Bounded Bessel Processes and Ferrari-Spohn Diffusions

We introduce a new diffusion process which arises as the $n\to\infty$ limit of a Bessel process of dimension $d \ge 2$ conditioned upon remaining bounded below one until time $n$. In addition to being interesting in its own right, we argue that the resulting diffusion process is a natural hard edge counterpart to the Ferrari-Spohn diffusion of arXiv:math/0308242. In particular, we show that the generator of our new diffusion has the same relation to the Sturm-Liouville problem for the Bessel operator that the Ferrari-Spohn diffusion does to the corresponding problem for the Airy operator.Comment: 8 page

Sharing and Preserving Computational Analyses for Posterity with encapsulator

Open data and open-source software may be part of the solution to science's "reproducibility crisis", but they are insufficient to guarantee reproducibility. Requiring minimal end-user expertise, encapsulator creates a "time capsule" with reproducible code in a self-contained computational environment. encapsulator provides end-users with a fully-featured desktop environment for reproducible research.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure

From Foreign Text to Local Meaning: The Politics of Religious Exclusion in Transnational Constitutional Borrowing

Constitutional drafters often look to foreign constitutional models, ideas, and texts for inspiration; many are explicit about their foreign borrowing. However, when implemented domestically, the meaning of borrowed elements often changes. Political scientists and scholars of comparative constitutional law have analyzed the transnational movement of constitutional ideas and norms, but the political processes through which the meaning of foreign provisions might be refashioned remain understudied. Socio-legal scholars have examined the “transplantation” and “translation” of laws and legal institutions, but they rarely scrutinize this process in the context of constitutions. Drawing on an examination of borrowed constitutional elements in four cases (Pakistan, Morocco, Egypt, Israel), this article builds on research in comparative politics, comparative constitutional law, and socio-legal studies to provide a nuanced picture of deliberate efforts to import “inclusive” constitutional provisions regarding religion-state relations while, at the same time, refashioning the meaning of those provisions in ways that “exclude” specific forms of religious, sectarian, doctrinal, or ideological diversity. Building on socio-legal studies regarding the translation of law, we argue that foreign constitutional elements embraced by politically embedded actors are often treated as “empty signifiers” with meanings that are deliberately transformed. Tracing the processes that lead political actors to engage foreign constitutional elements, even if they have no intention of transplanting their prior meaning, we highlight the need for detailed case studies to reveal both the international and the national dynamics that shape and re-shape the meaning of constitutions today

How to observe and quantify quantum-discord states via correlations

Quantum correlations between parts of a composite system most clearly reveal themselves through entanglement. Designing, maintaining, and controlling entangled systems is very demanding, which raises the stakes for understanding the efficacy of entanglement-free, yet quantum correlations, exemplified by quantum discord. Discord is defined via conditional mutual entropies of parts of a composite system and its direct measurement is hardly possible even via full tomographic characterization of the system state. Here we design a simple protocol to detect and quantify quantum discord in an unentangled bipartite system. Our protocol relies on a characteristic of discord that can be extracted from repeated direct measurements of certain correlations between subsystems of the bipartite system. The proposed protocol opens a way of extending experimental studies of discord to electronic systems, but can also be implemented in quantum-optical systems

Kinetics of thorium and particle cycling along the U.S. GEOTRACES North Atlantic Transect

© The Author(s), 2017. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here under a nonexclusive, irrevocable, paid-up, worldwide license granted to WHOI. It is made available for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers 125 (2017): 106-128, doi:10.1016/j.dsr.2017.05.003.The high particle reactivity of thorium has resulted in its widespread use in tracing processes impacting marine particles and their chemical constituents. The use of thorium isotopes as tracers of particle dynamics, however, largely relies on our understanding of how the element scavenges onto particles. Here, we estimate apparent rate constants of Th adsorption (k1), Th desorption (k−1), bulk particle degradation (β-1), and bulk particle sinking speed (w) along the water column at 11 open-ocean stations occupied during the GEOTRACES North Atlantic Section (GA03). First, we provide evidence that the budgets of Th isotopes and particles at these stations appear to be generally dominated by radioactive production and decay sorption reactions, particle degradation, and particle sinking. Rate parameters are then estimated by fitting a Th and particle cycling model to data of dissolved and particulate 228,230,234Th, 228Ra, particle concentrations, and 234,238U estimates based on salinity, using a nonlinear programming technique. We find that the adsorption rate constant (k1) generally decreases with depth across the section: broadly, the time scale 1/k1 averages 1.0 yr in the upper 1000 m and (1.4–1.5) yr below. A positive relationship between k1 and particle concentration (P) is found, i.e., , k1 ∝ Pb where b ≥ 1, consistent with the notion that k1 increases with the number of surface sites available for adsorption. The rate constant ratio, K = k1/(k-1 + β-1), which measures the collective influence of rate parameters on Th scavenging, averages 0.2 for most stations and most depths. We clarify the conditions under which K/P is equivalent to the distribution coefficient, KD, test that the conditions are met at the stations, and find that decreases with P, in line with a particle concentration effect (dKD/dP < 0). In contrast to the influence of colloids as envisioned by the Brownian pumping hypothesis, we provide evidence that the particle concentration effect arises from the joint effect of P on the rate constants for thorium attachment to, and detachment from, particles.We acknowledge the U.S. National Science Foundation for providing funding for this study (grant OCE-1232578) and for U.S. GEOTRACES North Atlantic section ship time, sampling, and data analysis. The U.S. NSF also supported the generation of 230Th data (OCE-0927064 to LDEO, OCE-O092860 to WHOI, and OCE-0927754 to UMN) and 228,234Th data (OCE-0925158 to WHOI)

Evaluation of Interpretability for Deep Learning algorithms in EEG Emotion Recognition: A case study in Autism

Current models on Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) have shown an evident and quantified lack of reliability for measuring feature-relevance when statistically entangled features are proposed for training deep classifiers. There has been an increase in the application of Deep Learning in clinical trials to predict early diagnosis of neuro-developmental disorders, such as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, the inclusion of more reliable saliency-maps to obtain more trustworthy and interpretable metrics using neural activity features is still insufficiently mature for practical applications in diagnostics or clinical trials. Moreover, in ASD research the inclusion of deep classifiers that use neural measures to predict viewed facial emotions is relatively unexplored. Therefore, in this study we propose the evaluation of a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for electroencephalography (EEG)-based facial emotion recognition decoding complemented with a novel RemOve-And-Retrain (ROAR) methodology to recover highly relevant features used in the classifier. Specifically, we compare well-known relevance maps such as Layer-Wise Relevance Propagation (LRP), PatternNet, Pattern-Attribution, and Smooth-Grad Squared. This study is the first to consolidate a more transparent feature-relevance calculation for a successful EEG-based facial emotion recognition using a within-subject-trained CNN in typically-developed and ASD individuals

Multimodality imaging of anomalous pulmonary veins

Partial anomalous pulmonary venous connection (PAPVC) is an extremely rare congenital condition where one or more of the pulmonary veins are connected to the venous circulation. Although initially suspected with unexplained right ventricular enlargement on transthoracic echocardiography (TTE), cardiac MRI is able to delineate the anatomical variant. We present a case of a 65-year-old male diagnosed with left sided PAPVC using multimodality cardiac imaging

Ophelia Business Proposal

This capstone project is a culmination of everything students have learned since their first day at Johnson & Wales. Knowledge from each lab and culinary academic course was used to come up with a restaurant concept and execute fine services to friends, family, and industry leaders. With this, Ophelia was created, a restaurant experience based on astrology. A group of friends on a mission to give the consumer a dining experience unlike anything they have seen before. Attractive to multiple target markets, our restaurant has two distinct sides of the dining room. First, a sophisticated but welcoming tasting menu experience. Courses are based off of the zodiac signs, each course serving as a representation of that sign. For example, Taurus is represented by a Bison Tartare. The bison tartare is paired with a gribiche foam and a nut tuile, giving the dish earthy tones while maintaining rich and vibrant flavors. On the other side of the restaurant, there is a full function bar with a bar menu. In the restaurant industry, drinks are one of the most profitable items you can sell. The bar menu includes a variety of “out of this world” cocktails and drinks and gives friend groups the opportunity to go out and experience a laid back atmosphere without the formality. In addition to the drink menu, the exclusive bar menu that gives a fun take on classic bar foods like the crescent moon fried mozzarella. Overall, Ophelia changes the way fine-dining is viewed, giving a wide range to our target consumers and the success they bring