17,135 research outputs found
Solar influences on dynamical coupling between the stratosphere and troposphere
We use a simplified atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) to investigate the response of the lower atmosphere to thermal perturbations in the lower stratosphere. The results show that generic heating of the lower stratosphere tends to weaken the sub-tropical jets and the tropospheric mean meridional circulations. The positions of the jets, and the extent of the Hadley cells, respond to the distribution of the stratospheric heating, with low latitude heating displacing them poleward, and uniform heating displacing them equatorward. The patterns of response to the low latitude heating are similar to those found to be associated with solar variability in previous observational data analysis, and to the effects of varying solar UV radiation in sophisticated AGCMs. In order to investigate the chain of causality involved in converting the stratospheric thermal forcing to a tropospheric climate signal we conduct an experiment which uses an ensemble of model spin-ups to analyse the time development of the response to an applied stratospheric perturbation. We find that the initial effect of the change in static stability at the tropopause is to reduce the eddy momentum flux convergence in this region. This is followed by a vertical transfer of the momentum forcing anomaly by an anomalous mean circulation to the surface, where it is partly balanced by surface stress anomalies. The unbalanced part drives the evolution of the vertically integrated zonal flow. We conclude that solar heating of the stratosphere may produce changes in the circulation of the troposphere even without any direct forcing below the tropopause. We suggest that the impact of the stratospheric changes on wave propagation is key to the mechanisms involved
Terminology mining in social media
The highly variable and dynamic word usage in social media presents serious challenges for both research and those commercial applications that are geared towards blogs or other user-generated non-editorial texts. This paper discusses and exemplifies a terminology mining approach for dealing with the productive character of the textual environment in social media. We explore the challenges of practically acquiring new terminology, and of modeling similarity and relatedness of terms from observing realistic amounts of data. We also discuss semantic evolution and density, and investigate novel measures for characterizing the preconditions for terminology mining
State of The Art and Hot Aspects in Cloud Data Storage Security
Along with the evolution of cloud computing and cloud storage towards matu-
rity, researchers have analyzed an increasing range of cloud computing security
aspects, data security being an important topic in this area. In this paper, we
examine the state of the art in cloud storage security through an overview of
selected peer reviewed publications. We address the question of defining cloud
storage security and its different aspects, as well as enumerate the main vec-
tors of attack on cloud storage. The reviewed papers present techniques for key
management and controlled disclosure of encrypted data in cloud storage, while
novel ideas regarding secure operations on encrypted data and methods for pro-
tection of data in fully virtualized environments provide a glimpse of the toolbox
available for securing cloud storage. Finally, new challenges such as emergent
government regulation call for solutions to problems that did not receive enough
attention in earlier stages of cloud computing, such as for example geographical
location of data. The methods presented in the papers selected for this review
represent only a small fraction of the wide research effort within cloud storage
security. Nevertheless, they serve as an indication of the diversity of problems
that are being addressed
Item Recommendation with Evolving User Preferences and Experience
Current recommender systems exploit user and item similarities by
collaborative filtering. Some advanced methods also consider the temporal
evolution of item ratings as a global background process. However, all prior
methods disregard the individual evolution of a user's experience level and how
this is expressed in the user's writing in a review community. In this paper,
we model the joint evolution of user experience, interest in specific item
facets, writing style, and rating behavior. This way we can generate individual
recommendations that take into account the user's maturity level (e.g.,
recommending art movies rather than blockbusters for a cinematography expert).
As only item ratings and review texts are observables, we capture the user's
experience and interests in a latent model learned from her reviews, vocabulary
and writing style. We develop a generative HMM-LDA model to trace user
evolution, where the Hidden Markov Model (HMM) traces her latent experience
progressing over time -- with solely user reviews and ratings as observables
over time. The facets of a user's interest are drawn from a Latent Dirichlet
Allocation (LDA) model derived from her reviews, as a function of her (again
latent) experience level. In experiments with five real-world datasets, we show
that our model improves the rating prediction over state-of-the-art baselines,
by a substantial margin. We also show, in a use-case study, that our model
performs well in the assessment of user experience levels
Emergence of Zipf's Law in the Evolution of Communication
Zipf's law seems to be ubiquitous in human languages and appears to be a
universal property of complex communicating systems. Following the early
proposal made by Zipf concerning the presence of a tension between the efforts
of speaker and hearer in a communication system, we introduce evolution by
means of a variational approach to the problem based on Kullback's Minimum
Discrimination of Information Principle. Therefore, using a formalism fully
embedded in the framework of information theory, we demonstrate that Zipf's law
is the only expected outcome of an evolving, communicative system under a
rigorous definition of the communicative tension described by Zipf.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure
An instability of unitary quantum dynamics
Instabilities of equilibrium quantum mechanics are common and
well-understood. They are manifested for example in phase transitions, where a
quantum system becomes so sensitive to perturbations that a symmetry can be
spontaneously broken. Here, we consider the possibility that the time evolution
governing quantum dynamics may be similarly subject to an instability, at which
its unitarity spontaneously breaks down owing to an extreme sensitivity towards
perturbations. We find that indeed such an instability exists, and we explore
its immediate consequences. Interpretations of the results both in terms of
extreme sensitivity to the influence of environmental degrees of freedom, and
in terms of a possible fundamental violation of unitarity are discussed.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures; Conference proceedings DICE 201
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