Using visualization for visualization : an ecological interface design approach to inputting data

Visualization is experiencing growing use by a diverse community, with continuing improvements in the availability and usability of systems. In spite of these developments the problem of how first to get the data in has received scant attention: the established approach of pre-defined readers and programming aids has changed little in the last two decades. This paper proposes a novel way of inputting data for scientific visualization that employs rapid interaction and visual feedback in order to understand how the data is stored. The approach draws on ideas from the discipline of ecological interface design to extract and control important parameters describing the data, at the same time harnessing our innate human ability to recognize patterns. Crucially, the emphasis is on file format discovery rather than file format description, so the method can therefore still work when nothing is known initially of how the file was originally written, as is often the case with legacy binary data. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd

Generating-function method for fusion rules

This is the second of two articles devoted to an exposition of the generating-function method for computing fusion rules in affine Lie algebras. The present paper focuses on fusion rules, using the machinery developed for tensor products in the companion article. Although the Kac-Walton algorithm provides a method for constructing a fusion generating function from the corresponding tensor-product generating function, we describe a more powerful approach which starts by first defining the set of fusion elementary couplings from a natural extension of the set of tensor-product elementary couplings. A set of inequalities involving the level are derived from this set using Farkas' lemma. These inequalities, taken in conjunction with the inequalities defining the tensor products, define what we call the fusion basis. Given this basis, the machinery of our previous paper may be applied to construct the fusion generating function. New generating functions for sp(4) and su(4), together with a closed form expression for their threshold levels are presented.Comment: Harvmac (b mode : 47 p) and Pictex; to appear in J. Math. Phy

A low-luminosity soft state in the short period black hole X-ray binary Swift J1753.5-0127

We present results from the spectral fitting of the candidate black hole X-ray binary Swift J1753.5-0127 in an accretion state previously unseen in this source. We fit the 0.7-78 keV spectrum with a number of models, however the preferred model is one of a multi-temperature disk with an inner disk temperature $\mathrm{k}T_\mathrm{in}=0.252\pm0.003$ keV scattered into a steep power-law with photon index $\Gamma=6.39^{+0.08}_{-0.02}$ and an additional hard power law tail ($\Gamma=1.79\pm0.02$). We report on the emergence of a strong disk-dominated component in the X-ray spectrum and we conclude that the source has entered the soft state for the first time in its ~10 year prolonged outburst. Using reasonable estimates for the distance to the source ($3$ kpc) and black hole mass ($5M_{\odot}$), we find the unabsorbed luminosity (0.1-100 keV) to be $\approx0.60$% of the Eddington luminosity, making this one of the lowest luminosity soft states recorded in X-ray binaries. We also find that the accretion disk extended towards the compact object during its transition from hard to soft, with the inner radius estimated to be $R_{\mathrm{in}}=28.0^{+0.7}_{-0.4} R_g$ or ~$12R_g$, dependent on the boundary condition chosen, assuming the above distance and mass, a spectral hardening factor $f=1.7$ and a binary inclination $i=55^{\circ}$.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Arguing and negotiating in the presence of social influences

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Face distortion aftereffects in personally familiar, famous, and unfamiliar faces

The internal face prototype is thought to be a construction of the average of every previously viewed face (Schwaninger et al., 2003). However, the influence of the most frequently encountered faces (i.e., personally familiar faces) has been generally understated. The current research explored the face distortion aftereffect in unfamiliar, famous, and personally familiar (each subject’s parent) faces. Forty-eight adult participants reported whether faces were distorted or not (distorted by shifting the eyes in the vertical axis) of a series of images that included unfamiliar, famous, and personally familiar faces. The number of faces perceived to be “odd” was measured pre- and post-adaptation to the most extreme distortion. Participants were adapted to either an unfamiliar, famous, or personally familiar face. The results indicate that adaptation transferred from unfamiliar faces to personally familiar faces more so than the converse and aftereffects did not transfer from famous faces to unfamiliar faces. These results are indicative of representation differences between unfamiliar, famous, and personally familiar faces, whereby personally familiar faces share representations of both unfamiliar and famous faces