21,202 research outputs found
Solid state microwave source development program Final report
Microstrip oscillator for solid state microwave sourc
The thermodynamics of prediction
A system responding to a stochastic driving signal can be interpreted as
computing, by means of its dynamics, an implicit model of the environmental
variables. The system's state retains information about past environmental
fluctuations, and a fraction of this information is predictive of future ones.
The remaining nonpredictive information reflects model complexity that does not
improve predictive power, and thus represents the ineffectiveness of the model.
We expose the fundamental equivalence between this model inefficiency and
thermodynamic inefficiency, measured by dissipation. Our results hold
arbitrarily far from thermodynamic equilibrium and are applicable to a wide
range of systems, including biomolecular machines. They highlight a profound
connection between the effective use of information and efficient thermodynamic
operation: any system constructed to keep memory about its environment and to
operate with maximal energetic efficiency has to be predictive.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figur
On Invariant Notions of Segre Varieties in Binary Projective Spaces
Invariant notions of a class of Segre varieties \Segrem(2) of PG(2^m - 1,
2) that are direct products of copies of PG(1, 2), being any positive
integer, are established and studied. We first demonstrate that there exists a
hyperbolic quadric that contains \Segrem(2) and is invariant under its
projective stabiliser group \Stab{m}{2}. By embedding PG(2^m - 1, 2) into
\PG(2^m - 1, 4), a basis of the latter space is constructed that is invariant
under \Stab{m}{2} as well. Such a basis can be split into two subsets whose
spans are either real or complex-conjugate subspaces according as is even
or odd. In the latter case, these spans can, in addition, be viewed as
indicator sets of a \Stab{m}{2}-invariant geometric spread of lines of PG(2^m
- 1, 2). This spread is also related with a \Stab{m}{2}-invariant
non-singular Hermitian variety. The case is examined in detail to
illustrate the theory. Here, the lines of the invariant spread are found to
fall into four distinct orbits under \Stab{3}{2}, while the points of PG(7,
2) form five orbits.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figure; v2 - version accepted in Designs, Codes and
Cryptograph
Population connectivity of an overexploited coastal fish, Argyrosomus coronus (Sciaenidae), in an ocean-warming hotspot
The West Coast dusky kob Argyrosomus coronus is a commercially exploited fish with a distribution confined to the Angola–Benguela Frontal Zone (ABFZ) of the southeastern Atlantic Ocean. A previous study revealed that during a recent period of local warming the species extended its distribution into Namibian waters, where it hybridised with the resident and congeneric Argyrosomus inodorus. Environmental changes are a major threat to marine biodiversity and when combined with overfishing have the potential to accelerate the decline of species. However, little is known regarding the evolutionary history and population structure of A. coronus across the ABFZ. We investigated genetic diversity, population structure and historical demographic changes using mtDNA control region sequences and genotypes at six nuclear microsatellite loci, from 180 individuals. A single, genetically homogeneous population was indicated across the distributional range of A. coronus (ϕST = 0.041, FST = 0.000, D = 0.000; p > 0.05). These findings imply that the oceanographic features within the ABFZ do not appear to significantly influence population connectivity in A. coronus, which simplifies management of the species. However, reconstruction of the demographic history points to a close link between the evolutionary history of A. coronus and the environmental characteristics of the ABFZ. This outcome suggests the species’ vulnerability to the rapid environmental changes being observed across this region, and highlights a pressing need for transboundary management to mitigate the impacts of climate change in this global hotspot of seawater temperature changes.Keywords: Angola–Benguela Frontal Zone, climate change, demographic history, marine fisheries, molecular ecology, population structur
Research on irrigation of corn and soybeans at Conesville and Ankeny, Iowa, 1951 to 1955
Irrigation in the humid and semihumid sections of the United States has increased manyfold since World War II. Before this, irrigation was confined principally to the more arid western states. Some of the reasons for the spread to more humid areas were the development of portable lightweight aluminum pipe and couplers, moderately high farm prices, occurrence of several drouthy seasons, increased use of fertilizers and development of better crop varieties. Drouths in various portions of the state in 1953, 1954, 1955 and 1956 have prompted many farmers to buy irrigation equipment. A 1953 survey in Iowa showed that only 55 farmers were irrigating about 3,600 acres. Twenty-two of these farmers were in Muscatine County where irrigation is used on vegetable crops. Two years later, in 1955, another survey indicated that 250 farmers were irrigating approximately 15,000 acres.
Indications are that irrigation will continue to increase, particularly along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. Along the Missouri River there are about 600,000 acres of bottomland. Most of this area needs better surface drainage. Without too much additional cost, land which is surface drained can be shaped for surface irrigation. Because of good ground water supplies, this area has a high irrigation potential. These conditions also exist to a more limited extent along other major Iowa streams
Breakdown of Conformal Invariance at Strongly Random Critical Points
We consider the breakdown of conformal and scale invariance in random systems
with strongly random critical points. Extending previous results on
one-dimensional systems, we provide an example of a three-dimensional system
which has a strongly random critical point. The average correlation functions
of this system demonstrate a breakdown of conformal invariance, while the
typical correlation functions demonstrate a breakdown of scale invariance. The
breakdown of conformal invariance is due to the vanishing of the correlation
functions at the infinite disorder fixed point, causing the critical
correlation functions to be controlled by a dangerously irrelevant operator
describing the approach to the fixed point. We relate the computation of
average correlation functions to a problem of persistence in the RG flow.Comment: 9 page
All Who Wander: On the Prevalence and Characteristics of Multi-community Engagement
Although analyzing user behavior within individual communities is an active
and rich research domain, people usually interact with multiple communities
both on- and off-line. How do users act in such multi-community environments?
Although there are a host of intriguing aspects to this question, it has
received much less attention in the research community in comparison to the
intra-community case. In this paper, we examine three aspects of
multi-community engagement: the sequence of communities that users post to, the
language that users employ in those communities, and the feedback that users
receive, using longitudinal posting behavior on Reddit as our main data source,
and DBLP for auxiliary experiments. We also demonstrate the effectiveness of
features drawn from these aspects in predicting users' future level of
activity.
One might expect that a user's trajectory mimics the "settling-down" process
in real life: an initial exploration of sub-communities before settling down
into a few niches. However, we find that the users in our data continually post
in new communities; moreover, as time goes on, they post increasingly evenly
among a more diverse set of smaller communities. Interestingly, it seems that
users that eventually leave the community are "destined" to do so from the very
beginning, in the sense of showing significantly different "wandering" patterns
very early on in their trajectories; this finding has potentially important
design implications for community maintainers. Our multi-community perspective
also allows us to investigate the "situation vs. personality" debate from
language usage across different communities.Comment: 11 pages, data available at
https://chenhaot.com/pages/multi-community.html, Proceedings of WWW 2015
(updated references
Parallel algorithm with spectral convergence for nonlinear integro-differential equations
We discuss a numerical algorithm for solving nonlinear integro-differential
equations, and illustrate our findings for the particular case of Volterra type
equations. The algorithm combines a perturbation approach meant to render a
linearized version of the problem and a spectral method where unknown functions
are expanded in terms of Chebyshev polynomials (El-gendi's method). This
approach is shown to be suitable for the calculation of two-point Green
functions required in next to leading order studies of time-dependent quantum
field theory.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figure
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