CORRECTION OF TRANSIENT SOLID-EMBEDDED THERMOCOUPLE DATA WITH APPLICATION TO INVERSE HEAT CONDUCTION

The current research investigates the use of solid-embedded thermocouples for determining accurate transient temperature measurements within a solid medium, with emphasis on measurements intended for use in inverse heat conduction problems. Metal casting experiments have been conducted to collect internal mold temperatures to be used, through inverse conduction methods, to estimate the heat exchange between a casting and mold. Inverse conduction methods require accurate temperature measurements for valid boundary estimates. Therefore, various sources of thermocouple measurement uncertainty are examined and some suggestions for uncertainty reduction are presented. Thermocouple installation induced bias uncertainties in experimental temperature data are dynamically corrected through the development and implementation of an embedded thermocouple correction (ETC) transfer function. Comparisons of experimental data to dynamically adjusted data, as well as the inverse conduction estimates for heat flux from each data set, are presented and discussed

Minority game with arbitrary cutoffs

We study a model of a competing population of N adaptive agents, with similar capabilities, repeatedly deciding whether to attend a bar with an arbitrary cutoff L. Decisions are based upon past outcomes. The agents are only told whether the actual attendance is above or below L. For L-> N/2, the game reproduces the main features of Challet and Zhang's minority game. As L is lowered, however, the mean attendances in different runs tend to divide into two groups. The corresponding standard deviations for these two groups are very different. This grouping effect results from the dynamical feedback governing the game's time-evolution, and is not reproduced if the agents are fed a random history.Comment: 4 pages (Revtex) + 6 separate pdf figure

Generalized strategies in the Minority Game

We show analytically how the fluctuations (i.e. standard deviation) in the Minority Game (MG) can be made to decrease below the random coin-toss limit if the agents use more general behavioral strategies. This suppression of the standard deviation results from a cancellation between the actions of a crowd, in which agents act collectively and make the same decision, and an anticrowd in which agents act collectively by making the opposite decision to the crowd.Comment: Revised manuscript: a few minor typos corrected. Results unaffecte

Crowd-anticrowd theory of the Minority Game

The Minority Game is a simple yet highly non-trivial agent-based model for a complex adaptive system. Despite its importance, a quantitative explanation of the game's fluctuations which applies over the entire parameter range of interest has so far been lacking. We provide such a quantitative description based on the interplay between crowds of like-minded agents and their anti-correlated partners (anticrowds).Comment: Shortened version of cond-mat/0003486. Submitted for publicatio

Volatility and Agent Adaptability in a Self-Organizing Market

We present results for the so-called `bar-attendance' model of market behavior: $p$ adaptive agents, each possessing $n$ prediction rules chosen randomly from a pool, attempt to attend a bar whose cut-off is $s$. The global attendance time-series has a mean near, but not equal to, $s$. The variance, or `volatility', can show a minimum with increasing adaptability of the individual agents.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figs. [email protected], [email protected]

Anatomy of extreme events in a complex adaptive system

We provide an analytic, microscopic analysis of extreme events in an adaptive population comprising competing agents (e.g. species, cells, traders, data-packets). Such large changes tend to dictate the long-term dynamical behaviour of many real-world systems in both the natural and social sciences. Our results reveal a taxonomy of extreme events, and provide a microscopic understanding as to their build-up and likely duration.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures. Now with Postscript figure

Molecular phylogeny of telenomine egg parasitoids (Hymenoptera: Platygastridae s.l.: Telenominae): evolution of host shifts and implications for classification

Parasitoid wasps of the subfamily Telenominae (Hymenoptera: Platygastroidea, Platygastridae) develop as immatures within the eggs of other insects (Lepidoptera, Hemiptera, Diptera and Neuroptera). Rearing records indicate that individual species are restricted to attack hosts within only one of these four main groups. We conducted a phylogenetic analysis of the group using sequence data from multiple genes (18S, 28S, COI, EF-1α) to assess the pattern of shifts among host groups and to test the monophyly of and relationships among genera and species-groups. Telenominae sensu Masner—that is, including only the nominate tribe Telenomini—is not monophyletic. Representatives of the Psix group of genera (Psix Kozlov & Lê and Paratelenomus Dodd) form a monophyletic group that is sister to Gryon Haliday (Scelioninae: Gryonini) and are excluded from the subfamily. The remaining telenomines are monophyletic. The genus Phanuromyia Dodd and the crassiclava group of Telenomus Haliday, both recorded as parasitoids of planthopper eggs (Hemiptera: Auchenorrhyncha, Fulgoroidea), form a monophyletic group that is sister to all other telenomines exclusive of the Psix group. Twenty-nine species of the crassiclava and aradi groups of Telenomus are transferred to Phanuromyia as new combinations. Basal elements of the remaining species are all in groups reared from the eggs of true bugs (Heteroptera), primarily the stink bugs (Pentatomoidea) and seed bugs (Lygaeoidea). A shift to parasitism of lepidopteran eggs evolved within a single clade, occurring either one or two times. From this clade a small group of species, the Telenomus tabanivorus group, subsequently shifted to parasitism of egg masses of true flies (Tabanidae and Stratiomyiidae). Aholcus Kieffer and Platytelenomus Dodd both belong to the clade of lepidopteran parasitoids and are considered as junior synonyms of Telenomus (new synonymy for Aholcus). The monophyletic status of the two core genera, Telenomus and Trissolcus could not be resolved using these data. The phylogenetic pattern of host shifts suggests comparisons among taxa that may be fruitful in elucidating mechanisms by which parasitoids locate their hosts, the proximate factors that determine the host range, and the changes in these factors that influence host changes.Charuwat Taekul, Alejandro A. Valerio, Andrew D. Austin, Hans Klompen and Norman F. Johnso

Continuous time dynamics of the Thermal Minority Game

We study the continuous time dynamics of the Thermal Minority Game. We find that the dynamical equations of the model reduce to a set of stochastic differential equations for an interacting disordered system with non-trivial random diffusion. This is the simplest microscopic description which accounts for all the features of the system. Within this framework, we study the phase structure of the model and find that its macroscopic properties strongly depend on the initial conditions.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Theory of Phase Transition in the Evolutionary Minority Game

We discover the mechanism for the transition from self-segregation (into opposing groups) to clustering (towards cautious behaviors) in the evolutionary minority game (EMG). The mechanism is illustrated with a statistical mechanics analysis of a simplified EMG involving three groups of agents: two groups of opposing agents and one group of cautious agents. Two key factors affect the population distribution of the agents. One is the market impact (the self-interaction), which has been identified previously. The other is the market inefficiency due to the short-time imbalance in the number of agents using opposite strategies. Large market impact favors "extreme" players who choose fixed strategies, while large market inefficiency favors cautious players. The phase transition depends on the number of agents ($N$), the reward-to-fine ratio ($R$), as well as the wealth reduction threshold ($d$) for switching strategy. When the rate for switching strategy is large, there is strong clustering of cautious agents. On the other hand, when $N$ is small, the market impact becomes large, and the extreme behavior is favored.Comment: 5 pages and 3 figure