Analysis of reported error in Monte Carlo rendered images

Evaluating image quality in Monte Carlo rendered images is an important aspect of the rendering process as we often need to determine the relative quality between images computed using different algorithms and with varying amounts of computation. The use of a gold-standard, reference image, or ground truth (GT) is a common method to provide a baseline with which to compare experimental results. We show that if not chosen carefully the reference image can skew results leading to significant misreporting of error. We present an analysis of error in Monte Carlo rendered images and discuss practices to avoid or be aware of when designing an experiment

Multifractal analysis of the electronic states in the Fibonacci superlattice under weak electric fields

Influence of the weak electric field on the electronic structure of the Fibonacci superlattice is considered. The electric field produces a nonlinear dynamics of the energy spectrum of the aperiodic superlattice. Mechanism of the nonlinearity is explained in terms of energy levels anticrossings. The multifractal formalism is applied to investigate the effect of weak electric field on the statistical properties of electronic eigenfunctions. It is shown that the applied electric field does not remove the multifractal character of the electronic eigenfunctions, and that the singularity spectrum remains non-parabolic, however with a modified shape. Changes of the distances between energy levels of neighbouring eigenstates lead to the changes of the inverse participation ratio of the corresponding eigenfunctions in the weak electric field. It is demonstrated, that the local minima of the inverse participation ratio in the vicinity of the anticrossings correspond to discontinuity of the first derivative of the difference between marginal values of the singularity strength. Analysis of the generalized dimension as a function of the electric field shows that the electric field correlates spatial fluctuations of the neighbouring electronic eigenfunction amplitudes in the vicinity of anticrossings, and the nonlinear character of the scaling exponent confirms multifractality of the corresponding electronic eigenfunctions.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figure

Sequential dependency for affective appraisal of food images

Abstract How we perceive the world is not solely determined by our experiences at a given moment in time, but also by what we have experienced in our immediate past. Here, we investigated whether such sequential effects influence the affective appraisal of food images. Participants from 16 different countries (N = 1278) watched a randomly presented sequence of 60 different food images and reported their affective appraisal of each image in terms of valence and arousal. For both measures, we conducted an inter-trial analysis, based on whether the rating on the preceding trial(s) was low or high. The analyses showed that valence and arousal ratings for a given food image are both assimilated towards the ratings on the previous trial (i.e., a positive serial dependence). For a given trial, the arousal rating depends on the arousal ratings up to three trials back. For valence, we observed a positive dependence for the immediately preceding trial only, while a negative (repulsive) dependence was present up to four trials back. These inter-trial effects were larger for males than for females, but independent of the participants’ BMI, age, and cultural background. The results of this exploratory study may be relevant for the design of websites of food delivery services and restaurant menus

Search for composite and exotic fermions at LEP 2

A search for unstable heavy fermions with the DELPHI detector at LEP is reported. Sequential and non-canonical leptons, as well as excited leptons and quarks, are considered. The data analysed correspond to an integrated luminosity of about 48 pb^{-1} at an e^+e^- centre-of-mass energy of 183 GeV and about 20 pb^{-1} equally shared between the centre-of-mass energies of 172 GeV and 161 GeV. The search for pair-produced new leptons establishes 95% confidence level mass limits in the region between 70 GeV/c^2 and 90 GeV/c^2, depending on the channel. The search for singly produced excited leptons and quarks establishes upper limits on the ratio of the coupling of the excited fermio

Search for lightest neutralino and stau pair production in light gravitino scenarios with stau NLSP

Promptly decaying lightest neutralinos and long-lived staus are searched for in the context of light gravitino scenarios. It is assumed that the stau is the next to lightest supersymmetric particle (NLSP) and that the lightest neutralino is the next to NLSP (NNLSP). Data collected with the Delphi detector at centre-of-mass energies from 161 to 183 \GeV are analysed. No evidence of the production of these particles is found. Hence, lower mass limits for both kinds of particles are set at 95% C.L.. The mass of gaugino-like neutralinos is found to be greater than 71.5 GeV/c^2. In the search for long-lived stau, masses less than 70.0 to 77.5 \GeVcc are excluded for gravitino masses from 10 to 150 \eVcc . Combining this search with the searches for stable heavy leptons and Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model staus a lower limit of 68.5 \GeVcc may be set for the stau mas

Reducing Crowding by Weakening Inhibitory Lateral Interactions in the Periphery with Perceptual Learning

We investigated whether lateral masking in the near-periphery, due to inhibitory lateral interactions at an early level of central visual processing, could be weakened by perceptual learning and whether learning transferred to an untrained, higher-level lateral masking known as crowding. The trained task was contrast detection of a Gabor target presented in the near periphery (4°) in the presence of co-oriented and co-aligned high contrast Gabor flankers, which featured different target-to-flankers separations along the vertical axis that varied from 2λ to 8λ. We found both suppressive and facilitatory lateral interactions at target-to-flankers distances (2λ - 4λ and 8λ, respectively) that were larger than those found in the fovea. Training reduces suppression but does not increase facilitation. Most importantly, we found that learning reduces crowding and improves contrast sensitivity, but has no effect on visual acuity (VA). These results suggest a different pattern of connectivity in the periphery with respect to the fovea as well as a different modulation of this connectivity via perceptual learning that not only reduces low-level lateral masking but also reduces crowding. These results have important implications for the rehabilitation of low-vision patients who must use peripheral vision to perform tasks, such as reading and refined figure-ground segmentation, which normal sighted subjects perform in the fovea

Investigation of the splitting of quark and gluon jets

The splitting processes in identified quark and gluon jets are investigated using longitudinal and transverse observables. The jets are selected from symmetric three-jet events measured in Z decays with the Delphi detector in 1991-1994. Gluon jets are identified using heavy quark anti-tagging. Scaling violations in identified gluon jets are observed for the first time. The scale energy dependence of the gluon fragmentation function is found to be about two times larger than for the corresponding quark jets, consistent with the QCD expectation TeX . The primary splitting of gluons and quarks into subjets agrees with fragmentation models and, for specific regions of the jet resolution TeX , with NLLA calculations. The maximum of the ratio of the primary subjet splittings in quark and gluon jets is TeX . Due to non-perturbative effects, the data are below the expectation at small TeX . The transition from the perturbative to the non-perturbative domain appears at smaller TeX for quark jets than for gluon jets. Combined with the observed behaviour of the higher rank splittings, this explains the relatively small multiplicity ratio between gluon and quark jets