2,535 research outputs found
New Methods for Characterizing Phases of 2D Supersymmetric Gauge Theories
We study the physics of two-dimensional N=(2,2) gauged linear sigma models
(GLSMs) via the two-sphere partition function. We show that the classical phase
boundaries separating distinct GLSM phases, which are described by the
secondary fan construction for abelian GLSMs, are completely encoded in the
analytic structure of the partition function. The partition function of a
non-abelian GLSM can be obtained as a limit from an abelian theory; we utilize
this fact to show that the phases of non-abelian GLSMs can be obtained from the
secondary fan of the associated abelian GLSM. We prove that the partition
function of any abelian GLSM satisfies a set of linear differential equations;
these reduce to the familiar A-hypergeometric system of Gel'fand, Kapranov, and
Zelevinski for GLSMs describing complete intersections in toric varieties. We
develop a set of conditions that are necessary for a GLSM phase to admit an
interpretation as the low-energy limit of a non-linear sigma model with a
Calabi-Yau threefold target space. Through the application of these criteria we
discover a class of GLSMs with novel geometric phases corresponding to
Calabi-Yau manifolds that are branched double-covers of Fano threefolds. These
criteria provide a promising approach for constructing new Calabi-Yau
geometries.Comment: 25 pages + references, appendices. v2: references added, typos
corrected. v3: two small typos correcte
Learning scalable and transferable multi-robot/machine sequential assignment planning via graph embedding
Can the success of reinforcement learning methods for simple combinatorial
optimization problems be extended to multi-robot sequential assignment
planning? In addition to the challenge of achieving near-optimal performance in
large problems, transferability to an unseen number of robots and tasks is
another key challenge for real-world applications. In this paper, we suggest a
method that achieves the first success in both challenges for robot/machine
scheduling problems.
Our method comprises of three components. First, we show a robot scheduling
problem can be expressed as a random probabilistic graphical model (PGM). We
develop a mean-field inference method for random PGM and use it for Q-function
inference. Second, we show that transferability can be achieved by carefully
designing two-step sequential encoding of problem state. Third, we resolve the
computational scalability issue of fitted Q-iteration by suggesting a heuristic
auction-based Q-iteration fitting method enabled by transferability we
achieved.
We apply our method to discrete-time, discrete space problems (Multi-Robot
Reward Collection (MRRC)) and scalably achieve 97% optimality with
transferability. This optimality is maintained under stochastic contexts. By
extending our method to continuous time, continuous space formulation, we claim
to be the first learning-based method with scalable performance among
multi-machine scheduling problems; our method scalability achieves comparable
performance to popular metaheuristics in Identical parallel machine scheduling
(IPMS) problems
Importance of understanding variable and transient energy demand in large multi-product industrial plants for process integration
There have been some news releases claiming that Professor Henle in Germany has found the chemical identity of UMF, and that in future chemical analysis will be used instead of assays of antibacterial activity to indicate the level of UMF in manuka honey. Both of these claims are misleading. Because the level of active substance in manuka honey is an unreliable indication of the level of antibacterial activity and can be very misleading, it is hard to see any commercial advantage for it to be used to indicate antibacterial activity other than if someone wanted to fool the consumer into thinking that the higher numbers are giving them a level of antibacterial activity that is far higher than they are really getting
The Landscape of M-theory Compactifications on Seven-Manifolds with Holonomy
We study the physics of globally consistent four-dimensional
supersymmetric M-theory compactifications on manifolds constructed via
twisted connected sum; there are now perhaps fifty million examples of these
manifolds. We study a rich example that exhibits gauge symmetry and a
spectrum of massive charged particles that includes a trifundamental. Applying
recent mathematical results to this example, we compute membrane instanton
corrections to the superpotential and spacetime topology change in a compact
model; the latter include both the (non-isolated) flop and conifold
transitions. The conifold transition spontaneously breaks the gauge symmetry to
, and associated field theoretic computations of particle charges make
correct predictions for the topology of the deformed manifold. We discuss
physical aspects of the abelian landscape broadly, including aspects of
Higgs and Coulomb branches, membrane instanton corrections, and some general
aspects of topology change.Comment: v1: 37 pages. v2: references added. v3: more discussion of instanton
zero modes. JHEP version v4: references correcte
Potential repellency of cedarwood oil from a novel extraction method to stored product insects
Producers lose 10-30% of crops during storage, processing, and marketing after harvest each year to stored product insects (1,2). Globally, there has been a rise in insecticide resistance to phosphine, the most common fumigant for these pests (3). As a result, producers need to diversify post-harvest IPM methods to preserve existing tools. One alternative strategy is push-pull, whereby a repellent is used to âpushâ an insect away from the commodity of interest, while also simultaneously âpullingâ the insects to an alternate location away from the commodity using an attractant (4)(Fig. 1). This system notably requires a long-distance repellent. One potential repellent includes cedarwood oil, which has shown repellency to termites and ants (5,6). A novel extraction process for this compound has been developed, which leaves many of its main constituents intact (7). However, to date, this compound has never been assessed for repellency to post-harvest insects
Accuracy of 2 telemetry systems in mountainous terrain
Spring 1992.Summary report 1988-1991.Conducted for: Colorado Division of Wildlife, Vail Associates, Arrohead and Vail, The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, U.S. Forest Service.Includes bibliographical references
Game Theory Analysis of Aircraft Manufacturer Innovation Strategies in the Face of Increasing Airline Fuel Costs
The air transportation system is a vital infrastructure that enables economic
growth and provides significant social benefits. Future increases and volatility in crude
oil prices, as well as environmental charges, are likely to increase the effective cost of
fuel. We investigate the impacts of effective fuel cost increase on the US air transportation system historically and perform a game theory analysis of the impact of
manufacturer competition on the introduction of new, more fuel efficient aircraft.
The cost of jet fuel increased 244% between July 2004 and July 2008, providing a natural experiment to evaluate how fuel price increase affected continental US networks and fleets. It was found that non-hub airports serving small communities lost 12% of
connections, compared to a system-wide average loss of 2.8%. Increased effective fuel costs will provide incentives for airlines to improve fleet fuel efficiency, reducing the
environmental impacts of aviation, but may cause an uneven distribution of social and economic impacts if small communities suffer greater loss of mobility. Government
action may be required to determine acceptable levels of access as the system transitions
to higher fuel costs.
Technology innovation may act as a long-term hedge against increasing effective
fuel costs, enabling mobility to be maintained. The single aisle commercial aircraft
market segment is the largest, but has the longest running product lines. We hypothesize
that competition has important effects on manufacturersâ decisions to innovate that must
be considered when designing policies to reduce fleet emissions. An aircraft program
valuation model is developed to estimate expected payoffs to manufacturers under
competitive scenarios. A game theory analysis demonstrates how the incentives to
innovate may be altered by subsidies, technology forcing regulations, increased effective
fuel costs, the threat of new entrants, and long-term competitive strategies. Increased
competition may result in incumbent manufacturers producing re-engined aircraft while increased effective fuel costs may result in new aircraft programs. Incumbentsâ optimal
strategies may be to delay the entry of new single aisle aircraft until 2020-24, unless
technology forcing regulations are implemented.This work was supported by the MIT/Masdar Institute of Science and Technology
under grant number Mubadala Development Co. Agreement 12/1/06. The authors wish to
thank PARTNER for access to the Piano-X software package and Robert M. Peterson
from the Boeing Corporation for his valuable feedback on the aircraft program valuation
model. Any errors are the authorsâ alone
Non-continuous and variable rate processes: Optimisation for energy use
The need to develop new and improved ways of reducing energy use and increasing energy intensity in industrial processes is currently a major issue in New Zealand. Little attention has been given to optimisation of non-continuous processes in the past, due to their complexity, yet they remain an essential and often energy intensive component of many industrial sites. Novel models based on pinch analysis that aid in minimising utility usage have been constructed here through the adaptation of proven continuous techniques. The knowledge has been integrated into a user friendly software package, and allows the optimisation of processes under variable operating rates and batch conditions. An example problem demonstrates the improvements in energy use that can be gained when using these techniques to analyse non-continuous data. A comparison with results achieved using a pseudo-continuous method show that the method described can provide simultaneous reductions in capital and operating costs
A derivative method for minimising total cost in heat exchanger networks through optimal area allocation
This paper presents a novel Cost Derivative Method (CDM) for finding the optimal area allocation for a defined Heat Exchanger Network (HEN) structure and stream data, without any stream splits to achieve minimum total cost. Using the Pinch Design Method (PDM) to determine the HEN structure, the approach attempts to add, remove and shift area to exchangers where economic benefits are returned. From the derivation of the method, it is found that the slope of the Δ-NTU relationship for the specific heat exchanger type, in combination with the difference in exchanger inlet temperatures and the overall heat transfer coefficient, are critical to calculating the extra overall duty each incremental area element returns. The approach is able to account for differences in film coefficients, heat exchanger types, flow arrangements, exchanger cost functions, and utility pricing. Incorporated into the method is the newly defined âutility cost savings flow-onâ factor, Ξ, which evaluates downstream effects on utility use and cost that are caused by changing the area of one exchanger. To illustrate the method, the CDM is applied to the distillation example of Gundersen (2000). After applying the new CDM, the total annual cost was reduced by 7.1 % mainly due to 24 % less HEN area for similar heat recovery. Area reduction resulted from one exchanger having a minimum approach temperature (ÎTmin) of 7.7 °C while the other recovery exchangers had larger ÎTmin values. The optimum ÎTmin for the PDM was 12.5 °C. The CDM solution was found to give a comparable minimum total area and cost to two recently published programming HEN synthesis solutions for the same problem without requiring the increased network complexity through multiple stream splits
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