217 research outputs found
Is the electrostatic force between a point charge and a neutral metallic object always attractive?
We give an example of a geometry in which the electrostatic force between a
point charge and a neutral metallic object is repulsive. The example consists
of a point charge centered above a thin metallic hemisphere, positioned concave
up. We show that this geometry has a repulsive regime using both a simple
analytical argument and an exact calculation for an analogous two-dimensional
geometry. Analogues of this geometry-induced repulsion can appear in many other
contexts, including Casimir systems.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure
Solid 4He and the Supersolid Phase: from Theoretical Speculation to the Discovery of a New State of Matter? A Review of the Past and Present Status of Research
The possibility of a supersolid state of matter, i.e., a crystalline solid
exhibiting superfluid properties, first appeared in theoretical studies about
forty years ago. After a long period of little interest due to the lack of
experimental evidence, it has attracted strong experimental and theoretical
attention in the last few years since Kim and Chan (Penn State, USA) reported
evidence for nonclassical rotational inertia effects, a typical signature of
superfluidity, in samples of solid 4He. Since this "first observation", other
experimental groups have observed such effects in the response to the rotation
of samples of crystalline helium, and it has become clear that the response of
the solid is extremely sensitive to growth conditions, annealing processes, and
3He impurities. A peak in the specific heat in the same range of temperatures
has been reported as well as anomalies in the elastic behaviour of solid 4He
with a strong resemblance to the phenomena revealed by torsional oscillator
experiments. Very recently, the observation of unusual mass transport in hcp
solid 4He has also been reported, suggesting superflow. From the theoretical
point of view, powerful simulation methods have been used to study solid 4He,
but the interpretation of the data is still rather difficult; dealing with the
question of supersolidity means that one has to face not only the problem of
the coexistence of quantum coherence phenomena and crystalline order, exploring
the realm of spontaneous symmetry breaking and quantum field theory, but also
the problem of the role of disorder, i.e., how defects, such as vacancies,
impurities, dislocations, and grain boundaries, participate in the phase
transition mechanism.Comment: Published on J. Phys. Soc. Jpn., Vol.77, No.11, p.11101
Simulations of Pregalactic Structure Formation with Radiative Feedback
We present results from three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations of the
high redshift collapse of pregalactic clouds including feedback effects from a
soft H2 photodissociating UV radiation field. The simulations use an Eulerian
adaptive mesh refinement technique to follow the nonequilibrium chemistry of
nine chemical species with cosmological initial conditions drawn from a popular
Lambda-dominated cold dark matter model. The results confirm that the soft UV
background can delay the cooling and collapse of small halos (~10^6 Msun). For
reasonable values of the photo-dissociating flux, the H2 fraction is in
equilibrium throughout most of the objects we simulate. We determine the mass
threshold for collapse for a range of soft-UV fluxes and also derive a simple
analytic expression. Continuing the simulations beyond the point of initial
collapse demonstrates that the fraction of gas which can cool depends mostly on
the virial mass of the halo and the amount of soft-UV flux, with remarkably
little scatter. We parameterize this relation, for use in semi-analytic models.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Ap
Bond-disordered spin systems: Theory and application to doped high-Tc compounds
We examine the stability of magnetic order in a classical Heisenberg model
with quenched random exchange couplings. This system represents the spin
degrees of freedom in high- compounds with immobile dopants.
Starting from a replica representation of the nonlinear -model, we
perform a renormalization-group analysis. The importance of cumulants of the
disorder distribution to arbitrarily high orders necessitates a functional
renormalization scheme. From the renormalization flow equations we determine
the magnetic correlation length numerically as a function of the impurity
concentration and of temperature. From our analysis follows that
two-dimensional layers can be magnetically ordered for arbitrarily strong but
sufficiently diluted defects. We further consider the dimensional crossover in
a stack of weakly coupled layers. The resulting phase diagram is compared with
experimental data for LaSrCuO.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure
Quantum Films Adsorbed on Graphite: Third and Fourth Helium Layers
Using a path-integral Monte Carlo method for simulating superfluid quantum
films, we investigate helium layers adsorbed on a substrate consisting of
graphite plus two solid helium layers. Our results for the promotion densities
and the dependence of the superfluid density on coverage are in agreement with
experiment. We can also explain certain features of the measured heat capacity
as a function of temperature and coverage.Comment: 13 pages in the Phys. Rev. two-column format, 16 Figure
Recommendations for a national agenda to substantially reduce cervical cancer
PURPOSE:
Prophylactic human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines and new HPV screening tests, combined with traditional Pap test screening, provide an unprecedented opportunity to greatly reduce cervical cancer in the USA. Despite these advances, thousands of women continue to be diagnosed with and die of this highly preventable disease each year. This paper describes the initiatives and recommendations of national cervical cancer experts toward preventing and possibly eliminating this disease.
METHODS:
In May 2011, Cervical Cancer-Free America, a national initiative, convened a cervical cancer summit in Washington, DC. Over 120 experts from the public and private sector met to develop a national agenda for reducing cervical cancer morbidity and mortality in the USA.
RESULTS:
Summit participants evaluated four broad challenges to reducing cervical cancer: (1) low use of HPV vaccines, (2) low use of cervical cancer screening, (3) screening errors, and (4) lack of continuity of care for women diagnosed with cervical cancer. The summit offered 12 concrete recommendations to guide future national and local efforts toward this goal.
CONCLUSIONS:
Cervical cancer incidence and mortality can be greatly reduced by better deploying existing methods and systems. The challenge lies in ensuring that the array of available prevention options are accessible and utilized by all age-appropriate women-particularly minority and underserved women who are disproportionately affected by this disease. The consensus was that cervical cancer can be greatly reduced and that prevention efforts can lead the way towards a dramatic reduction in this preventable disease in our country
Atypical disengagement from faces and its modulation by the control of eye fixation in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
By using the gap overlap task, we investigated disengagement from faces and objects in children (9–17 years old) with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and its neurophysiological correlates. In typically developing (TD) children, faces elicited larger gap effect, an index of attentional engagement, and larger saccade-related event-related potentials (ERPs), compared to objects. In children with ASD, by contrast, neither gap effect nor ERPs differ between faces and objects. Follow-up experiments demonstrated that instructed fixation on the eyes induces larger gap effect for faces in children with ASD, whereas instructed fixation on the mouth can disrupt larger gap effect in TD children. These results suggest a critical role of eye fixation on attentional engagement to faces in both groups
The Curse of Online Friends: The Detrimental Effects of Online Social Network Usage on Well-Being
In the pursuit of happiness, it has been conventionally accepted that more friends would bring us a better quality of life. However, with the advent of social networking sites, unprecedented social influence has pervaded our daily lives. Across two studies we show that even though people feel more satisfied with their lives when they view the friends added on Facebook, reading friends’ posts reduces their well-being. This is because the more friends people have on Facebook, the more ostentatious information they see. The resultant drop in life satisfaction occurs because people fail to draw a connection between the number of friends and the amount of ostentatious information. Moreover, this decrease in life satisfaction is mediated by envy. We contribute to the literature on consumer well-being by identifying a novel and ubiquitous phenomenon of making social comparisons with hundreds of people, a phenomenon that arose with the advent of social networking and was previously outside the scope of social comparison literature
Path integral Monte Carlo simulation of the second layer of helium-4 adsorbed on graphite
We have developed a path integral Monte Carlo method for simulating helium
films and apply it to the second layer of helium adsorbed on graphite. We use
helium-helium and helium-graphite interactions that are found from potentials
which realistically describe the interatomic interactions. The Monte Carlo
sampling is over both particle positions and permutations of particle labels.
From the particle configurations and static structure factor calculations, we
find that this layer possesses, in order of increasing density, a superfluid
liquid phase, a sqrt(7) x sqrt(7) commensurate solid phase that is registered
with respect to the first layer, and an incommensurate solid phases. By
applying the Maxwell construction to the dependence of the low-temperature
total energy on the coverage, we are able to identify coexistence regions
between the phases. From these, we deduce an effectively zero-temperature phase
diagram. Our phase boundaries are in agreement with heat capacity and torsional
oscillator measurements, and demonstrate that the experimentally observed
disruption of the superfluid phase is caused by the growth of the commensurate
phase. We further observe that the superfluid phase has a transition
temperature consistent with the two-dimensional value. Promotion to the third
layer occurs for densities above 0.212 atom/A^2, in good agreement with
experiment. Finally, we calculate the specific heat for each phase and obtain
peaks at temperatures in general agreement with experiment.Comment: 14 double-column pages, 10 figures, revtex. Accepted for publication
in Phys. Rev. B. 3 figures added, some text revisions, 6 figures remove
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