Compact artificial hand

A relatively simple, compact artificial hand, is described which includes hooks pivotally mounted on first frame to move together and apart. The first frame is rotatably mounted on a second frame to enable "turning at the wrist" movement without limitation. The second frame is pivotally mounted on a third frame to permit 'flexing at the wrist' movement. A hook-driving motor is fixed to the second frame but has a shaft that drives a speed reducer on the first frame which, in turn, drives the hooks. A second motor mounted on the second frame, turns a gear on the first frame to rotate the first frame and the hooks thereon. A third motor mounted on the third frame, turns a gear on a second frame to pivot it

Governing dynamics by squeezing in a system of cold trapped ions

We consider a system of laser-cooled ions in a linear harmonic trap and study the phenomenon of squeezing exchange between their internal and motional degrees of freedom. An interesting relation between the quantum noise reduction (squeezing) and the dynamical evolution is found when the internal and motional subsystems are prepared in properly squeezed (intelligent) states. Specifically, the evolution of the system is fully governed by the relative strengths of spectroscopic and motional squeezing, including the phenomenon of total cancellation of the interaction when the initial squeezing parameters are equal.Comment: REVTeX, 5 pages, 2 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.

P-V Criticality in Quasitopological Gravity

We investigate the thermodynamic behaviour of AdS quasitopological black hole solutions in the context of extended thermodynamic phase space, in which the cosmological constant induces a pressure with a conjugate volume. We find that the third order exact quasitopological solution exhibits features consistent with the third order Lovelock solutions for positive quasitopological coupling, including multiple reentrant phase transitions and isolated critical points. For negative coupling we find the first instances of both reentrant phase transitions and thermodynamic singularities in five dimensions, along with other modified thermodynamic behaviour compared to Einstein-AdS-Gauss Bonnet gravity.Comment: 20 pages, 15 figures, REVTeX 4-1; updated to match published versio

Symmetry Breaking Using Value Precedence

We present a comprehensive study of the use of value precedence constraints to break value symmetry. We first give a simple encoding of value precedence into ternary constraints that is both efficient and effective at breaking symmetry. We then extend value precedence to deal with a number of generalizations like wreath value and partial interchangeability. We also show that value precedence is closely related to lexicographical ordering. Finally, we consider the interaction between value precedence and symmetry breaking constraints for variable symmetries.Comment: 17th European Conference on Artificial Intelligenc

Statistical Mechanics of Relativistic One-Dimensional Self-Gravitating Systems

We consider the statistical mechanics of a general relativistic one-dimensional self-gravitating system. The system consists of $N$-particles coupled to lineal gravity and can be considered as a model of $N$ relativistically interacting sheets of uniform mass. The partition function and one-particle distitrubion functions are computed to leading order in $1/c$ where $c$ is the speed of light; as $c\to\infty$ results for the non-relativistic one-dimensional self-gravitating system are recovered. We find that relativistic effects generally cause both position and momentum distribution functions to become more sharply peaked, and that the temperature of a relativistic gas is smaller than its non-relativistic counterpart at the same fixed energy. We consider the large-N limit of our results and compare this to the non-relativistic case.Comment: latex, 60 pages, 22 figure

Quasiclassical Equations of Motion for Nonlinear Brownian Systems

Following the formalism of Gell-Mann and Hartle, phenomenological equations of motion are derived from the decoherence functional formalism of quantum mechanics, using a path-integral description. This is done explicitly for the case of a system interacting with a ``bath'' of harmonic oscillators whose individual motions are neglected. The results are compared to the equations derived from the purely classical theory. The case of linear interactions is treated exactly, and nonlinear interactions are compared using classical and quantum perturbation theory.Comment: 24 pages, CALT-68-1848 (RevTeX 2.0 macros

On the Standard Approach to Renormalization Group Improvement

Two approaches to renormalization-group improvement are examined: the substitution of the solutions of running couplings, masses and fields into perturbatively computed quantities is compared with the systematic sum of all the leading log (LL), next-to-leading log (NLL) etc. contributions to radiatively corrected processes, with n-loop expressions for the running quantities being responsible for summing N^{n}LL contributions. A detailed comparison of these procedures is made in the context of the effective potential V in the 4-dimensional O(4) massless $\lambda \phi^{4}$ model, showing the distinction between these procedures at two-loop order when considering the NLL contributions to the effective potential V.Comment: 6 page