Killer Whale Ecotypes in the Juneau Area

The goal of this project was to identify the most common killer whale ecotype in the Juneau area. Over 400 photographs of killer whales taken from the years 2012-2015 were collected from Juneau photographers and marine naturalists on various whale watching boats. The photos were analyzed and the killer whales were identified as either resident, transient, or offshore based on morphological characteristics. Additionally, the individual whales were compared to published killer whale identification catalogs and identified when possible.Heidi Pearson, Faculty Mento

‘That’s unscientific!’: Science as the arbitrator of ‘truth’ in (German) feminist linguistic debates

The feminist critique of language has been contested from its very inception. Opponents have distanced themselves from feminist proposals by arguing, for example, that language and reality are separate entities; that linguistic disparity is insignificant in comparison to other forms of discrimination; and most of all, that feminist approaches are ‘unscientific’. In this paper, I explore the late 1970s dispute between Senta Trömel-Plötz, Hartwig Kalverkämper and Luise F. Pusch as a particular example of the feminist vs. ‘scientific’ position. These three linguists are prominent voices in the German-language context and their arguments provide a valuable insight into the nature of gender and language debates in general. As I aim to show in the following, even empirical evidence does not necessarily bring a close to the discussions

An investigation of equilibration in small quantum systems: the example of a particle in a 1D random potential

We investigate the equilibration of a small isolated quantum system by means of its matrix of asymptotic transition probabilities in a preferential basis. The trace of this matrix is shown to measure the degree of equilibration of the system launched from a typical state, from the standpoint of the chosen basis. This approach is substantiated by an in-depth study of the example of a tight-binding particle in one dimension. In the regime of free ballistic propagation, the above trace saturates to a finite limit, testifying good equilibration. In the presence of a random potential, the trace grows linearly with the system size, testifying poor equilibration in the insulating regime induced by Anderson localization. In the weak-disorder situation of most interest, a universal finite-size scaling law describes the crossover between the ballistic and localized regimes. The associated crossover exponent 2/3 is dictated by the anomalous band-edge scaling characterizing the most localized energy eigenstates.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figures, 1 tabl

A column of grains in the jamming limit: glassy dynamics in the compaction process

We investigate a stochastic model describing a column of grains in the jamming limit, in the presence of a low vibrational intensity. The key control parameter of the model, $\epsilon$, is a representation of granular shape, related to the reduced void space. Regularity and irregularity in grain shapes, respectively corresponding to rational and irrational values of $\epsilon$, are shown to be centrally important in determining the statics and dynamics of the compaction process.Comment: 29 pages, 14 figures, 1 table. Various minor changes and updates. To appear in EPJ

Balancing Conflict and Cost in the Selection of Negotiation Opponents

Within the context of agent-to-agent purchase negotiations, a problem that has received little attention is that of identifying negotiation opponents in situations where the consequences of conflict and the ability to access resources dynamically vary. Such dynamism poses a number of problems that make it difficult to automate the identification of appropriate opponents. To that end, this paper describes a motivation-based opponent selection mechanism used by a buyer-agent to evaluate and select between an already identified set of seller-agents. Sellers are evaluated in terms of the amount of conflict they are expected to bring to a negotiation and the expected amount of cost a negotiation with them will entail. The mechanism allows trade-offs to be made between conflict and cost minimisation, and experimental results show the effectiveness of the approach

Analysing partner selection through exchange values

Dynamic and resource-constrained environments raise interesting issues for partnership formation and multi-agent systems. In a scenario in which agents interact with each other to exchange services, if computational resources are limited, agents cannot always accept a request, and may take time to find available partners to delegate their needed services. Several approaches are available to solve this problem, which we explore through an experimental evaluation in this paper. In particular, we provide a computational implementation of Piaget's exchange-values theory, and compare its performance against alternatives