K-Space at TRECVID 2008

In this paper we describe K-Space’s participation in TRECVid 2008 in the interactive search task. For 2008 the K-Space group performed one of the largest interactive video information retrieval experiments conducted in a laboratory setting. We had three institutions participating in a multi-site multi-system experiment. In total 36 users participated, 12 each from Dublin City University (DCU, Ireland), University of Glasgow (GU, Scotland) and Centrum Wiskunde and Informatica (CWI, the Netherlands). Three user interfaces were developed, two from DCU which were also used in 2007 as well as an interface from GU. All interfaces leveraged the same search service. Using a latin squares arrangement, each user conducted 12 topics, leading in total to 6 runs per site, 18 in total. We officially submitted for evaluation 3 of these runs to NIST with an additional expert run using a 4th system. Our submitted runs performed around the median. In this paper we will present an overview of the search system utilized, the experimental setup and a preliminary analysis of our results

Measurement of La-139(n, gamma) cross section

We measured the neutron capture cross section of La-139 relative to Au-197 in the energy range of 0.6 cV to 9 keV at n_TOF, the neutron time-of-flight facility at CERN. After a description of the experimental apparatus, we discuss data analysis procedures. The data were fitted using R-matrix formalism to extract resonance parameters which, in turn, were used to calculate average level spacings D-0 = 268 +/- 22 eV and D-1 <250 cV, and neutron strength functions S-0 = (0.79 +/- 0.03)x 10(-4) and S-1 = (0.73 +/- 0.05)x 10(4) for s- and p-wave resonances. The data also were used to determine Maxwellian-averaged neutron capture cross sections which, in turn, were used to calculate the La-139 abundance synthesized in a stellar model of the main component of the s process