4,667 research outputs found
Birth, survival and death of languages by Monte Carlo simulation
Simulations of physicists for the competition between adult languages since
2003 are reviewed. How many languages are spoken by how many people? How many
languages are contained in various language families? How do language
similarities decay with geographical distance, and what effects do natural
boundaries have? New simulations of bilinguality are given in an appendix.Comment: 24 pages review, draft for Comm.Comput.Phys., plus appendix on
bilingualit
Local heuristics and the emergence of spanning subgraphs in complex networks
We study the use of local heuristics to determine spanning subgraphs for use
in the dissemination of information in complex networks. We introduce two
different heuristics and analyze their behavior in giving rise to spanning
subgraphs that perform well in terms of allowing every node of the network to
be reached, of requiring relatively few messages and small node bandwidth for
information dissemination, and also of stretching paths with respect to the
underlying network only modestly. We contribute a detailed mathematical
analysis of one of the heuristics and provide extensive simulation results on
random graphs for both of them. These results indicate that, within certain
limits, spanning subgraphs are indeed expected to emerge that perform well in
respect to all requirements. We also discuss the spanning subgraphs' inherent
resilience to failures and adaptability to topological changes
Probabilistic heuristics for disseminating information in networks
We study the problem of disseminating a piece of information through all the
nodes of a network, given that it is known originally only to a single node. In
the absence of any structural knowledge on the network other than the nodes'
neighborhoods, this problem is traditionally solved by flooding all the
network's edges. We analyze a recently introduced probabilistic algorithm for
flooding and give an alternative probabilistic heuristic that can lead to some
cost-effective improvements, like better trade-offs between the message and
time complexities involved. We analyze the two algorithms both mathematically
and by means of simulations, always within a random-graph framework and
considering relevant node-degree distributions
Overview of bladder heating technology: matching capabilities with clinical requirements.
Moderate temperature hyperthermia (40-45°C for 1 h) is emerging as an effective treatment to enhance best available chemotherapy strategies for bladder cancer. A rapidly increasing number of clinical trials have investigated the feasibility and efficacy of treating bladder cancer with combined intravesical chemotherapy and moderate temperature hyperthermia. To date, most studies have concerned treatment of non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) limited to the interior wall of the bladder. Following the promising results of initial clinical trials, investigators are now considering protocols for treatment of muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC). This paper provides a brief overview of the devices and techniques used for heating bladder cancer. Systems are described for thermal conduction heating of the bladder wall via circulation of hot fluid, intravesical microwave antenna heating, capacitively coupled radio-frequency current heating, and radiofrequency phased array deep regional heating of the pelvis. Relative heating characteristics of the available technologies are compared based on published feasibility studies, and the systems correlated with clinical requirements for effective treatment of MIBC and NMIBC
Disorder induced brittle to quasi-brittle transition in fiber bundles
We investigate the fracture process of a bundle of fibers with random Young
modulus and a constant breaking strength. For two component systems we show
that the strength of the mixture is always lower than the strength of the
individual components. For continuously distributed Young modulus the tail of
the distribution proved to play a decisive role since fibers break in the
decreasing order of their stiffness. Using power law distributed stiffness
values we demonstrate that the system exhibits a disorder induced brittle to
quasi-brittle transition which occurs analogously to continuous phase
transitions. Based on computer simulations we determine the critical exponents
of the transition and construct the phase diagram of the system.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure
Geometrical Phase Transition on WO Surface
A topographical study on an ensemble of height profiles obtained from atomic
force microscopy techniques on various independently grown samples of tungsten
oxide WO is presented by using ideas from percolation theory. We find that
a continuous 'geometrical' phase transition occurs at a certain critical
level-height below which an infinite island appears. By using the
finite-size scaling analysis of three independent percolation observables i.e.,
percolation probability, percolation strength and the mean island-size, we
compute some critical exponents which characterize the transition. Our results
are compatible with those of long-range correlated percolation. This method can
be generalized to a topographical classification of rough surface models.Comment: 3 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Applied Physics Letters (2010
Corrections to Finite Size Scaling in Percolation
A 1/L-expansion for percolation problems is proposed, where L is the lattice
finite length. The square lattice with 27 different sizes L = 18, 22 ... 1594
is considered. Certain spanning probabilities were determined by Monte Carlo
simulations, as continuous functions of the site occupation probability p. We
estimate the critical threshold pc by applying the quoted expansion to these
data. Also, the universal spanning probability at pc for an annulus with aspect
ratio r=1/2 is estimated as C = 0.876657(45)
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