Transfer of Metacognitive Skills and Hint Seeking in Monkeys

Metacognition is knowledge that can be expressed as confidence judgments about what we know (monitoring) and by strategies for learning what we don’t know (control). Although a substantial literature exists on cognitive processes in animals, little is known about their metacognitive abilities. Here we show that rhesus macaques, trained previously to make retrospective confidence judgments about their performance on perceptual tasks, transferred that ability immediately to a new perceptual task and to a working memory task. In a second experiment we show that monkeys can also learn to request “hints” when they are given problems that they would otherwise have to solve by trial and error. This shows, for the first time, that non-human primates share with humans the ability to monitor and transfer their metacognitive ability both within and between different cognitive tasks, and to seek new knowledge on a need to know basis.

Electroweak phase transition in the MSSM with four generations

By assuming the existence of the sequential fourth generation to the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM), we study the possibility of a strongly first-order electroweak phase transition. We find that there is a parameter region of the MSSM where the electroweak phase transition is strongly first order. In that parameter region, the mass of the lighter scalar Higgs boson is calculated to be above the experimental lower bound, and the scalar quarks of the third and the fourth generations are heavier than the corresponding quarks.Comment: 12 pages, 2 tables, 2 figure

Higgs bosons of a supersymmetric U(1)′U(1)' model at the ILC

We study the scalar Higgs sector of the next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model with an extra U(1), which has two Higgs doublets and a Higgs singlet, in the light leptophobic $Z'$ scenario where the extra neutral gauge boson $Z'$ does not couple to charged leptons. In this model, we find that the sum of the squared coupling coefficients of the three neutral scalar Higgs bosons to $ZZ$, normalized by the corresponding SM coupling coefficient is noticeably smaller than unity, due to the effect of the extra U(1), for a reasonable parameter space of the model, whereas it is unity in the next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model. Thus, these two models may be distinguished if the coupling coefficients of neutral scalar Higgs bosons to $ZZ$ are measured at the future International Linear Collider by producing them via the Higgs-strahlung, $ZZ$ fusion, and $WW$ fusion processes.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures, 1 table, PR

Dirac quasinormal frequencies in Schwarzschild-AdS space-time

We investigate the quasinormal mode frequencies for the massless Dirac field in static four dimensional $AdS$ space-time. The separation of the Dirac equation is achieved for the first time in $AdS$ space. Besides the relevance that this calculation can have in the framework of the $AdS/CFT$ correspondence between M-theory on $AdS_4\times S^7$ and SU(N) super Yang-Mills theory on $M_3$, it also serves to fill in a gap in the literature, which has only been concerned with particles of integral spin $0,1,2$.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figure

Unusual superexchange pathways in a Ni triangular lattice of NiGa2_2S4_4 with negative charge-transfer energy

We have studied the electronic structure of the Ni triangular lattice in NiGa$_2$S$_4$ using photoemission spectroscopy and subsequent model calculations. The cluster-model analysis of the Ni 2$p$ core-level spectrum shows that the S 3$p$ to Ni 3$d$ charge-transfer energy is $\sim$ -1 eV and the ground state is dominated by the $d^9L$ configuration ($L$ is a S 3$p$ hole). Cell perturbation analysis for the NiS$_2$ triangular lattice indicates that the strong S 3$p$ hole character of the ground state provides the enhanced superexchange interaction between the third nearest neighbor sites.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, accepted to PR

Hydrodynamics in 1+1 dimensions with gravitational anomalies

The constraints imposed on hydrodynamics by the structure of gauge and gravitational anomalies are studied in two dimensions. By explicit integration of the consistent gravitational anomaly, we derive the equilibrium partition function at second derivative order. This partition function is then used to compute the parity-violating part of the covariant energy-momentum tensor and the transport coefficients.Comment: 9 pages, JHEP format.v2; added comments and references, matching published versio

Infrared Hall conductivity of Na0.7_{0.7}CoO2_2

We report infrared Hall conductivity $\sigma_{xy}(\omega)$ of Na$_{0.7}$CoO$_2$ thin films determined from Faraday rotation angle $\theta_{F}$ measurements. $\sigma_{xy}(\omega)$ exhibits two types of hole conduction, Drude and incoherent carriers. The coherent Drude carrier shows a large renormalized mass and Fermi liquid-like behavior of Hall scattering rate, $\gamma_{H} \sim aT^{2}$. The spectral weight is suppressed and disappears at T = 120K. The incoherent carrier response is centered at mid-IR frequency and shifts to lower energy with increasing T. Infrared Hall constant is positive and almost independent of temperature in sharp contrast with the dc-Hall constant.Comment: 5 Pages, 5 Figures. Author list corrected in metadata only, paper is unchange

Lattice QCD at finite isospin density at zero and finite temperature

We simulate lattice QCD with dynamical $u$ and $d$ quarks at finite chemical potential, $\mu_I$, for the third component of isospin ($I_3$), at both zero and at finite temperature. At zero temperature there is some $\mu_I$, $\mu_c$ say, above which $I_3$ and parity are spontaneously broken by a charged pion condensate. This is in qualitative agreement with the prediction of effective (chiral) Lagrangians which also predict $\mu_c=m_\pi$. This transition appears to be second order, with scaling properties consistent with the mean-field predictions of such effective Lagrangian models. We have also studied the restoration of $I_3$ symmetry at high temperature for $\mu_I > \mu_c$. For $\mu_I$ sufficiently large, this finite temperature phase transition appears to be first order. As $\mu_I$ is decreased it becomes second order connecting continuously with the zero temperature transition.Comment: 23 pages, Revtex, 9 figures. Major revision of sections 3 and 4 to include new analyses of critical scaling which we now find to be in the universality class of mean-field theor