The Apparent Fractal Conjecture

This short communication advances the hypothesis that the observed fractal structure of large-scale distribution of galaxies is due to a geometrical effect, which arises when observational quantities relevant for the characterization of a cosmological fractal structure are calculated along the past light cone. If this hypothesis proves, even partially, correct, most, if not all, objections raised against fractals in cosmology may be solved. For instance, under this view the standard cosmology has zero average density, as predicted by an infinite fractal structure, with, at the same time, the cosmological principle remaining valid. The theoretical results which suggest this conjecture are reviewed, as well as possible ways of checking its validity.Comment: 6 pages, LaTeX. Text unchanged. Two references corrected. Contributed paper presented at the "South Africa Relativistic Cosmology Conference in Honour of George F. R. Ellis 60th Birthday"; University of Cape Town, February 1-5, 199

The Quest for Bandwidth Estimation Techniques for large-scale Distributed Systems

In recent years the research community has developed many techniques to estimate the end-to-end available bandwidth of an Internet path. This important metric has been proposed for use in several distributed systems and, more recently, has even been considered to improve the congestion control mechanism of TCP. Thus, it has been suggested that some existing estimation techniques could be used for this purpose. However, existing tools were not designed for large-scale deployments and were mostly validated in controlled settings, considering only one measurement running at a time. In this paper, we argue that current tools, while offering good estimates when used alone, might not work in large-scale systems where several estimations severely interfere with each other. We analyze the properties of the measurement paradigms employed today and discuss their functioning, study their overhead and analyze their interference. Our testbed results show that current techniques are insufficient as they are. Finally, we will discuss and propose some principles that should be taken into account for including available bandwidth measurements in large-scale distributed systems. 1

Dirac points merging and wandering in a model Chern insulator

We present a model for a Chern insulator on the square lattice with complex first and second neighbor hoppings and a sublattice potential which displays an unexpectedly rich physics. Similarly to the celebrated Haldane model, the proposed Chern insulator has two topologically non-trivial phases with Chern numbers $\pm1$. As a distinctive feature of the present model, phase transitions are associated to Dirac points that can move, merge and split in momentum space, at odds with Haldane's Chern insulator where Dirac points are bound to the corners of the hexagonal Brillouin zone. Additionally, the obtained phase diagram reveals a peculiar phase transition line between two distinct topological phases, in contrast to the Haldane model where such transition is reduced to a point with zero sublattice potential. The model is amenable to be simulated in optical lattices, facilitating the study of phase transitions between two distinct topological phases and the experimental analysis of Dirac points merging and wandering

Mesonic states in the generalised Nambu-Jona-Lasinio theories

For any Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model of QCD with arbitrary nonlocal, instantaneous, quark current-current confining kernels, we use a generalised Bogoliubov technique to go beyond BCS level (in the large-Nc limit) so as to explicitly build quark-antiquark compound operators for creating/annihilating mesons. In the Hamiltonian approach, the mesonic bound-state equations appear (from the generalised Bogoliubov transformation) as mass-gap-like equations which, in turn, ensure the absence, in the Hamiltonian, of mesonic Bogoliubov anomalous terms. We go further to demonstrate the one-to-one correspondence between Hamiltonian and Bethe-Salpeter approaches to non-local NJL-type models for QCD and give the corresponding "dictionary" necessary to "translate" the amplitudes built using the graphical Feynman rules to the terms of the Hamiltonian, and vice versa. We comment on the problem of multiple vacua existence in such type of models and argue that mesonic states in the theory should be prescribed to have an extra index - the index of the replica in which they are created. Then the completely diagonalised Hamiltonian should contain a sum over this new index. The method is proved to be general and valid for any instantaneous quark kernel.Comment: LaTeX2e, uses aipproc class, Talk given at the conference "Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum VI", 21-25 September 2004, Sardinia, Italy, to appear in Proceeding

Quantum field theory approach to the vacuum replica in QCD

Quantum field theory is used to describe the contribution of possible new QCD vacuum replica to hadronic processes. This sigma-like new state has been recently shown to be likely to appear for any realistic four-quark interaction kernel as a consequence of chiral symmetry. The local operator creating the replica vacuum state is constructed explicitly. Applications to physical processes are outlined.Comment: LaTeX2e, 2 EPS figures, uses ws-procs9x6 (included) and epsfig classes, Talk given at the conference "Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum V", 10-14 September 2002, Gargnano, Italy, to appear in Proceeding

History of art paintings through the lens of entropy and complexity

Art is the ultimate expression of human creativity that is deeply influenced by the philosophy and culture of the corresponding historical epoch. The quantitative analysis of art is therefore essential for better understanding human cultural evolution. Here we present a large-scale quantitative analysis of almost 140 thousand paintings, spanning nearly a millennium of art history. Based on the local spatial patterns in the images of these paintings, we estimate the permutation entropy and the statistical complexity of each painting. These measures map the degree of visual order of artworks into a scale of order-disorder and simplicity-complexity that locally reflects qualitative categories proposed by art historians. The dynamical behavior of these measures reveals a clear temporal evolution of art, marked by transitions that agree with the main historical periods of art. Our research shows that different artistic styles have a distinct average degree of entropy and complexity, thus allowing a hierarchical organization and clustering of styles according to these metrics. We have further verified that the identified groups correspond well with the textual content used to qualitatively describe the styles, and that the employed complexity-entropy measures can be used for an effective classification of artworks.Comment: 10 two-column pages, 5 figures; accepted for publication in PNAS [supplementary information available at http://www.pnas.org/highwire/filestream/824089/field_highwire_adjunct_files/0/pnas.1800083115.sapp.pdf

The Advantage of Playing Home in NBA: Microscopic, Team-Specific and Evolving Features

The idea that the success rate of a team increases when playing home is broadly accepted and documented for a wide variety of sports. Investigations on the so-called home advantage phenomenon date back to the 70's and every since has attracted the attention of scholars and sport enthusiasts. These studies have been mainly focused on identifying the phenomenon and trying to correlate it with external factors such as crowd noise and referee bias. Much less is known about the effects of home advantage in the microscopic dynamics of the game (within the game) or possible team-specific and evolving features of this phenomenon. Here we present a detailed study of these previous features in the National Basketball Association (NBA). By analyzing play-by-play events of more than sixteen thousand games that span thirteen NBA seasons, we have found that home advantage affects the microscopic dynamics of the game by increasing the scoring rates and decreasing the time intervals between scores of teams playing home. We verified that these two features are different among the NBA teams, for instance, the scoring rate of the Cleveland Cavaliers team is increased 0.16 points per minute (on average the seasons 2004-05 to 2013-14) when playing home, whereas for the New Jersey Nets (now the Brooklyn Nets) this rate increases in only 0.04 points per minute. We further observed that these microscopic features have evolved over time in a non-trivial manner when analyzing the results team-by-team. However, after averaging over all teams some regularities emerge; in particular, we noticed that the average differences in the scoring rates and in the characteristic times (related to the time intervals between scores) have slightly decreased over time, suggesting a weakening of the phenomenon.Comment: Accepted for publication in PLoS ON