Comment on ``Signal of Quark Deconfinement in the Timing Structure of Pulsar Spin-Down''

This is a comment on a paper by Glendenning, Pei, and Weber (Phys. Rev. Lett., 79, 1603, 1997), where the authors gave an incorrect estimate of the event rate and neglected the important gravitational energy release. Previous work on the same subject is reviewed, and a new suggestion is made to link quark-hadron phase transitions with soft gamma-ray repeaters.Comment: 4 pages; to appear in Phys. Rev. Let

Information complexity of the AND function in the two-Party, and multiparty settings

In a recent breakthrough paper [M. Braverman, A. Garg, D. Pankratov, and O. Weinstein, From information to exact communication, STOC'13] Braverman et al. developed a local characterization for the zero-error information complexity in the two party model, and used it to compute the exact internal and external information complexity of the 2-bit AND function, which was then applied to determine the exact asymptotic of randomized communication complexity of the set disjointness problem. In this article, we extend their results on AND function to the multi-party number-in-hand model by proving that the generalization of their protocol has optimal internal and external information cost for certain distributions. Our proof has new components, and in particular it fixes some minor gaps in the proof of Braverman et al

Contextualizing the blogosphere: A comparison of traditional and novel user interfaces for the web

In this paper, we investigate how contextual user interfaces affect blog reading experience. Based on a review of previous research, we argue why and how contextualization may result in (H1) enhanced blog reading experiences. In an eyetracking experiment, we tested 3 different web-based user interfaces for information spaces. The StarTree interface (by Inxight) and the Focus-Metaphor interface are compared with a standard blog interface. Information tasks have been used to evaluate and compare task performance and user satisfaction between these three interfaces. We found that both contextual user interfaces clearly outperformed the traditional blog interface, both in terms of task performance as well as user satisfaction. © 2007 Laqua, S., Ogbechie, N. and Sasse, M. A

Influence of acute caffeine on 50-kHz ultrasonic vocalizations in male adult rats and relevance to caffeine-mediated psychopharmacological effects

To further characterize caffeine-mediated psychopharmacological effects, the present study investigated whether acute caffeine (3, 10, 30, 50 mg/kg i.p.) exerted any influence on the emission and features of ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs), which are thought to index changes involving emotional state, in male adult rats. The results obtained demonstrate that caffeine can trigger modifications in the maximum peak frequency and bandwidth of the 50-kHz range USVs. However, such an effect was not accompanied by a significant elevation in the number of 50-kHz USVs, relative to administration of vehicle. Under the same experimental conditions, acute amphetamine (2 mg/kg i.p.) robustly elevated the number of 50-kHz USVs emitted by rats, although it did not affect the maximum peak frequency and bandwidth of USVs. Thus, both qualitative and quantitative differences in the effects exerted by caffeine and amphetamine on 50-kHz USVs were observed. Taken together, these findings further clarify the features of caffeine-mediated psychopharmacological effects, and may help to elucidate the differences between the central effects of caffeine and those elicited by other psychostimulant

Tour-based Travel Mode Choice Estimation based on Data Mining and Fuzzy Techniques

This paper extends tour-based mode choice model, which mainly includes individual trip level interactions, to include linked travel modes of consecutive trips of an individual. Travel modes of consecutive trip made by an individual in a household have strong dependency or co-relation because individuals try to maintain their travel modes or use a few combinations of modes for current and subsequent trips. Traditionally, tour based mode choice models involved nested logit models derived from expert knowledge. There are limitations associated with this approach. Logit models assumes i) specific model structure (linear utility model) in advance; and, ii) it holds across an entire historical observations. These assumptions about the predefined model may be representative of reality, however these rules or heuristics for tour based mode choice should ideally be derived from the survey data rather than based on expert knowledge/ judgment. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a novel data-driven methodology to address the issues identified in tour based mode choice. The proposed methodology is tested using the Household Travel Survey (HTS) data of Sydney metropolitan area and its performances are compared with the state-of-the-art approaches in this area

Naturally Small Seesaw Neutrino Mass with No New Physics Beyond the TeV Scale

If there is no new physics beyond the TeV energy scale, such as in a theory of large extra dimensions, the smallness of the seesaw neutrino mass, i.e. $m_\nu = m_D^2/m_N$, cannot be explained by a very large $m_N$. In contrast to previous attempts to find an alternative mechanism for a small $m_\nu$, I show how a solution may be obtained in a simple extension of the Standard Model, without using any ingredient supplied by the large extra dimensions. It is also experimentally testable at future accelerators.Comment: 9 pages, in final form for PR