268 research outputs found
The development of ultrahigh and extreme high vacuum technology for physics research
Over the last 50 years increasingly larger and more sophisticated devices have been designed and put into operation for the study of particle and nuclear physics, magnetic confinement of high-temperature plasmas for thermonuclear fusion research, and gravity wave observatories based on laser interferometers. The evolution of these devices has generated many developments in ultrahigh and extreme high vacuum technology that were required for these devices to meet their operational goals. The technologies that were developed included unique ultrahigh vacuum vessel structures, ultrahigh vacuum compatible materials, surface conditioning techniques, specialized vacuum pumps and vacuum diagnostics. Associated with these technological developments are scientific advancements in the understanding of outgassing limits of UHV-compatible materials and particle-induced desorption effects
Learning relational event models from video
Event models obtained automatically from video can be used in applications ranging from abnormal event detection to content based video retrieval. When multiple agents are involved in the events, characterizing events naturally suggests encoding interactions as relations. Learning event models from this kind of relational spatio-temporal data using relational learning techniques such as Inductive Logic Programming (ILP) hold promise, but have not been successfully applied to very large datasets which result from video data. In this paper, we present a novel framework REMIND (Relational Event Model INDuction) for supervised relational learning of event models from large video datasets using ILP. Efficiency is achieved through the learning from interpretations setting and using a typing system that exploits the type hierarchy of objects in a domain. The use of types also helps prevent over generalization. Furthermore, we also present a type-refining operator and prove that it is optimal. The learned models can be used for recognizing events from previously unseen videos. We also present an extension to the framework by integrating an abduction step that improves the learning performance when there is noise in the input data. The experimental results on several hours of video data from two challenging real world domains (an airport domain and a physical action verbs domain) suggest that the techniques are suitable to real world scenarios
Vacuum Polarization and the Electric Charge of the Positron
We show that higher-order vacuum polarization would contribute a measureable
net charge to atoms, if the charges of electrons and positrons do not balance
precisely. We obtain the limit for the sum of
the charges of electron and positron. This also constitutes a new bound on
certain violations of PCT invariance.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figure attached as PostScript file, DUKE-TH-92-38. Revised
versio
Towards Safe Navigation by Formalizing Navigation Rules
One crucial aspect of safe navigation is to obey all navigation regulations applicable, in particular the collision regulations issued by the International Maritime Organization (IMO Colregs). Therefore, decision support systems for navigation need to respect Colregs and this feature should be verifiably correct. We tackle compliancy of navigation regulations from a perspective of software verification. One common approach is to use formal logic, but it requires to bridge a wide gap between navigation concepts and simple logic. We introduce a novel domain specification language based on a spatio-temporal logic that allows us to overcome this gap. We are able to capture complex navigation concepts in an easily comprehensible representation that can direcly be utilized by various bridge systems and that allows for software verification
Electric charge quantization without anomalies?
In gauge theories like the standard model, the electric charges of the
fermions can be heavily constrained from the classical structure of the theory
and from the cancellation of anomalies. We argue that the anomaly conditions
are not quite as well motivated as the classical constraints, since it is
possible that new fermions could exist which cancel potential anomalies. For
this reason we examine the classically allowed electric charges of the known
fermions and we point out that the electric charge of the tau neutrino is
classically allowed to be non-zero. The experimental bound on the electric
charge of the tau neutrino is many orders of magnitude weaker than for any
other known neutrino. We discuss possible modifications of the minimal standard
model such that electric charge is quantized classically.Comment: 10 McGill/93-3
Constraints on the Electrical Charge Asymmetry of the Universe
We use the isotropy of the Cosmic Microwave Background to place stringent
constraints on a possible electrical charge asymmetry of the universe. We find
the excess charge per baryon to be in the case of a uniform
distribution of charge, where is the charge of the electron. If the charge
asymmetry is inhomogeneous, the constraints will depend on the spectral index,
, of the induced magnetic field and range from
() to (). If one could further
assume that the charge asymmetries of individual particle species are not
anti-correlated so as to cancel, this would imply, for photons, ; for neutrinos, ; and for heavy (light) dark
matter particles ().Comment: New version to appear in JCA
Tractable Fragments of Temporal Sequences of Topological Information
In this paper, we focus on qualitative temporal sequences of topological
information. We firstly consider the context of topological temporal sequences
of length greater than 3 describing the evolution of regions at consecutive
time points. We show that there is no Cartesian subclass containing all the
basic relations and the universal relation for which the algebraic closure
decides satisfiability. However, we identify some tractable subclasses, by
giving up the relations containing the non-tangential proper part relation and
not containing the tangential proper part relation. We then formalize an
alternative semantics for temporal sequences. We place ourselves in the context
of the topological temporal sequences describing the evolution of regions on a
partition of time (i.e. an alternation of instants and intervals). In this
context, we identify large tractable fragments
Allen's Interval Algebra Makes the Difference
Allen's Interval Algebra constitutes a framework for reasoning about temporal
information in a qualitative manner. In particular, it uses intervals, i.e.,
pairs of endpoints, on the timeline to represent entities corresponding to
actions, events, or tasks, and binary relations such as precedes and overlaps
to encode the possible configurations between those entities. Allen's calculus
has found its way in many academic and industrial applications that involve,
most commonly, planning and scheduling, temporal databases, and healthcare. In
this paper, we present a novel encoding of Interval Algebra using answer-set
programming (ASP) extended by difference constraints, i.e., the fragment
abbreviated as ASP(DL), and demonstrate its performance via a preliminary
experimental evaluation. Although our ASP encoding is presented in the case of
Allen's calculus for the sake of clarity, we suggest that analogous encodings
can be devised for other point-based calculi, too.Comment: Part of DECLARE 19 proceeding
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