4,199 research outputs found
A worldwide model for boundaries of urban settlements
The shape of urban settlements plays a fundamental role in their sustainable
planning. Properly defining the boundaries of cities is challenging and remains
an open problem in the Science of Cities. Here, we propose a worldwide model to
define urban settlements beyond their administrative boundaries through a
bottom-up approach that takes into account geographical biases intrinsically
associated with most societies around the world, and reflected in their
different regional growing dynamics. The generality of the model allows to
study the scaling laws of cities at all geographical levels: countries,
continents, and the entire world. Our definition of cities is robust and holds
to one of the most famous results in Social Sciences: Zipf's law. According to
our results, the largest cities in the world are not in line with what was
recently reported by the United Nations. For example, we find that the largest
city in the world is an agglomeration of several small settlements close to
each other, connecting three large settlements: Alexandria, Cairo, and Luxor.
Our definition of cities opens the doors to the study of the economy of cities
in a systematic way independently of arbitrary definitions that employ
administrative boundaries
A universal approach for drainage basins
Drainage basins are essential to Geohydrology and Biodiversity. Defining
those regions in a simple, robust and efficient way is a constant challenge in
Earth Science. Here, we introduce a model to delineate multiple drainage basins
through an extension of the Invasion Percolation-Based Algorithm (IPBA). In
order to prove the potential of our approach, we apply it to real and
artificial datasets. We observe that the perimeter and area distributions of
basins and anti-basins display long tails extending over several orders of
magnitude and following approximately power-law behaviors. Moreover, the
exponents of these power laws depend on spatial correlations and are invariant
under the landscape orientation, not only for terrestrial, but lunar and
martian landscapes. The terrestrial and martian results are statistically
identical, which suggests that a hypothetical martian river would present
similarity to the terrestrial rivers. Finally, we propose a theoretical value
for the Hack's exponent based on the fractal dimension of watersheds,
. We measure for Earth, which is close to
our estimation of . Our study suggests that Hack's law can
have its origin purely in the maximum and minimum lines of the landscapes.Comment: 20 pages, 6 Figures, and 1 Tabl
Bound states in the dynamics of a dipole in the presence of a conical defect
In this work we investigate the quantum dynamics of an electric dipole in a
-dimensional conical spacetime. For specific conditions, the
Schr\"odinger equation is solved and bound states are found with the energy
spectrum and eigenfunctions determined. We find that the bound states spectrum
extends from minus infinity to zero with a point of accumulation at zero. This
unphysical result is fixed when a finite radius for the defect is introduced.Comment: 4 page
Collaboration networks from a large CV database: dynamics, topology and bonus impact
Understanding the dynamics of research production and collaboration may
reveal better strategies for scientific careers, academic institutions and
funding agencies. Here we propose the use of a large and multidisciplinar
database of scientific curricula in Brazil, namely, the Lattes Platform, to
study patterns of scientific production and collaboration. In this database,
detailed information about publications and researchers are made available by
themselves so that coauthorship is unambiguous and individuals can be evaluated
by scientific productivity, geographical location and field of expertise. Our
results show that the collaboration network is growing exponentially for the
last three decades, with a distribution of number of collaborators per
researcher that approaches a power-law as the network gets older. Moreover,
both the distributions of number of collaborators and production per researcher
obey power-law behaviors, regardless of the geographical location or field,
suggesting that the same universal mechanism might be responsible for network
growth and productivity.We also show that the collaboration network under
investigation displays a typical assortative mixing behavior, where teeming
researchers (i.e., with high degree) tend to collaborate with others alike.
Finally, our analysis reveals that the distinctive collaboration profile of
researchers awarded with governmental scholarships suggests a strong bonus
impact on their productivity.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure
MAIS - A Model for the Multi-criteria Analysis of Interaction Solutions
AbstractThe research methodology applied in this work, consisted of the following steps: initially, we collected work that applied subjective analysis methods in a decision making process in order to choose the appropriate interaction solution(s) to the users’ preferences. Then, we verified the characteristics of the multi-criteria approaches found in such works, which did not provide designers with support to define what to evaluate in solutions, how to assess them nor to what purpose the analysis is made. Subsequently, we derived a general process, from which we could identify the main elements to generate an evaluation model. Such elements refer to interaction aspects, concepts, techniques and methods coming from different areas of computer scienc
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