On the convergence of autonomous agent communities

This is the post-print version of the final published paper that is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2010 IOS Press and the authors.Community is a common phenomenon in natural ecosystems, human societies as well as artificial multi-agent systems such as those in web and Internet based applications. In many self-organizing systems, communities are formed evolutionarily in a decentralized way through agents' autonomous behavior. This paper systematically investigates the properties of a variety of the self-organizing agent community systems by a formal qualitative approach and a quantitative experimental approach. The qualitative formal study by applying formal specification in SLABS and Scenario Calculus has proven that mature and optimal communities always form and become stable when agents behave based on the collective knowledge of the communities, whereas community formation does not always reach maturity and optimality if agents behave solely based on individual knowledge, and the communities are not always stable even if such a formation is achieved. The quantitative experimental study by simulation has shown that the convergence time of agent communities depends on several parameters of the system in certain complicated patterns, including the number of agents, the number of community organizers, the number of knowledge categories, and the size of the knowledge in each category

Electroencephalogram evidence for the activation of human mirror neuron system during the observation of intransitive shadow and line drawing actions

This article is available open access from the NCBI website at the link below. Copyright 2013 © Neural Regeneration Research. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Previous studies have demonstrated that hand shadows may activate the motor cortex associated with the mirror neuron system in human brain. However, there is no evidence of activity of the human mirror neuron system during the observation of intransitive movements by shadows and line drawings of hands. This study examined the suppression of electroencephalography mu waves (8–13 Hz) induced by observation of stimuli in 18 healthy students. Three stimuli were used: real hand actions, hand shadow actions and actions made by line drawings of hands. The results showed significant desynchronization of the mu rhythm (“mu suppression”) across the sensorimotor cortex (recorded at C3, Cz and C4), the frontal cortex (recorded at F3, Fz and F4) and the central and right posterior parietal cortex (recorded at Pz and P4) under all three conditions. Our experimental findings suggest that the observation of “impoverished hand actions”, such as intransitive movements of shadows and line drawings of hands, is able to activate widespread cortical areas related to the putative human mirror neuron system.The National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China

Understanding the nucleation mechanisms of Carbon Nanotubes in catalytic Chemical Vapor Deposition

The nucleation of carbon caps on small nickel clusters is studied using a tight binding model coupled to grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations. It takes place in a well defined carbon chemical potential range, when a critical concentration of surface carbon atoms is reached. The solubility of carbon in the outermost Ni layers, that depends on the initial, crystalline or disordered, state of the catalyst and on the thermodynamic conditions, is therefore a key quantity to control the nucleation

Crystals for high-energy calorimetry in extreme environments

Crystals are used as a homogeneous calorimetric medium in many high-energy physics experiments. For some experiments, performance has to be ensured in very difficult operating conditions, like a high radiation environment, very large particle fluxes, high collision rates, placing constraints on response and readout time. An overview is presented of recent achievements in the field, with particular attention given to the performance of Lead Tungstate (PWO) crystals exposed to high particle fluxes.Comment: To be published in Proc. of the Meeting of the Division of Particles and Fields of the American Physical Society, DPF2004 (Riverside, USA, August 26th to 31st, 2004

Superconductivity in Ti-doped Iron-Arsenide Compound Sr4Cr0.8Ti1.2O6Fe2As2

Superconductivity was achieved in Ti-doped iron-arsenide compound Sr4Cr0.8Ti1.2O6Fe2As2 (abbreviated as Cr-FeAs-42622). The x-ray diffraction measurement shows that this material has a layered structure with the space group of \emph{P4/nmm}, and with the lattice constants a = b = 3.9003 A and c = 15.8376 A. Clear diamagnetic signals in ac susceptibility data and zero-resistance in resistivity data were detected at about 6 K, confirming the occurrence of bulk superconductivity. Meanwhile we observed a superconducting transition in the resistive data with the onset transition temperature at 29.2 K, which may be induced by the nonuniform distribution of the Cr/Ti content in the FeAs-42622 phase, or due to some other minority phase.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figure

Tackling Challenges in Seebeck Coefficient Measurement of Ultra-High Resistance Samples with an AC Technique

Seebeck coefficient is a widely studied semiconductor property. Conventional Seebeck coefficient measurements are based on DC voltage measurement. Normally this is performed on samples with moderate resistances (e.g., below a few MΩ level). Certain semiconductors are intrinsic and highly resistive. Many examples can be found in optical and photovoltaic materials. The hybrid halide perovskites that have gained extensive attention recently are a good example. Despite great attention from the materials and physics communities, few successful studies exist of the Seebeck coefficient of these compounds, for example CH3NH3PbI3. An AC-technique-based Seebeck coefficient measurement is reported, which makes high-quality Seebeck voltage measurements on samples with resistances up to the 100 GΩ level. This is achieved through a specifically designed setup to enhance sample isolation and increase capacitive impedance. As a demonstration, Seebeck coefficient measurement of a CH3NH3PbI3 thin film is performed at dark, with sample resistance 150 GΩ, and found S = +550 µV K−1. The strategy reported could be applied to the studies of fundamental transport parameters of all intrinsic semiconductors that have not been feasible

Exploration of Saint-Venant’s Principle in inertial high strain rate testing of materials

Current high strain rate testing procedures of materials are limited by poor instrumentation which leads to the requirement for stringent assumptions to enable data processing and constitutive model identification. This is the case for instance for the well known Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar (SHPB) apparatus which relies on strain gauge measurements away from the deforming sample. This paper is a step forward in the exploration of novel tests based on time and space resolved kinematic measurements obtained through ultra-high speed imaging. The underpinning idea is to use acceleration fields obtained from temporal differentiation of the full-field deformation maps measured through techniques like Digital Image Correlation (DIC) or the grid method. This information is then used for inverse identification with the Virtual Fields Method. The feasibility of this new methodology has been verified in the recent past on a few examples. The present paper is a new contribution towards the advancement of this idea. Here, inertial impact tests are considered. They consist of firing a small steel ball impactor at rectangular free standing quasi-isotropic composite specimens. One of the main contributions of the work is to investigate the issue of through thickness heterogeneity of the kinematic fields through both numerical simulations (3D finite element model) and actual tests. The results show that the parasitic effects arising from non uniform through-the-thickness loading can successfully be mitigated by the use of longer specimens, making use of Saint-Venant's principle in dynamics