12,231 research outputs found
Measurement of the Entropy and Critical Temperature of a Strongly Interacting Fermi Gas
We report a model-independent measurement of the entropy, energy, and
critical temperature of a degenerate, strongly interacting Fermi gas of atoms.
The total energy is determined from the mean square cloud size in the strongly
interacting regime, where the gas exhibits universal behavior. The entropy is
measured by sweeping a bias magnetic field to adiabatically tune the gas from
the strongly interacting regime to a weakly interacting regime, where the
entropy is known from the cloud size after the sweep. The dependence of the
entropy on the total energy quantitatively tests predictions of the
finite-temperature thermodynamics.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figure
Sugar Free with Justin T.: Diabetes Education Through Community Partnerships
This article describes the design, development, and delivery of an Extension community cable television program, Sugar Free with Justin T., in Roane County, Tennessee. The program targets diabetics, pre-diabetics, and those who care for them, with practical information and demonstrations to improve dietary quality. In addition to television, program videos are posted to the county Extension Facebook page for greater exposure. This innovative approach is the result of extensive Extension and community partnerships, and the article highlights the roles of these varied partners, including the local community college that films, edits, and produces Sugar Free with Justin T
Recommendations and illustrations for the evaluation of photonic random number generators
The never-ending quest to improve the security of digital information
combined with recent improvements in hardware technology has caused the field
of random number generation to undergo a fundamental shift from relying solely
on pseudo-random algorithms to employing optical entropy sources. Despite these
significant advances on the hardware side, commonly used statistical measures
and evaluation practices remain ill-suited to understand or quantify the
optical entropy that underlies physical random number generation. We review the
state of the art in the evaluation of optical random number generation and
recommend a new paradigm: quantifying entropy generation and understanding the
physical limits of the optical sources of randomness. In order to do this, we
advocate for the separation of the physical entropy source from deterministic
post-processing in the evaluation of random number generators and for the
explicit consideration of the impact of the measurement and digitization
process on the rate of entropy production. We present the Cohen-Procaccia
estimate of the entropy rate as one way to do this. In order
to provide an illustration of our recommendations, we apply the Cohen-Procaccia
estimate as well as the entropy estimates from the new NIST draft standards for
physical random number generators to evaluate and compare three common optical
entropy sources: single photon time-of-arrival detection, chaotic lasers, and
amplified spontaneous emission
Pencil-Beam Surveys for Faint Trans-Neptunian Objects
We have conducted pencil-beam searches for outer solar system objects to a
limiting magnitude of R ~ 26. Five new trans-neptunian objects were detected in
these searches. Our combined data set provides an estimate of ~90
trans-neptunian objects per square degree brighter than ~ 25.9. This estimate
is a factor of 3 above the expected number of objects based on an extrapolation
of previous surveys with brighter limits, and appears consistent with the
hypothesis of a single power-law luminosity function for the entire
trans-neptunian region. Maximum likelihood fits to all self-consistent
published surveys with published efficiency functions predicts a cumulative sky
density Sigma(<R) obeying log10(Sigma) = 0.76(R-23.4) objects per square degree
brighter than a given magnitude R.Comment: Accepted by AJ, 18 pages, including 6 figure
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