Reevaluating evaluative conditioning: A nonassociative explanation of conditioning effects in the visual evaluative conditioning paradigm

In 2 studies, the authors investigated whether evaluative conditioning (EC) is an associative phenomenon. Experiment 1 compared a standard EC paradigm with nonpaired and no-treatment control conditions. EC effects were obtained only when the conditioned stimulus (CS) and unconditioned stimulus (UCS) were rated as perceptually similar. However, similar EC effects were obtained in both control groups. An earlier failure to obtain EC effects was reanalyzed in Experiment 2. Conditioning-like effects were found when comparing a CS with the most perceptually similar UCSs used in the procedure but not when analyzing a CS rating with respect to the UCS with which it was paired during conditioning. The implications are that EC effects found in many studies are not due to associative learning and that the special characteristics of EC (conditioning without awareness and resistance to extinction) are probably nonassociative artifacts of the EC paradigm

Higgs boson production with one bottom quark including higher-order soft-gluon corrections

A Higgs boson produced in association with one or more bottom quarks is of great theoretical and experimental interest to the high-energy community. A precise prediction of its total and differential cross-section can have a great impact on the discovery of a Higgs boson with large bottom-quark Yukawa coupling, like the scalar (h^0 and H^0) and pseudoscalar (A^0) Higgs bosons of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) in the region of large \tan\beta. In this paper we apply the threshold resummation formalism to determine both differential and total cross-sections for b g \to b\Phi (where \Phi = h^0, H^0), including up to next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order (NNNLO) soft plus virtual QCD corrections at next-to-leading logarithmic (NLL) accuracy. We present results for both the Fermilab Tevatron and the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC).Comment: revtex4, 13 pages, 11 figures; new references and additional comment

Inspections To Avert Terrorism: Robustness Under Severe Uncertainty

Protecting against terrorist attacks requires making decisions in a world in which attack probabilities are largely unknown. The potential for very large losses encourages a conservative perspective, in particular toward decisions that are robust. But robustness, in the sense of assurance against extreme outcomes, ordinarily is not the only desideratum in uncertain environments. We adopt Yakov Ben-Haim’s (2001b) model of information gap decision making to investigate the problem of inspecting a number of similar targets when one of the targets may be attacked, but with unknown probability. We apply this to a problem of inspecting a sample of incoming shipping containers for a terrorist weapon. While it is always possible to lower the risk of a successful attack by inspecting more vessels, we show that robustness against the failure to guarantee a minimum level of expected utility might not be monotonic. Robustness modeling based on expected utility and incorporating inspection costs yields decision protocols that are a useful alternative to traditional risk analysis.Terrorism, Robustness, Severe Uncertainty, Port Security

A Toy Model of Flying Snake's Glide

We have developed a toy model of flying snake's glide [J.J. Socha, Nature vol. 418 (2002) 603.] by modifying a model for a falling paper. We have found that asymmetric oscillation is a key about why snake can glide. Further investigation for snake's glide will provide us details about how it can glide without a wing.Comment: 6 pages, to be submitted to J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. Revised Version submitted to the abov

Enhancement of prompt photons in ultrarelativistic proton-proton collisions from nonlinear gluon evolution at small-xx

In this paper we estimate the influence of nonlinear gluon evolution in the production of prompt photons at the LHC pp collider. We assume the validity of collinear factorization and consider the EHKQS parton distributions, which are solutions of the GLR-MQ evolution equations and describe quite well the DESY $ep$ HERA data, as input in our calculations. We find that both single and double photon production are enhanced for low-$p_T$ photons and central rapidities, while this effect is absent for the high-$p_T$ photons. The implications of this effect for the Quark-Gluon Plasma searches and for the QCD background to Higgs are also discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. Version to be published in Physical Review

Derivation of the Lorentz Force Law, the Magnetic Field Concept and the Faraday-Lenz Law using an Invariant Formulation of the Lorentz Transformation

It is demonstrated how the right hand sides of the Lorentz Transformation equations may be written, in a Lorentz invariant manner, as 4--vector scalar products. This implies the existence of invariant length intervals analogous to invariant proper time intervals. This formalism, making essential use of the 4-vector electromagnetic potential concept, provides a short derivation of the Lorentz force law of classical electrodynamics, the conventional definition of the magnetic field, in terms of spatial derivatives of the 4--vector potential and the Faraday-Lenz Law. An important distinction between the physical meanings of the space-time and energy-momentum 4--vectors is pointed out.Comment: 15 pages, no tables 1 figure. Revised and extended version of physics/0307133 Some typos removed and minor text improvements in this versio

CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE BENGUELA ECOLOGY PROGRAMME TO PELAGIC FISHERIES MANAGEMENT IN SOUTH AFRICA

In 1982, the Benguela Ecology Programme (BEP) created a formal, multi-institutional research partnership in South Africa. During the next two decades, the BEP directed many aspects of pelagic ecosystem research in the southern Benguela upwelling region, aiming to improve fisheries management, particularly that of anchovy Engraulis encrasicolus. Although much reduced in scale, the BEP is now in its fifth phase. Its early critics believed that much of the money invested in its ecosystem-type research had not benefited fisheries management, whereas its supporters maintain that many aspects of current pelagic fisheries management are founded on the BEP legacy. Ecosystem research underpinned the design of hydroacoustic surveys, and resulted in the development of expert system models aimed at predicting recruitment strength of anchovy. Current efforts to develop an ecosystem approach to management of the pelagic fishery in South Africa draw on the knowledge and understanding generated by more than 20 years of ecosystem research. However, despite this strong foundation, there is still uncertainty about the causes of interannual variability in pelagic fish recruitment. It is suggested that this time span is too short, and ecosystem monitoring and research should persist for decades to reap their full rewards. The BEP enabled productive partnerships to be established between academic and State researchers and fisheries managers, and improved linkages and communication to the fishing industry. Afr. J. mar. Sci. 26: 37–5

Shadowing Effects on the Nuclear Suppression Factor, R_dAu, in d+Au Interactions

We explore how nuclear modifications to the nucleon parton distributions affect production of high transverse momentum hadrons in deuteron-nucleus collisions. We calculate the charged hadron spectra to leading order using standard fragmentation functions and shadowing parameterizations. We obtain the d+Au to pp ratio both in minimum bias collisions and as a function of centrality. The minimum bias results agree reasonably well with the BRAHMS data while the calculated centrality dependence underestimates the data and is a stronger function of p_T than the data indicate.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figures, final version, Phys. Rev. C in pres