846 research outputs found
Brain-Inspired Intelligent Systems for Daily Assistance
The fields of machine learning and cognitive computing have been in the last decade revolutionised with neural-inspired algorithms (e.g., deep ANNs and deep RL) and brain-intelligent systems that assist in many real-world learning tasks from robot monitoring and interaction at home to complex decision-making about emotions and behaviours in humans and animals. While there are remarkable advances in these brain-inspired algorithms and systems, they need to be trained with huge data sets, and their results lack flexibility to adapt to diverse learning tasks and sustainable performance over long periods of time. To address these challenges, it is essential to gain an analytical understanding of the principles that allow biological inspired intelligent systems to leverage knowledge and how they can be translated to hardware for daily assistance and practical applications. This special issue brings researchers from interdesciplinary domains to report their latest research work on algorithms and neural-inspired systems that flexibly adapt to new learning tasks, learn from the environment using multimodal signals (e.g., neural, physiological, and kinematic), and produce autonomous adaptive agencies, which utilise cognitive and affective data, within a social neuroscientific framework. In this special issue, we have selected five papers out of fourteen high-quality papers after a careful reviewing process, which brings the acceptance rate to 35.7 percent. The five papers are representative of the current state-of-the-art in this area
Feasibility of Thorium Fuel Cycles in a Very High Temperature Pebble-Bed Hybrid System
Nuclear energy presents key challenges to be successful as a sustainable energy source. Currently, the viability of the use thorium-based fuel cycles in an innovative nuclear energy generation system is being investigated in order to solve these key challenges. In this work, the feasibility of three thorium-based fuel cycles (232Th-233U, 232Th-239Pu, and 232Th-U) in a hybrid system formed by a Very High Temperature Pebble-Bed Reactor (VHTR) and two Pebble-Bed Accelerator Driven Systems (ADSs) was evaluated using parameters related to the neutronic behavior such as nuclear fuel breeding, minor actinide stockpile, the energetic contribution of each fissile isotope, and the radiotoxicity of the long lived wastes. These parameters were used to compare the fuel cycles using the well-known MCNPX ver. 2.6e computational code. The results obtained confirm that the 232Th-233U fuel cycle is the best cycle for minimizing the production of plutonium isotopes and minor actinides. Moreover, the inclusion of the second stage in the ADSs demonstrated the possibility of extending the burnup cycle duration and reducing the radiotoxicity of the discharged fuel from the VHTR.Received: 09 February 2015; Revised: 12 May 2015; Accepted: 20 May 201
Evaluation of different chrominance models in the detection and reconstruction of faces and hands using the growing neural gas network
Physical traits such as the shape of the hand and face can be used for human recognition and identification in video surveillance systems and in biometric authentication smart card systems, as well as in personal health care. However, the accuracy of such systems suffers from illumination changes, unpredictability, and variability in appearance (e.g. occluded faces or hands, cluttered backgrounds, etc.). This work evaluates different statistical and chrominance models in different environments with increasingly cluttered backgrounds where changes in lighting are common and with no occlusions applied, in order to get a reliable neural network reconstruction of faces and hands, without taking into account the structural and temporal kinematics of the hands. First a statistical model is used for skin colour segmentation to roughly locate hands and faces. Then a neural network is used to reconstruct in 3D the hands and faces. For the filtering and the reconstruction we have used the growing neural gas algorithm which can preserve the topology of an object without restarting the learning process. Experiments conducted on our own database but also on four benchmark databases (Stirling’s, Alicante, Essex, and Stegmann’s) and on deaf individuals from normal 2D videos are freely available on the BSL signbank dataset. Results demonstrate the validity of our system to solve problems of face and hand segmentation and reconstruction under different environmental conditions
Constraining the period of the ringed secondary companion to the young star J1407 with photographic plates
Context. The 16 Myr old star 1SWASP J140747.93-394542.6 (V1400 Cen) underwent
a series of complex eclipses in May 2007, interpreted as the transit of a giant
Hill sphere filling debris ring system around a secondary companion, J1407b. No
other eclipses have since been detected, although other measurements have
constrained but not uniquely determined the orbital period of J1407b. Finding
another eclipse towards J1407 will help determine the orbital period of the
system, the geometry of the proposed ring system and enable planning of further
observations to characterize the material within these putative rings. Aims. We
carry out a search for other eclipses in photometric data of J1407 with the aim
of constraining the orbital period of J1407b. Methods. We present photometry
from archival photographic plates from the Harvard DASCH survey, and Bamberg
and Sonneberg Observatories, in order to place additional constraints on the
orbital period of J1407b by searching for other dimming and eclipse events.
Using a visual inspection of all 387 plates and a period-folding algorithm we
performed a search for other eclipses in these data sets. Results. We find no
other deep eclipses in the data spanning from 1890 to 1990, nor in recent
time-series photometry from 2012-2018. Conclusions. We rule out a large
fraction of putative orbital periods for J1407b from 5 to 20 years. These
limits are still marginally consistent with a large Hill sphere filling ring
system surrounding a brown dwarf companion in a bound elliptical orbit about
J1407. Issues with the stability of any rings combined with the lack of
detection of another eclipse, suggests that J1407b may not be bound to J1407.Comment: 8 pages, 3 tables, 4 figures, accepted for publication in A&A. LaTeX
files of the paper, scripts for the figures, and a minimal working FPA can be
found under https://github.com/robinmentel/Constraining-Period
Thermo-optical dynamics of a nonlinear GaInP photonic crystal nanocavity depend on the optical mode profile
We measure the dynamics of the thermo-optical nonlinearity of both a mode-gap
nanocavity and a delocalized mode in a
GaInP photonic crystal membrane. We model
these results in terms of heat transport and thermo-optical response in the
material. By step-modulating the optical input power we push the nonlinear
resonance to jump between stable branches of its response curve, causing
bistable switching. An overshoot of the intensity followed by a relaxation tail
is observed upon bistable switching. In this way, the thermal relaxation of
both the localized resonance and the delocalized resonance is measured.
Significant difference in decay time is observed and related to the optical
mode profile of the resonance. We reproduce the observed transient behavior
with our thermo-optical model, implementing a non-instantaneous nonlinearity,
and taking into account the optical mode profile of the resonance, as
experimentally measured
Charged lepton electric dipole moments with the localized leptons and the new Higgs doublet in the two Higgs doublet model
We study the lepton electric dipole moments in the split fermion scenario, in
the two Higgs doublet model, where the new Higgs scalars are localized around
the origin in the extra dimension, with the help of the localizer field. We
observe that the numerical value of the electron (muon, tau) electric dipole
moment is at the order of the magnitude of 10^{-31} (10^{-24}, 10^{-22}) (e-cm)
and this quantity is sensitive the new Higgs localization in the extra
dimension.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figure
Ultrasound attenuation in gap-anisotropic systems
Transverse ultrasound attenuation provides a weakly-coupled probe of momentum
current correlations in electronic systems. We develop a simple theory for the
interpretation of transverse ultrasound attenuation coefficients in systems
with nodal gap anisotropy. Applying this theory we show how ultrasound can
delineate between extended-s and d-wave scenarios for the cuprate
superconductors.Comment: Uuencode file: 4 pages (Revtex), 3 figures. Some references adde
Lepton masses in a supersymmetric 3-3-1 model
We consider the mass generation for both charginos and neutralinos in a 3-3-1
supersymmetric model. We show that R-parity breaking interactions leave the
electron and one of the neutrinos massless at the tree level. However the same
interactions induce masses for these particles at the 1-loop level. Unlike the
similar situation in the MSSM the masses of the neutralinos are related to the
masses of the charginos.Comment: RevTex, 11 pages incluing 2 .eps figures. Extended published versio
Geometry and material effects in Casimir physics - Scattering theory
We give a comprehensive presentation of methods for calculating the Casimir
force to arbitrary accuracy, for any number of objects, arbitrary shapes,
susceptibility functions, and separations. The technique is applicable to
objects immersed in media other than vacuum, to nonzero temperatures, and to
spatial arrangements in which one object is enclosed in another. Our method
combines each object's classical electromagnetic scattering amplitude with
universal translation matrices, which convert between the bases used to
calculate scattering for each object, but are otherwise independent of the
details of the individual objects. This approach, which combines methods of
statistical physics and scattering theory, is well suited to analyze many
diverse phenomena. We illustrate its power and versatility by a number of
examples, which show how the interplay of geometry and material properties
helps to understand and control Casimir forces. We also examine whether
electrodynamic Casimir forces can lead to stable levitation. Neglecting
permeabilities, we prove that any equilibrium position of objects subject to
such forces is unstable if the permittivities of all objects are higher or
lower than that of the enveloping medium; the former being the generic case for
ordinary materials in vacuum.Comment: 44 pages, 11 figures, to appear in upcoming Lecture Notes in Physics
volume in Casimir physic
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