The far-infrared/submillimeter properties of galaxies located behind the Bullet cluster

The Herschel Lensing Survey (HLS) takes advantage of gravitational lensing by massive galaxy clusters to sample a population of high-redshift galaxies which are too faint to be detected above the confusion limit of current far-infrared/submillimeter telescopes. Measurements from 100–500 μm bracket the peaks of the far-infrared spectral energy distributions of these galaxies, characterizing their infrared luminosities and star formation rates. We introduce initial results from our science demonstration phase observations, directed toward the Bullet cluster (1E0657-56). By combining our observations with LABOCA 870 μm and AzTEC 1.1 mm data we fully constrain the spectral energy distributions of 19 MIPS 24 μm-selected galaxies which are located behind the cluster. We find that their colors are best fit using templates based on local galaxies with systematically lower infrared luminosities. This suggests that our sources are not like local ultra-luminous infrared galaxies in which vigorous star formation is contained in a compact highly dust-obscured region. Instead, they appear to be scaled up versions of lower luminosity local galaxies with star formation occurring on larger physical scales

Breaking the News: First Impressions Matter on Online News

A growing number of people are changing the way they consume news, replacing the traditional physical newspapers and magazines by their virtual online versions or/and weblogs. The interactivity and immediacy present in online news are changing the way news are being produced and exposed by media corporations. News websites have to create effective strategies to catch people's attention and attract their clicks. In this paper we investigate possible strategies used by online news corporations in the design of their news headlines. We analyze the content of 69,907 headlines produced by four major global media corporations during a minimum of eight consecutive months in 2014. In order to discover strategies that could be used to attract clicks, we extracted features from the text of the news headlines related to the sentiment polarity of the headline. We discovered that the sentiment of the headline is strongly related to the popularity of the news and also with the dynamics of the posted comments on that particular news.Comment: The paper appears in ICWSM 201

Learning to automatically detect features for mobile robots using second-order Hidden Markov Models

In this paper, we propose a new method based on Hidden Markov Models to interpret temporal sequences of sensor data from mobile robots to automatically detect features. Hidden Markov Models have been used for a long time in pattern recognition, especially in speech recognition. Their main advantages over other methods (such as neural networks) are their ability to model noisy temporal signals of variable length. We show in this paper that this approach is well suited for interpretation of temporal sequences of mobile-robot sensor data. We present two distinct experiments and results: the first one in an indoor environment where a mobile robot learns to detect features like open doors or T-intersections, the second one in an outdoor environment where a different mobile robot has to identify situations like climbing a hill or crossing a rock.Comment: 200

Toward a More Coherent Doctrine of Trademark Genericism and Functionality: Focusing on Fair Competition

The doctrines of trademark genericism and functionality serve similar functions under the Lanham Act and the common law of unfair competition. Genericism, in the context of word marks, and functionality, for trade dress, bar trademark registration under the Lanham Act and, both under the Act and at common law, render a trademark unprotectable and invalid. In the word mark context, genericism stands for the proposition that certain parts of vocabulary cannot be cordoned off as trademarks; all competitors must be able to use words that consumers understand to identify the goods or services that they are selling. Functionality likewise demands that certain aspects of product design cannot be legally protected as trade dress, as to do so would potentially limit competitors’ ability to make products that work as well at the same price. The core concern, for both doctrines, is or should be the preservation of free and fair market competition. Part I of this Article explains the theoretical parallels between the doctrines of genericism and functionality, and examines the history and purpose of these doctrines. A finding that a word is or has become generic, or that a form of trade dress is functional, negates a mark’s registration and protection under the Lanham Act, as well as under state and common law. Even incontestable marks can be declared invalid, regardless of the passage of time, under either doctrine. The types of trademarks typically at issue when making genericism and functionality determinations—word marks that are, at best, descriptive, or product design functioning as trade dress—are correctly described as weak. The genericism and functionality doctrines therefore play a critical role in marking the boundaries of trademark law. To properly draw those lines, decision makers need to correctly define and understand the theory underlying both doctrines. In Part II, this Article argues that both genericism and functionality, in their practical interpretation and purpose, should more clearly reflect the core principle of protecting fair competition. In particular, the concept of viable, competitive alternatives—either in the form of words or alternative designs—should play an enhanced role in determining whether an erstwhile trademark is generic or functional. The various tests for genericism and functionality currently employed by the courts often attempt to draw formalistic distinctions among categories of words or product features that may confound business owners (and their lawyers) and divert the focus of the courts’ inquiry in such cases away from the core value at the heart of both doctrines: preserving fair competition

Sneutrino identification in dilepton events at the LHC

Heavy neutral resonances appearing in the clean Drell-Yan channel may be the first new physics to be observed at the proton-proton CERN LHC. If a new resonance is discovered at the LHC as a (narrow) peak in the dilepton invariant mass distribution, the characterization of its spin and couplings will proceed via the measurement of production rates and angular distributions of the decay products. We discuss the discrimination of a spin-0 resonance (sneutrino) predicted by supersymmetric theories with R-parity breaking against the spin-1 of Z^\prime bosons and the Randall-Sundrum graviton resonance (spin-2) with the same mass and producing the same number of events under the observed peak. To assess the region of sneutrino parameters (couplings and masses) where the spin determination can be performed to a given confidence level, we focus on the event rate and the angular distributions of the Drell-Yan leptons, in particular using the center-edge asymmetry, A_{\rm CE}. We find that although the measured event rate permits solving the above problem partially, the center-edge asymmetry, on the contrary allows to differentiate the various spins entirely with a minimal number of events around 200.Comment: 20 pages; version to appear in PR