951 research outputs found
Where to go in the near future: diverging perspectives on online public service delivery
Although the electronic government is under heavy development, a clear vision doesn’t seem to exist. In this study 20 interviews among leaders in the field of e-government in the Netherlands resulted in different perspectives on the future of electronic public service delivery. The interviews revealed different objectives and interpretations of the presuppositions regarding citizens’ desires. Opinions about channel approaches and ‘trigger services’ appeared to vary. Furthermore, the respondents didn’t agree on the number of contact moments between citizen and government, had different opinions about digital skills, pled for various designs of the electronic government and placed the responsibility for electronic service delivery in different hands. Conclusion is that there is a lack of concepts on how to do things. Everybody talks about eGovernment, but all have different interpretations. \u
Experimental constraints on the parameter space of the next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model at LEP 2
We search for the neutral Higgs sector of the next-to-minimal supersymmetric
standard model at LEP 2. At the tree level any experimental constraints on
cannot be set by the Higgs search at LEP 2 with = 175
GeV, whereas at LEP 2 with = 192 GeV can be set by an
experimental constraint. Furthermore the tree level parameter space of the
model can be completely explored by the Higgs search at LEP 2 with =
205 GeV. Radiative corrections both to the neutral Higgs boson masses and to
the relevant couplings for the scalar Higgs productions give large
contributions to the production cross sections of the scalar Higgs bosons at
the tree level. The tree level situation at LEP 2 with = 192 GeV as
well as with = 205 GeV can be drastically changed by these effects.
We expect that a small region of the 1-loop level parameter space of the model
via the scalar Higgs production can be explored by the Higgs search at LEP 2.Comment: 14 pages (3 figures are included
Optimisation of AWD off-road vehicle performance using visco-lock devices
A comprehensive computer model is devised for the simulation of AWD off-road vehicle dynamics. Particular attention has been paid to the modelling of various visco-lock devices, including the viscous couplings and visco-lock limited-slip differentials. These devices are represented by fully parameterised physical models which capture the torque transmission mechanism represented by various thermodynamic, hydrodynamic, structural and mechanical modules. The characteristics of these devices can easily be altered so that comparisons can be made between different types. In addition, the influence of a wide range operating conditions, vehicle design parameters and tyre characteristics can also be made over various deformable soils
Search for Small Trans-Neptunian Objects by the TAOS Project
The Taiwan-America Occultation Survey (TAOS) aims to determine the number of
small icy bodies in the outer reach of the Solar System by means of stellar
occultation. An array of 4 robotic small (D=0.5 m), wide-field (f/1.9)
telescopes have been installed at Lulin Observatory in Taiwan to simultaneously
monitor some thousand of stars for such rare occultation events. Because a
typical occultation event by a TNO a few km across will last for only a
fraction of a second, fast photometry is necessary. A special CCD readout
scheme has been devised to allow for stellar photometry taken a few times per
second. Effective analysis pipelines have been developed to process stellar
light curves and to correlate any possible flux changes among all telescopes. A
few billion photometric measurements have been collected since the routine
survey began in early 2005. Our preliminary result of a very low detection rate
suggests a deficit of small TNOs down to a few km size, consistent with the
extrapolation of some recent studies of larger (30--100 km) TNOs.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, IAU Symposium 23
The influence of seat backrest angle on perceived discomfort during exposure to vertical whole-body vibration
National and International Standards (e.g. BS 6841 and ISO 2631-1) provide methodologies for the measurement and assessment of whole-body vibration in terms of comfort and health. The EU Physical Agents (Vibration) Directive (PAVD) provides criteria by which vibration magnitudes can be assessed. However, these standards only consider upright seated (90°) and recumbent (0°) backrest angles, and do not provide guidance for semi-recumbent postures. This article reports an experimental programme that investigated the effects of backrest angle on comfort during vertical whole-body vibration. The series of experiments showed that a relationship exists between seat backrest angle, whole-body vibration frequency and perceived levels of discomfort. The recumbent position (0°) was the most uncomfortable and the semi-recumbent positions of 67.5° and 45° were the least uncomfortable. A new set of frequency weighting curves are proposed which use the same topology as the existing BS and ISO standards. These curves could be applied to those exposed to whole-body vibration in semi-recumbent postures to augment the existing standardised methods.
Practitioner Summary: Current vibration standards provide guidance for assessing exposures for seated, standing and recumbent positions, but not for semi-recumbent postures. This article reports new experimental data systematically investigating the effect of backrest angle on discomfort experienced. It demonstrates that most discomfort is caused in a recumbent posture and that least was caused in a semi-recumbent posture
Moving toward sustainable irrigation in a southern Idaho irrigation project
Private and public irrigation development projects were a fundamental part of bringing irrigation arid regions of the western U.S. The Twin Falls Canal Company in southern Idaho provides a case study of private and public irrigation development because the project was developed by private investors under the Carey Act and receives a portion of its irrigation water from Bureau of Reclamation reservoirs. The project survived initial financial struggles and waterlogged soil to focus on sustaining the production by reducing chronic furrow irrigation erosion and nutrient losses in irrigation return flow. Average sediment loss from the project was 460 kg/ha in 1970. A cooperative effort by the canal company, state and federal agencies, and farmers improved water quality by installing sediment ponds on fields, applying polyacrylamide with furrow irrigation, converting from furrow to sprinkler irrigation, and constructing water quality ponds on irrigation return flow streams. From 2006-2018, the project retained on average 165 kg/ha of sediment and 0.4 kg/ha of total phosphorus annually, which removed 13,000 Mg of sediment and 33 Mg of total phosphorus from the Snake River each year. Nitrate-N from subsurface drainage, however, was lost at 10 kg/ha each year, which is equivalent to 380 Mg of urea fertilizer from the entire project. While sediment and phosphorus concentrations in irrigation return flow have decreased, they were still greater than the irrigation water concentrations, indicating that more can be done to reduce the project’s influence on water quality in the Snake River
Screening of Dirac flavor structure in the seesaw and neutrino mixing
We consider the mechanism of screening of the Dirac flavor structure in the
context of the double seesaw mechanism. As a consequence of screening, the
structure of the light neutrino mass matrix, m_\nu, is determined essentially
by the structure of the (Majorana) mass matrix, M_S, of new super-heavy (Planck
scale) neutral fermions S. We calculate effects of the renormalization group
running in order to investigate the stability of the screening mechanism with
respect to radiative corrections. We find that screening is stable in the
supersymmetric case, whereas in the standard model it is unstable for certain
structures of M_S. The screening mechanism allows us to reconcile the
(approximate) quark-lepton symmetry and the strong difference of the mixing
patterns in the quark and lepton sectors. It opens new possibilities to explain
a quasi-degenerate neutrino mass spectrum, special ``neutrino'' symmetries and
quark-lepton complementarity. Screening can emerge from certain flavor
symmetries or Grand Unification.Comment: 27 pages, 3 figures; references added, discussion of the E6 model
modifie
Morse theory of the moment map for representations of quivers
The results of this paper concern the Morse theory of the norm-square of the
moment map on the space of representations of a quiver. We show that the
gradient flow of this function converges, and that the Morse stratification
induced by the gradient flow co-incides with the Harder-Narasimhan
stratification from algebraic geometry. Moreover, the limit of the gradient
flow is isomorphic to the graded object of the
Harder-Narasimhan-Jordan-H\"older filtration associated to the initial
conditions for the flow. With a view towards applications to Nakajima quiver
varieties we construct explicit local co-ordinates around the Morse strata and
(under a technical hypothesis on the stability parameter) describe the negative
normal space to the critical sets. Finally, we observe that the usual Kirwan
surjectivity theorems in rational cohomology and integral K-theory carry over
to this non-compact setting, and that these theorems generalize to certain
equivariant contexts.Comment: 48 pages, small revisions from previous version based on referee's
comments. To appear in Geometriae Dedicat
Reconstructing the two right-handed neutrino model
In this paper we propose a low-energy parametrization of the two right-handed
neutrino model, and discuss the prospects to determine experimentally these
parameters in supersymmetric scenarios. In addition, we present exact formulas
to reconstruct the high-energy leptonic superpotential in terms of the
low-energy observables. We also discuss limits of the three right-handed
neutrino model where this procedure applies.Comment: 28 pages, 4 figures. Typos corrected, references adde
Optimal topological simplification of discrete functions on surfaces
We solve the problem of minimizing the number of critical points among all
functions on a surface within a prescribed distance {\delta} from a given input
function. The result is achieved by establishing a connection between discrete
Morse theory and persistent homology. Our method completely removes homological
noise with persistence less than 2{\delta}, constructively proving the
tightness of a lower bound on the number of critical points given by the
stability theorem of persistent homology in dimension two for any input
function. We also show that an optimal solution can be computed in linear time
after persistence pairs have been computed.Comment: 27 pages, 8 figure
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