Lateral Effects in Fermion Antibunching

Lateral effects are analyzed in the antibunching of a beam of free non-interacting fermions. The emission of particles from a source is dynamically described in a 3D full quantum field-theoretical framework. The size of the source and the detectors, as well as the temperature of the source are taken into account and the behavior of the visibility is scrutinized as a function of these parameters.Comment: 22 pages, 4 figure

Children’s spontaneous comparisons from 26 to 58 months predict performance in verbal and non-verbal analogy tests in 6th grade

Comparison supports the development of children’s analogical reasoning. The evidence for this claim comes from laboratory studies. We describe spontaneous comparisons produced by 24 typically developing children from 26 to 58 months. Children tend to express similarity before expressing difference. They compare objects from the same category before objects from different categories, make global comparisons before specific comparisons, and specify perceptual features of similarity/difference before non-perceptual features. We then investigate how a theoretically interesting subset of children’s comparisons – those expressing a specific feature of similarity or difference – relates to analogical reasoning as measured by verbal and non-verbal tests in 6th grade. The number of specific comparisons children produce before 58 months predicts their scores on both tests, controlling for vocabulary at 54 months. The results provide naturalistic support for experimental findings on comparison development, and demonstrate a strong relationship between children’s early comparisons and their later analogical reasoning

GREAT: the SOFIA high-frequency heterodyne instrument

We describe the design and construction of GREAT, the German REceiver for Astronomy at Terahertz frequencies operated on the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). GREAT is a modular dual-color heterodyne instrument for highresolution far-infrared (FIR) spectroscopy. Selected for SOFIA's Early Science demonstration, the instrument has successfully performed three Short and more than a dozen Basic Science flights since first light was recorded on its April 1, 2011 commissioning flight. We report on the in-flight performance and operation of the receiver that - in various flight configurations, with three different detector channels - observed in several science-defined frequency windows between 1.25 and 2.5 THz. The receiver optics was verified to be diffraction-limited as designed, with nominal efficiencies; receiver sensitivities are state-of-the-art, with excellent system stability. The modular design allows for the continuous integration of latest technologies; we briefly discuss additional channels under development and ongoing improvements for Cycle 1 observations. GREAT is a principal investigator instrument, developed by a consortium of four German research institutes, available to the SOFIA users on a collaborative basis

Design of a regulated lentiviral vector for hematopoietic stem cell gene therapy of globoid cell leukodystrophy

Globoid cell leukodystrophy (GLD) is a demyelinating lysosomal storage disease due to the deficiency of the galactocerebrosidase (GALC) enzyme. The favorable outcome of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cell (HSPC)-based approaches in GLD and other similar diseases suggests HSPC gene therapy as a promising therapeutic option for patients. The path to clinical development of this strategy was hampered by a selective toxicity of the overexpressed GALC in the HSPC compartment. Here, we presented the optimization of a lentiviral vector (LV) in which miR-126 regulation was coupled to codon optimization of the human GALC cDNA to obtain a selective and enhanced enzymatic activity only upon transduced HSPCs differentiation. The safety of human GALC overexpression driven by this LV was extensively demonstrated in vitro and in vivo on human HSPCs from healthy donors. No perturbation in the content of proapoptotic sphingolipids, gene expression profile, and capability of engraftment and mutlilineage differentiation in chimeric mice was observed. The therapeutic potential of this LV was then assessed in a severe GLD murine model that benefited from transplantation of corrected HSPCs with longer survival and ameliorated phenotype as compared to untreated siblings. This construct has thus been selected as a candidate for clinical translatio

Metaphors We Think With: The Role of Metaphor in Reasoning

The way we talk about complex and abstract ideas is suffused with metaphor. In five experiments, we explore how these metaphors influence the way that we reason about complex issues and forage for further information about them. We find that even the subtlest instantiation of a metaphor (via a single word) can have a powerful influence over how people attempt to solve social problems like crime and how they gather information to make “well-informed” decisions. Interestingly, we find that the influence of the metaphorical framing effect is covert: people do not recognize metaphors as influential in their decisions; instead they point to more “substantive” (often numerical) information as the motivation for their problem-solving decision. Metaphors in language appear to instantiate frame-consistent knowledge structures and invite structurally consistent inferences. Far from being mere rhetorical flourishes, metaphors have profound influences on how we conceptualize and act with respect to important societal issues. We find that exposure to even a single metaphor can induce substantial differences in opinion about how to solve social problems: differences that are larger, for example, than pre-existing differences in opinion between Democrats and Republicans

ACUOS: A System for Modular ACU Generalization with Subtyping and Inheritance

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11558-0_40Computing generalizers is relevant in a wide spectrum of automated reasoning areas where analogical reasoning and inductive inference are needed. The ACUOS system computes a complete and minimal set of semantic generalizers (also called “anti-unifiers”) of two structures in a typed language modulo a set of equational axioms. By supporting types and any (modular) combination of associativity (A), commutativity (C), and unity (U) algebraic axioms for function symbols, ACUOS allows reasoning about typed data structures, e.g. lists, trees, and (multi-)sets, and typical hierarchical/structural relations such as is a and part of. This paper discusses the modular ACU generalization tool ACUOS and illustrates its use in a classical artificial intelligence problem.This work has been partially supported by the EU (FEDER) and the Spanish MINECO under grants TIN 2010-21062-C02-02 and TIN 2013-45732-C4-1-P, by Generalitat Valenciana PROMETEO2011/052, and by NSF Grant CNS 13-10109. J. Espert has also been supported by the Spanish FPU grant FPU12/06223.Alpuente Frasnedo, M.; Escobar Román, S.; Espert Real, J.; Meseguer, J. (2014). ACUOS: A System for Modular ACU Generalization with Subtyping and Inheritance. En Logics in Artificial Intelligence. Springer. 573-581. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11558-0_40S573581Alpuente, M., Escobar, S., Espert, J., Meseguer, J.: A Modular Order-sorted Equational Generalization Algorithm. Information and Computation 235, 98–136 (2014)Alpuente, M., Escobar, S., Meseguer, J., Ojeda, P.: A Modular Equational Generalization Algorithm. In: Hanus, M. (ed.) LOPSTR 2008. LNCS, vol. 5438, pp. 24–39. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)Alpuente, M., Escobar, S., Meseguer, J., Ojeda, P.: Order–Sorted Generalization. ENTCS 246, 27–38 (2009)Alpuente, M., Espert, J., Escobar, S., Meseguer, J.: ACUOS: A System for Modular ACU Generalization with Subtyping and Inheritance. Tech. rep., DSIC-UPV (2013), http://www.dsic.upv.es/users/elp/papers.htmlArmengol, E.: Usages of Generalization in Case-Based Reasoning. In: Weber, R.O., Richter, M.M. (eds.) ICCBR 2007. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 4626, pp. 31–45. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)Clavel, M., Durán, F., Eker, S., Lincoln, P., Martí-Oliet, N., Meseguer, J., Talcott, C. (eds.): All About Maude - A High-Performance Logical Framework. LNCS, vol. 4350. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)Clavel, M., Durán, F., Eker, S., Lincoln, P., Martí-Oliet, N., Meseguer, J., Talcott, C.L.: Reflection, metalevel computation, and strategies. In: All About Maude [6], pp. 419–458Gentner, D.: Structure-Mapping: A Theoretical Framework for Analogy*. Cognitive Science 7(2), 155–170 (1983)Krumnack, U., Schwering, A., Gust, H., Kühnberger, K.-U.: Restricted higher order anti unification for analogy making. In: Orgun, M.A., Thornton, J. (eds.) AI 2007. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 4830, pp. 273–282. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)Kutsia, T., Levy, J., Villaret, M.: Anti-Unification for Unranked Terms and Hedges. Journal of Automated Reasoning 520, 155–190 (2014)Meseguer, J.: Conditioned rewriting logic as a united model of concurrency. Theor. Comput. Sci. 96(1), 73–155 (1992)Muggleton, S.: Inductive Logic Programming: Issues, Results and the Challenge of Learning Language in Logic. Artif. Intell. 114(1-2), 283–296 (1999)Ontañón, S., Plaza, E.: Similarity measures over refinement graphs. Machine Learning 87(1), 57–92 (2012)Plotkin, G.: A note on inductive generalization. In: Machine Intelligence, vol. 5, pp. 153–163. Edinburgh University Press (1970)Pottier, L.: Generalisation de termes en theorie equationelle: Cas associatif-commutatif. Tech. Rep. INRIA 1056, Norwegian Computing Center (1989)Schmid, U., Hofmann, M., Bader, F., Häberle, T., Schneider, T.: Incident Mining using Structural Prototypes. In: García-Pedrajas, N., Herrera, F., Fyfe, C., Benítez, J.M., Ali, M. (eds.) IEA/AIE 2010, Part II. LNCS, vol. 6097, pp. 327–336. Springer, Heidelberg (2010

Metaphoric coherence: Distinguishing verbal metaphor from `anomaly\u27

Theories and computational models of metaphor comprehension generally circumvent the question of metaphor versus “anomaly” in favor of a treatment of metaphor versus literal language. Making the distinction between metaphoric and “anomalous” expressions is subject to wide variation in judgment, yet humans agree that some potentially metaphoric expressions are much more comprehensible than others. In the context of a program which interprets simple isolated sentences that are potential instances of cross‐modal and other verbal metaphor, I consider some possible coherence criteria which must be satisfied for an expression to be “conceivable” metaphorically. Metaphoric constraints on object nominals are represented as abstracted or extended along with the invariant structural components of the verb meaning in a metaphor. This approach distinguishes what is preserved in metaphoric extension from that which is “violated”, thus referring to both “similarity” and “dissimilarity” views of metaphor. The role and potential limits of represented abstracted properties and constraints is discussed as they relate to the recognition of incoherent semantic combinations and the rejection or adjustment of metaphoric interpretations