From Soft Walls to Infrared Branes

Five dimensional warped spaces with soft walls are generalizations of the standard Randall-Sundrum compactifications, where instead of an infrared brane one has a curvature singularity (with vanishing warp factor) at finite proper distance in the bulk. We project the physics near the singularity onto a hypersurface located a small distance away from it in the bulk. This results in a completely equivalent description of the soft wall in terms of an effective infrared brane, hiding any singular point. We perform explicitly this calculation for two classes of soft wall backgrounds used in the literature. The procedure has several advantages. It separates in a clean way the physics of the soft wall from the physics of the five dimensional bulk, facilitating a more direct comparison with standard two-brane warped compactifications. Moreover, consistent soft walls show a sort of universal behavior near the singularity which is reflected in the effective brane Lagrangian. Thirdly, for many purposes, a good approximation is obtained by assuming the bulk background away from the singularity to be the usual Randall-Sundrum metric, thus making the soft wall backgrounds better analytically tractable. We check the validity of this procedure by calculating the spectrum of bulk fields and comparing it to the exact result, finding very good agreement.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figures, v2: subsection on IR brane potentials and appendix on fermions added, version to appear in PR

Computational modelling of the design conversation as a sequence of situated acts

This paper describes the design conversation as a sequence of situated acts. It distinguishes the research questions that require attention for the computation of a more situated design conversation; in terms of design actions and design interpretations. It presents an architecture for 'more situated' systems and describes some examples of implementation. The limitations and complexities of what has been achieved are identified

CHRONOBIOLOGY IN DIVERGENT THINKING: HOW DESIGNERS ARE AFFECTED BY TIME OF DAY

Chronobiology is the science that studies the role of time in biology. The study of time in human bodies revealed the presence of internal rhythms related to the time of day. Considering divergent thinking as one of the essential cognitive activities of conceptual design, this paper presents the results of investigating the effect of time of day on designers’ brain activity while performing divergent thinking tasks. An experiment was run with a revised Alternative Uses Task, measuring brain activity with an electroencephalogram (EEG) device. Students with different educational backgrounds were recruited for this experiment, including engineering and industrial design students, to determine if the time of day affected them differently. The brain waves and related power results show significant differences with respect to the time of day and educational background. The differences are particularly evident considering the interaction of these factors. Further studies are required to understand the relationship between the differences detected and the designers’ behavioral performance and to identify which time of day is most effective for idea-generation activities for designers

Effect of Dietary Consumption Pattern, Nutrition Status, and Hemoglobin Level on Academic Achievement among High School Students in Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara

Background: A healthy diet has been reported to be associated with physical development, cognition and academic performance, and personality during adolescence. This study aimed to estimate the effects of dietary consumption pat¬tern, nutrition status, and hemoglobin level on academic achievement among high school students in Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara. Subjects and Method: This was a cross-sectional study conducted at Senior High School, Kupang district, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia, from December 2014 to March 2015. A total sample of 206 students was selected for this study by simple random sampling. The dependent variable was academic achievement. The independent variables were type of food consumed, food consumed rate, protein intake rate, nutritional status, and hemoglobin level. The data were collected by interview. The data were analyzed by a multiple linear regression. Results: Academic achievement increased with hemoglobin level (b=1.27; 95%CI= 0.45 to 2.08; p=0.02), energy (b=0.01; 95%CI= 0.003 to 0.01; p<0.001), pro¬tein intake (b=0.09; 95%CI= 0.02 to 0.15; p=0.007), nutritional status (b=0.47; 95%CI= 0.15 to 0.78; p=0.004). Conclusion: Academic achievement increases with hemoglobin level, energy, protein intake, and nutritional status. Keywords: academic achievement, hemoglobin level, energy, protein intake, and nutritional status