433 research outputs found
Historic records and GIS applications for flood risk analysis in the Salento peninsula (southern Italy)
International audienceThe occurrence of calamitous meteoric events represents a current problem of the Salento peninsula (Southern Italy). In fact, flash floods, generated by very intense rainfall, occur not only in autumn and winter, but at the end of summer as well. These calamities are amplified by peculiar geological and geomorphological characteristics of Salento and by the pollution of sinkholes. Floodings affect often large areas, especially in the impermeable lowering zones. These events cause warnings and emergency states, involving people as well as socio-economic goods. A methodical investigation based on the historic flood records and an analysis of the geoenvironmental factors have been performed, using a Geographic Information System (GIS) methodology for database processing in order to identify the distribution of areas with different risk degrees. The data, referring to events that occurred from 1968 to 2004, have been collected in a database, the so-called IPHAS (Salento Alluvial PHenomena Inventory), extracted in an easily consultable table. The final goal is the development of a risk map where the areas that are affected by floodings are included between small ridges, the so-called "Serre". More than 50% of the Salento peninsula shows high or very high risk values. The numerous maps that were utilized and generated represent an important basis in order to quantify the flood risk, according to the model using historic records
Classical and Quantum Gravity in 1+1 Dimensions, Part I: A Unifying Approach
We provide a concise approach to generalized dilaton theories with and
without torsion and coupling to Yang-Mills fields. Transformations on the space
of fields are used to trivialize the field equations locally. In this way their
solution becomes accessible within a few lines of calculation only. In this
first of a series of papers we set the stage for a thorough global
investigation of classical and quantum aspects of more or less all available 2D
gravity-Yang-Mills models.Comment: 24 pages, no figures, some sign errors in Eqs. 52--59 have been
corrected (according to the Erratum
Quantization of Two-Dimensional Gravity with Dynamical Torsion
We consider two-dimensional gravity with dynamical torsion in the Batalin -
Vilkovisky and Batalin - Lavrov - Tyutin formalisms of gauge theories
quantization as well as in the background field method.Comment: 12 pages, LaTe
Geometric Interpretation and Classification of Global Solutions in Generalized Dilaton Gravity
Two dimensional gravity with torsion is proved to be equivalent to special
types of generalized 2d dilaton gravity. E.g. in one version, the dilaton field
is shown to be expressible by the extra scalar curvature, constructed for an
independent Lorentz connection corresponding to a nontrivial torsion.
Elimination of that dilaton field yields an equivalent torsionless theory,
nonpolynomial in curvature. These theories, although locally equivalent exhibit
quite different global properties of the general solution. We discuss the
example of a (torsionless) dilaton theory equivalent to the --model.
Each global solution of this model is shown to split into a set of global
solutions of generalized dilaton gravity. In contrast to the theory with
torsion the equivalent dilaton one exhibits solutions which are asymptotically
flat in special ranges of the parameters. In the simplest case of ordinary
dilaton gravity we clarify the well known problem of removing the Schwarzschild
singularity by a field redefinition.Comment: 21 pages, 6 Postscript figure
On the Canonical Reduction of Spherically Symmetric Gravity
In a thorough paper Kuchar has examined the canonical reduction of the most
general action functional describing the geometrodynamics of the maximally
extended Schwarzschild geometry. This reduction yields the true degrees of
freedom for (vacuum) spherically symmetric general relativity. The essential
technical ingredient in Kuchar's analysis is a canonical transformation to a
certain chart on the gravitational phase space which features the Schwarzschild
mass parameter , expressed in terms of what are essentially
Arnowitt-Deser-Misner variables, as a canonical coordinate. In this paper we
discuss the geometric interpretation of Kuchar's canonical transformation in
terms of the theory of quasilocal energy-momentum in general relativity given
by Brown and York. We find Kuchar's transformation to be a ``sphere-dependent
boost to the rest frame," where the ``rest frame'' is defined by vanishing
quasilocal momentum. Furthermore, our formalism is general enough to cover the
case of (vacuum) two-dimensional dilaton gravity. Therefore, besides reviewing
Kucha\v{r}'s original work for Schwarzschild black holes from the framework of
hyperbolic geometry, we present new results concerning the canonical reduction
of Witten-black-hole geometrodynamics.Comment: Revtex, 35 pages, no figure
Circadian rhythm of hepatic cytosolic and nuclear estrogen receptors
The distribution of estrogen receptor between the cytosolic and nuclear compartments were evaluated in liver of male rats to determine whether a circadian rhythm exists. Cytosolic receptor reached a maximum level at 400 hours and a minimum at 2000 and 2400 hr. Nuclear receptor reached a maximum level at 800 hr and was lowest at 1600 and 2000 hr. Serum estradiol levels were also highest at 800 hr and lowest at 1600 hr. The variations in cytosolic and nuclear receptors are not reciprocal; in fact, the overall content of receptor in the liver is not constant and also displays a circadian rhythm. © 1986 Informa UK Ltd All rights reserved: reproduction in whole or part not permitted
Absolute conservation law for black holes
In all 2d theories of gravity a conservation law connects the (space-time
dependent) mass aspect function at all times and all radii with an integral of
the matter fields. It depends on an arbitrary constant which may be interpreted
as determining the initial value together with the initial values for the
matter field. We discuss this for spherically reduced Einstein-gravity in a
diagonal metric and in a Bondi-Sachs metric using the first order formulation
of spherically reduced gravity, which allows easy and direct fixations of any
type of gauge. The relation of our conserved quantity to the ADM and Bondi mass
is investigated. Further possible applications (ideal fluid, black holes in
higher dimensions or AdS spacetimes etc.) are straightforward generalizations.Comment: LaTex, 17 pages, final version, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Universal conservation law and modified Noether symmetry in 2d models of gravity with matter
It is well-known that all 2d models of gravity---including theories with
nonvanishing torsion and dilaton theories---can be solved exactly, if matter
interactions are absent. An absolutely (in space and time) conserved quantity
determines the global classification of all (classical) solutions. For the
special case of spherically reduced Einstein gravity it coincides with the mass
in the Schwarzschild solution. The corresponding Noether symmetry has been
derived previously by P. Widerin and one of the authors (W.K.) for a specific
2d model with nonvanishing torsion. In the present paper this is generalized to
all covariant 2d theories, including interactions with matter. The related
Noether-like symmetry differs from the usual one. The parameters for the
symmetry transformation of the geometric part and those of the matterfields are
distinct. The total conservation law (a zero-form current) results from a two
stage argument which also involves a consistency condition expressed by the
conservation of a one-form matter ``current''. The black hole is treated as a
special case.Comment: 3
Crime Watch:Hurricanes and Illegal Activities
We investigate the relationship between hurricane strikes and crime for Jamaica. To this end, we construct hurricane damages and daily recorded criminal activity. Hurricanes are found to significantly increase crime by 35%, where the impact is stronger for more damaging storms, but this only lasts for the duration of the storm. Decomposing crime into its various subtypes, one finds that while aggravated assault, break-ins, and shooting increase during a hurricane, murders, rapes, and robberies actually decline. The greatest increase is with shootings, whereas the greatest decline is with rape. Crucially, the impact of crime depends on the existence of a storm warning. Our results also show that high frequency data more accurately estimate the impact of hurricanes on crime.</p
Graphical modeling of binary data using the LASSO: a simulation study
Background: Graphical models were identified as a promising new approach to modeling high-dimensional clinical data. They provided a probabilistic tool to display, analyze and visualize the net-like dependence structures by drawing a graph describing the conditional dependencies between the variables. Until now, the main focus of research was on building Gaussian graphical models for continuous multivariate data following a multivariate normal distribution. Satisfactory solutions for binary data were missing. We adapted the method of Meinshausen and Buhlmann to binary data and used the LASSO for logistic regression. Objective of this paper was to examine the performance of the Bolasso to the development of graphical models for high dimensional binary data. We hypothesized that the performance of Bolasso is superior to competing LASSO methods to identify graphical models. Methods: We analyzed the Bolasso to derive graphical models in comparison with other LASSO based method. Model performance was assessed in a simulation study with random data generated via symmetric local logistic regression models and Gibbs sampling. Main outcome variables were the Structural Hamming Distance and the Youden Index. We applied the results of the simulation study to a real-life data with functioning data of patients having head and neck cancer. Results: Bootstrap aggregating as incorporated in the Bolasso algorithm greatly improved the performance in higher sample sizes. The number of bootstraps did have minimal impact on performance. Bolasso performed reasonable well with a cutpoint of 0.90 and a small penalty term. Optimal prediction for Bolasso leads to very conservative models in comparison with AIC, BIC or cross-validated optimal penalty terms. Conclusions: Bootstrap aggregating may improve variable selection if the underlying selection process is not too unstable due to small sample size and if one is mainly interested in reducing the false discovery rate. We propose using the Bolasso for graphical modeling in large sample sizes
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