5,305 research outputs found
Spiral cracks in drying precipitates
We investigate the formation of spiral crack patterns during the desiccation
of thin layers of precipitates in contact with a substrate. This
symmetry-breaking fracturing mode is found to arise naturally not from torsion
forces, but from a propagating stress front induced by the fold-up of the
fragments. We model their formation mechanism using a coarse-grain model for
fragmentation and successfully reproduce the spiral cracks. Fittings of
experimental and simulation data show that the spirals are logarithmic,
corresponding to constant deviation from a circular crack path. Theoretical
aspects of the logarithmic spirals are discussed. In particular we show that
this occurs generally when the crack speed is proportional to the propagating
speed of stress front.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, RevTe
Bioinformatics tools in predictive ecology: Applications to fisheries
This article is made available throught the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund - Copygith @ 2012 Tucker et al.There has been a huge effort in the advancement of analytical techniques for molecular biological data over the past decade. This has led to many novel algorithms that are specialized to deal with data associated with biological phenomena, such as gene expression and protein interactions. In contrast, ecological data analysis has remained focused to some degree on off-the-shelf statistical techniques though this is starting to change with the adoption of state-of-the-art methods, where few assumptions can be made about the data and a more explorative approach is required, for example, through the use of Bayesian networks. In this paper, some novel bioinformatics tools for microarray data are discussed along with their ‘crossover potential’ with an application to fisheries data. In particular, a focus is made on the development of models that identify functionally equivalent species in different fish communities with the aim of predicting functional collapse
Magnetic Fluffy Dark Matter
We explore extensions of inelastic Dark Matter and Magnetic inelastic Dark
Matter where the WIMP can scatter to a tower of heavier states. We assume a
WIMP mass GeV and a constant splitting between
successive states keV. For the
spin-independent scattering scenario we find that the direct experiments CDMS
and XENON strongly constrain most of the DAMA/LIBRA preferred parameter space,
while for WIMPs that interact with nuclei via their magnetic moment a region of
parameter space corresponding to GeV and keV
is allowed by all the present direct detection constraints.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures, added comments about magnetic moment form factor
to Sec 3.1.2 and results to Sec 3.2.2, final version to be published in JHE
Neutrino Mass, Sneutrino Dark Matter and Signals of Lepton Flavor Violation in the MRSSM
We study the phenomenology of mixed-sneutrino dark matter in the Minimal
R-Symmetric Supersymmetric Standard Model (MRSSM). Mixed sneutrinos fit
naturally within the MRSSM, as the smallness (or absence) of neutrino Yukawa
couplings singles out sneutrino A-terms as the only ones not automatically
forbidden by R-symmetry. We perform a study of randomly generated sneutrino
mass matrices and find that (i) the measured value of is well
within the range of typical values obtained for the relic abundance of the
lightest sneutrino, (ii) with small lepton-number-violating mass terms
for the right-handed sneutrinos, random
matrices satisfying the constraint have a decent probability of
satisfying direct detection constraints, and much of the remaining parameter
space will be probed by upcoming experiments, (iii) the terms radiatively generate appropriately small Majorana neutrino
masses, with neutrino oscillation data favoring a mostly sterile lightest
sneutrino with a dominantly mu/tau-flavored active component, and (iv) a
sneutrino LSP with a significant mu component can lead to striking signals of
e-mu flavor violation in dilepton invariant-mass distributions at the LHC.Comment: Revised collider analysis in Sec. 5 after fixing error in particle
spectrum, References adde
Acceleressence: Dark Energy from a Phase Transition at the Seesaw Scale
Simple models are constructed for "acceleressence" dark energy: the latent
heat of a phase transition occurring in a hidden sector governed by the seesaw
mass scale v^2/M_Pl, where v is the electroweak scale and M_Pl the
gravitational mass scale. In our models, the seesaw scale is stabilized by
supersymmetry, implying that the LHC must discover superpartners with a
spectrum that reflects a low scale of fundamental supersymmetry breaking.
Newtonian gravity may be modified by effects arising from the exchange of
fields in the acceleressence sector whose Compton wavelengths are typically of
order the millimeter scale. There are two classes of models. In the first class
the universe is presently in a metastable vacuum and will continue to inflate
until tunneling processes eventually induce a first order transition. In the
simplest such model, the range of the new force is bounded to be larger than 25
microns in the absence of fine-tuning of parameters, and for couplings of order
unity it is expected to be \approx 100 microns. In the second class of models
thermal effects maintain the present vacuum energy of the universe, but on
further cooling, the universe will "soon" smoothly relax to a matter dominated
era. In this case, the range of the new force is also expected to be of order
the millimeter scale or larger, although its strength is uncertain. A firm
prediction of this class of models is the existence of additional energy
density in radiation at the eV era, which can potentially be probed in
precision measurements of the cosmic microwave background. An interesting
possibility is that the transition towards a matter dominated era has occurred
in the very recent past, with the consequence that the universe is currently
decelerating.Comment: 10 pages, references adde
The Tevatron at the Frontier of Dark Matter Direct Detection
Direct detection of dark matter (DM) requires an interaction of dark matter
particles with nucleons. The same interaction can lead to dark matter pair
production at a hadron collider, and with the addition of initial state
radiation this may lead to mono-jet signals. Mono-jet searches at the Tevatron
can thus place limits on DM direct detection rates. We study these bounds both
in the case where there is a contact interaction between DM and the standard
model and where there is a mediator kinematically accessible at the Tevatron.
We find that in many cases the Tevatron provides the current best limit,
particularly for light dark matter, below 5 GeV, and for spin dependent
interactions. Non-standard dark matter candidates are also constrained. The
introduction of a light mediator significantly weakens the collider bound. A
direct detection discovery that is in apparent conflict with mono-jet limits
will thus point to a new light state coupling the standard model to the dark
sector. Mono-jet searches with more luminosity and including the spectrum shape
in the analysis can improve the constraints on DM-nucleon scattering cross
section.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures, final version in JHE
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Testing of a Model with Latino Patients That Explains the Links Among Patient-Perceived Provider Cultural Sensitivity, Language Preference, and Patient Treatment Adherence
Introduction
Disparities in treatment adherence based on race and ethnicity are well documented but poorly understood. Specifically, the causes of treatment nonadherence among Latino patients living in the USA are complex and include cultural and language barriers.
Purpose
The purpose of this study was to examine whether patients’ perceptions in patient-provider interactions (i.e., trust in provider, patient satisfaction, and patient sense of interpersonal control in patient-provider interactions) mediate any found association between patient-perceived provider cultural sensitivity (PCS) and treatment adherence among English-preferred Latino (EPL) and Spanish-preferred Latino (SPL) patients.
Methods
Data from 194 EPL patients and 361 SPL patients were obtained using questionnaires. A series of language-specific structural equation models were conducted to test the relationship between patient-perceived PCS and patient treatment adherence and the examined mediators of this relationship among the Latino patients.
Results
No significant direct effects of patient-perceived PCS on general treatment adherence were found. However, as hypothesized, several significant indirect effects emerged. Preferred language appeared to have moderating effects on the relationships between patient-perceived PCS and general treatment adherence.
Conclusion
These results suggest that interventions to promote treatment adherence among Latino patients should likely include provider training to foster patient-defined PCS, trust in provider, and patient satisfaction with care. Furthermore, this training needs to be customized to be suitable for providing care to Latino patients who prefer speaking Spanish and Latino patients who prefer speaking English
Exact results of the mixed-spin Ising model on a decorated square lattice with two different decorating spins of integer magnitudes
The mixed-spin Ising model on a decorated square lattice with two different
decorating spins of the integer magnitudes S_B = 1 and S_C = 2 placed on
horizontal and vertical bonds of the lattice, respectively, is examined within
an exact analytical approach based on the generalized decoration-iteration
mapping transformation. Besides the ground-state analysis, finite-temperature
properties of the system are also investigated in detail. The most interesting
numerical result to emerge from our study relates to a striking critical
behaviour of the spontaneously ordered 'quasi-1D' spin system. It was found
that this quite remarkable spontaneous order arises when one sub-lattice of the
decorating spins (either S_B or S_C) tends towards their 'non-magnetic' spin
state S = 0 and the system becomes disordered only upon further single-ion
anisotropy strengthening. The effect of single-ion anisotropy upon the
temperature dependence of the total and sub-lattice magnetization is also
particularly investigated.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figure
Tensor completion in hierarchical tensor representations
Compressed sensing extends from the recovery of sparse vectors from
undersampled measurements via efficient algorithms to the recovery of matrices
of low rank from incomplete information. Here we consider a further extension
to the reconstruction of tensors of low multi-linear rank in recently
introduced hierarchical tensor formats from a small number of measurements.
Hierarchical tensors are a flexible generalization of the well-known Tucker
representation, which have the advantage that the number of degrees of freedom
of a low rank tensor does not scale exponentially with the order of the tensor.
While corresponding tensor decompositions can be computed efficiently via
successive applications of (matrix) singular value decompositions, some
important properties of the singular value decomposition do not extend from the
matrix to the tensor case. This results in major computational and theoretical
difficulties in designing and analyzing algorithms for low rank tensor
recovery. For instance, a canonical analogue of the tensor nuclear norm is
NP-hard to compute in general, which is in stark contrast to the matrix case.
In this book chapter we consider versions of iterative hard thresholding
schemes adapted to hierarchical tensor formats. A variant builds on methods
from Riemannian optimization and uses a retraction mapping from the tangent
space of the manifold of low rank tensors back to this manifold. We provide
first partial convergence results based on a tensor version of the restricted
isometry property (TRIP) of the measurement map. Moreover, an estimate of the
number of measurements is provided that ensures the TRIP of a given tensor rank
with high probability for Gaussian measurement maps.Comment: revised version, to be published in Compressed Sensing and Its
Applications (edited by H. Boche, R. Calderbank, G. Kutyniok, J. Vybiral
Long Lived Fourth Generation and the Higgs
A chiral fourth generation is a simple and well motivated extension of the
standard model, and has important consequences for Higgs phenomenology. Here we
consider a scenario where the fourth generation neutrinos are long lived and
have both a Dirac and Majorana mass term. Such neutrinos can be as light as 40
GeV and can be the dominant decay mode of the Higgs boson for Higgs masses
below the W-boson threshold. We study the effect of the Majorana mass term on
the Higgs branching fractions and reevaluate the Tevatron constraints on the
Higgs mass. We discuss the prospects for the LHC to detect the semi-invisible
Higgs decays into fourth generation neutrino pairs. Under the assumption that
the lightest fourth generation neutrino is stable, it's thermal relic density
can be up to 20% of the observed dark matter density in the universe. This is
in agreement with current constraints on the spin dependent neutrino-neutron
cross section, but can be probed by the next generation of dark matter direct
detection experiments.Comment: v1: 19 pages, 5 figures; v2: References added; v3: version to appear
in JHE
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