678 research outputs found
Probabilistic Motion Estimation Based on Temporal Coherence
We develop a theory for the temporal integration of visual motion motivated
by psychophysical experiments. The theory proposes that input data are
temporally grouped and used to predict and estimate the motion flows in the
image sequence. This temporal grouping can be considered a generalization of
the data association techniques used by engineers to study motion sequences.
Our temporal-grouping theory is expressed in terms of the Bayesian
generalization of standard Kalman filtering. To implement the theory we derive
a parallel network which shares some properties of cortical networks. Computer
simulations of this network demonstrate that our theory qualitatively accounts
for psychophysical experiments on motion occlusion and motion outliers.Comment: 40 pages, 7 figure
Classification of personal exposure to radio frequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF) for epidemiological research : evaluation of different exposure assessment methods
The use of personal exposure meters (exposimeters) has been recommended for measuring personal exposure to radio frequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF) from environmental far-field sources in everyday life. However, it is unclear to what extent exposimeter readings are affected by measurements taken when personal mobile and cordless phones are used. In addition, the use of exposimeters in large epidemiological studies is limited due to high costs and large effort for study participants. In the current analysis we aimed to investigate the impact of personal phone use on exposimeter readings and to evaluate different exposure assessment methods potentially useful in epidemiological studies. We collected personal exposimeter measurements during one week and diary data from 166 study participants. Moreover, we collected spot measurements in the participants' bedrooms and data on self-estimated exposure, assessed residential exposure to fixed site transmitters by calculating the geo-coded distance and mean RF-EMF from a geospatial propagation model, and developed an exposure prediction model based on the propagation model and exposure relevant behavior. The mean personal exposure was 0.13mW/m(2), when measurements during personal phone calls were excluded and 0.15mW/m(2), when such measurements were included. The Spearman correlation with personal exposure (without personal phone calls) was 0.42 (95%-CI: 0.29 to 0.55) for the spot measurements, -0.03 (95%-CI: -0.18 to 0.12) for the geo-coded distance, 0.28 (95%-CI: 0.14 to 0.42) for the geospatial propagation model, 0.50 (95%-CI: 0.37 to 0.61) for the full exposure prediction model and 0.06 (95%-CI: -0.10 to 0.21) for self-estimated exposure. In conclusion, personal exposure measured with exposimeters correlated best with the full exposure prediction model and spot measurements. Self-estimated exposure and geo-coded distance turned out to be poor surrogates for personal exposure
Dynamic origin of chirality transfer between chiral surface and achiral ligand in Au38 clusters
The transfer of chirality between nanomolecules is at the core of several applications in chiral technology such as sensing and catalysis. However, the origin of this phenomenon and how exactly nanoscale objects transfer chirality to molecules in their vicinity remain largely obscure. Here, we show that the transfer of chirality for the intrinsically chiral gold cluster Au38(SR)24 is site dependent; that is, it differs depending on the ligand-binding sites. This is closely related to the dynamic nature of the ligands on the cluster surface. Using a combination of NMR techniques and molecular dynamics simulations, we could assign the four symmetry- unique ligands on the cluster. The study reveals largely different conformational dynamics of the bound ligands, explaining the diverse diastereotopicities observed for the CH2 protons of the ligands. Although chirality is a structural property, our study reveals the importance of dynamics for the transfer of chirality
Normalizing flow-based deep variational Bayesian network for seismic multi-hazards and impacts estimation from InSAR imagery
Onsite disasters like earthquakes can trigger cascading hazards and impacts,
such as landslides and infrastructure damage, leading to catastrophic losses;
thus, rapid and accurate estimates are crucial for timely and effective
post-disaster responses. Interferometric Synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) data
is important in providing high-resolution onsite information for rapid hazard
estimation. Most recent methods using InSAR imagery signals predict a single
type of hazard and thus often suffer low accuracy due to noisy and complex
signals induced by co-located hazards, impacts, and irrelevant environmental
changes (e.g., vegetation changes, human activities). We introduce a novel
stochastic variational inference with normalizing flows derived to jointly
approximate posteriors of multiple unobserved hazards and impacts from noisy
InSAR imagery
Two-dimensional electron gas at noble-metal surfaces
The electrons of the surface states on the (I 11) surfaces of the noble metals An, Ag, and Cu form a quasi-two-dimensional (2D) free electron gas which is confined to the first few atomic layers at the crystal surface. They are scattered by the potential associated with surface defects, e.g. impurity atoms, adatoms, or step edges, leading to quantum-interference patterns in the local density of states around these defects, We have used the quantum-interference phenomena to quantitatively measure the electron phase-relaxation length and to probe long-range adsorbate interactions
Quantum Holographic Encoding in a Two-dimensional Electron Gas
The advent of bottom-up atomic manipulation heralded a new horizon for
attainable information density, as it allowed a bit of information to be
represented by a single atom. The discrete spacing between atoms in condensed
matter has thus set a rigid limit on the maximum possible information density.
While modern technologies are still far from this scale, all theoretical
downscaling of devices terminates at this spatial limit. Here, however, we
break this barrier with electronic quantum encoding scaled to subatomic
densities. We use atomic manipulation to first construct open
nanostructures--"molecular holograms"--which in turn concentrate information
into a medium free of lattice constraints: the quantum states of a
two-dimensional degenerate Fermi gas of electrons. The information embedded in
the holograms is transcoded at even smaller length scales into an atomically
uniform area of a copper surface, where it is densely projected into both two
spatial degrees of freedom and a third holographic dimension mapped to energy.
In analogy to optical volume holography, this requires precise amplitude and
phase engineering of electron wavefunctions to assemble pages of information
volumetrically. This data is read out by mapping the energy-resolved electron
density of states with a scanning tunnelling microscope. As the projection and
readout are both extremely near-field, and because we use native quantum states
rather than an external beam, we are not limited by lensing or collimation and
can create electronically projected objects with features as small as ~0.3 nm.
These techniques reach unprecedented densities exceeding 20 bits/nm2 and place
tens of bits into a single fermionic state.Comment: Published online 25 January 2009 in Nature Nanotechnology; 12 page
manuscript (including 4 figures) + 2 page supplement (including 1 figure);
supplementary movie available at http://mota.stanford.ed
Modelling and simulating change in reforesting mountain landscapes using a social-ecological framework
Natural reforestation of European mountain landscapes raises major environmental and societal issues. With local stakeholders in the Pyrenees National Park area (France), we studied agricultural landscape colonisation by ash (Fraxinus excelsior) to enlighten its impacts on biodiversity and other landscape functions of importance for the valley socio-economics. The study comprised an integrated assessment of land-use and land-cover change (LUCC) since the 1950s, and a scenario analysis of alternative future policy. We combined knowledge and methods from landscape ecology, land change and agricultural sciences, and a set of coordinated field studies to capture interactions and feedback in the local landscape/land-use system. Our results elicited the hierarchically-nested relationships between social and ecological processes. Agricultural change played a preeminent role in the spatial and temporal patterns of LUCC. Landscape colonisation by ash at the parcel level of organisation was merely controlled by grassland management, and in fact depended on the farmer's land management at the whole-farm level. LUCC patterns at the landscape level depended to a great extent on interactions between farm household behaviours and the spatial arrangement of landholdings within the landscape mosaic. Our results stressed the need to represent the local SES function at a fine scale to adequately capture scenarios of change in landscape functions. These findings orientated our modelling choices in the building an agent-based model for LUCC simulation (SMASH - Spatialized Multi-Agent System of landscape colonization by ASH). We discuss our method and results with reference to topical issues in interdisciplinary research into the sustainability of multifunctional landscapes
One-Dimensional Energy Dispersion of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes by Resonant Electron Scattering
We characterized the energy band dispersion near the Fermi level in
single-walled carbon nanotubes using low-temperature scanning tunneling
microscopy. Analysis of energy dependent standing wave oscillations, which
result from quantum interference of electrons resonantly scattered by defects,
yield a linear energy dispersion near EF, and indicate the importance of parity
in scattering for armchair single-walled carbon nanotubes. Additionally, these
data provide values of the tight-binding overlap integral and Fermi wavevector
in good agreement with previous work, but indicate that the electron coherence
length is substantially shortened.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
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