35,207 research outputs found
Search Heuristics, Case-Based Reasoning and Software Project Effort Prediction
This paper reports on the use of search techniques to help optimise a case-based reasoning (CBR) system for predicting software project effort. A major problem, common to ML techniques in general, has been dealing with large numbers of case features, some of which can hinder the prediction process. Unfortunately searching for the optimal feature subset is a combinatorial problem and therefore NP-hard. This paper examines the use of random searching, hill climbing and forward sequential selection (FSS) to tackle this problem. Results from examining a set of real software project data show that even random searching was better than using all available for features (average error 35.6% rather than 50.8%). Hill climbing and FSS both produced results substantially better than the random search (15.3 and 13.1% respectively), but FSS was more computationally efficient. Providing a description of the fitness landscape of a problem along with search results is a step towards the classification of search problems and their assignment to optimum search techniques. This paper attempts to describe the fitness landscape of this problem by combining the results from random searches and hill climbing, as well as using multi-dimensional scaling to aid visualisation. Amongst other findings, the visualisation results suggest that some form of heuristic-based initialisation might prove useful for this problem
On the glueball spectrum in O(a)-improved lattice QCD
We calculate the light `glueball' mass spectrum in N_f=2 lattice QCD using a
fermion action that is non-perturbatively O(a) improved. We work at lattice
spacings a ~0.1 fm and with quark masses that range down to about half the
strange quark mass. We find the statistical errors to be moderate and under
control on relatively small ensembles. We compare our mass spectrum to that of
quenched QCD at the same value of a. Whilst the tensor mass is the same (within
errors), the scalar mass is significantly smaller in the dynamical lattice
theory, by a factor of ~(0.84 +/- 0.03). We discuss what the observed m_q
dependence of this suppression tells us about the dynamics of glueballs in QCD.
We also calculate the masses of flux tubes that wind around the spatial torus,
and extract the string tension from these. As we decrease the quark mass we see
a small but growing vacuum expectation value for the corresponding flux tube
operators. This provides clear evidence for `string breaking' and for the
(expected) breaking of the associated gauge centre symmetry by sea quarks.Comment: 33pp LaTeX. Version to appear in Phys. Rev.
Monopole clusters in Abelian projected gauge theories
We show that the monopole currents which one obtains in the maximally Abelian
gauge of SU(2) fall into two quite distinct classes (when the volume is large
enough). In each field configuration there is precisely one cluster that
permeates the whole lattice volume. It has a current density and a magnetic
screening mass that scale and it produces the whole of the string tension. The
remaining clusters have a number density that follows an approximate power law
proportional to the inverse cube of l where l is the length of the monopole
world line in lattice units. These clusters are localised in space-time with
radii which vary as the square root of l. In terms of the radius r these
`lumps' have a scale-invariant distribution proportional to (dr/r . 1/{r^4}).
Moreover they appear not to contribute at all to the string tension. The fact
that they are scale-invariant at small distances would seem to rule out an
instanton origin.Comment: LaTeX, 31 pages, 11 PostScript figures. Typo in Table 2 correcte
Scattering a pulse from a chaotic cavity: Transitioning from algebraic to exponential decay
The ensemble averaged power scattered in and out of lossless chaotic cavities
decays as a power law in time for large times. In the case of a pulse with a
finite duration, the power scattered from a single realization of a cavity
closely tracks the power law ensemble decay initially, but eventually
transitions to an exponential decay. In this paper, we explore the nature of
this transition in the case of coupling to a single port. We find that for a
given pulse shape, the properties of the transition are universal if time is
properly normalized. We define the crossover time to be the time at which the
deviations from the mean of the reflected power in individual realizations
become comparable to the mean reflected power. We demonstrate numerically that,
for randomly chosen cavity realizations and given pulse shapes, the probability
distribution function of reflected power depends only on time, normalized to
this crossover time.Comment: 23 pages, 5 figure
The Index Theorem and Universality Properties of the Low-lying Eigenvalues of Improved Staggered Quarks
We study various improved staggered quark Dirac operators on quenched gluon
backgrounds in lattice QCD generated using a Symanzik-improved gluon action. We
find a clear separation of the spectrum into would-be zero modes and others.
The number of would-be zero modes depends on the topological charge as expected
from the Index Theorem, and their chirality expectation value is large
(approximately 0.7). The remaining modes have low chirality and show clear
signs of clustering into quartets and approaching the random matrix theory
predictions for all topological charge sectors. We conclude that improvement of
the fermionic and gauge actions moves the staggered quarks closer to the
continuum limit where they respond correctly to QCD topology.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
The effect of short ray trajectories on the scattering statistics of wave chaotic systems
In many situations, the statistical properties of wave systems with chaotic
classical limits are well-described by random matrix theory. However,
applications of random matrix theory to scattering problems require
introduction of system specific information into the statistical model, such as
the introduction of the average scattering matrix in the Poisson kernel. Here
it is shown that the average impedance matrix, which also characterizes the
system-specific properties, can be expressed in terms of classical trajectories
that travel between ports and thus can be calculated semiclassically.
Theoretical results are compared with numerical solutions for a model
wave-chaotic system
Impact of a theoretically based sex education programme (SHARE) delivered by teachers on NHS registered conceptions and terminations: final results of cluster randomised trial
<b>Objective</b>: To assess the impact of a theoretically based sex education programme (SHARE) delivered by teachers compared with conventional education in terms of conceptions and terminations registered by the NHS.
Design Follow-up of cluster randomised trial 4.5 years after intervention.
<b>Setting</b>: NHS records of women who had attended 25 secondary schools in east Scotland.
<b>Participants</b>: 4196 women (99.5% of those eligible).
<b>Intervention</b>: SHARE programme (intervention group) v existing sex education (control group).
<b>Main outcome measure</b>: NHS recorded conceptions and terminations for the achieved sample linked at age 20.
<b>Results</b>: In an "intention to treat" analysis there were no significant differences between the groups in registered conceptions per 1000 pupils (300 SHARE v 274 control; difference 26, 95% confidence interval â33 to 86) and terminations per 1000 pupils (127 v 112; difference 15, â13 to 42) between ages 16 and 20.
<b>Conclusions</b>: This specially designed sex education programme did not reduce conceptions or terminations by age 20 compared with conventional provision. The lack of effect was not due to quality of delivery. Enhancing teacher led school sex education beyond conventional provision in eastern Scotland is unlikely to reduce terminations in teenagers
Ground-layer wavefront reconstruction from multiple natural guide stars
Observational tests of ground layer wavefront recovery have been made in open
loop using a constellation of four natural guide stars at the 1.55 m Kuiper
telescope in Arizona. Such tests explore the effectiveness of wide-field seeing
improvement by correction of low-lying atmospheric turbulence with ground-layer
adaptive optics (GLAO). The wavefronts from the four stars were measured
simultaneously on a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor (WFS). The WFS placed a 5 x
5 array of square subapertures across the pupil of the telescope, allowing for
wavefront reconstruction up to the fifth radial Zernike order. We find that the
wavefront aberration in each star can be roughly halved by subtracting the
average of the wavefronts from the other three stars. Wavefront correction on
this basis leads to a reduction in width of the seeing-limited stellar image by
up to a factor of 3, with image sharpening effective from the visible to near
infrared wavelengths over a field of at least 2 arc minutes. We conclude that
GLAO correction will be a valuable tool that can increase resolution and
spectrographic throughput across a broad range of seeing-limited observations.Comment: 25 pages, 8 figures, to be published in Astrophys.
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