2,152 research outputs found
Juries and Justice: Are Malpractice and Other Personal Injuries Created Equal?
A study analyzed the civil jury system and the difference in personal injury awards between automobile and deep-pocket defendants, especially in medical malpractice cases. Six conclusions were reached, including the finding that juries sometimes respond emotionally and award some objectively similar cases higher damages than others
Effect of the dynamic topology on the performance of PSO-2S algorithm for continuous optimization
International audiencePSO-2S is a multi-swarm PSO algorithm using charged particles in a partitioned search space for continuous optimization problems. In order to improve the performance of PSO-2S, this paper proposes a novel variant of this algorithm, called DPSO-2S, which uses the Dcluster neighborhood topologies to organize the communication networks between the particles. Experiments were conducted on a set of classical benchmark functions. The obtained results prove the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm
The Interplay of Structure and Dynamics in the Raman Spectrum of Liquid Water over the Full Frequency and Temperature Range
While many vibrational Raman spectroscopy studies of liquid water have
investigated the temperature dependence of the high-frequency O-H stretching
region, few have analyzed the changes in the Raman spectrum as a function of
temperature over the entire spectral range. Here, we obtain the Raman spectra
of water from its melting to boiling point, both experimentally and from
simulations using an ab initio-trained machine learning potential. We use these
to assign the Raman bands and show that the entire spectrum can be well
described as a combination of two temperature-independent spectra. We then
assess which spectral regions exhibit strong dependence on the local
tetrahedral order in the liquid. Further, this work demonstrates that changes
in this structural parameter can be used to elucidate the temperature
dependence of the Raman spectrum of liquid water and provides a guide to the
Raman features that signal water ordering in more complex aqueous systems
Secure and linear cryptosystems using error-correcting codes
A public-key cryptosystem, digital signature and authentication procedures
based on a Gallager-type parity-check error-correcting code are presented. The
complexity of the encryption and the decryption processes scale linearly with
the size of the plaintext Alice sends to Bob. The public-key is pre-corrupted
by Bob, whereas a private-noise added by Alice to a given fraction of the
ciphertext of each encrypted plaintext serves to increase the secure channel
and is the cornerstone for digital signatures and authentication. Various
scenarios are discussed including the possible actions of the opponent Oscar as
an eavesdropper or as a disruptor
Laboratory observations of midwater spawning by Illex illecebrosus
Visual observations and video-tape records were made for the first time of mid-water spawning by Illex illecebrosus in the Aquatron Laboratory pool tank. Coupled with data on the density of egg masses, they allow some conclusions to be drawn concerning possible mid-water spawning sites in nature
LaserTank is NP-complete
We show that the classical game LaserTank is -complete, even
when the tank movement is restricted to a single column and the only blocks
appearing on the board are mirrors and solid blocks. We show this by reducing
-SAT instances to LaserTank puzzles.Comment: 5 page
The Konkoly Blazhko Survey: Is light-curve modulation a common property of RRab stars?
A systematic survey to establish the true incidence rate of the Blazhko
modulation among short-period, fundamental-mode, Galactic field RR Lyrae stars
has been accomplished. The Konkoly Blazhko Survey (KBS) was initiated in 2004.
Since then more than 750 nights of observation have been devoted to this
project. A sample of 30 RRab stars was extensively observed, and light-curve
modulation was detected in 14 cases. The 47% occurrence rate of the modulation
is much larger than any previous estimate. The significant increase of the
detected incidence rate is mostly due to the discovery of small-amplitude
modulation. Half of the Blazhko variables in our sample show modulation with so
small amplitude that definitely have been missed in the previous surveys. We
have found that the modulation can be very unstable in some cases, e.g. RY Com
showed regular modulation only during one part of the observations while during
two seasons it had stable light curve with abrupt, small changes in the
pulsation amplitude. This type of light-curve variability is also hard to
detect in other Survey's data. The larger frequency of the light-curve
modulation of RRab stars makes it even more important to find the still lacking
explanation of the Blazhko phenomenon. The validity of the [Fe/H](P,phi_{31})
relation using the mean light curves of Blazhko variables is checked in our
sample. We have found that the formula gives accurate result for
small-modulation-amplitude Blazhko stars, and this is also the case for
large-modulation-amplitude stars if the light curve has complete phase
coverage. However, if the data of large-modulation-amplitude Blazhko stars are
not extended enough (e.g. < 500 data points from < 15 nights), the formula may
give false result due to the distorted shape of the mean light curve used.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS, 14 pages, 7 Figure
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