The use of online dating services has surged dramatically in recent years. Concurrently, a substantial body of scientific literature has emerged, analyzing these services from demographic and social ...perspectives. This review, based on 528 English-language publications from the past 13 years, compiles a bibliographic database and employs content analysis to systematize research directions on the use of online dating services. The classification includes topics such as locations and methods of dating (both traditional and digital), the risks and drawbacks of digital dating services, user actions and interactions, dating goals, marital status, and more. This bibliographic database has helped identify the primary vectors of publication activity on the topic of online dating services over the past 13 years.
This work explores Boltzmann's time hypothesis, which associates the perceived direction of time flow with the second law of thermodynamics. We discuss mechanisms that can be responsible for the ...action of the second law, for directional properties of time and, ultimately, for the perception that past events cause future events. Special attention is paid to possibility of testing these mechanisms in experiments. It is argued that CP-violations known in particle physics may offer such an opportunity. Entropy-based analysis of decoherence and collapse during traditional quantum measurements and a time-symmetric version of Everett's many-worlds interpretation are given in the appendix.
This work investigates intensive vortices, which are characterised by the existence of a converging radial flow that significantly intensifies the flow rotation. Evolution and amplification of the ...vorticity present in the flow play important roles in the formation of the vortex. When rotation in the flow becomes sufficiently strong (this implies the validity of the strong swirl approximation, which has been developed in a series of publications since the 1950s) the previous analysis of the author and the present work determine that further amplification of vorticity is moderated by interactions of vorticity and velocity. This imposes physical constraints on the flow, resulting in the so-called compensating regime, where the radial distribution of the axial vorticity is characterised by the
$4/ 3$
and
$3/ 2$
power laws. This asymptotic treatment of a strong swirl is based on vorticity equations and involves higher-order terms. This treatment incorporates multi-scale analysis indicating downstream relaxation of the flow to the compensating regime. The present work also investigates and takes into account viscous and transient effects. One of the main points of this work is the applicability of the power laws of the compensating regime to intermediate regions in large atmospheric vortices, such as tropical cyclones and tornadoes.
The effectiveness of goal-directed human behavior and the processes underlying organization of such activity are the subjects of various biomedical studies. Here we review both classical and modern ...evidence on the fundamental principles of goal-directed human activity. Facts are presented about the basic mechanisms that ensure the effectiveness of goal-directed behavior and determine its physiological cost.
Abstract
Unlike conventional planar Josephson junctions, nanowire-based devices have a bridge geometry with a peculiar coupling to environment that can favor non-equilibrium electronic phenomena. ...Here we measure the influence of the electron bath overheating on critical current of several bridge-like junctions built on a single Au-nanowire. Using the Usadel theory and applying the two-fluid description for the normal and superconducting components of the flowing currents, we reveal and explain the mutual influence of the neighbouring junctions on their characteristics through various processes of the electron gas overheating. Our results provide additional ways to control nanowire-based superconducting devices.
When applied to matter and antimatter states, the Pauli master equation (PME) may have two forms: time-symmetric, which is conventional, and time-antisymmetric, which is suggested in the present ...work. The symmetric and antisymmetric forms correspond to symmetric and antisymmetric extensions of thermodynamics from matter to antimatter - this is demonstrated by proving the corresponding H-theorem. The two forms are based on the thermodynamic similarity of matter and antimatter and differ only in the directions of thermodynamic time for matter and antimatter (the same in the time-symmetric case and the opposite in the time-antisymmetric case). We demonstrate that, while the symmetric form of PME predicts an equibalance between matter and antimatter, the antisymmetric form of PME favours full conversion of antimatter into matter. At this stage, it is impossible to make an experimentally justified choice in favour of the symmetric or antisymmetric versions of thermodynamics since we have no experience of thermodynamic properties of macroscopic objects made of antimatter, but experiments of this kind may become possible in the future.
The aims of this work are to analyze the changes in the world power industry during the time after the adoption of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992 and to assess the ...extent to which the commitments of the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 have been met and evaluate the prospects of implementing the tasks of the Paris Agreement of 2015. Based on data on the production and consumption of various kinds of energy and the emissions of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, in 1990–2017, changes in the structure of the global energy consumption, trends in electric power generation, and the influence of different factors on the carbon dioxide emissions in power-generating enterprises are investigated. It is shown that the power industry, which is the main source of anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHGs), is the most inertial branch of the economy in terms of its contribution to the reduction in GHG emissions. Thus, in the first 2008–2012 commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, GHG emissions in the state parties to the protocol decreased by 7.6% compared the base year, while other GHG sources reduced the emission by 18%. The corresponding figures for the following 2013–2017 commitment period were 10.6 and 17.1%, respectively. The maximum reduction in the carbon dioxide emissions in the power industry resulted from an increase in the global average efficiency of the thermal power stations from 32% in 1990 to 36% in 2017; as a consequence, the cumulative decrease in the CO
2
emissions in the world during the 1990–2017 period was approximately 22 billion t. The increase in the electric power generation at HPPs and NPPs resulted in a reduction in GHG emissions by 16.7 and 10.7 billion t, respectively. The substitution of coal and fuel oil by gas at thermal power stations facilitated reducing the emissions by 5.2 billion t, while the use of renewable energy sources for generation of electric energy resulted in a reduction of 1.1 billion t. The contribution of the carbon capture and storage technologies amounting to only 0.2 billion t is not noticeable so far.
This work proposes a series of quantum experiments that can, at least in principle, allow for examining microscopic mechanisms associated with decoherence. These experiments can be interpreted as a ...quantum-mechanical version of non-equilibrium mixing between two volumes separated by a thin interface. One of the principal goals of such experiments is in identifying non-equilibrium conditions when time-symmetric laws give way to time-directional, irreversible processes, which are represented by decoherence at the quantum level. The rate of decoherence is suggested to be examined indirectly, with minimal intrusions—this can be achieved by measuring tunnelling rates that, in turn, are affected by decoherence. Decoherence is understood here as a general process that does not involve any significant exchanges of energy and governed by a particular class of the Kraus operators. The present work analyses different regimes of tunnelling in the presence of decoherence and obtains formulae that link the corresponding rates of tunnelling and decoherence under different conditions. It is shown that the effects on tunnelling of intrinsic decoherence and of decoherence due to unitary interactions with the environment are similar but not the same and can be distinguished in experiments.
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The current state-of-art of studies aimed at forecasting the development of world energy and its influence on the Earth’s atmosphere and climate is analyzed. Advantages of applying a ...historical-extrapolation approach to forecasting the development of world energy and other anthropogenic sources affecting the planet’s atmosphere and climate, and also comprehensive consideration of natural climatic factors and natural variability features of the global climate are demonstrated. It is shown that a pattern adequately reflecting the change in the world’s energy consumption and its carbon intensity was presented as a result of a genetic (based on the historical development regularities) world energy development forecast elaborated at the Moscow Power Engineering Institute (MPEI) more than 30 years ago. The cumulative carbon dioxide emission estimates for the period of 1990‒2020 obtained using this approach are fully consistent with the actual data following from the world energy statistics
1
. By using this approach, it became possible to predict an essential transformation of the world energy mix (energy transition) at the beginning of the current century, which manifested itself in the growing role of carbon-free energy sources, primarily renewable ones. The predictions carried out in the 1990s using the MPEI’s combined climatic model, which combines the principles of dynamic and statistical modeling of the global climatic system and takes into account the effect of natural climatic factors and the climatic system’s internal features with using a genetic forecast of world energy consumption and carbon dioxide emission for the period of 1990‒2020, showed an encouraging consistency with the data of observed global temperature variation dynamics. The prediction results show that the majority of the most radical energy consumption and corresponding carbon dioxide emission scenarios are in reality unfeasible, and the model predictions of global climatic changes performed according to these scenarios are also extremely unlikely. At the same time, it is stated that, to achieve the goals of preventing the average global temperature increase by more than 2°C in comparison with the preindustrial period, it is necessary, along with decreasing the consumption of fossil fuel, to develop, on significant scales, carbon dioxide capture technologies, both biological (forest recreation, protection from forest fires, etc.) and geological (direct disposal).
We examine the influence of superconductivity on the magneto-transport properties of a ferromagnetic Ni nanowire connected to Nb electrodes. We show experimentally and confirm theoretically that the ...Nb/Ni interface plays an essential role in the electron transport through the device. Just below the superconducting transition, a strong inverse proximity effect from the nanowire suppresses superconducting correlations at Nb/Ni interfaces, resulting in a conventional anisotropic magneto-resistive response. At lower temperatures however, the Nb electrodes operate as superconducting shunts. As the result, the magneto-resistance exhibits a strongly growing hysteretic behavior accompanied by a series of saw-like jumps. The latter are associated with the penetration/escape of individual Abrikosov vortices that influence non-equilibrium processes at the Nb/Ni interface. These effects should be taken into account when designing superconducting quantum nano-hybrids involving ferromagnetic nanowires.
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