7,196 research outputs found
Multi-camera Realtime 3D Tracking of Multiple Flying Animals
Automated tracking of animal movement allows analyses that would not
otherwise be possible by providing great quantities of data. The additional
capability of tracking in realtime - with minimal latency - opens up the
experimental possibility of manipulating sensory feedback, thus allowing
detailed explorations of the neural basis for control of behavior. Here we
describe a new system capable of tracking the position and body orientation of
animals such as flies and birds. The system operates with less than 40 msec
latency and can track multiple animals simultaneously. To achieve these
results, a multi target tracking algorithm was developed based on the Extended
Kalman Filter and the Nearest Neighbor Standard Filter data association
algorithm. In one implementation, an eleven camera system is capable of
tracking three flies simultaneously at 60 frames per second using a gigabit
network of nine standard Intel Pentium 4 and Core 2 Duo computers. This
manuscript presents the rationale and details of the algorithms employed and
shows three implementations of the system. An experiment was performed using
the tracking system to measure the effect of visual contrast on the flight
speed of Drosophila melanogaster. At low contrasts, speed is more variable and
faster on average than at high contrasts. Thus, the system is already a useful
tool to study the neurobiology and behavior of freely flying animals. If
combined with other techniques, such as `virtual reality'-type computer
graphics or genetic manipulation, the tracking system would offer a powerful
new way to investigate the biology of flying animals.Comment: pdfTeX using libpoppler 3.141592-1.40.3-2.2 (Web2C 7.5.6), 18 pages
with 9 figure
Quantum Effective Action in Spacetimes with Branes and Boundaries
We construct quantum effective action in spacetime with branes/boundaries.
This construction is based on the reduction of the underlying Neumann type
boundary value problem for the propagator of the theory to that of the much
more manageable Dirichlet problem. In its turn, this reduction follows from the
recently suggested Neumann-Dirichlet duality which we extend beyond the tree
level approximation. In the one-loop approximation this duality suggests that
the functional determinant of the differential operator subject to Neumann
boundary conditions in the bulk factorizes into the product of its Dirichlet
counterpart and the functional determinant of a special operator on the brane
-- the inverse of the brane-to-brane propagator. As a byproduct of this
relation we suggest a new method for surface terms of the heat kernel
expansion. This method allows one to circumvent well-known difficulties in heat
kernel theory on manifolds with boundaries for a wide class of generalized
Neumann boundary conditions. In particular, we easily recover several lowest
order surface terms in the case of Robin and oblique boundary conditions. We
briefly discuss multi-loop applications of the suggested Dirichlet reduction
and the prospects of constructing the universal background field method for
systems with branes/boundaries, analogous to the Schwinger-DeWitt technique.Comment: LaTeX, 25 pages, final version, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Spectral Action for Robertson-Walker metrics
We use the Euler-Maclaurin formula and the Feynman-Kac formula to extend our
previous method of computation of the spectral action based on the Poisson
summation formula. We show how to compute directly the spectral action for the
general case of Robertson-Walker metrics. We check the terms of the expansion
up to a_6 against the known universal formulas of Gilkey and compute the
expansion up to a_{10} using our direct method
Phase transition in a static granular system
We find that a column of glass beads exhibits a well-defined transition
between two phases that differ in their resistance to shear. Pulses of
fluidization are used to prepare static states with well-defined particle
volume fractions in the range 0.57-0.63. The resistance to shear is
determined by slowly inserting a rod into the column of beads. The transition
occurs at for a range of speeds of the rod.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. The paper is significantly extended, including
new dat
Effective action and heat kernel in a toy model of brane-induced gravity
We apply a recently suggested technique of the Neumann-Dirichlet reduction to
a toy model of brane-induced gravity for the calculation of its quantum
one-loop effective action. This model is represented by a massive scalar field
in the -dimensional flat bulk supplied with the -dimensional kinetic
term localized on a flat brane and mimicking the brane Einstein term of the
Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati (DGP) model. We obtain the inverse mass expansion of
the effective action and its ultraviolet divergences which turn out to be
non-vanishing for both even and odd spacetime dimensionality . For the
massless case, which corresponds to a limit of the toy DGP model, we obtain the
Coleman-Weinberg type effective potential of the system. We also obtain the
proper time expansion of the heat kernel in this model associated with the
generalized Neumann boundary conditions containing second order tangential
derivatives. We show that in addition to the usual integer and half-integer
powers of the proper time this expansion exhibits, depending on the dimension
, either logarithmic terms or powers multiple of one quarter. This property
is considered in the context of strong ellipticity of the boundary value
problem, which can be violated when the Euclidean action of the theory is not
positive definite.Comment: LaTeX, 20 pages, new references added, typos correcte
Brief of Law Professors as \u3cem\u3eAmici Curiae\u3c/em\u3e in Support of Petitioner
Amici curiae respectfully submit this brief in support of Petitioner, Edward Lane, encouraging the reversal of the judgment of the Eleventh Circuit, because the judgment below is inconsistent with both the Court’s general historical approach to public employee speech and the specific approach to such speech that the Court adopted in Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410 (2006).
Amici are law professors who teach and write about the constitutional rights of public employees and have published a number of scholarly articles on these topics. Amici have no financial stake in the outcome of this case, and in this brief do not ask the Court to reconsider Garcetti. But we are troubled by the tendency in some courts of appeals to misread this Court’s decision in Garcettito articulate ever-broadening readings of the narrow exemption from First Amendment protection the Court carved out. We file this brief to urge this Court to correct these rulings by clarifying the narrow nature of the exemption it recognized
Spectral action for torsion with and without boundaries
We derive a commutative spectral triple and study the spectral action for a
rather general geometric setting which includes the (skew-symmetric) torsion
and the chiral bag conditions on the boundary. The spectral action splits into
bulk and boundary parts. In the bulk, we clarify certain issues of the previous
calculations, show that many terms in fact cancel out, and demonstrate that
this cancellation is a result of the chiral symmetry of spectral action. On the
boundary, we calculate several leading terms in the expansion of spectral
action in four dimensions for vanishing chiral parameter of the
boundary conditions, and show that is a critical point of the action
in any dimension and at all orders of the expansion.Comment: 16 pages, references adde
Boundary dynamics and multiple reflection expansion for Robin boundary conditions
In the presence of a boundary interaction, Neumann boundary conditions should
be modified to contain a function S of the boundary fields: (\nabla_N +S)\phi
=0. Information on quantum boundary dynamics is then encoded in the
-dependent part of the effective action. In the present paper we extend the
multiple reflection expansion method to the Robin boundary conditions mentioned
above, and calculate the heat kernel and the effective action (i) for constant
S, (ii) to the order S^2 with an arbitrary number of tangential derivatives.
Some applications to symmetry breaking effects, tachyon condensation and brane
world are briefly discussed.Comment: latex, 22 pages, no figure
K\"ahlerian Twistor Spinors
On a K\"ahler spin manifold K\"ahlerian twistor spinors are a natural
analogue of twistor spinors on Riemannian spin manifolds. They are defined as
sections in the kernel of a first order differential operator adapted to the
K\"ahler structure, called K\"ahlerian twistor (Penrose) operator. We study
K\"ahlerian twistor spinors and give a complete description of compact K\"ahler
manifolds of constant scalar curvature admitting such spinors. As in the
Riemannian case, the existence of K\"ahlerian twistor spinors is related to the
lower bound of the spectrum of the Dirac operator.Comment: shorter version; to appear in Math.
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