What is the Cause of Inertia?

The question of the cause of inertial reaction forces and the validity of Mach's principle are investigated. A recent claim that the cause of inertial reaction forces can be attributed to an interaction of the electrical charge of elementary particles with the hypothetical quantum mechanical zero-point fluctuation electromagnetic field is shown to be untenable. It fails to correspond to reality because the coupling of electric charge to the electromagnetic field cannot be made to mimic plausibly the universal coupling of gravity and inertia to the stress-energy-momentum (i.e., matter) tensor. The gravitational explanation of the origin of inertial forces is then briefly laid out, and various important features of it explored in the last half-century are addressed.     

What is the role of chaotic scattering in irreversible processes?

We study kinetic properties of simple mechanical models of deterministic diffusion like the scattering of a point particle in a billiard of Lorentz type and the multibaker area-preserving map. We show how dynamical chaos and, in particular, chaotic scattering are related to the transport property of diffusion. Moreover, we show that the Liouvillian dynamics of the multibaker map can be decomposed into the eigenmodes of diffusive relaxation associated with the Ruelle resonances of the Perron-Frobenius operator.     

What is the problem in the locality problem?

In connection with my previous paper Locality, Reflection, and Wave-Particle Duality [Found. Phys. 17, 813 (1987)], in this paper I distinguish explicitly, in the locality problem, between assertions, deductively established results, interpretations, intuitions, and facts. This clarifies the structure of the problem.     

What is the origin of chirality in the cholesteric phase of virus suspensions?

We report a study of the cholesteric phase in monodisperse suspensions of the rodlike virus fd sterically stabilized with the polymer polyethylene glycol (PEG). After coating the virus with neutral polymers, the phase diagram and nematic order parameter of the fd-PEG system then become independent of ionic strength. Surprisingly, the fd-PEG suspensions not only continue to exhibit a cholesteric phase, which means that the grafted polymer does not screen all chiral interactions between rods, but paradoxically the cholesteric pitch of this sterically stabilized fd-PEG system varies with ionic strength. Furthermore, we observe that the cholesteric pitch decreases with increasing viral contour length, in contrast to theories which predict the opposite trend. Different models of the origin of chirality in colloidal liquid crystals are discussed.     

Nanometer Calibration Particles: What is Available and What is Needed?

Information on available polystyrene calibration spheres is presented regarding the particle diameter, uncertainty in the size, and the width of the size distribution for particles in a size range between 20 and 100nm. The use of differential mobility analysis for measuring the single primary calibration standard in this size range, 100nm NIST Standard Reference Material®1963, is described along with the key factors in the uncertainty assessment. The issues of differences between international standards and traceability to the NIST Standard are presented. The lack of suitable polystyrene spheres in the 20–40nm size range will be discussed in terms of measurement uncertainty and width of the size distributions. Results on characterizing a new class of molecular particles known as dendrimers will be described and the possibilities of using these as size calibration standards for the size range from 3 to 15nm will be discussed.     

Physicists probing active media: What is the measure of success?

I present a critical review of this issue integrating the aims of continuous and agent-based theories and experiment.     

What is the ground-state structure of the thinnest Si nanowires?

Pristine silicon whiskers are compared through energy analysis by separating the surface, edge, and bulk contributions, and by energy computation for a variety of structures and diameters d. It is shown that for d<6 nm a polycrystalline wire of five-fold symmetry, rather than single-crystal types, represents the ground state. It remains stable in molecular dynamics tests up to approximately 1000 K. Its specific surface reconstruction also stands out in that it favors kinetics of whisker growth and thus appears potentially realizable.     

What is measured in the scanning gate microscopy of a quantum point contact?

The conductance change due to a local perturbation in a phase-coherent nanostructure is calculated. The general expressions to first and second order in the perturbation are applied to the scanning gate microscopy of a two-dimensional electron gas containing a quantum point contact. The first-order correction depends on two scattering states with electrons incoming from opposite leads and is suppressed on a conductance plateau; it is significant in the step regions. On the plateaus, the dominant second-order term likewise depends on scattering states incoming from both sides. It is always negative, exhibits fringes, and has a spatial decay consistent with experiments.     

What is the fate of a black hole embedded in an expanding universe?

Within a large class of exact solutions of the Einstein equations describing a black hole embedded in a Friedmann universe it is shown that, under certain assumptions, only those with comoving Hawking–Hayward quasi-local mass are generic, in the sense that they are late-time attractors.     

Thepp —p \bar p difference and the behaviour of phases at high energies

Predictions based on axiomatic field theory are obtained from the assumption that the difference between thepp and thep \(\bar p\) elastic scattering observed at the CERN ISR is caused by an “odderon-like” term in the scattering amplitude. A wide class of amplitudes violating the Pomeranchuk relation is considered. Contrary to common opinion, severe restrictions on the high-energy behaviour of the phase of the crossing-odd amplitude are shown to follow for the whole class. Less pronounced but still visible consequences follow for the phases of thepp andp \(\bar p\) amplitudes separately. We derive the corresponding high-energy bounds and correlations using the general frame of analyticity, crossing symmetry and unitarity. As a special case, the maximal odderon amplitude is discussed.     

Truncating expansions in bi-orthogonal bases: What is preserved?

In this work, we test the survival of topological information of an attractor under the truncations of a bi-orthogonal decomposition. We generate synthetic patterns which evolve dynamically in a desired way, and investigate the number of modes which should be kept in a truncation in order to be able to recover the information which we provided to the system. We show that a premature truncation of this kind of decomposition, based on existing energy criteria, leads to orbits that do not preserve the topological properties of the original signal.     

What is the recall rate of breast MRI when used for screening asymptomatic women at high risk?

Breast screening acceptability is dependent on sensitivity and recall rate. We aimed to establish the recall rate for MRI and mammography, separately and together, when screening a cohort of women at high genetic risk. Women aged 35-49 years in the MARIBS study form the cohort. We analysed the recall rate, the number of extra tests and their effectiveness. Wilcoxon Rank test was used to estimate the effect of age and logistic regression with robust variance the effect of mammographic density on recall rates. The first 726 screening studies took place in 415 women. Following 86 of these recall occurred, comprising 140 additional investigations. 28 of the cases were resolved without further MRI, and 18 women had more than 2 additional tests. Neither age nor mammographic density was associated with recall. MRI had a recall of rate of 10.19%, and mammography 4.00%. The two techniques largely recalled different cases and 10 cases only (11.62% of those recalled) were abnormal by both tests. The two together had a recall rate of 11.85%. Recall rates varied widely between centres of the study. Breast MRI in asymptomatic high-risk women age 35-49 years largely recalls different women from mammography. The combined figure of approximately 12% may be acceptable for screening and will be useful for planning similar studies.     

What is so mysterious about the electronic states of SCI?

The 15 lowest lying doublet electronic states of the molecule SCI have been investigated theoretically at a high level of correlation treatment (MRCI). For the ground state (X ²II), spectroscopic constants were obtained from a set of eight vibrational intervals. This result extends our knowledge about this state beyond the experimentally known data that presently were derived from only two bands. Spin-orbit constants, transition probabilities and radiative lifetimes complement its spectroscopic characterization. For the excited electronic states, a global view of the doublet states is presented that can help us understand the scarcity of experimental data on electronic transitions for this system and also the difficulty of assigning the only two transitions so far recorded. Most of these states are repulsive, and for the few high lying bound ones, of Rydberg character, avoided crossings restrict the number of accessible vibrational states. Crossing by repulsive states and predissociation is also a factor that can prevent further emissions. Two new bound excited states, ²δ and ²Σ, predicted in this study, are of direct relevance to an interpretation of the limited experimental data available on electronic transitions.     

What is the effective stress energy of particles created from the vacuum?

When spontaneous particle creation occurs in a strong gravitational field, it seems clear on physical grounds that the particle creation must back-react on the gravitation field. It is generally believed that in the semiclassical approximation this effect can be described by assigning an effective stress energy to the created particles, which acts as a source of the gravitational field via Einstein's equation. In this essay, I discuss an axiomatic approach for determining the renormalized value of this effective stress energy.This essay was awarded the third prize for 1977 by the Gravity Research Foundation.