No Arabic abstract
Temperature, the central concept of thermal physics, is one of the most frequently employed physical quantities in common practice. Even though the operative methods of the temperature measurement are described in detail in various practical instructions and textbooks, the rigorous treatment of this concept is almost lacking in the current literature. As a result, the answer to a simple question of what the temperature is is by no means trivial and unambiguous. There is especially an appreciable gap between the temperature as introduced in the frame of statistical theory and the only experimentally observable quantity related to this concept, phenomenological temperature. Just the logical and epistemological analysis of the present concept of phenomenological temperature is the kernel of the contribution.
String theory has transformed our understanding of geometry, topology and spacetime. Thus, for this special issue of Foundations of Physics commemorating Forty Years of String Theory, it seems appropriate to step back and ask what we do not understand. As I will discuss, time remains the least understood concept in physical theory. While we have made significant progress in understanding space, our understanding of time has not progressed much beyond the level of a century ago when Einstein introduced the idea of space-time as a combined entity. Thus, I will raise a series of open questions about time, and will review some of the progress that has been made as a roadmap for the future.
In the present paper, we investigate the cosmographic problem using the bias-variance trade-off. We find that both the z-redshift and the $y=z/(1+z)$-redshift can present a small bias estimation. It means that the cosmography can describe the supernova data more accurately. Minimizing risk, it suggests that cosmography up to the second order is the best approximation. Forecasting the constraint from future measurements, we find that future supernova and redshift drift can significantly improve the constraint, thus having the potential to solve the cosmographic problem. We also exploit the values of cosmography on the deceleration parameter and equation of state of dark energy $w(z)$. We find that supernova cosmography cannot give stable estimations on them. However, much useful information was obtained, such as that the cosmography favors a complicated dark energy with varying $w(z)$, and the derivative $dw/dz<0$ for low redshift. The cosmography is helpful to model the dark energy.
Polarized foregrounds are going to be a serious challenge for detecting CMB cosmological B-modes. Both diffuse Galactic emission and extragalactic sources contribute significantly to the power spectrum on large angular scales. At low frequencies, Galactic synchrotron emission will dominate with fractional polarization $sim 20-40%$ at high latitudes while radio sources can contribute significantly even on large ($sim 1^{circ}$) angular scales. Nevertheless, simulations suggest that a detection at the level of $r=0.001$ might be achievable if the foregrounds are not too complex.
The DNA molecule, apart from carrying the genetic information, plays a crucial role in a variety of biological processes and find applications in drug design, nanotechnology and nanoelectronics. The molecule undergoes significant structural transitions under the influence of forces due to physiological and non-physiological environments. Here, we summarize the insights gained from simulations and single-molecule experiments on the structural transitions and mechanics of DNA under force, as well as its elastic properties, in various environmental conditions, and discuss appealing future directions.
We present the simplest nuclear energy density functional (NEDF) to date, determined by only 4 significant phenomenological parameters, yet capable of fitting measured nuclear masses with better accuracy than the Bethe-Weizsacker mass formula, while also describing density structures (charge radii, neutron skins etc.) and time-dependent phenomena (induced fission, giant resonances, low energy nuclear collisions, etc.). The 4 significant parameters are necessary to describe bulk nuclear properties (binding energies and charge radii); an additional 2 to 3 parameters have little influence on the bulk nuclear properties, but allow independent control of the density dependence of the symmetry energy and isovector excitations, in particular the Thomas-Reiche-Kuhn sum rule. This Hohenberg-Kohn-style of density functional theory successfully realizes Weizsackers ideas and provides a computationally tractable model for a variety of static nuclear properties and dynamics, from finite nuclei to neutron stars, where it will also provide a new insight into the physics of the r-process, nucleosynthesis, and neutron star crust structure. This new NEDF clearly separates the bulk geometric properties - volume, surface, symmetry, and Coulomb energies which amount to 8MeV per nucleon or up to 2000MeV per nucleus for heavy nuclei - from finer details related to shell effects, pairing, isospin breaking, etc. which contribute at most a few MeV for the entire nucleus. Thus it provides a systematic framework for organizing various contributions to the NEDF. Measured and calculated physical observables - symmetry and saturation properties, the neutron matter equation of state, and the frequency of giant dipole resonances - lead directly to new terms not considered in current NEDF parameterizations.