Gott time machines in anti-de Sitter space

In 1991 Gott presented a solution of Einstein's field equations in 2+1 dimensions with =0 that contained closed timelike curves (ctc's). This solution was remarkable because at first it did not seem to be unphysical in any other respect. Later, however, it was shown that Gott's solution is tachyonic in a certain sense. Here the case <0 is discussed. We show that it is also possible to constructctc's in this case, in a way analogous to that used by Gott. We also show a special case of this construction to be tachyonic. <0 means that we are dealing with anti-de Sitter space, and since the CTC-construction necessitates some understanding of its structure, a few pages are devoted to this subject.     

Lifetime prediction from only present age: fact or fiction?

We focus on the widely used method of J.R. Gott III for predicting future lifetime using only present age as confusion still reigns about whether it is justified. We provide a focused and precise examination of the method so that its validity or otherwise may be established unambiguously.     

Unwrapping Closed Timelike Curves

Closed timelike curves (CTCs) appear in many solutions of the Einstein equation, even with reasonable matter sources. These solutions appear to violate causality and so are considered problematic. Since CTCs reflect the global properties of a spacetime, one can attempt to extend a local CTC-free patch of such a spacetime in a way that does not give rise to CTCs. One such procedure is informally known as unwrapping. However, changes in global identifications tend to lead to local effects, and unwrapping is no exception, as it introduces a special kind of singularity, called quasi-regular. This “unwrapping” singularity is similar to the string singularities. We define an unwrapping of a (locally) axisymmetric spacetime as the universal cover of the spacetime after one or more of the local axes of symmetry is removed. We give two examples of unwrapping of essentially 2+1 dimensional spacetimes with CTCs, the Gott spacetime and the Gödel spacetime. We show that the unwrapped Gott spacetime, while singular, is at least devoid of CTCs. In contrast, the unwrapped Gödel spacetime still contains CTCs through every point. A “multiple unwrapping” procedure is devised to remove the remaining circular CTCs. We conclude that, based on the given examples, CTCs appearing in the solutions of the Einstein equation are not simply a mathematical artifact of coordinate identifications. Alternative extensions of spacetimes with CTCs tend to lead to other pathologies, such as naked quasi-regular singularities.     

Gott time machines, BTZ black hole formation, and choptuik scaling

We study the formation of Banados-Teitelboim-Zanelli black holes by the collision of point particles. It is shown that the Gott time machine, originally constructed for the case of vanishing cosmological constant, provides a precise mechanism for black hole formation. As a result, one obtains an exact analytic understanding of the Choptuik scaling.     

Closed Timelike Curves and Time Travel: Dispelling the Myth

G?del’s contention that closed timelike curves (CTC’s) are a necessary consequence of the Einstein equations for his metric is challenged. It is seen that the imposition of periodicity in a timelike coordinate is the actual source of CTC’s rather than the physics of general relativity. This conclusion is supported by the creation of G?del-like CTC’s in flat space by the correct choice of coordinate system and identifications. Thus, the indications are that the notion of a time machine remains exclusively an aspect of science fiction fantasy. The element of the identification of spacetime points is also seen to be the essential factor in the modern creation of CTC’s in the Gott model of moving cosmic strings.     

Modal prediction of atmospheric turbulence wavefront for open-loop liquid-crystal adaptive optics system with recursive least-squares algorithm

For an open-loop liquid-crystal adaptive optics system, its performance is mainly limited by the time delay. We propose a new modal recursive least-squares (RLS) predictive algorithm to overcome this problem. The RLS algorithm has a simple architecture, low computational complexity and a high converging speed. The impact of the number of the foreword prediction frame N and the number of the predictor order M of the RLS predictor is analyzed in detail. The results show that the best foreword prediction frame N must be equal to the system loop delay frame SLDF. The appropriate predictor order M of the RLS predictor is equal to 2 or 3 when there is no measurement noise and it depends on noise ratio N_R when the measurement error cannot be neglected. We present numerical simulations to show the significant improvements brought by the RLS predictor.     

含噪混沌时间序列预测误差分析

对于含噪混沌时间序列预测问题, 传统方法存在较大的经验性, 对预测误差的构成分析不足, 因而忽略了混沌动态重建与预测模型建立之间的差异性. 本文将实际预测误差分解为预测器偏差和输入扰动误差, 并对整体最小二乘和正则化两种全局预测方法进行分析比较, 进而说明整体最小二乘适用于混沌动态的重建, 对预测器偏差影响较大, 而正则化方法能够改善预测器敏感性, 对输入扰动误差影响较大. 通过两个仿真实例, 展示了混沌动态重建与预测模型建立之间的差异, 在对比最小二乘和正则化方法的同时验证了实际预测误差受预测器偏差和输入扰动误差共同作用. 并指出, 在实际操作时应在二者间寻求平衡, 以便使模型预测精度达到最优. 关键词： 混沌时间序列预测 噪声 整体最小二乘 正则化     

手机短信息传播过程和短信息寿命研究

比较了短信息在无标度网络、小世界网络和实际的短信息网络三种网络中的传播过程,寻找影响短信息传播的因素.研究发现,网络拓扑结构和手机用户的转发短信行为均会影响短信息传播过程.在无标度网络中短信息传播速率快于小世界网络和实际的短信息网络,而无标度网络的短信息寿命较小世界网络和实际的短信息网络短;网络中手机用户的转发短信息行为明显影响短信息的传播过程.同时还发现短信息寿命与网络直径有关. 关键词： 复杂网络 短信息 信息传播 人类行为     

Seed cryopreservation and longevity of two Salix hybrids

The effects of desiccation and storage temperature on the viability and longevity of willow seeds was investigated using two hybrids, Salix rehderiana x (Salix x capreola) [cross 458] and Salix x sericans x Salix viminalis [cross 512]. Freshly harvested seed of both crosses survived silica gel drying down to c. 3 to 5% moisture content. Hybrid 458 seed stored in liquid nitrogen (-196C) for 3 d retained viability when equilibrated to < or = 45% RH (pre-storage), showed slightly reduced survival at 65% RH and exhibited no survival at > or =82% RH. The level of survival after 68 d for seeds pre-equilibrated to either c. 10 or 65% (5 or 10% moisture) and stored at four temperatures was -196C > -20C > 2C > 16C. At all temperatures, drier seed stored better than wetter seed. For hybrid 512, seed longevity at 20C > 40C > 60C, and a 10% fall in pre-storage seed RH resulted in a c. 2-fold increase in longevity at each storage temperature. The response of hybrid willow seeds to desiccation and cooling raises possibilities for the long-term seed conservation of Salix species by cryopreservation.     

Mechanisms of elementary events in the kinetics of electrical breakdown of polymer and ceramic dielectrics

The kinetics of electrical breakdown of thin (15–70 μm) layers of polymers and ceramics in a constant-sign field at 77–480 K has been investigated. The temperature dependences of the longevity (breakdown waiting time) of both dielectrics have been found to be similar to each other. At elevated temperatures, the longevity of the dielectrics varies exponentially with increasing temperature, and at reduced temperatures, it is temperature-independent (there is an athermal plateau). The mechanisms of elementary events controlling the process of preparation of the dielectrics for breakdown at elevated and reduced temperatures are the thermal-fluctuation over-barrier electron transition from trap to trap and the tunneling (under-barrier) transition, respectively. The hopping electron transport in the field direction gives rise to critical space charges causing breakdown of the dielectrics. The transition barrier heights (trap depths) have been determined. The low-temperature longevities of the polymer and the ceramic have been found to be similar, whereas the transition barrier for the ceramic is much higher than that for the polymer and the applied field in the former case is significantly (by a factor of tens) lower than that in the latter case. Electron traps in the polymer are adequately described by the Coulomb center model, whereas this is not the case for the ceramic.     

Physical nature of longevity of light actinides in dynamic failure phenomenon

It is shown in this work that the physical nature of the longevity of light actinides under extreme conditions in a range of nonequilibrium states of t ~ 10^–6–10^–10 s is determined by the time needed for the formation of a critical concentration of a cascade of failure centers, which changes connectivity of the body. These centers form a percolation cluster. The longevity is composed of waiting time t _w for the appearance of failure centers and clusterization time t _c of cascade of failure centers, when connectivity in the system of failure centers and the percolation cluster arise. A unique mechanism of the dynamic failure process, a unique order parameter, and an equal dimensionality of the space in which the process occurs determine the physical nature of the longevity of metals, including fissionable materials.     

核电池材料及核电池的应用

核电池具有体积小、寿命长、不受外界环境影响等优点,因而在航空航天、深海、极地、心脏起搏器、微型电机等领域得到广泛地应用。核电池的发展与所用材料的发展互相促进。从同位素放射源、电能转换、密封保护的角度介绍了核电池所用材料的发展和最新研究进展,同时也介绍了核电池现有和潜在的应用领域。Nuclear battery has lots of advantages such as small volume, longevity, environal stability and so on, therefore, it was widely used in aerospace, deep-sea , polar region, heart pacemaker, micro-electromotor and other fields etc. The application of nuclear battery and the development of its materials promote each other. In this paper the development and the latest research progress of nuclear battery materials has been introduced from the view of radioisotope, electric energy conversion and encapsulation. And the current and potential applications of the nuclear battery are also summarized.     

Observation of well-ordered metastable vortex lattice phases in superconducting MgB2 using small-angle neutron scattering

The vortex lattice (VL) symmetry and orientation in clean type-II superconductors depends sensitively on the host material anisotropy, vortex density and temperature, frequently leading to rich phase diagrams. Typically, a well-ordered VL is taken to imply a ground-state configuration for the vortex-vortex interaction. Using neutron scattering we studied the VL in MgB(2) for a number of field-temperature histories, discovering an unprecedented degree of metastability in connection with a known, second-order rotation transition. This allows, for the first time, structural studies of a well-ordered, nonequilibrium VL. While the mechanism responsible for the longevity of the metastable states is not resolved, we speculate it is due to a jamming of VL domains, preventing a rotation to the ground-state orientation.     

On the mean radiative efficiency of accreting massive black holes in AGNs and QSOs

Radiative efficiency is an important physical parameter that describes the fraction of accretion material converted to radiative energy for accretion onto massive black holes (MBHs). With the simplest So?tan argument, the radiative efficiency of MBHs can be estimated by matching the mass density of MBHs in the local universe to the accreted mass density by MBHs during AGN/QSO phases. In this paper, we estimate the local MBH mass density through a combination of various determinations of the correlations between the masses of MBHs and the properties of MBH host galaxies, with the distribution functions of those galaxy properties. We also estimate the total energy density radiated by AGNs and QSOs by using various AGN/QSO X-ray luminosity functions in the literature. We then obtain several hundred estimates of the mean radiative efficiency of AGNs/QSOs. Under the assumption that those estimates are independent of each other and free of systematic effects, we apply the median statistics as described by Gott et al. and find the mean radiative efficiency of AGNs/QSOs is ∈= 0.105_(0.008)~(+0.006), which is consistent with the canonical value ~0.1. Considering that about 20% Compton-thick objects may be missed from current available X-ray surveys,the true mean radiative efficiency may be actually ~0.12.     

Sleep,aging, and lifespan in <Emphasis Type="Italic">Drosophila</Emphasis>

Background  

Epidemiological studies in humans suggest that a decrease in daily sleep duration is associated with reduced lifespan, but this issue remains controversial. Other studies in humans also show that both sleep quantity and sleep quality decrease with age. Drosophila melanogaster is a useful model to study aging and sleep, and inheriting mutations affecting the potassium current Shaker results in flies that sleep less and have a shorter lifespan. However, whether the link between short sleep and reduced longevity exists also in wild-type flies is unknown. Similarly, it is unknown whether such a link depends on sleep amount per se, rather than on other factors such as waking activity. Also, sleep quality has been shown to decrease in old flies, but it remains unclear whether aging-related sleep fragmentation is a generalized phenomenon.     

Prediction of mucin-type <Emphasis Type="Italic">O</Emphasis>-glycosylation sites by a two-staged strategy

The mucin-type O-glycosylation of a protein is an important type of protein post-translational modification. This process is mediated by a family of UDP-GalNAc:polypeptide N-acetylgalactosaminyltransferases which transfer the N-acetylgalactosamine (GalNAc) to the serine or threonine residues with unknown specificity. In order to determine the glycosylation sites of a given protein, we present a two-staged prediction method here, which first determines whether a protein is a glycoprotein, and then determines the glycosylation sites of a protein that has been predicted to be glycosylated in the first stage. In the first stage, a protein is encoded by the protein families in PFAM, which is a collective annotated database of classified protein families; then it is predicted by a predictor trained by the training set. In the second stage, nonapeptides of the predicted mucin-type glycoproteins, with serine or threonine residues at their fifth sites, are represented by indices in AAIndex. Then, it is predicted whether the nonapeptides are attached by GalNAc by a predictor, which is constructed with features selected by feature selection methods [Maximum Relevance Minimum Redundancy (mRMR) method and Incremental Feature Selection method]. The prediction accuracy of the first stage is 94.9% validated by Leave-One-Out validation method; the prediction accuracy of the second stage is 99.4%. These results show that this method is valuable to study the mucin-type O-glycosylation. The analysis of the features used to construct the predictor of the second stage confirms the previously obtained results from other groups. The residues at position −1 and +3 have great impact on the prediction. Among other amino acid indices, the indices about alpha and turn propensities and indices about hydrophobicity of the residues in nonapeptide also influence the recognition of the GalNAc transferases. A web server is available at .     

Breathers and thermal relaxation in Fermi-Pasta-Ulam arrays

Breather stability and longevity in thermally relaxing nonlinear arrays depend sensitively on their interactions with other excitations. We review numerical results for the relaxation of breathers in Fermi-Pasta-Ulam arrays, with a specific focus on the different relaxation channels and their dependence on the interparticle interactions, dimensionality, initial condition, and system parameters.     

A- and C-weighted sound levels as predictors of the annoyance caused by shooting sounds,for various façade attenuation types

In a previous study on the annoyance caused by a great variety of shooting sounds [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 109, 244-253 (2001)], it was shown that the annoyance, as rated indoors with the windows closed, could be adequately predicted from the outdoor A-weighted and C-weighted sound-exposure levels [ASEL (L(AE)) and CSEL (L(CE))] of the impulse sounds. The explained variance in the mean ratings by (outdoor) ASEL was significantly increased by adding the product (L(CE) - L(AE))(L(AE)) as a second variable. In the present study it was investigated to which extent the additional contribution of the second predictor is also relevant for fa?ade attenuation types with lower and higher degrees of sound isolation than applied previously. Twenty subjects rated the indoor annoyance caused by 11 different impulse types produced by firearms ranging in caliber from 7.62 to 155 mm, at various levels and for five fa?ade attenuation conditions. The effect of fa?ade attenuation on the ratings was large and consistent. In all conditions, an optimal prediction of the annoyance was obtained with outdoor ASEL as the first, and (L(CE) - L(AE))(L(AE)) as the second predictor. The benefit of the second predictor, expressed as the increase in the explained variance, ranged from 2.5 to 55 percent points, and strongly increased with the degree of fa?ade attenuation. It was concluded that for the determination of the rating sound level, the acoustic parameters ASEL and CSEL are very powerful. In addition, the results showed that for the whole set of impulses included, the annoyance could also be predicted very well by the weighted sum of indoor ASEL and the product (L(CE) - L(AE))(L(AE)).     

The young adult patient

The purpose of this paper is to 1) describe the unique issues of voice patients, ages 21–55; 2) outline the knowledge and clinical skills that speech language pathologists should possess to deal with those issues; and 3) provide suggestions for promoting vocal longevity.