(S)quark Masses and Non-Abelian Horizontal Symmetries

We present a model of quark and squark masses which is based on a non-Abelian horizontal symmetry. It leads to order of magnitude relations between quark mass ratios and mixing angles and to the successful exact relation $\sin \theta_C=\sqrt {m_d\over m_s}$ to better than $20\%$ accuracy. The non-Abelian symmetry also ensures the necessary squark degeneracy to suppress FCNC mediated by loops with squarks and gluinos, in the neutral meson systems.Comment: 9 pages, RU-93-3

Learn to Spot Phishing URLs with the Android NoPhish App

Part 3: Tools and Applications for TeachingInternational audiencePhishing is a münich issue in today’s Internet. It can have financial or personal consequences. Attacks continue to become more and more sophisticated and the advanced ones (including spear phishing) can only be detected if people carefully check URLs – be it in messages or in the address bar of the web browser. We developed a game-based smartphone app – NoPhish – to educate people in accessing, parsing and checking URLs; i.e. enabling them to distinguish between trustworthy and non-trustworthy messages and websites. Throughout several levels of the game information is provided and phishing detection is exercised in a playful manner. Several learning principles were applied and the interfaces and texts were developed in a user-centered design

Recalculation of QCD Corrections to b→sγb \to s \gamma Decay

We give a more complete calculation of $b \to s\gamma$ decay, including leading log QCD corrections from $m_{top}$ to $M_W$ in addition to corrections from $M_{W}$ to $m_b$. We have included the full set of dimension-6 operators and corrected numerical mistakes of anomalous dimensions in a previous paper\cite{Cho}. Comparing with the calculations without QCD running from $m_{top}$ to $M_W$\cite{Mis}, the inclusive decay rate is found to be enhanced. At $m_t=150$GeV, it results in 12\% enhancement, and for $m_t=250$GeV, 15\% is found. The total QCD effect makes an enhanced factor of 4.2 at $m_t=150$GeV, and 3.2 for $m_t=250$GeV.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures (uuencoded ps files), Changes of description. To appear in Phys. Rev.

Flavor Symmetries and The Problem of Squark Degeneracy

If supersymmetry exists at low energies, it is necessary to understand why the squark spectrum exhibits sufficient degeneracy to suppress flavor changing neutral currents. In this note, we point out that gauged horizontal symmetries can yield realistic quark mass matrices, while at the same time giving just barely enough squark degeneracy to account for neutral $K$-meson phenomenology. This approach suggests likely patterns for squark masses, and indicates that there could be significant supersymmetric contributions to $B-\bar{B}$ and $D-\bar{D}$ mixing and CP violation in the $K$ and $B$ systems.Comment: preprint SCIPP 93/04,SLAC-PUB-6147, 14 pages, 4 tables included; uses macro package TABLES.TEX and phyzzx forma

Learning Mazes with Aliasing States: An LCS Algorithm with Associative Perception

Learning classifier systems (LCSs) belong to a class of algorithms based on the principle of self-organization and have frequently been applied to the task of solving mazes, an important type of reinforcement learning (RL) problem. Maze problems represent a simplified virtual model of real environments that can be used for developing core algorithms of many real-world applications related to the problem of navigation. However, the best achievements of LCSs in maze problems are still mostly bounded to non-aliasing environments, while LCS complexity seems to obstruct a proper analysis of the reasons of failure. We construct a new LCS agent that has a simpler and more transparent performance mechanism, but that can still solve mazes better than existing algorithms. We use the structure of a predictive LCS model, strip out the evolutionary mechanism, simplify the reinforcement learning procedure and equip the agent with the ability of associative perception, adopted from psychology. To improve our understanding of the nature and structure of maze environments, we analyze mazes used in research for the last two decades, introduce a set of maze complexity characteristics, and develop a set of new maze environments. We then run our new LCS with associative perception through the old and new aliasing mazes, which represent partially observable Markov decision problems (POMDP) and demonstrate that it performs at least as well as, and in some cases better than, other published systems

Analysis of Charge Asymmetry in Rare Dilepton BB Decays

We analyze forward-backward charge asymmetry of the lepton production in rare decays $B\rightarrow X_s l^+l^-$ and $B\rightarrow K^* l^+l^-$, including vector-resonance effects. Certain regions of phase space, in which the asymmetry is sensitive to individual short-distance coefficients, are pointed out. In particular, we suggest a method to test the coupling of the leptonic axial vector current to the left-handed quark current experimentally.Comment: 27 pages, 4 figures available up to requiremen

Impact of CP phases on stop and sbottom searches

We study the decays of top squarks (stop_{1,2}) and bottom squarks (sbottom_{1,2}) in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) with complex parameters A_t, A_b, mu and M_1. We show that including the corresponding phases substantially affects the branching ratios of stop_{1,2} and sbottom_{1,2} decays in a large domain of the MSSM parameter space. We find that the branching ratios can easily change by a factor of 2 and more when varying the phases. This could have an important impact on the search for stop_{1,2} and sbottom_{1,2} and the determination of the MSSM parameters at future colliders.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures, LaTeX2

Large-basis shell-model calculation of 10C->10B Fermi matrix element

We use a $4\hbar\Omega$ shell-model calculation with a two-body effective interaction derived microscopically from the Reid93 potential to calculate the isospin-mixing correction for the 10C->10B superallowed Fermi transition. The effective interaction takes into account the Coulomb potential as well as the charge dependence of T=1 partial waves. Our results suggest the isospin- mixing correction $\delta_{C}\approx 0.1$, which is compatible with previous calculations. The correction obtained in those calculations, performed in a $0\hbar\Omega$ space, was dominated by deviation from unity of the radial overlap between the converted proton and the corresponding neutron. In the present calculation this effect is accommodated by the large model space. The obtained $\delta_{C}$ correction is about a factor of four too small to obtain unitarity of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix with the present experimental data.Comment: 14 pages. REVTEX. 3 PostScript figure

Conceptual learning : the priority for higher education

The common sense notion of learning as the all-pervasive acquisition of new behaviour and knowledge, made vivid by experience, is an incomplete characterisation, because it assumes that the learning of behaviour and the learning of knowledge are indistinguishable, and that acquisition constitutes learning without reference to transfer. A psychological level of analysis is used to argue that conceptual learning should have priority in higher education

Linear, Deterministic, and Order-Invariant Initialization Methods for the K-Means Clustering Algorithm

Over the past five decades, k-means has become the clustering algorithm of choice in many application domains primarily due to its simplicity, time/space efficiency, and invariance to the ordering of the data points. Unfortunately, the algorithm's sensitivity to the initial selection of the cluster centers remains to be its most serious drawback. Numerous initialization methods have been proposed to address this drawback. Many of these methods, however, have time complexity superlinear in the number of data points, which makes them impractical for large data sets. On the other hand, linear methods are often random and/or sensitive to the ordering of the data points. These methods are generally unreliable in that the quality of their results is unpredictable. Therefore, it is common practice to perform multiple runs of such methods and take the output of the run that produces the best results. Such a practice, however, greatly increases the computational requirements of the otherwise highly efficient k-means algorithm. In this chapter, we investigate the empirical performance of six linear, deterministic (non-random), and order-invariant k-means initialization methods on a large and diverse collection of data sets from the UCI Machine Learning Repository. The results demonstrate that two relatively unknown hierarchical initialization methods due to Su and Dy outperform the remaining four methods with respect to two objective effectiveness criteria. In addition, a recent method due to Erisoglu et al. performs surprisingly poorly.Comment: 21 pages, 2 figures, 5 tables, Partitional Clustering Algorithms (Springer, 2014). arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1304.7465, arXiv:1209.196