Resistive transition in superconducting films

The consequences of a vortex unbinding picture of two-dimensional superconductivity are worked out. Although there is no true finite-temperature phase transition, dirty superconducting films should display anomalous behavior below the BCS transition temperature and above an effective Kosterlitz-Thouless vortex unbinding temperature. In particular, both the conductivity and fluctuation diamagnetism behave like ₊ ² in this regime, where ₊ is the correlation length calculated by Kosterlitz, _{+ c} exp (B/T – T _c)^1/2. We estimate _c, B, and the vortex unbinding temperature, and determine the nonlinear resistivity below T _c. A recent theory of vortex dynamics, together with a time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau theory, lead to a determination of the frequency-dependent conductivity.This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DMR 77-10210.     

Grounding power systems above 600 V

The multigrounded neutral system for power systems above 600 V is a reasonable and safe design. The multigrounded neutral system provides 1) safety, 2) low zero sequence impedance than the single-point grounded neutral system, 3) lightning-arrester sizes can be optimized, 4) freezing and arctic conditions have an adverse impact on the zero sequence impedance, 5) cost of equipment for the multigrounded system is lower.     

Learning Dextrous Manipulation Skills for Multifingered Robot Hands Using the Evolution Strategy

We present a method for autonomous learning of dextrous manipulation skills with multifingered robot hands. We use heuristics derived from observations made on human hands to reduce the degrees of freedom of the task and make learning tractable. Our approach consists of learning and storing a few basic manipulation primitives for a few prototypical objects and then using an associative memory to obtain the required parameters for new objects and/or manipulations. The parameter space of the robot is searched using a modified version of the evolution strategy, which is robust to the noise normally present in real-world complex robotic tasks. Given the difficulty of modeling and simulating accurately the interactions of multiple fingers and an object, and to ensure that the learned skills are applicable in the real world, our system does not rely on simulation; all the experimentation is performed by a physical robot, in this case the 16-degree-of-freedom Utah/MIT hand. Experimental results show that accurate dextrous manipulation skills can be learned by the robot in a short period of time. We also show the application of the learned primitives to perform an assembly task and how the primitives generalize to objects that are different from those used during the learning phase.     

Ethnicity, Expressed Emotion, Attributions, and Course of Schizophrenia: Family Warmth Matters.

The authors examined the role of family factors and the course of schizophrenia by carrying out additional assessments and analyses in 2 previously published studies of Mexican American and Anglo American patients and families. The authors found partial support for an attributional model of relapse for families who are low in emotional overinvolvement. Attributions of control, criticism, and warmth together marginally predicted relapse. The data also indicated that for Mexican Americans, family warmth is a significant protective factor, whereas for Anglo Americans, family criticism is a significant risk factor. These findings suggest that the sociocultural context shapes the pathways by which family processes are related to the course of illness. Moreover, the warmth findings suggest that families may contribute to preventing relapse. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Experimental renewal in human participants.

Two experiments with human participants are presented that differentiate renewal from other behavioral effects that can produce a response after extinction. Participants played a video game and learned to suppress their behavior when sensor stimuli predicted an attack. Contexts (A, B, & C) were provided by fictitious galaxies where the game play took place. In Experiment 1, participants who received conditioning in A, extinction in B, and testing in A showed some context specificity of conditioning during extinction and a recovery of suppression on test. Experiment 2 demonstrated recovery of extinguished responding when participants were conditioned in A, extinguished in B, and tested in C, a third, neutral context. The experiment also demonstrated that the context of extinction did not control performance by becoming inhibitory. Results are discussed in terms of mechanisms that can produce a response recovery after extinction. The experiments demonstrated a renewal effect: a response recovery that was not attributable to the contexts acting as simple conditioned stimuli and is the first work with human participants to conclusively do so. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Constructing a Multivalued Representation for View Synthesis

A fundamental problem in computer vision and graphics is that of arbitrary view synthesis for static 3-D scenes, whereby a user-specified viewpoint of the given scene may be created directly from a representation. We propose a novel compact representation for this purpose called the multivalued representation (MVR). Starting with an image sequence captured by a moving camera undergoing either unknown planar translation or orbital motion, a MVR is derived for each preselected reference frame, and may then be used to synthesize arbitrary views of the scene. The representation itself is comprised of multiple depth and intensity levels in which the k-th level consists of points occluded by exactly k surfaces. To build a MVR with respect to a particular reference frame, dense depth maps are first computed for all the neighboring frames of the reference frame. The depth maps are then combined together into a single map, where points are organized by occlusions rather than by coherent affine motions. This grouping facilitates an automatic process to determine the number of levels and helps to reduce the artifacts caused by occlusions in the scene. An iterative multiframe algorithm is presented for dense depth estimation that both handles low-contrast regions and produces piecewise smooth depth maps. Reconstructed views as well as arbitrary flyarounds of real scenes are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach.     

Hyperwelcome

Web page annotation and adaptive navigation support are two active, but independent research directions focused on the same goal: expanding the functionality of the Web as a hypertext system. The goal of the AnnotatEd system presented in this paper has been to integrate annotation and adaptive navigation support into a single value-added service where the components can reinforce each other and create new unique attributes. This paper describes the implementation of AnnotatEd from early prototypes to the current version, which has been explored in several contexts. We summarize some lessons we learned during the development process and which defined the current functionality of the system. We also present the results of several classroom studies of the system. These results demonstrate the importance of the browsing-based information access supported by AnnotatEd and the value of both the annotation and navigation support functionalities offered by the system.