6,563 research outputs found
Exact numerical diagonalization of one-dimensional interacting electrons nonadiabatically coupled to phonons
We study the role of non-adiabatic Holstein electron-phonon coupling on the
neutral-ionic phase transition of charge transfer crystals which can be tuned
from continuous to discontinuous, using exact numerical diagonalization. The
variation of electronic properties through the transition is smoothed by
nonadiabaticity. Lattice properties are strongly affected, and we observe both
squeezing and antisqueezing, depending on details of the adiabatic potentials,
and identify the quantum uncertainty of the phonons as the most sensitive
measure of nonadiabaticity. The adiabatic limit is regular for a continuous
transition but turns out completely inadequate near a discontinuous transition.
The relevance of coherent state approaches is assessed critically.Comment: latex manuscript (7 pages), 3 eps figures; revised version, better
discussion, one figure replaced; to be published in Europhys. Let
Costs of publicly provided maternity services in Rosario, Argentina
This material is posted here with permission of the publishers, Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública. Internal or personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material must be obtained from the Publisher.Objective. This study estimates the costs of maternal health services in Rosario, Argentina. Material and Methods. The rovider costs (US114.62. The average cost of a caesarean section (105.61). A normal delivery costs less at the general
hospital and a c-section less at the aternity hospital. The average cost of an antenatal visit is 4.70. Direct costs are minimal compared to indirect costs of travel and waiting time. Conclusions. These results suggest the potential for increasing the efficiency of resource use by promoting antenatal care visits at the primary level. Women could also benefit from reduced travel and waiting time. Similar benefits could accrue to the provider by encouraging normal delivery at general hospitals, and complicated deliveries at specialised maternity hospitals.Josephine Borghi is funded by the Department for International Development through the Maternal Health Programme at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. This project was conducted for and funded by the Human Reproduction Programme at WHO, Geneva
Pseudospin Magnetism in Graphene
We predict that neutral graphene bilayers are pseudospin magnets in which the
charge density-contribution from each valley and spin spontaneously shifts to
one of the two layers. The band structure of this system is characterized by a
momentum-space vortex which is responsible for unusual competition between band
and kinetic energies leading to symmetry breaking in the vortex core. We
discuss the possibility of realizing a pseudospin version of ferromagnetic
metal spintronics in graphene bilayers based on hysteresis associated with this
broken symmetry.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures; added figure 1, modified introduction and
discussion; updated reference
High frequency electro-optic measurement of strained silicon racetrack resonators
The observation of the electro-optic effect in strained silicon waveguides
has been considered as a direct manifestation of an induced
non-linearity in the material. In this work, we perform high frequency
measurements on strained silicon racetrack resonators. Strain is controlled by
a mechanical deformation of the waveguide. It is shown that any optical
modulation vanishes independently of the applied strain when the applied
voltage varies much faster than the carrier effective lifetime, and that the DC
modulation is also largely independent of the applied strain. This demonstrates
that plasma carrier dispersion is responsible for the observed electro-optic
effect. After normalizing out free carrier effects, our results set an upper
limit of to the induced high-speed tensor
element at an applied stress of . This upper limit is about one
order of magnitude lower than the previously reported values for static
electro-optic measurements
Automated Artifact Retouching in Morphed Images with Attention Maps
open4noMorphing attack is an important security threat for automatic face recognition systems. High-quality morphed images, i.e. images without significant visual artifacts such as ghosts, noise, and blurring, exhibit higher chances of success, being able to fool both human examiners and commercial face verification algorithms. Therefore, the availability of large sets of high-quality morphs is fundamental for training and testing robust morphing attack detection algorithms. However, producing a high-quality morphed image is an expensive and time-consuming task since manual post-processing is generally required to remove the typical artifacts generated by landmark-based morphing techniques. This work describes an approach based on the Conditional Generative Adversarial Network paradigm for automated morphing artifact retouching and the use of Attention Maps to guide the generation process and limit the retouch to specific areas. In order to work with high-resolution images, the framework is applied on different facial crops, which, once processed and retouched, are accurately blended to reconstruct the whole morphed face. Specifically, we focus on four different squared face regions, i.e. the right and left eyes, the nose, and the mouth, that are frequently affected by artifacts. Several qualitative and quantitative experimental evaluations have been conducted to confirm the effectiveness of the proposal in terms of, among the others, pixel-wise metrics, identity preservation, and human observer analysis. Results confirm the feasibility and the accuracy of the proposed framework.openBorghi G.; Franco A.; Graffieti G.; Maltoni D.Borghi G.; Franco A.; Graffieti G.; Maltoni D
The Role of Electron-electron Interactions in Graphene ARPES Spectra
We report on a theoretical study of the influence of electron-electron
interactions on ARPES spectra in graphene that is based on the
random-phase-approximation and on graphene's massless Dirac equation continuum
model. We find that level repulsion between quasiparticle and plasmaron
resonances gives rise to a gap-like feature at small k. ARPES spectra are
sensitive to the electron-electron interaction coupling strength and might enable an experimental determination of this material parameter.Comment: 5 Pages, 4 Figures, Submitte
A heat island model for large urban areas and its application to Milano
The study of the urban heat island has been carried out through two new enhanced versions of the UCLM (Urban Canopy Layer Model) model, Landsat/Thematic Mapper data sets and meteorological data collected over a square area 30 km of side including Milan and its hinterland. The urban climate can be described in different summer and winter radiative settings. The input data are divided into two classes: 1) parameters related to urban and rural local properties
(albedo and emissivity, vegetation index NDVI, surface roughness length, land cover...); 2) meteorological data related to the general synoptic conditions. The bulk system of the model is made up of four independent equations expressed in terms of four unknowns, i.e., the temperature values at ground level, canopy level and reference level (100 m) and relative humidity within the urban structure. The study area is divided by a regular square mesh of variable dimension (from 30 m to 1500 m); both the input and output data are average cell values. UCLM30 and UCLM60 calculate the temperature excess as well as the turbulent heat exchanges and the heat storage in the urban canopy as a function of the radiative and dynamic forcing. As can be observed in reality, the model shows that in summer the highest urban heating occurs in early morning and after sunset and that, in extreme conditions, the temperature can be up to 8 7C warmer in town than in the nearby rural lands
Manejo de espécies forrageiras em consórcio com milho safrinha.
O propósito deste documento é fornecer algumas informações sobre o cultivo consorciado de milho com espécies forrageiras dos gêneros Urochloa e Panicum, de forma a proporcionar maiores subsídios na tomada de decisão quanto à adoção deste sistema visando a sustentabilidade de sistemas produtivos de grãos e de carne/leite, pela utilização do componente forrageiro em duplo propósito para fornecer forragem no período de maior escassez de alimento e, ainda, viabilizar o SPD pelo resíduo depositado na superfície do solo.Editado por: Germani Concenço, Gessi Ceccon
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