16,559 research outputs found
Experiments on Visual Acuity and the Visibility of Markings on the Ground in Long-duration Earth-Orbital Space Flight
Visual acuity and visibility of markings on ground in long duration earth orbital space fligh
Matched Pulse Propagation in a Three-Level System
The B\"{a}cklund transformation for the three-level Maxwell-Bloch equation is
presented in the matrix potential formalism. By applying the B\"{a}cklund
transformation to a constant electric field background, we obtain a general
solution for matched pulses (a pair of solitary waves) which can emit or absorb
a light velocity solitary pulse but otherwise propagate with their shapes
invariant. In the special case, this solution describes a steady state pulse
without emission or absorption, and becomes the matched pulse solution recently
obtained by Hioe and Grobe. A nonlinear superposition rule is derived from the
B\"{a}cklund transformation and used for the explicit construction of two
solitons as well as nonabelian breathers. Various new features of these
solutions are addressed. In particular, we analyze in detail the scattering of
"invertons", a specific pair of different wavelength solitons one of which
moving with the velocity of light. Unlike the usual case of soliton scattering,
the broader inverton changes its sign through the scattering. Surprisingly, the
light velocity inverton receives time advance through the scattering thereby
moving faster than light, which however does not violate causality.Comment: 20 pages, Latex, 12 eps figure files some comments and references are
added. postscript file with 12 figures can be obtained at
http://photon.kyunghee.ac.kr/~qhpark
The Core-like Nature of HST-1 in the M87 Jet
We investigate the total flux density, spectral, polarization, and Faraday
rotation variability of HST-1 in the M87 jet during the outburst from 2003 to
2007 through multi-epoch VLA observations at 8, 15, and 22 GHz. Contrary to the
general case for blazars, the flux densities of HST-1 rise earlier at lower
frequencies from radio to X-ray, and the spectra are softening with the growth
of outburst, indicating that the newly emerging subcomponents within HST-1 have
relatively steep spectra. In particular, the intrinsic EVPA varies
monotonically by at the 3 wavebands during the period, and all
but the stationary subcomponent in the eastern end of HST-1 move downstream
superluminally deviating divergently from the overall jet direction, with the
motion of the outmost subcomponent bending from one side of the jet axis to
another. These strongly argue for the presence of helical magnetic fields
around HST-1, which is also supported by the fact that the subcomponents might
be accelerated in this region. The fractional polarization is relatively low in
the rising stage, and in the decaying stage the polarization levels are almost
comparable at the 3 wavebands. In view of the quite large RM values, Faraday
rotation is expected to occur dominantly external to HST-1 in the decaying
stage, which is well supported by the presence of diffuse emission around
HST-1, and consistent with the scenario that RM decrease gets slower with time.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, Accepted for publication in MNRAS Lette
Enhancing Sensitivity Classification with Semantic Features using Word Embeddings
Government documents must be reviewed to identify any sensitive information
they may contain, before they can be released to the public. However,
traditional paper-based sensitivity review processes are not practical for reviewing
born-digital documents. Therefore, there is a timely need for automatic sensitivity
classification techniques, to assist the digital sensitivity review process.
However, sensitivity is typically a product of the relations between combinations
of terms, such as who said what about whom, therefore, automatic sensitivity
classification is a difficult task. Vector representations of terms, such as word
embeddings, have been shown to be effective at encoding latent term features
that preserve semantic relations between terms, which can also be beneficial to
sensitivity classification. In this work, we present a thorough evaluation of the
effectiveness of semantic word embedding features, along with term and grammatical
features, for sensitivity classification. On a test collection of government
documents containing real sensitivities, we show that extending text classification
with semantic features and additional term n-grams results in significant improvements
in classification effectiveness, correctly classifying 9.99% more sensitive
documents compared to the text classification baseline
Bound States and Critical Behavior of the Yukawa Potential
We investigate the bound states of the Yukawa potential , using different algorithms: solving the Schr\"odinger
equation numerically and our Monte Carlo Hamiltonian approach. There is a
critical , above which no bound state exists. We study the
relation between and for various angular momentum quantum
number , and find in atomic units, , with , ,
, and .Comment: 15 pages, 12 figures, 5 tables. Version to appear in Sciences in
China
Incentivizing High Quality Crowdwork
We study the causal effects of financial incentives on the quality of
crowdwork. We focus on performance-based payments (PBPs), bonus payments
awarded to workers for producing high quality work. We design and run
randomized behavioral experiments on the popular crowdsourcing platform Amazon
Mechanical Turk with the goal of understanding when, where, and why PBPs help,
identifying properties of the payment, payment structure, and the task itself
that make them most effective. We provide examples of tasks for which PBPs do
improve quality. For such tasks, the effectiveness of PBPs is not too sensitive
to the threshold for quality required to receive the bonus, while the magnitude
of the bonus must be large enough to make the reward salient. We also present
examples of tasks for which PBPs do not improve quality. Our results suggest
that for PBPs to improve quality, the task must be effort-responsive: the task
must allow workers to produce higher quality work by exerting more effort. We
also give a simple method to determine if a task is effort-responsive a priori.
Furthermore, our experiments suggest that all payments on Mechanical Turk are,
to some degree, implicitly performance-based in that workers believe their work
may be rejected if their performance is sufficiently poor. Finally, we propose
a new model of worker behavior that extends the standard principal-agent model
from economics to include a worker's subjective beliefs about his likelihood of
being paid, and show that the predictions of this model are in line with our
experimental findings. This model may be useful as a foundation for theoretical
studies of incentives in crowdsourcing markets.Comment: This is a preprint of an Article accepted for publication in WWW
\c{opyright} 2015 International World Wide Web Conference Committe
Measuring mechanical motion with a single spin
We study theoretically the measurement of a mechanical oscillator using a
single two level system as a detector. In a recent experiment, we used a single
electronic spin associated with a nitrogen vacancy center in diamond to probe
the thermal motion of a magnetized cantilever at room temperature {Kolkowitz et
al., Science 335, 1603 (2012)}. Here, we present a detailed analysis of the
sensitivity limits of this technique, as well as the possibility to measure the
zero point motion of the oscillator. Further, we discuss the issue of
measurement backaction in sequential measurements and find that although
backaction heating can occur, it does not prohibit the detection of zero point
motion. Throughout the paper we focus on the experimental implementation of a
nitrogen vacancy center coupled to a magnetic cantilever; however, our results
are applicable to a wide class of spin-oscillator systems. Implications for
preparation of nonclassical states of a mechanical oscillator are also
discussed.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figure
Infrared signatures of the spin-Peierls transition in CuGeO3
We investigated the infrared reflectivity of several Mg- and Si-substituted
CuGeO3 single crystals. The temperature dependent b-axis and c-axis optical
response is reported. For T<Tsp we detected the activation of zone-boundary
phonons along the b axis of the crystal on the pure sample and for 1% Mg and
0.7% Si concentrations. From a detailed analysis of the phonon parameters the
redshift of the B2u mode at 48 cm^-1 is observed and discussed in relation to
the soft mode expected to drive the spin-Peierls phase transition in CuGeO3.
Moreover, the polarization dependence of a magnetic excitation measured in
transmission at 44 cm^-1 has been investigated.Comment: Revtex, 3 pages, 5 postscript pictures, submitted to PRB Rapid
Communication
Domestication as innovation : the entanglement of techniques, technology and chance in the domestication of cereal crops
The origins of agriculture involved pathways of domestication in which human behaviours and plant genetic adaptations were entangled. These changes resulted in consequences that were unintended at the start of the process. This paper highlights some of the key innovations in human behaviours, such as soil preparation, harvesting and threshing, and how these were coupled with genetic ‘innovations’ within plant populations. We identify a number of ‘traps’ for early cultivators, including the needs for extra labour expenditure on crop-processing and soil fertility maintenance, but also linked gains in terms of potential crop yields. Compilations of quantitative data across a few different crops for the traits of nonshattering and seed size are discussed in terms of the apparently slow process of domestication, and parallels and differences between different regional pathways are identified. We highlight the need to bridge the gap between a Neolithic archaeobotanical focus on domestication and a focus of later periods on crop-processing activities and labour organization. In addition, archaeobotanical data provide a basis for rethinking previous assumptions about how plant genetic data should be related to the origins of agriculture and we contrast two alternative hypotheses: gradual evolution with low selection pressure versus metastable equilibrium that prolonged the persistence of ‘semi-domesticated’ populations. Our revised understanding of the innovations involved in plant domestication highlight the need for new approaches to collecting, modelling and integrating genetic data and archaeobotanical evidence
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