87 research outputs found
A Cognitive Information Theory of Music: A Computational Memetics Approach
This thesis offers an account of music cognition based on information theory and memetics. My research strategy is to split the memetic modelling into four layers: Data, Information, Psychology and Application. Multiple cognitive models are proposed for the Information and Psychology layers, and the MDL best-fit models with published human data are selected. Then, for the Psychology layer only, new experiments are conducted to validate the best-fit models.
In the information chapter, an information-theoretic model of musical memory is proposed, along with two competing models. The proposed model exhibited a better fit with human data than the competing models. Higher-level psychological theories are then built on top of this information layer. In the similarity chapter, I proposed three competing models of musical similarity, and conducted a new experiment to validate the best-fit model. In the fitness chapter, I again proposed three competing models of musical fitness, and conducted a new experiment to validate the best-fit model. In both cases, the correlations with human data are statistically significant.
All in all, my research has shown that the memetic strategy is sound, and the modelling results are encouraging. Implications of this research are discussed
Will new residential developments stimulate the transaction volume of nearby property developments?
Includes bibliographical references (p. 65-68).Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 2008.published_or_final_versio
Directional spreading of a viscous droplet on a conical fibre
If a droplet is placed on a substrate with a conical shape it spontaneously
starts to spread in the direction of a growing fibre radius. We describe this
capillary spreading dynamics by developing a lubrication approximation on a
cone and by the perturbation method of matched asymptotic expansions. Our
results show that the droplet appears to adopt a quasi-static shape and the
predictions of the droplet shape and spreading velocity from the two
mathematical models are in excellent agreement for a wide range of slip
lengths, cone angles and equilibrium contact angles. At the contact line
regions, a large pressure gradient is generated by the mismatch between the
equilibrium contact angle and the apparent contact angle that maintains the
viscous flow. It is the conical shape of the substrate that breaks the
front/rear droplet symmetry in terms of the apparent contact angle, which is
larger at the thicker part of the cone than that at its thinner part.
Consequently, the droplet is predicted to move from the cone tip to its base,
consistent with experimental observations
Maximum speed of dewetting on a fiber
A solid object can be coated by a nonwetting liquid since a receding contact
line cannot exceed a critical speed. We theoretically investigate this forced
wetting transition for axisymmetric menisci on fibers of varying radii. First,
we use a matched asymptotic expansion and derive the maximum speed of
dewetting. For all radii we find the maximum speed occurs at vanishing apparent
contact angle. To further investigate the transition we numerically determine
the bifurcation diagram for steady menisci. It is found that the meniscus
profiles on thick fibers are smooth, even when there is a film deposited
between the bath and the contact line, while profiles on thin fibers exhibit
strong oscillations. We discuss how this could lead to different experimental
scenarios of film deposition
Identifying Metering Hierarchies with Distance Correlation and Dominance Constraints
In this paper, we consider observations from a series of smart meters that are either completely or partially aggregated, and our aim is to estimate the metering hierarchy. We propose to estimate this important metadata through a novel adaptation of the Chow–Liu tree learning procedure. Our approach takes into account prior knowledge from a set of dominance conditions that are easily elicited from the consumption data. In addition to more traditional correlation-based approaches we also introduce a distance-correlation-based method for detecting edges. Synthetic experiments show the benefits of distance correlation and the dominance conditions in recovering tree structure. The paper concludes with a real-world application of the method to infer energy metering hierarchies in a library building
Plateau-Rayleigh instability of a viscous film on a soft fiber
We theoretically study the Plateau-Rayleigh instability of a thin viscous
film covering a fiber consisting of a rigid cylindrical core coated with a thin
compressible elastic layer. We develop a soft-lubrication model, combining the
capillary-driven flow in the viscous film to the elastic deformation of the
soft coating, within the Winkler-foundation framework. We perform a
linear-stability analysis and derive the dispersion relation. We find that the
growth rate is larger when the soft coating is more compliant. As such,
softness acts as a destabilising factor. In contrast, increasing the thickness
of the soft coating reduces the growth rate, due to the dominating geometrical
effect
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