333 research outputs found
The caregiver perspective: an assistive AAL platform
The Ambient Assisted Living area has spawned several projects that aim to help the user on his/her daily activities. The AAL4ALL (ambient assisted living for all) project aims to develop a unified ecosystem using fully compatible devices and services. The UserAccess platform is part of the AAL4ALL and has as a goal to provide assistance to a type of actor that is commonly forgotten in the Ambient Assisted Living area, the caregiver. This paper presents the archi-tecture, implementation, and interfaces, along with a brief analysis of caregiver’s needs and work related issues.Project "AAL4ALL", co-financed by the European Community Fund FEDER, through COMPETE - Programa Operacional Factores de Competitividade (POFC). Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), Lisbon, Portugal, through Project PEst-C/CTM/LA0025/2013 and the project PEst-OE/EEI/UI0752/2014.
Project CAMCoF - Context-aware Multimodal Communication Framework funded by ERDF -European Regional Development Fund through the COMPETE Programme (operational programme for competitiveness) and by National Funds through the FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) within project FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-028980
Dynamical spin correlations in Heisenberg ladder under magnetic field and correlation functions in SO(5) ladder
The zero-temperature dynamical spin-spin correlation functions are calculated
for the spin-1/2 two-leg Heisenberg ladder in a magnetic field above the lower
critical field Hc1. The dynamical structure factors are calculated which
exhibit both massless and massive excitations. These modes appear in different
sectors characterized by the parity in the rung direction and by the momentum
in the direction of the chains. The structure factors have power-law
singularities at the lower edges of their support. The results are also
applicable to spin-1 Heisenberg chain. The implications are briefly discussed
for various correlation functions and the pi-resonance in the SO(5) symmetric
ladder model.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures, added references; final version to appear in
Phys. Rev.
Effect of large magnetotactic bacteria with polyphosphate inclusions on the phosphate profile of the suboxic zone in the Black Sea
The Black Sea is the world’s largest anoxic basin and a model system for studying processes across redox gradients. In
between the oxic surface and the deeper sulfidic waters there is an unusually broad layer of 10–40 m, where neither oxygen
nor sulfide are detectable. In this suboxic zone, dissolved phosphate profiles display a pronounced minimum at the upper and
a maximum at the lower boundary, with a peak of particulate phosphorus in between, which was suggested to be caused by
the sorption of phosphate on sinking particles of metal oxides. Here we show that bacterial polyphosphate inclusions within
large magnetotactic bacteria related to the genus Magnetococcus contribute substantially to the observed phosphorus peak,
as they contain 26–34% phosphorus compared to only 1–5% in metal-rich particles. Furthermore, we found increased gene
expression for polyphosphate kinases by several groups of bacteria including Magnetococcaceae at the phosphate
maximum, indicating active bacterial polyphosphate degradation. We propose that large magnetotactic bacteria shuttle up
and down within the suboxic zone, scavenging phosphate at the upper and releasing it at the lower boundary. In contrast to a
passive transport via metal oxides, this bacterial transport can quantitatively explain the observed phosphate profiles.We are grateful for the competent technical
assistance of Ronny Baaske, Christian Burmeister, Christin Laudan
and Christian Meeske. We are greatly indebted to Cindy Lee and Bo
Barker Jørgensen for providing extremely helpful comments on an
earlier version of the manuscript. Horst D. Schulz and René Friedland
are acknowledged for stimulating discussions on the modeling
approach. We thank the captain and the crew of the R/V “Maria S.
Merian” for the excellent support on board and the DFG (MSM33) and
BMBF (01DK12043) for financing the cruise. The particle analysis
was funded by the BMBF (03F0663A). S.B. was funded by a BONUS
BLUEPRINT project (03F0679A awarded to KJ; http://blueprint-
project.org), supported by BONUS (Art 185), funded jointly by the EU
and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).
T. S. was funded by the German research foundation (DFG) (awarded
to K.J., JU 367/16-1). Metagenome sequencing was done at the
Swedish National Genomics Infrastructure (NGI) at SciLifeLab
(Sweden).We are grateful for the competent technical
assistance of Ronny Baaske, Christian Burmeister, Christin Laudan
and Christian Meeske. We are greatly indebted to Cindy Lee and Bo
Barker Jørgensen for providing extremely helpful comments on an
earlier version of the manuscript. Horst D. Schulz and René Friedland
are acknowledged for stimulating discussions on the modeling
approach. We thank the captain and the crew of the R/V “Maria S.
Merian” for the excellent support on board and the DFG (MSM33) and
BMBF (01DK12043) for financing the cruise. The particle analysis
was funded by the BMBF (03F0663A). S.B. was funded by a BONUS
BLUEPRINT project (03F0679A awarded to KJ; http://blueprint-
project.org), supported by BONUS (Art 185), funded jointly by the EU
and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).
T. S. was funded by the German research foundation (DFG) (awarded
to K.J., JU 367/16-1). Metagenome sequencing was done at the
Swedish National Genomics Infrastructure (NGI) at SciLifeLab
(Sweden)
The Science of Sungrazers, Sunskirters, and Other Near-Sun Comets
This review addresses our current understanding of comets that venture close to the Sun, and are hence exposed to much more extreme conditions than comets that are typically studied from Earth. The extreme solar heating and plasma environments that these objects encounter change many aspects of their behaviour, thus yielding valuable information on both the comets themselves that complements other data we have on primitive solar system bodies, as well as on the near-solar environment which they traverse. We propose clear definitions for these comets: We use the term near-Sun comets to encompass all objects that pass sunward of the perihelion distance of planet Mercury (0.307 AU). Sunskirters are defined as objects that pass within 33 solar radii of the Sun’s centre, equal to half of Mercury’s perihelion distance, and the commonly-used phrase sungrazers to be objects that reach perihelion within 3.45 solar radii, i.e. the fluid Roche limit. Finally, comets with orbits that intersect the solar photosphere are termed sundivers. We summarize past studies of these objects, as well as the instruments and facilities used to study them, including space-based platforms that have led to a recent revolution in the quantity and quality of relevant observations. Relevant comet populations are described, including the Kreutz, Marsden, Kracht, and Meyer groups, near-Sun asteroids, and a brief discussion of their origins. The importance of light curves and the clues they provide on cometary composition are emphasized, together with what information has been gleaned about nucleus parameters, including the sizes and masses of objects and their families, and their tensile strengths. The physical processes occurring at these objects are considered in some detail, including the disruption of nuclei, sublimation, and ionisation, and we consider the mass, momentum, and energy loss of comets in the corona and those that venture to lower altitudes. The different components of comae and tails are described, including dust, neutral and ionised gases, their chemical reactions, and their contributions to the near-Sun environment. Comet-solar wind interactions are discussed, including the use of comets as probes of solar wind and coronal conditions in their vicinities. We address the relevance of work on comets near the Sun to similar objects orbiting other stars, and conclude with a discussion of future directions for the field and the planned ground- and space-based facilities that will allow us to address those science topics
Field- and pressure-induced magnetic quantum phase transitions in TlCuCl_3
Thallium copper chloride is a quantum spin liquid of S = 1/2 Cu^2+ dimers.
Interdimer superexchange interactions give a three-dimensional magnon
dispersion and a spin gap significantly smaller than the dimer coupling. This
gap is closed by an applied hydrostatic pressure of approximately 2kbar or by a
magnetic field of 5.6T, offering a unique opportunity to explore the both types
of quantum phase transition and their associated critical phenomena. We use a
bond-operator formulation to obtain a continuous description of all disordered
and ordered phases, and thus of the transitions separating these. Both
pressure- and field-induced transitions may be considered as the Bose-Einstein
condensation of triplet magnon excitations, and the respective phases of
staggered magnetic order as linear combinations of dimer singlet and triplet
modes. We focus on the evolution with applied pressure and field of the
magnetic excitations in each phase, and in particular on the gapless
(Goldstone) modes in the ordered regimes which correspond to phase fluctuations
of the ordered moment. The bond-operator description yields a good account of
the magnetization curves and of magnon dispersion relations observed by
inelastic neutron scattering under applied fields, and a variety of
experimental predictions for pressure-dependent measurements.Comment: 20 pages, 17 figure
An Efficient Bi-Level Surrogate Approach for Optimizing Shock Control Bumps under Uncertainty
The assessment of uncertainties is essential in aerodynamic shape optimization problems in order to come up with configurations that are more robust. The influence of aleatory fluctuations in flight conditions and manufacturing tolerances is of primary concern when designing shock control bumps, as their effectiveness is highly sensitive to the shock wave location. However, exploring the stochastic design space for the global robust optimum increases the computational cost, especially when dealing with nonconvex design spaces and multiple local optima. The aim of this paper is to develop a framework for efficient aerodynamic shape optimization under uncertainty by means of a bi-level surrogate approach and to apply it to the robust design of a retrofitted shock control bump over an airfoil. The framework combines a surrogate-based optimization algorithm with an efficient surrogate-based approach for uncertainty quantification. The surrogate-based optimizer efficiently finds the global optimum of a given quantile of the drag coefficient. It outperforms traditional evolutionary algorithms by effectively balancing exploration and exploitation through the combination of adaptive sampling and a moving trust region. At each iteration of the optimization, the surrogate-based uncertainty quantification uses an active infill criterion in order to accurately quantify the quantile of the drag at a reduced number of function evaluations. Two different quantiles of the drag are chosen, the 95% to increase the robustness at off-design conditions, and the 50% for a configuration that is best for day to day operations. In both cases, the optimum configurations lead to an airfoil that is more robust to geometrical and operational uncertainties, compared to the configuration obtained through classical deterministic optimization
A First Search for coincident Gravitational Waves and High Energy Neutrinos using LIGO, Virgo and ANTARES data from 2007
We present the results of the first search for gravitational wave bursts
associated with high energy neutrinos. Together, these messengers could reveal
new, hidden sources that are not observed by conventional photon astronomy,
particularly at high energy. Our search uses neutrinos detected by the
underwater neutrino telescope ANTARES in its 5 line configuration during the
period January - September 2007, which coincided with the fifth and first
science runs of LIGO and Virgo, respectively. The LIGO-Virgo data were analysed
for candidate gravitational-wave signals coincident in time and direction with
the neutrino events. No significant coincident events were observed. We place
limits on the density of joint high energy neutrino - gravitational wave
emission events in the local universe, and compare them with densities of
merger and core-collapse events.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figures, science summary page at
http://www.ligo.org/science/Publication-S5LV_ANTARES/index.php. Public access
area to figures, tables at
https://dcc.ligo.org/cgi-bin/DocDB/ShowDocument?docid=p120000
Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector
A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results
Jet size dependence of single jet suppression in lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s(NN)) = 2.76 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC
Measurements of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions at the LHC
provide direct sensitivity to the physics of jet quenching. In a sample of
lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s) = 2.76 TeV corresponding to an integrated
luminosity of approximately 7 inverse microbarns, ATLAS has measured jets with
a calorimeter over the pseudorapidity interval |eta| < 2.1 and over the
transverse momentum range 38 < pT < 210 GeV. Jets were reconstructed using the
anti-kt algorithm with values for the distance parameter that determines the
nominal jet radius of R = 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5. The centrality dependence of
the jet yield is characterized by the jet "central-to-peripheral ratio," Rcp.
Jet production is found to be suppressed by approximately a factor of two in
the 10% most central collisions relative to peripheral collisions. Rcp varies
smoothly with centrality as characterized by the number of participating
nucleons. The observed suppression is only weakly dependent on jet radius and
transverse momentum. These results provide the first direct measurement of
inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions and complement previous
measurements of dijet transverse energy imbalance at the LHC.Comment: 15 pages plus author list (30 pages total), 8 figures, 2 tables,
submitted to Physics Letters B. All figures including auxiliary figures are
available at
http://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/HION-2011-02
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