11,116 research outputs found
Matching and stabilization of the unicycle with rider
In this paper we apply matching techniques for controlled Lagrangians to
the stabilization problem of a nonholonomic system consisting of a unicycle with rider.
We show how generalized matching results may be applied to the Routhian associated
with this nonholonomic system
Elected and appointed justices face different constraints inwriting opinions
The majority opinion is the main vehicle for policy-making for state and federal courts. Longer opinions usually indicate a more detailed explanation of the decision of the majority. But is the length of these opinions influenced by whether justices are appointed or elected? In new research Meghan E. Leonard and Joseph V. Ross find that while the length of these opinions is not directly affected by how judges are selected, appointed justices write longer opinions when a separate opinion is filed or when the majority opinion author is not randomly selected, as compared to states where justices are selected through contestable elections
Unsplit Schemes for Hyperbolic Conservation Laws with Source Terms in One Space Dimension
The present work is concerned with the extension of the theory of characteristics to conservation laws with source terms in one space dimension, such as the
Euler equations for reacting flows. New spacetime curves are introduced on which the equations decouple to the characteristic set of O.D.E's for the corresponding
homogeneous laws, thus allowing the introduction of functions analogous to the Riemann Invariants. The geometry of these curves depends on the spatial gradients
for the solution. This particular decomposition can be used in the design of efficient unsplit algorithms for the numerical integration of the equations. As a first step,
these ideas are implemented for the case of a scalar conservation law with a nonlinear
source term. The resulting algorithm belongs to the class of MUSCL-type, shock-capturing schemes. Its accuracy and robustness are checked through a series
of tests. The aspect of the stiffness of the source term is also studied. Then, the algorithm is generalized for a system of hyperbolic equations, namely the Euler
equations for reacting flows. An extensive numerical study of unstable detonations is performed
FGK stars and T Tauri stars: Monograph series on nonthermal phenomena in stellar atmospheres
The purpose of this book, FGK Stars and T Tauri Stars, like all other volumes of this series, is to exhibit and describe the best space data and ground based data currently available, and also to describe and critically evaluate the status of current theoretical models and physical mechanisms that have been proposed to interpret these data. The method for obtaining this book was to collect manuscripts from competent volunteer authors, and then to collate and edit these contributions to form a well structured book, which will be distributed to an international community of research astronomers by NASA and by the French CNRS
Optically Controlled Excitonic Transistor
Optical control of exciton fluxes is realized for indirect excitons in a
crossed-ramp excitonic device. The device demonstrates experimental proof of
principle for all-optical excitonic transistors with a high ratio between the
excitonic signal at the optical drain and the excitonic signal due to the
optical gate. The device also demonstrates experimental proof of principle for
all-optical excitonic routers
Gene duplication and subsequent diversification strongly affect phenotypic evolvability and robustness.
We study the effects of non-determinism and gene duplication on the structure of genotype-phenotype (GP) maps by introducing a non-deterministic version of the Polyomino self-assembly model. This model has previously been used in a variety of contexts to model the assembly and evolution of protein quaternary structure. Firstly, we show the limit of the current deterministic paradigm which leads to built-in anti-correlation between evolvability and robustness at the genotypic level. We develop a set of metrics to measure structural properties of GP maps in a non-deterministic setting and use them to evaluate the effects of gene duplication and subsequent diversification. Our generalized versions of evolvability and robustness exhibit positive correlation for a subset of genotypes. This positive correlation is only possible because non-deterministic phenotypes can contribute to both robustness and evolvability. Secondly, we show that duplication increases robustness and reduces evolvability initially, but that the subsequent diversification that duplication enables has a stronger, inverse effect, greatly increasing evolvability and reducing robustness relative to their original values
Faster k-Medoids Clustering: Improving the PAM, CLARA, and CLARANS Algorithms
Clustering non-Euclidean data is difficult, and one of the most used
algorithms besides hierarchical clustering is the popular algorithm
Partitioning Around Medoids (PAM), also simply referred to as k-medoids. In
Euclidean geometry the mean-as used in k-means-is a good estimator for the
cluster center, but this does not hold for arbitrary dissimilarities. PAM uses
the medoid instead, the object with the smallest dissimilarity to all others in
the cluster. This notion of centrality can be used with any (dis-)similarity,
and thus is of high relevance to many domains such as biology that require the
use of Jaccard, Gower, or more complex distances.
A key issue with PAM is its high run time cost. We propose modifications to
the PAM algorithm to achieve an O(k)-fold speedup in the second SWAP phase of
the algorithm, but will still find the same results as the original PAM
algorithm. If we slightly relax the choice of swaps performed (at comparable
quality), we can further accelerate the algorithm by performing up to k swaps
in each iteration. With the substantially faster SWAP, we can now also explore
alternative strategies for choosing the initial medoids. We also show how the
CLARA and CLARANS algorithms benefit from these modifications. It can easily be
combined with earlier approaches to use PAM and CLARA on big data (some of
which use PAM as a subroutine, hence can immediately benefit from these
improvements), where the performance with high k becomes increasingly
important.
In experiments on real data with k=100, we observed a 200-fold speedup
compared to the original PAM SWAP algorithm, making PAM applicable to larger
data sets as long as we can afford to compute a distance matrix, and in
particular to higher k (at k=2, the new SWAP was only 1.5 times faster, as the
speedup is expected to increase with k)
Excitation Energy Dependence of the Exciton Inner Ring
We report on the excitation energy dependence of the inner ring in the
exciton emission pattern. The contrast of the inner ring is found to decrease
with lowering excitation energy. Excitation by light tuned to the direct
exciton resonance is found to effectively suppress excitation-induced heating
of indirect excitons and facilitate the realization of a cold and dense exciton
gas. The excitation energy dependence of the inner ring is explained in terms
of exciton transport and cooling.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Sparse 3D Point-cloud Map Upsampling and Noise Removal as a vSLAM Post-processing Step: Experimental Evaluation
The monocular vision-based simultaneous localization and mapping (vSLAM) is
one of the most challenging problem in mobile robotics and computer vision. In
this work we study the post-processing techniques applied to sparse 3D
point-cloud maps, obtained by feature-based vSLAM algorithms. Map
post-processing is split into 2 major steps: 1) noise and outlier removal and
2) upsampling. We evaluate different combinations of known algorithms for
outlier removing and upsampling on datasets of real indoor and outdoor
environments and identify the most promising combination. We further use it to
convert a point-cloud map, obtained by the real UAV performing indoor flight to
3D voxel grid (octo-map) potentially suitable for path planning.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, camera-ready version of paper for "The 3rd
International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Robotics (ICR 2018)
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