1,723 research outputs found
Local states of free bose fields
These notes contain an extended version of lectures given at the ``Summer
School on Large Coulomb Systems'' in Nordfjordeid, Norway, in august 2003. They
furnish a short introduction to the theory of quantum harmonic systems, or free
bose fields. The main issue addressed is the one of local states. I will adopt
the definition of Knight of ``strictly local excitation of the vacuum'' and
will then state and prove a generalization of Knight's Theorem which asserts
that finite particle states cannot be perfectly localized. It will furthermore
be explained how Knight's a priori counterintuitive result can be readily
understood if one remembers the analogy between finite and infinite dimensional
harmonic systems alluded to above. I will also discuss the link between the
above result and the so-called Newton-Wigner position operator thereby
illuminating, I believe, the difficulties associated with the latter. I will in
particular argue that those difficulties do not find their origin in special
relativity or in any form of causality violation, as is usually claimed
Imperfect Imitation Can Enhance Cooperation
The promotion of cooperation on spatial lattices is an important issue in
evolutionary game theory. This effect clearly depends on the update rule: it
diminishes with stochastic imitative rules whereas it increases with
unconditional imitation. To study the transition between both regimes, we
propose a new evolutionary rule, which stochastically combines unconditional
imitation with another imitative rule. We find that, surprinsingly, in many
social dilemmas this rule yields higher cooperative levels than any of the two
original ones. This nontrivial effect occurs because the basic rules induce a
separation of timescales in the microscopic processes at cluster interfaces.
The result is robust in the space of 2x2 symmetric games, on regular lattices
and on scale-free networks.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Unstable states in QED of strong magnetic fields
We question the use of stable asymptotic scattering states in QED of strong
magnetic fields. To correctly describe excited Landau states and photons above
the pair creation threshold the asymptotic fields are chosen as generalized
Licht fields. In this way the off-shell behavior of unstable particles is
automatically taken into account, and the resonant divergences that occur in
scattering cross sections in the presence of a strong external magnetic field
are avoided. While in a limiting case the conventional electron propagator with
Breit-Wigner form is obtained, in this formalism it is also possible to
calculate -matrix elements with external unstable particles.Comment: Revtex, 7 pages. To appear in Phys. Rev. D53(2
Big sugar in southern Africa : rural development and the perverted potential of sugar/ethanol exports
This paper asks how investment in large-scale sugar cane production has contributed, and will contribute, to rural development in southern Africa. Taking a case study of the South African company Illovo in Zambia, the argument is made that the potential for greater tax revenue, domestic competition, access to resources and wealth distribution from sugar/ethanol production have all been perverted and with relatively little payoff in wage labour opportunities in return. If the benefits of agro-exports cannot be so easily assumed, then the prospective 'balance sheet' of biofuels needs to be re-examined. In this light, the paper advocates smaller-scale agrarian initiatives
String-localized Quantum Fields and Modular Localization
We study free, covariant, quantum (Bose) fields that are associated with
irreducible representations of the Poincar\'e group and localized in
semi-infinite strings extending to spacelike infinity. Among these are fields
that generate the irreducible representations of mass zero and infinite spin
that are known to be incompatible with point-like localized fields. For the
massive representation and the massless representations of finite helicity, all
string-localized free fields can be written as an integral, along the string,
of point-localized tensor or spinor fields. As a special case we discuss the
string-localized vector fields associated with the point-like electromagnetic
field and their relation to the axial gauge condition in the usual setting.Comment: minor correction
Neuropsychological intervention in kindergarten children with subtyped risks of reading retardation
Kindergarten children at risk of developing language problems were administered the Florida Kindergarten Screening Battery. A principal components analysis revealed a verbal and a visual-spatial component and subsequent discriminant function analyses a high verbal/low visual-spatial group (LAL: Latent L) and a high visual-spatial/low verbal group (LAP: Latent P). LAL- and LAP-children were considered at risk for developing an L- or P-type of dyslexia, respectively. As is common practice with children suffering from manifest L- or Pdyslexia, the LAL- and LAP-kindergartners received right and left hemisphere stimulation, respectively. The outcomes were compared with those of bilateral hemispheric stimulation and no intervention. Reading tests were administered in primary school Grades 1 and 5/6; teachers' evaluation of reading took place in Grade 5/6. Overall, the LAL- and LAP- groups showed significant backwardness in word and text reading, both at early and late primary school. Types of intervention made a difference though: not significantly backward in early word, late word, and late text reading were the LAL-children who had received right hemisphere stimulation. Nonintervened LAP-children did not show significant backwardness in early word reading and late text reading, nor did LAP-children who had received left hemisphere or bilateral stimulation. Early text reading was not affected by any treatment. Teacher's evaluations were in support of these findings. Copyright © 2005 by The International Dyslexia Association®
Effect of mecillinam on peptidoglycan synthesis during the division cycle of Salmonella typhimurium 2616
The effects of mecillinam, ampicillin and cephalexin on peptidoglycan synthesis in Salmonella typhimurium 2616 have been studied at equivalent concentrations or "isoactivities". Using antibiotics at isoactivities allows a direct comparison of the biochemical effects of different antibiotics. When mecillinam was added at different times during the division cycle at a concentration that produced 50 % inhibition of peptidoglycan synthesis in an exponential culture over a short period of time, the inhibition of synthesis was greatest in the newborn cells and least in the dividing cells. Antibiotic competition experiments showed that mecillinam preferentially bound to penicillin-binding protein 2 in S. typhimurium 2616. High performance liquid chromatography analysis of the residual peptidoglycan synthesized in the presence of mecillinam showed an unexpected increase in pentapeptides and a significant increase in cross-linking. Other antibiotics added at equivalent activities did not show an increase in cross-linking.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/30717/1/0000363.pd
GeantV: Results from the prototype of concurrent vector particle transport simulation in HEP
Full detector simulation was among the largest CPU consumer in all CERN
experiment software stacks for the first two runs of the Large Hadron Collider
(LHC). In the early 2010's, the projections were that simulation demands would
scale linearly with luminosity increase, compensated only partially by an
increase of computing resources. The extension of fast simulation approaches to
more use cases, covering a larger fraction of the simulation budget, is only
part of the solution due to intrinsic precision limitations. The remainder
corresponds to speeding-up the simulation software by several factors, which is
out of reach using simple optimizations on the current code base. In this
context, the GeantV R&D project was launched, aiming to redesign the legacy
particle transport codes in order to make them benefit from fine-grained
parallelism features such as vectorization, but also from increased code and
data locality. This paper presents extensively the results and achievements of
this R&D, as well as the conclusions and lessons learnt from the beta
prototype.Comment: 34 pages, 26 figures, 24 table
Evaluating the Impacts of Subsidies on Innovation Activities in Germany
Innovations are a key factor to ensure the competitiveness of establishments as well as to enhance the growth and wealth of nations. But more than any other economic activity, decisions about innovations are plagued by failures of the market mechanism. As a response, public instruments have been implemented to stimulate private innovation activities. The effectiveness of these measures, however, is ambiguous and calls for an empirical evaluation. In this paper we make use of the IAB Establishment Panel and apply various microeconometric methods to estimate the effect of public measures on innovation activities of German establishments. We find that neglecting sample selection due to observable as well as to unobservable characteristics leads to an overestimation of the treatment effect and that there are considerable differences with regard to size class and betweenWest and East German establishments
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