Theseus' Paradox:: History, Authenticity and Identity

In the Life of Theseus, Plutarch observes: "The ship on which Theseus sailed with the youths and returned in safety, the thirty-oared galley, was preserved by the Athenians down to the time of Demetrius Phalereus. They took away the old timbers from time to time, and put new and sound ones in their places, so that the vessel became a standing illustration for the philosophers in the mooted question of growth, some declaring that it remained the same, others that it was not the same vessel.” (Plutarch, Perrin, 1914, V 1,49). Thereafter, the paradox sparked discussion regarding an object's authenticity and identity. For Barthes (1974), the paradox presents form-permanence as a Structural argument. Walter Benjamin (1969) disagreed noting that "[t]he presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity.” When original producers are not available we can evaluate the relationship of contemporary design with historic modes of production through Material Culture. By privileging knowledge of what the spatial product is and how it was produced, the essay examines the role of History in addressing spatial authenticity. The essay uses Theseus' Paradox as a theoretical framework to evaluate authenticity and identity. Architectural objects either continue or discontinue the aesthetic language of their context; as designers cite History to generate designs claiming contextual site sensitivity, it is important to evaluate the validity of this approach. Specifically, Theseus' Ship is deconstructed using the philosophical arguments of atomism and essentialism. Atomism, a Positivist tool, determines elementary physical characteristics of a society's spatial practice. Essentialism (Aristotle) focuses on the nature of the spatial product: what it has been, it is, and could be. Designers can use Theseus' Paradox as a comparative framework to evaluate to what degree their proposal continues authentic modes of production rooted in historic spatial traditions and identity-based placemaking

Embodied Contradictions and Post-Industrial Built Environments

In October of 2004, the Museo de Medicina Laboral (Museum of Labor Medicine), opened to the public in Real del Monte, State of Hidalgo, Mexico. The museum, located on the grounds of what had been the Hospital Minero (Mining Hospital), was a building complex conceived, built, and operationalized at the height of Mexico’s Industrial Revolution and the region’s only medical facility specializing in the healthcare needs of miners and their families. Utilizing historical analysis, the hospital reveals contradictions frequently embodied by the era’s Modernist built environments. Inaugurated in 1907, the hospital was the culmination of the United States Smelting Refining and Mining Company (USSRMC) and its Mexican subsidiary, Compañía Real del Monte y Pachuca’s (CRMyP) efforts to bring healthcare to its employees while maximizing production. On one hand, the hospital’s design and operation expressed an optimism wrought by the dissemination of positivist and utilitarian philosophies and economic growth spurred by technological innovation; on the other, growing wealth inequality and deteriorating, often brutal, labor conditions. Nearly 120 years later, the hospital again embodies a global reality. In contemporary post-industrialist economies, once these built environments cease being productive, they are usually abandoned or demolished; only a few are transformed and repositioned for other uses. As the region’s mining industry ceased productivity, the hospital was first abandoned and later rescued by a newly privatized enterprise that donated the medical building complex to a non-for-profit civil association focused on mining heritage. Now the Museum, an architectural expression that fused global and local economic, technological, and aesthetic sensibilities, has become an example of commodified didactic heritage

SIMD acceleration for HEVC decoding

Single instruction multiple data (SIMD) instructions have been commonly used to accelerate video codecs. The recently introduced High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) codec like its predecessors is based on the hybrid video codec principle and, therefore, is also well suited to be accelerated with SIMD. In this paper we present the SIMD optimization for the entire HEVC decoder for all major SIMD instruction set architectures. Evaluation has been performed on 14 mobile and PC platforms covering most major architectures released in recent years. With SIMD, up to 5× speedup can be achieved over the entire HEVC decoder, resulting in up to 133 and 37.8 frames/s on average on a single core for Main profile 1080p and Main10 profile 2160p sequences, respectively.EC/FP7/288653/EU/Low-Power Parallel Computing on GPUs/LPGP

HEVC real-time decoding

The new High Efficiency Video Coding Standard (HEVC) was finalized in January 2013. Compared to its predecessor H.264 / MPEG4-AVC, this new international standard is able to reduce the bitrate by 50% for the same subjective video quality. This paper investigates decoder optimizations that are needed to achieve HEVC real-time software decoding on a mobile processor. It is shown that HEVC real-time decoding up to high definition video is feasible using instruction extensions of the processor while decoding 4K ultra high definition video in real-time requires additional parallel processing. For parallel processing, a picture-level parallel approach has been chosen because it is generic and does not require bitstreams with special indication

HEVC performance and complexity for 4K video

The recently finalized High-Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard was jointly developed by the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) and the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) to improve the compression performance of current video coding standards by 50%. Especially when it comes to transmit high resolution video like 4K over the internet or in broadcast, the 50% bitrate reduction is essential. This paper shows that real-time decoding of 4K video with a frame-level parallel decoding approach using four desktop CPU cores is feasible

Search for Neutral Higgs Bosons in Events with Multiple Bottom Quarks at the Tevatron

The combination of searches performed by the CDF and D0 collaborations at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider for neutral Higgs bosons produced in association with b quarks is reported. The data, corresponding to 2.6 fb-1 of integrated luminosity at CDF and 5.2 fb-1 at D0, have been collected in final states containing three or more b jets. Upper limits are set on the cross section multiplied by the branching ratio varying between 44 pb and 0.7 pb in the Higgs boson mass range 90 to 300 GeV, assuming production of a narrow scalar boson. Significant enhancements to the production of Higgs bosons can be found in theories beyond the standard model, for example in supersymmetry. The results are interpreted as upper limits in the parameter space of the minimal supersymmetric standard model in a benchmark scenario favoring this decay mode.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure

Search for the standard model Higgs boson decaying to a bbˉb\bar{b} pair in events with no charged leptons and large missing transverse energy using the full CDF data set

We report on a search for the standard model Higgs boson produced in association with a vector boson in the full data set of proton-antiproton collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 1.96$ TeV recorded by the CDF II detector at the Tevatron, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 9.45 fb$^{-1}$. We consider events having no identified charged lepton, a transverse energy imbalance, and two or three jets, of which at least one is consistent with originating from the decay of a $b$ quark. We place 95% credibility level upper limits on the production cross section times standard model branching fraction for several mass hypotheses between 90 and $150 \mathrm{GeV}/c^2$. For a Higgs boson mass of $125 \mathrm{GeV}/c^2$, the observed (expected) limit is 6.7 (3.6) times the standard model prediction.Comment: Accepted by Phys. Rev. Let

Search for the standard model Higgs boson decaying to a bb pair in events with one charged lepton and large missing transverse energy using the full CDF data set

We present a search for the standard model Higgs boson produced in association with a W boson in sqrt(s) = 1.96 TeV p-pbar collision data collected with the CDF II detector at the Tevatron corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 9.45 fb-1. In events consistent with the decay of the Higgs boson to a bottom-quark pair and the W boson to an electron or muon and a neutrino, we set 95% credibility level upper limits on the WH production cross section times the H->bb branching ratio as a function of Higgs boson mass. At a Higgs boson mass of 125 GeV/c2 we observe (expect) a limit of 4.9 (2.8) times the standard model value.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett (v2 contains clarifications suggested by PRL

Search for the standard model Higgs boson decaying to a bb pair in events with two oppositely-charged leptons using the full CDF data set

We present a search for the standard model Higgs boson produced in association with a Z boson in data collected with the CDF II detector at the Tevatron, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 9.45/fb. In events consistent with the decay of the Higgs boson to a bottom-quark pair and the Z boson to electron or muon pairs, we set 95% credibility level upper limits on the ZH production cross section times the H -> bb branching ratio as a function of Higgs boson mass. At a Higgs boson mass of 125 GeV/c^2 we observe (expect) a limit of 7.1 (3.9) times the standard model value.Comment: To be submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

Combined Forward-Backward Asymmetry Measurements in Top-Antitop Quark Production at the Tevatron

The CDF and D0 experiments at the Fermilab Tevatron have measured the asymmetry between yields of forward- and backward-produced top and antitop quarks based on their rapidity difference and the asymmetry between their decay leptons. These measurements use the full data sets collected in proton-antiproton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of $\sqrt s =1.96$ TeV. We report the results of combinations of the inclusive asymmetries and their differential dependencies on relevant kinematic quantities. The combined inclusive asymmetry is $A_{\mathrm{FB}}^{t\bar{t}} = 0.128 \pm 0.025$. The combined inclusive and differential asymmetries are consistent with recent standard model predictions