Control Modules for Scintillation Counters in the SPS Experimental Areas

The hardware used in the SPS Experimental Areas to control the beam instrumentation electronics and mechanics of the particle detectors is based on CAMAC and NIM modules. The maintenance of this hardware now presents very serious problems. The modules used to operate the Experimental Areas are numerous and older than 20 years so many of them cannot be repaired any more and CAMAC is no longer well supported by industry. The fast evolution of technology and a better understanding of the detectors allow a new equipment-oriented approach, which is more favourable for maintenance purposes and presents fewer data handling problems. VME and IP Modules were selected as standard components to implement the new electronics to control and read out the particle detectors. The first application implemented in this way concerns the instrumentation for the Scintillation Counters (formerly referred to as triggers). The fundamental options and the design features will be presented

Algorithm for Adapting Cases Represented in a Tractable Description Logic

Case-based reasoning (CBR) based on description logics (DLs) has gained a lot of attention lately. Adaptation is a basic task in the CBR inference that can be modeled as the knowledge base revision problem and solved in propositional logic. However, in DLs, it is still a challenge problem since existing revision operators only work well for strictly restricted DLs of the \emph{DL-Lite} family, and it is difficult to design a revision algorithm which is syntax-independent and fine-grained. In this paper, we present a new method for adaptation based on the DL $\mathcal{EL_{\bot}}$. Following the idea of adaptation as revision, we firstly extend the logical basis for describing cases from propositional logic to the DL $\mathcal{EL_{\bot}}$, and present a formalism for adaptation based on $\mathcal{EL_{\bot}}$. Then we present an adaptation algorithm for this formalism and demonstrate that our algorithm is syntax-independent and fine-grained. Our work provides a logical basis for adaptation in CBR systems where cases and domain knowledge are described by the tractable DL $\mathcal{EL_{\bot}}$.Comment: 21 pages. ICCBR 201

Miocene (23–13 Ma) continental paleotemperature record from the northern Mediterranean region (Digne-Valensole Basin, SE France) within a global climatic framework

During the Middle Miocene, the Earth’s climate transitioned from a warm phase, the Miocene Climatic Optimum (MCO, 16.9–14.7 Ma), to a colder phase associated by formation of major ice sheets on Antarctica. This climatic shift, the Middle Miocene Climatic Transition (MMCT, 14.7–13.8 Ma), considerably impacted not only the structure and formation of major ecosystems (e.g. Jimenez-Moreno & Suc, 2005) it also affected global ocean circulation (Holbourn et al., 2014), terrestrial temperatures as well as precipitation patterns (e.g. Methner et al., 2020). While the MCO and the subsequent MMCT are well described in marine records, knowledge about the magnitude and rate of terrestrial paleoclimate changes is often limited by lack of temporal resolution and reliable quantitative proxy records (Steinthorsdottir et al., 2021). Here, we present a long-term (23–13 Ma) biostratigraphically-controlled terrestrial stable (δ18O, δ13C) and clumped (Δ47) isotope paleosol carbonate record from the northern Mediterranean region (Digne-Valensole basin, SE France). When comparing the northern Mediterranean δ18O, δ13C and Δ47 record with age-equivalent counterparts from central Europe (Northern Alpine Foreland Basin, Switzerland), our Δ47 results from the Digne-Valensole basin reveal two important features: 1) Relatively warm and constant carbonate formation temperatures (ca. 30°C) for the Early Miocene (23–18.6 Ma) followed by 2) intensified temperature fluctuations with high values (ca. 37°C) at the onset of the MCO, most probably amplified by changes in seasonality of pedogenic carbonate formation. The combined Northern Alpine foreland and northern Mediterranean records display a coherent climate pattern for the Middle Miocene circum-Alpine foreland. In both records, high-amplitude, rapid changes in Δ47 temperatures (ca. 18°C within 400 ka) characterize the onset of the MCO and MMCT. We furthermore identify warm peaks during the MCO and a distinct fall in apparent Δ47-based temperatures at ca. 14 Ma that is in very good temporal agreement with oceanic isotope records and coincides with the documented global cooling following the MCT. Collectively, these data contribute to understanding of the dynamics and variability in atmospheric circulation controlling Middle to Late Miocene temperature dynamics in the Northern Mediterranean region

Giant infrared intensity of the Peierls mode at the neutral-ionic phase transition

We present exact diagonalization results on a modified Peierls-Hubbard model for the neutral-ionic phase transition. The ground state potential energy surface and the infrared intensity of the Peierls mode point to a strong, non-linear electron-phonon coupling, with effects that are dominated by the proximity to the electronic instability rather than by electronic correlations. The huge infrared intensity of the Peierls mode at the ferroelectric transition is related to the temperature dependence of the dielectric constant of mixed-stack organic crystals.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Tuuurbine: A Generic CBR Engine over RDFS

International audienceThis paper presents Tuuurbine, a case-based reasoning (CBR) system for the Semantic Web. Tuuurbine is built as a generic CBR system able to reason on knowledge stored in RDF format; it uses Semantic Web technologies like RDF/RDFS, RDF stores, SPARQL, and optionally Semantic Wikis. Tuuurbine implements a generic case-based inference mechanism in which adaptation consists in retrieving similar cases and in replacing some features of these cases in order to obtain one or more solutions for a given query. The search for similar cases is based on a generalization/specialization method performed by means of generalization costs and adaptation rules. The whole knowledge (cases, domain knowledge, costs, adaptation rules) is stored in an RDF store

Hypnotic analgesia reduces brain responses to pain seen in others.

Brain responses to pain experienced by oneself or seen in other people show consistent overlap in the pain processing network, particularly anterior insula, supporting the view that pain empathy partly relies on neural processes engaged by self-nociception. However, it remains unresolved whether changes in one's own pain sensation may affect empathic responding to others' pain. Here we show that inducing analgesia through hypnosis leads to decreased responses to both self and vicarious experience of pain. Activations in the right anterior insula and amygdala were markedly reduced when participants received painful thermal stimuli following hypnotic analgesia on their own hand, but also when they viewed pictures of others' hand in pain. Functional connectivity analysis indicated that this hypnotic modulation of pain responses was associated with differential recruitment of right prefrontal regions implicated in selective attention and inhibitory control. Our results provide novel support to the view that self-nociception is involved during empathy for pain, and demonstrate the possibility to use hypnotic procedures to modulate higher-level emotional and social processes

The low-lying excitations of polydiacetylene

The Pariser-Parr-Pople Hamiltonian is used to calculate and identify the nature of the low-lying vertical transition energies of polydiacetylene. The model is solved using the density matrix renormalisation group method for a fixed acetylenic geometry for chains of up to 102 atoms. The non-linear optical properties of polydiacetylene are considered, which are determined by the third-order susceptibility. The experimental 1Bu data of Giesa and Schultz are used as the geometric model for the calculation. For short chains, the calculated E(1Bu) agrees with the experimental value, within solvation effects (ca. 0.3 eV). The charge gap is used to characterise bound and unbound states. The nBu is above the charge gap and hence a continuum state; the 1Bu, 2Ag and mAg are not and hence are bound excitons. For large chain lengths, the nBu tends towards the charge gap as expected, strongly suggesting that the nBu is the conduction band edge. The conduction band edge for PDA is agreed in the literature to be ca. 3.0 eV. Accounting for the strong polarisation effects of the medium and polaron formation gives our calculated E(nBu) ca. 3.6 eV, with an exciton binding energy of ca. 1.0 eV. The 2Ag state is found to be above the 1Bu, which does not agree with relaxed transition experimental data. However, this could be resolved by including explicit lattice relaxation in the Pariser- Parr-Pople-Peierls model. Particle-hole separation data further suggest that the 1Bu, 2Ag and mAg are bound excitons, and that the nBu is an unbound exciton.Comment: LaTeX, 23 pages, 4 postscript tables and 8 postscript figure

Analogical Transfer in RDFS, Application to Cocktail Name Adaptation

International audienceThis paper deals with analogical transfer in the framework of the representation language RDFS. The application of analogical transfer to case-based reasoning consists in reusing the problem-solution dependency to the context of the target problem; thus it is a general approach to adaptation. RDFS is a representation language that is a standard of the semantic Web; it is based on RDF, a graphical representation of data, completed by an entailment relation. A dependency is therefore represented as a graph representing complex links between a problem and a solution, and analogical transfer uses, in particular, RDFS entailment. This research work is applied (and inspired from) the issue of cocktail name adaptation: given a cocktail and a way this cocktail is adapted by changing its ingredient list, how can the cocktail name be modified

Attention or instruction: do sustained attentional abilities really differ between high and low hypnotisable persons?

Previous research has suggested that highly hypnotisable participants (‘highs’) are more sensitive to the bistability of ambiguous figures—as evidenced by reporting more perspective changes of a Necker cube—than low hypnotisable participants (‘lows’). This finding has been interpreted as supporting the hypothesis that highs have more efficient sustained attentional abilities than lows. However, the higher report of perspective changes in highs in comparison to lows may reflect the implementation of different expectation-based strategies as a result of differently constructed demand characteristics according to one’s level of hypnotisability. Highs, but not lows, might interpret an instruction to report perspective changes as an instruction to report many changes. Using a Necker cube as our bistable stimulus, we manipulated demand characteristics by giving specific information to participants of different hypnotisability levels. Participants were told that previous research has shown that people with similar hypnotisability as theirs were either very good at switching or maintaining perspective versus no information. Our results show that highs, but neither lows nor mediums, were strongly influenced by the given information. However, highs were not better at maintaining the same perspective than participants with lower hypnotisability. Taken together, these findings favour the view that the higher sensitivity of highs in comparison to lows to the bistability of ambiguous figures reflect the implementation of different strategies

A SPARQL Query Transformation Rule Language — Application to Retrieval and Adaptation in Case-Based Reasoning

International audienceThis paper presents SQTRL, a language for transformation rules for SPARQL queries, a tool associated with it, and how it can be applied to retrieval and adaptation in case-based reasoning (CBR). Three applications of SQTRL are presented in the domains of cooking and digital humanities. For a CBR system using RDFS for representing cases and domain knowledge, and SPARQL for its query language, case retrieval with SQTRL consists in a minimal modification of the query so that it matches at least a source case. Adaptation based on the modification of an RDFS base can also be handled with the help of this tool. SQTRL and its tool can therefore be used for several goals related to CBR systems based on the semantic web standards RDFS and SPARQL