We extend the study of velocity quantization phenomena recently found in the classical motion of an idealized 1D model solid lubricant – consisting of a harmonic chain interposed between two periodic sliding potentials [Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 056101 (2006)]. This quantization is due to one slider rigidly dragging the commensurate lattice of kinks that the chain forms with the other slider. In thi...

Snow friction results from a mixture of processes. With little meltwater present, the surfaces are partially separated and, when too much water is present, the contact area increases and there may be capillary attachments. Slider thermal conductivity and even colour are very important. Heat is generated by friction and solar radiation absorbtion and is conducted away by both slider and ice part...

We study the stick-slip behavior of a granular bed of photoelastic disks sheared by a rough slider pulled along the surface. Time series of a proxy for granular friction are examined using complex systems methods to characterize the observed stick-slip dynamics of this laboratory fault. Nonlinear surrogate time series methods show that the stick-slip behavior appears more complex than a periodi...

This paper demonstrates the capability of curve fitting using Artificial Neural Network (ANN), not only for a moderate set of input data but also for a coarse set of input. When appropriate number of neurons is chosen for the training purpose, accurate graphs can be obtained, despite having a coarse data. The effect of number of neurons used for curve fitting and the accuracy obtained is also s...

A novel MEMS-based electrostatic actuator design is proposed for recording head fly height control below 10 nm. Different from prior work on MEMS-based electrostatic microactuators designed for magnetic hard disk drives (HDD), the proposed microactuator is fabricated monolithically with a conventional head/slider design. The actuator is micromachined into the same side as the head element on a ...

We present an experimental tool that tests the effect of emotionality (psychological valence, arousal and dominance) of a word meaning or a picture content on the approach-avoidance motivational systems. A participant is presented with a slider with a schematic human figure in the middle and a word/picture at the top or bottom of the slider. The instruction is to use the computer mouse to move ...

People’s beliefs about everyday events are both of theoretical interest in their own right and an important ingredient in model building—especially in Bayesian cognitive models of phenomena such as logical reasoning, future predictions, and language use. Here, we explore several recently used methods for measuring subjective beliefs about unidimensional contiguous properties, such as the likely...

MOTIVATION Detection of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) has been a major application in processing second generation sequencing (SGS) data. In principle, SNPs are called on single base differences between a reference genome and a sequence generated from SGS short reads of a sample genome. However, this exercise is far from trivial; several parameters related to sequencing quality, and/or...