An Improved Procedure for Laboratory Rearing of the Corn Earworm, \u3ci\u3eHeliothis Zea\u3c/i\u3e (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae)

An improved method for the laboratory rearing of the corn earworm. Heliothis zea, described. The rearing medium is a modification of the commonly used wheat germ An oviposition chamber, a feeder for adults, and a simple and inexpensive contrnlled humidity chamber are described

The Narrow-band Ultraviolet Imaging Experiment for Wide-field Surveys (NUVIEWS)-I: Dust scattered continuum

We report on the first results of the Narrow-band Ultraviolet Imaging Experiment for Wide-field Surveys (NUVIEWS), a sounding rocket experiment designed to map the far-ultraviolet background in four narrow bands. This is the first imaging measurement of the UV background to cover a substantial fraction of the sky. The narrow band responses (145, 155, 161, and 174 nm, 7-10 nm wide) allow us to isolate background contributions from dust-scattered continuum, H2 fluorescence, and CIV 155 nm emission. In our first flight, we mapped one quarter of the sky with 5-10 arcminute imaging resolution. In this paper, we model the dominant contribution of the background, dust-scattered continuum. Our data base consists of a map of over 10,000 sq. degrees with 468 independent measurements in 6.25 by 6.25 sq. degree bins. Stars and instrumental stellar halos are removed from the data. We present a map of the continuum background obtained in the 174 nm telescope. We use a model that follows Witt, Friedman, and Sasseen (1997: WFS) to account for the inhomogeneous radiation field and multiple scattering effects in clouds. We find that the dust in the diffuse interstellar medium displays a moderate albedo (a=0.55+/-0.1) and highly forward scattering phase function parameter (g=0.75+/-0.1) over a large fraction of the sky, similar to dust in star forming regions. We also have discovered a significant variance from the model.Comment: 16 pages, 3 ps figures, submitted to Astrophysical Journal Letter

Decay rate and other properties of the positronium negative ion

A new method for detecting the positronium minus ion is described, and the possibility of a long positronium mean free path in a solid is discussed

Extended Hodge Theory for Fibred Cusp Manifolds

For a particular class of pseudo manifolds, we show that the intersection cohomology groups for any perversity may be naturally represented by extended weighted $L^2$ harmonic forms for a complete metric on the regular stratum with respect to some weight determined by the perversity. Extended weighted $L^2$ harmonic forms are harmonic forms that are almost in the given weighted $L^2$ space for the metric in question, but not quite. This result is akin to the representation of absolute and relative cohomology groups for a manifold with boundary by extended harmonic forms on the associated manifold with cylindrical ends. As in that setting, in the unweighted $L^2$ case, the boundary values of the extended harmonic forms define a Lagrangian splitting of the boundary space in the long exact sequence relating upper and lower middle perversity intersection cohomology groups.Comment: 26 page

Quantum Lattice Fluctuations and Luminescence in C_60

We consider luminescence in photo-excited neutral C_60 using the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model applied to a single C_60 molecule. To calculate the luminescence we use a collective coordinate method where our collective coordinate resembles the displacement of the carbon atoms of the Hg(8) phonon mode and extrapolates between the ground state "dimerisation" and the exciton polaron. There is good agreement for the existing luminescence peak spacing and fair agreement for the relative intensity. We predict the existence of further peaks not yet resolved in experiment. PACS Numbers : 78.65.Hc, 74.70.Kn, 36.90+

Asymmetric Totally-corrective Boosting for Real-time Object Detection

Real-time object detection is one of the core problems in computer vision. The cascade boosting framework proposed by Viola and Jones has become the standard for this problem. In this framework, the learning goal for each node is asymmetric, which is required to achieve a high detection rate and a moderate false positive rate. We develop new boosting algorithms to address this asymmetric learning problem. We show that our methods explicitly optimize asymmetric loss objectives in a totally corrective fashion. The methods are totally corrective in the sense that the coefficients of all selected weak classifiers are updated at each iteration. In contract, conventional boosting like AdaBoost is stage-wise in that only the current weak classifier's coefficient is updated. At the heart of the totally corrective boosting is the column generation technique. Experiments on face detection show that our methods outperform the state-of-the-art asymmetric boosting methods.Comment: 14 pages, published in Asian Conf. Computer Vision 201

Occurrence of normal and anomalous diffusion in polygonal billiard channels

From extensive numerical simulations, we find that periodic polygonal billiard channels with angles which are irrational multiples of pi generically exhibit normal diffusion (linear growth of the mean squared displacement) when they have a finite horizon, i.e. when no particle can travel arbitrarily far without colliding. For the infinite horizon case we present numerical tests showing that the mean squared displacement instead grows asymptotically as t log t. When the unit cell contains accessible parallel scatterers, however, we always find anomalous super-diffusion, i.e. power-law growth with an exponent larger than 1. This behavior cannot be accounted for quantitatively by a simple continuous-time random walk model. Instead, we argue that anomalous diffusion correlates with the existence of families of propagating periodic orbits. Finally we show that when a configuration with parallel scatterers is approached there is a crossover from normal to anomalous diffusion, with the diffusion coefficient exhibiting a power-law divergence.Comment: 9 pages, 15 figures. Revised after referee reports: redrawn figures, additional comments. Some higher quality figures available at http://www.fis.unam.mx/~dsander

Dual Fronts Propagating into an Unstable State

The interface between an unstable state and a stable state usually develops a single confined front travelling with constant velocity into the unstable state. Recently, the splitting of such an interface into {\em two} fronts propagating with {\em different} velocities was observed numerically in a magnetic system. The intermediate state is unstable and grows linearly in time. We first establish rigorously the existence of this phenomenon, called ``dual front,'' for a class of structurally unstable one-component models. Then we use this insight to explain dual fronts for a generic two-component reaction-diffusion system, and for the magnetic system.Comment: 19 pages, Postscript, A

Combinatorial Games with a Pass: A dynamical systems approach

By treating combinatorial games as dynamical systems, we are able to address a longstanding open question in combinatorial game theory, namely, how the introduction of a "pass" move into a game affects its behavior. We consider two well known combinatorial games, 3-pile Nim and 3-row Chomp. In the case of Nim, we observe that the introduction of the pass dramatically alters the game's underlying structure, rendering it considerably more complex, while for Chomp, the pass move is found to have relatively minimal impact. We show how these results can be understood by recasting these games as dynamical systems describable by dynamical recursion relations. From these recursion relations we are able to identify underlying structural connections between these "games with passes" and a recently introduced class of "generic (perturbed) games." This connection, together with a (non-rigorous) numerical stability analysis, allows one to understand and predict the effect of a pass on a game.Comment: 39 pages, 13 figures, published versio