15,148 research outputs found
Library Development in Francophone Africa
Traces the history and development of libraries in Francophone Africa. Covers public, academic, government, and scientific libraries; also covers library education and the library profession
James J. Kaput (1942â2005) imagineer and futurologist of mathematics education
Jim Kaput lived a full life in mathematics education and we have many reasons to be grateful to him, not only for his vision of the use of technology in mathematics, but also for his fundamental humanity. This paper considers the origins of his âbig ideasâ as he lived through the most amazing innovations in technology that have changed our lives more in a generation than in many centuries before. His vision continues as is exemplified by the collected papers in this tribute to his life and work
Disorder, inhomogeneity and spin dynamics in f-electron non-Fermi liquid systems
Muon spin rotation and relaxation (SR) experiments have yielded evidence
that structural disorder is an important factor in many f-electron-based
non-Fermi-liquid (NFL) systems. Disorder-driven mechanisms for NFL behaviour
are suggested by the observed broad and strongly temperature-dependent SR
(and NMR) linewidths in several NFL compounds and alloys. Local disorder-driven
theories (Kondo disorder, Griffiths-McCoy singularity) are, however, not
capable of describing the time-field scaling seen in muon spin relaxation
experiments, which suggest cooperative and critical spin fluctuations rather
than a distribution of local fluctuation rates. A strong empirical correlation
is established between electronic disorder and slow spin fluctuations in NFL
materialsComment: 24 pages, 15 figures, submitted to J. Phys.: Condens. Matte
Perspective on gravitational self-force analyses
A point particle of mass moving on a geodesic creates a perturbation
, of the spacetime metric , that diverges at the particle.
Simple expressions are given for the singular part of and its
distortion caused by the spacetime. This singular part h^\SS_{ab} is
described in different coordinate systems and in different gauges. Subtracting
h^\SS_{ab} from leaves a regular remainder . The
self-force on the particle from its own gravitational field adjusts the world
line at \Or(\mu) to be a geodesic of ; this adjustment
includes all of the effects of radiation reaction. For the case that the
particle is a small non-rotating black hole, we give a uniformly valid
approximation to a solution of the Einstein equations, with a remainder of
\Or(\mu^2) as .
An example presents the actual steps involved in a self-force calculation.
Gauge freedom introduces ambiguity in perturbation analysis. However,
physically interesting problems avoid this ambiguity.Comment: 40 pages, to appear in a special issue of CQG on radiation reaction,
contains additional references, improved notation for tensor harmonic
Second-order corrections to noncommutative spacetime inflation
We investigate how the uncertainty of noncommutative spacetime affects on
inflation. For this purpose, the noncommutative parameter is taken to
be a zeroth order slow-roll parameter. We calculate the noncommutative power
spectrum up to second order using the slow-roll expansion. We find corrections
arisen from a change of the pivot scale and the presence of a variable
noncommutative parameter, when comparing with the commutative power spectrum.
The power-law inflation is chosen to obtain explicit forms for the power
spectrum, spectral index, and running spectral index. In cases of the power
spectrum and spectral index, the noncommutative effect of higher-order
corrections compensates for a loss of higher-order corrections in the
commutative case. However, for the running spectral index, all higher-order
corrections to the commutative case always provide negative spectral indexes,
which could explain the recent WMAP data.Comment: 15 pages, no figure, version published in PR
Lifeline and Geotechnical Aspects of the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake
This paper provides an overview of areas in San Francisco which were affected by soil liquefaction and significant ground deformation as a result of the Loma Prieta earthquake. The distribution of pipeline system damage is examined, and comparisons are made between 1989 and 1906 patterns of water supply damage. Special attention is given to the Marina to illustrate how the natural site conditions and artificial fills contributed to soil liquefaction and buried pipeline damage of both the water and gas distribution networks. Finally, the liquefaction potentials of natural beach and sand bar deposits, land-tipped fill, and hydraulic fill are evaluated and compared
Evolution of fluctuations near QCD critical point
We propose to describe the time evolution of quasi-stationary fluctuations
near QCD critical point by a system of stochastic
Boltzmann-Langevin-Vlasov-type equations. We derive the equations and study the
system analytically in the linearized regime. Known results for equilibrium
stationary fluctuations as well as the critical scaling of diffusion
coefficient are reproduced. We apply the approach to the long-standing question
of the fate of the critical point fluctuations during the hadronic rescattering
stage of the heavy-ion collision after chemical freezeout. We find that if
conserved particle number fluctuations survive the rescattering, so do, under a
certain additional condition, the fluctuations of non-conserved quantities,
such as mean transverse momentum. We derive a simple analytical formula for the
magnitude of this "memory" effect.Comment: 13 pages, as published, typos corrected, some definitions made more
explici
Stable radiation-controlling boundary conditions for the generalized harmonic Einstein equations
This paper is concerned with the initial-boundary value problem for the
Einstein equations in a first-order generalized harmonic formulation. We impose
boundary conditions that preserve the constraints and control the incoming
gravitational radiation by prescribing data for the incoming fields of the Weyl
tensor. High-frequency perturbations about any given spacetime (including a
shift vector with subluminal normal component) are analyzed using the
Fourier-Laplace technique. We show that the system is boundary-stable. In
addition, we develop a criterion that can be used to detect weak instabilities
with polynomial time dependence, and we show that our system does not suffer
from such instabilities. A numerical robust stability test supports our claim
that the initial-boundary value problem is most likely to be well-posed even if
nonzero initial and source data are included.Comment: 27 pages, 4 figures; more numerical results and references added,
several minor amendments; version accepted for publication in Class. Quantum
Gra
The Inflationary Perturbation Spectrum
Motivated by the prospect of testing inflation from precision cosmic
microwave background observations, we present analytic results for scalar and
tensor perturbations in single-field inflation models based on the application
of uniform approximations. This technique is systematically improvable,
possesses controlled error bounds, and does not rely on assuming the slow-roll
parameters to be constant. We provide closed-form expressions for the power
spectra and the corresponding scalar and tensor spectral indices.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur
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