255 research outputs found
Composite multi-vortex diffraction-free beams and van Hove singularities in honeycomb lattices
We find diffraction-free beams for graphene and MoS-type honeycomb
optical lattices. The resulting composite solutions have the form of
multi-vortices, with spinor topological charges (, ). Exact solutions
for the spinor components are obtained in the Dirac limit. The effects of the
valley degree of freedom and the mass are analyzed. Passing through the
van-Hove singularity the topological structure of the solutions is modified.
Exactly at the singularity the diffraction-free beams take the form of strongly
localized one-dimensional stripes.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Optics Letter
Statistical analysis of emotions and opinions at Digg website
We performed statistical analysis on data from the Digg.com website, which
enables its users to express their opinion on news stories by taking part in
forum-like discussions as well as directly evaluate previous posts and stories
by assigning so called "diggs". Owing to fact that the content of each post has
been annotated with its emotional value, apart from the strictly structural
properties, the study also includes an analysis of the average emotional
response of the posts commenting the main story. While analysing correlations
at the story level, an interesting relationship between the number of diggs and
the number of comments received by a story was found. The correlation between
the two quantities is high for data where small threads dominate and
consistently decreases for longer threads. However, while the correlation of
the number of diggs and the average emotional response tends to grow for longer
threads, correlations between numbers of comments and the average emotional
response are almost zero. We also show that the initial set of comments given
to a story has a substantial impact on the further "life" of the discussion:
high negative average emotions in the first 10 comments lead to longer threads
while the opposite situation results in shorter discussions. We also suggest
presence of two different mechanisms governing the evolution of the discussion
and, consequently, its length.Comment: 26 pages, 16 figures, 6 table
Quantitative Analysis of Bloggers Collective Behavior Powered by Emotions
Large-scale data resulting from users online interactions provide the
ultimate source of information to study emergent social phenomena on the Web.
From individual actions of users to observable collective behaviors, different
mechanisms involving emotions expressed in the posted text play a role. Here we
combine approaches of statistical physics with machine-learning methods of text
analysis to study emergence of the emotional behavior among Web users. Mapping
the high-resolution data from digg.com onto bipartite network of users and
their comments onto posted stories, we identify user communities centered
around certain popular posts and determine emotional contents of the related
comments by the emotion-classifier developed for this type of texts. Applied
over different time periods, this framework reveals strong correlations between
the excess of negative emotions and the evolution of communities. We observe
avalanches of emotional comments exhibiting significant self-organized critical
behavior and temporal correlations. To explore robustness of these critical
states, we design a network automaton model on realistic network connections
and several control parameters, which can be inferred from the dataset.
Dissemination of emotions by a small fraction of very active users appears to
critically tune the collective states
Public self-consciousness, pre-loading and drinking harms among university students
Background: Social anxiety and self-consciousness are associated with alcohol-related problems in students. The practice of pre-loading is one avenue for exploration regarding this relationship. Individuals may pre-load to reduce social anxiety and feel more confident when socialising, which could lead to the increased harms experienced. The current study aimed to explore reasons for pre-loading, and whether public and private self-consciousness and social anxiety were related to pre-loading, increased drinking and harms. Method: Prospective study with four-week follow up of 325 UK students aged 18-30 years old. Participants completed measures of private and public self-consciousness, social anxiety, alcohol consumption, alcohol-related harms and pre-loading. Results: Financial motives and mood-related reasons, such as gaining confidence were reported as reasons for pre-loading. Pre-loading predicted hazardous alcohol consumption, but social anxiety, and public and private self-consciousness did not. However, pre-loading, public self-consciousness and social anxiety predicted alcohol-related harms. Furthermore, public self-consciousness mediated the relationship between pre-loading and harms in a positive direction and this appeared to be more relevant in high risk (AUDIT 8+) than low risk drinkers. Conclusion: Students who scored higher in public self-consciousness appeared to be at greater risk of harms from pre-loading. Further research should examine this relationship further with particular attention to high risk drinkers, and explore which aspects of a night out are related to heightened self-consciousness. Interventions could incorporate measures to reduce public self-consciousness, in order to reduce the negative impacts of pre-loading
Strain-induced interface reconstruction in epitaxial heterostructures
We investigate in the framework of Landau theory the distortion of the strain
fields at the interface of two dissimilar ferroelastic oxides that undergo a
structural cubic-to-tetragonal phase transition. Simple analytical solutions
are derived for the dilatational and the order parameter strains that are
globally valid over the whole of the heterostructure. The solutions reveal that
the dilatational strain exhibits compression close to the interface which may
in turn affect the electronic properties in that region.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, to be published in Physical Review
Using virtual reality to understand and treat depression
Depression is a prevalent mental health disorder with serious consequences for the patients’ lives. Virtual Reality (VR) is a promising technology that can immerse individuals in a virtual environment, and has increasingly been used to conduct experiments and deliver interventions with higher ecological validity. One of the studies discussed here showed that individuals with depression score lower in a novel Spatial Memory Navigation task than controls. Two other studies showed some promising results in using VR to deliver interventions for depression to reduce stress and increase self-compassion in depressed individuals. Longitudinal randomized controlled trials are needed to further validate these promising results
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