There´s more behind it : Perceived depth order biases perceived numerosity/density

Humans have a clear sense of the numerosity of elements in a surface. However, recent studies showed that the binding of features to the single elements is severely limited. By studying the relationship of depth order and perceived numerosity of overlapping, pseudotransparent surfaces, we show that the binding of elements to the surfaces is also limited. In transparent motion, anisotropies for perceived depth order and perceived numerosity were highly correlated: directions that were more likely to be perceived in the back were also more likely to be perceived as more numerous. The magnitude of anisotropies, however, was larger for depth order than for numerosity, and the correlation with eye movement anisotropies also developed earlier for depth order than for numerosity judgments. Presenting the surfaces at different disparities removed the anisotropies but lead to a consistent bias to overestimate the numerosity of the surface in the back and to underestimate the surface in the front. The magnitude of this bias did not depend on dot density or lifetime. However when the speed of motion was reduced or when the two surfaces were presented at different luminance polarities, the magnitude of anisotropies and the numerosity bias were greatly reduced. These results show that the numerosity of pseudotransparent surfaces is not processed independent of the depth structure in the scene. Instead there is a strong prior for higher numerosity in the back surface

General Conditions for Lepton Flavour Violation at Tree- and 1-Loop Level

In this work, we compile the necessary and sufficient conditions a theory has to fulfill in order to ensure general lepton flavour conservation, in the spirit of the Glashow-Weinberg criteria for the absence of flavour-changing neutral currents. At tree-level, interactions involving electrically neutral and doubly charged bosons are investigated. We also investigate flavour changes at 1-loop level. In all cases we find that the essential theoretical requirements can be reduced to a few basic conditions on the particle content and the coupling matrices. For 1-loop diagrams, we also investigate how exactly a GIM-suppression can occur that will strongly reduce the rates of lepton flavour violating effects even if they are in principle present in a certain theory. In all chapters, we apply our criteria to several models which can in general induce lepton flavour violation, e.g. LR-symmetric models or the MSSM. In the end we give a summarizing table of the obtained results, thereby demonstrating the applicability of our criteria to a large class of models beyond the Standard Model.Comment: 31 pages, 2 figure

Analysis of integrated single-electron memory operation

Various aspects of single-electron memory are discussed. In particular, we analyze the single-electron charging by Fowler-Nordheim tunneling, propose the idea of background charge compensation, and discuss the defect-tolerant architecture based on nanofuses.Comment: 6 page

Edge diffraction of a convergent wave

Closed-form solutions have been derived for the diffraction patterns at the focal plane of (1) a convergent wave of unit amplitude illuminating a segment of a circular aperture and (2) a convergent wave of Gaussian amplitude diffracted by an infinite edge. Photographs showing the main features of these edge transform patterns are presented together with computer-generated graphs

Emergence of symmetry from random n-body interactions

An ensemble with random n-body interactions is investigated in the presence of symmetries. A striking emergence of regularities in spectra, ground state spins and isospins is discovered in both odd and even-particle systems. Various types of correlations from pairing to spectral sequences and correlations across different masses are explored. A search for interpretation is presented.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure