High-speed tunable photonic crystal fiber-based femtosecond soliton source without dispersion pre-compensation

We present a high-speed wavelength tunable photonic crystal fiber-based source capable of generating tunable femtosecond solitons in the infrared region. Through measurements and numerical simulation, we show that both the pulsewidth and the spectral width of the output pulses remain nearly constant over the entire tuning range from 860 to 1160 nm. This remarkable behavior is observed even when pump pulses are heavily chirped (7400 fs^2), which allows to avoid bulky compensation optics, or the use of another fiber, for dispersion compensation usually required by the tuning device.Comment: 8 pages, 11 figure

A Procedure for Assessing Heavy Mineral Resources Potential

Supplies of placer heavy minerals, such as ilmenite, rutile, zircon, and monazite, are anticipated to be in short supply by early in the next century. The depletion of conventional onshore deposits coupled with the declaration of the Exclusive Economic Zone in 1983 have provided the impetus to assess the resource potential of heavy-mineral concentrations in U.S. Continental Shelf sediments as future sources for these mineral commodities. Mineralogically imprecise assessments of placer resources result from analyses of concentrates derived from small volume samples because of the particle-sparsity effect. The overall low grade of heavy minerals in Atlantic Continental Shelf sediments require the analysis of mineral concentrates from large volumes of bulk sample. A set of procedures to extract and analyze heavy minerals from large-volume samples is presented.https://scholarworks.wm.edu/vimsbooks/1103/thumbnail.jp

Integrating Collaboration and Activity-Oriented Planning for Coalition Operations Support

The University of Edinburgh and research sponsors are authorised to reproduce and distribute reprints and on-line copies for their purposes notwithstanding any copyright annotation hereon. The views and conclusions contained herein are the author’s and shouldn’t be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of other parties.The use of planning assistant agents is an appropriate option to provide support for members of a coalition. Planning agents can extend the human abilities and be customised to attend different kinds of activities. However, the implementation of a planning framework must also consider other important requirements for coalitions, such as the performance of collaborative activities and human-agent interaction (HAI). This paper discusses the integration of an activity-oriented planning with collaborative concepts using a constraint-based ontology for that. While the use of collaborative concepts provides a better performance to systems as a whole, a unified representation of planning and collaboration enables an easy customisation of activity handlers and the basis for a future incorporation of HAI mechanisms

Modeling of Small DC Magnetic Field Response in Trilayer Magnetoelectric Laminate Composites

We consider a magnetoelectric laminate which comprises two magnetostrictive (Ni) layers and an in-between piezoelectric layer (PZT). Using the finite-element method-based software COMSOL, we numerically calculate the induced voltage between the two faces of the PZT piezoelectric layer, by an external homogeneous small-signal magnetic field threading the three-layer Ni/PZT/Ni laminate structure. A bias magnetic field is simulated as being produced by two permanent magnets, as it is done in real experimental setups. For approaching the real materials’ properties, a measured magnetization curve of the Ni plate is used in the computations. The reported results take into account the finite-size effects of the structure, such as the fringing electric field effect and the demagnetization, as well as the effect of the finite conductivity of the Ni layers on the output voltage. The results of the simulations are compared with the experimental data and with a widely known analytical result for the induced magnetoelectric voltage

Reducing the Overlap Between Machiavellianism and Subclinical Psychopathy: The M7 and P7 Scales

Machiavellianism (Mach) and subclinical psychopathy are two widely studied antagonistic personality traits with distinct theoretical conceptualizations. Mach is conceptualized by strategic deviousness, cynicism, and pragmatic morality, whereas subclinical psychopathy is conceptualized by impulsive antisocial tendencies, callousness, and rule-breaking. However, existing measures of the two traits are typically highly correlated and have very similar nomological networks. Notably, even though psychopathy scales should be more strongly positively associated with antisocial impulsivity and more strongly negatively associated with conscientiousness than Mach scales, existing Mach and psychopathy scales tend to be similarly related to these constructs. We created a new Mach scale, the M7, and a new psychopathy scale, the P7, by selecting items from existing Mach and psychopathy scales on the basis of the correlations of these items with antisocial impulsivity and conscientiousness. Across three studies (combined N = 4,607), the M7 and P7 showed acceptable to good psychometric properties in terms of closeness to unidimensionality, measurement precision, temporal stability, measurement invariance across language and gender groups, and convergent and discriminant validity (nomological network, self-other agreement, and interpersonal perceptions in group interactions). Most importantly, the new scales assess clearly distinct latent traits that are more in line with their theoretical conceptualizations than established scales are

Childhood and the politics of scale: Descaling children's geographies?

This is the post-print version of the final published paper that is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2008 SAGE Publications.The past decade has witnessed a resurgence of interest in the geographies of children's lives, and particularly in engaging the voices and activities of young people in geographical research. Much of this growing body of scholarship is characterized by a very parochial locus of interest — the neighbourhood, playground, shopping mall or journey to school. In this paper I explore some of the roots of children's geographies' preoccupation with the micro-scale and argue that it limits the relevance of research, both politically and to other areas of geography. In order to widen the scope of children's geographies, some scholars have engaged with developments in the theorization of scale. I present these arguments but also point to their limitations. As an alternative, I propose that the notion of a flat ontology might help overcome some difficulties around scalar thinking, and provide a useful means of conceptualizing sociospatiality in material and non-hierarchical terms. Bringing together flat ontology and work in children's geographies on embodied subjectivity, I argue that it is important to examine the nature and limits of children's spaces of perception and action. While these spaces are not simply `local', they seldom afford children opportunities to comment on, or intervene in, the events, processes and decisions that shape their own lives. The implications for the substance and method of children's geographies and for geographical work on scale are considered

Temporal drag: transdisciplinarity and the 'case' of psychosocial studies

Psychosocial studies is a putatively ‘new’ or emerging field concerned with the irreducible relation between psychic and social life. Genealogically, it attempts to re-suture a tentative relation between mind and social world, individual and mass, internality and externality, norm and subject, and the human and non-human, through gathering up and re-animating largely forgotten debates that have played out across a range of other disciplinary spaces. If, as I argue, the central tenets, concepts and questions for psychosocial studies emerge out of a re-appropriation of what have become anachronistic or ‘useless’ concepts in other fields – ‘the unconscious’, for instance, in the discipline of psychology – then we need to think about transdisciplinarity not just in spatial terms (that is, in terms of the movement across disciplinary borders) but also in temporal terms. This may involve engaging with theoretical ‘embarrassments’, one of which – the notion of ‘psychic reality’ – I explore here

A computational approach to implicit entities and events in text and discourse

In this paper we will focus on the notion of “implicit” or lexically unexpressed linguistic elements that are nonetheless necessary for a complete semantic interpretation of a text. We refer to “entities” and “events” because the recovery of the implicit material may affect all the modules of a system for semantic processing, from the grammatically guided components to the inferential and reasoning ones. Reference to the system GETARUNS offers one possible implementation of the algorithms and procedures needed to cope with the problem and enables us to deal with all the spectrum of phenomena. The paper will address at first the following three types of “implicit” entities and events: – the grammatical ones, as suggested by a linguistic theories like LFG or similar generative theories; – the semantic ones suggested in the FrameNet project, i.e. CNI, DNI, INI; – the pragmatic ones: here we will present a theory and an implementation for the recovery of implicit entities and events of (non-) standard implicatures. In particular we will show how the use of commonsense knowledge may fruitfully contribute to find relevant implied meanings. Last Implicit Entity only touched on, though for lack of space, is the Subject of Point of View, which is computed by Semantic Informational Structure and contributes the intended entity from whose point of view a given subjective statement is expressed

Relating imperatives to action

The aim of this chapter is to provide an analysis of the use of logically complex imperatives, in particular, imperatives of the form Do A1 or A2 and Do A, if B. We argue for an analysis of imperatives in terms of classical logic which takes into account the influence of background information on imperatives. We show that by doing so one can avoid some counter-intuitive results which have been associated with analyses of imperatives in terms of classical logic. In particular, I address Hamblin's observations concerning rule-like imperatives and Ross' Paradox. The analysis is carried out within an agent-based logical framework. This analysis explicates what it means for an agent to have a successful policy for action with respect to satisfying his or her commitments, where some of these commitments have been introduced as a result of imperative language use

Faking like a woman? Towards an interpretative theorization of sexual pleasure.

This article explores the possibility of developing a feminist approach to gendered and sexual embodiment which is rooted in the pragmatist/interactionist tradition derived from G.H. Mead, but which in turn develops this perspective by inflecting it through more recent feminist thinking. In so doing we seek to rebalance some of the rather abstract work on gender and embodiment by focusing on an instance of 'heterosexual' everyday/night life - the production of the female orgasm. Through engaging with feminist and interactionist work, we develop an approach to embodied sexual pleasure that emphasizes the sociality of sexual practices and of reflexive sexual selves. We argue that sexual practices and experiences must be understood in social context, taking account of the situatedness of sex as well as wider socio-cultural processes the production of sexual desire and sexual pleasure (or their non-production) always entails interpretive, interactional processes