1,938 research outputs found
Physical rehabilitation for critical illness myopathy and neuropathy (Protocol)
Protocol for a review - no abstract
The complex scaling behavior of non--conserved self--organized critical systems
The Olami--Feder--Christensen earthquake model is often considered the
prototype dissipative self--organized critical model. It is shown that the size
distribution of events in this model results from a complex interplay of
several different phenomena, including limited floating--point precision.
Parallels between the dynamics of synchronized regions and those of a system
with periodic boundary conditions are pointed out, and the asymptotic avalanche
size distribution is conjectured to be dominated by avalanches of size one,
with the weight of larger avalanches converging towards zero as the system size
increases.Comment: 4 pages revtex4, 5 figure
Phase-slip avalanches in the superflow of He through arrays of nanopores
Recent experiments by Sato et al. [1] have explored the dynamics of He
superflow through an array of nanopores. These experiments have found that, as
the temperature is lowered, phase-slippage in the pores changes its character,
from synchronous to asynchronous. Inspired by these experiments, we construct a
model to address the characteristics of phase-slippage in superflow through
nanopore arrays. We focus on the low-temperature regime, in which the
current-phase relation for a single pore is linear, and thermal fluctuations
may be neglected. Our model incorporates two basic ingredients: (1) each pore
has its own random value of critical velocity (due, e.g., to atomic-scale
imperfections), and (2) an effective inter-pore coupling, mediated through the
bulk superfluid. The inter-pore coupling tends to cause neighbours of a pore
that has already phase-slipped also to phase-slip; this process may cascade,
creating an avalanche of synchronously slipping phases. As the temperature is
lowered, the distribution of critical velocities is expected to effectively
broaden, owing to the reduction in the superfluid healing length, leading to a
loss of synchronicity in phase-slippage. Furthermore, we find that competition
between the strength of the disorder in the critical velocities and the
strength of the inter-pore interaction leads to a phase transition between
non-avalanching and avalanching regimes of phase-slippage.
[1] Sato, Y., Hoskinson, E. Packard, R. E. cond-mat/0605660.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure
Relating quanta conservation and compartmental epidemiological models of airborne disease outbreaks in buildings
We investigate the underlying assumptions and limits of applicability of several documented models for outbreaks of airborne disease inside buildings by showing how they may each be regarded as special cases of a system of equations which combines quanta conservation and compartmental epidemiological modelling. We investigate the behaviour of this system analytically, gaining insight to its behaviour at large time. We then investigate the characteristic timescales of an indoor outbreak, showing how the dilution rate of the space, and the quanta generation rate, incubation rate and removal rate associated with the illness may be used to predict the evolution of an outbreak over time, and may also be used to predict the relative performances of other indoor airborne outbreak models. The model is compared to a more commonly used model, in which it is assumed the environmental concentration of infectious aerosols adheres to a quasi-steady-state, so that the the dimensionless quanta concentration is equal to the the infectious fraction. The model presented here is shown to approach this limit exponentially to within an interval defined by the incubation and removal rates. This may be used to predict the maximum extent to which a case will deviate from the quasi steady state condition
A spring-block model for Barkhausen noise
A simple mechanical spring-block model is introduced for studying
magnetization phenomena and in particularly the Barkhausen noise. The model
captures and reproduces the accepted microscopic picture of domain wall
movement and pinning. Computer simulations suggest that this model is able to
reproduce the main characteristics of hysteresis loops and Barkhausen jumps. In
the thermodynamic limit the statistics of the obtained Barkhausen jumps follows
several scaling laws, in qualitative agreement with the experimental results.
The simplicity of the model and the invoked mechanical analogies makes it
attractive for computer simulations and pedagogical purposes.Comment: Revtex, 8 pages, 6 figure
Network of recurrent events for the Olami-Feder-Christensen model
We numerically study the dynamics of a discrete spring-block model introduced
by Olami, Feder and Christensen (OFC) to mimic earthquakes and investigate to
which extent this simple model is able to reproduce the observed spatiotemporal
clustering of seismicty. Following a recently proposed method to characterize
such clustering by networks of recurrent events [Geophys. Res. Lett. {\bf 33},
L1304, 2006], we find that for synthetic catalogs generated by the OFC model
these networks have many non-trivial statistical properties. This includes
characteristic degree distributions -- very similar to what has been observed
for real seismicity. There are, however, also significant differences between
the OFC model and earthquake catalogs indicating that this simple model is
insufficient to account for certain aspects of the spatiotemporal clustering of
seismicity.Comment: 11 pages, 16 figure
Asperity characteristics of the Olami-Feder-Christensen model of earthquakes
Properties of the Olami-Feder-Christensen (OFC) model of earthquakes are
studied by numerical simulations. The previous study indicated that the model
exhibits ``asperity''-like phenomena, {\it i.e.}, the same region ruptures many
times near periodically [T.Kotani {\it et al}, Phys. Rev. E {\bf 77}, 010102
(2008)]. Such periodic or characteristic features apparently coexist with
power-law-like critical features, {\it e.g.}, the Gutenberg-Richter law
observed in the size distribution. In order to clarify the origin and the
nature of the asperity-like phenomena, we investigate here the properties of
the OFC model with emphasis on its stress distribution. It is found that the
asperity formation is accompanied by self-organization of the highly
concentrated stress state. Such stress organization naturally provides the
mechanism underlying our observation that a series of asperity events repeat
with a common epicenter site and with a common period solely determined by the
transmission parameter of the model. Asperity events tend to cluster both in
time and in space
Simulation study of spatio-temporal correlations of earthquakes as a stick-slip frictional instability
Spatio-temporal correlations of earthquakes are studied numerically on the
basis of the one-dimensional spring-block (Burridge-Knopoff) model. As large
events approach, the frequency of smaller events gradually increases, while,
just before the mainshock, it is dramatically suppressed in a close vicinity of
the epicenter of the upcoming mainshock, a phenomenon closely resembling the
``Mogi doughnut'
Self-organized critical earthquake model with moving boundary
A globally driven self-organized critical model of earthquakes with
conservative dynamics has been studied. An open but moving boundary condition
has been used so that the origin (epicenter) of every avalanche (earthquake) is
at the center of the boundary. As a result, all avalanches grow in equivalent
conditions and the avalanche size distribution obeys finite size scaling
excellent. Though the recurrence time distribution of the time series of
avalanche sizes obeys well both the scaling forms recently observed in analysis
of the real data of earthquakes, it is found that the scaling function decays
only exponentially in contrast to a generalized gamma distribution observed in
the real data analysis. The non-conservative version of the model shows
periodicity even with open boundary.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, accepted version in EPJ
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