Using SPARQL – the practitioners’ viewpoint

A number of studies have analyzed SPARQL log data to draw conclusions about how SPARQL is being used. To complement this work, a survey of SPARQL users has been undertaken. Whilst confirming some of the conclusions of the previous studies, the current work is able to provide additional insight into how users create SPARQL queries, the difficulties they encounter, and the features they would like to see included in the language. Based on this insight, a number of recommendations are presented to the community. These relate to predicting and avoiding computationally expensive queries; extensions to the language; and extending the search paradigm

Impact of Globalization on Production and Export of Turmeric in India – An Economic Analysis

India is a major supplier of turmeric to the world with more than 60 per cent share in turmeric trade. The production and export performance of turmeric in India have been examined using secondary data for the period from 1974-75 to 2007-08 and exponential form of growth function has been used for the analysis. The growth in production and export of turmeric has been reported significant, because of the high demand coupled with inflation. Instability index has been worked for the production and export for preliberalization and post-liberalization periods. Instability has been observed high for production, export and prices of domestic and international markets and domestic and international prices have shown high integration. For the assessment of direction of trade, the Markov chain model has been used. The data regarding country-wise export of turmeric has shown that the previous export share retention for Indian turmeric has been high in minor importing countries (pooled under others category) (87 %), followed by UAE (49 %), Iran (41 %) and UK (35 %). The countries such as USA and Japan have not been the stable importers of Indian turmeric. The plans for export may be oriented towards these two countries and also plans should be formulated for stabilizing the export of turmeric to other countries. The farmers should be provided training on production of a quality product.Turmeric, Export of turmeric, Indian turmeric, Markov chain model, Agricultural and Food Policy, Q13, Q17,

Dynamic Response of Ising System to a Pulsed Field

The dynamical response to a pulsed magnetic field has been studied here both using Monte Carlo simulation and by solving numerically the meanfield dynamical equation of motion for the Ising model. The ratio R_p of the response magnetisation half-width to the width of the external field pulse has been observed to diverge and pulse susceptibility \chi_p (ratio of the response magnetisation peak height and the pulse height) gives a peak near the order-disorder transition temperature T_c (for the unperturbed system). The Monte Carlo results for Ising system on square lattice show that R_p diverges at T_c, with the exponent $\nu z \cong 2.0$, while \chi_p shows a peak at $T_c^e$, which is a function of the field pulse width $\delta t$. A finite size (in time) scaling analysis shows that $T_c^e = T_c + C (\delta t)^{-1/x}$, with $x = \nu z \cong 2.0$. The meanfield results show that both the divergence of R and the peak in \chi_p occur at the meanfield transition temperature, while the peak height in $\chi_p \sim (\delta t)^y$, $y \cong 1$ for small values of $\delta t$. These results also compare well with an approximate analytical solution of the meanfield equation of motion.Comment: Revtex, Eight encapsulated postscript figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

On the shape of the mass-function of dense clumps in the Hi-GAL fields. II. Using Bayesian inference to study the clump mass function

Context. Stars form in dense, dusty clumps of molecular clouds, but little is known about their origin, their evolution and their detailed physical properties. In particular, the relationship between the mass distribution of these clumps (also known as the "clump mass function", or CMF) and the stellar initial mass function (IMF), is still poorly understood. Aims. In order to better understand how the CMF evolve toward the IMF, and to discern the "true" shape of the CMF, large samples of bona-fide pre- and proto-stellar clumps are required. Two such datasets obtained from the Herschel infrared GALactic Plane Survey (Hi-GAL) have been described in paper I. Robust statistical methods are needed in order to infer the parameters describing the models used to fit the CMF, and to compare the competing models themselves. Methods. In this paper we apply Bayesian inference to the analysis of the CMF of the two regions discussed in Paper I. First, we determine the Bayesian posterior probability distribution for each of the fitted parameters. Then, we carry out a quantitative comparison of the models used to fit the CMF. Results. We have compared the results from several methods implementing Bayesian inference, and we have also analyzed the impact of the choice of priors and the influence of various constraints on the statistical conclusions for the preferred values of the parameters. We find that both parameter estimation and model comparison depend on the choice of parameter priors. Conclusions. Our results confirm our earlier conclusion that the CMFs of the two Hi-GAL regions studied here have very similar shapes but different mass scales. Furthermore, the lognormal model appears to better describe the CMF measured in the two Hi-GAL regions studied here. However, this preliminary conclusion is dependent on the choice of parameters priors.Comment: Submitted for publication to A&A on November 12, 2013. This paper contains 11 pages and 7 figure

DFT plus U study of the structures and properties of the actinide dioxides

The actinide oxides play a vital role in the nuclear fuel cycle. For systems where current experimental measurements are difficult, computational techniques provide a means of predicting their behaviour. However, to date no systematic methodology exists in the literature to calculate the properties of the series, due to the lack of experimental data and the computational complexity of the systems. Here, we present a systematic study where, within the DFT+U formulism, we have parametrized the most suitable Coulombic (U) and exchange (J) parameters for different functionals (LDA, PBE, PBE-Sol and AM05) to reproduce the experimental band-gap and lattice parameters for ThO2, UO2, NpO2, PuO2, AmO2 and CmO2. After successfully identifying the most suitable parameters for these actinide dioxides, we have used our model to describe the electronic structures of the different systems and determine the band structures, optical band-gaps and the Bulk moduli. In general, PBE-Sol provides the most accurate reproduction of the experimental properties, where available. We have employed diamagnetic order for ThO2, PuO2 and CmO2, transverse 3k antiferromagnetic order for UO2 and AmO2, and longitudinal 3k antiferromagnetic order for NpO2. The Fm m cubic symmetry is preserved for diamagnetic ThO2, PuO2 and CmO2 and longitudinal 3k NpO2. For UO2 and AmO2, the transverse 3k antiferromagnetic state results in Pa symmetry, in agreement with recent experimental findings. Although the electronic structure of ThO2 cannot be reproduced by DFT or DFT+U, for UO2, PuO2, NpO2, AmO2 and CmO2, the experimental properties are very well represented when U = 3.35 eV, 6.35 eV, 5.00 eV, 7.00 eV and 6.00 eV, respectively, with J = 0.00 eV, 0.00 eV, 0.75 eV, 0.50 eV and 0.00 eV, respectively

Dynamical phase transition in one-dimensional kinetic Ising model with nonuniform coupling constants

An extension of the Kinetic Ising model with nonuniform coupling constants on a one-dimensional lattice with boundaries is investigated, and the relaxation of such a system towards its equilibrium is studied. Using a transfer matrix method, it is shown that there are cases where the system exhibits a dynamical phase transition. There may be two phases, the fast phase and the slow phase. For some region of the parameter space, the relaxation time is independent of the reaction rates at the boundaries. Changing continuously the reaction rates at the boundaries, however, there is a point where the relaxation times begins changing, as a continuous (nonconstant) function of the reaction rates at the boundaries, so that at this point there is a jump in the derivative of the relaxation time with respect to the reaction rates at the boundaries.Comment: 17 page

Context-Free Path Queries on RDF Graphs

Navigational graph queries are an important class of queries that canextract implicit binary relations over the nodes of input graphs. Most of the navigational query languages used in the RDF community, e.g. property paths in W3C SPARQL 1.1 and nested regular expressions in nSPARQL, are based on the regular expressions. It is known that regular expressions have limited expressivity; for instance, some natural queries, like same generation-queries, are not expressible with regular expressions. To overcome this limitation, in this paper, we present cfSPARQL, an extension of SPARQL query language equipped with context-free grammars. The cfSPARQL language is strictly more expressive than property paths and nested expressions. The additional expressivity can be used for modelling graph similarities, graph summarization and ontology alignment. Despite the increasing expressivity, we show that cfSPARQL still enjoys a low computational complexity and can be evaluated efficiently.Comment: 25 page