Epistemological models in psychoacoustics: a historical overview

Since Fechner set the basis for psychophysics, psychology of sound and musical perception started its course as a scientific discipline. During less than two centuries of history, anyway, it passed through many different epistemological paradigms, influenced by the changes occurred into the historical and philosophical panorama. Starting from Fechner's 1860 volume Elemente der Psychophysik, we explore these paradigm shifts, tracking some of the principal steps made by psychology of sound and music in its attempts to offer a model for discovering and explaining the scientific phenomena and laws underlying acoustic sensations and perception, “in tune” with the different theoretical frames of the most influent psychological theories of the XIXth and XXth century

Ferromagnetic 0-pi Junctions as Classical Spins

The ground state of highly damped PdNi based 0-pi ferromagnetic Josephson junctions shows a spontaneous half quantum vortex, sustained by a supercurrent of undetermined sign. This supercurrent flows in the electrode of a Josephson junction used as a detector and produces a phi(0)/4 shift in its magnetic diffraction pattern. We have measured the statistics of the positive or negative sign shift occurring at the superconducting transition of such a junction. The randomness of the shift sign, the reproducibility of its magnitude and the possibility of achieving exact flux compensation upon field cooling: all these features show that 0-pi junctions behave as classical spins, just as magnetic nanoparticles with uniaxial anisotropy.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Bench-to-bedside review: The importance of the precision of the reference technique in method comparison studies - with specific reference to the measurement of cardiac output

Bland-Altman analysis is used for assessing agreement between two measurements of the same clinical variable. In the field of cardiac output monitoring, its results, in terms of bias and limits of agreement, are often difficult to interpret, leading clinicians to use a cutoff of 30% in the percentage error in order to decide whether a new technique may be considered a good alternative. This percentage error of ± 30% arises from the assumption that the commonly used reference technique, intermittent thermodilution, has a precision of ± 20% or less. The combination of two precisions of ± 20% equates to a total error of ± 28.3%, which is commonly rounded up to ± 30%. Thus, finding a percentage error of less than ± 30% should equate to the new tested technique having an error similar to the reference, which therefore should be acceptable. In a worked example in this paper, we discuss the limitations of this approach, in particular in regard to the situation in which the reference technique may be either more or less precise than would normally be expected. This can lead to inappropriate conclusions being drawn from data acquired in validation studies of new monitoring technologies. We conclude that it is not acceptable to present comparison studies quoting percentage error as an acceptability criteria without reporting the precision of the reference technique

Conductance fluctuations in metallic nanogaps made by electromigration

We report on low temperature conductance measurements of gold nanogaps fabricated by controlled electromigration. Fluctuations of the conductance due to quantum interferences and depending both on bias voltage and magnetic field are observed. By analyzing the voltage and magnetoconductance correlation functions we determine the type of electron trajectories generating the observed quantum interferences and the effective characteristic time of phase coherence in our device.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, to appear in J. Appl. Phy

On Graph Refutation for Relational Inclusions

We introduce a graphical refutation calculus for relational inclusions: it reduces establishing a relational inclusion to establishing that a graph constructed from it has empty extension. This sound and complete calculus is conceptually simpler and easier to use than the usual ones.Comment: In Proceedings LSFA 2011, arXiv:1203.542

Measurement of the current-phase relation of superconducting atomic contacts

We have probed the current-phase relation of an atomic contact placed with a tunnel junction in a small superconducting loop. The measurements are in quantitative agreement with the predictions of a resistively shunted SQUID model in which the Josephson coupling of the contact is calculated using the independently determined transmissions of its conduction channels.Comment: to be published in Physical Review Letter

Using the Data Fusion tecnique for producing tematic maps.

The University of Salerno (Italy) has recently been equipped with a pair of aerials that are able to receive data transmitted from various satellite platforms such as the NOAA and the Terra-1 and Aqua-1 EOS. These satellites are fitted with sensors that pick up information regarding soil and cloud temperature, the humidity level of the atmosphere, the presence of extraneous water, the presence of certain substances such as chlorophyll, the surface colour of the ocean and the presence of plankton with a spatial resolution that at its greatest reaches 250 m. Great use is therefore made of a vast amount of data that concerns our geographical area which allows for a fairly approximate assessment of the state of health (desertification, deforestation, abundance of surface water) and the potential risks (landslides, fires, plant and crop infections or diseases) to which the territory is prone. Nevertheless, the data is supplied with differing precision to the ground and with different pixel dimensions, therefore it is not possible to generate, taking as a starting point the data alone, (thematic map) which, besides furnishing qualitative information, also supplies correct and precise metric information. By using the Data Fusion technique it is possible to project the data supplied by various sensors onto a higher resolution image in order to obtain a representation that allows for a synthesis of all available information

A discrimination algorithm inside λ-β-calculus

AbstractA finite set {F1,…,Fn} of λ-terms is said to be discriminable if, given n arbitrary λ-terms X1,…,Xn, there exists a λ-term Δ such that: ΔFi ⩾ Xi for 1 ⩽ i ⩽ n. In the present paper each finite set of normal combinators which are pairwise non α-η-convertible is proved to be discriminable. Moreover a discrimination algorithm is given