Thinking About Fairness & Achieving Balance in Mediation

This Article identifies five sources of bias present in mediation practice: (1) categorization, (2) attribution, (3) metaphorical expression, (4) norming, and (5) framing. For each of these cognitive efficiencies, which contribute to bias in mediation, the author provides practice recommendations. Finally, the author suggests that the Article be read as a proposal for further thought and inquiry to improve the fairness of mediators

On the genus Halirages (Crustacea, Amphipoda), with the description of two new species from Scandinavia and Arctic Europe

A new common deep-sea species of Halirages Boeck, 1871 closely related to H.qvadridentatus G.O. Sars, 1877, H.cainae sp. nov., is described after specimens collected in the Norwegian Sea during the MAREANO 2009-111 cruise. Examination of the syntypes of H. elegans Norman, 1882 demonstrates that Norman's species is a junior synonym of H.qvadridentatus G.O. Sars, 1877 and that the species usually named H.elegans in literature was actually undescribed. The name H.stappersi sp. nov. is proposed for that species. A key to and a checklist of Halirages species is given

Excitation Backprop for RNNs

Deep models are state-of-the-art for many vision tasks including video action recognition and video captioning. Models are trained to caption or classify activity in videos, but little is known about the evidence used to make such decisions. Grounding decisions made by deep networks has been studied in spatial visual content, giving more insight into model predictions for images. However, such studies are relatively lacking for models of spatiotemporal visual content - videos. In this work, we devise a formulation that simultaneously grounds evidence in space and time, in a single pass, using top-down saliency. We visualize the spatiotemporal cues that contribute to a deep model's classification/captioning output using the model's internal representation. Based on these spatiotemporal cues, we are able to localize segments within a video that correspond with a specific action, or phrase from a caption, without explicitly optimizing/training for these tasks.Comment: CVPR 2018 Camera Ready Versio

Examining the role of social cues in early word learning

Infant word learning has become a popular field of study over the past decade. Research during this time has shown that infants can learn, in a short period of time, to attach words to objects. Two experiments on the role of social cues in early word learning are reported using tightly controlled conditions. Fourteen- and 18-month-old infants were trained by viewing a video of an adult pointing and nodding towards one of two different novel objects appearing on a screen simultaneously, while novel labels were emitted through a speaker. Infants’ looking times to each object were recorded both during training and test trials. Our analyses indicated that both 14-and 18-month-olds looked significantly longer at the object that the adult pointed to in the training trials. However, only 18-month-olds showed any evidence of looking longer at the target object during the test in the consistent condition than in the inconsistent (control) condition. These studies are important because they show, in a controlled laboratory study of infant word learning, that different types of social cues are available at different ages. Fourteen-month-olds are aware of adult pointing and head turning and can follow those cues to an object during training. However, it isn’t until 18 months of age that infants seem able to use those cues in the service of actual word learning.Psycholog

Pulsar science with the Five hundred metre Aperture Spherical Telescope

With a collecting area of 70 000 m^2, the Five hundred metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) will allow for great advances in pulsar astronomy. We have performed simulations to estimate the number of previously unknown pulsars FAST will find with its 19-beam or possibly 100-beam receivers for different survey strategies. With the 19-beam receiver, a total of 5200 previously unknown pulsars could be discovered in the Galactic plane, including about 460 millisecond pulsars (MSPs). Such a survey would take just over 200 days with eight hours survey time per day. We also estimate that, with about 80 six-hour days, a survey of M31 and M33 could yield 50--100 extra-Galactic pulsars. A 19-beam receiver would produce just under 500 MB of data per second and requires about 9 tera-ops to perform the major part of a real time analysis. We also simulate the logistics of high-precision timing of MSPs with FAST. Timing of the 50 brightest MSPs to a signal-to-noise of 500 would take about 24 hours per epoch.Comment: 9 pages, 10 figures; accepted for publication in A&

Drag-free and attitude control for the GOCE satellite

The paper concerns Drag-Free and Attitude Control of the European satellite Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) during the science phase. Design has followed Embedded Model Control, where a spacecraft/environment discrete-time model becomes the realtime control core and is interfaced to actuators and sensors via tuneable feedback laws. Drag-free control implies cancelling non-gravitational forces and all torques, leaving the satellite to free fall subject only to gravity. In addition, for reasons of science, the spacecraft must be carefully aligned to the local orbital frame, retrieved from range and rate of a Global Positioning System receiver. Accurate drag-free and attitude control requires proportional and low-noise thrusting, which in turn raises the problem of propellant saving. Six-axis drag-free control is driven by accurate acceleration measurements provided by the mission payload. Their angular components must be combined with the star-tracker attitude so as to compensate accelerometer drift. Simulated results are presented and discusse

Superbroadcasting and classical information

We address the problem of broadcasting N copies of a generic qubit state to M>N copies by estimating its direction and preparing a suitable output state according to the outcome of the estimate. This semiclassical broadcasting protocol is more restrictive than a general one, since it requires an intermediate step where classical information is extracted and processed. However, we prove that a suboptimal superbroadcasting, namely broadcasting with simultaneous purification of the local output states with respect to the input ones, is possible. We show that in the asymptotic limit of $M \to \infty$ the purification rate converges to the optimal one, proving the conjecture that optimal broadcasting and state estimation are asymptotically equivalent. We also show that it is possible to achieve superbroadcasting with simultaneous inversion of the Bloch vector direction (universal NOT). We prove that in this case the semiclassical procedure of state estimation and preparation turns out to be optimal. We finally analyse semiclassical superbroadcasting in the phase-covariant case.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figure