8,171 research outputs found
A hermeneutic inquiry into user-created personas in different Namibian locales
Persona is a tool broadly used in technology design to support communicational interactions between designers and users. Different Persona types and methods have evolved mostly in the Global North, and been partially deployed in the Global South every so often in its original User-Centred Design methodology. We postulate persona conceptualizations are expected to differ across cultures. We demonstrate this with an exploratory-case study on user-created persona co-designed with four Namibian ethnic groups: ovaHerero, Ovambo, ovaHimba and Khoisan. We follow a hermeneutic inquiry approach to discern cultural nuances from diverse human conducts. Findings reveal diverse self-representations whereby for each ethnic group results emerge in unalike fashions, viewpoints, recounts and storylines. This paper ultimately argues User-Created Persona as a potentially valid approach for pursuing cross-cultural depictions of personas that communicate cultural features and user experiences paramount to designing acceptable and gratifying technologies in dissimilar locales
Critical exponents and the correlation length in the charge exchange manganite spin glass Eu_{0.5}Ba_{0.5}MnO_{3}
The critical regime of the charge exchange (CE) manganite spin glass
Eu_{0.5}Ba_{0.5}MnO_{3} is investigated using linear and non linear magnetic
susceptibility and the divergence of the third ordered susceptibility (chi{_3})
signifying the onset of a conventional freezing transition is experimentally
demonstrated. The divergence in chi{_3}, dynamical scaling of the linear
susceptibility and relevant scaling equations are used to determine the
critical exponents associated with this freezing transition, the values of
which match well with the 3D Ising universality class. Magnetic field
dependence of the spin glass response function is used to estimate the spin
correlation length which is seen to be larger than the charge/orbital
correlation length reported in this system.Comment: 4 pages, 4 Figure
Self-Consistency Requirements of the Renormalization Group for Setting the Renormalization Scale
In conventional treatments, predictions from fixed-order perturbative QCD
calculations cannot be fixed with certainty due to ambiguities in the choice of
the renormalization scale as well as the renormalization scheme. In this paper
we present a general discussion of the constraints of the renormalization group
(RG) invariance on the choice of the renormalization scale. We adopt the RG
based equations, which incorporate the scheme parameters, for a general
exposition of RG invariance, since they simultaneously express the invariance
of physical observables under both the variation of the renormalization scale
and the renormalization scheme parameters. We then discuss the self-consistency
requirements of the RG, such as reflexivity, symmetry, and transitivity, which
must be satisfied by the scale-setting method. The Principle of Minimal
Sensitivity (PMS) requires the slope of the approximant of an observable to
vanish at the renormalization point. This criterion provides a
scheme-independent estimation, but it violates the symmetry and transitivity
properties of the RG and does not reproduce the Gell-Mann-Low scale for QED
observables. The Principle of Maximum Conformality (PMC) satisfies all of the
deductions of the RG invariance - reflectivity, symmetry, and transitivity.
Using the PMC, all non-conformal -terms (
stands for an arbitrary renormalization scheme) in the perturbative expansion
series are summed into the running coupling, and one obtains a unique,
scale-fixed, scheme-independent prediction at any finite order. The PMC scales
and the resulting finite-order PMC predictions are both to high accuracy
independent of the choice of initial renormalization scale, consistent with RG
invariance. [...More in the text...]Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures. References updated. To be published in
Phys.Rev.
Application of the Principle of Maximum Conformality to Top-Pair Production
A major contribution to the uncertainty of finite-order perturbative QCD
predictions is the perceived ambiguity in setting the renormalization scale
. For example, by using the conventional way of setting , one obtains the total production cross-section
with the uncertainty \Delta \sigma_{t \bar{t}}/\sigma_{t
\bar{t}}\sim ({}^{+3%}_{-4%}) at the Tevatron and LHC even for the present
NNLO level. The Principle of Maximum Conformality (PMC) eliminates the
renormalization scale ambiguity in precision tests of Abelian QED and
non-Abelian QCD theories. In this paper we apply PMC scale-setting to predict
the cross-section at the Tevatron and LHC
colliders. It is found that remains almost unchanged by
varying within the region of . The convergence
of the expansion series is greatly improved. For the -channel,
which is dominant at the Tevatron, its NLO PMC scale is much smaller than the
top-quark mass in the small -region, and thus its NLO cross-section is
increased by about a factor of two. In the case of the -channel, which is
dominant at the LHC, its NLO PMC scale slightly increases with the subprocess
collision energy , but it is still smaller than for
TeV, and the resulting NLO cross-section is increased by
. As a result, a larger is obtained in comparison
to the conventional scale-setting method, which agrees well with the present
Tevatron and LHC data. More explicitly, by setting GeV, we
predict pb,
pb and pb. [full abstract can be found in the
paper.]Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures, 5 tables. Fig.(9) is correcte
Effect of water-wall interaction potential on the properties of nanoconfined water
Much of the understanding of bulk liquids has progressed through study of the
limiting case in which molecules interact via purely repulsive forces, such as
a hard-core potential. In the same spirit, we report progress on the
understanding of confined water by examining the behavior of water-like
molecules interacting with planar walls via purely repulsive forces and compare
our results with those obtained for Lennard-Jones (LJ) interactions between the
molecules and the walls. Specifically, we perform molecular dynamics
simulations of 512 water-like molecules which are confined between two smooth
planar walls that are separated by 1.1 nm. At this separation, there are either
two or three molecular layers of water, depending on density. We study two
different forms of repulsive confinements, when the interaction potential
between water-wall is (i) and (ii) WCA-like repulsive potential. We
find that the thermodynamic, dynamic and structural properties of the liquid in
purely repulsive confinements qualitatively match those for a system with a
pure LJ attraction to the wall. In previous studies that include attractions,
freezing into monolayer or trilayer ice was seen for this wall separation.
Using the same separation as these previous studies, we find that the crystal
state is not stable with repulsive walls but is stable with WCA-like
repulsive confinement. However, by carefully adjusting the separation of the
plates with repulsive interactions so that the effective space
available to the molecules is the same as that for LJ confinement, we find that
the same crystal phases are stable. This result emphasizes the importance of
comparing systems only using the same effective confinement, which may differ
from the geometric separation of the confining surfaces.Comment: 20 pages, 10 figure
Probing the field-induced variation of the chemical potential in Bi(2)Sr(2)CaCu(2)O(y) via the magneto-thermopower measurements
Approximating the shape of the measured in
magneto-thermopower (TEP) by asymmetric linear triangle of the
form with positive and defined below and above , we observe that . In order to account for this asymmetry, we
explicitly introduce the field-dependent chemical potential of holes
into the Ginzburg-Landau theory and calculate both an average and fluctuation contributions to the total
magneto-TEP . As a result, we find a rather simple relationship
between the field-induced variation of the chemical potential in this material
and the above-mentioned magneto-TEP data around , viz. .Comment: REVTEX (epsf), 4 pages, 2 PS figures; to be published in JET
On the role of continuum-driven eruptions in the evolution of very massive stars and Population III stars
We suggest that the mass lost during the evolution of very massive stars may
be dominated by optically thick, continuum-driven outbursts or explosions,
instead of by steady line-driven winds. In order for a massive star to become a
WR star, it must shed its H envelope, but new estimates of the effects of
clumping in winds indicate that line driving is vastly insufficient. We discuss
massive stars above roughly 40-50 Msun, for which the best alternative is mass
loss during brief eruptions of luminous blue variables (LBVs). Our clearest
example of this phenomenon is the 19th century outburst of eta Car, when the
star shed 12-20 Msun or more in less than a decade. Other examples are
circumstellar nebulae of LBVs, extragalactic eta Car analogs (``supernova
impostors''), and massive shells around SNe and GRBs. We do not yet fully
understand what triggers LBV outbursts, but they occur nonetheless, and present
a fundamental mystery in stellar astrophysics. Since line opacity from metals
becomes too saturated, the extreme mass loss probably arises from a
continuum-driven wind or a hydrodynamic explosion, both of which are
insensitive to metallicity. As such, eruptive mass loss could have played a
pivotal role in the evolution and fate of massive metal-poor stars in the early
universe. If they occur in these Population III stars, such eruptions would
profoundly affect the chemical yield and types of remnants from early SNe and
hypernovae.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, accepted by ApJ Letter
Single Transverse-Spin Asymmetries at Large-x
The large- behavior of the transverse-momentum dependent quark
distributions is analyzed in the factorization-inspired perturbative QCD
framework, particularly for the naive time-reversal-odd quark Sivers function
which is responsible for the single transverse-spin asymmetries in various
semi-inclusive hard processes. By examining the dominant hard gluon exchange
Feynman diagrams, and using the resulting power counting rule, we find that the
Sivers function has power behavior at , which is one power
of suppressed relative to the unpolarized quark distribution. These
power-counting results provide important guidelines for the parameterization of
quark distributions and quark-gluon correlations.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figure
Lattice Point Generating Functions and Symmetric Cones
We show that a recent identity of Beck-Gessel-Lee-Savage on the generating
function of symmetrically contrained compositions of integers generalizes
naturally to a family of convex polyhedral cones that are invariant under the
action of a finite reflection group. We obtain general expressions for the
multivariate generating functions of such cones, and work out the specific
cases of a symmetry group of type A (previously known) and types B and D (new).
We obtain several applications of the special cases in type B, including
identities involving permutation statistics and lecture hall partitions.Comment: 19 page
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