Condensation of a Strongly Interacting Parton Plasma into a Hadron Gas in High Energy Nuclear Collisions

We examine the effects of color screening on the transition of a parton plasma into a hadron gas at RHIC energies. It is found that as expected, color screening posed itself as a significant barrier for hadronization. Parton-hadron conversion would therefore be delayed and prolonged when compared to that occuring in a vacuum. Due to the on-going expansion, the resulting hadron densities are lowered. Parton equilibration is also shown to be seriously disrupted in the process.Comment: 4 pages, 2 embedded EPS figures, talk presented at Quark Matter'99, Torino, Ital

LDPC Code Design for the BPSK-constrained Gaussian Wiretap Channel

A coding scheme based on irregular low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes is proposed to send secret messages from a source over the Gaussian wiretap channel to a destination in the presence of a wiretapper, with the restriction that the source can send only binary phase-shift keyed (BPSK) symbols. The secrecy performance of the proposed coding scheme is measured by the secret message rate through the wiretap channel as well as the equivocation rate about the message at the wiretapper. A code search procedure is suggested to obtain irregular LDPC codes that achieve good secrecy performance in such context.Comment: submitted to IEEE GLOBECOM 2011 - Communication Theory Symposiu

Color Octet Contribution in Exclusive P-Wave Charmonium Decay

Recent advances in our understanding of the higher-wave quarkonia have generated much interests in quarkonium physics. However most are devoted to inclusive decays and productions. Experimental data of several two-body exclusive decay channels of P-wave charmonia such as \pi \pi and p \bar p are available and some have recently been re-measured by the BES collaboration. It is not clear from the outset that color octet is needed for these exclusive channels. Indeed only color singlet has been used in the past and reasonable agreement with data was found. Contrary to these old results, we provide theoretical arguments for the inclusion of color octet and perform explicit calculations to back this up.Comment: 6 pages using espcrc2.sty, contribution to the 4th Int. Conference on Hyperons, Charm and Beauty Hadrons, Valencia, June 200

On finite complete rewriting systems and large subsemigroups

Let $S$ be a semigroup and $T$ be a subsemigroup of finite index in $S$ (that is, the set $S\setminus T$ is finite). The subsemigroup $T$ is also called a large subsemigroup of $S$. It is well known that if $T$ has a finite complete rewriting system then so does $S$. In this paper, we will prove the converse, that is, if $S$ has a finite complete rewriting system then so does $T$. Our proof is purely combinatorial and also constructive.Comment: We have made major changes to the paper and simplified most of the proof

Using NMR to Measure Fractal Dimensions

A comment is made on the recent PFG NMR measurements by Stallmach, et al. on water-saturated sands [Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 105505 (2002)]. It is pointed out that the usual law for the time-dependent diffusion coefficient D(t) used by these authors is not valid for a fractal surface. It is shown that (1-D(t)/D0) \~ t^[(3-Ds)/2] at short times for a surface of fractal dimension Ds, where D0 is the bulk diffusion coefficient. Preliminary PFG NMR data on water saturated limestone and plastic beads are presented to illustrate this analysis.Comment: 1 page, 1 figur

Improving Advance Directive Use Through Provider Education at Newtown Primary Care

Nationally, there seems to be a discrepancy between a patient\u27s desire to talk about end-of-life care and their act of doing so. An advance directive is a legal document that enables an individual facilitate an end-of-life care discussion with someone. For many patients, primary care is their first contact with healthcare on many occasions. Educating primary care providers about common misconceptions of advance directives and advance care planning may increase the amount patients that have talked to someone about their goals and desires at end of life. This project uses a handout and an oral presentation to educate providers with the goal to encourage more advance care planning discussions and advance directive completion.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/fmclerk/1410/thumbnail.jp

A well-ordered society with publicly acknowledged principles - a re-interpretation of Rawlsian social contract

John Rawls is arguably the most influential political philosopher of the twentieth century. In his most seminal books, A Theory of Justice (1971), Rawls claims that his aim is to ‘present a conception of justice which generalizes and carries to a higher level of abstraction the familiar theory of the social contract as found, say, in Locke, Rousseau, and Kant.’ However, what role does the idea of social contract play in Rawls’ theory is rarely discussed among Rawls scholars. Some scholars contend that Rawlsian social contract is a kind of hypothetical contract which people would make behind the ‘veil of ignorance,’ and this idea is redundant in Rawls’ theory. In this poster, I would like to argue that Rawlsian social contract should rather be understood as a social agreement on political principles which people would make in a well-ordered society. The idea of social contract is necessary because it represents a political ideal in Rawls’ mind

Identifying table tennis balls from real match scenes using image processing and artificial intelligence techniques

Table tennis is a fast sport and it is very difficult for a normal human being to manage accurate umpiring, especially in services (serves), which usually take less than a second to complete. The umpire needs to make over 30 observations and makes a judgment before or soon after the service is complete. This is a complex task and the author believes the employment of image processing and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies could aid the umpire to evaluating services more accurately. The aim of this research is to develop an intelligent system which is able to identify and track the location of the ball from live video images and evaluate the service according to the service rules. In this paper, the discussion is focused on the development of techniques for identifying a table tennis ball from match scenes. These techniques formed the basis of the ball detection system. Artificial neural networks (ANN) have been designed and applied to further the accuracy of the detection system. The system has been tested on still images taken at real match scenes and the preliminary results are very promising. Almost all the balls from the images have been correctly identified. The system has been further tested on some video images and the preliminary result is also very encouraging. It shows the system could tolerate the poorer quality of video images. This paper also discusses the idea of employing multiple cameras for improving accuracy. A multi-agent system is proposed because it is known to be able to coordinate and manage the flow of information more effectively