Informality and the Development and Demolition of Urban Villages in the Chinese Peri-urban Area

The fate of Chinese urban villages (chengzhongcun) has recently attracted both research and policy attention. Two important unaddressed questions are: what are the sources of informality in otherwise orderly Chinese cities; and, will village redevelopment policy eliminate informality in the Chinese city? Reflecting on the long-established study of informal settlements and recent research on informality, it is argued that the informality in China has been created by the dual urban-rural land market and land management system and by an underprovision of migrant housing. The redevelopment of chengzhongcun is an attempt to eliminate this informality and to create more governable spaces through formal land development; but since it fails to tackle the root demand for unregulated living and working space, village redevelopment only leads to the replication of informality in more remote rural villages, in other urban neighbourhoods and, to some extent, in the redeveloped neighbourhoods. © 2012 Urban Studies Journal Limited

A mesoscale finite element simulation of intermittent plastic flow of micropillar compression under hybrid loading mode

The plastic deformation of the micropillar proceeds as a series of strain bursts, showing an intermittent plastic flow. In this work, we present a stochastic finite element method in crystal plasticity to describe the intermittent characteristic of crystal deformation under the hybrid loading mode (HLM). The microscopic boundary conditions(MBCs) using the HLM are studied and they are demonstrated to be different in various deformation periods such as loading stage, burst slip and holding stage, which occur alternatively as the plastic flow proceeds. In order to determine the MBCs, we use the Monte Carlo (MC) stochastic model to predict the amplitude of the burst displacement and then incorporate such model into our established continuum framework accounting for the characteristics of the strain burst. By implementing this continuum model into the finite element analysis, we predict the plastic flow of single crystal nickel micropillars that deform under uniaxial compression along the [2 6 9] crystalline direction. The simulation results indicate clearly visible strain bursts in the course of plastic deformation, producing a stair-case like stress-strain behavior that agrees well with experimental observations. The computational results reveal that the intermittent flow in the micrometer-scale is intensified due to the increasing amplitude of the strain burst, as well as the occurrence of successive strain bursts rather than the discrete strain bursts, with decreasing of the specimen size. In addition, the micropillar displacement in the context of burst activity predicted from our simulations is similar to the experimental observations. We demonstrate that our simulation method could provide further insights into the intermittent plastic flow characteristics such as burst time duration, micropillar velocity; plus, it is feasible to apply this method to investigate the plastic flow behaviors under complex loading conditions

Binary interactions and UV photometry on photometric redshift

Using the Hyperz code (Bolzonella et al. 2000) we present photometric redshift estimates for a random sample of galaxies selected from the SDSS/DR7 and GALEX/DR4, for which spectroscopic redshifts are also available. We confirm that the inclusion of ultraviolet photometry improves the accuracy of photo-zs for those galaxies with g*-r* < 0.7 and z_spec < 0.2. We also address the problem of how binary interactions can affect photo-z estimates, and find that their effect is negligible.Comment: 2 pages 1 figure

Quantum states of a binary mixture of spinor Bose-Einstein condensates

We study the structure of quantum states for a binary mixture of spin-1 atomic Bose-Einstein condensates. In contrast to collision between identical bosons, the s-wave scattering channel between inter-species does not conform to a fixed symmetry. The spin-dependent Hamiltonian thus contains non-commuting terms, making the exact eigenstates more challenging to obtain because they now depend more generally on both the intra- and inter-species interactions. We discuss two limiting cases, where the spin-dependent Hamiltonian reduces respectively to sums of commuting operators. All eigenstates can then be directly constructed, and they are independent of the detailed interaction parameters.Comment: 5 pages, no figure

Renormalization of transition matrix elements of particle number operators due to strong electron correlation

Renormalization of non-magnetic and magnetic impurities due to electron double occupancy prohibition is derived analytically by an improved Gutzwiller approximation. Non-magnetic impurities are effectively weakened by the same renormalization factor as that for the hopping amplitude, whereas magnetic impurities are strengthened by the square root of the spin-exchange renormalization factor, in contrast to results by the conventional Gutzwiller approximation. We demonstrate it by showing that transition matrix elements of number operators between assumed excited states and between an assumed ground state and excited states are renormalized differently than diagonal matrix elements. Deviation from such simple renormalization with a factor is also discussed. In addition, as related calculation, we correct an error in treatment of renormalization of charge interaction in the literature. Namely, terms from the second order of the transition matrix elements are strongly suppressed. Since all these results do not depend on the signs of impurity potential or charge interaction parameter, they are valid both in attractive and repulsive cases.Comment: 12 page

Atomic number fluctuations in a mixture of two spinor condensates

We study particle number fluctuations in the quantum ground states of a mixture of two spin-1 atomic condensates when the interspecies spin-exchange coupling interaction $c_{12}\beta$ is adjusted. The two spin-1 condensates forming the mixture are respectively ferromagnetic and polar in the absence of an external magnetic (B-) field. We categorize all possible ground states using the angular momentum algebra and compute their characteristic atom number fluctuations, focusing especially on the the AA phase (when $c_{12}\beta >0$), where the ground state becomes fragmented and atomic number fluctuations exhibit drastically different features from a single stand alone spin-1 polar condensate. Our results are further supported by numerical simulations of the full quantum many-body system.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, in press PR