345,946 research outputs found
Robustness of stress focusing in soft lattices under topology-switching deformation
Recent developments in topological mechanics have demonstrated the ability of
Maxwell lattices to effectively focus stress along domain walls between
differently polarized domains. The focusing ability can be exploited to protect
the lattice bulk from accidental stress concentration -- and eventually onset
and propagation of fracture -- at structural hot spots such as defects and
cracks. A recent study has revisited the problem for structural lattices
featuring non-ideal hinges, showing that the focusing remains robust, albeit
diluted in strength. Realizing that the problem of domain wall localization has
been traditionally framed in the context of linear elasticity, in this work we
extend the study to the realm of soft structures undergoing nonlinear finite
deformation. Through experiments performed on silicone hyperelastic prototypes,
we assess and quantify the robustness of the phenomenon against the macroscopic
shape changes induced by large deformation, with special attention to
deformation levels that alter the topology of the bulk, lifting the topological
protection. Furthermore, we identify a simple geometric indicator for this
transition.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, +1 supplemental materials figur
An Object-Based Interpretation of Audiovisual Processing
Visual cues help listeners follow conversation in a complex acoustic environment. Many audiovisual research studies focus on how sensory cues are combined to optimize perception, either in terms of minimizing the uncertainty in the sensory estimate or maximizing intelligibility, particularly in speech understanding. From an auditory perception perspective, a fundamental question that has not been fully addressed is how visual information aids the ability to select and focus on one auditory object in the presence of competing sounds in a busy auditory scene. In this chapter, audiovisual integration is presented from an object-based attention viewpoint. In particular, it is argued that a stricter delineation of the concepts of multisensory integration versus binding would facilitate a deeper understanding of the nature of how information is combined across senses. Furthermore, using an object-based theoretical framework to distinguish binding as a distinct form of multisensory integration generates testable hypotheses with behavioral predictions that can account for different aspects of multisensory interactions. In this chapter, classic multisensory illusion paradigms are revisited and discussed in the context of multisensory binding. The chapter also describes multisensory experiments that focus on addressing how visual stimuli help listeners parse complex auditory scenes. Finally, it concludes with a discussion of the potential mechanisms by which audiovisual processing might resolve competition between concurrent sounds in order to solve the cocktail party problem
The scar mechanism revisited
Unstable periodic orbits are known to originate scars on some eigenfunctions
of classically chaotic systems through recurrences causing that some part of an
initial distribution of quantum probability in its vicinity returns
periodically close to the initial point. In the energy domain, these
recurrences are seen to accumulate quantum density along the orbit by a
constructive interference mechanism when the appropriate quantization (on the
action of the scarring orbit) is fulfilled. Other quantized phase space
circuits, such as those defined by homoclinic tori, are also important in the
coherent transport of quantum density in chaotic systems. The relationship of
this secondary quantum transport mechanism with the standard mechanism for
scarring is here discussed and analyzed.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure
Iterative criteria-based approach to engineering the requirements of software development methodologies
Software engineering endeavours are typically based on and governed by the requirements of the target software; requirements identification is therefore an integral part of software development methodologies. Similarly, engineering a software development methodology (SDM) involves the identification of the requirements of the target methodology. Methodology engineering approaches pay special attention to this issue; however, they make little use of existing methodologies as sources of insight into methodology requirements. The authors propose an iterative method for eliciting and specifying the requirements of a SDM using existing methodologies as supplementary resources. The method is performed as the analysis phase of a methodology engineering process aimed at the ultimate design and implementation of a target methodology. An initial set of requirements is first identified through analysing the characteristics of the development situation at hand and/or via delineating the general features desirable in the target methodology. These initial requirements are used as evaluation criteria; refined through iterative application to a select set of relevant methodologies. The finalised criteria highlight the qualities that the target methodology is expected to possess, and are therefore used as a basis for de. ning the final set of requirements. In an example, the authors demonstrate how the proposed elicitation process can be used for identifying the requirements of a general object-oriented SDM. Owing to its basis in knowledge gained from existing methodologies and practices, the proposed method can help methodology engineers produce a set of requirements that is not only more complete in span, but also more concrete and rigorous
The Permit Power Revisited: The Theory and Practice of Regulatory Permits in the Administrative State
Two decades ago, Professor Richard Epstein fired a shot at the administrative state that has gone largely unanswered in legal scholarship. His target was the permit power, under which legislatures prohibit a specified activity by statute and delegate to administrative agencies the discretionary power to authorize the activity under terms the agency mandates in a regulatory permit. Accurately describing the permit power as an enormous power in the state, Epstein bemoaned that it had received scant attention in the academic literature. He sought to fill that gap. Centered on the premise that the permit power represents a complete inversion of the proper distribution of power within a legal system, Epstein launched a scathing critique of regulatory permitting in operation, condemning it as a racket for administrative abuses and excesses.
Epstein\u27s assessment of the permit power was and remains accurate in three respects: it is vast in scope, it is ripe for administrative abuse, and it has been largely ignored in legal scholarship. The problem is that, beyond what he got right about the permit power, most of Epstein\u27s critique was based on an incomplete caricature of permitting in theory and practice.
This Article is the first to return comprehensively to the permit power since Epstein\u27s critique, offering a deep account of the theory and practice of regulatory permits in the administrative state. This Article opens by defining the various types of regulatory permits and describing the scope of permitting in the regulatory state. From there it compares different permit design approaches and explores the advantages of general permits, including their ability to mitigate many of the concerns Epstein advanced. This Article then applies a theoretical model to environmental degradation problems and concludes that if certain conditions are met, general permits can effectively respond to many of the complex policy problems of the future. Finally, this Article adds to the scholarship initiated by Epstein by proposing a set of default rules and exceptions for permit design and suggesting how they apply to complex policy problems
Skeleton Key: Image Captioning by Skeleton-Attribute Decomposition
Recently, there has been a lot of interest in automatically generating
descriptions for an image. Most existing language-model based approaches for
this task learn to generate an image description word by word in its original
word order. However, for humans, it is more natural to locate the objects and
their relationships first, and then elaborate on each object, describing
notable attributes. We present a coarse-to-fine method that decomposes the
original image description into a skeleton sentence and its attributes, and
generates the skeleton sentence and attribute phrases separately. By this
decomposition, our method can generate more accurate and novel descriptions
than the previous state-of-the-art. Experimental results on the MS-COCO and a
larger scale Stock3M datasets show that our algorithm yields consistent
improvements across different evaluation metrics, especially on the SPICE
metric, which has much higher correlation with human ratings than the
conventional metrics. Furthermore, our algorithm can generate descriptions with
varied length, benefiting from the separate control of the skeleton and
attributes. This enables image description generation that better accommodates
user preferences.Comment: Accepted by CVPR 201
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