Meson-Meson Scattering in Relativistic Constraint Dynamics

Dirac's relativistic constraint dynamics have been successfully applied to obtain a covariant nonperturbative description of QED and QCD bound states. We use this formalism to describe a microscopic theory of meson-meson scattering as a relativistic generalization of the nonrelativistic quark-interchange model developed by Barnes and Swanson.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure in LaTex, talk present at the First Meeting of the APS Topical Group on Hadronic Physics (Fermilab, October 24-26, 2004

The universal functorial equivariant Lefschetz invariant

We introduce the universal functorial equivariant Lefschetz invariant for endomorphisms of finite proper G-CW-complexes, where G is a discrete group. We use K_0 of the category of "phi-endomorphisms of finitely generated free RPi(G,X)-modules". We derive results about fixed points of equivariant endomorphisms of cocompact proper smooth G-manifolds.Comment: 33 pages; shortened version of the author's PhD thesis, supervised by Wolfgang Lueck, Westfaelische Wilhelms-Universitaet Muenster, 200

Non-Langevin behaviour of the uncompensated magnetisation in nanoparticles of artificial ferritin

The magnetic behaviour of nanoparticles of antiferromagnetic ferritin has been investigated by 57Fe Mossbauer absorption spectroscopy and magnetisation measurements, in the temperature range 2.5K-250K and with magnetic fields up to 7T. Samples containing nanoparticles with an average number of Fe atoms ranging from 400 to 2500 were studied. The value of the anisotropy energy per unit volume was determined and found to be in the range 3-6 10**5 ergs/cm3, which is a value typical for ferric oxides. By comparing the results of the two experimental methods at large field, we show that, contratry to what is currently assumed, the uncompensated magnetisation of the feritin cores in the superparamagnetic regime does not follow a Langevin law. For magnetic fields below the spin-flop field, we propose an approximate law for the field and temperature variation of the uncompensated magnetisation which has so far never been applied in antiferromagnetic systems. This approach should more generally hold for randomly oriented antiferro- magnetic nanoparticles systems with weak uncompensated moments.Comment: 11 pages, 11 figure

Phonetic complexity affects children’s Mandarin tone production accuracy in disyllabic words: A perceptual study

This is the first study to examine the effect of phonetic contexts on children’s lexical tone production. Mandarin tones in disyllabic words produced by forty-four 2- to 6-year-old children and twelve mothers were low-pass filtered to eliminate lexical information. Native Mandarin-speaking adults categorized the tones based on the pitch information in the filtered stimuli. All mothers’ tones were categorized with ceiling accuracy. Counter to the findings in most previous studies on children’s tone acquisition and the prevailing assumption in models of speech development that children acquire suprasegmental features much earlier than segmental features, this study found that children as old as six years of age have not mastered the production of Mandarin tones. Children’s tones were judged with significantly lower accuracy than mothers’ productions. Tone accuracy improved, while cross subject variability in tone accuracy decreased, with age. Children’s tone accuracy was affected by the articulatory complexity of phonetic contexts. Children made more errors in tone combinations with more complex fundamental frequency (F0) contours than tone sequences with simpler F0 changes. When producing disyllabic tone sequences with complex F0 contours, children tended to shift the F0 contour of the first tone to reduce the F0 change, resulting in more tone errors in the first syllable than in the second syllable and showing substantially more anticipatory coarticulation than adults. The results provide further evidence that acquisition of lexical tones is a protracted process in children. Tones produced accurately by children in one phonetic context may not be produced correctly in another phonetic context. Children demonstrate more anticipatory coarticulation in their disyllabic productions than adults, which may be attributed to children’s immature speech motor control in tone production, and is presumably a by-product of their inability to accomplish complex F0 changes within the syllable time-frame.published_or_final_versio

Pet bereavement experiences and its pilot interventions in Hong Kong

En el trabajo se presenta la formulación de un modelo constitutivo capaz de simular, de manera general, procesos elastoplásticos con grandes deformaciones. El desarrollo del modelo se basa en la descomposición multiplicativa del tensor gradiente de la deformación F = Fe. Fp. Luego, la energía libre y las variables internas se escriben en la configuración intermedia, en la que se desarrolla el modelo. Mediante el empleo de la fórmula de Doyle y Ericksen se obtiene la expresión espacial del modelo. Finalmente se aplica el modelo general al caso de metales. En este caso se utiliza a posteriori la hipótesis de pequeñas deformaciones elásticas, típica de estos materiales. En otro trabajo que continúa y acompaña al presente se trata la implementación numérica y se presentan ejemplos de aplicación.Peer Reviewe