7,323 research outputs found
Classical Scalar Fields and the Generalized Second Law
It has been shown that classical non-minimally coupled scalar fields can
violate all of the standard energy conditions in general relativity. Violations
of the null and averaged null energy conditions obtainable with such fields
have been suggested as possible exotic matter candidates required for the
maintenance of traversable wormholes. In this paper, we explore the possibility
that if such fields exist, they might be used to produce large negative energy
fluxes and macroscopic violations of the generalized second law (GSL) of
thermodynamics. We find that it appears to be very easy to produce large
magnitude negative energy fluxes in flat spacetime. However we also find,
somewhat surprisingly, that these same types of fluxes injected into a black
hole do {\it not} produce violations of the GSL. This is true even in cases
where the flux results in a decrease in the area of the horizon. We demonstrate
that two effects are responsible for the rescue of the GSL: the acausal
behavior of the horizon and the modification of the usual black hole entropy
formula by an additional term which depends on the scalar field.Comment: 25 pages, 2 figures; paper substantially rewritten, major changes in
the conclusion
Reading, Trauma and Literary Caregiving 1914-1918: Helen Mary Gaskell and the War Library
This article is about the relationship between reading, trauma and responsive literary caregiving in Britain during the First World War. Its analysis of two little-known documents describing the history of the War Library, begun by Helen Mary Gaskell in 1914, exposes a gap in the scholarship of war-time reading; generates a new narrative of "how," "when," and "why" books went to war; and foregrounds gender in its analysis of the historiography. The Library of Congress's T. W. Koch discovered Gaskell's ground-breaking work in 1917 and reported its successes to the American Library Association. The British Times also covered Gaskell's library, yet researchers working on reading during the war have routinely neglected her distinct model and method, skewing the research base on war-time reading and its association with trauma and caregiving. In the article's second half, a literary case study of a popular war novel demonstrates the extent of the "bitter cry for books." The success of Gaskell's intervention is examined alongside H. G. Wells's representation of textual healing. Reading is shown to offer sick, traumatized and recovering combatants emotional and psychological caregiving in ways that she could not always have predicted and that are not visible in the literary/historical record
Degeneracy Algorithm for Random Magnets
It has been known for a long time that the ground state problem of random
magnets, e.g. random field Ising model (RFIM), can be mapped onto the
max-flow/min-cut problem of transportation networks. I build on this approach,
relying on the concept of residual graph, and design an algorithm that I prove
to be exact for finding all the minimum cuts, i.e. the ground state degeneracy
of these systems. I demonstrate that this algorithm is also relevant for the
study of the ground state properties of the dilute Ising antiferromagnet in a
constant field (DAFF) and interfaces in random bond magnets.Comment: 17 pages(Revtex), 8 Postscript figures(5color) to appear in Phys.
Rev. E 58, December 1st (1998
CWRML: representing crop wild relative conservation and use data in XML
Background
Crop wild relatives are wild species that are closely related to crops. They are valuable as potential gene donors for crop improvement and may help to ensure food security for the future. However, they are becoming increasingly threatened in the wild and are inadequately conserved, both in situ and ex situ. Information about the conservation status and utilisation potential of crop wild relatives is diverse and dispersed, and no single agreed standard exists for representing such information; yet, this information is vital to ensure these species are effectively conserved and utilised. The European Community-funded project, European Crop Wild Relative Diversity Assessment and Conservation Forum, determined the minimum information requirements for the conservation and utilisation of crop wild relatives and created the Crop Wild Relative Information System, incorporating an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) schema to aid data sharing and exchange.
Results
Crop Wild Relative Markup Language (CWRML) was developed to represent the data necessary for crop wild relative conservation and ensure that they can be effectively utilised for crop improvement. The schema partitions data into taxon-, site-, and population-specific elements, to allow for integration with other more general conservation biology schemata which may emerge as accepted standards in the future. These elements are composed of sub-elements, which are structured in order to facilitate the use of the schema in a variety of crop wild relative conservation and use contexts. Pre-existing standards for data representation in conservation biology were reviewed and incorporated into the schema as restrictions on element data contents, where appropriate.
Conclusion
CWRML provides a flexible data communication format for representing in situ and ex situ conservation status of individual taxa as well as their utilisation potential. The development of the schema highlights a number of instances where additional standards-development may be valuable, particularly with regard to the representation of population-specific data and utilisation potential. As crop wild relatives are intrinsically no different to other wild plant species there is potential for the inclusion of CWRML data elements in the emerging standards for representation of biodiversity data
Fluoromycobacteriophages for rapid, specific, and sensitive antibiotic susceptibility testing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis
Rapid antibiotic susceptibility testing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis is of paramount importance as multiple- and extensively- drug resistant strains of M. tuberculosis emerge and spread. We describe here a virus-based assay in which fluoromycobacteriophages are used to deliver a GFP or ZsYellow fluorescent marker gene to M. tuberculosis, which can then be monitored by fluorescent detection approaches including fluorescent microscopy and flow cytometry. Pre-clinical evaluations show that addition of either Rifampicin or Streptomycin at the time of phage addition obliterates fluorescence in susceptible cells but not in isogenic resistant bacteria enabling drug sensitivity determination in less than 24 hours. Detection requires no substrate addition, fewer than 100 cells can be identified, and resistant bacteria can be detected within mixed populations. Fluorescence withstands fixation by paraformaldehyde providing enhanced biosafety for testing MDR-TB and XDR-TB infections. © 2009 Piuri et al
Superinflation, quintessence, and nonsingular cosmologies
The dynamics of a universe dominated by a self-interacting nonminimally
coupled scalar field are considered. The structure of the phase space and
complete phase portraits are given. New dynamical behaviors include
superinflation (), avoidance of big bang singularities through
classical birth of the universe, and spontaneous entry into and exit from
inflation. This model is promising for describing quintessence as a
nonminimally coupled scalar field.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure
Fluctuations of the vacuum energy density of quantum fields in curved spacetime via generalized zeta functions
For quantum fields on a curved spacetime with an Euclidean section, we derive
a general expression for the stress energy tensor two-point function in terms
of the effective action. The renormalized two-point function is given in terms
of the second variation of the Mellin transform of the trace of the heat kernel
for the quantum fields. For systems for which a spectral decomposition of the
wave opearator is possible, we give an exact expression for this two-point
function. Explicit examples of the variance to the mean ratio of the vacuum energy density of a
massless scalar field are computed for the spatial topologies of and , with results of , and
respectively. The large variance signifies the importance
of quantum fluctuations and has important implications for the validity of
semiclassical gravity theories at sub-Planckian scales. The method presented
here can facilitate the calculation of stress-energy fluctuations for quantum
fields useful for the analysis of fluctuation effects and critical phenomena in
problems ranging from atom optics and mesoscopic physics to early universe and
black hole physics.Comment: Uses revte
On the Weyl - Eddington - Einstein affine gravity in the context of modern cosmology
We propose new models of an `affine' theory of gravity in -dimensional
space-times with symmetric connections. They are based on ideas of Weyl,
Eddington and Einstein and, in particular, on Einstein's proposal to specify
the space - time geometry by use of the Hamilton principle. More specifically,
the connection coefficients are derived by varying a `geometric' Lagrangian
that is supposed to be an arbitrary function of the generalized (non-symmetric)
Ricci curvature tensor (and, possibly, of other fundamental tensors) expressed
in terms of the connection coefficients regarded as independent variables. In
addition to the standard Einstein gravity, such a theory predicts dark energy
(the cosmological constant, in the first approximation), a neutral massive (or,
tachyonic) vector field, and massive (or, tachyonic) scalar fields. These
fields couple only to gravity and may generate dark matter and/or inflation.
The masses (real or imaginary) have geometric origin and one cannot avoid their
appearance in any concrete model. Further details of the theory - such as the
nature of the vector and scalar fields that can describe massive particles,
tachyons, or even `phantoms' - depend on the concrete choice of the geometric
Lagrangian. In `natural' geometric theories, which are discussed here, dark
energy is also unavoidable. Main parameters - mass, cosmological constant,
possible dimensionless constants - cannot be predicted, but, in the framework
of modern `multiverse' ideology, this is rather a virtue than a drawback of the
theory. To better understand possible applications of the theory we discuss
some further extensions of the affine models and analyze in more detail
approximate (`physical') Lagrangians that can be applied to cosmology of the
early Universe.Comment: 15 pages; a few misprints corrected, one footnote removed and two
added, the formulae and results unchanged but the text somewhat edited, esp.
in Sections 4,5; the reference to the RFBR grant corrected
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