Quantum-mechanical communication theory

Optimum signal reception using quantum-mechanical communication theor

Good Teaching and Learning in the Academy

This paper is based on original research at five Queensland Universities. It compared the teaching strategies of law, education and science academics in an attempt to discover any relationship between teaching strategies and subject matter. It also examined the teaching policy at each university, specifically university definitions of good teaching and its relationship to use of technology. The purpose of this research was to determine whether or not specific understandings of good teaching in the academy prevailed, and whether or not this (dis)advantaged certain faculties. From an initial case study of QUT, the basic findings from our research were as follows: • good teaching was found to have two central features: it was student centred and technologically innovative, • irrespective of discipline, all lecturers espoused the importance of student centred learning as integral to good teaching, even though, in practice, teaching style appeared to be largely determined by subject matter, • the most innovative and technological units were the least student centred We conclude that what counts as good teaching is both contested and context bound. This has major implications for monolithic definitions of good teaching as espoused by university policy and teaching units. It also has clear ramifications for university measures of effective and innovative teaching and thus standardised procedures for both academic promotion and teaching practices across the university

Polymer Statistics and Fermionic Vector Models

We consider a variation of $O(N)$-symmetric vector models in which the vector components are Grassmann numbers. We show that these theories generate the same sort of random polymer models as the $O(N)$ vector models and that they lie in the same universality class in the large-$N$ limit. We explicitly construct the double-scaling limit of the theory and show that the genus expansion is an alternating Borel summable series that otherwise coincides with the topological expansion of the bosonic models. We also show how the fermionic nature of these models leads to an explicit solution even at finite-$N$ for the generating functions of the number of random polymer configurations.Comment: 13 pages LaTeX, run twice. Minor technical details corrected (mainly in combinatorics for Feynman graphs) and clarifying comments added; additional reference include

Technology meets Student Centred Learning: "good practice" in university teaching

In tertiary institutions across Australia, good teaching increasingly means student centred and technological. In this paper, this is demonstrated by a case study of Queensland University of Technology, where recent policy on teaching, promoted by management and supported by teaching and learning services, suggests two things. The first that it is impossible for QUT academics to educate their students without using inclusive and dialogical methods of instruction. The second, that at QUT, effective use of technology is paramount to the success of such student centred learning. This relationship, given legitimacy through the QUT focus on flexible delivery, raises larger questions about the dominant assumptions regarding ‘good practice’ within the university setting. In this context, the dominant assumption is the superiority of progressive education and this in itself assumes further a humanistic notion of the self. This paper will suggest three things. First that such assumptions should be challenged within tertiary teaching theory and practice, as they have been within the wider domain of social and cultural theory. Second that the new valorised practices of progressive education actually depend upon old derogated practices, but that this reliance is either downplayed or disregarded. Third, that the resulting unified policy on good teaching, needs rethinking

Fermionic Matrix Models

We review a class of matrix models whose degrees of freedom are matrices with anticommuting elements. We discuss the properties of the adjoint fermion one-, two- and gauge invariant D-dimensional matrix models at large-N and compare them with their bosonic counterparts which are the more familiar Hermitian matrix models. We derive and solve the complete sets of loop equations for the correlators of these models and use these equations to examine critical behaviour. The topological large-N expansions are also constructed and their relation to other aspects of modern string theory such as integrable hierarchies is discussed. We use these connections to discuss the applications of these matrix models to string theory and induced gauge theories. We argue that as such the fermionic matrix models may provide a novel generalization of the discretized random surface representation of quantum gravity in which the genus sum alternates and the sums over genera for correlators have better convergence properties than their Hermitian counterparts. We discuss the use of adjoint fermions instead of adjoint scalars to study induced gauge theories. We also discuss two classes of dimensionally reduced models, a fermionic vector model and a supersymmetric matrix model, and discuss their applications to the branched polymer phase of string theories in target space dimensions D>1 and also to the meander problem.Comment: 139 pages Latex (99 pages in landscape, two-column option); Section on Supersymmetric Matrix Models expanded, additional references include

A New Technique for System-to-system Transfer of Surface Data

The purpose is to describe a recently developed technique aimed at providing a universal interface between surface types. In brief, a software package was developed which functions a common denominator of CAD/CAM surface types. This software enable one to convert from any given surface representation to any other target representation. The tiles maintain the same slope continuity as the target surface gram, bicubic patches are used since they allow one to match point, slope, and twist vectors to the target surface. Thus, slopes can be continuous or discontinuous as they are on the target surface. The patches can be of lower order if desired. For example, if only point information is available, the patches produced will be bilinear; however, the number of patches required is likely to increase correspondingly. The patches can be of higher order although many systems will not accept patches of more than order four. The final result of the program is a rectangular grid of bicubic patches. The patches fit the target surface exactly at their corners. Also, the patch corners have the same tangent and twist vectors. Adjacent patches will have slope continuity, unless a discontinuity was indicated by the target surface

Whey Utilization in North Dakota

Demand and Price Analysis,

Predictability and hierarchy in Drosophila behavior

Even the simplest of animals exhibit behavioral sequences with complex temporal dynamics. Prominent amongst the proposed organizing principles for these dynamics has been the idea of a hierarchy, wherein the movements an animal makes can be understood as a set of nested sub-clusters. Although this type of organization holds potential advantages in terms of motion control and neural circuitry, measurements demonstrating this for an animal's entire behavioral repertoire have been limited in scope and temporal complexity. Here, we use a recently developed unsupervised technique to discover and track the occurrence of all stereotyped behaviors performed by fruit flies moving in a shallow arena. Calculating the optimally predictive representation of the fly's future behaviors, we show that fly behavior exhibits multiple time scales and is organized into a hierarchical structure that is indicative of its underlying behavioral programs and its changing internal states

X-ray Source Heights in a Solar Flare: Thick-target versus Thermal Conduction Front Heating

Observations of solar flares with RHESSI have shown X-ray sources traveling along flaring loops, from the corona down to the chromosphere and back up. The 28 November 2002 C1.1 flare, first observed with RHESSI by Sui et al. 2006 and quantitatively analyzed by O'Flannagain et al. 2013, very clearly shows this behavior. By employing numerical experiments, we use these observations of X-ray source height motions as a constraint to distinguish between heating due to a non-thermal electron beam and in situ energy deposition in the corona. We find that both heating scenarios can reproduce the observed light curves, but our results favor non-thermal heating. In situ heating is inconsistent with the observed X-ray source morphology and always gives a height dispersion with photon energy opposite to what is observed.Comment: Accepted to Ap

Dry Edible Beans: Production and Marketing, Red River Valley

Marketing, Production Economics,