672 research outputs found
The genealogy of judgement: towards a deep history of academic freedom
The classical conception of academic freedom associated with Wilhelm von Humboldt and the rise of the modern university has a quite specific cultural foundation that centres on the controversial mental faculty of 'judgement'. This article traces the roots of 'judgement' back to the Protestant Reformation, through its heyday as the signature feature of German idealism, and to its gradual loss of salience as both a philosophical and a psychological concept. This trajectory has been accompanied by a general shrinking in the scope of academic freedom from the promulgation of world-views to the offering of expert opinion
Magnetic and Mössbauer spectroscopy studies of nanocrystalline iron oxide aerogels
A sol-gel synthesis was used to produce iron oxide aerogels. These nanocrystalline aerogels have a pore-solid structure similar to silica aerogels but are composed entirely of iron oxides. Mössbauer experiments and x-ray diffraction showed that the as-prepared aerogel is an amorphous or poorly crystalline iron oxide, which crystallized as a partially oxidized magnetite during heating in argon. After further heat treatment in air, the nanocrystallites are fully converted to maghemite. The particles are superparamagnetic at high temperatures, but the magnetic properties are strongly influenced by magnetic interactions between the particles at lower temperatures
Magnetic Field Measurement with Ground State Alignment
Observational studies of magnetic fields are crucial. We introduce a process
"ground state alignment" as a new way to determine the magnetic field direction
in diffuse medium. The alignment is due to anisotropic radiation impinging on
the atom/ion. The consequence of the process is the polarization of spectral
lines resulting from scattering and absorption from aligned atomic/ionic
species with fine or hyperfine structure. The magnetic field induces precession
and realign the atom/ion and therefore the polarization of the emitted or
absorbed radiation reflects the direction of the magnetic field. The atoms get
aligned at their low levels and, as the life-time of the atoms/ions we deal
with is long, the alignment induced by anisotropic radiation is susceptible to
extremely weak magnetic fields (G). In fact,
the effects of atomic/ionic alignment were studied in the laboratory decades
ago, mostly in relation to the maser research. Recently, the atomic effect has
been already detected in observations from circumstellar medium and this is a
harbinger of future extensive magnetic field studies. A unique feature of the
atomic realignment is that they can reveal the 3D orientation of magnetic
field. In this article, we shall review the basic physical processes involved
in atomic realignment. We shall also discuss its applications to
interplanetary, circumstellar and interstellar magnetic fields. In addition,
our research reveals that the polarization of the radiation arising from the
transitions between fine and hyperfine states of the ground level can provide a
unique diagnostics of magnetic fields in the Epoch of Reionization.Comment: 30 pages, 12 figures, chapter in Lecture Notes in Physics "Magnetic
Fields in Diffuse Media". arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with
arXiv:1203.557
A local 2-approximation algorithm for the vertex cover problem
We present a distributed 2-approximation algorithm for the minimum vertex cover problem. The algorithm is deterministic, and it runs in (Δ + 1)2 synchronous communication rounds, where Δ is the maximum degree of the graph. For Δ = 3, we give a 2-approximation algorithm also for the weighted version of the problem.Peer reviewe
The Non-linear Dynamics of Meaning-Processing in Social Systems
Social order cannot be considered as a stable phenomenon because it contains
an order of reproduced expectations. When the expectations operate upon one
another, they generate a non-linear dynamics that processes meaning. Specific
meaning can be stabilized, for example, in social institutions, but all meaning
arises from a horizon of possible meanings. Using Luhmann's (1984) social
systems theory and Rosen's (1985) theory of anticipatory systems, I submit
equations for modeling the processing of meaning in inter-human communication.
First, a self-referential system can use a model of itself for the
anticipation. Under the condition of functional differentiation, the social
system can be expected to entertain a set of models; each model can also
contain a model of the other models. Two anticipatory mechanisms are then
possible: one transversal between the models, and a longitudinal one providing
the modeled systems with meaning from the perspective of hindsight. A system
containing two anticipatory mechanisms can become hyper-incursive. Without
making decisions, however, a hyper-incursive system would be overloaded with
uncertainty. Under this pressure, informed decisions tend to replace the
"natural preferences" of agents and an order of cultural expectations can
increasingly be shaped
Precision Measurement of the Proton and Deuteron Spin Structure Functions g2 and Asymmetries A2
We have measured the spin structure functions g2p and g2d and the virtual
photon asymmetries A2p and A2d over the kinematic range 0.02 < x < 0.8 and 0.7
< Q^2 < 20 GeV^2 by scattering 29.1 and 32.3 GeV longitudinally polarized
electrons from transversely polarized NH3 and 6LiD targets. Our measured g2
approximately follows the twist-2 Wandzura-Wilczek calculation. The twist-3
reduced matrix elements d2p and d2n are less than two standard deviations from
zero. The data are inconsistent with the Burkhardt-Cottingham sum rule if there
is no pathological behavior as x->0. The Efremov-Leader-Teryaev integral is
consistent with zero within our measured kinematic range. The absolute value of
A2 is significantly smaller than the sqrt[R(1+A1)/2] limit.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, 2 table
Measurement of the Proton and Deuteron Spin Structure Functions g2 and Asymmetry A2
We have measured the spin structure functions g2p and g2d and the virtual
photon asymmetries A2p and A2d over the kinematic range 0.02 < x < 0.8 and 1.0
< Q^2 < 30(GeV/c)^2 by scattering 38.8 GeV longitudinally polarized electrons
from transversely polarized NH3 and 6LiD targets.The absolute value of A2 is
significantly smaller than the sqrt{R} positivity limit over the measured
range, while g2 is consistent with the twist-2 Wandzura-Wilczek calculation. We
obtain results for the twist-3 reduced matrix elements d2p, d2d and d2n. The
Burkhardt-Cottingham sum rule integral - int(g2(x)dx) is reported for the range
0.02 < x < 0.8.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, 1 tabl
Measurements of the -Dependence of the Proton and Neutron Spin Structure Functions g1p and g1n
The structure functions g1p and g1n have been measured over the range 0.014 <
x < 0.9 and 1 < Q2 < 40 GeV2 using deep-inelastic scattering of 48 GeV
longitudinally polarized electrons from polarized protons and deuterons. We
find that the Q2 dependence of g1p (g1n) at fixed x is very similar to that of
the spin-averaged structure function F1p (F1n). From a NLO QCD fit to all
available data we find at
Q2=5 GeV2, in agreement with the Bjorken sum rule prediction of 0.182 \pm
0.005.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures. Submitted to Physics Letters
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