6,232 research outputs found
Gas chromatograph injection system
An injection system for a gas chromatograph is described which uses a small injector chamber (available in various configurations). The sample is placed in the chamber while the chamber is not under pressure and is not heated, and there is no chance of leakage caused by either pressure or heat. It is injected into the apparatus by changing the position of a valve and heating the chamber, and is volatilized and swept by a carrier gas into the analysis apparatus
Cognitive Information Processing
Contains reports on four research projects.National Science Foundation (Grant G-16526)National Institutes of Health (Grant MH-04737-03)National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Grant NsG-496
Localized Exotic Smoothness
Gompf's end-sum techniques are used to establish the existence of an infinity
of non-diffeomorphic manifolds, all having the same trivial
topology, but for which the exotic differentiable structure is confined to a
region which is spatially limited. Thus, the smoothness is standard outside of
a region which is topologically (but not smoothly) ,
where is the compact three ball. The exterior of this region is
diffeomorphic to standard . In a
space-time diagram, the confined exoticness sweeps out a world tube which, it
is conjectured, might act as a source for certain non-standard solutions to the
Einstein equations. It is shown that smooth Lorentz signature metrics can be
globally continued from ones given on appropriately defined regions, including
the exterior (standard) region. Similar constructs are provided for the
topology, of the Kruskal form of the Schwarzschild
solution. This leads to conjectures on the existence of Einstein metrics which
are externally identical to standard black hole ones, but none of which can be
globally diffeomorphic to such standard objects. Certain aspects of the Cauchy
problem are also discussed in terms of \models which are
``half-standard'', say for all but for which cannot be globally
smooth.Comment: 8 pages plus 6 figures, available on request, IASSNS-HEP-94/2
Exposing errors related to weak memory in GPU applications
© 2016 ACM.We present the systematic design of a testing environment that uses stressing and fuzzing to reveal errors in GPU applications that arise due to weak memory effects. We evaluate our approach on seven GPUS spanning three NVIDIA architectures, across ten CUDA applications that use fine-grained concurrency. Our results show that applications that rarely or never exhibit errors related to weak memory when executed natively can readily exhibit these errors when executed in our testing environment. Our testing environment also provides a means to help identify the root causes of such errors, and automatically suggests how to insert fences that harden an application against weak memory bugs. To understand the cost of GPU fences, we benchmark applications with fences provided by the hardening strategy as well as a more conservative, sound fencing strategy
The Ethics of Corporate Governance
How should corporate directors determine what is the right decision? For at least the past 30 years the debate has raged as to whether shareholder value should take precedence over corporate social responsibility when crucial decisions arise. Directors face pressure, not least from ethical investors, to do the good thing when they seek to make the right choice. Corporate governance theory has tended to look to agency theory and the need of boards to curb excessive executive power to guide directors' decisions. While useful for those purposes, agency theory provides only limited guidance. Supplementing it with the alternatives - stakeholder theory and stewardship theory - tends to put directors in conflict with their legal obligations to work in the interests of shareholders. This paper seeks to reframe the discussion about corporate governance in terms of the ethical debate between consequential, teleological approaches to ethics and idealist, deontological ones, suggesting that directors are - for good reason - more inclined toward utilitarian judgments like those underpinning shareholder value. But the problems with shareholder value have become so great that a different framework is needed: strategic value, with an emphasis on long-term value creation judged from a decidedly utilitarian standpoint
Topological Field Theory and Rational Curves
We analyze the superstring propagating on a Calabi-Yau threefold. This theory
naturally leads to the consideration of Witten's topological non-linear
sigma-model and the structure of rational curves on the Calabi-Yau manifold. We
study in detail the case of the world-sheet of the string being mapped to a
multiple cover of an isolated rational curve and we show that a natural
compactification of the moduli space of such a multiple cover leads to a
formula in agreement with a conjecture by Candelas, de la Ossa, Green and
Parkes.Comment: 20 page
Hamiltonian 2-forms in Kahler geometry, III Extremal metrics and stability
This paper concerns the explicit construction of extremal Kaehler metrics on
total spaces of projective bundles, which have been studied in many places. We
present a unified approach, motivated by the theory of hamiltonian 2-forms (as
introduced and studied in previous papers in the series) but this paper is
largely independent of that theory.
We obtain a characterization, on a large family of projective bundles, of
those `admissible' Kaehler classes (i.e., the ones compatible with the bundle
structure in a way we make precise) which contain an extremal Kaehler metric.
In many cases, such as on geometrically ruled surfaces, every Kaehler class is
admissible. In particular, our results complete the classification of extremal
Kaehler metrics on geometrically ruled surfaces, answering several
long-standing questions.
We also find that our characterization agrees with a notion of K-stability
for admissible Kaehler classes. Our examples and nonexistence results therefore
provide a fertile testing ground for the rapidly developing theory of stability
for projective varieties, and we discuss some of the ramifications. In
particular we obtain examples of projective varieties which are destabilized by
a non-algebraic degeneration.Comment: 40 pages, sequel to math.DG/0401320 and math.DG/0202280, but largely
self-contained; partially replaces and extends math.DG/050151
Engineering a static verification tool for GPU kernels
We report on practical experiences over the last 2.5 years related to the engineering of GPUVerify, a static verification tool for OpenCL and CUDA GPU kernels, plotting the progress of GPUVerify from a prototype to a fully functional and relatively efficient analysis tool. Our hope is that this experience report will serve the verification community by helping to inform future tooling efforts. © 2014 Springer International Publishing
Cognitive Information Processing
Contains reports on seven research projects split into three sections.Joint Services Electronics Program by the U. S. Army Research Office, Durham, under Contract DA36-039-AMC-03200(E)National Science Foundation (Grant GP-2495)National Institutes of Health (Grant MH-04737-05)National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Grant NsG-496
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