Persistent Topology of Syntax

We study the persistent homology of the data set of syntactic parameters of the world languages. We show that, while homology generators behave erratically over the whole data set, non-trivial persistent homology appears when one restricts to specific language families. Different families exhibit different persistent homology. We focus on the cases of the Indo-European and the Niger-Congo families, for which we compare persistent homology over different cluster filtering values. We investigate the possible significance, in historical linguistic terms, of the presence of persistent generators of the first homology. In particular, we show that the persistent first homology generator we find in the Indo-European family is not due (as one might guess) to the Anglo-Norman bridge in the Indo-European phylogenetic network, but is related to the position of Ancient Greek and the Hellenic branch within the network.Comment: 15 pages, 25 jpg figure

Study of the electron trigger efficiency of the CMS Experiment using test beam data

A study of the electron identification and selection efficiency of the L1 Trigger algorithm has been performed using the combined ECAL/HCAL test beam data. A detailed discussion of the electron isolation and its impact on the selection efficiency is presented. The L1 electron algorithm is studied for different beam energies and the results indicate that efficiencies of 98% or more can be achieved for electrons with energies between 15 and 100 GeV. The fraction of charged hadrons with energies from 3 up to 100 GeV rejected by the L1 electron trigger algorithm is estimated to be larger than 93%.Comment: 22 pages, 14 figure

Automated data pre-processing via meta-learning

The final publication is available at link.springer.comA data mining algorithm may perform differently on datasets with different characteristics, e.g., it might perform better on a dataset with continuous attributes rather than with categorical attributes, or the other way around. As a matter of fact, a dataset usually needs to be pre-processed. Taking into account all the possible pre-processing operators, there exists a staggeringly large number of alternatives and nonexperienced users become overwhelmed. We show that this problem can be addressed by an automated approach, leveraging ideas from metalearning. Specifically, we consider a wide range of data pre-processing techniques and a set of data mining algorithms. For each data mining algorithm and selected dataset, we are able to predict the transformations that improve the result of the algorithm on the respective dataset. Our approach will help non-expert users to more effectively identify the transformations appropriate to their applications, and hence to achieve improved results.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Radiative Corrections to Electron-Proton Scattering

The radiative corrections to elastic electron-proton scattering are analyzed in a hadronic model including the finite size of the nucleon. For initial electron energies above 8 GeV and large scattering angles, the proton vertex correction in this model increases by at least two percent the overall factor by which the one-photon exchange (Rosenbluth) cross section must be multiplied. The contribution of soft photon emission is calculated exactly. Comparison is made with the generally used expressions previously obtained by Mo and Tsai. Results are presented for some kinematics at high momentum transfer.Comment: 31 pages, 4 figure

Extended Superscaling of Electron Scattering from Nuclei

An extended study of scaling of the first and second kinds for inclusive electron scattering from nuclei is presented. Emphasis is placed on the transverse response in the kinematic region lying above the quasielastic peak. In particular, for the region in which electroproduction of resonances is expected to be important, approximate scaling of the second kind is observed and the modest breaking of it is shown probably to be due to the role played by an inelastic version of the usual scaling variable.Comment: LaTeX, 36 pages including 5 color postscript figures and 4 postscript figure

The BaBar Event Building and Level-3 Trigger Farm Upgrade

The BaBar experiment is the particle detector at the PEP-II B-factory facility at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. During the summer shutdown 2002 the BaBar Event Building and Level-3 trigger farm were upgraded from 60 Sun Ultra-5 machines and 100MBit/s Ethernet to 50 Dual-CPU 1.4GHz Pentium-III systems with Gigabit Ethernet. Combined with an upgrade to Gigabit Ethernet on the source side and a major feature extraction software speedup, this pushes the performance of the BaBar event builder and L3 filter to 5.5kHz at current background levels, almost three times the original design rate of 2kHz. For our specific application the new farm provides 8.5 times the CPU power of the old system.Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 4 pages, 1 eps figure, PSN MOGT00

Perturbative QCD Analysis of Local Duality in a fixed W^2 Framework

We study the global Q^2 dependence of large x, F_2 nucleon structure function data, with the aim of providing a perturbative-QCD based, quantitative analysis of parton-hadron duality. As opposed to previous analyses at fixed x, we use a framework in fixed W^2. We uncover a breakdown of the twist-4 approximation with a renormalon type improvement at O(1/Q^4) which, by affecting the initial evolution of parton distributions, will have consequences for pQCD analyses also at large x and very large Q^2.Comment: RevTex4, 8 pages, 3 figure

Level-1 Regional Calorimeter Trigger System for CMS

The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) calorimeter regional trigger system is designed to detect signatures of isolated and non-isolated electrons/photons, jets, ?-leptons, and missing and total transverse energy using a deadtimeless pipelined architecture. This system contains 18 crates of custom-built electronics. The pre-production prototype backplane, boards, links and Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) have been built and their performance is characterized.Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 6 pages, PDF. PSN THHT00