9,023 research outputs found
Electron Cooling System Development
This research was sponsored by the National Science Foundation Grant NSF PHY-931478
Concordant cues in faces and voices: testing the backup signal hypothesis
Information from faces and voices combines to provide multimodal signals about a person. Faces and voices may offer redundant, overlapping (backup signals), or complementary information (multiple messages). This article reports two experiments which investigated the extent to which faces and voices deliver concordant information about dimensions of fitness and quality. In Experiment 1, participants rated faces and voices on scales for masculinity/femininity, age, health, height, and weight. The results showed that people make similar judgments from faces and voices, with particularly strong correlations for masculinity/femininity, health, and height. If, as these results suggest, faces and voices constitute backup signals for various dimensions, it is hypothetically possible that people would be able to accurately match novel faces and voices for identity. However, previous investigations into novel face–voice matching offer contradictory results. In Experiment 2, participants saw a face and heard a voice and were required to decide whether the face and voice belonged to the same person. Matching accuracy was significantly above chance level, suggesting that judgments made independently from faces and voices are sufficiently similar that people can match the two. Both sets of results were analyzed using multilevel modeling and are interpreted as being consistent with the backup signal hypothesis
Galactic Cosmic Rays from Supernova Remnants: II Shock Acceleration of Gas and Dust
This is the second paper (the first was astro-ph/9704267) of a series
analysing the Galactic Cosmic Ray (GCR) composition and origin. In this we
present a quantitative model of GCR origin and acceleration based on the
acceleration of a mixture of interstellar and/or circumstellar gas and dust by
supernova remnant blast waves. We present results from a nonlinear shock model
which includes (i) the direct acceleration of interstellar gas-phase ions, (ii)
a simplified model for the direct acceleration of weakly charged dust grains to
energies of order 100keV/amu simultaneously with the gas ions, (iii) frictional
energy losses of the grains colliding with the gas, (iv) sputtering of ions of
refractory elements from the accelerated grains and (v) the further shock
acceleration of the sputtered ions to cosmic ray energies. The calculated GCR
composition and spectra are in good agreement with observations.Comment: to appear in ApJ, 51 pages, LaTeX with AAS macros, 9 postscript
figures, also available from ftp://wonka.physics.ncsu.edu/pub/elliso
Clustering of vacancy defects in high-purity semi-insulating SiC
Positron lifetime spectroscopy was used to study native vacancy defects in
semi-insulating silicon carbide. The material is shown to contain (i) vacancy
clusters consisting of 4--5 missing atoms and (ii) Si vacancy related
negatively charged defects. The total open volume bound to the clusters
anticorrelates with the electrical resistivity both in as-grown and annealed
material. Our results suggest that Si vacancy related complexes compensate
electrically the as-grown material, but migrate to increase the size of the
clusters during annealing, leading to loss of resistivity.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure
Synchronization and Control in Intrinsic and Designed Computation: An Information-Theoretic Analysis of Competing Models of Stochastic Computation
We adapt tools from information theory to analyze how an observer comes to
synchronize with the hidden states of a finitary, stationary stochastic
process. We show that synchronization is determined by both the process's
internal organization and by an observer's model of it. We analyze these
components using the convergence of state-block and block-state entropies,
comparing them to the previously known convergence properties of the Shannon
block entropy. Along the way, we introduce a hierarchy of information
quantifiers as derivatives and integrals of these entropies, which parallels a
similar hierarchy introduced for block entropy. We also draw out the duality
between synchronization properties and a process's controllability. The tools
lead to a new classification of a process's alternative representations in
terms of minimality, synchronizability, and unifilarity.Comment: 25 pages, 13 figures, 1 tabl
Particle acceleration
Data is compiled from Solar Maximum Mission and Hinothori satellites, particle detectors in several satellites, ground based instruments, and balloon flights in order to answer fundamental questions relating to: (1) the requirements for the coronal magnetic field structure in the vicinity of the energization source; (2) the height (above the photosphere) of the energization source; (3) the time of energization; (4) transistion between coronal heating and flares; (5) evidence for purely thermal, purely nonthermal and hybrid type flares; (6) the time characteristics of the energization source; (7) whether every flare accelerates protons; (8) the location of the interaction site of the ions and relativistic electrons; (9) the energy spectra for ions and relativistic electrons; (10) the relationship between particles at the Sun and interplanetary space; (11) evidence for more than one acceleration mechanism; (12) whether there is single mechanism that will accelerate particles to all energies and also heat the plasma; and (13) how fast the existing mechanisms accelerate electrons up to several MeV and ions to 1 GeV
Dust-driven Dynamos in Accretion Disks
Magnetically driven astrophysical jets are related to accretion and involve
toroidal magnetic field pressure inflating poloidal magnetic field flux
surfaces. Examination of particle motion in combined gravitational and magnetic
fields shows that these astrophysical jet toroidal and poloidal magnetic fields
can be powered by the gravitational energy liberated by accreting dust grains
that have become positively charged by emitting photo-electrons. Because a dust
grain experiences magnetic forces after becoming charged, but not before,
charging can cause irreversible trapping of the grain so dust accretion is a
consequence of charging. Furthermore, charging causes canonical angular
momentum to replace mechanical angular momentum as the relevant constant of the
motion. The resulting effective potential has three distinct classes of
accreting particles distinguished by canonical angular momentum, namely (i)
"cyclotron-orbit", (ii) "Speiser-orbit", and (iii) "zero canonical angular
momentum" particles. Electrons and ions are of class (i) but depending on mass
and initial orbit inclination, dust grains can be of any class. Light-weight
dust grains develop class (i) orbits such that the grains are confined to
nested poloidal flux surfaces, whereas grains with a critical weight such that
they experience comparable gravitational and magnetic forces can develop class
(ii) or class (iii) orbits, respectively producing poloidal and toroidal field
dynamos.Comment: 70 pages, 16 figure
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