A Direct Distance to the LMC Cepheid HV 12198 from the Infrared Surface Brightness Technique

We report on a first application of the infrared surface brightness technique on a Cepheid in the Large Magellanic Cloud, the variable HV 12198 in the young globular cluster NGC 1866. From this one star, we determine a distance modulus of 18.42 +- 0.10 (random and systematic uncertainty) to the cluster. When the results on further member Cepheids in NGC 1866 become available, we expect to derive the distance to the LMC with a +- 3-4 percent accuracy, including systematic errors, from this technique.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, accepted in ApJ Letter

Tuning grid storage resources for LHC data analysis

Grid Storage Resource Management (SRM) and local file-system solutions are facing significant challenges to support efficient analysis of the data now being produced at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). We compare the performance of different storage technologies at UK grid sites examining the effects of tuning and recent improvements in the I/O patterns of experiment software. Results are presented for both live production systems and technologies not currently in widespread use. Performance is studied using tests, including real LHC data analysis, which can be used to aid sites in deploying or optimising their storage configuration

Enhanced Stability of Superheavy Nuclei due to High-Spin Isomerism

Configuration-constrained calculations of potential-energy surfaces in even-even superheavy nuclei reveal systematically the existence at low excitation energies of multi-quasiparticle states with deformed axially symmetric shapes and large angular momenta. These results indicate the prevalence of long-lived, multi-quasiparticle isomers. In a quantal system, the ground state is usually more stable than the excited states. In contrast, in superheavy nuclei the multi-qausiparticle excitations decrease the probability for both fission and $\alpha$ decay, implying enhanced stability. Hence, the systematic occurrence of multi-qausiparticle isomers may become crucial for future production and study of even heavier nuclei. The energies of multi-quasiparticle states and their $\alpha$ decays are calculated and compared to available data.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in PR

Antiferromagnetism and hot spots in CeIn3_3

Enormous mass enhancement at ''hot spots'' on the Fermi surface (FS) of CeIn$_3$ has been reported at strong magnetic field near its antiferromagnetic (AFM) quantum critical point [T. Ebihara et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 246401 (2004)] and ascribed to anomalous spin fluctuations at these spots. The ''hot spots'' lie at the positions on FS where in non-magnetic LaIn$_3$ the narrow necks are protruded. In paramagnetic phase CeIn$_3$ has similar spectrum. We show that in the presence of AFM ordering its FS undergoes a topological change at the onset of AFM order that truncates the necks at the ''hot spots'' for one of the branches. Applied field leads to the logarithmic divergence of the dHvA effective mass when the electron trajectory passes near or through the neck positions. This effect explains the observed dHvA mass enhancement at the ''hot spots'' and leads to interesting predictions concerning the spin-dependence of the effective electron mass. The (T,B)-phase diagram of CeIn$_3$, constructed in terms of the Landau functional, is in agreement with experiment.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

Learning Content Selection Rules for Generating Object Descriptions in Dialogue

A fundamental requirement of any task-oriented dialogue system is the ability to generate object descriptions that refer to objects in the task domain. The subproblem of content selection for object descriptions in task-oriented dialogue has been the focus of much previous work and a large number of models have been proposed. In this paper, we use the annotated COCONUT corpus of task-oriented design dialogues to develop feature sets based on Dale and Reiters (1995) incremental model, Brennan and Clarks (1996) conceptual pact model, and Jordans (2000b) intentional influences model, and use these feature sets in a machine learning experiment to automatically learn a model of content selection for object descriptions. Since Dale and Reiters model requires a representation of discourse structure, the corpus annotations are used to derive a representation based on Grosz and Sidners (1986) theory of the intentional structure of discourse, as well as two very simple representations of discourse structure based purely on recency. We then apply the rule-induction program RIPPER to train and test the content selection component of an object description generator on a set of 393 object descriptions from the corpus. To our knowledge, this is the first reported experiment of a trainable content selection component for object description generation in dialogue. Three separate content selection models that are based on the three theoretical models, all independently achieve accuracies significantly above the majority class baseline (17%) on unseen test data, with the intentional influences model (42.4%) performing significantly better than either the incremental model (30.4%) or the conceptual pact model (28.9%). But the best performing models combine all the feature sets, achieving accuracies near 60%. Surprisingly, a simple recency-based representation of discourse structure does as well as one based on intentional structure. To our knowledge, this is also the first empirical comparison of a representation of Grosz and Sidners model of discourse structure with a simpler model for any generation task

Distinguishing Adult Pectinophora scutigera (Holdaway) According to Larval Diet by X-Ray Microanalysis

In an exploratory study using scanning electron microscope (SEM) based energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) of X-rays, differences were detected in the elemental compositions of adult Pectinophora scutigera raised on contrasting diets - cotton, Hibiscus tiliaceus and laboratory medium. X-ray spectra were collected from the thorax and abdomen of 13 male and 13 female moths. X-ray yields are optimised by ashing the insects for 1 h at 400-600°C, and by operating the SEM at 25 kV. Spectrum matching, element matching, discriminant analysis and principal components analysis were used to classify the specimens on the basis of diet with 54-100% success. Spectra were considered as a whole or processed using either a digital filter to remove background or a ZAF program to compute semiquantitative elemental concentrations. Background corrected peaks is the favoured data format, having high discriminating power and being simple to obtain and interpret. Better classification is apparent when subsets of the same sex, body part or both are employed; and when the data for each element is normalised to a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of 1. The chief discriminating elements appear to be F, Na, Mg, P, Cl, K and Ca with Si, S, Mn, Fe and Zn being of little assistance

16S rRNA gene-based profiling of the human infant gut microbiota is strongly influenced by sample processing and PCR primer choice

Acknowledgements The authors acknowledge the assistance of Grietje Holtrop (RINH-BioSS) with the statistical analysis of the data and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute’s 454 pyrosequencing team for generating 16S rRNA gene data. AWW, PS and JP received core funding support from the Wellcome Trust [grant number 098051]. AWW, JCM, HJF and KPS are funded by the Scottish Government (SG-RESAS).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Casimir force acting on magnetodielectric bodies embedded in media

Within the framework of macroscopic quantum electrodynamics, general expressions for the Casimir force acting on linearly and causally responding magnetodielectric bodies that can be embedded in another linear and causal magnetodielectric medium are derived. Consistency with microscopic harmonic-oscillator models of the matter is shown. The theory is applied to planar structures and proper generalizations of Casimir's and Lifshitz-type formulas are given.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures; minor additions and corrections, to appear in PR