Black Holes, Entropy Bound and Causality Violation

The gravity/gauge theory duality has provided us a way of studying QCD at short distances from straightforward calculations in classical general relativity. Among numerous results obtained so far, one of the most striking is the universality of the ratio of the shear viscosity to the entropy density. For all gauge theories with Einstein gravity dual, this ratio is \eta/s=1/4\pi. However, in general higher-curvature gravity theories, including two concrete models under discussion - the Gauss-Bonnet gravity and the (Riemann)^2 gravity - the ratio \eta/s can be smaller than 1/4\pi (thus violating the conjecture bound), equal to 1/4\pi or even larger than 1/4\pi. As we probe spacetime at shorter distances, there arises an internal inconsistency in the theory, such as a violation of microcausality, which is correlated with a classical limit on black hole entropy.Comment: 8 pages, no figures; Invited contribution to appear in the Proceedings of the 75 Years since Solvay, Singapore, Nov 2008, (World Scientific, Singapore, 2009

Rail accessibility on property value: Zuoying Station

Problem/Purpose: Accessibility to transport infrastructure is one of the factors that affects property value. A number of researchers have found positive and negative effects on how improvement in public transportation has on property value (Chau and Ng, 1998). In Taiwan, little research has been carried out in this area. This research seeks to contribute to the understanding of the effect of rail accessibility on property value. Specifically, this study investigates the impact on property value located in close proximity to Zuoying station in Taiwan. Hedonic price theory is used and 5,478 data sets including property transaction prices, house or unit size; distances to the rail station, amenities, parklands and main roads were used for the testing. Before and after the commencement of the rail systems has also been considered in this study. Design/methodology/approach: Hedonic analysis is a well-established technique that is applied in this study. Findings: The estimation results suggest that accessibility to train station is one of the important factors affecting property values. It is found that the shorter distance and easier access the rail station, the higher the property values. Research limitations/implications (if applicable): This research has considered the elements of before and after the opening of the Taiwan High Speed Rail (THSR) and Kaohsiung Mass Rapid Transit (KMRT). However, a comparison study on the effects of before and after the completed rail development is not included in this study. Takeaway for practice (if applicable) Originality/value: No study has been conducted in the past on Zuoying station in the area of rail accessibility and property values. This is the only rail station in southern Taiwan where three railway systems converge. The investment of new transport infrastructure has positive impact on the land values in the locality and the economic and social aspects of the built environment

Acoustic black holes from supercurrent tunneling

We present a version of acoustic black holes by using the principle of the Josephson effect. We find that in the case two superconductors $A$ and $B$ are separated by an insulating barrier, an acoustic black hole may be created in the middle region between the two superconductors. We discuss in detail how to describe an acoustic black hole in the Josephson junction and write the metric in the langauge of the superconducting electronics. Our final results infer that for big enough tunneling current and thickness of the junction, experimental verification of the Hawking temperature could be possible.Comment: 15pages,1 figure, to appear in IJMP

Effects of cordycepin on the microglia-overactivation-induced impairments of growth and development of hippocampal cultured neurons

© 2015 Peng et al. Microglial cells are normally activated in response to brain injury or immunological stimuli to protect central nervous system (CNS). However, over-activation of microglia conversely amplifies the inflammatory effects and mediates cellular degeneration, leading to the death of neurons. Recently, cordycepin, an active component found in Cordyceps militarisa known as a rare Chinese caterpillar fungus, has been reported as an effective drug for treating inflammatory diseases and cancer via unclear mechanisms. In this study, we attempted to identify the anti-inflammatory role of cordycepin and its protective effects on the impairments of neural growth and development induced by microglial over-activation. The results indicate that cordycepin could attenuate the lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced microglial activation, evidenced by the dramatically reduced release of TNF-α and IL-1β, as well as the down-regulation of mRNA levels of iNOS and COX-2 after cordycepin treatment. Besides, cordycepin reversed the LPS-induced activation of NF-κB pathway, resulting in antiinflammatory effects. Furthermore, by employing the conditioned medium (CM), we found cordycepin was able to recover the impairments of neural growth and development in the primary hippocampal neurons cultured in LPS-CM, including cell viability, growth cone extension, neurite sprouting and outgrowth as well as spinogenesis. This study expands our knowledge of the anti-inflammatory function of cordycepin and paves the way for the biomedical applications of cordycepin in the therapies of neural injuries

Shear viscosity, instability and the upper bound of the Gauss-Bonnet coupling constant

We compute the dimensionality dependence of $\eta/s$ for charged black branes with Gauss-Bonnet correction. We find that both causality and stability constrain the value of Gauss-Bonnet coupling constant to be bounded by 1/4 in the infinite dimensionality limit. We further show that higher dimensionality stabilize the gravitational perturbation. The stabilization of the perturbation in higher dimensional space-time is a straightforward consequence of the Gauss-Bonnet coupling constant bound.Comment: 16 pages,3 figures+3 tables,typos corrected, published versio

A Model of Strongly Correlated Electrons with Condensed Resonating-Valence-Bond Ground States

We propose a new exactly solvable model of strongly correlated electrons. The model is based on a $d$-$p$ model of the CuO$_2$ plane with infinitely large repulsive interactions on Cu-sites, and it contains additional correlated-hopping, pair-hopping and charge-charge interactions of electrons. For even numbers of electrons less than or equal to 2/3-filling, we construct the exact ground states of the model, all of which have the same energy and each of which is the unique ground state for a fixed electron number. It is shown that these ground states are the resonating-valence-bond states which are also regarded as condensed states in which all electrons are in a single two-electron state. We also show that the ground states exhibit off-diagonal long-range order.Comment: 17 pages, 1 figure, v2: minor changes, v3: minor changes and typos correction

Network coding based wireless broadcast with performance guarantee

© 2014 IEEE. Wireless broadcast has been increasingly used to deliver information of common interest to a large number of users. There are two major challenges in wireless broadcast: the unreliable nature of wireless links and the difficulty of acknowledging the correct reception of every broadcast packet by every user when the number of users becomes large. In this paper, by resorting to stochastic geometry analysis, we develop a network coding based broadcast scheme that allows a base station (BS) to broadcast a given number of packets to a large number of users, without user acknowledgment, while being able to provide a performance guarantee on the probability of successful delivery. Further, the BS only has limited statistical information about the environment including the spatial distribution of users (instead of their exact locations and number) and the wireless propagation model. Performance analysis is conducted. On that basis, an upper and a lower bound on the number of packet transmissions required to meet the performance guarantee are obtained. Simulations are conducted to validate the accuracy of the theoretical analysis. The technique and analysis developed in this paper are useful for designing efficient and reliable wireless broadcast strategies