909 research outputs found
Induced Magnetic Ordering by Proton Irradiation in Graphite
We provide evidence that proton irradiation of energy 2.25 MeV on
highly-oriented pyrolytic graphite samples triggers ferro- or ferrimagnetism.
Measurements performed with a superconducting quantum interferometer device
(SQUID) and magnetic force microscopy (MFM) reveal that the magnetic ordering
is stable at room temperature.Comment: 3 Figure
Analysis of the Copenhagen Accord pledges and its global climatic impactsâ a snapshot of dissonant ambitions
This analysis of the Copenhagen Accord evaluates emission reduction pledges by individual countries against the Accord's climate-related objectives. Probabilistic estimates of the climatic consequences for a set of resulting multi-gas scenarios over the 21st century are calculated with a reduced complexity climate model, yielding global temperature increase and atmospheric CO2 and CO2-equivalent concentrations. Provisions for banked surplus emission allowances and credits from land use, land-use change and forestry are assessed and are shown to have the potential to lead to significant deterioration of the ambition levels implied by the pledges in 2020. This analysis demonstrates that the Copenhagen Accord and the pledges made under it represent a set of dissonant ambitions. The ambition level of the current pledges for 2020 and the lack of commonly agreed goals for 2050 place in peril the Accord's own ambition: to limit global warming to below 2 °C, and even more so for 1.5 °C, which is referenced in the Accord in association with potentially strengthening the long-term temperature goal in 2015. Due to the limited level of ambition by 2020, the ability to limit emissions afterwards to pathways consistent with either the 2 or 1.5 °C goal is likely to become less feasibl
SPoC: A novel framework for relating the amplitude of neuronal oscillations to behaviorally relevant parameters
Previously, modulations in power of neuronal oscillations have been functionally linked to sensory, motor and cognitive operations. Such links are commonly established by relating the power modulations to specific target variables such as reaction times or task ratings. Consequently, the resulting spatio-spectral representation is subjected to neurophysiological interpretation. As an alternative, independent component analysis (ICA) or alternative decomposition methods can be applied and the power of the components may be related to the target variable. In this paper we show that these standard approaches are suboptimal as the first does not take into account the superposition of many sources due to volume conduction, while the second is unable to exploit available information about the target variable. To improve upon these approaches we introduce a novel (supervised) source separation framework called Source Power Comodulation (SPoC). SPoC makes use of the target variable in the decomposition process in order to give preference to components whose power comodulates with the target variable. We present two algorithms that implement the SPoC approach. Using simulations with a realistic head model, we show that the SPoC algorithms are able extract neuronal components exhibiting high correlation of power with the target variable. In this task, the SPoC algorithms outperform other commonly used techniques that are based on the sensor data or ICA approaches. Furthermore, using real electroencephalography (EEG) recordings during an auditory steady state paradigm, we demonstrate the utility of the SPoC algorithms by extracting neuronal components exhibiting high correlation of power with the intensity of the auditory input. Taking into account the results of the simulations and real EEG recordings, we conclude that SPoC represents an adequate approach for the optimal extraction of neuronal components showing coupling of power with continuously changing behaviorally relevant parameters
Strange Particle Production at RHIC
We report STAR measurements of mid-rapidity yields for the ,
, , , , , and
particles in Cu+Cu and Au+Au GeV
collisions. We show that at a given number of participating nucleons, bulk
strangeness production is higher in Cu+Cu collisions compared to Au+Au
collisions at the same center of mass energy, counter to predictions from the
Canonical formalism. We compare both the Cu+Cu and Au+Au yields to AMPT and
EPOS predictions, and find they reproduce key qualitative aspects of the data.
Finally, we investigate other scaling parameters and find bulk strangeness
production for both the measured data and theoretical predictions, scales
better with the number participants that undergo more than one collision.Comment: Conference proceedings for Hot Quarks 2008, 5 pages and 4 figure
The Meta-Evaluation Problem in Explainable AI: Identifying Reliable Estimators with MetaQuantus
Explainable AI (XAI) is a rapidly evolving field that aims to improve
transparency and trustworthiness of AI systems to humans. One of the unsolved
challenges in XAI is estimating the performance of these explanation methods
for neural networks, which has resulted in numerous competing metrics with
little to no indication of which one is to be preferred. In this paper, to
identify the most reliable evaluation method in a given explainability context,
we propose MetaQuantus -- a simple yet powerful framework that meta-evaluates
two complementary performance characteristics of an evaluation method: its
resilience to noise and reactivity to randomness. We demonstrate the
effectiveness of our framework through a series of experiments, targeting
various open questions in XAI, such as the selection of explanation methods and
optimisation of hyperparameters of a given metric. We release our work under an
open-source license to serve as a development tool for XAI researchers and
Machine Learning (ML) practitioners to verify and benchmark newly constructed
metrics (i.e., ``estimators'' of explanation quality). With this work, we
provide clear and theoretically-grounded guidance for building reliable
evaluation methods, thus facilitating standardisation and reproducibility in
the field of XAI.Comment: 30 pages, 12 figures, 3 table
System-size dependence
The final state in The final state in heavy-ion collisions has a higher
degree of strangeness saturation than the one produced in collisions between
elementary particles like p-p or p-. A systematic analysis of this
phenomenon is made for C-C, Si-Si and Pb-Pb collisions at the CERN SPS collider
and for collisions at RHIC and at AGS energies. Strangeness saturation
is shown to increase smoothly with the number of participants at AGS, CERN and
RHIC energies.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, presented at SQM2003 conferenc
Psychopathological Profiles in Transsexuals and the Challenge of Their Special Status among the Sexes
OBJECTIVE:Investigating psychopathological profiles of transsexuals raises a very basic methodological question: are control groups, which represent the biological or the phenotypic sex, most suited for an optimal evaluation of psychopathology of transsexuals? METHOD:Male-to-female (MtF) (n=52) and female-to-male transsexuals (FtM) (n=32), receiving cross-sex hormone treatment, were compared with age matched healthy subjects of the same genetic sex (n=178) and with the same phenotypic sex (n=178) by means of the Symptom Check List-90-Revisited instrument (SCL-90-R). We performed analyses of covariance (ANCOVA) to test for group and sex effects. Furthermore, we used a profile analysis to determine if psychopathological symptom profiles of transsexuals more closely resemble genotypic sex or phenotypic sex controls. RESULTS:Transsexual patients reported more symptoms of psychopathological distress than did healthy control subjects in all subscales of the SCL-90-R (all p<0.001), regardless of whether they were compared with phenotype or genotype matched controls. Depressive symptoms were more pronounced in MtF than in FtM (SCL-90-R score 0.85 vs. 0.45, p = 0.001). We could demonstrate that FtM primarily reflect the psychopathological profile of biological males rather than that of biological females (r = 0.945), while MtF showed a slightly higher profile similarity with biological females than with biological males (r = 0.698 vs. r = 0.685). CONCLUSION:Our findings suggest that phenotypic sex matched controls are potentially more appropriate for comparison with the psychopathology of transsexual patients than are genetic sex matched controls
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