2,018 research outputs found
A Bayesian Approach to Comparing Cosmic Ray Energy Spectra
A common problem in ultra-high energy cosmic ray physics is the comparison of
energy spectra. The question is whether the spectra from two experiments or two
regions of the sky agree within their statistical and systematic uncertainties.
We develop a method to directly compare energy spectra for ultra-high energy
cosmic rays from two different regions of the sky in the same experiment
without reliance on agreement with a theoretical model of the energy spectra.
The consistency between the two spectra is expressed in terms of a Bayes
factor, defined here as the ratio of the likelihood of the two-parent source
hypothesis to the likelihood of the one-parent source hypothesis. Unlike other
methods, for example chi^2 tests, the Bayes factor allows for the calculation
of the posterior odds ratio and correctly accounts for non-Gaussian
uncertainties. The latter is particularly important at the highest energies,
where the number of events is very small.Comment: 22 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in Ap
Comparison of dogs treated for primary immune-mediated hemolytic anemia in Tuscany, Italy and Texas, USA
This retrospective study compared clinical characteristics between dogs treated for IMHA by veterinary teaching hospitals in Tuscany, Italy and Texas, USA between 2010 and 2018
Simulating Ability: Representing Skills in Games
Throughout the history of games, representing the abilities of the various
agents acting on behalf of the players has been a central concern. With
increasingly sophisticated games emerging, these simulations have become more
realistic, but the underlying mechanisms are still, to a large extent, of an ad
hoc nature. This paper proposes using a logistic model from psychometrics as a
unified mechanism for task resolution in simulation-oriented games
Exact steady-state velocity of ratchets driven by random sequential adsorption
We solve the problem of discrete translocation of a polymer through a pore,
driven by the irreversible, random sequential adsorption of particles on one
side of the pore. Although the kinetics of the wall motion and the deposition
are coupled, we find the exact steady-state distribution for the gap between
the wall and the nearest deposited particle. This result enables us to
construct the mean translocation velocity demonstrating that translocation is
faster when the adsorbing particles are smaller. Monte-Carlo simulations also
show that smaller particles gives less dispersion in the ratcheted motion. We
also define and compare the relative efficiencies of ratcheting by deposition
of particles with different sizes and we describe an associated
"zone-refinement" process.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures New asymptotic result for low chaperone density
added. Exact translocation velocity is proportional to (chaperone
density)^(1/3
Ignorance based inference of optimality in thermodynamic processes
We derive ignorance based prior distribution to quantify incomplete
information and show its use to estimate the optimal work characteristics of a
heat engine.Comment: Latex, 10 pages, 3 figure
Consistency of the Shannon entropy in quantum experiments
The consistency of the Shannon entropy, when applied to outcomes of quantum
experiments, is analysed. It is shown that the Shannon entropy is fully
consistent and its properties are never violated in quantum settings, but
attention must be paid to logical and experimental contexts. This last remark
is shown to apply regardless of the quantum or classical nature of the
experiments.Comment: 12 pages, LaTeX2e/REVTeX4. V5: slightly different than the published
versio
Present and future evidence for evolving dark energy
We compute the Bayesian evidences for one- and two-parameter models of
evolving dark energy, and compare them to the evidence for a cosmological
constant, using current data from Type Ia supernova, baryon acoustic
oscillations, and the cosmic microwave background. We use only distance
information, ignoring dark energy perturbations. We find that, under various
priors on the dark energy parameters, LambdaCDM is currently favoured as
compared to the dark energy models. We consider the parameter constraints that
arise under Bayesian model averaging, and discuss the implication of our
results for future dark energy projects seeking to detect dark energy
evolution. The model selection approach complements and extends the
figure-of-merit approach of the Dark Energy Task Force in assessing future
experiments, and suggests a significantly-modified interpretation of that
statistic.Comment: 10 pages RevTex4, 3 figures included. Minor changes to match version
accepted by PR
Direct reconstruction of the quintessence potential
We describe an algorithm which directly determines the quintessence potential
from observational data, without using an equation of state parametrisation.
The strategy is to numerically determine observational quantities as a function
of the expansion coefficients of the quintessence potential, which are then
constrained using a likelihood approach. We further impose a model selection
criterion, the Bayesian Information Criterion, to determine the appropriate
level of the potential expansion. In addition to the potential parameters, the
present-day quintessence field velocity is kept as a free parameter. Our
investigation contains unusual model types, including a scalar field moving on
a flat potential, or in an uphill direction, and is general enough to permit
oscillating quintessence field models. We apply our method to the `gold' Type
Ia supernovae sample of Riess et al. (2004), confirming the pure cosmological
constant model as the best description of current supernovae
luminosity-redshift data. Our method is optimal for extracting quintessence
parameters from future data.Comment: 9 pages RevTeX4 with lots of incorporated figure
Tidal dissipation in rotating giant planets
[Abridged] Tides may play an important role in determining the observed
distributions of mass, orbital period, and eccentricity of the extrasolar
planets. In addition, tidal interactions between giant planets in the solar
system and their moons are thought to be responsible for the orbital migration
of the satellites, leading to their capture into resonant configurations. We
treat the underlying fluid dynamical problem with the aim of determining the
efficiency of tidal dissipation in gaseous giant planets. In cases of interest,
the tidal forcing frequencies are comparable to the spin frequency of the
planet but small compared to its dynamical frequency. We therefore study the
linearized response of a slowly and possibly differentially rotating planet to
low-frequency tidal forcing. Convective regions of the planet support inertial
waves, while any radiative regions support generalized Hough waves. We present
illustrative numerical calculations of the tidal dissipation rate and argue
that inertial waves provide a natural avenue for efficient tidal dissipation in
most cases of interest. The resulting value of Q depends in a highly erratic
way on the forcing frequency, but we provide evidence that the relevant
frequency-averaged dissipation rate may be asymptotically independent of the
viscosity in the limit of small Ekman number. In short-period extrasolar
planets, if the stellar irradiation of the planet leads to the formation of a
radiative outer layer that supports generalized Hough modes, the tidal
dissipation rate can be enhanced through the excitation and damping of these
waves. These dissipative mechanisms offer a promising explanation of the
historical evolution and current state of the Galilean satellites as well as
the observed circularization of the orbits of short-period extrasolar planets.Comment: 74 pages, 12 figures, submitted to The Astrophysical Journa
Non-Compositional Term Dependence for Information Retrieval
Modelling term dependence in IR aims to identify co-occurring terms that are
too heavily dependent on each other to be treated as a bag of words, and to
adapt the indexing and ranking accordingly. Dependent terms are predominantly
identified using lexical frequency statistics, assuming that (a) if terms
co-occur often enough in some corpus, they are semantically dependent; (b) the
more often they co-occur, the more semantically dependent they are. This
assumption is not always correct: the frequency of co-occurring terms can be
separate from the strength of their semantic dependence. E.g. "red tape" might
be overall less frequent than "tape measure" in some corpus, but this does not
mean that "red"+"tape" are less dependent than "tape"+"measure". This is
especially the case for non-compositional phrases, i.e. phrases whose meaning
cannot be composed from the individual meanings of their terms (such as the
phrase "red tape" meaning bureaucracy). Motivated by this lack of distinction
between the frequency and strength of term dependence in IR, we present a
principled approach for handling term dependence in queries, using both lexical
frequency and semantic evidence. We focus on non-compositional phrases,
extending a recent unsupervised model for their detection [21] to IR. Our
approach, integrated into ranking using Markov Random Fields [31], yields
effectiveness gains over competitive TREC baselines, showing that there is
still room for improvement in the very well-studied area of term dependence in
IR
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