Scaling laws in the dynamics of crime growth rate

The increasing number of crimes in areas with large concentrations of people have made cities one of the main sources of violence. Understanding characteristics of how crime rate expands and its relations with the cities size goes beyond an academic question, being a central issue for contemporary society. Here, we characterize and analyze quantitative aspects of murders in the period from 1980 to 2009 in Brazilian cities. We find that the distribution of the annual, biannual and triannual logarithmic homicide growth rates exhibit the same functional form for distinct scales, that is, a scale invariant behavior. We also identify asymptotic power-law decay relations between the standard deviations of these three growth rates and the initial size. Further, we discuss similarities with complex organizations.     

Scaling laws of single polymer dynamics near attractive surfaces

We present a molecular dynamics study of a generic model for single polymer diffusion on surfaces, which have variable atomic-scale corrugation but no artificial, impenetrable obstacles. The diffusion coefficient D scales as D is proportional to (-3/2) with the degree of polymerization N for strongly adsorbed, linear polymers on solid substrates in good solvents. Weaker scaling, i.e., D is proportional to (-1), is found if (i) the substrate is a fluid, e.g., a membrane, (ii) the polymer is a ring polymer, and (iii) the polymer is commensurate with the substrate. In poor solvents, diffusion on solids slows exponentially fast with N. Reptation is not observed in any of the simulations presented here.     

Scaling laws and the modern city

The inter-relations and the complexity of modern urban spaces are difficult to analyse in a way that allows improving living conditions or help to ascertain optimal decisions for saving energy or improving sustainability. Carefully designed decisions and guidelines might produce unexpected results because of particularities, or complex sets of reactions from residents or economic counterparts. Complexity tends to increase with size, such as when, for instance, services tend to concentrate in large agglomerations, and transportation needs take on critical importance. Complex systems such as living organisms are known to follow approximate relationships as scaling laws between the variables that describe them. Some of these kinds of relationships are tested in relation to modern developed urban spaces, in which it is possible to find a reasonable continuity with the types of scales seen in living organisms, and some preliminary conclusions are drawn.     

Scaling laws and higher-order effects in Coulomb excitation of neutron halo nuclei

Essential properties of halo nuclei can be described in terms of a few low-energy constants. For neutron halo nuclei, analytical results can be found for wave functions and electromagnetic transition matrix elements in simple but well-adapted models. These wave functions can be used to study nuclear reactions; an especially simple and instructive example is Coulomb excitation. A systematic expansion in terms of small parameters can be given. We present scaling laws for excitation amplitudes and cross-sections. The results can be used to analyze experiments like ¹¹Be Coulomb excitation. They also serve as benchmark tests for more involved reaction theories.     

Apparent finite-size effects in the dynamics of supercooled liquids

Molecular dynamics simulations are performed for a supercooled simple liquid with changing the system size from N=108 to 10(4) to examine possible finite-size effects. Although almost no systematic deviation is detected in the static pair correlation functions, it is demonstrated that the structural alpha relaxation in a small system becomes considerably slower than that in larger systems for temperatures below T(c) at which the size of the cooperative particle motions becomes comparable to the unit cell length of the small system. The discrepancy increases with decreasing temperature.     

Scaling in ecosystems and the linkage of macroecological laws

Scaling provides an elegant framework for understanding power-law behavior and deducing relationships between critical exponents. We demonstrate that scaling theory can be generalized to develop a framework for the analysis of diverse empirical macroecological relationships traditionally treated as independent. Our mathematical arguments predict links between the species-area relationship, the relative species abundance and community size spectra in excellent accord with empirical data.     

Scaling laws of turbulent dynamos

We consider magnetic fields generated by homogeneous isotropic and parity invariant turbulent flows. We show that simple scaling laws for the dynamo threshold, magnetic energy and Ohmic dissipation can be obtained depending on the value of the magnetic Prandtl number. To cite this article: S. Fauve, F. Pétrélis, C. R. Physique 8 (2007).     

Scaling laws of aquatic locomotion

In recent years studies of aquatic locomotion have provided some remarkable insights into the many features of fish swimming performances. This paper derives a scaling relation of aquatic locomotion CD(Re)~2 =(Sw)~2 and its corresponding log law and power law. For power scaling law,(Sw)~2 = β_nRe~((2-1)/n), which is valid within the full spectrum of the Reynolds number Re=UL/v from low up to high, can simply be expressed as the power law of the Reynolds number Re and the swimming number Sw=ωAL/v as Re ∝ (Sw)~σ,with σ=2 for creeping flows,σ=4/3 for laminar flows, σ=10/9 and σ=14/13 for turbulent flows. For log law this paper has derived the scaling law as Sw ∝ Re=(lnRe+1.287), which is even valid for a much wider range of the Reynolds number Re. Both power and log scaling relationships link the locomotory input variables that describe the swimmer's gait A;ω via the swimming number Sw to the locomotory output velocity U via the longitudinal Reynolds number Re, and reveal the secret input-output relationship of aquatic locomotion at different scales of the Reynolds number.     

Scaling laws in high-energy electron-nuclear scattering

The approximate scaling behavior suggested by recent measurements of electron scattering form factors and inelastic structure functions of few-body nuclei (mass 2, 3, 4) is discussed in a relativistic impulse approximation model. The model is a straightforward extension incorporating spin of a nucleon parton model introduced in recent works. We present results for electric and magnetic form factors as well as inelastic structure functions near threshold. The important corrections to scaling which are present in the preasymptotic regions are found to be well accounted for by the type of binding effects included in the phenomenologically constructed infinite-momentum frame nuclear wave functions. While predicted form factors are very sensitive to the parameters in the wave functions it does not appear possible to associate unambiguous dynamical meaning to these parameters. We find that spin effects bring significant and useful corrections.     

Scaling laws in aeolian sand transport

We report on wind tunnel measurements on saltating particles in a turbulent boundary layer and provide evidence that over an erodible bed the particle velocity in the saltation layer and the saltation length are almost invariant with the wind strength, whereas over a nonerodible bed these quantities vary significantly with the air friction speed. It results that the particle transport rate over an erodible bed does not exhibit a cubic dependence with the air friction speed, as predicted by Bagnold, but a quadratic one. This contrasts with saltation over a nonerodible bed where the cubic Bagnold scaling holds. Our findings emphasize the crucial role of the boundary conditions at the bed and may have important practical consequences for aeolian sand transport in a natural environment.     

Scaling laws in the vortex lattice model of turbulence

The lattice vortex model of the intertial range in turbulence theory is reviewed; the model consists of an array of vortex tubes whose axes coincide with the bonds on a regular lattice, subjected to random stretching and successive scaling, and constrained by conservation laws for energy, specific volume, circulation, helicity, and an energy/vorticity relation. The scaling laws for vorticity are examined in detail, a Hausdorff dimension for the active portion of the vortex array is calculated, the origin of intermittency is exhibited, and it is pointed out that the Kolmogorov — 5/3 power law already accounts for intermittency effects.Partially supported by the Office of Energy Research, U.S. Department of Energy, under contract DE-AC03-76SF0098, and in part by the Office of Naval Research under contract N00014-76-C-0316     

Scaling laws for plasma armatures in railguns

A methodology for deriving the electrical and thermodynamic properties of plasma armatures in railgun launchers is presented. The methodology is based on the solution to the one-dimensional, quasi-steady equations for the plasma armature. It is shown that the thermodynamic and transport properties for typical armature materials can be adequately represented by power-law curve fits in the temperature and pressure regimes of interest. To illustrate the methodology, detailed computations for both copper and aluminum armatures are performed. Some discussion is also presented for hydrogen armatures. It is shown that the armature properties predicted by the scaling laws agree very well with those derived from more detailed numerical solutions to the governing differential equations. It is shown that, for both aluminum and copper armatures, the electrical conductivity is a strong function of the current per unit rail height and a weak function of launcher geometry. This dependence is shown to be in reasonable agreement with experimental data compiled over a wide range of gun bore dimensions and operating conditions     

Scaling laws for the decay of multiqubit entanglement

We investigate the decay of entanglement of generalized N-particle Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states interacting with independent reservoirs. Scaling laws for the decay of entanglement and for its finite-time extinction (sudden death) are derived for different types of reservoirs. The latter is found to increase with N. However, entanglement becomes arbitrarily small, and therefore useless as a resource, much before it completely disappears, around a time which is inversely proportional to the number of particles. We also show that the decay of multiparticle GHZ states can generate bound entangled states.     

Scaling laws in evolution of large computer programs

The approach is based on a paradigm of self-organized criticality proposed for experimental investigation and theoretical modeling of software evolution. The dynamics of modifications is studied for three free, open source programs Mozilla, Free-BSD, and Emacs using the data from version control systems. Scaling laws typical for the self-organization criticality are found. The model of software evolution presenting the natural selection principle is proposed. The results of numerical and analytical investigation of the model are presented. They are in good agreement with the data collected for the real-world software. The text was submitted by the authors in English.