Quasi-monotonic segmentation of state variable behavior for reactive control

Real-world agents must react to changing conditions as they execute planned tasks. Conditions are typically monitored through time series representing state variables. While some predicates on these times series only consider one measure at a time, other predicates, sometimes called episodic predicates, consider sets of measures. We consider a special class of episodic predicates based on segmentation of the the measures into quasi-monotonic intervals where each interval is either quasi-increasing, quasi-decreasing, or quasi-flat. While being scale-based, this approach is also computational efficient and results can be computed exactly without need for approximation algorithms. Our approach is compared to linear spline and regression analysis

Pauline Spiritual Warfare: How a Warfare Mentality Shaped Paul’s Approach to Missions

Paul’s understanding of the condition of nonbelievers and his understanding of how Satan attacks believers is explained in this article. In support of this effort the biblical data is examined and lessons arising from the Pauline corpus in relation to these two issues are noted. Paul’s perspective on these two issues is explored as it relates to his missiological practice. The article, then, concludes with some contemporary applications of this study as they affect current missiological practices

Pauline Spiritual Warfare: How a Warfare Mentality Shaped Paul’s Approach to Missions

Paul’s understanding of the condition of nonbelievers and his understanding of how Satan attacks believers is explained in this article. In support of this effort the biblical data is examined and lessons arising from the Pauline corpus in relation to these two issues are noted. Paul’s perspective on these two issues is explored as it relates to his missiological practice. The article, then, concludes with some contemporary applications of this study as they affect current missiological practices

Studies of Hadronization Mechanisms using Pion Electroproduction in Deep Inelastic Scattering from Nuclei

Atomic nuclei can be used as spatial analyzers of the hadronization process in semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering. The study of this process using fully-identified final state hadrons began with the HERMES program in the late 1990s, and is now continuing at Jefferson Lab. In the measurement described here, electrons and positive pions were measured from a 5 GeV electron beam incident on targets of liquid deuterium, C, Fe, and Pb using CLAS in Hall B. The broadening of the transverse momentum of positive pions has been studied in detail as a function of multiple kinematic variables, and interpreted in terms of the transport of the struck quark through the nuclear systems. New insights are being obtained into the hadronization process from these studies; and experiments of this type can be relevant for the interpretation of jet quenching and proton-nucleus collisions at RHIC and LHC. These measurements will be extended in the next few years with the approved JLab experiment E12-06-117, and later at a future Electron-Ion Collider.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures; proceedings of the 19th Particles & Nuclei International Conference (PANIC), 2011, with one updated figur

Studies of Parton Propagation and Hadron Formation in the Space-Time Domain

Over the past decade, new data from HERMES, Jefferson Lab, Fermilab, and RHIC that connect to parton propagation and hadron formation have become available. Semi-inclusive DIS on nuclei, the Drell-Yan reaction, and heavy-ion collisions all bring different kinds of information on parton propagation within a medium, while the most direct information on hadron formation comes from the DIS data. Over the next decade one can hope to begin to understand these data within a unified picture. We briefly survey the most relevant data and the common elements of the physics picture, then highlight the new Jefferson Lab data, and close with a prospective for the future.Comment: Invited talk delivered at the Sixth International Conference on Perspectives in Hadronic Physics, ICTP, Trieste, Italy, 12-16 May 2008. 8 pages, 5 figure

Flexibility defines structure in crystals of amphiphilic DNA nanostars.

DNA nanostructures with programmable shape and interactions can be used as building blocks for the self-assembly of crystalline materials with prescribed nanoscale features, holding a vast technological potential. Structural rigidity and bond directionality have been recognised as key design features for DNA motifs to sustain long-range order in 3D, but the practical challenges associated with prescribing building-block geometry with sufficient accuracy have limited the variety of available designs. We have recently introduced a novel platform for the one-pot preparation of crystalline DNA frameworks supported by a combination of Watson-Crick base pairing and hydrophobic forces (Brady et al 2017 Nano Lett. 17 3276-81). Here we use small angle x-ray scattering and coarse-grained molecular simulations to demonstrate that, as opposed to available all-DNA approaches, amphiphilic motifs do not rely on structural rigidity to support long-range order. Instead, the flexibility of amphiphilic DNA building-blocks is a crucial feature for successful crystallisation

MOCVD of Cd(1-x)Zn(x)S/CdTe PV cells using an ultra-thin absorber layer

Ultra-thin Cd(₁ ₋ ₓ)Zn(ₓ)S/CdTe devices were produced by atmospheric pressure metal organic chemical vapour deposition (AP-MOCVD) with varying CdTe absorber thicknesses ranging from 1.0 to 0.2 mm and compared to baseline cells with total CdTe thickness of 2.25μ. The ultra-thin CdTe layers (≤1 μm) were intentionally doped with As to induce p-type conductivity in the absorber. Cell performance reduced with CdTe thickness, with the magnitude of photo-current generation loss becoming more significant for the very thin CdTe layers. The decline in cell performance was lower than the optically limited performance relating to a decrease in shunt resistance, Rsh, especially for the thinnest cells due to areas of incomplete CdTe coverage and large presence of pin-holes leading to micro-shorts. Incorporation of Zn into the CdS window layer improved cell performance for all devices except when 0.2 μm thick CdTe was used. This improvement was markedly in the blue region owing to enhanced optical transparency of the window layer. External quantum efficiency (EQE) measurements showed a red-shift of the window layer absorption edge due to leaching out of Zn during the CdCl₂ treatment. Reduction of the CdCl₂ deposition time was demonstrated to recover the blue response of the ultra-thin cells

Unbiased clustering estimates with the DESI fibre assignment

The Emission Line Galaxy survey made by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey will be created from five passes of the instrument on the sky. On each pass, the constrained mobility of the ends of the fibres in the DESI focal plane means that the angular-distribution of targets that can be observed is limited. Thus, the clustering of samples constructed using a limited number of passes will be strongly affected by missing targets. In two recent papers, we showed how the effect of missing galaxies can be corrected when calculating the correlation function using a weighting scheme for pairs. Using mock galaxy catalogues we now show that this method provides an unbiased estimator of the true correlation function for the DESI survey after any number of passes. We use multiple mocks to determine the expected errors given one to four passes, compared to an idealised survey observing an equivalent number of randomly selected targets. On BAO scales, we find that the error is a factor 2 worse after one pass, but that after three or more passes, the errors are very similar. Thus we find that the fibre assignment strategy enforced by the design of DESI will not affect the cosmological measurements to be made by the survey, and can be removed as a potential risk for this experiment.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figure