18,852 research outputs found
Unbounded Human Learning: Optimal Scheduling for Spaced Repetition
In the study of human learning, there is broad evidence that our ability to
retain information improves with repeated exposure and decays with delay since
last exposure. This plays a crucial role in the design of educational software,
leading to a trade-off between teaching new material and reviewing what has
already been taught. A common way to balance this trade-off is spaced
repetition, which uses periodic review of content to improve long-term
retention. Though spaced repetition is widely used in practice, e.g., in
electronic flashcard software, there is little formal understanding of the
design of these systems. Our paper addresses this gap in three ways. First, we
mine log data from spaced repetition software to establish the functional
dependence of retention on reinforcement and delay. Second, we use this memory
model to develop a stochastic model for spaced repetition systems. We propose a
queueing network model of the Leitner system for reviewing flashcards, along
with a heuristic approximation that admits a tractable optimization problem for
review scheduling. Finally, we empirically evaluate our queueing model through
a Mechanical Turk experiment, verifying a key qualitative prediction of our
model: the existence of a sharp phase transition in learning outcomes upon
increasing the rate of new item introductions.Comment: Accepted to the ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data
Mining 201
A percutaneous needle biopsy technique for sampling the supraclavicular brown adipose tissue depot of humans.
Brown adipose tissue (BAT) has been proposed as a potential target tissue against obesity and its related metabolic complications. Although the molecular and functional characteristics of BAT have been intensively studied in rodents, only a few studies have used human BAT specimens due to the difficulty of sampling human BAT deposits. We established a novel positron emission tomography and computed tomography-guided Bergström needle biopsy technique to acquire human BAT specimens from the supraclavicular area in human subjects. Forty-three biopsies were performed on 23 participants. The procedure was tolerated well by the majority of participants. No major complications were noted. Numbness (9.6%) and hematoma (2.3%) were the two minor complications noted, which fully resolved. Thus, the proposed biopsy technique can be considered safe with only minimal risk of adverse events. Adoption of the proposed method is expected to increase the sampling of the supraclavicular BAT depot for research purposes so as to augment the scientific knowledge of the biology of human BAT
Exclusive Lambda_b -> Lambda l^+ l^- decay in two Higgs doublet model
Rare Lambda_b -> Lambda l^+ l^- decay is investigated in framework of general
two Higgs doublet model, in which a new source of CP violation exists (model
III). The polarization parameter, CP asymmetry and decay width are calculated.
It is shown that CP asymmetry is a very sensitive tool for establishing model
III.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures, LaTeX formatte
D-wave heavy quarkonium production in fixed target experiments
We calculate the -wave heavy quarkonium production at fixed target
experiments under the NRQCD factorization formalism. We find that the color
octet contributions are two orders of magnitude larger than color-singlet
contributions if color-octet matrix elements are taken according to the NRQCD
velocity scaling rules. Within the theoretical uncertainties, the prediction
for the production rate of -wave charmonium state agrees with the
preliminary result of E705 and other experiments. Searching for the
-wave state is further suggested.Comment: 13pages, 4 PS figures, final vertion to appear in PR
Optimal Dividend Payments for the Piecewise-Deterministic Poisson Risk Model
This paper considers the optimal dividend payment problem in
piecewise-deterministic compound Poisson risk models. The objective is to
maximize the expected discounted dividend payout up to the time of ruin. We
provide a comparative study in this general framework of both restricted and
unrestricted payment schemes, which were only previously treated separately in
certain special cases of risk models in the literature. In the case of
restricted payment scheme, the value function is shown to be a classical
solution of the corresponding HJB equation, which in turn leads to an optimal
restricted payment policy known as the threshold strategy. In the case of
unrestricted payment scheme, by solving the associated integro-differential
quasi-variational inequality, we obtain the value function as well as an
optimal unrestricted dividend payment scheme known as the barrier strategy.
When claim sizes are exponentially distributed, we provide easily verifiable
conditions under which the threshold and barrier strategies are optimal
restricted and unrestricted dividend payment policies, respectively. The main
results are illustrated with several examples, including a new example
concerning regressive growth rates.Comment: Key Words: Piecewise-deterministic compound Poisson model, optimal
stochastic control, HJB equation, quasi-variational inequality, threshold
strategy, barrier strateg
AUSSAT battery life test program
AUSSAT Pty. Ltd., the Australian National Satellite organization, has contracted with the Hughes Aircraft Company (HAC) for the construction of 3 satellites based on the now familiar HS-376 product line. As part of the AUSSAT contract, HAC is conducting an extensive NiCd battery life test program. The life test program, objectives and test results to date are described. Particular emphasis is given to the evaluation of the FS2117 separator as a future replacement for the Pellon 2505 separator of which only a very limited quantity remains
Verification of Hierarchical Artifact Systems
Data-driven workflows, of which IBM's Business Artifacts are a prime
exponent, have been successfully deployed in practice, adopted in industrial
standards, and have spawned a rich body of research in academia, focused
primarily on static analysis. The present work represents a significant advance
on the problem of artifact verification, by considering a much richer and more
realistic model than in previous work, incorporating core elements of IBM's
successful Guard-Stage-Milestone model. In particular, the model features task
hierarchy, concurrency, and richer artifact data. It also allows database key
and foreign key dependencies, as well as arithmetic constraints. The results
show decidability of verification and establish its complexity, making use of
novel techniques including a hierarchy of Vector Addition Systems and a variant
of quantifier elimination tailored to our context.Comment: Full version of the accepted PODS pape
The meson annihilation to leptons and inclusive light hadrons
The annihilation of the meson to leptons and inclusive light hadrons is
analyzed in the framework of nonrelativistic QCD (NRQCD) factorization. We find
that the decay mode, which escapes from the helicity suppression, contributes a
sizable fraction width. According to the analysis, the branching ratio due to
the contribution from the color-singlet component of the meson can be of
order (10^{-2}). We also estimate the contributions from the color-octet
components. With the velocity scaling rule of NRQCD, we find that the
color-octet contributions are sizable too, especially, in certain phase space
of the annihilation they are greater than (or comparative to) the color-singlet
component. A few observables relevant to the spectrum of charged lepton are
suggested, that may be used as measurements on the color-octet and
color-singlet components in the future experiments. A typical long
distance contribution in the annihilation is estimated too.Comment: 26 pages, 5 figures (6 eps-files), submitted to Phys. Rev.
On the theoretical and experimental uncertainties in the extraction of the J/psi absorption cross section in cold nuclear matter
We investigate the cold nuclear matter effects on production, whose
understanding is fundamental to study the quark-gluon plasma. Two of these
effects are of particular relevance: the shadowing of the parton distributions
and the nuclear absorption of the pair. If 's are not
produced {\it via} a process as suggested by recent theoretical
works, one has to modify accordingly the way to compute the nuclear shadowing.
This naturally induces differences in the absorption cross-section fit to the
data. A careful analysis of these differences however requires taking into
account the experimental uncertainties and their correlations, as done in this
work for Au collisions at \sqrtsNN=200\mathrm{GeV}, using several
shadowing parametrisations.Comment: 6 pages, 1 table, 3 figures, Submitted to J. Phys. G, talk given at
the International Conference on Strangeness in Quark Matter (SQM2009),
Buzios, Brasil, Sep. 27 - Oct. 2, 200
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