Ground state of antiferromagnetic Heisenberg two-leg ladder in terms of the valence-bond solid picture

We have proposed the plaquette-singlet solid (PSS) ground state for the spin-1 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg two-leg ladder. Based on the PSS picture, we discuss the correspondence of the PSS state to the valence-bond solid (VBS) state of the ground state of spin-2 chain by introducing an appropriate composite spin picture. When the bond alternation is introduced, there occur quantum phase transitions and each phase can be identified with that in the dimerized spin-2 chain. Furthermore, we argue that the VBS picture of spin-2S chain can be applied to the ground state of spin-S two-leg ladder.Comment: 2 pages, 1 eps figure, Proceedings for LT23; Proper citation added, Author list change

身体状況が言語処理過程に与える影響について

Evidence is increasing that brain areas that are responsible for action planning and execution are activated during the information processing of action-related verbs (e.g., pick or kick). To obtain further evidence, we conducted six experiments to see whether constraining arm posture, which could disturb motor planning and imagery for that arm, would lead to the delayed judgment of verbs referring to arm actions. In all experiments, native Japanese speaker participants performed two tasks. In compatibility judgment task, participants judged as quickly as possible whether the presented object and the verb would be compatible (e.g., ball—throw) or not (e.g., ball pour). Constrained arm posture was introduced to the task by asking participants to keep both hands behind their backs. Two types of verbs were used: manual action verbs (MA verbs,i.e., verbs referring to actions performed on an object by a human hand) and non-manual action verbs (non-MA verbs). In a word detection task, participants were asked to react as quickly as possible when a word was presented. In experiment 1, we hypothesized that, for the compatibility judgment task, delayed judgment by constrained arm posture would be observed, particularly for manual action (MA) verbs but not for non-manual action (non-MA) verbs because only MA verbs are related to manual actions. In contrast, for the word detection task, constrained arm postures would not affect the judgment time. If the hypothesis would be the case, then it would show that peripheral bodily states affect the information processing of action verbs. The results of Experiment 1 showed that, for the compatibility judgment task, inconsistently in part with our hypothesis, constrained arm posture led to overall delayed responses. The results of the word detection task showed no significant main effect or interaction. This was consistent with our hypothesis and showed that constrained arm postures would not affect judgment time. This suggests that, in the compatibility judgment task, the delayed response induced by constrained arm posture was not merely due to the difficulty of responding via the button when the arm was constrained. The results of Experiment 2 produced the same results obtained in Experiment 1, showing the reliability of the findings. In Experiments 3 and 4, we addressed whether the effect of constrained arm posture would be reproduced when the compatibility judgment task was performed when the response method was changed from a finger response to a foot (Exp. 3) or voice (Exp. 4) response. The results showed that, when reacting with a foot, constrained arm posture did not lead to delayed reaction time. On the other hand, when reacting by voice, constrained arm posture led to delayed reaction times for both MA and non-MA verbs. These results partly supported our hypothesis that constrained arm posture would induce a delayed response in the compatibility judgment task; however, it depended on the reaction method. Inconsistently with our hypothesis, the result of the four experiments uniformly showed that delayed judgment was observed with constrained arm posture for both MA verbs and non-MA verbs. Before concluding that constrained arm posture is likely to affect the processing of verbs, regardless of the type of verb, an additional experiment was planned as Experiment 5 to exclude the possibility that the results were produced merely due to the experimental condition, in which a pictured stimulus of an object was presented before a verb. To exclude this possibility, we conducted an experiment in which the protocol was the same as in Experiments 1-4; however, the object and the verb were presented in reversed order. The results replicated the findings in Experiments 1-4. Experiment 6 showed that the effect of constrained arm posture was observed even for compatibility judgments for nouns. Based on the results of all experiments, we concluded that constrained arm posture could result in the peripheral bodily state\u27s affecting the information processing of words. The effect of constrained arm posture was observed even when participants responded with their voices (Experiment 4), suggesting that the delayed judgment was not simply due to the difficulty of responding with the hand (i.e., the motor factor). In contrast to our hypothesis that constrained arm posture would affect only the information processing of manual action verbs, the results showed delayed processing of both manual action and non-manual action verbs when the arm posture was constrained. The results also showed delayed processing for nouns with constrained arm posture. The findings were discussed based on the idea that a body schema is involved in the information processing of action-related words.首都大学東京, 2017-03-25, 博士（健康科学）, 甲第718号首都大学東

The Spatial Distribution of Backscattered Electrons Revisited with a New Monte Carlo Simulation

A Monte Carlo simulation program including the discrete energy loss process has been developed, based on the Mott cross section for elastic scattering and the Vriens cross section for inelastic scattering. A deficiency of the previous model which is based on the screened Rutherford cross section and the Bethe law is made clear, from comparison between the new and old results such as the energy distribution of backscattered electrons for a Cu target. With the new Monte Carlo model, the radial spreading and penetration depth of both all and low-loss backscattered electrons have been studied for the Cu target at electron energies of 5.10 and 20 keV. From these studies, it is found that the electron exit angle dependence of the spatial spreading is more significant with the low-loss backscattered electrons and a very high resolution of 2 to 3 nm can be obtained even with backscattered electrons

Soy sauce and its umami taste: a link from the past to current situation.

Soy sauce taste has become a focus of umami taste research. Umami taste is a 5th basic taste, which is associated to a palatable and pleasurable taste of food. Soy sauce has been used as an umami seasoning since the ancient time in Asia. The complex fermentation process occurred to soy beans, as the raw material in the soy sauce production, gives a distinct delicious taste. The recent investigation on Japanese and Indonesian soy sauces revealed that this taste is primarily due to umami components which have molecular weights lower than 500 Da. Free amino acids are the low molecular compounds that have an important role to the taste, in the presence of sodium salt. The intense umami taste found in the soy sauces may also be a result from the interaction between umami components and other tastants. Small peptides are also present, but have very low, almost undetected umami taste intensities investigated in their fractions

CompDP: A Framework for Simultaneous Subgraph Counting Under Connectivity Constraints

The subgraph counting problem computes the number of subgraphs of a given graph that satisfy some constraints. Among various constraints imposed on a graph, those regarding the connectivity of vertices, such as "these two vertices must be connected," have great importance since they are indispensable for determining various graph substructures, e.g., paths, Steiner trees, and rooted spanning forests. In this view, the subgraph counting problem under connectivity constraints is also important because counting such substructures often corresponds to measuring the importance of a vertex in network infrastructures. However, we must solve the subgraph counting problems multiple times to compute such an importance measure for every vertex. Conventionally, they are solved separately by constructing decision diagrams such as BDD and ZDD for each problem. However, even solving a single subgraph counting is a computationally hard task, preventing us from solving it multiple times in a reasonable time. In this paper, we propose a dynamic programming framework that simultaneously counts subgraphs for every vertex by focusing on similar connectivity constraints. Experimental results show that the proposed method solved multiple subgraph counting problems about 10-20 times faster than the existing approach for many problem settings

International Competition on Graph Counting Algorithms 2023

This paper reports on the details of the International Competition on Graph Counting Algorithms (ICGCA) held in 2023. The graph counting problem is to count the subgraphs satisfying specified constraints on a given graph. The problem belongs to #P-complete, a computationally tough class. Since many essential systems in modern society, e.g., infrastructure networks, are often represented as graphs, graph counting algorithms are a key technology to efficiently scan all the subgraphs representing the feasible states of the system. In the ICGCA, contestants were asked to count the paths on a graph under a length constraint. The benchmark set included 150 challenging instances, emphasizing graphs resembling infrastructure networks. Eleven solvers were submitted and ranked by the number of benchmarks correctly solved within a time limit. The winning solver, TLDC, was designed based on three fundamental approaches: backtracking search, dynamic programming, and model counting or #SAT (a counting version of Boolean satisfiability). Detailed analyses show that each approach has its own strengths, and one approach is unlikely to dominate the others. The codes and papers of the participating solvers are available: https://afsa.jp/icgca/.Comment: https://afsa.jp/icgca