Vincent Van Gogh\u27s Personal Possession

I am an amatuer artist, so when I was in Arles in southern France, it was nat­ural. for me to want to see all the places thereabouts that the famous Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh had been concerned with when he lived there in 1888

Corrections to linear mixing in binary ionic mixtures and plasma screening at zero separation

Using the results of extensive Monte Carlo simulations we discuss corrections to the linear mixing rule in strongly coupled binary ionic mixtures. We analyze the plasma screening function at zero separation, H_{jk}(0), for two ions (of types j=1,2 and k=1,2) in a strongly coupled binary mixture. The function H_{jk}(0) is estimated by two methods: (1) from the difference of Helmholtz Coulomb free energies at large and zero separations; (2) by fitting the Widom expansion of H_{jk}(x) in powers of interionic distance x to Monte Carlo data on the radial pair distribution function g_{jk}(x). These methods are shown to be in good agreement. For illustration, we analyze the plasma screening enhancement of nuclear burning rates in dense stellar matter.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, pre-peer reviewed version of the article accepted for publication in Contrib. Plasma Phys. (2009). The results can be applied to plasma screening enhancement of nuclear burning rates in dense stellar matte

Collecting \u3ci\u3eNeocurtilla Hexadactyla\u3c/i\u3e, the Northern Mole Cricket (Orthoptera: Gryllidae), in Iowa

(excerpt) The northern mole cricket, Neocurtilla hexadactyla (Perty), is a common insect that is infrequently collected perhaps owing to its burrowing and nocturnal habits. It tunnels into moist soil and feeds on tender roots, earthworms, or various insect larvae (Blatchley, 1920)

The Heart Wants What It Wants: Effects of Desirability and Body Part Salience on Distance Perceptions (DeWitt)

Previous research has shown that the desirability of an object influences perceived distance from the object, such that desirable objects are perceived as closer than objects that are not desirable (Balcetis & Dunning, 2010). It has also been suggested that metaphors reflect how our knowledge is represented; so, for example, making the head or heart more salient produces characteristics commonly associated with those body parts (i.e., emotionality for the heart and rationality for the head) (Fetterman & Robinson, 2013). The current study examined the effects of head or heart salience and desirability on distance perception. We hypothesized that since common idioms relate the heart to desirability, salience of the heart would cause desirable objects to be perceived as closer than would salience of the head, but there would be no such difference between the head and heart conditions when the object was neutral. To test this hypothesis, participants had their attention drawn to either their head or their heart by placing their index finger there while throwing a beanbag towards a desirable or a neutral object. In Experiment 2, a verbal distance estimate was also included. We predicted that there would be a significant interaction between desirability of object and hand placement. Specifically, we expected that there would be no effect of hand placement when the object was neutral but that heart-pointers would perceive a desirable object as closer than the head-pointers. Results from both experiments failed to support our hypothesis

Green development: improving the health of residents and neighborhoods

Building sustainable developments for long-term savings and better community healthArchitecture and energy conservation ; Housing - Boston

Locally Convex Words and Permutations

We introduce some new classes of words and permutations characterized by the second difference condition $\pi(i-1) + \pi(i+1) - 2\pi(i) \leq k$, which we call the $k$-convexity condition. We demonstrate that for any sized alphabet and convexity parameter $k$, we may find a generating function which counts $k$-convex words of length $n$. We also determine a formula for the number of 0-convex words on any fixed-size alphabet for sufficiently large $n$ by exhibiting a connection to integer partitions. For permutations, we give an explicit solution in the case $k = 0$ and show that the number of 1-convex and 2-convex permutations of length $n$ are $\Theta(C_1^n)$ and $\Theta(C_2^n)$, respectively, and use the transfer matrix method to give tight bounds on the constants $C_1$ and $C_2$. We also providing generating functions similar to the the continued fraction generating functions studied by Odlyzko and Wilf in the "coins in a fountain" problem.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figure

Klein-Gordon-Wheeler-DeWitt-Schroedinger Equation

We start from the Einstein-Hilbert action for the gravitational field in the presence of a "point particle" source, and cast the action into the corresponding phase space form. The dynamical variables of such a system satisfy the point particle mass shell constraint, the Hamilton and the momentum constraints of the canonical gravity. In the quantized theory, those constraints become operators that annihilate a state. A state can be represented by a wave functional $\Psi$ that simultaneously satisfies the Klein-Gordon and the Wheeler-DeWitt-Schr\"odinger equation. The latter equation, besides the term due to gravity, also contains the Schr\"odinger like term, namely the derivative of $\Psi$ with respect to time, that occurs because of the presence of the point particle. The particle's time coordinate, $X^0$, serves the role of time. Next, we generalize the system to $p$-branes, and find out that for a quantized spacetime filling brane there occurs an effective cosmological constant, proportional to the expectation value of the brane's momentum, a degree of freedom that has two discrete values only, a positive and a negative one. This mechanism could be an explanation for the small cosmological constant that drives the accelerated expansion of the universe.Comment: 14 pages; typos corrected; journal reference include