A connectionist account of the emergence of the literal-metaphorical-anomalous distinction in young children

We present the first developmental computational model of metaphor comprehension, which seeks to relate the emergence of a distinction between literal and non-literal similarity in young children to the development of semantic representations. The model gradually learns to distinguish literal from metaphorical semantic juxtapositions as it acquires more knowledge about the vehicle domain. In accordance with Keil (1986), the separation of literal from metaphorical comparisons is found to depend on the maturity of the vehicle concept stored within the network. The model generates a number of explicit novel predictions

Improved surface quality of anisotropically etched silicon {111} planes for mm-scale integrated optics

We have studied the surface quality of millimeter-scale optical mirrors produced by etching CZ and FZ silicon wafers in potassium hydroxide to expose the $\{111\}$ planes. We find that the FZ surfaces have four times lower noise power at spatial frequencies up to $500\, {mm}^{-1}$. We conclude that mirrors made using FZ wafers have higher optical quality

Fertility control for invasive pest mammals – Fare we making progress?

Hinds, L.A

ICP polishing of silicon for high quality optical resonators on a chip

Miniature concave hollows, made by wet etching silicon through a circular mask, can be used as mirror substrates for building optical micro-cavities on a chip. In this paper we investigate how ICP polishing improves both shape and roughness of the mirror substrates. We characterise the evolution of the surfaces during the ICP polishing using white-light optical profilometry and atomic force microscopy. A surface roughness of 1 nm is reached, which reduces to 0.5 nm after coating with a high reflectivity dielectric. With such smooth mirrors, the optical cavity finesse is now limited by the shape of the underlying mirror