String theory has proved to be a valuable theoretical laboratory for probing gravity and gauge theory in a unified framework. In this thesis some of the exciting spin-offs of string theory such as branes and higher spin are studied. After a review of the basics of string theory the four papers of the thesis are discussed. In the first paper we support the equivalence between two descriptions of non-commutative open strings by calculating scattering amplitudes in both approaches. The second paper gives a physical interpretation of the fact that Ramond-Ramond charge in string theory on SU(2) is only defined modulo an integer. In the third paper we calculate contributions to the stress-energy tensor of higher-spin theory in four dimensional AdS space, and in the last paper of the thesis we compare the free energy of the two dimesional type 0A extremal blackhole and find agreement with the corresponding quantity in a deformed matrix model.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Two sets of recordings included, each in its own container. The first work is for string quartet; the second for bangdi, soprano sheng, yangqin, pipa, guzheng, erhu, gehu and percussion; the third for harmonica quintet, sheng, harp, piano and percussion. "Symphonic poem-Genesis" is for orchestra with piano and celesta. "Ghost opera" is for string quartet and pipa, with water, stones, paper and metal. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / O uso de ferramentas matemáticas, estatísticas e computacionais para estudar o comportamento de sistemas biológicos se faz cada vez mais presente. Este interesse é devido à complexidade apresentada pelas populações, que sofrem influências externas, relativas à interação com o ambiente e influências internas, conseqüências dos interesses conflitantes entre os indivíduos do ecossistema. A nossa proposta é de modelar computacionalmente alguns fenômenos biológicos observados em populações reais, para tentar entender melhor o que está acontecendo e analisar os prováveis efeitos de fatores externos, como os avanços na área de saúde, mudanças no clima ou invasão de nichos por outras espécies. Mostraremos neste trabalho modelos distintos, destacando entre as ferramentas computacionais aplicadas os algoritmos genéticos, que combinam a sobrevivência dos organismos mais adaptados com pequenas mudanças aleatórias nas suas estruturas, e os autômatos celulares, que permitem o estudo da distribuição espacial da população e utilizam regras simples de evolução. Apresentaremos também, uma solução analítica aproximada para um dos problemas estudados. Nos dois primeiros capítulos utilizaremos o modelo Penna para a dinâmica de populações que apresentam estrutura etária, portanto ideal para estudar o envelhecimento de populações, adaptando o modelo à situação a ser estudada. Nos capítulos seguintes iremos propor dois novos modelos para a colonização de substrato por animais marinhos sésseis, onde larvas trazidas de populações distantes competem pela colonização de superfícies submersas, onde se manterão fixos durante toda a vida. / The usefulness of mathematical, statistical and computational tools to study the behavior of biological systems has been affirmed on many opportunities. This interest is mostly due to the complexity presented by the populations that can suffer external influences,for example, due to the interaction with the environment, and internal influences due to the conflicting interests of the individuals of the ecosystem. Our proposal is modelling in a computer, biological phenomena observed in real populations, in order to understand and to analyze the effects of external factors, such as changes on health care and Medicine, changes in the climate or invasion of niches from intruder species. We will work with different models and computational tools such as genetic algorithms, that combine the survival of the fitter organisms with small random changes in its structures; and cellular automata, that allow the study of the space distribution of the population from simple rules for the dynamical evolution. In addition, we also present an analytic solution for one of the studied situations. In the first two chapters we use the so-called Penna model, appropriate to study the aging of populations, for being age structured, by modifying the model according to the situation we will be studying. In the following chapters we propose two new models for the substratum colonization for sessile marine animals, where larvae brought from distant populations compete for the colonization of submerged surfaces, where they will keep fixed during their lifetime.

Unreliable communication channels are a practical reality. They add to the complexity of protocol design and verification. In this work, we consider noisy channels which can corrupt messages. We present an approach to model and verify protocols which combine error detection and error control to provide reliable communication over noisy channels. We call these protocols retransmission protocols as they achieve reliable communication through repeated retransmissions of messages. These protocols typically use cyclic redundancy checks and sliding window protocols for error detection and control respectively. We propose models of these protocols as regular transducers operating on bit strings. Deterministic streaming string transducers provide a natural way of modeling these protocols and formalizing correctness requirements. The verification problem is posed as functional equivalence between the protocol transducer and the specification transducer. Functional equivalence checking is decidable for this class of transducers and this makes the transducer models amenable to algorithmic verification. In our transducer models, message lengths and retransmission rounds are unbounded. We present case studies based on TinyOS serial communication and the HDLC retransmission protocol. We further extend our protocol models to capture the effects of a noisy channel with non-determinism. We present two non-deterministic yet decidable extensions of transducer models of retransmission protocols. For one of our models, we achieve decidable verification by bounding the retransmission rounds, whereas for the other, even retransmission rounds are unbounded.

The paper is located on the border between physics, mathematics and philosophy (ontology). The latter is required to embed the dualistic by nature mathematics into a monistic metatheory. It is shown, that a consequent philosophical monism and an approach which starts from the origin of the universe imposes significant constraints on a physical Theory-of-Everything. This may be helpful for finding such a theory. A philosophical system that is monistic and at the same time structured clear enough to be compatible with mathematical thinking is the Hegelian dialectic logic. With the aid of this logic the necessary existence of a causal chain embedded in the general, unconditional and timeless being is proved constructively. In the causal chain our entire reality is coded. It is termed by Hegel as determinate being in contrast to being. The chain has a beginning, representing the birth of the universe (big bang) and the beginning of time. It is isomorphic to the natural numbers. The half-ring structure of the natural numbers induces a secondary causal network. Thus the ontological approach results in a special version of the theory or causal sets. The causal network is topologically homeo-morphic to an infinite dimensional Minkowski cone. Each prime number corresponds to a dimension. Hypothetical small 'bumps” of 4D spacetime (Brane) in the direction of the extra dimensions of the Minkowski manifold mean topological defects, which can be interpreted as curvature of spacetime. This means a bridge to the general theory of relativity. On the other hand, the bumps may be interpreted as objects with which one can handle similar to the strings in string theory. / Die Arbeit bewegt sich im Grenzgebiet zwischen Physik, Mathematik und Philosophie (Ontologie). Letztere wird benötigt, um die vom Wesen her dualistische Mathematik in eine monistische Metatheorie einzubetten. Es wird gezeigt, dass ein konsequenter philosophischer Monismus und ein Denken vom Ursprung des Universums her einer physikalischen Theorie-von-Allem erhebliche Randbedingungen auferlegen. Für das Auffinden einer solchen Theorie kann das hilfreich sein. Ein philosophisches System, dass monistisch ist und zugleich klar genug strukturiert um mit der mathematischen Denkweise kompatibel zu sein ist die Hegelsche dialektische Logik. Unter Zuhilfenahme dieser Logik wird die notwendige Existenz einer in das allgemeine, unbedingte und zeitlose Sein eingebetteten, aber vom Chaos dieses Seins unbeeinflussten kausalen Kette konstruktiv bewiesen. In dieser kausalen Kette ist unsere gesamte Realität codiert, von Hegel als Dasein im Gegensatz zum Sein bezeichnet. Die Kette hat einen Anfang, der den Anfang des Universums und den Anfang der Zeit darstellt. Sie ist isomorph zu den natürlichen Zahlen. Deren Halbring-Struktur induziert ein sekundäres kausales Netzwerk. Somit ist das Ergebnis der ontologischen Herangehensweise eine spezielle Version der Theorie der kausalen Mengen. Das Netzwerk ist topologisch homöomorph ist zu einem unendlich dimensionalen Minkowski-Kegel. Jeder Primzahl entspricht eine Dimension. Hypothetische kleine „Ausbeulungen“ oder „Bumps“ der 4D-Raumzeit (Brane) in Richtung der Extradimensionen der Minkowski-Mannigfaltigkeit bedeuten topologische Baufehler, die sich als Krümmung der Raumzeit interpretieren lassen und eine Brücke zur allgemeinen Relativi-tätstheorie darstellen. Auf der anderen Seite lassen sich die Ausbeulungen der Brane als Objekte deuten, mit denen man ähnlich umgehen kann wie mit den Strings der Stringtheorie.

We discuss certain aspects of string field theory and its applications in exploring the land- scape of classical string theory vacua. We start by giving a brief overview of various tree-level string field theories, as well as of some relevant mathematical background. As a byproduct of our general discussion of observables, we present a new gauge-invariant quantity for the A∞ formulation of open superstring field theory. Putting particular emphasis on perturba- tive methods, we proceed to review in detail the construction of tree-level effective actions governing the dynamics of a certain subset of degrees of freedom. In light of recent devel- opments, we also discuss efficient methods for evaluating certain vertices of zero-momentum effective actions for open superstring and heterotic string field theories in the presence of a global N = 2 worldsheet superconformal symmetry. We show how to apply this perturbative approach to study dynamics of the D(−1)/D3 system (both with and without a B-field), while also discussing a number of more complicated Dp-brane configurations. At generic points in their moduli spaces, such bound states of Dp-branes clearly cannot be described in terms of simple Dirichlet or Neumann boundary conditions. The rest of this thesis is therefore devoted to developing analytic...

Studiens syfte är att undersöka vad stråkpedagoger har för attityd och syn på begreppet genrebredd samt hur detta kan relateras till undervisning på musik- och kulturskola. Studiens teoretiska ramverk utgörs av diskurspsykologi. För att undersöka detta har fokusgrupper använts som metod där stråkpedagoger inom musik- och kulturskolor har fått diskutera sina synsätt på genrebredd. Gruppsamtalen spelades in med både ljud och bild för att sedan transkriberas. Transkriptionerna analyserades med diskursanalys för att urskilja vilka tolkningsrepertoarer som framträder i samtalen. I resultatdelen beskrivs de olika tolkningsrepertoarerna som framträtt. Stråkpedagogerna ger utlopp för en variation av tolkningsrepertoarer som presenteras genom två huvudteman: Genrebredd som beroende av flera faktorer samt Genrebredd i undervisningen. Vissa av tolkningsrepertoarerna är kontrasterande mot varandra och vissa innefattar variationer inom dem själva. De mest förekommande synsätten hos lärarna är enligt resultatet, att genrebredd beror mycket på deras egen bakgrund, samt att genrebredd ses som ett verktyg för att möta eleven. Samtliga lärare ger dock uttryck för en tolkningsrepertoar där genrebredd ses som ett viktigt arbete. I diskussionen lyfts resultatets mest framträdande tolkningsrepertoarer för att diskuteras i relation med tidigare presenterad litteratur och forskning samt till det teoretiska perspektivet. / The purpose of this study is to examine string teachers’ attitudes and views towards the term genre width and how this could be related to string education in Swedish community school of music. The theoretical framework of the study is discourse psychology. To examine this, focus groups were used as method where string teachers within Swedish Community Schools of music has discussed their point of views on genre width. The conversations were recorded by video and audio to later be transcribed. The transcriptions were analyzed with discourse analysis to distinguish the various interpretative repertoires. The string teachers provide an outlet for a variety of interpretative repertoires, which is presented in two main themes: Genre as dependent of several factors and genre in teaching context. Some of the interpretative repertoires are contrasting to one another and some includes variations within themselves. The most occurring of the teachers’ views seems to be that to broadening the genre, are dependent on their own background, and that it is looked upon as a tool for meeting the student. All teachers express an interpretative repertoire where genre width, is looked upon as an important work. In the discussion, the most highlighted interpretative repertoires of the results are being related to previous research and presented literature and to the theoretical perspective.

No description available.

<p>In this work, we consider the addition of a single neutral massive vector boson to the Standard Model (SM). This boson, which we refer to as N⁰, induces dipolar transitions between electrons and muons. We obtain bounds on the strength of its coupling and its mass: from the scattering process e+e- to mu+mu-; from its contribution to muonium-antimuonium oscillations; and from its possible contribution to the rare muon decay mu- to e+e-e-. In particular, we examine the two cases where the mediator is both heavy and light compared with the scattering energies for, and place constraints on the relevant parameters based on their contributions to the cross section and the forward-backward asymmetry. For muonium-antimuonium oscillations, we consider only the case where the mediator is heavy compared to all other scales, reducing its effect to an effective contact interaction. Finally, we consider an SU(2) invariant theory from which the N⁰ interaction emerges, and find that flavour diagonal interactions also emerge, giving a tree-level path for the decay mu- to e+e-e-. We find that the heavy N⁰ is not strongly constrained by this contribution, while the light N⁰ is very strongly constrained by it. Very generally, we find that the heavy N⁰ is much less constrained than other lepton flavour violating processes, while the constraints on the light N0 vary in strength between processes.</p> / Master of Science (MSc)