Collective Strategy Condensation: When Envy Splits Societies

Human societies are characterized by three constituent features, besides others. (A) Options, as for jobs and societal positions, differ with respect to their associated monetary and non-monetary payoffs. (B) Competition leads to reduced payoffs when individuals compete for the same option as others. (C) People care about how they are doing relatively to others. The latter trait—the propensity to compare one’s own success with that of others—expresses itself as envy. It is shown that the combination of (A)–(C) leads to spontaneous class stratification. Societies of agents split endogenously into two social classes, an upper and a lower class, when envy becomes relevant. A comprehensive analysis of the Nash equilibria characterizing a basic reference game is presented. Class separation is due to the condensation of the strategies of lower-class agents, which play an identical mixed strategy. Upper-class agents do not condense, following individualist pure strategies. The model and results are size-consistent, holding for arbitrary large numbers of agents and options. Analytic results are confirmed by extensive numerical simulations. An analogy to interacting confined classical particles is discussed.     

Characterization of low molecular weight hydrocarbon oligomers by laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry using a solvent-free sample preparation method.

A new solvent-free sample preparation method using silver trifluoroacetate (AgTFA) was developed for the analysis of low molecular weight paraffins and microcrystalline waxes by laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LDI-TOFMS). Experiments show that spectral quality can be enhanced by dispersing AgTFA directly in liquid paraffins without the use of additional solvents. This preparation mixture is applied directly to the MALDI probe. Solid waxes could be examined by melting prior to analysis. The method also provides sufficiently reproducible spectra that peak area ratios between mono- and bicyclic alkane peaks indicated variations in the cycloalkane content of paraffin samples. Dehydrogenation of hydrocarbons observed during the desorption/ionization process was studied by analysis of alkane standards.     

Sequestering of Eu(III) by a GAAA RNA tetraloop

The site-specific binding of metal ions maintains an important role in the structure, thermal stability, and function of folded RNA structures. RNA tetraloops of the "GNRA" family (where N = any base and R = any purine), which owe their unusual stability to base stacking and an extensive hydrogen bonding network, have been observed to bind metal ions having different chemical and geometric properties. We have used laser-induced lanthanide luminescence and isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) to examine the metal-binding properties of an RNA stem loop of the GNRA family. Previous research has shown that a single Eu(III) ion binds the stem loop fragment in a highly dehydrated site with a K(d) of approximately 12 microM. Curve-fitting analysis of the broad luminescence excitation spectrum of Eu(III) upon complexation with the tetraloop fragment indicates the possibility of two microenvironments that do not differ in hydration number. Binding of Eu(III) to the loop was accompanied by positive enthalpic changes, consistent with energetic cost of removal of water molecules and suggesting that the binding is entropically driven. By comparison, binding of Mg(II) or Mn(II) to the RNA loop, or Eu(III) to the DNA analogue of the loop, was associated with exothermic changes, consistent with predominantly outer-sphere coordination. These results suggest specific binding, most probably involving ligands on the 5' side of the loop.     

Die Brechung von Wasser-in-Erdöl-Emulsionen mit dem Demulgator Dispersal BO im Zusammenhange mit der Veränderung der Wechselwirkungskräfte zwischen den Wassertröpfchen

Zusammenfassung Es wurde in Modellversuchen die Koaleszenz von zwei Wassertr?pfchen in Erd?l mit und ohne Zusatz des Demulgators untersucht. Gleichzeitig wurde die Geschwindigkeit der Ann?herung der Tr?pfchen registrierend gemessen und aus den Ergebnissen die Wechsel-wirkungskr?fte berechnet. Es konnte gezeigt werden, da? die Absto?ungskr?fte zwischen den Teilchen mit steigender Menge des Demulgators abnehmen, bis schlie?lich Anziehungskr?ftevan der Waalsscher Natur überwiegen, so da? eine Zerst?rung der Emulsion eintritt. Die gro?e Best?ndigkeit der Wasser-Erd?lemulsionen ist auf die mechanische Festigkeit der Adsorptionsschichten an der Phasengrenze zurückzuführen.     

Back-Transformation into Physical Configuration Space after Model Order Reduction onto a General Subspace

Model order reduction (MOR) techniques that project onto a general subspace are common practice. In Elastic Multi-Body-Dynamics (EMBD) distinct interface coordinates are required for the interconnection of the elastic structure and the multi-body system. For that reason, a physical interpretation of the coordinates is mandatory, which is not the case for reduced order models in a general subspace. To make alternative MOR techniques accessible for EMBD, a back-projection approach was introduced by [1]. Therein, the system is projected back onto the physical configuration space, which requires the inversion of the master partition of the projection matrix. But the procedure lacks of robustness and generality. A novel approach is introduced by generating additional master coordinates using sensor placement methods, e.g. the Effective-Independence-algorithm (EfI) [2]. By using a rank criterion for the automatic selection of additional coordinates, the improved back-transformation performs properly and without damaging the reduced order model at a fairly small computational overhead, which is demonstrated at the example of a gear box housing. (© 2015 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Anomalous thermal conductivity of frustrated heisenberg spin chains and ladders

We study the thermal transport properties of several quantum-spin chains and ladders. We find indications for a diverging thermal conductivity at finite temperatures for the models examined. The temperature at which the nondiverging prefactor kappa((th))(T) peaks is, in general, substantially lower than the temperature at which the corresponding specific heat c(V)(T) is maximal. We show that this result of the microscopic approach leads to a substantial reduction for estimates of the magnetic mean-free path lambda extracted by analyzing recent experiments, as compared to similar analyses by phenomenological theories.     

Interaction-induced collapse of a section of the Fermi sea in the zigzag Hubbard ladder

Using the next-nearest-neighbor (zigzag) Hubbard chain as a one-dimensional model, we investigate the influence of interactions on the position of the Fermi wave vectors with the density-matrix renormalization-group technique. For suitable choices of the hopping parameters we observe that electron-electron correlations induce very different renormalizations for the two different Fermi wave vectors, which ultimately lead to a complete destruction of one section of the Fermi sea in a quantum critical point.