3,593 research outputs found
A CLT for Plancherel representations of the infinite-dimensional unitary group
We study asymptotics of traces of (noncommutative) monomials formed by images
of certain elements of the universal enveloping algebra of the
infinite-dimensional unitary group in its Plancherel representations. We prove
that they converge to (commutative) moments of a Gaussian process that can be
viewed as a collection of simply yet nontrivially correlated two-dimensional
Gaussian Free Fields. The limiting process has previously arisen via the global
scaling limit of spectra for submatrices of Wigner Hermitian random matrices.
This note is an announcement, proofs will appear elsewhere.Comment: 12 page
Popular music, psychogeography, place identity and tourism: The case of Sheffield
Tourism and cultural agencies in some English provincial cities are promoting their popular music âheritageâ and, in some cases, contemporary musicians through the packaging of trails, sites, âiconicâ venues and festivals. This article focuses on Sheffield, a âpost-industrialâ northern English city which is drawing on its associations with musicians past and present in seeking to attract tourists. This article is based on interviews with, among others, recording artists, promoters, producers and venue managers, along with reflective observational and documentary data. Theoretical remarks are made on the representations of popular musicians through cultural tourism strategies, programmes and products and also on the ways in which musicians convey a âpsychogeographicalâ sense of place in the âsoundscapeâ of the city
Statistical Mechanics of Logarithmic REM: Duality, Freezing and Extreme Value Statistics of Noises generated by Gaussian Free Fields
We compute the distribution of the partition functions for a class of
one-dimensional Random Energy Models (REM) with logarithmically correlated
random potential, above and at the glass transition temperature. The random
potential sequences represent various versions of the 1/f noise generated by
sampling the two-dimensional Gaussian Free Field (2dGFF) along various planar
curves. Our method extends the recent analysis of Fyodorov Bouchaud from the
circular case to an interval and is based on an analytical continuation of the
Selberg integral. In particular, we unveil a {\it duality relation} satisfied
by the suitable generating function of free energy cumulants in the
high-temperature phase. It reinforces the freezing scenario hypothesis for that
generating function, from which we derive the distribution of extrema for the
2dGFF on the interval. We provide numerical checks of the circular and
the interval case and discuss universality and various extensions. Relevance to
the distribution of length of a segment in Liouville quantum gravity is noted.Comment: 25 pages, 12 figures Published version. Misprint corrected,
references and note adde
Do cardiovascular responses to active and passive coping tasks predict future blood pressure 10 months later?
The study examined whether cardiovascular responses to active or passive coping tasks and single or multiple tasks predicted changes in resting blood pressure (BP) over a ten-month period. Heart rate (HR), BP, cardiac output (CO), and total peripheral resistance (TPR) were measured at rest, and during mental stress tests (mental arithmetic, speech, and cold pressor tasks). A total of 104 eligible participants participated in the initial study, and 77 (74.04%) normotensive adult participantsâ resting BP were re-evaluated at ten-month follow-up. Regression analyses indicated that after adjustment for baseline BP, initial age, gender, body mass index, family history of cardiovascular disease, and current cigarette smoking, heightened systolic blood pressure (SBP) and HR responses to an active coping task (mental arithmetic) were associated with increased future SBP (R2 = .060, R2 =.045, respectively). Further, when aggregated, SBP responsivity (over the three tasks) resulted in a significant, but smaller increase in R2 accounting for .040 of the variance of follow-up SBP. These findings suggest that cardiovascular responses to active coping tasks predict future SBP. Furtherthe findings revealed that SBP responses to the tasks when aggregated were less predictive compared to an individual task (i.e., mental arithmetic). Of importance, hemodynamic reactivity (namely CO and TPR) did not predict future BP; suggesting that more general psychophysiological processes (e.g., inflammation, platelet aggregation) may be implicated, or that BP, but not hemodynamic reactivity may be a marker of hypertension
The identification and characterization of small molecules for the inhibition of NGF and proNGF8p75NTR interactions using surface plasmon resonance spectroscopy
! The!survival!of!neurons!in!both!the!central!and!peripheral!nervous!systems!
depend!on!a!balance!between!pro8survival!and!pro8death!signaling!pathways.!
Neurotrophins!and!their!precursors,!proneurotrophins,!are!a!unique!family!of!
soluble!signaling!proteins,!which!act!to!preserve!this!balance.!Dysregulation!of!these!
proteins,!however,!has!been!implicated!in!several!pathologies.!Specifically,!both!
nerve!growth!factor!(NGF)!and!pro8nerve!growth!factor!(proNGF)!have!been!
implicated!in!the!development!and!progression!of!neurodegenerative!diseases,!such!
as!Parkinsonâs!and!Alzheimerâs!diseases,!through!p75NTR8mediated!apoptotic!
signaling.!!Therefore,!the!identification!of!small!molecule!inhibitors!capable!of!
binding!to!and!modulating!NGF!and!proNGF!may!be!of!therapeutic!interest.!This!
thesis!aims!to!characterize!the!inhibitory!action!of!previously!reported!small!
molecule8based!NGF!inhibitors,!ALE80540,!PD90780,!Ro!0882750,!and!PQC!083,!as!
well!as!novel!derivatives!of!these!compounds,!using!surface!plasmon!resonance!
(SPR)!spectroscopy.!Of!the!established!inhibitors,!PD90780!offered!the!most!
effective!inhibitory!action!for!both!NGF!and!proNGF!binding!to!p75NTR,!suggesting!
that!this!compound!may!offer!multipotent!inhibition.!Further,!several!novel!ligand!
specific!molecules!were!identified,!which!selectively!inhibited!either!NGF!or!
proNGF8p75NTR!interactions.!Specifically,!BVNP!1,!BVNP!6,!and!BVNP!7!were!shown!
to!be!effective!inhibitors!of!NGF8p75NTR!interactions,!while!BVNP!3!and!BVNP!4!
were!found!to!be!selective!for!the!inhibition!of!proNGF!binding!to!p75NTR.!The!
findings!of!this!thesis!offer!new!insight!into!the!use!of!small!molecule!inhibitors!to!
! iv!
block!both!neurotrophin!and!proneurotrophin8mediated!signaling.!In!addition,!the!
compounds!described!herein!may!be!used!for!future!lead!development.!Master of Science (MSc) in Biolog
Disk Heating, Galactoseismology, and the Formation of Stellar Halos
Deep photometric surveys of the Milky Way have revealed diffuse structures
encircling our Galaxy far beyond the "classical" limits of the stellar disk.
This paper reviews results from our own and other observational programs, which
together suggest that, despite their extreme positions, the stars in these
structures were formed in our Galactic disk. Mounting evidence from recent
observations and simulations implies kinematic connections between several of
these distinct structures. This suggests the existence of collective disk
oscillations that can plausibly be traced all the way to asymmetries seen in
the stellar velocity distribution around the Sun. There are multiple
interesting implications of these findings: they promise new perspectives on
the process of disk heating, they provide direct evidence for a stellar halo
formation mechanism in addition to the accretion and disruption of satellite
galaxies, and, they motivate searches of current and near-future surveys to
trace these oscillations across the Galaxy. Such maps could be used as
dynamical diagnostics in the emerging field of "Galactoseismology", which
promises to model the history of interactions between the Milky Way and its
entourage of satellites, as well examine the density of our dark matter halo.
As sensitivity to very low surface brightness features around external galaxies
increases, many more examples of such disk oscillations will likely be
identified. Statistical samples of such features not only encode detailed
information about interaction rates and mergers, but also about long
sought-after dark matter halo densities and shapes. Models for the Milky Way's
own Galactoseismic history will therefore serve as a critical foundation for
studying the weak dynamical interactions of galaxies across the universe.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figures, accepted in for publication in a special edition
of the journal "Galaxies", reporting the proceedings of the conference "On
the Origin (and Evolution) of Baryonic Galaxy Halos", Puerto Ayora, Ecuador,
March 13-17 2017, Eds. Duncan A. Forbes and Ericson D. Lope
Fluctuations for the Ginzburg-Landau Interface Model on a Bounded Domain
We study the massless field on , where is a bounded domain with smooth boundary, with Hamiltonian
\CH(h) = \sum_{x \sim y} \CV(h(x) - h(y)). The interaction \CV is assumed
to be symmetric and uniformly convex. This is a general model for a
-dimensional effective interface where represents the height. We
take our boundary conditions to be a continuous perturbation of a macroscopic
tilt: for , , and
continuous. We prove that the fluctuations of linear
functionals of about the tilt converge in the limit to a Gaussian free
field on , the standard Gaussian with respect to the weighted Dirichlet
inner product for some explicit . In a subsequent article,
we will employ the tools developed here to resolve a conjecture of Sheffield
that the zero contour lines of are asymptotically described by , a
conformally invariant random curve.Comment: 58 page
Conformal Curves in Potts Model: Numerical Calculation
We calculated numerically the fractal dimension of the boundaries of the
Fortuin-Kasteleyn clusters of the -state Potts model for integer and
non-integer values of on the square lattice.
In addition we calculated with high accuracy the fractal dimension of the
boundary points of the same clusters on the square domain. Our calculation
confirms that this curves can be described by SLE.Comment: 11 Pages, 4 figure
Pre-freezing of multifractal exponents in Random Energy Models with logarithmically correlated potential
Boltzmann-Gibbs measures generated by logarithmically correlated random
potentials are multifractal. We investigate the abrupt change ("pre-freezing")
of multifractality exponents extracted from the averaged moments of the measure
- the so-called inverse participation ratios. The pre-freezing can be
identified with termination of the disorder-averaged multifractality spectrum.
Naive replica limit employed to study a one-dimensional variant of the model is
shown to break down at the pre-freezing point. Further insights are possible
when employing zero-dimensional and infinite-dimensional versions of the
problem. In particular, the latter version allows one to identify the pattern
of the replica symmetry breaking responsible for the pre-freezing phenomenon.Comment: This is published version, 11 pages, 1 figur
Hidden clusters: the articulation of agglomeration in City Regions
For many years, local economic development has been driven by the desire to maintain, attract and nurture clusters of economic activity in targeted industrial sectors. However, where clusters are not conventionally sector-based, public policy needs to develop alternative approaches to leverage the economic benefits and realise competitive advantage. Drawing on a study of the Sheffield City Region (SCR), the paper explores the challenge of leveraging âhiddenâ cross-sectoral clusters, which do not fit dominant discourses of agglomeration-led growth. We posit that it is the cross-sectoral connections and networks in the SCR which represent its key strength, yet these are only partially reflected by current place marketing and policy considerations, and, in many ways, are overlooked and thus remain âhiddenâ. The paper argues that the competitive advantage of the SCR is undermined when it characterises clusters in terms of industrial sectors, and instead needs to articulate its strengths as a strategically important industrial centre. The paper concludes by drawing out a number of implications for academic theory and policy development
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