Learning an Artist's Style: Just What Does a Pigeon See in a Picasso?

Judgments of style in art, music, and literature are commonplace, although the mechanisms providing for this structural sensitivity are not well understood. Watanabe, Sakamoto, and Wakita (1995) showed that pigeons trained to discriminate colour slides of paintings of Picasso from those of Monet could generalise this discrimination not only to new paintings of Picasso and Monet, but also to paintings of other cubist and impressionist painters. These results suggest that the bases for such judgments of artistic style may be simpler than normally thought. This tacit sensitivity to artistic style is explored in terms of a simple PCA network model applied to pixel-maps of the paintings. The eigenvectors obtained from the singular value decomposition of sets of these pixel-maps provide for descriptions of the stimuli in terms of visual “macro-features”. These macro-features provide a simple basis not only for recognising previously-experienced paintings, but for the successful discrimination of novel paintings into various style categories. A summary of simulations of the performance of Watanabe et al.’s pigeons using precisely the same stimuli and tasks is provided. The results suggest that the eigen-decomposition is a necessary first-step, and that the bases for judgments of style may indeed be quite simple

Estimating Earnings Differentials among Military Veterans

This thesis analyzes whether the decision to enter the military offers a different investment in human capital as indicated by the civilian earning of veterans. Using seven one month samples from the Current Population Survey, I run three linear regressions to compare the earnings of veterans by gender, the earnings of female veterans and non-veterans, and the earnings of male veterans and non-veterans. It appears that, between 2005 and 2013, veterans enjoyed a wage premium which existed for both male and female veterans. These results suggest that military service acts as a screening device or a bridge to employment in the civilian labor force. Additionally, female veterans earn less than male veterans in the civilian labor force. Even though female veterans are more successful in the civilian labor force than women with no military experience, they still suffer a gender wage gap

Could the Pioneer anomaly have a gravitational origin?

If the Pioneer anomaly has a gravitational origin, it would, according to the equivalence principle, distort the motions of the planets in the Solar System. Since no anomalous motion of the planets has been detected, it is generally believed that the Pioneer anomaly can not originate from a gravitational source in the Solar System. However, this conclusion becomes less obvious when considering models that either imply modifications to gravity at long range or gravitational sources localized to the outer Solar System, given the uncertainty in the orbital parameters of the outer planets. Following the general assumption that the Pioneer spacecraft move geodesically in a spherically symmetric spacetime metric, we derive the metric disturbance that is needed in order to account for the Pioneer anomaly. We then analyze the residual effects on the astronomical observables of the three outer planets that would arise from this metric disturbance, given an arbitrary metric theory of gravity. Providing a method for comparing the computed residuals with actual residuals, our results imply that the presence of a perturbation to the gravitational field necessary to induce the Pioneer anomaly is in conflict with available data for the planets Uranus and Pluto, but not for Neptune. We therefore conclude that the motion of the Pioneer spacecraft must be non-geodesic. Since our results are model independent within the class of metric theories of gravity, they can be applied to rule out any model of the Pioneer anomaly that implies that the Pioneer spacecraft move geodesically in a perturbed spacetime metric, regardless of the origin of this metric disturbance.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures. Rev. 3: Major revision. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D. Rev. 4: Added two reference

Zugänglichkeit und Nutzung der EUCOR- Bibliotheken für behinderte Studierende

Zur Bibliotheksbenutzung benötigen behinderte Studierende zusätzlich räumliche und technische Unterstützung. Eine Umfrage unter den EUCOR-Bibliotheken soll aufzeigen, inwieweit die einzelnen Bibliotheken behindertengerecht ausgestattet sind. Gerade bei der Studienortwahl sollte die lokale Ausstattung der Bibliothek berücksichtigt werden, da ihr für den Studienverlauf eine zentrale Bedeutung zukommt. Die Untersuchung ergab, daß jeweils im Einzelfall entschieden werden muß, ob eine Bibliothek für die individuelle Behinderung geeignet erscheint

Samisk – En del av mangfoldet og kulturarven. En kvalitativ undersøkelse om læreres tanker om samisk som tema i norskfaget på mellomtrinnet og ungdomstrinnet

Master i grunnskolelærerutdanning 5-10, Norsk 4 - 202