534 research outputs found
Self-Organization Leads to Supraoptimal Performance in Public Transportation Systems
The performance of public transportation systems affects a large part of the population. Current theory assumes that passengers are served optimally when vehicles arrive at stations with regular intervals. In this paper, it is shown that self-organization can improve the performance of public transportation systems beyond the theoretical optimum by responding adaptively to local conditions. This is possible because of a “slower-is-faster” effect, where passengers wait more time at stations but total travel times are reduced. The proposed self-organizing method uses “antipheromones” to regulate headways, which are inspired by the stigmergy (communication via environment) of some ant colonies
The Long-Run Impacts of Same-Race Teachers
Black primary-school students matched to a same-race teacher perform better on standardized tests and face more favorable teacher perceptions, yet little is known about the long-run, sustained impacts of student-teacher demographic match. We show that assigning a black male to a black teacher in the third, fourth, or fifth grades significantly reduces the probability that he drops out of high school, particularly among the most economically disadvantaged black males. Exposure to at least one black teacher in grades 3-5 also increases the likelihood that persistently low-income students of both sexes aspire to attend a four-year college. These findings are robust across administrative data from two states and multiple identification strategies, including an instrumental variables strategy that exploits within-school, intertemporal variation in the proportion of black teachers, family fixed-effects models that compare siblings who attended the same school, and the random assignment of students and teachers to classrooms created by the Project STAR class-size reduction experiment
Comment on "Quantum Decoherence in Disordered Mesoscopic Systems"
In a recent paper, Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 1074 (1998), Golubev and Zaikin (GZ)
found that ``zero-point fluctuations of electrons'' contribute to the dephasing
rate extracted from the magnetoresistance. As a result, the dephasing rate
remains finite at zero temperature. GZ claimed that their results ``agree well
with the experimental data''. We point out that the GZ results are incompatible
with (i) conventional perturbation theory of the effects of interaction on weak
localization (WL), and (ii) with the available experimental data. More detailed
criticism of GZ findings can be found in cond-mat/9808053.Comment: 1 page, no figure
Microwave Spectroscopy of a Cooper-Pair Transistor Coupled to a Lumped-Element Resonator
We have studied the microwave response of a single Cooper-pair transistor
(CPT) coupled to a lumped-element microwave resonator. The resonance frequency
of this circuit, , was measured as a function of the charge
induced on the CPT island by the gate electrode, and the phase difference
across the CPT, , which was controlled by the magnetic flux in the
superconducting loop containing the CPT. The observed
dependences reflect the variations of the CPT Josephson inductance with
and as well as the CPT excitation when the microwaves induce
transitions between different quantum states of the CPT. The results are in
excellent agreement with our simulations based on the numerical diagonalization
of the circuit Hamiltonian. This agreement over the whole range of and
is unexpected, because the relevant energies vary widely, from 0.1K
to 3K. The observed strong dependence near the
resonance excitation of the CPT provides a tool for sensitive charge
measurements.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure
Learning, Social Intelligence and the Turing Test - why an "out-of-the-box" Turing Machine will not pass the Turing Test
The Turing Test (TT) checks for human intelligence, rather than any putative
general intelligence. It involves repeated interaction requiring learning in
the form of adaption to the human conversation partner. It is a macro-level
post-hoc test in contrast to the definition of a Turing Machine (TM), which is
a prior micro-level definition. This raises the question of whether learning is
just another computational process, i.e. can be implemented as a TM. Here we
argue that learning or adaption is fundamentally different from computation,
though it does involve processes that can be seen as computations. To
illustrate this difference we compare (a) designing a TM and (b) learning a TM,
defining them for the purpose of the argument. We show that there is a
well-defined sequence of problems which are not effectively designable but are
learnable, in the form of the bounded halting problem. Some characteristics of
human intelligence are reviewed including it's: interactive nature, learning
abilities, imitative tendencies, linguistic ability and context-dependency. A
story that explains some of these is the Social Intelligence Hypothesis. If
this is broadly correct, this points to the necessity of a considerable period
of acculturation (social learning in context) if an artificial intelligence is
to pass the TT. Whilst it is always possible to 'compile' the results of
learning into a TM, this would not be a designed TM and would not be able to
continually adapt (pass future TTs). We conclude three things, namely that: a
purely "designed" TM will never pass the TT; that there is no such thing as a
general intelligence since it necessary involves learning; and that
learning/adaption and computation should be clearly distinguished.Comment: 10 pages, invited talk at Turing Centenary Conference CiE 2012,
special session on "The Turing Test and Thinking Machines
Energy resolution of terahertz single-photon-sensitive bolometric detectors
We report measurements of the energy resolution of ultra-sensitive
superconducting bolometric detectors. The device is a superconducting titanium
nanobridge with niobium contacts. A fast microwave pulse is used to simulate a
single higher-frequency photon, where the absorbed energy of the pulse is equal
to the photon energy. This technique allows precise calibration of the input
coupling and avoids problems with unwanted background photons. Present devices
have an intrinsic full-width at half-maximum energy resolution of approximately
23 terahertz, near the predicted value due to intrinsic thermal fluctuation
noise.Comment: 11 pages (double-spaced), 5 figures; minor revision
Boolean networks with reliable dynamics
We investigated the properties of Boolean networks that follow a given
reliable trajectory in state space. A reliable trajectory is defined as a
sequence of states which is independent of the order in which the nodes are
updated. We explored numerically the topology, the update functions, and the
state space structure of these networks, which we constructed using a minimum
number of links and the simplest update functions. We found that the clustering
coefficient is larger than in random networks, and that the probability
distribution of three-node motifs is similar to that found in gene regulation
networks. Among the update functions, only a subset of all possible functions
occur, and they can be classified according to their probability. More
homogeneous functions occur more often, leading to a dominance of canalyzing
functions. Finally, we studied the entire state space of the networks. We
observed that with increasing systems size, fixed points become more dominant,
moving the networks close to the frozen phase.Comment: 11 Pages, 15 figure
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