A two-dimensional model for the erosion generated by viscous free-surface flows, based on the shallow-water equations and the lubrication approximation, is presented. It has a family of self-similar solutions for straight erodible channels, with an aspect ratio that increases in time. It is also shown, through a simplified stability analysis, that a laminar river can generate various bar instab...

Three experiments investigated whether the human visual system can make independent estimations of 3-dimensional shape dimensions, as suggested by structural description models of human object recognition. Experiment 1 used a noise masking paradigm to investigate whether primary-axis curvature and aspect ratio are estimated independently. The results showed clear evidence that these 3-dimension...

Bose-Einstein condensates of sodium atoms have been prepared in optical and magnetic traps in which the energy-level spacing in one or two dimensions exceeds the interaction energy between atoms, realizing condensates of lower dimensionality. The crossover into two-dimensional and one-dimensional condensates was observed by a change in aspect ratio and by the release energy converging to a nonz...

The perceived angular velocity of an ellipse undergoing a constant rate of rotation will vary as its aspect ratio is changed. Specifically, a "fat" ellipse with a low aspect ratio will in general be perceived to rotate more slowly than a "thin" ellipse with a higher aspect ratio. Here we investigate this illusory underestimation of angular velocity in the domain where ellipses appear to be rota...

We propose three-terminal core-shell (CS) silicon vertical nanowire tunneling field-effect transistors (TFETs), which can be fabricated by conventional CMOS technology. CS TFETs show lower subthreshold swing (SS) and higher on-state current than conventional TFETs through their high surface-to-volume ratio, which increases carrier-tunneling region with no additional device area. The on-state cu...

We consider a convection process in thin loops of different geometries. At Ra=Ra(')(cr) a first transition leading to the generation of corner vortices is observed. At higher Ra (Ra>Ra(cr)) a coherent large-scale flow, which persists for a very long time, sets up. The mean velocity nu mass flux m, and the Nusselt number Nu in this flow scale with Ra as nu proportional to m proportional to Ra0.4...

We perform event-driven molecular dynamics simulations of a system composed by uniaxial hard ellipsoids for different values of the aspect ratio and packing fraction. We compare the molecular orientational-dependent structure factors previously calculated within the Percus-Yevick approximation with the numerical results. The agreement between theoretical and numerical results is rather satisfac...

Perceptual multistability refers to cases where perception alternates between two or more interpretations of an unchanging sensory stimulus. In a first experiment we trained eight pigeons to discriminate horizontal and vertical apparent motion stimuli and then presented a multistable display. In five cases their behavior showed alternations similar to human experiments. In a second experiment w...

Single features such as line orientation and length are known to guide visual search, but relatively little is known about how multiple features combine in search. To address this question, we investigated how search for targets differing in multiple features (intensity, length, orientation) from the distracters is related to searches for targets differing in each of the individual features. We...

The Coulombic interaction in the oriented attachment growth of one-dimensional nanotubes is evaluated via a newly-derived analytical expression of the Coulombic interactions between a spherical attaching nanoparticle and a growing nanotube. The correlation between the interaction and the important growth parameters, including nanoparticle/nanotube size, aspect ratio, and nanoparticle-nanotube s...