Tracing the German Centennial Flood in the Stream of Tweets: First Lessons Learned

Social microblogging services such as Twitter result in massive streams of georeferenced messages and geolocated status updates. This real-time source of information is invaluable for many application areas, in particular for disaster detection and response scenarios. Consequently, a considerable number of works has dealt with issues of their acquisition, analysis and visualization. Most of these works not only assume an appropriate percentage of georeferenced messages that allows for detecting relevant events for a specific region and time frame, but also that these geolocations are reasonably correct in representing places and times of the underlying spatio-temporal situation. In this paper, we review these two key assumption based on the results of applying a visual analytics approach to a dataset of georeferenced Tweets from Germany over eight months witnessing several large-scale flooding situations throughout the country. Our results con rm the potential of Twitter as a distributed 'social sensor' but at the same time highlight some caveats in interpreting immediate results. To overcome these limits we explore incorporating evidence from other data sources including further social media and mobile phone network metrics to detect, confirm and refine events with respect to location and time. We summarize the lessons learned from our initial analysis by proposing recommendations and outline possible future work directions

Visual Analysis of Place Connectedness by Public Transport

The concept of place connectedness (traditionally termed `accessibility') refers to the ability of people to reach various services and to participate in activities. Connectedness by public transport is especially important for underprivileged and elderly people while the active use of public transport by the general population contributes in reducing traffic congestions and air pollution in cities. Place connectedness analyses are performed for a variety of purposes. In communication with transportation experts, we performed the conceptual modeling of the domain of problems related to place connectedness, defined the system of analysis tasks, and matched the tasks to visual analytics techniques that are capable to support them. In this paper, we introduce the task typology and present the visual analytics techniques using several example scenarios of place connectedness analyses

Transitions Induced by the Discreteness of Molecules in a Small Autocatalytic System

Autocatalytic reaction system with a small number of molecules is studied numerically by stochastic particle simulations. A novel state due to fluctuation and discreteness in molecular numbers is found, characterized as extinction of molecule species alternately in the autocatalytic reaction loop. Phase transition to this state with the change of the system size and flow is studied, while a single-molecule switch of the molecule distributions is reported. Relevance of the results to intracellular processes are briefly discussed.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Detecting and tracking dynamic clusters of spatial events

We present a work in progress on developing a tool supporting real-time detection of significant clusters of spatial events and observing their evolution. The tool consists of an incremental stream clustering algorithm and coordinated map and timeline displays showing current situation and cluster evolution

The importance of tau leptons for supersymmetry searches at the Tevatron

Supersymmetry is perhaps most effectively probed at the Tevatron through production and decay of weak gauginos. Most of the analyses of weak gaugino observables require electrons or muons in the final state. However, it is possible that the gauginos will decay primarily to tau leptons, thus complicating the search for supersymmetry. The motivating reasons for high tau multiplicity final states are discussed in three approaches to supersymmetry model building: minimal supergravity, gauge mediated supersymmetry breaking, and more minimal supersymmetry. The concept of ``e/mu/tau candidate'' is introduced, and an observable with three e/mu/tau candidates is defined in analog to the trilepton observable. The maximum mass reach for supersymmetry is then estimated when gaugino decays to tau leptons have full branching fraction.Comment: 9 pages, latex, 2 figures. Presented at the D0 New Phenomena Workshop, UC Davis, 26-28 March 199

Visual Analytics for Understanding Spatial Situations from Episodic Movement Data

Continuing advances in modern data acquisition techniques result in rapidly growing amounts of geo-referenced data about moving objects and in emergence of new data types. We define episodic movement data as a new complex data type to be considered in the research fields relevant to data analysis. In episodic movement data, position measurements may be separated by large time gaps, in which the positions of the moving objects are unknown and cannot be reliably reconstructed. Many of the existing methods for movement analysis are designed for data with fine temporal resolution and cannot be applied to discontinuous trajectories. We present an approach utilizing Visual Analytics methods to explore and understand the temporal variation of spatial situations derived from episodic movement data by means of spatio-temporal aggregation. The situations are defined in terms of the presence of moving objects in different places and in terms of flows (collective movements) among the places. The approach, which combines interactive visual displays with clustering of the spatial situations, is presented by example of a real dataset collected by Bluetooth sensors

Standard Model Higgs Physics at a 4 TeV Upgraded Tevatron

We compute an array of Standard Model Higgs boson (\hsm) signals and backgrounds for a possible upgrade of the Tevatron to E_{\rm cm}=4\tev. Taking \mt\geq 140\gev, and assuming a total accumulated luminosity of L=30\fbi, we find that a Standard Model Higgs boson with \mhsm\lsim 110\gev could almost certainly be detected using the \wpm\hsm\rta l\nu b\anti b mode. A Higgs boson with mass between \sim 120\gev and \sim 140\gev or above \sim 230-250\gev almost certainly would not be seen. A Higgs boson with \mhsm\sim 150\gev or 200\lsim\mhsm\lsim 230-250\gev has a decent chance of being detected in the ZZ\rta 4l mode. There would also be some possibility of discovering the \hsm in the WW\rta l\nu jj mode for 150\lsim\mhsm\lsim 200\gev. Finally, hints of an event excess in the WW\rta ll \nu\nu mode due to the \hsm might emerge for 140\lsim\mhsm\lsim 180\gev. Given the difficult nature of the Higgs boson signals for \mhsm values beyond the reach of LEP-200, and the discontinuous \mhsm range that could potentially be probed, justification of an upgrade of the Tevatron to 4\tev on the basis of its potential for Standard Model Higgs boson discovery would seem inappropriate.Comment: 21 pages; requires phyzzx.tex and tables.tex; full postscript file including embedded figures available via anonymous ftp at ucdhep.ucdavis.edu as [anonymous.gunion]4tev.ps, preprint UCD-94-1

A double parton scattering background to Higgs boson production at the LHC

The experimental capability of recognizing the presence of b quarks in complex hadronic final states has addressed the attention towards final states with b\bar{b} pairs for observing the production of the Higgs boson at the LHC, in the intermediate Higgs mass range.We point out that double parton scattering processes are going to represent a sizeable background to the process.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figure

Orienteering with One Endomorphism

In supersingular isogeny-based cryptography, the path-finding problem reduces to the endomorphism ring problem. Can path-finding be reduced to knowing just one endomorphism? It is known that a small endomorphism enables polynomial-time path-finding and endomorphism ring computation (Love-Boneh [36]). An endomorphism gives an explicit orientation of a supersingular elliptic curve. In this paper, we use the volcano structure of the oriented supersingular isogeny graph to take ascending/descending/horizontal steps on the graph and deduce path-finding algorithms to an initial curve. Each altitude of the volcano corresponds to a unique quadratic order, called the primitive order. We introduce a new hard problem of computing the primitive order given an arbitrary endomorphism on the curve, and we also provide a sub-exponential quantum algorithm for solving it. In concurrent work (Wesolowski [54]), it was shown that the endomorphism ring problem in the presence of one endomorphism with known primitive order reduces to a vectorization problem, implying path-finding algorithms. Our path-finding algorithms are more general in the sense that we don't assume the knowledge of the primitive order associated with the endomorphism.Comment: 40 pages, 1 figure; 3rd revision implements small corrections and expositional improvement

How primary care can contribute to good mental health in adults.

The need for support for good mental health is enormous. General support for good mental health is needed for 100% of the population, and at all stages of life, from early childhood to end of life. Focused support is needed for the 17.6% of adults who have a mental disorder at any time, including those who also have a mental health problem amongst the 30% who report having a long-term condition of some kind. All sectors of society and all parts of the NHS need to play their part. Primary care cannot do this on its own. This paper describes how primary care practitioners can help stimulate such a grand alliance for health, by operating at four different levels - as individual practitioners, as organisations, as geographic clusters of organisations and as policy-makers