11,353 research outputs found
The effect of monitoring and crowds on crime and law enforcement: A natural experiment from European football
Technological advancements like the presence of smart phones and body cameras have led to increased monitoring of police, but little evidence exists on their impact. We address these problems using data on fouls from football matches in five European football leagues over six seasons. This period contains exogenous changes in monitoring rule enforcers through introduction of Video Assistant Referee review and limited bystanders from Covid-19 restrictions. Results from difference-in-differences models estimated separately for each league indicate that both events influenced the number of fouls called with substantial heterogeneity across leagues and home/away teams
Asymptotically-optimal path planning for manipulation using incremental sampling-based algorithms
A desirable property of path planning for robotic manipulation is the ability to identify solutions in a sufficiently short amount of time to be usable. This is particularly challenging for the manipulation problem due to the need to plan over high-dimensional configuration spaces and to perform computationally expensive collision checking procedures. Consequently, existing planners take steps to achieve desired solution times at the cost of low quality solutions. This paper presents a planning algorithm that overcomes these difficulties by augmenting the asymptotically-optimal RRT* with a sparse sampling procedure. With the addition of a collision checking procedure that leverages memoization, this approach has the benefit that it quickly identifies low-cost feasible trajectories and takes advantage of subsequent computation time to refine the solution towards an optimal one. We evaluate the algorithm through a series of Monte Carlo simulations of seven, twelve, and fourteen degree of freedom manipulation planning problems in a realistic simulation environment. The results indicate that the proposed approach provides significant improvements in the quality of both the initial solution and the final path, while incurring almost no computational overhead compared to the RRT algorithm. We conclude with a demonstration of our algorithm for single-arm and dual-arm planning on Willow Garage's PR2 robot
Validation of an optical model applied to the beam down CSP facility at the Masdar Institute Solar Platform
In the framework of the CSPonD Demo project, the optical characterization of the Beam Down Optical Experiment (BDOE) heliostats field is an important step to certify the required power is provided. To achieve this goal, an experiment involving a single heliostat is carried out. The results of the experiment and the comparison with simulated results are presented in this paper. Only the reflection on the heliostat is observed in order to have a better assessment of its optical performance. The heliostat reflectance is modified and the experimental and simulated concentration distribution are confronted. Results indicate that the shapes of the concentration distributions are quite similar, hence validating the optical model respects the geometry of the BDOE. Moreover these results lead to an increase of the optimized heliostat reflectance when the incident angle on the heliostat decreases. Further investigation is required to validate this method with all the individual heliostats of the BDOE solar field.MIT & Masdar Institute Cooperative Progra
The linearization of the Kodama state
We study the question of whether the linearization of the Kodama state around
classical deSitter spacetime is normalizable in the inner product of the theory
of linearized gravitons on deSitter spacetime. We find the answer is no in the
Lorentzian theory. However, in the Euclidean theory the corresponding
linearized Kodama state is delta-functional normalizable. We discuss whether
this result invalidates the conjecture that the full Kodama state is a good
physical state for quantum gravity with positive cosmological constant.Comment: 14 pages, statement on the corresponding Yang-Mills case correcte
The Spectral Action for Dirac Operators with skew-symmetric Torsion
We derive a formula for the gravitational part of the spectral action for
Dirac operators on 4-dimensional manifolds with totally anti-symmetric torsion.
We find that the torsion becomes dynamical and couples to the traceless part of
the Riemann curvature tensor. Finally we deduce the Lagrangian for the Standard
Model of particle physics in presence of torsion from the Chamseddine-Connes
Dirac operator.Comment: Longer introduction and conclusion adde
A search for AGN in the most extreme UV-selected starbursts using the European VLBI Network
We have used the European VLBI Network (EVN) to observe a sample of Lyman
Break Analogs (LBAs), nearby (z < 0.3) galaxies with properties similar to the
more distant Lyman Break Galaxies (LBGs). The study of LBGs may help define the
feed-back relationship between black holes (BHs) and their host galaxies.
Previous VLA observations have shown that the kpc-scale radio emission from
LBAs is dominated by starbursts. The main targets of this VLBI experiment were
selected because they possessed emission-line properties between starbursts and
Type 2 (obscured) AGN. Eight targets (three star-forming LBAs, four composite
LBAs, and one Type 1 AGN) were observed at 5 GHz, four of which were also
observed at 1.7 GHz. One star-forming LBA and one composite LBA were detected
above 5 \sigma at 1.7 GHz (only), while the AGN was detected at 5 GHz. In both
LBAs, the radio luminosity (LR) exceeds that expected from supernovae
(remnants) based on a comparison with Arp220, Arp229A and Mrk273, by factors of
2 - 8. The composite LBA exhibits a compact core emitting around 10% of the VLA
flux density. The high Tb of 3.5E7 K and excess core L_R with respect to the
L_R/L_X relation of radio-quiet AGN indicate that this LBA possesses an
obscured AGN (MBH ~ E5-E7 M_sun). While weak AGN may co-exist with the
starbursts as shown in at least one of the LBAs, their contribution to the
total radio flux is fairly minimal. Our results show that the detection of such
weak AGN presents a challenge at radio, X-ray and optical emission-line
wavelengths at z ~ 0.2, indicating the great difficulties that need to be
overcome in order to study similar processes at high redshift when these types
of galaxies were common.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
Quantum gravity and the standard model
We show that a class of background independent models of quantum spacetime
have local excitations that can be mapped to the first generation fermions of
the standard model of particle physics. These states propagate coherently as
they can be shown to be noiseless subsystems of the microscopic quantum
dynamics. These are identified in terms of certain patterns of braiding of
graphs, thus giving a quantum gravitational foundation for the topological
preon model proposed by one of us.
These results apply to a large class of theories in which the Hilbert space
has a basis of states given by ribbon graphs embedded in a three-dimensional
manifold up to diffeomorphisms, and the dynamics is given by local moves on the
graphs, such as arise in the representation theory of quantum groups. For such
models, matter appears to be already included in the microscopic kinematics and
dynamics.Comment: 12 pages, 21 figures, improved presentation, results unchange
Cosmology of the Lifshitz universe
We study the ultraviolet complete non-relativistic theory recently proposed
by Horava. After introducing a Lifshitz scalar for a general background, we
analyze the cosmology of the model in Lorentzian and Euclidean signature.
Vacuum solutions are found and it is argued the existence of non-singular
bouncing profiles. We find a general qualitative agreement with both the
picture of Causal Dynamical Triangulations and Quantum Einstein Gravity.
However, inflation driven by a Lifshitz scalar field on a classical background
might not produce a scale-invariant spectrum when the principle of detailed
balance is assumed.Comment: 23 pages. v2: one reference and one equation added, main conclusions
unchanged; v3: matches published version, discussion improved, typos
correcte
Hard Two-Photon Contribution to Elastic Lepton-Proton Scattering: Determined by the OLYMPUS Experiment
The OLYMPUS collaboration reports on a precision measurement of the
positron-proton to electron-proton elastic cross section ratio, ,
a direct measure of the contribution of hard two-photon exchange to the elastic
cross section. In the OLYMPUS measurement, 2.01~GeV electron and positron beams
were directed through a hydrogen gas target internal to the DORIS storage ring
at DESY. A toroidal magnetic spectrometer instrumented with drift chambers and
time-of-flight scintillators detected elastically scattered leptons in
coincidence with recoiling protons over a scattering angle range of to . The relative luminosity between the two beam species
was monitored using tracking telescopes of interleaved GEM and MWPC detectors
at , as well as symmetric M{\o}ller/Bhabha calorimeters at
. A total integrated luminosity of 4.5~fb was collected. In
the extraction of , radiative effects were taken into account
using a Monte Carlo generator to simulate the convolutions of internal
bremsstrahlung with experiment-specific conditions such as detector acceptance
and reconstruction efficiency. The resulting values of , presented
here for a wide range of virtual photon polarization ,
are smaller than some hadronic two-photon exchange calculations predict, but
are in reasonable agreement with a subtracted dispersion model and a
phenomenological fit to the form factor data.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, 2 table
Infrared spectroscopy of NGC 1068: Probing the obscured ionizing AGN continuum
The ISO-SWS 2.5-45 um infrared spectroscopic observations of the nucleus of
the Seyfert 2 galaxy NGC 1068 (see companion paper) are combined with a
compilation of UV to IR narrow emission line data to determine the spectral
energy distribution (SED) of the obscured extreme-UV continuum that
photoionizes the narrow line emitting gas in the active galactic nucleus. We
search a large grid of gas cloud models and SEDs for the combination that best
reproduces the observed line fluxes and NLR geometry. Our best fit model
reproduces the observed line fluxes to better than a factor of 2 on average and
is in general agreement with the observed NLR geometry. It has two gas
components that are consistent with a clumpy distribution of dense outflowing
gas in the center and a more extended distribution of less dense and more
clumpy gas farther out that has no net outflow. The best fit SED has a deep
trough at ~4 Ryd, which is consistent with an intrinsic Big Blue Bump that is
partially absorbed by ~6x10^19 cm^-2 of neutral hydrogen interior to the NLR.Comment: 15 pp, 4 figures, ApJ accepte
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