30,983 research outputs found
Metastable Cosmic Strings in Realistic Models
We investigate the stability of the electroweak Z-string at high
temperatures. Our results show that while finite temperature corrections can
improve the stability of the Z-string, their effect is not strong enough to
stabilize the Z-string in the standard electroweak model. Consequently, the
Z-string will be unstable even under the conditions present during the
electroweak phase transition. We then consider phenomenologically viable models
based on the gauge group and show
that metastable strings exist and are stable to small perturbations for a large
region of the parameter space for these models. We also show that these strings
are superconducting with bosonic charge carriers. The string superconductivity
may be able to stabilize segments and loops against dynamical contraction.
Possible implications of these strings for cosmology are discussed.Comment: 24 pages, 2 figures (available on request); HUTP-92/A032,
Fermilab-Pub-92/228-
Preliminary assessment of systems for deriving liquid and gaseous fuels from waste or grown organics
The overall feasibility of the chemical conversion of waste or grown organic matter to fuel is examined from the technical, economic, and social viewpoints. The energy contribution from a system that uses waste and grown organic feedstocks is estimated as 4 to 12 percent of our current energy consumption. Estimates of today's market prices for these fuels are included. Economic and social issues are as important as technology in determining the feasibility of such a proposal. An orderly program of development and demonstration is recommended to provide reliable data for an assessment of the viability of the proposal
A preliminary assessment of the feasibility of deriving liquid and gaseous fuels from grown and waste organics
The anticipated depletion of our resources of natural gas and petroleum in a few decades has caused a search for renewable sources of fuel. Among the possibilities is the chemical conversion of waste and grown organic matter into gaseous or liquid fuels. The overall feasibility of such a system is considered from the technical, economic, and social viewpoints. Although there are a number of difficult problems to overcome, this preliminary study indicates that this option could provide between 4 and 10 percent of the U.S. energy needs. Estimated costs of fuels derived from grown organic material are appreciably higher than today's market price for fossil fuel. The cost of fuel derived from waste organics is competitive with fossil fuel prices. Economic and social reasons will prohibit the allocation of good food producing land to fuel crop production
Confronting the opioid crisis: Practical pain management and strategies: AOA 2018 critical issues symposium
The United States is in the midst of an opioid crisis. Clinicians have been part of the problem because of overprescribing of narcotics for perioperative pain management. Clinicians need to understand the pathophysiology and science of addiction to improve perioperative management of pain for their patients. Multiple modalities for pain management exist that decrease the use of narcotics. Physical strategies, cognitive strategies, and multimodal medication can all provide improved pain relief and decrease the use of narcotics. National medical societies are developing clinical practice guidelines for pain management that incorporate multimodal strategies and multimodal medication. Changes to policy that improve provider education, access to naloxone, and treatment for addiction can decrease narcotic misuse and the risk of addiction
Experimental study of ion heating and acceleration during magnetic reconnection
Ion heating and acceleration has been studied in the well-characterized reconnection layer of the Magnetic Reconnection Experiment [M. Yamada , Phys. Plasmas 4, 1936 (1997)]. Ion temperature in the layer rises substantially during null-helicity reconnection in which reconnecting field lines are anti-parallel. The plasma outflow is sub-Alfvenic due to a downstream back pressure. An ion energy balance calculation based on the data and including classical viscous heating indicates that ions are heated largely via nonclassical mechanisms. The T-i rise is much smaller during co-helicity reconnection in which field lines reconnect obliquely. This is consistent with a slower reconnection rate and a smaller resistivity enhancement over the Spitzer value. These observations show that nonclassical dissipation mechanisms can play an important role both in heating the ions and in facilitating the reconnection process
Unitarity and the Hilbert space of quantum gravity
Under the premises that physics is unitary and black hole evaporation is
complete (no remnants, no topology change), there must exist a one-to-one
correspondence between states on future null and timelike infinity and on any
earlier spacelike Cauchy surface (e.g., slices preceding the formation of the
hole). We show that these requirements exclude a large set of semiclassical
spacetime configurations from the Hilbert space of quantum gravity. In
particular, the highest entropy configurations, which account for almost all of
the volume of semiclassical phase space, would not have quantum counterparts,
i.e. would not correspond to allowed states in a quantum theory of gravity.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, revtex; minor changes in v2 (version published in
Class. Quant. Grav.
An Interpretable Deep Hierarchical Semantic Convolutional Neural Network for Lung Nodule Malignancy Classification
While deep learning methods are increasingly being applied to tasks such as
computer-aided diagnosis, these models are difficult to interpret, do not
incorporate prior domain knowledge, and are often considered as a "black-box."
The lack of model interpretability hinders them from being fully understood by
target users such as radiologists. In this paper, we present a novel
interpretable deep hierarchical semantic convolutional neural network (HSCNN)
to predict whether a given pulmonary nodule observed on a computed tomography
(CT) scan is malignant. Our network provides two levels of output: 1) low-level
radiologist semantic features, and 2) a high-level malignancy prediction score.
The low-level semantic outputs quantify the diagnostic features used by
radiologists and serve to explain how the model interprets the images in an
expert-driven manner. The information from these low-level tasks, along with
the representations learned by the convolutional layers, are then combined and
used to infer the high-level task of predicting nodule malignancy. This unified
architecture is trained by optimizing a global loss function including both
low- and high-level tasks, thereby learning all the parameters within a joint
framework. Our experimental results using the Lung Image Database Consortium
(LIDC) show that the proposed method not only produces interpretable lung
cancer predictions but also achieves significantly better results compared to
common 3D CNN approaches
Wave-induced sediment transport and onshore sandbar migration
Author Posting. © Elsevier B.V., 2006. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B.V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Coastal Engineering 53 (2006): 817-824, doi:10.1016/j.coastaleng.2006.04.003.The 25-m onshore migration of a nearshore sandbar observed over a 5-day period near
Duck, NC is simulated with a simplified, computationally efficient, wave-resolving singlephase model. The modeled sediment transport is assumed to occur close to the seabed and to be in phase with the bottom stress. Neglected intergranular stresses and fluid-granular interactions, likely important in concentrated flow, are compensated for with an elevated (relative to that appropriate for a clear fluid) model roughness height that gives the best fit to the observed bar migration. Model results suggest that when mean-current-induced transport is small, wave-induced transport leads to the observed onshore bar migration. Based on the results from the simplified phase-resolving model, a wave-averaged, energetics-type model (e.g., only moments of the near-bottom velocity field are required) with different friction factors for
oscillatory and mean flows is developed that also predicts the observed bar migration. Although the assumptions underlying the models differ, the similarity of model results precludes determination of the dominant mechanisms of sediment transport during onshore bar migration.Supported by the Office of Naval Research, the National Science Foundation, the Army Research
Office, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Coastal Ocean Institute
Tendency of spherically imploding plasma liners formed by merging plasma jets to evolve toward spherical symmetry
Three dimensional hydrodynamic simulations have been performed using smoothed
particle hydrodynamics (SPH) in order to study the effects of discrete jets on
the processes of plasma liner formation, implosion on vacuum, and expansion.
The pressure history of the inner portion of the liner was qualitatively and
quantitatively similar from peak compression through the complete stagnation of
the liner among simulation results from two one dimensional
radiationhydrodynamic codes, 3D SPH with a uniform liner, and 3D SPH with 30
discrete plasma jets. Two dimensional slices of the pressure show that the
discrete jet SPH case evolves towards a profile that is almost
indistinguishable from the SPH case with a uniform liner, showing that
non-uniformities due to discrete jets are smeared out by late stages of the
implosion. Liner formation and implosion on vacuum was also shown to be robust
to Rayleigh-Taylor instability growth. Interparticle mixing for a liner
imploding on vacuum was investigated. The mixing rate was very small until
after peak compression for the 30 jet simulation.Comment: 28 pages, 16 figures, submitted to Physics of Plasmas (2012
MAGIC observations of Mkn 421 in 2008, and related optical/X-ray/TeV MWL study
The HBL-type blazar Markarian 421 is one of the brightest TeV gamma-ray
sources of the Northern sky. From December 2007 until June 2008 it was
intensively observed in the VHE (E>100 GeV) band by the MAGIC gamma-ray
telescope. The source showed intense and prolonged activity during the whole
period. In some nights the integral flux rose up to 3.6 Crab units (E>200 GeV).
Intra-night rapid flux variations were observed. We compared the optical (KVA)
and X-ray (RXTE-ASM, Swift-XRT) data with the MAGIC VHE data, investigating the
correlations between different energy bands.Comment: 4 pages,4figures, Contribution to the 31st ICRC, Lodz, Poland, July
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