247 research outputs found
Serious games for the human behaviour analysis in emergency evacuation scenarios
This paper describes an experiment designed to elicit human behaviour when facing the urgent need of exiting an unknown building. This work is part of a larger effort to devise the methodological approach underlying the implementation of simulation of pedestrians and elicitation of their emergent dynamics, an experimental framework coined SPEED. To validate our experimental setup, a group of 16 experts on fire safety, emergency planning and building evacuation were consulted. The experts were solicited to answer a questionnaire, rating their gaming experiences and validating the questions in the form to be presented to subjects. Their comments were valuable inputs used in the development of the experiment described in this paper. A sample of 62 subjects was then used to test our approach, which consists in having the subjects answering a questionnaire and later on playing a Serious Game resorting to the Unity3D game engine. Some specific scenarios were carefully designed and presented to subjects, both in the questionnaire and in the game environment to maintain consistency of answers. Preliminary results are promising, showing that the challenge made players think about the various situations that might happen when facing an emergency. They are also implied to reason on their stream of decisions, such as which direction to take considering the environment and some adverse situations, such as smoke, fire and people running on the opposite direction of the emergency signage.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Equivalence of three-dimensional spacetimes
A solution to the equivalence problem in three-dimensional gravity is given
and a practically useful method to obtain a coordinate invariant description of
local geometry is presented. The method is a nontrivial adaptation of Karlhede
invariant classification of spacetimes of general relativity. The local
geometry is completely determined by the curvature tensor and a finite number
of its covariant derivatives in a frame where the components of the metric are
constants. The results are presented in the framework of real two-component
spinors in three-dimensional spacetimes, where the algebraic classifications of
the Ricci and Cotton-York spinors are given and their isotropy groups and
canonical forms are determined. As an application we discuss Goedel-type
spacetimes in three-dimensional General Relativity. The conditions for local
space and time homogeneity are derived and the equivalence of three-dimensional
Goedel-type spacetimes is studied and the results are compared with previous
works on four-dimensional Goedel-type spacetimes.Comment: 13 pages - content changes and corrected typo
Anomalous excitonic phase diagram in band-gap-tuned Ta2Ni(Se,S)5
During a band-gap-tuned semimetal-to-semiconductor transition, Coulomb
attraction between electrons and holes can cause spontaneously formed excitons
near the zero-band-gap point, or the Lifshitz transition point. This has become
an important route to realize bulk excitonic insulators -- an insulating ground
state distinct from single-particle band insulators. How this route manifests
from weak to strong coupling is not clear. In this work, using angle-resolved
photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and high-resolution synchrotron x-ray
diffraction (XRD), we investigate the broken symmetry state across the
semimetal-to-semiconductor transition in a leading bulk excitonic insulator
candidate system Ta2Ni(Se,S)5. A broken symmetry phase is found to be
continuously suppressed from the semimetal side to the semiconductor side,
contradicting the anticipated maximal excitonic instability around the Lifshitz
transition. Bolstered by first-principles and model calculations, we find
strong interband electron-phonon coupling to play a crucial role in the
enhanced symmetry breaking on the semimetal side of the phase diagram. Our
results not only provide insight into the longstanding debate of the nature of
intertwined orders in Ta2NiSe5, but also establish a basis for exploring
band-gap-tuned structural and electronic instabilities in strongly coupled
systems.Comment: 27 pages, 4 + 9 figure
Measurement of the cosmic ray spectrum above eV using inclined events detected with the Pierre Auger Observatory
A measurement of the cosmic-ray spectrum for energies exceeding
eV is presented, which is based on the analysis of showers
with zenith angles greater than detected with the Pierre Auger
Observatory between 1 January 2004 and 31 December 2013. The measured spectrum
confirms a flux suppression at the highest energies. Above
eV, the "ankle", the flux can be described by a power law with
index followed by
a smooth suppression region. For the energy () at which the
spectral flux has fallen to one-half of its extrapolated value in the absence
of suppression, we find
eV.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO
Energy Estimation of Cosmic Rays with the Engineering Radio Array of the Pierre Auger Observatory
The Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) is part of the Pierre Auger
Observatory and is used to detect the radio emission of cosmic-ray air showers.
These observations are compared to the data of the surface detector stations of
the Observatory, which provide well-calibrated information on the cosmic-ray
energies and arrival directions. The response of the radio stations in the 30
to 80 MHz regime has been thoroughly calibrated to enable the reconstruction of
the incoming electric field. For the latter, the energy deposit per area is
determined from the radio pulses at each observer position and is interpolated
using a two-dimensional function that takes into account signal asymmetries due
to interference between the geomagnetic and charge-excess emission components.
The spatial integral over the signal distribution gives a direct measurement of
the energy transferred from the primary cosmic ray into radio emission in the
AERA frequency range. We measure 15.8 MeV of radiation energy for a 1 EeV air
shower arriving perpendicularly to the geomagnetic field. This radiation energy
-- corrected for geometrical effects -- is used as a cosmic-ray energy
estimator. Performing an absolute energy calibration against the
surface-detector information, we observe that this radio-energy estimator
scales quadratically with the cosmic-ray energy as expected for coherent
emission. We find an energy resolution of the radio reconstruction of 22% for
the data set and 17% for a high-quality subset containing only events with at
least five radio stations with signal.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO
Measurement of the Radiation Energy in the Radio Signal of Extensive Air Showers as a Universal Estimator of Cosmic-Ray Energy
We measure the energy emitted by extensive air showers in the form of radio
emission in the frequency range from 30 to 80 MHz. Exploiting the accurate
energy scale of the Pierre Auger Observatory, we obtain a radiation energy of
15.8 \pm 0.7 (stat) \pm 6.7 (sys) MeV for cosmic rays with an energy of 1 EeV
arriving perpendicularly to a geomagnetic field of 0.24 G, scaling
quadratically with the cosmic-ray energy. A comparison with predictions from
state-of-the-art first-principle calculations shows agreement with our
measurement. The radiation energy provides direct access to the calorimetric
energy in the electromagnetic cascade of extensive air showers. Comparison with
our result thus allows the direct calibration of any cosmic-ray radio detector
against the well-established energy scale of the Pierre Auger Observatory.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DOI.
Supplemental material in the ancillary file
Accurate Genome Relative Abundance Estimation Based on Shotgun Metagenomic Reads
Accurate estimation of microbial community composition based on metagenomic sequencing data is fundamental for subsequent metagenomics analysis. Prevalent estimation methods are mainly based on directly summarizing alignment results or its variants; often result in biased and/or unstable estimates. We have developed a unified probabilistic framework (named GRAMMy) by explicitly modeling read assignment ambiguities, genome size biases and read distributions along the genomes. Maximum likelihood method is employed to compute Genome Relative Abundance of microbial communities using the Mixture Model theory (GRAMMy). GRAMMy has been demonstrated to give estimates that are accurate and robust across both simulated and real read benchmark datasets. We applied GRAMMy to a collection of 34 metagenomic read sets from four metagenomics projects and identified 99 frequent species (minimally 0.5% abundant in at least 50% of the data- sets) in the human gut samples. Our results show substantial improvements over previous studies, such as adjusting the over-estimated abundance for Bacteroides species for human gut samples, by providing a new reference-based strategy for metagenomic sample comparisons. GRAMMy can be used flexibly with many read assignment tools (mapping, alignment or composition-based) even with low-sensitivity mapping results from huge short-read datasets. It will be increasingly useful as an accurate and robust tool for abundance estimation with the growing size of read sets and the expanding database of reference genomes
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