347 research outputs found
A multi-detector array for high energy nuclear e+e- pair spectrosocopy
A multi-detector array has been constructed for the simultaneous measurement
of energy- and angular correlation of electron-positron pairs produced in
internal pair conversion (IPC) of nuclear transitions up to 18 MeV. The
response functions of the individual detectors have been measured with
mono-energetic beams of electrons. Experimental results obtained with 1.6 MeV
protons on targets containing B and F show clear IPC over a wide
angular range. A comparison with GEANT simulations demonstrates that angular
correlations of pairs of transitions in the energy range between 6 and
18 MeV can be determined with sufficient resolution and efficiency to search
for deviations from IPC due to the creation and subsequent decay into
of a hypothetical short-lived neutral boson.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figure
Multilayer neural networks with extensively many hidden units
The information processing abilities of a multilayer neural network with a
number of hidden units scaling as the input dimension are studied using
statistical mechanics methods. The mapping from the input layer to the hidden
units is performed by general symmetric Boolean functions whereas the hidden
layer is connected to the output by either discrete or continuous couplings.
Introducing an overlap in the space of Boolean functions as order parameter the
storage capacity if found to scale with the logarithm of the number of
implementable Boolean functions. The generalization behaviour is smooth for
continuous couplings and shows a discontinuous transition to perfect
generalization for discrete ones.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure
Efficient coding of natural scenes improves neural system identification
Neural system identification aims at learning the response function of neurons to arbitrary stimuli using experimentally recorded data, but typically does not leverage normative principles such as efficient coding of natural environments. Visual systems, however, have evolved to efficiently process input from the natural environment. Here, we present a normative network regularization for system identification models by incorporating, as a regularizer, the efficient coding hypothesis, which states that neural response properties of sensory representations are strongly shaped by the need to preserve most of the stimulus information with limited resources. Using this approach, we explored if a system identification model can be improved by sharing its convolutional filters with those of an autoencoder which aims to efficiently encode natural stimuli. To this end, we built a hybrid model to predict the responses of retinal neurons to noise stimuli. This approach did not only yield a higher performance than the “stand-alone” system identification model, it also produced more biologically-plausible filters. We found these results to be consistent for retinal responses to different stimuli and across model architectures. Moreover, our normatively regularized model performed particularly well in predicting responses of direction-of-motion sensitive retinal neurons. In summary, our results support the hypothesis that efficiently encoding environmental inputs can improve system identification models of early visual processing
Magnetic fields of opposite polarity in sunspot penumbrae
Context. A significant part of the penumbral magnetic field returns below the
surface in the very deep photosphere. For lines in the visible, a large portion
of this return field can only be detected indirectly by studying its imprints
on strongly asymmetric and three-lobed Stokes V profiles. Infrared lines probe
a narrow layer in the very deep photosphere, providing the possibility of
directly measuring the orientation of magnetic fields close to the solar
surface.
Aims. We study the topology of the penumbral magnetic field in the lower
photosphere, focusing on regions where it returns below the surface.
Methods. We analyzed 71 spectropolarimetric datasets from Hinode and from the
GREGOR infrared spectrograph. We inferred the quality and polarimetric accuracy
of the infrared data after applying several reduction steps. Techniques of
spectral inversion and forward synthesis were used to test the detection
algorithm. We compared the morphology and the fractional penumbral area covered
by reversed-polarity and three-lobed Stokes V profiles for sunspots at disk
center. We determined the amount of reversed-polarity and three-lobed Stokes V
profiles in visible and infrared data of sunspots at various heliocentric
angles. From the results, we computed center-to-limb variation curves, which
were interpreted in the context of existing penumbral models.
Results. Observations in visible and near-infrared spectral lines yield a
significant difference in the penumbral area covered by magnetic fields of
opposite polarity. In the infrared, the number of reversed-polarity Stokes V
profiles is smaller by a factor of two than in the visible. For three-lobed
Stokes V profiles the numbers differ by up to an order of magnitude.Comment: 11 pages 10 figures plus appendix (2 pages 3 figures). Accepted as
part of the A&A special issue on the GREGOR solar telescop
Natural Image Coding in V1: How Much Use is Orientation Selectivity?
Orientation selectivity is the most striking feature of simple cell coding in
V1 which has been shown to emerge from the reduction of higher-order
correlations in natural images in a large variety of statistical image models.
The most parsimonious one among these models is linear Independent Component
Analysis (ICA), whereas second-order decorrelation transformations such as
Principal Component Analysis (PCA) do not yield oriented filters. Because of
this finding it has been suggested that the emergence of orientation
selectivity may be explained by higher-order redundancy reduction. In order to
assess the tenability of this hypothesis, it is an important empirical question
how much more redundancies can be removed with ICA in comparison to PCA, or
other second-order decorrelation methods. This question has not yet been
settled, as over the last ten years contradicting results have been reported
ranging from less than five to more than hundred percent extra gain for ICA.
Here, we aim at resolving this conflict by presenting a very careful and
comprehensive analysis using three evaluation criteria related to redundancy
reduction: In addition to the multi-information and the average log-loss we
compute, for the first time, complete rate-distortion curves for ICA in
comparison with PCA. Without exception, we find that the advantage of the ICA
filters is surprisingly small. Furthermore, we show that a simple spherically
symmetric distribution with only two parameters can fit the data even better
than the probabilistic model underlying ICA. Since spherically symmetric models
are agnostic with respect to the specific filter shapes, we conlude that
orientation selectivity is unlikely to play a critical role for redundancy
reduction
How Work Impairments and Reduced Work Ability are Associated with Health Care Use in Workers with Musculoskeletal Disorders, Cardiovascular Disorders or Mental Disorders
__Abstract__
Purpose the aim of this study was to explore
how work impairments and work ability are associated with
health care use by workers with musculoskeletal disorders
(MSD), cardiovascular disorders (CVD), or mental disorders
(MD). Methods in this cross-sectional study, subjects
with MSD (n = 2,074), CVD (n = 714), and MD
(n = 443) were selected among health care workers in 12
Dutch organizations. Using an online questionnaire, data
were collected on in
Pairwise maximum entropy models for studying large biological systems: when they can and when they can't work
One of the most critical problems we face in the study of biological systems
is building accurate statistical descriptions of them. This problem has been
particularly challenging because biological systems typically contain large
numbers of interacting elements, which precludes the use of standard brute
force approaches. Recently, though, several groups have reported that there may
be an alternate strategy. The reports show that reliable statistical models can
be built without knowledge of all the interactions in a system; instead,
pairwise interactions can suffice. These findings, however, are based on the
analysis of small subsystems. Here we ask whether the observations will
generalize to systems of realistic size, that is, whether pairwise models will
provide reliable descriptions of true biological systems. Our results show
that, in most cases, they will not. The reason is that there is a crossover in
the predictive power of pairwise models: If the size of the subsystem is below
the crossover point, then the results have no predictive power for large
systems. If the size is above the crossover point, the results do have
predictive power. This work thus provides a general framework for determining
the extent to which pairwise models can be used to predict the behavior of
whole biological systems. Applied to neural data, the size of most systems
studied so far is below the crossover point
The High-Resolution Coronal Imager, Flight 2.1
The third flight of the High-Resolution Coronal Imager (Hi-C 2.1) occurred on May 29, 2018; the Sounding Rocket was launched from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The instrument has been modified from its original configuration (Hi-C 1) to observe the solar corona in a passband that peaks near 172 Å, and uses a new, custom-built low-noise camera. The instrument targeted Active Region 12712, and captured 78 images at a cadence of 4.4 s (18:56:22 – 19:01:57 UT; 5 min and 35 s observing time). The image spatial resolution varies due to quasi-periodic motion blur from the rocket; sharp images contain resolved features of at least 0.47 arcsec. There are coordinated observations from multiple ground- and space-based telescopes providing an unprecedented opportunity to observe the mass and energy coupling between the chromosphere and the corona. Details of the instrument and the data set are presented in this paper
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