Optical effects on the characteristics of a nanoscale SOI MOSFET with uniform doping profile

This paper deals with the effects of optical radiation on a uniformly doped three dimensional nano scale SOI MOSFET including quantum mechanical effects. The model takes into account all the major effects that determine the device characteristics in the illuminated condition. The device characteristics are obtained using self-consistent solution of 3D Poisson–Schrodinger equations using Leibman's iteration method. Calculations were carried out to examine the effect of illumination on the surface potential, current–voltage characteristics, drain to source resistance (R_ds), sub threshold characteristics and transconductance (g_m). The obtained characteristics are used to examine the performance of the device for its suitable use as a photodetector in opto-electronic integrated circuit (OEIC) receivers.     

Correlations,hierarchies and networks of the world’s automotive companies

We investigate, within the scope of econophysics, the correlations, hierarchies and networks of the world’s automotive companies over the 2003–2010 period by using the concept of a minimal spanning tree (MST) and hierarchical tree (HT). We derive a hierarchical organization and construct the MSTs and HTs for the 2003–2010 period and illustrate how the MSTs and their associated HTs developed over time. These periods are divided into two subperiods, such as 2003–2006 and 2007–2010, in order to test various time-windows and understand the temporal evolution of the correlation structure over time. We perform the bootstrap techniques to investigate a value of the statistical reliability to the links of the MSTs. We also use average linkage cluster analysis (ALCA) to observe the cluster structure more clearly in HTs. From the structural topologies of these trees, we identify different clusters of companies according to their geographical proximity and economic ties. Our results show that some companies are more important within the network, due to a tighter connection with other companies. We also find that these important companies play a predominant role in the world’s automotive industry.     

Organization of membrane-associated proteins in lipid bilayers

Lateral organization of proteins in biomembranes is vitally important to membrane functions such as signal transduction, endocytosis, and membrane trafficking. One of the major goals in current biomembrane science is to reveal the microscopic mechanism of membrane-associated protein organization in biomembranes. Here, we investigate the structural organization of membrane-associated proteins in lipid bilayers by combining self-consistent field theory with density functional theory. The present study can simultaneously take into account the entropy effect of lipids, depletion effect of membrane-associated proteins due to the presence of lipid headgroups as well as the effect of interfacial interaction. By varying the volume fraction of lipids, we examine various effects on protein organization, and reveal that a close-packed crystal structure appears at low lipid volume fractions due to interfacial energy and weak depletion effect, whereas a chain structure with branches occurs at high lipid volume fractions mainly due to strong depletion. The present results may provide some theoretical insight into further experiments on organization of membrane proteins.     

Power spectrum and Fisher–Shannon information plane analysis of tidal records

The time dynamics of tidal fluctuations measured in three sites in Bahia Blanca Estuary (central Argentina), Ingeniero White, Puerto Belgrano and Torre Mareografica, are analyzed. To investigate the time series of the tidal waves we used two different approaches: the power spectral density (PSD) and the Fisher–Shannon (FS) information plane. The PSD permitted: (i) the identification of diurnal, semi-diurnal and higher frequency cycles in all the three tidal signals, and (ii) the detection of two different dynamical regimes (scaling and white-noise), involving respectively timescales lower and higher than about 2–2.5 days. The FS method, which allows to gain insight into the complex structure of a time series, quantifying its degree of organization and order, was applied to the residual tidal series (after removing the main cycles) and permitted to identify a period of low organization in the tidal signal measured at Puerto Belgrano.     

Active Inference: Applicability to Different Types of Social Organization Explained through Reference to Industrial Engineering and Quality Management

Active inference is a physics of life process theory of perception, action and learning that is applicable to natural and artificial agents. In this paper, active inference theory is related to different types of practice in social organization. Here, the term social organization is used to clarify that this paper does not encompass organization in biological systems. Rather, the paper addresses active inference in social organization that utilizes industrial engineering, quality management, and artificial intelligence alongside human intelligence. Social organization referred to in this paper can be in private companies, public institutions, other for-profit or not-for-profit organizations, and any combination of them. The relevance of active inference theory is explained in terms of variational free energy, prediction errors, generative models, and Markov blankets. Active inference theory is most relevant to the social organization of work that is highly repetitive. By contrast, there are more challenges involved in applying active inference theory for social organization of less repetitive endeavors such as one-of-a-kind projects. These challenges need to be addressed in order for active inference to provide a unifying framework for different types of social organization employing human and artificial intelligence.     

2011 U.S. National School on Neutron and X-ray Scattering

The 13^th annual U.S. National School on Neutron and X-ray Scattering was held June 11-25, 2011, at both Oak Ridge and Argonne National Laboratories. This school brought together 65 early career graduate students from 56 different universities in the United States and provided them with a broad introduction to the properties and techniques available at the major large-scale neutron and synchrotron X-ray facilities. This school is focused primarily on techniques relevant to the physical sciences, but also touches on cross-disciplinary bio-related scattering measurements. During the school, the students received lectures by more than 30 researchers from academia, industry, and national laboratories and participated in a number of short demonstration experiments at Argonne's Advanced Photon Source (APS) and Oak Ridge's Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) and High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) facilities to get hands-on experience in using neutron and synchrotron sources.     

Temperature effects of Hamiltonian dark solitons on the stability of holographic solitons in a separate holographic–Hamiltonian soliton pair

We investigate theoretically the temperature effects on the evolution and stability of a separate holographic–Hamiltonian dark–dark or bright–dark soliton pair formed in an unbiased serial photorefractive crystal circuit. Our numerical results show that, for a stable dark–dark or bright–dark soliton pair originally formed in a crystal circuit at given temperatures, when the crystal in which formed a Hamiltonian dark soliton changes, the holographic dark or bright soliton supported by the other crystal tends to evolve into another stable soliton or experiences larger cycles of compression or breaks up into beam filaments or exhibit a common decaying process. The holographic dark soliton is more sensitive to the temperature change than the holographic bright one.     

Aspects concerning the acoustical performance of school buildings in Portugal

Acoustic measurements were performed in eight schools of different levels of education (from kindergarten to college) located in Viseu – Portugal. The acoustic evaluation was made in order to analyze the most common problems that may condition the acoustic environment inside school building.     

Dynamic studies of angle-ply laminates including flexure–torsion coupling using laser holography

Laser holographic interferometry has been applied to experimentally investigate the effect of flexure–torsion coupling stiffnesses on the vibrational characteristics. Test specimens are two special types of angle-ply laminates, which enables us to examine the influence by a flexure–torsion coupling term alone. The theoretical analysis by a finite element method is also conducted to support the experimental results. It is found that the effect of coupling stiffnesses on the natural frequencies is comparatively small. On the other hand, the mode shapes are strongly affected by the coupling terms depending on both the fiber orientation and the aspect ratio of a cantilevered laminate.     

高等师范学校物理专业课程结构改革研究

为解决高等师范院校物理专业学生的知识结构和实际能力与社会需要明显不相适应的矛盾，我们对四年制物理专业的课程结构进行了全面改革。改革后，毕业生不仅能胜任普通中学或职业中学（职业中专）的教学，而且有能力参与厂矿企业的技术工作，具有更广泛的适应性和更强的竞争力。     

Influence Cascades: Entropy-Based Characterization of Behavioral Influence Patterns in Social Media

Influence cascades are typically analyzed using a single metric approach, i.e., all influence is measured using one number. However, social influence is not monolithic; different users exercise different influences in different ways, and influence is correlated with the user and content-specific attributes. One such attribute could be whether the action is an initiation of a new post, a contribution to a post, or a sharing of an existing post. In this paper, we present a novel method for tracking these influence relationships over time, which we call influence cascades, and present a visualization technique to better understand these cascades. We investigate these influence patterns within and across online social media platforms using empirical data and comparing to a scale-free network as a null model. Our results show that characteristics of influence cascades and patterns of influence are, in fact, affected by the platform and the community of the users.     

The role of propagating stress waves on a geophysical scale: Evidence in terms of nonextensivity

Laboratory experiments have shown that, during a fracture, the breaking of a bond launches a propagating stress wave which may trigger the breaking of other bonds. We examine here the possibility that the same holds on a geophysical scale. Based on a nonextensive approach, we examine whether the transient stresses of seismic waves from a major earthquake (EQ) can trigger a considerably distant significant EQ. We use three different analytical approaches: (i) a recently introduced fragment-asperity interaction model for EQ dynamics based on nonextensive Tsallis statistics; (ii) the Hurst exponent; (iii) organization in terms of Fisher information. We find that the triggered seismicity displays higher nonextensivity, increased persistent behavior, and a higher level of organization. Using the same approaches, we further elucidate the link between the associated precursory kHz electromagnetic (EM) activity and the last stage of the impending EQ generation. We examine whether the statistics of regional seismicity could be a macroscopic reflection of physical processes in the EQ source, as would be expected by the fractal nature of fracture and faulting.     

Influence of gate engineering on the optical characteristics of a double gate FinFET

In this paper, the potential benefit of short channel triple material double gate (TM-DG) FinFET on the optical performance characteristics considering quantum mechanical effects has been theoretically examined and analyzed. The device characteristics are obtained from the self-consistent solution of 3D Poisson–Schrödinger equation using Leibmann's iteration method and provided the reasons for improved performance. The drain and transfer characteristics, electric field, transconductance and mobility of the device have been estimated and the results were compared with the device simulator results. The effect of different length ratios of three channel regions related to three different materials of TM-DG FinFET structure on the optical characteristics have also been discussed. The model is purely a physics based one and overcomes the major limitations of the existing 2D/3D analytical models by providing a more accurate result. The results obtained for dark and illuminated conditions are used to examine the performance of the device for its suitable use as a photodetector.     

Vortex lattice ordering in the flux flow state of Nb thin films

We measure current–voltage characteristics at high driving currents for different magnetic fields and temperatures in Nb thin films of rather strong pinning. In a definite range of the B–T phase diagram we find that a current induced transition occurs in the flux flow motion of the vortex lattice, namely a dynamic ordering (DO). Contrary to the case of weaker pinning materials, DO is observed only at low fields, due to the stronger intrinsic disorder that can deform plastically the moving vortex lattice even for small applied fields.     

Small-grid analysis of discrete model for evacuation from a hall

 In this paper, small-grid analysis of discrete model is described, and simulation that some walkers leave a hall is carried out to check the effects of different desired walk velocities with the same walk time at a time step, and different numbers of small grid at a time step with the same desired walk velocity, on the evacuation time. The simulation results show that small-grid analysis have reproduced some typical phenomena of evacuation, including jam, block and faster-is-slower, etc. as good as the continuum model, i.e., the social force model, but with high simulation efficiency. In addition, the power-law distribution of evacuation flow duration and block duration with the different desired walk velocities is found. The block duration with different numbers of small grid at a time step also takes on power-law characteristics, only their intercepts in log–log coordinates are different.     

Numerical simulation of a solitonic gas in KdV and KdV–BBM equations

The collective behaviour of soliton ensembles (i.e. the solitonic gas) is studied using the methods of the direct numerical simulation. Traditionally this problem was addressed in the context of integrable models such as the celebrated KdV equation. We extend this analysis to non-integrable KdV–BBM type models. Some high resolution numerical results are presented in both integrable and nonintegrable cases. Moreover, the free surface elevation probability distribution is shown to be quasi-stationary. Finally, we employ the asymptotic methods along with the Monte Carlo simulations in order to study quantitatively the dependence of some important statistical characteristics (such as the kurtosis and skewness) on the Stokes–Ursell number (which measures the relative importance of nonlinear effects compared to the dispersion) and also on the magnitude of the BBM term.     

Users structure and behavior on an online social network during a political protest

Over the past years, new technologies and specially online social networks have penetrated into the world’s population at an accelerated pace. In this paper we analyze collected data from the web application Twitter, in order to describe the structure and dynamics of the emergent social networks, based on complexity science. We focused on a Venezuelan protest that took place exclusively by Twitter during December, 2010. We found a community structure with highly connected hubs and three different kinds of user behavior that determine the information flow dynamics. We noticed that even though online social networks appear to be a pure social environment, traditional media still holds loads of influence inside the network.     

From h to p efficiently: Implementing finite and spectral/hp element methods to achieve optimal performance for low- and high-order discretisations

The spectral/hp element method can be considered as bridging the gap between the – traditionally low-order – finite element method on one side and spectral methods on the other side. Consequently, a major challenge which arises in implementing the spectral/hp element methods is to design algorithms that perform efficiently for both low- and high-order spectral/hp discretisations, as well as discretisations in the intermediate regime. In this paper, we explain how the judicious use of different implementation strategies can be employed to achieve high efficiency across a wide range of polynomial orders. Furthermore, based upon this efficient implementation, we analyse which spectral/hp discretisation (which specific combination of mesh-size h and polynomial order P) minimises the computational cost to solve an elliptic problem up to a predefined level of accuracy. We investigate this question for a set of both smooth and non-smooth problems.