Browsing by Subject "Universality"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5

Open Access
A continuum equation displaying Tracy-Widom distribution in the spatial and temporal fluctuations of growing interfaces
(2022-09) Liçkollari, Xhulian
A wide variety of surface growth phenomena involves random processes that result in correlated stochastic dynamics. Such dynamics is most succinctly described by a nonlinear equation known as the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) equation. It is of particular interest that the random fluctuations observed along a growing interface described by the KPZ equation turn out to be correlated, with statistics that match the so-called Tracy-Widom distribution. The correlated fluctuations pertain only to the space dimension, namely, along the growing interface. The fluctuations of any given point along the interface over time remain uncorrelated, thus exhibiting Gaussian fluctuations. This is to be expected since the KPZ equation and the experimental systems where the Tracy-Widom statistics have been observed lack mechanisms to induce temporal correlations. Recently, a new mechanism of dissipative self-assembly has been reported, where the self-assembly process is driven by an intrinsic feedback mechanism that is expected to induce temporal correlations. Indeed, such correlations have been experimentally observed with statistics that match the Tracy-Widom probability distribution. Here, we explore the theory of the emergence of correlated temporal fluctuations in such a system when a simplified feedback mechanism is introduced. We develop a highly simplified model, which formally constitutes a modified KPZ equation. We, then, show that this modified equation exhibits temporal fluctuations that are well described by Tracy-Widom fluctuations, up to at least the eight moment, in excellent agreement with the experimental results.
Open Access
Estranging Adorno: the dialectics of alienation in Leonard Michaels's "I would have saved them if I could"
(Penn State University Press, 2023-03-03) Coker, William Norman
Reflecting on his relatives’ deaths in the Shoah, Leonard Michaels lets their story unfold through a meditation on how not to tell it. He resists both the consolatory aestheticism he finds in Jorge Luis Borges and the teleological closure of Hegelian-Marxist history. Both modes press something positive out of Auschwitz’s absolute negativity. Yet Michaels finds he cannot do without Borges and Marx. As his standpoint emerges from theirs, light falls on what both tacitly teach: the necessity of alienation. Enabling a new reading of this key Marxian term, Michaels’s story complements and challenges the revisionary Marxism of Theodor W. Adorno. Adorno’s late works convey the awareness that a certain alienation inheres in subjectivity and that emancipation requires us to accept our own self-estrangement. In Michaels’s story, Borges and Marx appear as figures for the “nonidentity,” the internal contradiction, that every self must own in order to achieve an identity. By foregrounding the mismatch between narrative forms and their content, Michaels affirms narrative itself as “nonidentical.” Only through the alienation implicit to literature as self-conscious artifice, he finds, can one hope to grasp an experience in either its singularity or its universality.
Open Access
Ethics and aesthetics in the philosophy of Alain Badiou
(2005) Yalım, P. Burcu
The supposed impossibility of achieving a form of rational agency for action is the prevailing critique against contemporary theories of representaion. Alain Badiou’s philosophy appears to solve this problem by assigning a subject-form and not a substantial subject as such as rational agency and by filling in the space of truth left empty by the declaration of the end of philosophy with a new universality of truth subject to temporality. Yet this apparent duality of form and content pertaining to subjectivity, and the manner in which time and history are constructed in Badiou’s theory of truth signal the return of a certain transcendence, and the very abolishment of the time which appears to be thus constructed. This thesis aims to make a critical discussion on Alain Badiou’s philosophy through his fifteen theses on art, as the return of classical philosophy and to rise the ethical stakes involved in putting forth a philosophy based upon truth.
Open Access
Evolutionary psychology: A how-to guide
(American Psychological Association Inc., 2017) Lewis, David M. G.; Al-Shawaf, Laith; Conroy-Beam, D.; Asao, K.; Buss, D. M.
Researchers in the social and behavioral sciences are increasingly using evolutionary insights to test novel hypotheses about human psychology. Because evolutionary perspectives are relatively new to psychology and most researchers do not receive formal training in this endeavor, there remains ambiguity about "best practices" for implementing evolutionary principles. This article provides researchers with a practical guide for using evolutionary perspectives in their research programs and for avoiding common pitfalls in doing so. We outline essential elements of an evolutionarily informed research program at 3 central phases: (a) generating testable hypotheses, (b) testing empirical predictions, and (c) interpreting results. We elaborate key conceptual tools, including task analysis, psychological mechanisms, design features, universality, and cost-benefit analysis. Researchers can use these tools to generate hypotheses about universal psychological mechanisms, social and cultural inputs that amplify or attenuate the activation of these mechanisms, and cross-culturally variable behavior that these mechanisms can produce. We hope that this guide inspires theoretically and methodologically rigorous research that more cogently integrates knowledge from the psychological and life sciences.
Open Access
Non-equilibrium steady state phase transitions of various statistical models
(2013) Renklioğlu, Başak
Non-equilibrium phase transitions of a number of systems are investigated by several methods. These systems are in contact with thermal baths with different temperatures and taken to be driven to the non-equilibrium limits by spin exchange (Kawasaki) dynamics. First of all, the criticality of the two-finite temperature spin-1/2 Ising model with a conserved order parameter on a square lattice is studied through a real space renormalization group transformation. The dynamics of the nonequilibrium system are characterized by means of different temperatures (Tx and Ty), and also different time-scale constants, (αx and αy) for spin exchanges in the x and y directions. Based on the RG flows, the critical surface of the system is obtained as a function of these exchange parameters. This is the first study in which the full critical surface displaying various universality classes of this system is reported. Secondly, steady state phase transitions of the eight-vertex model, formulated by two interlaced two-dimensional Ising models on square lattices, are studied through four independent Monte Carlo simulations, each with 60 × 106 Monte Carlo steps on N × N lattices with N = 32, 40, 80, 100. To obtain an isotropic system, the spin exchanges are considered to occur within the sublattices. We observe non-universal behavior for non-equilibrium transitions around the equilibrium transitions, and Ising like behavior when one of the bath temperature becomes very large.