6,536 research outputs found
A dual modelling of evolving political opinion networks
We present the result of a dual modeling of opinion network. The model
complements the agent-based opinion models by attaching to the social agent
(voters) network a political opinion (party) network having its own intrinsic
mechanisms of evolution. These two sub-networks form a global network which can
be either isolated from or dependent on the external influence. Basically, the
evolution of the agent network includes link adding and deleting, the opinion
changes influenced by social validation, the political climate, the
attractivity of the parties and the interaction between them. The opinion
network is initially composed of numerous nodes representing opinions or
parties which are located on a one dimensional axis according to their
political positions. The mechanism of evolution includes union, splitting,
change of position and of attractivity, taken into account the pairwise node
interaction decaying with node distance in power law. The global evolution ends
in a stable distribution of the social agents over a quasi-stable and
fluctuating stationary number of remaining parties. Empirical study on the
lifetime distribution of numerous parties and vote results is carried out to
verify numerical results
Lensing of Fast Radio Bursts by Plasma Structures in Host Galaxies
Plasma lenses in the host galaxies of fast radio bursts (FRBs) can strongly
modulate FRB amplitudes for a wide range of distances, including the
Gpc distance of the repeater FRB121102. To produce caustics, the lens'
dispersion-measure depth (), scale size (), and distance
from the source () must satisfy . Caustics produce strong
magnifications () on short time scales ( hours to days and
perhaps shorter) along with narrow, epoch dependent spectral peaks (0.1 to
1~GHz). However, strong suppression also occurs in long-duration (
months) troughs. For geometries that produce multiple images, the resulting
burst components will arrive differentially by s to tens of ms and
they will show different apparent dispersion measures, pc cm. Arrival time perturbations may mask any
underlying periodicity with period s. When arrival times differ by
less than the burst width, interference effects in dynamic spectra are
expected. Strong lensing requires source sizes smaller than , which can be satisfied by compact objects such as
neutron star magnetospheres but not by AGNs. Much of the phenomenology of the
repeating fast radio burst source FRB121102 is similar to lensing effects. The
overall picture can be tested by obtaining wideband spectra of bursts (from
to 10 GHz and possibly higher), which can also be used to characterize the
plasma environment near FRB sources. A rich variety of phenomena is expected
from an ensemble of lenses near the FRB source. We discuss constraints on
densities, magnetic fields, and locations of plasma lenses related to
requirements for lensing to occur.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, submitted to the Astrophysical Journa
A new source detection algorithm using FDR
The False Discovery Rate (FDR) method has recently been described by Miller
et al (2001), along with several examples of astrophysical applications. FDR is
a new statistical procedure due to Benjamini and Hochberg (1995) for
controlling the fraction of false positives when performing multiple hypothesis
testing. The importance of this method to source detection algorithms is
immediately clear. To explore the possibilities offered we have developed a new
task for performing source detection in radio-telescope images, Sfind 2.0,
which implements FDR. We compare Sfind 2.0 with two other source detection and
measurement tasks, Imsad and SExtractor, and comment on several issues arising
from the nature of the correlation between nearby pixels and the necessary
assumption of the null hypothesis. The strong suggestion is made that
implementing FDR as a threshold defining method in other existing
source-detection tasks is easy and worthwhile. We show that the constraint on
the fraction of false detections as specified by FDR holds true even for highly
correlated and realistic images. For the detection of true sources, which are
complex combinations of source-pixels, this constraint appears to be somewhat
less strict. It is still reliable enough, however, for a priori estimates of
the fraction of false source detections to be robust and realistic.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication by A
Type Ia Supernovae, Evolution, and the Cosmological Constant
We explore the possible role of evolution in the analysis of data on SNe Ia
at cosmological distances. First, using a variety of simple sleuthing
techniques, we find evidence that the properties of the high and low redshift
SNe Ia observed so far differ from one another. Next, we examine the effects of
including simple phenomenological models for evolution in the analysis. The
result is that cosmological models and evolution are highly degenerate with one
another, so that the incorporation of even very simple models for evolution
makes it virtually impossible to pin down the values of and
, the density parameters for nonrelativistic matter and for the
cosmological constant, respectively. Moreover, we show that if SNe Ia evolve
with time, but evolution is neglected in analyzing data, then, given enough SNe
Ia, the analysis hones in on values of and which
are incorrect. Using Bayesian methods, we show that the probability that the
cosmological constant is nonzero (rather than zero) is unchanged by the SNe Ia
data when one accounts for the possibility of evolution, provided that we do
not discriminate among open, closed and flat cosmologies a priori. The case for
nonzero cosmological constant is stronger if the Universe is presumed to be
flat, but still depends sensitively on the degree to which the peak
luminosities of SNe Ia evolve as a function of redshift. The estimated value of
, however, is only negligibly affected by accounting for possible
evolution.Comment: 45 pages, 15 figures; accepted for publication in The Astrophysical
Journal. Minor revisions and clarifications made including addition of recent
reference
Interpretation of the angular dependence of the de Haas-van Alphen effect in MgB_2
We present detailed results for the amplitude and field dependence of the de
Haas-van Alphen (dHvA) signal arising from the electron-like sheet of
Fermi surface in MgB_2. Our data and analysis show that the dip in dHvA
amplitude when the field is close to the basal plane is caused by a beat
between two very similar dHvA frequencies and not a spin-zero effect as
previously assumed. Our results imply that the Stoner enhancement factors in
MgB_2 are small on both the Sigma and Pi sheets.Comment: 4 pages with figures. Submitted to PR
Realising context-sensitive mobile messaging
Mobile technologies aim to assist people as they move from place to place going about their daily work and social routines. Established and very popular mobile technologies include short-text messages and multimedia messages with newer growing technologies including Bluetooth mobile data transfer protocols and mobile web access.Here we present new work which combines all of the above technologies to fulfil some of the predictions for future context aware messaging. We present a context sensitive mobile messaging system which derives context in the form of physical locations through location sensing and the co-location of people through Bluetooth familiarity
Modeling Dynamics of Information Networks
We propose an information-based model for network dynamics in which imperfect
information leads to networks where the different vertices have widely
different number of edges to other vertices, and where the topology has
hierarchical features. The possibility to observe scale free networks is linked
to a minimally connected system where hubs remain dynamic.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures; changed content and new fig
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