17,191 research outputs found
Large Area Crop Inventory Experiment (LACIE). Level 3 baseline; LACIE commodity data control plan for JSC
There are no author-identified significant results in this report
Thermotropic Nematic and Smectic Order in Silica Glass Nanochannels
Optical birefringence measurements on a rod-like liquid crystal (8OCB),
imbibed in silica channels (7 nm diameter), are presented and compared to the
thermotropic bulk behavior. The orientational and positional order of the
confined liquid evolves continuously at the paranematic-to-nematic and sizeably
broadened at the nematic-to-smectic order transition, resp., in contrast to the
discontinuous and well-defined second-order character of the bulk transitions.
A Landau-de-Gennes analysis reveals identical strengths of the nematic and
smectic ordering fields (imposed by the walls) and indicates that the smectic
order is more affected by quenched disorder (originating in channel tortuosity
and roughness) than the nematic transition.Comment: 3 pages, 4 figure
Tactile information improves visual object discrimination in kea, Nestor notabilis, and capuchin monkeys, Sapajus spp.
In comparative visual cognition research, the influence of information acquired by nonvisual senses has received little attention. Systematic studies focusing on how the integration of information from sight and touch can affect animal perception are sparse. Here, we investigated whether tactile input improves visual discrimination ability of a bird, the kea, and capuchin monkeys, two species with acute vision, and known for their tendency to handle objects. To this end, we assessed whether, at the attainment of a criterion, accuracy and/or learning speed in the visual modality were enhanced by haptic (i.e. active tactile) exploration of an object. Subjects were trained to select the positive stimulus between two cylinders of the same shape and size, but with different surface structures. In the Sight condition, one pair of cylinders was inserted into transparent Plexiglas tubes. This prevented animals from haptically perceiving the objects' surfaces. In the Sight and Touch condition, one pair of cylinders was not inserted into transparent Plexiglas tubes. This allowed the subjects to perceive the objects' surfaces both visually and haptically. We found that both kea and capuchins (1) showed comparable levels of accuracy at the attainment of the learning criterion in both conditions, but (2) required fewer trials to achieve the criterion in the Sight and Touch condition. Moreover, this study showed that both kea and capuchins can integrate information acquired by the visual and tactile modalities. To our knowledge, this represents the first evidence of visuotactile integration in a bird species. Overall, our findings demonstrate that the acquisition of tactile information while manipulating objects facilitates visual discrimination of objects in two phylogenetically distant species
Which long-baseline neutrino experiments are preferable?
We discuss the physics of superbeam upgrades, where we focus on T2KK, a NuMI
beam line based experiment NOvA*, and a wide band beam (WBB) experiment
independent of the NuMI beam line. For T2KK, we find that the Japan-Korea
baseline helps resolve parameter degeneracies, but the improvement due to
correlated systematics between the two detectors (using identical detectors) is
only moderate. For an upgrade of NOvA with a liquid argon detector, we
demonstrate that the Ash River site is preferred compared to alternatives, such
as at the second oscillation maximum, and is the optimal site within the U.S.
For a WBB experiment, we find that high proton energies and long decay tunnels
are preferable. We compare water Cherenkov and liquid argon technologies, and
find the break-even point in detector cost at about 4:1. In order to compare
the physics potential of the different experimental configurations, we use the
concept of exposure to normalize the performance. We find that experiments with
WBBs are the best experimental concept. NOvA* could be competitive with
sufficient luminosity. If > 0.01, a WBB experiment can
perform better than a neutrino factory.Comment: 31 pages, 13 figures, 5 tables. Version to appear in PR
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