Why Do I Fall for the Elf, When I Am No Orc Myself? The Implications of Virtual Avatars in Digital Communication

Various recent research on online avatars debated their authenticity in terms of representing the individuals that manage them. Seemingly users would construct an enhanced or idealized presence of themselves online, yet fail to realize that others also do so when seeking information of other users through their avatars. This phenomenon becomes even more curious inside online video game spaces, since video game avatars are already expected to be unrelated with their players but are still seen as sources of information about them. This study approaches the issue as a communication problem and tries to explain the process through Berger’s Uncertainty Reduction Theory (URT). Merging URT with various other nonverbal and visual communication approaches, it is debated how video game avatars – seemingly unrelated or arbitrarily related entitites with their users – become information sources about them. Additionally to elaborate further on the process, the relationship between self and avatars is also analyzed. To create this link, semiotic theories of Saussure and Lacan were expanded and a new approach was proposed. Saussure’s signification process and Lacan’s chains of signification were adapted into digital avatars to define an on-going feedback loop between the video game avatars and the self

Vibrational Behavior of Metal Nanowires under Tensile Stress

We have investigated the vibrational density of states (VDOS) of a thin Cu nanowire with $$ axial orientation and considered the effect of axial strain. The VDOS are calculated using a real space Green's function approach with the force constant matrices extracted from interaction potential based on the embedded atom method. Results for the vibrational density of states of a strain-free nanowire show quite distinctive characteristics compared to that of a bulk atom, the most striking feature of which is the existence of high frequency modes above the top of the bulk spectrum. We further predict that the low frequency characteristics of the VDOS reveal the quasi-1 dimensional (Q1D) behavior only when the wire is extremely thin. Through decomposition of VDOS into local atoms we also exhibit that while the anomalous increase in low frequency density of states is mainly due to the corner atoms, the enhancement in high frequency modes is primarily moderated by core atoms. We, additionally, find that while the high frequency band above the top of the bulk phonon shifts to higher frequencies, the characteristics at low frequencies remains almost the same upon stretching the nanowire along the axial direction

Arithmetic Aspects of Bianchi Groups

We discuss several arithmetic aspects of Bianchi groups, especially from a computational point of view. In particular, we consider computing the homology of Bianchi groups together with the Hecke action, connections with automorphic forms, abelian varieties, Galois representations and the torsion in the homology of Bianchi groups. Along the way, we list several open problems and conjectures, survey the related literature, presenting concrete examples and numerical data.Comment: 35 pages, 171 references, 3 tables, 2 figure