34,477 research outputs found
The Anatomy of a Scientific Rumor
The announcement of the discovery of a Higgs boson-like particle at CERN will
be remembered as one of the milestones of the scientific endeavor of the 21st
century. In this paper we present a study of information spreading processes on
Twitter before, during and after the announcement of the discovery of a new
particle with the features of the elusive Higgs boson on 4th July 2012. We
report evidence for non-trivial spatio-temporal patterns in user activities at
individual and global level, such as tweeting, re-tweeting and replying to
existing tweets. We provide a possible explanation for the observed
time-varying dynamics of user activities during the spreading of this
scientific "rumor". We model the information spreading in the corresponding
network of individuals who posted a tweet related to the Higgs boson discovery.
Finally, we show that we are able to reproduce the global behavior of about
500,000 individuals with remarkable accuracy.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figure
An optimal fixed-priority assignment algorithm for supporting fault-tolerant hard real-time systems
The main contribution of this paper is twofold. First, we present an appropriate schedulability analysis, based on response time analysis, for supporting fault-tolerant hard real-time systems. We consider systems that make use of error-recovery techniques to carry out fault tolerance. Second, we propose a new priority assignment algorithm which can be used, together with the schedulability analysis, to improve system fault resilience. These achievements come from the observation that traditional priority assignment policies may no longer be appropriate when faults are being considered. The proposed schedulability analysis takes into account the fact that the recoveries of tasks may be executed at higher priority levels. This characteristic is very important since, after an error, a task certainly has a shorter period of time to meet its deadline. The proposed priority assignment algorithm, which uses some properties of the analysis, is very efficient. We show that the method used to find out an appropriate priority assignment reduces the search space from O(n!) to O(n/sup 2/), where n is the number of task recovery procedures. Also, we show that the priority assignment algorithm is optimal in the sense that the fault resilience of task sets is maximized as for the proposed analysis. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is evaluated by simulation
Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state generation with linear optical elements
We propose a scheme to probabilistically generate Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger
(GHZ) states encoded on the path degree of freedom of three photons. These
photons are totally independent from each other, having no direct interaction
during the whole evolution of the protocol, which remarkably requires only
linear optical devices to work, and two extra ancillary photons to mediate the
correlation. The efficacy of the method, which has potential application in
distribited quantum computation and multiparty quantum communication, is
analyzed in comparison with similar proposals reported in the recent
literature. We also discuss the main error sources that limit the efficiency of
the protocol in a real experiment and some interesting aspects about the
mediator photons in connection with the concept of spatial nonlocality
State determination: an iterative algorithm
An iterative algorithm for state determination is presented that uses as
physical input the probability distributions for the eigenvalues of two or more
observables in an unknown state . Starting form an arbitrary state
, a succession of states is obtained that converges to
or to a Pauli partner. This algorithm for state reconstruction is
efficient and robust as is seen in the numerical tests presented and is a
useful tool not only for state determination but also for the study of Pauli
partners. Its main ingredient is the Physical Imposition Operator that changes
any state to have the same physical properties, with respect to an observable,
of another state.Comment: 11 pages 3 figure
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