cometadata/datacite-rtg-text-other-reclassification-records huggingface dataset:
Teaching Quantum Computing through a Practical Software-driven Approach: Experience Report
Creators: name: Mykhailova, Mariia
name: Svore, Krysta M.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: Physics Education (physics.ed-ph)
subject: Emerging Technologies (cs.ET)
subject: Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: Quantum computing harnesses quantum laws of nature to enable new types of algorithms, not efficiently possible on traditional computers, that may lead to breakthroughs in crucial areas like materials science and chemistry. There is rapidly growing demand for a quantum workforce educated in the basics of quantum computing, in particular in quantum programming. However, there are few offerings for non-specialists and little information on best practices for training computer science and engineering students. In this report we describe our experience teaching an undergraduate course on quantum computing using a practical, software-driven approach. We centered our course around teaching quantum algorithms through hands-on programming, reducing the significance of traditional written assignments and relying instead on self-paced programming exercises ("Quantum Katas"), a variety of programming assignments, and a final project. We observed that the programming sections of the course helped students internalize theoretical material presented during the lectures. In the survey results, students indicated that the programming exercises and the final project contributed the most to their learning process. We describe the motivation for centering the course around quantum programming, discuss major artifacts used in this course, and present our lessons learned and best practices for a future improved course offering. We hope that our experience will help guide instructors who want to adopt a practical approach to teaching quantum computing and will enable more undergraduate programs to offer quantum programming as an elective.
description: 7 pages, 3 figures
Men renewing their male identity
Creators: name: Whitehead, Paul Richard
Publisher: name: University of British Columbia
Year: 2009

description: The purpose of this study was to investigate the experiences of four men who felt a significant, positive change in their satisfaction with their self-identity as men. The study begins with a discussion of the personal and social implications of the gender role changes that have occurred over the past half-century and how these have affected men, citing several authors who claim there are a growing number of men who are dissatisfied with themselves as men. Thus the significance of the research participants' positive change in this regard was highlighted, and the research aimed at discovering the deep phenomenological structure of the experience that brought these men to a greater satisfaction with themselves as men. The research participants had all experienced this change through the process of doing an enactment in a psychodrama group therapy workshop. The interviews revealed that they were dealing with their relationships with their fathers and other men. They needed to reconstruct an experience that can be seen as a rite of passage, in which they were able to stand up for their authentic selves and integrate that into their identity as men. This, then, allowed them to reconnect with the experiences of other men as creating a balance of separateness and community that stands as a fundamental structure of human existence and experience in general.
Examples of Gaussian cluster computation
Creators: name: van Loock, Peter
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2006
Subjects: subject: Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We give simple examples that illustrate the principles of one-way quantum computation using Gaussian continuous-variable cluster states. In these examples, we only consider single-mode evolutions, realizable via linear clusters. In particular, we focus on Gaussian single-mode transformations performed through the cluster state. Our examples highlight the differences between cluster-based schemes and protocols in which special quantum states are prepared off-line and then used as a resource for the on-line computation.
description: 15 pages, 3 figures
Nuclear ground states in a consistent implementation of the time-dependent density matrix approach
Creators: name: Barton, M. C.
name: Stevenson, P. D.
name: Rios, A.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2021
Subjects: subject: Nuclear Theory (nucl-th)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: Background: Time-dependent techniques in nuclear theory often rely on mean-field or Hartree-Fock descriptions. Beyond mean-field dynamical calculations within the time-dependent density matrix (TDDM) theory have often invoked symmetry restrictions and ignored the connection between the mean-field and the induced interaction. Purpose: We study the ground states obtained in a TDDM approach for nuclei from $A=12$ to $A=24$, including examples of even and odd-even nuclei with and without intrinsic deformation. We overcome previous limitations using three-dimensional simulations and employ density-independent Skyrme interactions self-consistently. Methods: The correlated ground states are found starting from the Hartree-Fock solution, by adiabatically including the beyond-mean-field terms in real time. Results: We find that, within this approach, correlations are responsible for $\approx 4-5 \%$ of the total energy. Radii are generally unaffected by the introduction of beyond mean-field correlations. Large nuclear correlation entropies are associated to large correlation energies. By all measures, $^{12}$C is the most correlated isotope in the mass region considered. Conclusions: Our work is the starting point of a consistent implementation of the TDDM technique for applications into nuclear reactions. Our results indicate that correlation effects in structure are small, but beyond-mean-field dynamical simulations could provide new insight into several issues of interest.
description: 14 pages, 7 figures, 8 tables
Essays on development and applied microeconomics
Creators: name: Hasan, Syed Abul
Publisher: name: The Australian National University
Year: 2014
Subjects: subject: Food consumption Bangladesh
subject: Income Bangladesh
subject: Food prices Bangladesh
subject: Poverty Bangladesh
subject: Household surveys Bangladesh.

description: This thesis comprises three empirical chapters, which are self-contained but all related to household food consumption in Bangladesh. Chapter 2 examines the Engel curve for major expenditure categories and presents estimates of equivalence scales for Bangladesh. We compare Engel curves estimated by semi-parametric techniques to those arising from models based on consumer theory. Our analysis supports the argument for a quadratic food Engel curve for developing countries. Knowledge about the correct specification of Engel curves has important implications for modelling household responses to negative income shocks. Chapter 3 studies the effect of a sharp rice price increase on welfare and poverty in Bangladesh. We employ the household expenditure information to estimate the welfare loss induced by the price increase. Our findings suggest that we underestimate the proportionate welfare loss for rice producing households, and overestimate proportionate welfare loss of households who do not produce rice if we ignore indirect effects arising from a change in household consumption and production behaviour. Our estimates further support the hypothesis of a quadratic relationship between welfare loss and permanent household income. We also demonstrate that higher rice prices either increase or decrease the poverty head-count ratio, depending on the choice of the poverty line. However, if we consider the per capita income gap as a measure of poverty, we always observe that higher rice prices unambiguously increase poverty. In Chapter 4 we study the effect of the rice price increase between 2005 and 2010 on household rice consumption in Bangladesh. Using a simple difference-in-difference estimator and household level data, we find a negative effect on the value of non-rice food consumption of net rice buyers compared to self-sufficient households. On the other hand, there is no effect on the value of rice or non-food consumption. In contrast, we find that the higher rice price does not effect the value of rice consumption of rice sellers, but increases the value of other food and non-food consumption.
Pionic Decays of $D_{sj}(2317)$, $D_{sj}(2460)$ and $B_{sj}(5718)$, $B_{sj}(5765)$
Creators: name: Lu, Jie
name: Chen, Xiao-Lin
name: Deng, Wei-Zheng
name: Zhu, Shi-Lin
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2006
Subjects: subject: High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We estimate pionic decay widths of the narrow charm-strange resonances $D_{sj}(2317)$ and $D_{sj}(2460)$ using the $^3P_0$ model. Their one-pion decays occur through $η$-$π^0$ mixing while the two-pion decays of $D_{sj}(2460)$ occur through the virtual $f_0(980)$ meson. The mixing between $^3P_1$ and $^1P_1$ states enhances the single pion decay width of $D_{sj}(2460)$ and suppresses its double pion decay width significantly. The two-pion decay width of $D_{sj}(2460)$ is much smaller than its one-pion decay width. As a byproduct, we also calculate pionic decay widths of $B_{sj}(5765)$, $B_{sj}(5765)$ mesons in the $(0^+, 1^+)$ heavy doublet.
description: Comments and suggestions welcome!
Social Security Policymaking: An Examination of Select Policies in the U.S. Social Security System
Creators: name: DeWitt, Larry William
Publisher: name: Maryland Shared Open Access Repository
Year: 2014
Subjects: agricultural and domestic workers
financing
Gender
Race
Social Security

description: This dissertation examines three distinct although related issues in the policy history of the U.S. Social Security system.  I examine the thesis that when agricultural and domestic employments were excluded from coverage in the 1935 Social Security Act, this was an act of racial bias against African-Americans. I show that this thesis is both conceptually flawed and disproven by the available empirical evidence.  I examine the thesis that the Social Security program has contained or does contain gender biases against women. I show that indeed there have been numerous gendered policies in Social Security. However, contrary to the claims and assumptions of the standard thesis, these gendered policies have overwhelmingly benefited women and disadvantaged men.  I examine the period between the major legislation of the 1939 Social Security Amendments and the important amendments of 1950. In the standard view, this period has generally been characterized as a time of quiescence in policymaking. About the only policy activity between these two milestones was a series of freezes in taxing policy whereby scheduled tax rate increases were not permitted to take effect. Most scholars have ignored these freezes, believing them of little significance. I argue that these rate freezes were an important reversal in existing Social Security policy. I also undertake a systematic effort to assess the impact of these policies on the financing of the program. I find that for a decade or more during these years the Social Security system was almost certainly insolvent in the long-run. The dissertation opens with a short general discussion of policy history as a discipline and the basic conceptual and theoretical context for the type of policy history pursued in this research. I then turn to a brief introduction to the Social Security program, to frame the necessary context for the more detailed work to follow. These two opening sections are followed by the three major parts of the dissertation, in which I examine each of the three indicated theses in detail.
ON OPTIMIZING CONTRAST QUALITY AND ACQUISITION TIME OF SSFP-SQUENCE-BASED TECHNIQUES FOR STRUCTURAL AND FUNCTIONAL MR IMAGING VIA EXTENDED PHASE GRAPH (EPG) ANALYSIS
Creators: name: Kir, Albert
Publisher: name: Maryland Shared Open Access Repository
Year: 2013
Subjects: Extended Phase Graph
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Image Optimization
MP-RAGE
Steady-State Free Precession
TruFISP

description: "Structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI/fMRI) has been an excellent neuroimaging tool, relying on which neuroscientists have been able to define different brain functional regions and measure neural activities within those regions. As it stands now, the most commonly used functional MRI technique, Echo Planar Imaging (EPI), performs reasonably well, but this imaging technique faces a number of long-standing issues. Specifically, the EPI images suffer from two types of image artifacts, signal dropout and geometric distortion, especially when images are acquired from brain regions around the air/tissue interface. In addition to the known image artifacts, it is understood that the technique does not provide functional images with the optimal resolution to capture spatially distributed fine neural activation.  	For structural imaging, many different techniques are available to allow delineation of detailed brain regions. A particular technique, Magnetization-Preparation RApid Gradient Echo (MP-RAGE), has received much attention for its potential of providing structural images with great tissue contrast and obtaining them with rapid imaging time. However, this technique has not been fully optimized in terms of image quality and acquisition time. Our main goal is to improve/optimize both structural and functional MRI in order to contribute to the study of neurophysiology. 	In light of our motivation, we have designed an optimization framework for MP-RAGE to enable acquisition that satisfies specified image quality criteria of signal intensity and contrast ratio of/between different tissues in the shortest amount of time. It allows us to perform highly quantitative structural imaging and customized imaging for any individuals. We have also designed a novel functional MRI technique called Frequency-Modulated TRUe Fast Imaging with Steady-state Free Precession (FM TruFISP) and different post image processing techniques to take advantage of the FM TruFISP functional image acquisition. The combined use of the new acquisition and processing techniques allow us to address the issue of the EPI image artifacts and perform highly quantitative functional imaging. The MP-RAGE optimization framework and the FM TruFISP design are discussed in detail in the body of this dissertation, and the Appendix B includes the developed Matlab programs that perform magnetization (signal) calculation/simulation necessary for applying the framework and the different post image processing techniques."
Observing and modelling the young solar analogue EK Draconis: starspot distribution, elemental abundances, and evolutionary status
Creators: name: Şenavcı, H. V.
name: Kılıçoğlu, T.
name: Işık, E.
name: Hussain, G. A. J.
name: Montes, D.
name: Bahar, E.
name: Solanki, S. K.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2021
Subjects: subject: Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: Observations and modelling of stars with near-solar masses in their early phases of evolution is critical for a better understanding of how dynamos of solar-type stars evolve. We examine the chemical composition and the spot distribution of the pre-main-sequence solar analogue EK Dra. Using spectra from the HERMES Spectrograph (La Palma), we obtain the abundances of 23 elements with respect to the solar ones, which lead to a $[{\rm Fe/H}]=0.03$, with significant overabundance of Li and Ba. The s-process elements Sr, Y, and Ce are marginally overabundant, while Co, Ni, Cu, Zn are marginally deficient compared to solar abundances. The overabundance of Ba is most likely due to the assumption of depth-independent microturbulent velocity. Li abundance is consistent with the age and the other abundances may indicate distinct initial conditions of the pre-stellar nebula. We estimate a mass of 1.04 $M_\odot$ and an age of $27^{+11}_{-8}$\,Myr using various spectroscopic and photometric indicators. We study the surface distribution of dark spots, using 17 spectra collected during 15 nights using the CAFE Spectrograph (Calar Alto). We also conduct flux emergence and transport (FEAT) simulations for EK Dra's parameters and produce 15-day-averaged synoptic maps of the likely starspot distributions. Using Doppler imaging, we reconstruct the surface brightness distributions for the observed spectra and FEAT simulations, which show overall agreement for polar and mid-latitude spots, while in the simulations there is a lack of low-latitude spots compared to the observed image. We find indications that cross-equatorial extensions of mid-latitude spots can be artefacts of the less visible southern-hemisphere activity.
description: 15 pages, 16 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS; corrections in Abstract and Introduction
Social Benefits and Costs of the National Flood Insurance Program
Creators: name: Howard, James Patrick
Publisher: name: Maryland Shared Open Access Repository
Year: 2014
Subjects: behavioral economics
benefit-cost analysis
catastrophe risk
flood insurance
homeland security
risk management

description: This analysis retrospectively examines the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) using benefit-cost analysis (BCA). Congress created the NFIP in 1968 to provide flood insurance in part due to the absence of a private market for flood insurance. Since 1994, the NFIP has included a Flood Mitigation Assistance (FMA) program to provide local communities with support for flood mitigation. Together, the NFIP and NFIP programs provide the national flood protection and response strategy. This analysis estimates net social benefit of the NFIP for the years 1996 through 2010. An important element is the estimated consumer surplus for flood insurance using historical financial and survey data available from the NFIP. Using this estimate and other components of net social benefits, this analysis derives a sufficient statistic for the insurance component of the NFIP and is joined with other estimates of the benefits of the FMA to estimate the net social benefits of the combined program. A supplemental analysis is done using different income weighting scenarios in a distributionally weighted BCA. Finally, this study includes an analysis of the change in government revenue attributable to the NFIP and FMA programs. Sensitivity analysis is conducted on all results. This study concludes by finding that the NFIP and FMA programs provided a net benefit to society the years 1996 through 2010. Additionally, the NFIP and FMA are regressive. Finally, this study finds that government revenue experiences a net increase due to the NFIP program.
On deformation types of real elliptic surfaces
Creators: name: Degtyarev, Alex
name: Itenberg, Ilia
name: Kharlamov, Viatcheslav
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2006
Subjects: subject: Algebraic Geometry (math.AG)
subject: FOS: Mathematics
subject: 14J27, 14P25, 05C90

description: We study real elliptic surfaces and trigonal curves (over a base of an arbitrary genus) and their equivariant deformations. We calculate the real Tate-Shafarevich group and reduce the deformation classification to the combinatorics of a real version of Grothendieck's {\it dessins d'enfants}. As a consequence, we obtain an explicit description of the deformation classes of $M$- and $(M-1)$- (i.e., maximal and submaximal in the sense of the Smith inequality) curves and surfaces.
A markovian random walk model of epidemic spreading
Creators: name: Bestehorn, Michael
name: Riascos, Alejandro P.
name: Michelitsch, Thomas M.
name: Collet, Bernard A.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph)
subject: Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
subject: Probability (math.PR)
subject: Populations and Evolution (q-bio.PE)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Mathematics
subject: FOS: Biological sciences

description: We analyze the dynamics of a population of independent random walkers on a graph and develop a simple model of epidemic spreading. We assume that each walker visits independently the nodes of a finite ergodic graph in a discrete-time markovian walk governed by his specific transition matrix. With this assumption, we first derive an upper bound for the reproduction numbers. Then we assume that a walker is in one of the states: susceptible, infectious, or recovered. An infectious walker remains infectious during a certain characteristic time. If an infectious walker meets a susceptible one on the same node there is a certain probability for the susceptible walker to get infected. By implementing this hypothesis in computer simulations we study the space-time evolution of the emerging infection patterns. Generally, random walk approaches seem to have a large potential to study epidemic spreading and to identify the pertinent parameters in epidemic dynamics.
description: 19 pages, 8 figures. Continuum Mech. Thermodyn. (2021)
Improved hierarchical role based access control model for cloud computing
Creators: name: Thilakarathne, N. N.
name: Wickramaaarachchi, Dilani
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: Cryptography and Security (cs.CR)
subject: Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing (cs.DC)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: Cloud computing is considered as the one of the most dominant paradigm in field of information technology which offers on demand cost effective services such as Software as a service (SAAS), Infrastructure as a service (IAAS) and Platform as a service (PAAS).Promising all these services as it is, this cloud computing paradigm still associates number of challenges such as data security, abuse of cloud services, malicious insider and cyber-attacks. Among all these security requirements of cloud computing access control is the one of the fundamental requirement in order to avoid unauthorized access to a system and organizational assets. Main purpose of this research is to review the existing methods of cloud access control models and their variants pros and cons and to identify further related research directions for developing an improved access control model for public cloud data storage. We have presented detailed access control requirement analysis for cloud computing and have identified important gaps, which are not fulfilled by conventional access control models. As the outcome of the study we have come up with an improved access control model with hybrid cryptographic schema and hybrid cloud architecture and practical implementation of it. We have tested our model for security implications, performance, functionality and data integrity to prove the validity. We have used AES and RSA cryptographic algorithms to implement the cryptographic schema and used public and private cloud to enforce our access control security and reliability.By validating and testing we have proved that our model can withstand against most of the cyber attacks in real cloud environment. Hence it has improved capabilities compared with other previous access control models that we have reviewed through literature.
Precise Blaze Angle Measurements of Lithographically Fabricated Silicon Immersion Gratings
Creators: name: Lubar, Emily
name: Jaffe, Daniel T.
name: Brooks, Cynthia
name: Hickman, Sierra
name: Gully-Santiago, Michael
name: Mace, Gregory
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: Silicon immersion gratings and grisms enable compact, near-infrared spectrographs with high throughput. These instruments find use in ground-based efforts to characterize stellar and exoplanet atmospheres, and in space-based observatories. Our grating fabrication technique uses x-ray crystallography to orient silicon parts prior to cutting, followed by lithography and wet chemical etching to produce the blaze. This process takes advantage of the crystal structure and relative difference in etching rates between the (100) and (111) planes such that we can produce parts that have surface errors < λ/4. Previous measurements indicate that chemical etching can yield a final etched blaze that slightly differs from the orientation of the (111) plane. This difference can be corrected by the mechanical mount in the case of the immersion gratings, but doing so may compromise grating throughput due to shadowing. In the case of the grisms, failure to take the actual blaze into account will reduce the brightness of the undeviated ray. We report on multiple techniques to precisely measure the blaze of our in-house fabricated immersion gratings. The first method uses a scanning electron microscope to image the blaze profile, which yields a measurement precision of 0.5 degrees. The second method is an optical method of measuring the angle between blaze faces using a rotation stage, which yields a measurement precision of 0.2 degrees. Finally, we describe a theoretical blaze function modeling method, which we expect to yield a measurement precision of 0.1 degrees. With these methods, we can quantify the accuracy with which the wet etching produces the required blaze and further optimize grating and grism efficiencies.
description: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation conference proceedings (2020) Volume 11451. 9 pages, 7 figures
Numerical Integration Techniques For Volume Rendering
Creators: name: Bindu, Preeti Subhash
Publisher: name: Maryland Shared Open Access Repository
Year: 2012
Subjects: GPU
Image Processing
Integration Techniques
Medical Imaging
Visualization
Volume Rendering

description: Medical image visualization often relies on 3D volume rendering. To enable interaction with 3D rendering of medical scans, improvements in the performance of Volume Rendering Algorithms need significant attention. Real-time visualization of 3D image data set is one of the key tasks of Augmented Reality Systems required by many medical imaging applications. Over past five years the development of the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) has proved beneficial when it comes to Real Time Volume Rendering. We propose a GPU based volume rendering system for medical images using adaptive integration to improve performance. Our system is able to read and render DICOM images, implementing adaptive integration techniques that increase frame rate for volume rendering with the same quality of output images.
The design of pictorial assembly instructions
Creators: name: Schumacher, Peter Collin
Publisher: name: The Australian National University
Year: 2018
Subjects: subject: T10.5.S38 2011
subject: Technical manuals Design
subject: Teaching Aids and devices
subject: Communication of technical information
subject: Pictures in education
subject: Industrial design

description: This thesis examines and develops knowledge for the design of effective Pictorial Assembly Instructions (PAls). PAls are an important element of products requiring assembly by the consumer as the success of the product relies on the consumer's ability to interpret and enact the instructions correctly. However there is very little research published about their design, particularly with regard to the creation of effective illustrations. The thesis examines the academic literature in the area of pictorial instruction design in western and developing countries. The positivist reductionist approaches used for the research are critiqued and alternative approaches to research appropriate for PAls are presented. The method used for this thesis is one of designerly research to develop grounded theory expressed as a pattern language and concepts. The research is expanded via an examination of existing practice and discussions with practitioners regarding how they develop and encode their knowledge for PAl design. This knowledge is set out as a list of guidelines. A project to design PAls for a flat-pack wheel chair for distribution to developing countries is undertaken to further investigate and develop the knowledge for PAl design. This thesis concludes with a pattern language for PAls and the description of factors to consider in the creation of illustrations for PAls.
The constitution and mobilization of soft power in the people's republic of China
Creators: name: Guan, Jia
Publisher: name: The Australian National University
Year: 2014
Subjects: subject: Power (Social sciences) China.
subject: China Relations
subject: China Politics and government

description: This thesis asks the central question of how soft power has been constituted and mobilized by the People's Republic of China (PRC). It also investigates what factors have shaped the constitution and mobilisation of China's soft power in PRC's international engagement. This study argues that soft power derives from the mobilization and promotion of non-material power sources. It treats soft power not as a static quality but as multifaceted and dynamic. In PRC's case, there is both change and continuity of state government's efforts to attract targeted audiences through the mobilization and promotion of non-material dimensions of power at different historical moments. Change and continuity of China's soft power is rooted in this country's evolving perceptions of its national identity and role in the international system. In supporting this argument, the thesis examines the promotion of non-material sources of power in PRC's international engagement at two key historical moments: Maoist China in the first half of the 1960s; and China during the hosting of the 2008 Olympic Games. In both cases, this thesis demonstrates that sources of China's soft power has been purposefully chosen and promoted by the PRC in its interaction with foreign countries. The thesis thereafter compares and contrasts the two case studies with respect to international context, purposes, components, tools, and targeted audience of China's soft power. It concludes by reflecting on change and continuity of China's soft power and provides an explanation of such change and continuity. This study of China's soft power aims to make two main contributions. In terms of its theoretical contribution, this thesis suggests that soft power is not a static attribute of a state. A state's sense of identity may shape how it seeks to cultivate, interpret and mobilize the non-material sources of power. How an actor seeks to represent itself on the world stage can shape the way it chooses to interpret, cultivate, mobilize and project its non-material sources of power. The articulation and promotion of its "chosen" sources of soft power are both derivative of and reproductive of that representation. In terms of the study of China's soft power, this thesis provides a deeper understanding of China's soft power. It demonstrates that soft power is not something "new" to China. It has, however, been understood and used differently over time according to China's sense of its own identity and its role in the global community. This is closely related to its perceptions of its role in relation to others in the international system and the way in which it seeks to project this role.
Multi-Source Option-Based Policy Transfer
Creators: name: MacGlashan, James
Publisher: name: Maryland Shared Open Access Repository
Year: 2013
Subjects: abstraction
agent control
reinforcement learning
transfer learning

description: Reinforcement learning algorithms are very effective at learning policies (mappings from states to actions) for specific well defined tasks, thereby allowing an agent to learn how to behave without extensive deliberation. However, if an agent must complete a novel variant of a task that is similar to, but not exactly the same as, a previous version for which it has already learned a policy, learning must begin anew and there is no benefit to having previously learned anything. To address this challenge, I introduce novel approaches for policy transfer. Policy transfer allows the agent to follow the policy of a previously solved, but different, task (called a source task) while it is learning a new task (called a target task). Specifically, I introduce option-based policy transfer (OPT). OPT enables policy transfer by encapsulating the policy for a source task in an option Sutton, Precup, & Singh 1999), which allows the agent to treat the policy of a source task as if it were a primitive action. A significant advantage of this approach is that if there are multiple source tasks, an option can be created for each of them, thereby enabling the agent to transfer knowledge from multiple sources and to combine their knowledge in useful ways. Moreover, this approach allows the agent to learn in which states of the world each source task is most applicable. OPT's approach to constructing and learning with options that represent source tasks allows OPT to greatly outperform existing policy transfer approaches. Additionally, OPT can utilize source tasks that other forms of transfer learning for reinforcement learning cannot. Challenges for policy transfer include identifying sets of source tasks that would be useful for a target task and providing mappings between the state and action spaces of source and target tasks. That is, it may not be useful to transfer from all previously solved source tasks. If a source task has a different state or action space than the target task, then a mapping between these spaces must be provided. To address these challenges, I introduce object-oriented OPT (OO-OPT), which leverages object-oriented MDP (OO-MDP) (Diuk, Cohen, & Littman 2008) state representations to automatically detect related tasks and redundant source tasks, and to provide multiple useful state and action space mappings between tasks. I also introduce methods to adapt value function approximation techniques (which are useful when the state space of a task is very large or continuous) to the unique state representation of OO-MDPs.
Attributing Blame: A Content Analysis of the Media's Portrayal of School Shootings
Creators: name: Bunting, Amanda
Publisher: name: Maryland Shared Open Access Repository
Year: 2014
Subjects: attribution
attribution theory
media
newspaper
race
school shootings

description: The current research employs a content analysis of newspaper media coverage of eight school shooting incidents from 2008 to 2011 in the United States. Media frames are analyzed utilizing attribution theory to examine what attributions are given to school shooting incidents. Specifically, the ultimate attribution error is applied which finds that external attributions (e.g., parental neglect, bullying, or mental illness), are given to white shooters and internal attributions (e.g., personal flaws/issues) are assigned to nonwhite shooters particularly in mainstream media.
A non-linear mathematical model for the X-ray variability of the microquasar GRS 1515+105 -- III: Low-frequency Quasi Periodic Oscillations
Creators: name: Massaro, E.
name: Capitanio, F.
name: Feroci, M.
name: Mineo, T.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: The X-ray emission from the microquasar GRS 1515+105 shows, together with a very complex variability on different time scales, the presence of low-frequency quasi periodic oscillations (LFQPO) at frequencies lower than 30 Hz. In this paper, we demonstrate that these oscillations can be consistently and naturally obtained as solutions of a system of two ordinary differential equations that is able to reproduce almost all variability classes of GRS 1515+105. We modified the Hindmarsh-Rose model and obtained a system with two dynamical variables x(t), y(t), where the first one represents the X-ray flux from the source, and an input function J(t), whose mean level J_0 and its time evolution is responsible of the variability class. We found that for values of J_0 around the boundary between the unstable and the stable interval, where the equilibrium points are of spiral type, one obtain an oscillating behaviour in the model light curve similar to the observed ones with a broad Lorentzian feature in the power density spectrum and, occasionally, with one or two harmonics. Rapid fluctuations of J(t), as those originating from turbulence, stabilize the low-frequency quasi periodic oscillations resulting in a slowly amplitude modulated pattern.To validate the model we compared the results with real RXTE data which resulted remarkably similar to those obtained from the mathematical model. Our results allow us to favour an intrinsic hypothesis on the origin of LFQPOs in accretion discs ultimately related to the same mechanism responsible for the spiking limit cycle.
description: Published in MNRAS 2020 497, 405M
Complex small-scale structure in the infrared extinction towards the Galactic Centre
Creators: name: Gosling, Andrew J.
name: Blundell, Katherine M.
name: Bandyopadhyay, Reba
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2006
Subjects: subject: Astrophysics (astro-ph)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: A high level of complex structure, or ``granularity'', has been observed in the distribution of infrared-obscuring material towards the Galactic Centre (GC), with a characteristic scale of 5arcsec - 15arcsec, corresponding to 0.2 - 0.6pc at a GC distance of 8.5kpc. This structure has been observed in ISAAC images which have a resolution of 0.6arcsec, significantly higher than that of previous studies of the GC. We have discovered granularity throughout the GC survey region, which covers an area of 1.6deg x 0.8deg in longitude and latitude respectively (300pc x 120pc at 8.5kpc) centred on Sgr A*. This granularity is variable over the whole region, with some areas exhibiting highly structured extinction in one or more wavebands and other areas displaying no structure and a uniform stellar distribution in all wavebands. The granularity does not appear to correspond to longitude, latitude or radial distance from Sgr A*. We find that regions exhibiting high granularity are strongly associated with high stellar reddening.
description: 5 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in ApJL
Confronting unfixable suffering: the lived experience of police officers
Creators: name: Plomp, Loralee Marie
Publisher: name: University of British Columbia
Year: 2009

description: Study participants were asked to relate stories about their lived experience of being police officers. Critical defining moments related to the definition and experience of self as police officer were identified in the transcripts of these interviews, summarized and then organized into groupings based on commonalities and differences. The most pervasive and powerful grouping of critical defining moments was summarized and described as "being confronted by unfixable suffering". Results were presented on three levels: (1) story account and core idea, (2) distillation, refinement and reflection of concepts, (3) interpretation. Other groupings of critical defining moments were reported as ancillary findings and recommended as areas for future research. The construct of "unfixable suffering" was developed using existential concepts of suffering. These were loneliness, angst, ambiguity and "thrownness". Embedding the concept of "unfixable suffering" in the context of existentialist ideology presented an opportunity to explore and understand both "what" it is and "how" police officers might approach this condition of human life. It was suggested that the nature of human freedom allows any person the opportunity to transcend the experience of suffering by engaging in a dynamic, personal search for the concrete meaning of suffering within the context of each person's unique life. As contexts to approach the meaning of "unfixable suffering", this construct was discussed as trauma and as the universal myth of "the hero's journey", the pattern of which was compared to cross-cultural healing practices and the pattern of deep psychotherapeutic work described by Jung. The quest for meaning and repair of the disempowerment and disconnection resulting from the experience of suffering in both individual and group counselling contexts were discussed as implications for counselling theory and practice.
Tunable Rashba spin-orbit coupling and its interplay with multiorbital effect and magnetic ordering at oxide interfaces
Creators: name: Kong, Weilong
name: Yang, Tong
name: Zhou, Jun
name: Luo, Yong Zheng
name: Chen, Jingsheng
name: Shen, Lei
name: Jiang, Yong
name: Feng, Yuan Ping
name: Yang, Ming
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2021
Subjects: subject: Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: The complex oxide heterostructures such as LaAlO3/SrTiO3 (LAO/STO) interface are paradigmatic platforms to explore emerging multi-degrees of freedom coupling and the associated exotic phenomena. In this study, we reveal the effects of multiorbital and magnetic ordering on Rashba spin-orbit coupling (SOC) at the LAO/STO (001) interface. Based on first-principles calculations, we show that the Rashba spin splitting near the conduction band edge can be tuned substantially by the interfacial insulator-metal transition due to the multiorbital effect of the lowest t_2g bands. We further unravel a competition between Rashba SOC and intrinsic magnetism, in which the Rashba SOC induced spin polarization is suppressed by the interfacial magnetic ordering. These results deepen our understanding of intricate electronic and magnetic reconstruction at the perovskite oxide interfaces and shed light on the engineering of oxide heterostructures for all-oxides-based spintronic devices.
description: 24 pages, 4 figures
Modeling Individual Nodes in Link Prediction
Creators: name: Morawski, Maksym
Publisher: name: Maryland Shared Open Access Repository
Year: 2013

description: The question of how to predict which links will form in a graph, given the graph's history, is an open research problem in computer science.  There are many different approaches to the link prediction problem, one of which involves building a set of features for pairs of nodes and using supervised learning to build a model that predicts when these pairs of nodes will link.  Typically, this model is learned over the entire graph.  In this thesis, I investigate building this model over each individual node in an attempt to learn the particular ways in which that node behaves before making predictions about it.  In addition, research into link prediction to date lacks intelligent ways of utilizing the graph over large timespans.  To address this, I introduce a variety of ways to include temporality into the link prediction process by introducing new ways of using existing features.
title: Cultural evolutionary production of human psychobiological variation and function
Creators: name: Uchiyama, Ryutaro
Publisher: name: London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
Year: 2021

description: This thesis presents a framework for understanding how the organisation of the human mind and its psychobiological basis are produced through the mechanisms of cultural evolution. It foregrounds three characteristics of the human mind: its cross-cultural variation, its responsiveness to environmental inputs, and its collective construction. Each of these characteristics has been studied on its own, but cultural evolution serves as an integrative theoretical framework for understanding how they relate to each other. A key insight is how the developmental environment is shaped extensively by cumulative cultural evolution, allowing culture and nervous system to be meshed in a functionally productive and highly evolvable coupling. Classical conceptions of nature and nurture are insufficient for capturing this dynamic, and instead reinforce conceptual and methodological barriers that obscure the effect of culture. This thesis articulates a theoretical interface that allows a number of insights derived from cultural evolutionary theory to be productively employed within the psychological sciences—fields such as psychology, behavioural biology, behavioural genetics, developmental science, and cognitive neuroscience. Chapter 1 briefly introduces the subsequent chapters, and Chapter 2 charts the overall theoretical framework of the thesis. Chapter 3 attempts a theoretical integration of cultural evolution and behavioural genetics in particular, offering new insights about the interpretation of genetic effects like heritability. Chapter 4 is an empirical test of a prediction given in the prior chapter, and demonstrates how cultural variance influences heritability across countries. Chapter 5 shows cross-cultural variation in the structure of internal representations using factor analysis and a questionnaire, and provides preliminary evidence that writing systems shape mental organisation. Chapter 6 proposes a theoretical integration between cultural evolution and neuroscience. Taken together, these studies give substance to a novel theoretical framework for the psychological sciences that elucidates the rich coordination of mind, biology, the developmental environment, and cultural dynamics.
Experimental Study of the Reaction $e^+e^-\to K_SK_L$ in the Energy Range $\sqrt{s}=1.04 ÷1.38$ GeV
Creators: name: Achasov, M. N.
name: Beloborodov, K. I.
name: Berdyugin, A. V.
name: Bozhenok, A. V.
name: Bukin, D. A.
name: Dimova, T. V.
name: Druzhinin, V. P.
name: Golubev, V. B.
name: Koop, I. A.
name: Korol, A. A.
name: Koshuba, S. V.
name: Lysenko, A. P.
name: Otboev, A. V.
name: Pakhtusova, E. V.
name: Serednyakov, S. I.
name: Shatunov, Yu. M.
name: Sidorov, V. A.
name: Silagadze, Z. K.
name: Skrinsky, A. N.
name: Vasiliev, A. V.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2006
Subjects: subject: High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We present a measurement of the $e^+e^-\to K_SK_L$ cross section in the energy range $\sqrt{s}=1.04 ÷1.38$ GeV. For the energy $\sqrt{s}\geq 1.2$ GeV the cross section exceeds vector meson dominance model predictions with only $ρ(770)$, $ω(783)$, and $ϕ(1020)$ mesons taken into account. Measured cross section agrees well with previous measurements.
description: 15 pages, 5 figures