Dog-Headed: Outcast to All

Cynocephali are a group of mythological, dog-headed, humans that appear throughout various cultures. Despite the wide range of region and time period in which they are used, they consistently represent a quality of otherness .https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/fsrs2020/1050/thumbnail.jp

Animal behaviour.

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Light Scattering From Periodic Conducting Nanostructures

Carbon nanotube (CNT) forests are roughly vertically aligned carbon tubes with a diameter of a few nanometers, and a height of hundreds of micrometers. CNT forests of proper densities and heights can be excellent absorbers of visible light, so a lot of interest has been generated in their application in optical calibration, energy conversion, antireflection, and radiometry. Unfortunately, reflectance from CNTs rises quickly above the mid-infrared range, limiting their present use. Improving a CNT-based broadband absorber requires understanding why the forests have almost zero visible-light reflectance, as well as a strategy to extend that low reflectance into longer wavelengths. Since CNTs are a conducting material, the focus of my research thus far is in developing an analytic model for light scattering from periodic conducting structures. Here I\u27ll present a 1-dimensional (1D) model and examine numerical calculations obtained from it to determine how various parameters affect reflectance. I\u27ll also discuss our efforts to extend that model to the 2D case and some of the issues we\u27ve encountered in that.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/fsrs2022/1026/thumbnail.jp

Scattering of Light From Periodic Conducting Nanostructures

Light scattered from periodic structures generates numerous fascinating phenomena, from diffraction patterns to the black patches on some butterfly wings. The simple scalar wave formulation based on Huygens principle can account for many diffraction and radiation patterns in the far field. However, when the structure dimensions are smaller than the wavelength, light polarization and structure details become important, and the vector formulation based on Maxwell\u27s equations is necessary. I will present an analytic calculation and a numerical simulation on light scattering from two-dimensional conducting grids to model the reflectance from butterfly wings and broadband absorption structures made from carbon nanotube forests.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/fsrs2021/1069/thumbnail.jp

Light Scattering From Periodic, Conducting Nanostructures

A material with broadband light absorbing capabilities has the potential for much usefulness in devices such as photovoltaics and thermoelectrics. By energy conservation, a non-transparent material with low reflectance will be highly absorbing. Thus, much research has been devoted to understanding what makes material having low reflectance across a wide wavelength spectrum. The importance of a material’s electronic structure in determining reflectance is well-established. Current research is revealing the additional importance of surface architecture in the reflective properties of a material. A metasurface is a two-dimentional material with physical features at or smaller than the wavelength of light considered. These wavelength-scale features allow metasurfaces to exhibit uncommon light-matter interactions, such as having a negative index of refraction or generating light beams with orbital angular momentum. Natural or man-made metasurfaces with periodic or quasi-periodic surface features have been found to have extremely low reflectance, but the underlying mechanism has not been clearly established. Here, mode matching at the boundaries is used to solve a plane wave of light scattering from an array of apertures in a perfectly conducting metal. This approach provides numerical solutions of Maxwell’s equations, instead of the commonly used finite-difference-time-domain simulations which provide solutions but can vary with the setup parameters involved in the simulation. My results indicate that interference effects are the primary cause behind the dark nature of periodic meta surfaces. These results provide guidelines to design subwavelength structures that can achieve low reflectance over a broader range of wavelengths. Furthermore, this technique can be extended to quasi-periodic surfaces. Similar to Fourier analysis, the surface structure could be represented by a distribution of periodic structures where reflectance from each periodic structure can be solved as detailed in this study. These quasi-periodic structures are closer to many ultra-dark surfaces found in nature, such as the dark patches on the wings of some butterfly species. Thus, being able to analyze aperiodic structures could further advance our design of broadband absorbers

Comparing Levels of Situational Empathy based on medium of exposure to Covid-19 Mortality Information: Does Political Affiliation Impact Levels of Situational Empathy?

Psychophysical numbing, compassion fading, and the singularity effect are strongly affecting the world amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Empathy-motivated prosocial behavior is not consistent with the drastic number of lives lost due to COVID-19. The current study evaluated participants for situational empathy levels post-exposure to either COVID-19 death statistics or a personal reflection on loss due to COVID-19. Alongside empathy, political affiliation and COVID-19 personal loss were measured as potential moderators on the relationship between medium of exposure to mortality information and empathy levels in the sample

A Comparison of Generalizability for Anomaly Detection

In security-related areas there is concern over the novel “zeroday” attack that penetrates system defenses and wreaks havoc. The best methods for countering these threats are recognizing “non-self” as in an Artificial Immune System or recognizing “self” through clustering. For either case, the concern remains that something that looks similar to self could be missed. Given this situation one could logically assume that a tighter fit to self rather than generalizability is important for false positive reduction in this type of learning problem. This article shows that a tight fit, although important, does not supersede having some model generality. This is shown using three systems. The first two use sphere and ellipsoid clusters with a k-means algorithm modified to work on the one-class/blind classification problem. The third is based on wrapping the self points with a multidimensional convex hull (polytope) algorithm capable of learning disjunctive concepts via a thresholding constant. All three of these algorithms are tested on an intrusion detection problem and a steganalysis problem with results exceeding published results using an Artificial Immune System

The use of electric pulse training aids (EPTAs) in companion animals

There is currently little regulation of training and behaviour modification processes in the UK (CAWC 2008) besides measures enshrined in the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and a voluntary Code of Practice launched in 2010 (see: http://www.cawc.org.uk/080603.pdf). This Code is consistent with current UK legislation outside of Wales and emphasises the need to safeguard the welfare of all interested parties involved in the “training contract” (animals and people alike) and the importance of adopting sound scientific methods within the skills base of the practitioner. There is much debate and opinion over whether the use of certain training techniques and devices meet these requirements, especially the use of electric pulse training aids (EPTAs). An EPTA is defined for the purposes of this report as a device designed for use in the training of dogs, cats and other companion animal species, which involves the application of an electric current to the skin to aid the training process. In Wales the use of all electronic collars has been banned ostensibly on animal welfare grounds, including those related to boundary fencing (The Animal Welfare (Electronic Collars) (Wales) Regulations 2010). It has been suggested that there are currently around 350000 EPTAs in the UK, although the number in active use is unknown. Nonetheless they clearly represent a significant practice within the sphere of animal training and it is appropriate that careful consideration be given to their use, especially when there appears to be so much contradictory information available and such passionately held convictions (often linked to ethical and animal welfare concerns) by those expressing an opinion. This report critically reviews current evidence and arguments used both for and against the use of such devices and the conclusions drawn. It highlights gaps in our knowledge and awareness of both theory and practice. Recommendations are drawn on this basis

Dipole-phonon quantum logic with alkaline-earth monoxide and monosulfide cations

Dipole-phonon quantum logic (DPQL) leverages the interaction between polar molecular ions and the motional modes of a trapped-ion Coulomb crystal to provide a potentially scalable route to quantum information science. Here, we study a class of candidate molecular ions for DPQL, the cationic alkaline-earth monoxides and monosulfides, which possess suitable structure for DPQL and can be produced in existing atomic ion experiments with little additional complexity. We present calculations of DPQL operations for one of these molecules, CaO$^+$, and discuss progress towards experimental realization. We also further develop the theory of DPQL to include state preparation and measurement and entanglement of multiple molecular ions.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure

Willingness and Ability of Older Adults in the Emergency Department to Provide Clinical Information Using a Tablet Computer

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/134983/1/jgs14366.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/134983/2/jgs14366_am.pd