2,701 research outputs found
Driving sandpiles to criticality and beyond
A popular theory of self-organized criticality relates driven dissipative
systems to systems with conservation. This theory predicts that the stationary
density of the abelian sandpile model equals the threshold density of the
fixed-energy sandpile. We refute this prediction for a wide variety of
underlying graphs, including the square grid. Driven dissipative sandpiles
continue to evolve even after reaching criticality. This result casts doubt on
the validity of using fixed-energy sandpiles to explore the critical behavior
of the abelian sandpile model at stationarity.Comment: v4 adds referenc
The spin-dependent nd scattering length - a proposed high-accuracy measurement
The understanding of few-nucleon systems at low energies is essential, e.g.
for accurate predictions of element abundances in big-bang and stellar fusion.
Novel effective field theories, taking only nucleons, or nucleons and pions as
explicit degrees of freedom, provide a systematic approach, permitting an
estimate of theoretical uncertainties. Basic constants parameterising the short
range physics are derived from only a handful of experimental values. The
doublet neutron scattering length a_2 of the deuteron is particularly sensitive
to a three-nucleon contact interaction, but experimentally known with only 6%
accuracy. It can be deduced from the two experimentally accessible parameters
of the nd scattering length. We plan to measure the poorly known "incoherent"
nd scattering length a_{i,d} with 10^{-3} accuracy, using a Ramsey apparatus
for pseudomagnetic precession with a cold polarised neutron beam at PSI. A
polarised target containing both deuterons and protons will permit a
measurement relative to the incoherent np scattering length, which is know
experimentally with an accuracy of 2.4\times 10^{-4}.Comment: 5 pages LaTeX2e, 1 .eps figure. To be published in Nucl. Inst.
Methods A as part of the Proceedings of the 9th International Workshop on
Polarized Solid Targets and Techniques in Bad Honnef (Germany), 27th - 29th
October 200
GeneHopper: a web-based search engine to link gene-expression platforms through GenBank accession numbers
Global gene-expression analysis is carried out using different technologies that are either array- or sequence-tag-based. To compare experiments that are performed on these different platforms, array probes and sequence tags need to be linked. An additional challenge is cross-referencing between species, to compare human profiles with those obtained in a mouse model, for example. We have developed the web-based search engine GeneHopper to link different expression resources based on UniGene clusters and HomoloGene orthologs databases of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI)
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