Improved Heterogeneous Distance Functions

Instance-based learning techniques typically handle continuous and linear input values well, but often do not handle nominal input attributes appropriately. The Value Difference Metric (VDM) was designed to find reasonable distance values between nominal attribute values, but it largely ignores continuous attributes, requiring discretization to map continuous values into nominal values. This paper proposes three new heterogeneous distance functions, called the Heterogeneous Value Difference Metric (HVDM), the Interpolated Value Difference Metric (IVDM), and the Windowed Value Difference Metric (WVDM). These new distance functions are designed to handle applications with nominal attributes, continuous attributes, or both. In experiments on 48 applications the new distance metrics achieve higher classification accuracy on average than three previous distance functions on those datasets that have both nominal and continuous attributes.Comment: See http://www.jair.org/ for an online appendix and other files accompanying this articl

Spinning Relativistic Particle in an External Electromagnetic Field

The Hamiltonian formulation of the motion of a spinning relativistic particle in an external electromagnetic field is considered. The approach is based on the introduction of new coordinates and their conjugated momenta to describe the spin degrees of freedom together with an appropriate set of constraints in the Dirac formulation. For particles with gyromagnetic ratio $g=2$, the equations of motion do not predict any deviation from the standard Lorentz force, while for $g \neq 2$ an additional force, which corresponds to the magnetic dipole force, is obtained.Comment: Latex file, 11 page

Z' boson detection in the Minimal Quiver Standard Model

We undertake a phenomenological study of the extra neutral Z' boson in the Minimal Quiver Standard Model and discuss limits on the model's parameters from previous precision electroweak experiments, as well as detection prospects at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. We find that masses lower than around 700 GeV are excluded by the $Z$-pole data from the CERN-LEP collider, and below 620 GeV by experimental data from di-electron events at the Fermilab-Tevatron collider. We also find that at a mass of 1 TeV the LHC cross section would show a small peak in the di-lepton and top pair channel.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures. v2: substantial revisions and improvements, final version accepted for publicatio