Centaur, Split: An Inquiry into the Human and the Animal

An exploration of the philosophical issues surrounding animals, with specific attention paid to how humans are or are not animals (and how the supposition of difference or non-difference shapes human identity), what humans can say about the animal, and how the human should think and relate to animals

Guest editors' introduction: special section on fault diagnosis and tolerance in cryptography

The objective of this special section is to present some of the state-of-the-art developments in the analysis of fault attacks and the techniques to protect crypto-systems from such attacks

Evidence for Induced Magnetization in Superconductor-Ferromagnet Hetero-structures: a Scanning Tunnelling Spectroscopy Study

We performed scanning tunneling spectroscopy of c-axis oriented YBCO films on top of which ferromagnetic SRO islands were grown epitaxially in-situ. When measured on the ferromagnetic islands, the density of states exhibits small gap-like features consistent with the expected short range penetration of the order parameter into the ferromagnet. However, anomalous split-gap structures are measured on the superconductor in the vicinity of ferromagnetic islands. This observation may provide evidence for the recently predicted induced magnetization in the superconductor side of a superconductor/ ferromagnet junction. The length scale of the effect inside the superconductor was found to be an order of magnitude larger than the superconducting coherence length. This is inconsistent with the theoretical prediction of a penetration depth of only a few superconducting coherence lengths. We discuss a possible origin for this discrepancy

Connectivity and Performance Tradeoffs in the Cascade Correlation Learning Architecture

The Cascade Correlation [1] is a very flexible, efficient and fast algorithm for supervised learning. It incrementally builds the network by adding hidden units one at a time, until the desired input/output mapping is achieved. It connects all the previously installed units to the new unit being added. Consequently, each new unit in effect adds a new layer and the fan–in of the hidden and output units keeps on increasing as more units get added. The resulting structure could be hard to implement in VLSI, because the connections are irregular and the fan-in is unbounded. Moreover, the depth or the propagation delay through the resulting network is directly proportional to the number of units and can be excessive. We have modified the algorithm to generate networks with restricted fan-in and small depth (propagation delay) by controlling the connectivity. Our results reveal that there is a tradeoff between connectivity and other performance attributes like depth, total number of independent parameters, learning time, etc. When the number of inputs or outputs is small relative to the size of the training set, a higher connectivity usually leads to faster learning, and fewer independent parameters, but it also results in unbounded fan-in and depth. Strictly layered architectures with restricted connectivity, on the other hand, need more epochs to learn and use more parameters, but generate more regular structures, with smaller, limited fan-in and significantly smaller depth (propagation delay), and may be better suited for VLSI implementations. When the number of inputs or outputs is not very small compared to the size of the training set, however, a strictly layered topology is seen to yield an overall better performance

Direct measurements of the effect of biomass burning over the Amazon on the atmospheric temperature profile

Aerosols suspended in the atmosphere interact with solar radiation and clouds, thus change the radiation energy fluxes in the atmospheric column. In this paper we measure changes in the atmospheric temperature profile as a function of the smoke loading and the cloudiness, over the Amazon basin, during the dry seasons (August and September) of 2005–2008. We show that as the aerosol optical depth (AOD) increases from 0.02 to a value of ~0.6, there is a decrease of ~4°C at 1000 hPa, and an increase of ~1.5°C at 850 hPa. The warming of the aerosol layer at 850 hPa is likely due to aerosol absorption when the particles are exposed to direct illumination by the sun. The large values of cooling in the lower layers could be explained by a combination of aerosol extinction of the solar flux in the layers aloft together with an aerosol-induced increase of cloud cover which shade the lower atmosphere. We estimate that the increase in cloud fraction due to aerosol contributes about half of the observed cooling in the lower layers

Optimal control of an assembly system with demand for the end-product and intermediate components

This article considers the production and admission control decisions for a two-stage manufacturing system where intermediate components are produced to stock in the first stage and an end-product is assembled from these components through a second-stage assembly operation. The firm faces two types of demand. The demand for the end-product is satisfied immediately if there are available products in inventory while the firm has the option to accept the order for later delivery or to reject it when no inventory is available. Demand for intermediate components may be accepted or rejected to keep components available for assembly purposes. The structure of demand admission, component production and product assembly decisions are characterized. The proposed model is extended to take into account multiple customer classes and a more general revenue collecting scheme where only an upfront partial payment is collected if a customer demand is accepted for future delivery with the remaining revenue received upon delivery. Since the optimal policy structure is rather complex and defined by switching surfaces in a multidimensional space, a simple heuristic policy is proposed for which the computational load grows linearly with the number of products and its performance is tested under a variety of example problems

A novel technique for extracting clouds base height using ground based imaging

The height of a cloud in the atmospheric column is a key parameter in its characterization. Several remote sensing techniques (passive and active, either ground-based or on space-borne platforms) and in-situ measurements are routinely used in order to estimate top and base heights of clouds. In this article we present a novel method that combines thermal imaging from the ground and sounded wind profile in order to derive the cloud base height. This method is independent of cloud types, making it efficient for both low boundary layer and high clouds. In addition, using thermal imaging ensures extraction of clouds' features during daytime as well as at nighttime. The proposed technique was validated by comparison to active sounding by ceilometers (which is a standard ground based method), to lifted condensation level (LCL) calculations, and to MODIS products obtained from space. As all passive remote sensing techniques, the proposed method extracts only the height of the lowest cloud layer, thus upper cloud layers are not detected. Nevertheless, the information derived from this method can be complementary to space-borne cloud top measurements when deep-convective clouds are present. Unlike techniques such as LCL, this method is not limited to boundary layer clouds, and can extract the cloud base height at any level, as long as sufficient thermal contrast exists between the radiative temperatures of the cloud and its surrounding air parcel. Another advantage of the proposed method is its simplicity and modest power needs, making it particularly suitable for field measurements and deployment at remote locations. Our method can be further simplified for use with visible CCD or CMOS camera (although nighttime clouds will not be observed)

Switching cloud cover and dynamical regimes from open to closed Benard cells in response to the suppression of precipitation by aerosols

International audienceThe dynamic structure of the atmospheric marine boundary layer (MBL) supports two distinct states of cloud cover: closed and open Benard cellular convection. Closed cells are nearly fully cloud covered, while the open cells have <40% cloud cover. Here we show that aerosols have a greater than expected impact on the cloud cover by changing the mode of cellular convection. By suppressing precipitation aerosols can reverse the direction of the airflow, converting the cloud structure from open to closed cells and doubling the cloud cover. The two states possess positive feedbacks for self maintenance, so that small changes of the conditions can lead to bifurcation of the MBL cloud regime. The transition occurs at near pristine background level of aerosols, creating a large sensitivity of cloud radiative forcing to very small changes in aerosols at the MBL. This can have a major impact on global temperatures