The effect of massed compared with massed followed by evenly spaced practice on the learning of a motor skill

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

3-D Hand Pose Estimation from Kinect's Point Cloud Using Appearance Matching

We present a novel appearance-based approach for pose estimation of a human hand using the point clouds provided by the low-cost Microsoft Kinect sensor. Both the free-hand case, in which the hand is isolated from the surrounding environment, and the hand-object case, in which the different types of interactions are classified, have been considered. The hand-object case is clearly the most challenging task having to deal with multiple tracks. The approach proposed here belongs to the class of partial pose estimation where the estimated pose in a frame is used for the initialization of the next one. The pose estimation is obtained by applying a modified version of the Iterative Closest Point (ICP) algorithm to synthetic models to obtain the rigid transformation that aligns each model with respect to the input data. The proposed framework uses a "pure" point cloud as provided by the Kinect sensor without any other information such as RGB values or normal vector components. For this reason, the proposed method can also be applied to data obtained from other types of depth sensor, or RGB-D camera

Probing the Structure of Jet Driven Core-Collapse Supernova and Long Gamma Ray Burst Progenitors with High Energy Neutrinos

Times of arrival of high energy neutrinos encode information about their sources. We demonstrate that the energy-dependence of the onset time of neutrino emission in advancing relativistic jets can be used to extract important information about the supernova/gamma-ray burst progenitor structure. We examine this energy and time dependence for different supernova and gamma-ray burst progenitors, including red and blue supergiants, helium cores, Wolf-Rayet stars, and chemically homogeneous stars, with a variety of masses and metallicities. For choked jets, we calculate the cutoff of observable neutrino energies depending on the radius at which the jet is stalled. Further, we exhibit how such energy and time dependence may be used to identify and differentiate between progenitors, with as few as one or two observed events, under favorable conditions

CFD Analysis of Helicopter Wakes in Ground Effect

The paper presents CFD results for the wake of a helicopter flying a low altitude at different advance ratios. The wakes are assessed in terms of topology and velocity magnitudes. The structure of the wake near ground changes rapidly with the advance ratio and its decay appears to be faster than what is suggested by theoretical analyses. The results show clear the potential of modern CFD for use in helicopter safety and highlights the need for detailed surveys of helicopter wakes using full-scale physical experiments

Hierarchical Self-Assembly of Halogen-Bonded Block Copolymer Complexes into Upright Cylindrical Domains

Self-assembly of block copolymers into well-defined, ordered arrangements of chemically distinct domains is a reliable strategy for preparing tailored nanostructures. Microphase separation results from the system, minimizing repulsive interactions between dissimilar blocks and maximizing attractive interactions between similar blocks. Supramolecular methods have also achieved this separation by introducing small-molecule additives binding specifically to one block by noncovalent interactions. Here, we use halogen bonding as a supramolecular tool that directs the hierarchical self-assembly of low-molecular-weight perfluorinated molecules and diblock copolymers. Microphase separation results in a lamellar-within-cylindrical arrangement and promotes upright cylindrical alignment in films upon rapid casting and without further annealing. Such cylindrical domains with internal lamellar self-assemblies can be cleaved by solvent treatment of bulk films, resulting in separated and segmented cylindrical micelles stabilized by halogen-bond-based supramolecular crosslinks. These features, alongside the reversible nature of halogen bonding, provide a robust modular approach for nanofabricatio

Single chain structure in thin polymer films: Corrections to Flory's and Silberberg's hypotheses

Conformational properties of polymer melts confined between two hard structureless walls are investigated by Monte Carlo simulation of the bond-fluctuation model. Parallel and perpendicular components of chain extension, bond-bond correlation function and structure factor are computed and compared with recent theoretical approaches attempting to go beyond Flory's and Silberberg's hypotheses. We demonstrate that for ultrathin films where the thickness, $H$, is smaller than the excluded volume screening length (blob size), $\xi$, the chain size parallel to the walls diverges logarithmically, $R^2/2N \approx b^2 + c \log(N)$ with $c \sim 1/H$. The corresponding bond-bond correlation function decreases like a power law, $C(s) = d/s^{\omega}$ with $s$ being the curvilinear distance between bonds and $\omega=1$. % Upon increasing the film thickness, $H$, we find -- in contrast to Flory's hypothesis -- the bulk exponent $\omega=3/2$ and, more importantly, an {\em decreasing} $d(H)$ that gives direct evidence for an {\em enhanced} self-interaction of chain segments reflected at the walls. Systematic deviations from the Kratky plateau as a function of $H$ are found for the single chain form factor parallel to the walls in agreement with the {\em non-monotonous} behaviour predicted by theory. This structure in the Kratky plateau might give rise to an erroneous estimation of the chain extension from scattering experiments. For large $H$ the deviations are linear with the wave vector, $q$, but are very weak. In contrast, for ultrathin films, $H<\xi$, very strong corrections are found (albeit logarithmic in $q$) suggesting a possible experimental verification of our results.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures. Dedicated to L. Sch\"afer on the occasion of his 60th birthda

BATSE Observations of Gamma-Ray Burst Spectra. IV. Time-Resolved High-Energy Spectroscopy

We report on the temporal behavior of the high-energy power law continuum component of gamma-ray burst spectra with data obtained by the Burst and Transient Source Experiment. We have selected 126 high fluence and high flux bursts from the beginning of the mission up until the present. Much of the data were obtained with the Large Area Detectors, which have nearly all-sky coverage, excellent sensitivity over two decades of energy and moderate energy resolution, ideal for continuum spectra studies of a large sample of bursts at high time resolution. At least 8 spectra from each burst were fitted with a spectral form that consisted of a low-energy power law, a spectral break at middle energies and a high-energy continuum. In most bursts (122), the high-energy continuum was consistent with a power law. The evolution of the fitted high-energy power-law index over the selected spectra for each burst is inconsistent with a constant for 34% of the total sample. The sample distribution of the average value for the index from each burst is fairly narrow, centered on -2.12. A linear trend in time is ruled out for only 20% of the bursts, with hard-to-soft evolution dominating the sample (100 events). The distribution for the total change in the power-law index over the duration of a burst peaks at the value -0.37, and is characterized by a median absolute deviation of 0.39, arguing that a single physical process is involved. We present analyses of the correlation of the power-law index with time, burst intensity and low-energy time evolution. In general, we confirm the general hard-to-soft spectral evolution observed in the low-energy component of the continuum, while presenting evidence that this evolution is different in nature from that of the rest of the continuum.Comment: 30 pages, with 2 tables and 9 figures To appear in The Astrophysical Journal, April 1, 199

High Energy gamma-rays From FR I Jets

Thanks to Hubble and Chandra telescopes, some of the large scale jets in extragalactic radio sources are now being observed at optical and X-ray frequencies. For the FR I objects the synchrotron nature of this emission is surely established, although a lot of uncertainties - connected for example with the particle acceleration processes involved - remain. In this paper we study production of high energy gamma-rays in FR I kiloparsec-scale jets by inverse-Compton emission of the synchrotron-emitting electrons. We consider different origin of seed photons contributing to the inverse-Compton scattering, including nuclear jet radiation as well as ambient, stellar and circumstellar emission of the host galaxies. We discuss how future detections or non-detections of the evaluated gamma-ray fluxes can provide constraints on the unknown large scale jet parameters, i.e. the magnetic field intensity and the jet Doppler factor. For the nearby sources Centaurus A and M 87, we find measurable fluxes of TeV photons resulting from synchrotron self-Compton process and from comptonisation of the galactic photon fields, respectively. In the case of Centaurus A, we also find a relatively strong emission component due to comptonisation of the nuclear blazar photons, which could be easily observed by GLAST at energy ~10 GeV, providing important test for the unification of FR I sources with BL Lac objects.Comment: 39 pages, 6 figures included. Modified version, accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journa