Multiscale approach to inhomogeneous cosmologies

The backreaction of inhomogeneities on the global expansion history of the Universe suggests a possible link of the formation of structures to the recent accelerated expansion. In this paper, the origin of this conjecture is illustrated and a model without Dark Energy that allows for a more explicit investigation of this link is discussed. Additionally to this conceptually interesting feature, the model leads to a LCDM-like distance-redshift relation that is consistent with SN data.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, contributed talk at the Workshop: New Directions in Modern Cosmology, Leiden, The Netherlands, 27.9.-1.10. (2010

Multiscale cosmology and structure-emerging Dark Energy: A plausibility analysis

Cosmological backreaction suggests a link between structure formation and the expansion history of the Universe. In order to quantitatively examine this connection, we dynamically investigate a volume partition of the Universe into over-- and underdense regions. This allows us to trace structure formation using the volume fraction of the overdense regions \lambda_{\CM} as its characterizing parameter. Employing results from cosmological perturbation theory and extrapolating the leading mode into the nonlinear regime, we construct a three--parameter model for the effective cosmic expansion history, involving \lambda_{\CM_{0}}, the matter density \Omega_{m}^{\CD_{0}}, and the Hubble rate H_{\CD_{0}} of today's Universe. Taking standard values for \Omega_{m}^{\CD_{0}} and H_{\CD_{0}} as well as a reasonable value for \lambda_{\CM_{0}}, that we derive from $N$--body simulations, we determine the corresponding amounts of backreaction and spatial curvature. We find that the obtained values that are sufficient to generate today's structure also lead to a $\Lambda$CDM--like behavior of the scale factor, parametrized by the same parameters \Omega_{m}^{\CD_{0}} and H_{\CD_{0}}, but without a cosmological constant. However, the temporal behavior of \lambda_{\CM} does not faithfully reproduce the structure formation history. Surprisingly, however, the model matches with structure formation with the assumption of a low matter content, \Omega_{m}^{\CD_{0}}\approx3\%, a result that hints to a different interpretation of part of the backreaction effect as kinematical Dark Matter. (truncated)Comment: 25 pages, 10 figures, includes calculation of luminosity distances, matches published version in Phys. Rev.

Multiple paths in complex tasks

The relationship between utility judgments of subtask paths and the utility of the task as a whole was examined. The convergent validation procedure is based on the assumption that measurements of the same quantity done with different methods should covary. The utility measures of the subtasks were obtained during the performance of an aircraft flight controller navigation task. Analyses helped decide among various models of subtask utility combination, whether the utility ratings of subtask paths predict the whole tasks utility rating, and indirectly, whether judgmental models need to include the equivalent of cognitive noise

Lagrangian theory of structure formation in relativistic cosmology III: gravitoelectric perturbation and solution schemes at any order

The relativistic generalization of the Newtonian Lagrangian perturbation theory is investigated. In previous works, the first-order trace solutions that are generated by the spatially projected gravitoelectric part of the Weyl tensor were given together with extensions and applications for accessing the nonperturbative regime. We furnish here construction rules to obtain from Newtonian solutions the gravitoelectric class of relativistic solutions, for which we give the complete perturbation and solution schemes at any order of the perturbations. By construction, these schemes generalize the complete hierarchy of solutions of the Newtonian Lagrangian perturbation theory.Comment: 17 pages, a few minor extensions to match the published version in PR

Occupational dental erosion from exposure to acids—a review

Objective Dental erosion is characterized as a disorder with a multifactorial aetiology including environmental acid exposure. The purpose of this article was to summarize and discuss the available information concerning occupational dental erosion. Methods Information from original scientific papers, case reports and reviews with additional case reports listed in PubMed, Medline or EMBASE [search term: (dental OR enamel OR dentin) AND (erosion OR tooth wear) AND (occupational OR worker)] were included in the review. References from the identified publications were manually searched to identify additional relevant articles. Results The systematic search resulted in 59 papers, of which 42 were suitable for the present review. Seventeen papers demonstrated evidence that battery, galvanizing and associated workers exposed to sulphuric or hydrochloric acid were at higher risk of dental erosion. For other industrial workers, wine tasters and competitive swimmers, only a few clinical studies exist and these do not allow the drawing of definitive conclusions. Conclusion Occupational acid exposure might increase the risk of dental erosion. Evidence for occupational dental erosion is limited to battery and galvanizing workers, while data for other occupational groups need to be confirmed by further studie

Deep Neural Networks for No-Reference and Full-Reference Image Quality Assessment

We present a deep neural network-based approach to image quality assessment (IQA). The network is trained end-to-end and comprises ten convolutional layers and five pooling layers for feature extraction, and two fully connected layers for regression, which makes it significantly deeper than related IQA models. Unique features of the proposed architecture are that: 1) with slight adaptations it can be used in a no-reference (NR) as well as in a full-reference (FR) IQA setting and 2) it allows for joint learning of local quality and local weights, i.e., relative importance of local quality to the global quality estimate, in an unified framework. Our approach is purely data-driven and does not rely on hand-crafted features or other types of prior domain knowledge about the human visual system or image statistics. We evaluate the proposed approach on the LIVE, CISQ, and TID2013 databases as well as the LIVE In the wild image quality challenge database and show superior performance to state-of-the-art NR and FR IQA methods. Finally, cross-database evaluation shows a high ability to generalize between different databases, indicating a high robustness of the learned features