4,751 research outputs found
Low Dirac Eigenmodes and the Topological and Chiral Structure of the QCD Vacuum
Several lattice calculations which probe the chiral and topological structure
of QCD are discussed. The results focus attention on the low-lying eigenmodes
of the Dirac operator in typical gauge field configurations.Comment: Talk presented at the DPF2000 Conferenc
Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics in cosmology: a comparative study of implementations
We analyse the performance of twelve different implementations of Smoothed
Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) using seven tests designed to isolate key
hydrodynamic elements of cosmological simulations which are known to cause the
SPH algorithm problems. In order, we consider a shock tube, spherical adiabatic
collapse, cooling flow model, drag, a cosmological simulation, rotating
cloud-collapse and disc stability. In the implementations special attention is
given to the way in which force symmetry is enforced in the equations of
motion. We study in detail how the hydrodynamics are affected by different
implementations of the artificial viscosity including those with a
shear-correction modification. We present an improved first-order
smoothing-length update algorithm that is designed to remove instabilities that
are present in the Hernquist and Katz (1989) algorithm.
For all tests we find that the artificial viscosity is the most important
factor distinguishing the results from the various implementations. The second
most important factor is the way force symmetry is achieved in the equation of
motion. Most results favour a kernel symmetrization approach. The exact method
by which SPH pressure forces are included has comparatively little effect on
the results. Combining the equation of motion presented in Thomas and Couchman
(1992) with a modification of the Monaghan and Gingold (1983) artificial
viscosity leads to an SPH scheme that is both fast and reliable.Comment: 30 pages, 26 figures and 9 tables included. Submitted to MNRAS.
Postscript version available at
ftp://phobos.astro.uwo.ca/pub/etittley/papers/sphtest.ps.g
A New Method for the High-Precision Assessment of Tumor Changes in Response to Treatment
Imaging demonstrates that preclinical and human tumors are heterogeneous,
i.e. a single tumor can exhibit multiple regions that behave differently during
both normal development and also in response to treatment. The large variations
observed in control group tumors can obscure detection of significant
therapeutic effects due to the ambiguity in attributing causes of change. This
can hinder development of effective therapies due to limitations in
experimental design, rather than due to therapeutic failure. An improved method
to model biological variation and heterogeneity in imaging signals is
described. Specifically, Linear Poisson modelling (LPM) evaluates changes in
apparent diffusion co-efficient (ADC) before and 72 hours after radiotherapy,
in two xenograft models of colorectal cancer. The statistical significance of
measured changes are compared to those attainable using a conventional t-test
analysis on basic ADC distribution parameters. When LPMs were applied to
treated tumors, the LPMs detected highly significant changes. The analyses were
significant for all tumors, equating to a gain in power of 4 fold (i.e.
equivelent to having a sample size 16 times larger), compared with the
conventional approach. In contrast, highly significant changes are only
detected at a cohort level using t-tests, restricting their potential use
within personalised medicine and increasing the number of animals required
during testing. Furthermore, LPM enabled the relative volumes of responding and
non-responding tissue to be estimated for each xenograft model. Leave-one-out
analysis of the treated xenografts provided quality control and identified
potential outliers, raising confidence in LPM data at clinically relevant
sample sizes
Star Formation, Supernovae Feedback and the Angular Momentum Problem in Numerical CDM Cosmogony: Half Way There?
We present a smoothed particle hydrodynamic (SPH) simulation that reproduces
a galaxy that is a moderate facsimile of those observed. The primary failing
point of previous simulations of disk formation, namely excessive transport of
angular momentum from gas to dark matter, is ameliorated by the inclusion of a
supernova feedback algorithm that allows energy to persist in the model ISM for
a period corresponding to the lifetime of stellar associations. The inclusion
of feedback leads to a disk at a redshift , with a specific angular
momentum content within 10% of the value required to fit observations. An
exponential fit to the disk baryon surface density gives a scale length within
17% of the theoretical value. Runs without feedback, with or without star
formation, exhibit the drastic angular momentum transport observed elsewhere.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ Letter
Measuring AGN Feedback with the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect
One of the most important and poorly-understood issues in structure formation
is the role of outflows driven by active galactic nuclei (AGN). Using
large-scale cosmological simulations, we compute the impact of such outflows on
the small-scale distribution of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Like
gravitationally-heated structures, AGN outflows induce CMB distortions both
through thermal motions and peculiar velocities, by processes known as the
thermal and kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effects, respectively. For AGN
outflows the thermal SZ effect is dominant, doubling the angular power spectrum
on arcminute scales. But the most distinct imprint of AGN feedback is a
substantial increase in the thermal SZ distortions around elliptical galaxies,
post-starburst ellipticals, and quasars, which is linearly proportional to the
outflow energy. While point source subtraction is difficult for quasars, we
show that by appropriately stacking microwave measurements around early-type
galaxies, the new generation of small-scale microwave telescopes will be able
to directly measure AGN feedback at the level important for current theoretical
models.Comment: 12 pages, 12 figures, submitted to ApJ (comments welcome
Quasars: What turns them off?
(Abridged) We explore the idea that the anti-hierarchical turn-off observed
in the quasar population arises from self-regulating feedback, via an outflow
mechanism. Using a detailed hydrodynamic simulation we calculate the luminosity
function of quasars down to a redshift of z=1 in a large, cosmologically
representative volume. Outflows are included explicitly by tracking halo
mergers and driving shocks into the surrounding intergalactic medium. Our
results are in excellent agreement with measurements of the spatial
distribution of quasars, and we detect an intriguing excess of galaxy-quasar
pairs at very short separations. We also reproduce the anti-hierarchical
turnoff in the quasar luminosity function, however, the magnitude of the
turn-off falls short of that observed as well as that predicted by analogous
semi-analytic models. The difference can be traced to the treatment of gas
heating within galaxies. The simulated galaxy cluster L_X-T relationship is
close to that observed for z~1 clusters, but the simulated galaxy groups at z=1
are significantly perturbed by quasar outflows, suggesting that measurements of
X-ray emission in high-redshift groups could well be a "smoking gun" for the
AGN heating hypothesis.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figures, submitted to ApJ, comments welcome
Quarkonium spin structure in lattice NRQCD
Numerical simulations of the quarkonium spin splittings are done in the
framework of lattice nonrelativistic quantum chromodynamics (NRQCD). At leading
order in the velocity expansion the spin splittings are of , where
is the renormalized quark mass and is the mean squared quark
velocity. A systematic analysis is done of all next-to-leading order
corrections. This includes the addition of relativistic
interactions, and the removal of discretization errors in the
leading-order interactions. Simulations are done for both S- and P-wave mesons,
with a variety of heavy quark actions and over a wide range of lattice
spacings. Two prescriptions for the tadpole improvement of the action are also
studied in detail: one using the measured value of the average plaquette, the
other using the mean link measured in Landau gauge. Next-to-leading order
interactions result in a very large reduction in the charmonium splittings,
down by about 60% from their values at leading order. There are further
indications that the velocity expansion may be poorly convergent for
charmonium. Prelimary results show a small correction to the hyperfine
splitting in the Upsilon system.Comment: 16 pages, REVTEX v3.1, 5 postscript figures include
Biodigital publics: personal genomes as digital media artifacts
The recent proliferation of personal genomics and direct-to-consumer (DTC) genomics has attracted much attention and publicity. Concern around these developments has mainly focused on issues of biomedical regulation and hinged on questions of how people understand genomic information as biomedical and what meaning they make of it. However, this publicity amplifies genome sequences which are also made as internet
texts and, as such, they generate new reading publics. The practices around the generation, circulation and reading of genome scans do not just raise questions about biomedical regulation, they also provide the focus for an exploration of how contemporary public participation in genomics works. These issues around the public features of DTC genomic testing can be pursued through a close examination of the modes of one of the best known providers—23andMe. In fact, genome sequences circulate as digital artefacts and, hence, people are addressed by them. They are read as texts, annotated and written about in browsers, blogs and wikis. This activity also yields content for media coverage which addresses an indefinite public in line with Michael Warner’s conceptualisation of publics. Digital genomic texts promise empowerment, personalisation and community, but this promise may obscure the compliance and proscription associated with these forms. The kinds of interaction here
can be compared to those analysed by Andrew Barry. Direct-to-consumer genetics companies are part of a network providing an infrastructure for genomic reading publics and this network can be mapped and examined to demonstrate the ways in which this formation both exacerbates inequalities and offers possibilities for participation in biodigital culture
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