challenges of this current LULCC representation and their implications for land use-climate interaction studies: (I) provision of consistent, harmonized, land-use time series spanning from historical reconstructions to future projections while accounting for uncertainties associated with different land-use modeling approaches, (II) accounting for sub-grid processes and bidirectional changes (gross changes) across spatial scales, and (III) the allocation strategy of independent land-use data at the grid cell level in TBMs. We discuss the factors that hamper the development of improved land-use representation, which sufficiently accounts for uncertainties in the land-use modeling process. We propose that LULCC data-provider and user communities should engage in the joint development and evaluation of enhanced LULCC time series, which account for the diversity of LULCC modeling and increasingly include empirically based information about sub-grid processes and land-use transition trajectories, to improve the representation of land use in TBMs. Moreover, we suggest concentrating on the development of integrated modeling frameworks that may provide further understanding of possible land-climate-society feedbacks.The research in this paper has been supported by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh
Framework Programme project LUC4C (Grant No. 603542), ERC grant GLOLAND (No. 311819) and BiodivERsA project TALE (No. 832.14.006) funded by the Dutch National Science Foundation (NWO). This research contributes to the Global
Land Project (www.globallandproject.org). This is paper number 26 of the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research
Transnational social capital: the socio‐spatialities of civil society
Civil society remains a contested concept, but one that is widely embedded in global development processes. Transnationalism within civil society scholarship is often described dichotomously, either through hierarchical dependency relations or as a more amorphous networked global civil society. These two contrasting spatial imaginaries produce very particular ideas about how transnational relations contribute to civil society. Drawing on empirical material from research with civil society organizations in Barbados and Grenada, in this article I contend that civil society groups use forms of transnational social capital in their work. This does not, however, resonate with the horizontal relations associated with grassroots globalization or vertical chains of dependence. These social relations are imbued with power and agency and are entangled in situated historical, geographical and personal contexts. I conclude that the diverse transnational social relations that are part of civil society activity offer hope and possibilities for continued civil society action in these unexpected spatial arrangements
Adaptive response and enlargement of dynamic range
Many membrane channels and receptors exhibit adaptive, or desensitized,
response to a strong sustained input stimulus, often supported by protein
activity-dependent inactivation. Adaptive response is thought to be related to
various cellular functions such as homeostasis and enlargement of dynamic range
by background compensation. Here we study the quantitative relation between
adaptive response and background compensation within a modeling framework. We
show that any particular type of adaptive response is neither sufficient nor
necessary for adaptive enlargement of dynamic range. In particular a precise
adaptive response, where system activity is maintained at a constant level at
steady state, does not ensure a large dynamic range neither in input signal nor
in system output. A general mechanism for input dynamic range enlargement can
come about from the activity-dependent modulation of protein responsiveness by
multiple biochemical modification, regardless of the type of adaptive response
it induces. Therefore hierarchical biochemical processes such as methylation
and phosphorylation are natural candidates to induce this property in signaling
systems.Comment: Corrected typos, minor text revision
Decay of correlations for maps with uniformly contracting fibers and logarithm law for singular hyperbolic attractors
We consider two dimensional maps preserving a foliation which is uniformly
contracting and a one dimensional associated quotient map having exponential
convergence to equilibrium (iterates of Lebesgue measure converge exponentially
fast to physical measure). We prove that these maps have exponential decay of
correlations over a large class of observables. We use this result to deduce
exponential decay of correlations for the Poincare maps of a large class of
singular hyperbolic flows. From this we deduce logarithm laws for these flows.Comment: 39 pages; 03 figures; proof of Theorem 1 corrected; many typos
corrected; improvements on the statements and comments suggested by a
referee. Keywords: singular flows, singular-hyperbolic attractor, exponential
decay of correlations, exact dimensionality, logarithm la
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