618 research outputs found
First results in terrain mapping for a roving planetary explorer
To perform planetary exploration without human supervision, a complete autonomous rover must be able to model its environment while exploring its surroundings. Researchers present a new algorithm to construct a geometric terrain representation from a single range image. The form of the representation is an elevation map that includes uncertainty, unknown areas, and local features. By virtue of working in spherical-polar space, the algorithm is independent of the desired map resolution and the orientation of the sensor, unlike other algorithms that work in Cartesian space. They also describe new methods to evaluate regions of the constructed elevation maps to support legged locomotion over rough terrain
Quantum phase transition of dynamical resistance in a mesoscopic capacitor
We study theoretically dynamic response of a mesoscopic capacitor, which
consists of a quantum dot connected to an electron reservoir via a point
contact and capacitively coupled to a gate voltage. A quantum Hall edge state
with a filling factor nu is realized in a strong magnetic field applied
perpendicular to the two-dimensional electron gas. We discuss a noise-driven
quantum phase transition of the transport property of the edge state by taking
into account an ohmic bath connected to the gate voltage. Without the noise,
the charge relaxation for nu>1/2 is universally quantized at R_q=h/(2e^2),
while for nu<1/2, the system undergoes the Kosterlitz-Thouless transtion, which
drastically changes the nature of the dynamical resistance. The phase
transition is facilitated by the noisy gate voltage, and we see that it can
occur even for an integer quantum Hall edge at nu=1. When the dissipation by
the noise is sufficiently small, the quantized value of R_q is shifted by the
bath impedance.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, proceeding of the 19th International Conference
on the Application of High Magnetic Fields in Semiconductor Physics and
Nanotechnology (HMF-19
Electric-field induced capillary interaction of charged particles at a polar interface
We study the electric-field induced capillary interaction of charged
particles at a polar interface. The algebraic tails of the electrostatic
pressure of each charge results in a deformation of the interface . The resulting capillary interaction is repulsive and varies as with the particle distance. As a consequence, electric-field induced
capillary forces cannot be at the origin of the secondary minimum observed
recently for charged PMMA particles at on oil-water interface.Comment: June 200
Cancellation of UV Divergences in the N=4 SUSY Nonlinear Sigma Model in Three Dimensions
We study the UV properties of the three-dimensional SUSY
nonlinear sigma model whose target space is (the cotangent
bundle of ) to higher orders in the 1/N expansion. We calculate the
-function to next-to-leading order and verify that it has no quantum
corrections at leading and next-to-leading orders.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures. references adde
Electronic structure and effects of dynamical electron correlation in ferromagnetic bcc-Fe, fcc-Ni and antiferromagnetic NiO
LDA+DMFT method in the framework of the iterative perturbation theory (IPT)
with full LDA Hamiltonian without mapping onto the effective Wannier orbitals.
We then apply this LDA+DMFT method to ferromagnetic bcc-Fe and fcc-Ni as a test
of transition metal, and to antiferromagnetic NiO as an example of transition
metal oxide. In Fe and Ni, the width of occupied 3d bands is narrower than
those in LDA and Ni 6eV satellite appears. In NiO, the resultant electronic
structure is of charge-transfer insulator type and the band gap is 4.3eV. These
results are in good agreement with the experimental XPS. The configuration
mixing and dynamical correlation effects play a crucial role in these results
Crystal structure of the human p58 killer cell inhibitory receptor (KIR2DL3) specific for HLA-Cw3-related MHC class I
AbstractBackground: T cells and natural killer (NK) cells perform complementary roles in the cellular immune system. T cells identify infected cells directly through recognition of antigenic peptides that are displayed at the target cell surface by the classical major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I molecules. NK cells monitor the target cell surface for malfunction of this display system, lysing potentially infected cells that might otherwise evade recognition by the T cells. Human killer cell inhibitory receptors (KIRs) control this process by either inhibiting or activating the cytotoxic activity of NK cells via specific binding to MHC class I molecules on the target cell.Results: We report the crystal structure of the extracellular region of the human p58 KIR (KIR2DL3), which is specific for the human MHC class I molecule HLA-Cw3 and related alleles. The structure shows the predicted topology of two tandem immunoglobulin-like domains, but comparison with the previously reported structure of the related receptor KIR2DL1 reveals an unexpected change of 23° in the relative orientation of these domains.Conclusions: The altered orientation of the immunoglobulin-like domains maintains an unusually acute interdomain elbow angle, which therefore appears to be a distinctive feature of the KIRs. The putative MHC class I binding site is located on the outer surface of the elbow, spanning both domains. The unexpected observation that this binding site can be modulated by differences in the relative domain orientations has implications for the general mechanism of KIR–MHC class I complex formation
First Detection of Near-Infrared Intraday Variations in the Seyfert 1 Nucleus NGC4395
We carried out a one-night optical V and near-infrared JHK monitoring
observation of the least luminous Seyfert 1 galaxy, NGC4395, on 2004 May 1, and
detected for the first time the intraday flux variations in the J and H bands,
while such variation was not clearly seen for the K band. The detected J and H
variations are synchronized with the flux variation in the V band, which
indicates that the intraday-variable component of near-infrared continuum
emission of the NGC4395 nucleus is an extension of power-law continuum emission
to the near-infrared and originates in an outer region of the central accretion
disk. On the other hand, from our regular program of long-term optical BVI and
near-infrared JHK monitoring observation of NGC4395 from 2004 February 12 until
2005 January 22, we found large flux variations in all the bands on time scales
of days to months. The optical BVI variations are almost synchronized with each
other, but not completely with the near-infrared JHK variations. The color
temperature of the near-infrared variable component is estimated to be
T=1320-1710 K, in agreement with thermal emission from hot dust tori in active
galactic nuclei (AGNs). We therefore conclude that the near-infrared variation
consists of two components having different time scales, so that a small K-flux
variation on a time scale of a few hours would possibly be veiled by large
variation of thermal dust emission on a time scale of days.Comment: 4 pages including figures, accepted for publication in ApJ
EvIcon: Designing High-Usability Icon with Human-in-the-loop Exploration and IconCLIP
Interface icons are prevalent in various digital applications. Due to limited
time and budgets, many designers rely on informal evaluation, which often
results in poor usability icons. In this paper, we propose a unique
human-in-the-loop framework that allows our target users, i.e., novice and
professional UI designers, to improve the usability of interface icons
efficiently. We formulate several usability criteria into a perceptual
usability function and enable users to iteratively revise an icon set with an
interactive design tool, EvIcon. We take a large-scale pre-trained joint
image-text embedding (CLIP) and fine-tune it to embed icon visuals with icon
tags in the same embedding space (IconCLIP). During the revision process, our
design tool provides two types of instant perceptual usability feedback. First,
we provide perceptual usability feedback modeled by deep learning models
trained on IconCLIP embeddings and crowdsourced perceptual ratings. Second, we
use the embedding space of IconCLIP to assist users in improving icons' visual
distinguishability among icons within the user-prepared icon set. To provide
the perceptual prediction, we compiled IconCEPT10K, the first large-scale
dataset of perceptual usability ratings over interface icons, by
conducting a crowdsourcing study. We demonstrated that our framework could
benefit UI designers' interface icon revision process with a wide range of
professional experience. Moreover, the interface icons designed using our
framework achieved better semantic distance and familiarity, verified by an
additional online user study
- …