Efficient generation and optimization of stochastic template banks by a neighboring cell algorithm

Placing signal templates (grid points) as efficiently as possible to cover a multi-dimensional parameter space is crucial in computing-intensive matched-filtering searches for gravitational waves, but also in similar searches in other fields of astronomy. To generate efficient coverings of arbitrary parameter spaces, stochastic template banks have been advocated, where templates are placed at random while rejecting those too close to others. However, in this simple scheme, for each new random point its distance to every template in the existing bank is computed. This rapidly increasing number of distance computations can render the acceptance of new templates computationally prohibitive, particularly for wide parameter spaces or in large dimensions. This work presents a neighboring cell algorithm that can dramatically improve the efficiency of constructing a stochastic template bank. By dividing the parameter space into sub-volumes (cells), for an arbitrary point an efficient hashing technique is exploited to obtain the index of its enclosing cell along with the parameters of its neighboring templates. Hence only distances to these neighboring templates in the bank are computed, massively lowering the overall computing cost, as demonstrated in simple examples. Furthermore, we propose a novel method based on this technique to increase the fraction of covered parameter space solely by directed template shifts, without adding any templates. As is demonstrated in examples, this method can be highly effective..Comment: PRD accepte

Tumbleweed

Tumbleweed is a short fiction piece depicting the lifestyle of a group of young adults living in Santa Fe, New Mexico during the late 1980\u27s. These people comprise a subculture of wanderers who travel the country on whims and who rely on tourism-related work for their ventures. In the manner of such works as On the Road, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and The Catcher in the Rye, Tumbleweed examines the role of the restless journeyman, a role which has played an important part of the American character. This picaresque story gives an account of an ordinary day in the life of these young travelers. The narrator is a young man from the Midwest who has been led to Santa Fe to get a taste of the West and gain the experience of travel before settling into a more conventional lifestyle. He\u27s like the other characters of the story in this way, motivated by a desire to quest and discover. With his reminiscences and flasbacks, the narrator provides a fuller sense of this subculture, its characters, and their way of life. The story does not have a conventional plot since it\u27s intended to provide a flavor of this subculture rather than to focus on any particular occurrence. In addition to the American travel theme, the story also explores the American idea of history, or more precisely, the unimportance of history in our culture. By world standards, Americans are history-less. What history and culture we do have tends to be borrowed. We\u27re a society not so concerned with the way things were as with how they can be. This ties in with our adventurous nature and is a theme also expressed in Tumbleweed. In addition, the story examines the influence of mass media in our society and how pop culture functions to bond Americans when history and common backgrounds fail to. These themes and ideas are brought forward in the fiction and begin to influence the narrator. As the story progresses, a spark of the American journeyman fire begins to kindle within him as he realizes those things about this subculture which he enjoys and which tempt him. Hopefully the reader will get caught up in the narrator\u27s zeal and share in his vision, inspiring the reader to undertake similar ventures as well

Heterotopien: Kindliche Raumwahrnehmung als produktive Kategorie der Architektur- und Kunstgeschichte

1\. Auflag

Automated sleep classification using the new sleep stage standards

Sleep is fundamental for physical health and good quality of life, and clinicians and researchers have long debated how best to understand it. Manual approaches to sleep classification have been in use for over 40 years, and in 2007, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) published a new sleep scoring manual. Over the years, many attempts have been made to introduce and validate machine learning and automated classification techniques in the sleep research field, with the goals of improving consistency and reliability. This thesis explored and assessed the use of automated classification systems with the updated sleep stage definitions and scoring rules using neuro-fuzzy system (NFS) and support vector machine (SVM) methodology. For both the NFS and SVM classification techniques, the overall percent correct was approximately 65%, with sensitivity and specificity rates around 80% and 95%, respectively. The overall Kappa scores, one means for evaluating system reliability, were approximately 0.57 for both the NFS and SVM, indicating moderate agreement that is not accidental. Stage 3 sleep was detected with an 87-89% success rate. The results presented in this thesis show that the use of NFS and SVM methods for classifying sleep stages is possible using the new AASM guidelines. While the current work supports and confirms the use of these classification techniques within the research community, the results did not indicate a significant difference in the accuracy of either approach-nor a difference in one over the other. The results suggest that the important clinical stage 3 (slow wave sleep) can be accurately scored with these classifiers; however, the techniques used here would need more investigation and optimization prior to serious use in clinical applications

„Im Straßenbild wirkungsvoll“. Kirchenbauten in der Stadt Hamburg vom Mittelalter bis 1965

Bis zur Aufhebung der Torsperre im Jahr 1860 war Hamburg ein recht kompakter, in sich geschlossener städtebaulicher Organismus. Dessen Entwicklung lässt sich bis heute eindrucksvoll an seinen Kirchenbauten nachvollziehen. Noch im 19. Jahrhunderts hatten die Kirchen zunächst große Gemeinden zu versorgen und mussten daher von weither sichtbar sein. „Sehlinien“ sollten ähnlich der städtischen Situation im Mittelpunkt der Architektenplanung stehen. In den Jahren 1945 bis 1961, in denen die meisten Hamburger Kirchen errichtet worden sind, waren neben dem Landeskirchenamt auch die städtischen Behörden an der Planung beteiligt. Die Entscheidung über Abriss oder Umnutzung und Umbau von Kirchenbauten darf daher, so die These, nicht den Kirchen selbst überlassen werden. Kirchen und ihre Ausstattung müssen in ihrer städtebaulichen und architekturhistorischen Bedeutung für Hamburg analysiert und öffentlich diskutiert werden

Teaching the form-function mapping of German ‘prefield’ elements using Concept-Based Instruction

This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.Empirical findings in Second Language Acquisition suggest that the basic structure of German declarative sentences, described in terms of topological fields, poses certain challenges to learners of German as a foreign language. The problem of multiple prefield elements, resulting in ungrammatical verb-third sentences, figures most prominently in the literature. While the so-called V2 constraint is usually treated as a purely formal feature of German syntax both in the empirical as well as in the pedagogical literature, the present paper adopts a usage-based perspective, viewing language as an inventory of form-function mappings. Basic functions of prefield elements have already been identified in research on textual grammar and information structure. This paper presents results from a pilot study with Japanese elementary learners of German as a foreign language, where the form-function mapping of German prefield elements was explicitly taught following the guidelines of an approach called Concept-Based Instruction. The findings indicate that, with a focus on the function-function mapping, it is in fact possible to explicitly teach these rather abstract regularities of German to beginning learners. The participants’ language production exhibits a prefield variation pattern similar to that of L1 German speakers; at the same time the learners produce very few ungrammatical verb-third sentences.Peer Reviewe

An Examination of Scholarly Perspective, Religiosity and Factors Which Lead to Religious Change

As a replication and expansion of work done by Alsdurf (1977), the relations between religiosity, commitment to scholarly openness and reasons for religious change were examined through a survey of 146 students attending a South-central university. A discussion of logical and empirical studies was presented to help clarify the theses under examination, and it was maintained that this study was primarily concerned with empirical relationships. A negative correlation was obtained between scholarly openness and religiosity for the total population studied, but the correlation was weak. In contrast to expectations, a significant negative correlation between scholarly openness and religiosity was not obtained for those who reported never experiencing a significant religious change. Conflicting with Alsdurf’s (1977) findings, a sinfulness factor mediating religious change was positively rather than negatively correlated with scholarly openness, and a factor assessing significant interaction with others was unrelated rather than positively correlated with scholarly openness. It was concluded that knowing factors reported as mediating religious conversion does not provide a basis for predicting scholarly openness, but that empirically, scholarly openness and religiosity are not necessarily incompatible