228 research outputs found
An error tolerant memory aid for reduced cognitive load in number copying tasks
Number copying tasks are still common despite increased digitalization of services. Number copying tasks are cognitively and visually demanding, errors are easily introduced and the process is often perceived as laborious. This study proposes an alternative scheme based on dictionary coding that reduces the cognitive load on the user by a factor of five. The strategy has several levels of error detection and error correction characteristics and is easy to implemen
Dark Matter signals from Draco and Willman 1: Prospects for MAGIC II and CTA
The next generation of ground-based Imaging Air Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs)
will play an important role in indirect dark matter searches. In this article,
we consider two particularly promising candidate sources for dark matter
annihilation signals, the nearby dwarf galaxies Draco and Willman 1, and study
the prospects of detecting such a signal for the soon-operating MAGIC II
telescope system as well as for the planned installation of CTA, taking special
care of describing the experimental features that affect the detectional
prospects. For the first time in such a study, we fully take into account the
effect of internal bremsstrahlung, which has recently been shown to
considerably enhance, in some cases, the gamma-ray flux at the high energies
where Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes operate, thus leading to significantly
harder annihilation spectra than traditionally considered. While the detection
of the spectral features introduced by internal bremsstrahlung would constitute
a smoking gun signature for dark matter annihilation, we find that for most
models the overall flux still remains at a level that will be challenging to
detect unless one adopts rather (though by no means overly) optimistic
astrophysical assumptions about the distribution of dark matter in the dwarfs.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, minor changes, matches the published version
(JCAP
Results of the Second SIGMORPHON Shared Task on Multilingual Grapheme-to-Phoneme Conversion
Grapheme-to-phoneme conversion is an important component in many speech technologies, but until recently there were no multilingual benchmarks for this task. The second iteration of the SIGMORPHON shared task on multilingual grapheme-to-phoneme conversion features many improvements from the previous year's task (Gorman et al. 2020), including additional languages, a stronger baseline, three subtasks varying the amount of available resources, extensive quality assurance procedures, and automated error analyses. Four teams submitted a total of thirteen systems, at best achieving relative reductions of word error rate of 11% in the high-resource subtask and 4% in the low-resource subtask
Net positive outcomes for nature
Much research and policy effort is being expended on seeking ways to conserve living nature while enabling the economic and social development needed to increase global equity and end poverty. We propose that this will only be possible if the language of policy shifts away from setting conservation targets that focus on avoiding losses and towards developing processes that consider net outcomes for biodiversity
Non-Perturbative QCD Treatment of High-Energy Hadron-Hadron Scattering
Total cross-sections and logarithmic slopes of the elastic scattering
cross-sections for different hadronic processes are calculated in the framework
of the model of the stochastic vacuum. The relevant parameters of this model, a
correlation length and the gluon condensate, are determined from scattering
data, and found to be in very good agreement with values coming from completely
different sources of information. A parameter-free relation is given between
total cross-sections and slope parameters, which is shown to be remarkably
valid up to the highest energies for which data exist.Comment: 60 pages, Heidelberg preprin
Risk of diabetes after para-aortic radiation for testicular cancer
Background: While the risk of diabetes is increased following radiation exposure to the pancreas among childhood cancer survivors, its association among testicular cancer (TC) survivors has not been investigated. Methods: Diabetes risk was studied in 2998 1-year TC survivors treated before 50 years of age with orchidectomy with/without radiotherapy between 1976 and 2007. Diabetes incidence was compared with general population rates. Treatment-specific risk of diabetes was assessed using a case–cohort design. Results: With a median follow-up of 13.4 years, 161 TC survivors were diagnosed with diabetes. Diabetes risk was not increased compared to general population rates (standardised incidence ratios (SIR): 0.9; 95% confidence interval (95% CI): 0.7–1.1). Adjusted for age, para-aortic radiotherapy was associated with a 1.66-fold (95% CI: 1.05–2.62) increased diabetes risk compared to no radiotherapy. The excess hazard increased with 0.31 with every 10 Gy increase in the prescribed radiation dose (95% CI: 0.11–0.51, P = 0.003, adjusted for age and BMI); restricted to irradiated patients the excess hazard increased with 0.33 (95% CI: −0.14 to 0.81, P = 0.169) with every 10 Gy increase in radiation dose. Conclusion: Compared to surgery only, para-aortic irradiation is associated with increased diabetes risk among TC survivors
Heavy quarkonium: progress, puzzles, and opportunities
A golden age for heavy quarkonium physics dawned a decade ago, initiated by
the confluence of exciting advances in quantum chromodynamics (QCD) and an
explosion of related experimental activity. The early years of this period were
chronicled in the Quarkonium Working Group (QWG) CERN Yellow Report (YR) in
2004, which presented a comprehensive review of the status of the field at that
time and provided specific recommendations for further progress. However, the
broad spectrum of subsequent breakthroughs, surprises, and continuing puzzles
could only be partially anticipated. Since the release of the YR, the BESII
program concluded only to give birth to BESIII; the -factories and CLEO-c
flourished; quarkonium production and polarization measurements at HERA and the
Tevatron matured; and heavy-ion collisions at RHIC have opened a window on the
deconfinement regime. All these experiments leave legacies of quality,
precision, and unsolved mysteries for quarkonium physics, and therefore beg for
continuing investigations. The plethora of newly-found quarkonium-like states
unleashed a flood of theoretical investigations into new forms of matter such
as quark-gluon hybrids, mesonic molecules, and tetraquarks. Measurements of the
spectroscopy, decays, production, and in-medium behavior of c\bar{c}, b\bar{b},
and b\bar{c} bound states have been shown to validate some theoretical
approaches to QCD and highlight lack of quantitative success for others. The
intriguing details of quarkonium suppression in heavy-ion collisions that have
emerged from RHIC have elevated the importance of separating hot- and
cold-nuclear-matter effects in quark-gluon plasma studies. This review
systematically addresses all these matters and concludes by prioritizing
directions for ongoing and future efforts.Comment: 182 pages, 112 figures. Editors: N. Brambilla, S. Eidelman, B. K.
Heltsley, R. Vogt. Section Coordinators: G. T. Bodwin, E. Eichten, A. D.
Frawley, A. B. Meyer, R. E. Mitchell, V. Papadimitriou, P. Petreczky, A. A.
Petrov, P. Robbe, A. Vair
Statistical Outliers and Dragon-Kings as Bose-Condensed Droplets
A theory of exceptional extreme events, characterized by their abnormal sizes
compared with the rest of the distribution, is presented. Such outliers, called
"dragon-kings", have been reported in the distribution of financial drawdowns,
city-size distributions (e.g., Paris in France and London in the UK), in
material failure, epileptic seizure intensities, and other systems. Within our
theory, the large outliers are interpreted as droplets of Bose-Einstein
condensate: the appearance of outliers is a natural consequence of the
occurrence of Bose-Einstein condensation controlled by the relative degree of
attraction, or utility, of the largest entities. For large populations, Zipf's
law is recovered (except for the dragon-king outliers). The theory thus
provides a parsimonious description of the possible coexistence of a power law
distribution of event sizes (Zipf's law) and dragon-king outliers.Comment: Latex file, 16 pages, 1 figur
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