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QUEST-DMC superfluid <sup>3</sup>He detector for sub-GeV dark matter
Get PDFThe focus of dark matter searches to date has been on Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) in the GeV/c2-TeV/c2 mass range. The direct, indirect and collider searches in this mass range have been extensive but ultimately unsuccessful, providing a strong motivation for widening the search outside this range. Here we describe a new concept for a dark matter experiment, employing superfluid 3He as a detector for dark matter that is close to the mass of the proton, of order 1 GeV/c2. The QUEST-DMC detector concept is based on quasiparticle detection in a bolometer cell by a nanomechanical resonator. In this paper we develop the energy measurement methodology and detector response model, simulate candidate dark matter signals and expected background interactions, and calculate the sensitivity of such a detector. We project that such a detector can reach sub-eV nuclear recoil energy threshold, opening up new windows on the parameter space of both spin-dependent and spin-independent interactions of light dark matter candidates
Investigating the behavior of sedimentary mercury (Hg) during burial-related thermal maturation
Get PDFThe Concurrent Calculi Formalisation Benchmark
Get PDFPOPLMark and POPLMark Reloaded sparked a flurry of work on machine-checked proofs, and fostered the adoption of proof mechanisation in programming language research. Both challenges were purposely limited in scope, and they do not address concurrency-related issues. We propose a new collection of benchmark challenges focused on the difficulties that typically arise when mechanising formal models of concurrent and distributed programming languages, such as process calculi. Our benchmark challenges address three key topics: linearity, scope extrusion, and coinductive reasoning. The goal of this new benchmark is to clarify, compare, and advance the state of the art, fostering the adoption of proof mechanisation in future research on concurrency
Shape analysis of AF segments for rapid assessment of Mohs layers for BCC presence by AF-Raman microscopy
Get PDFAn automated method to detect Basal Cell Carcinoma (BCC) relies on Autofluorescence (AF) imaging guiding Raman microscopy to obtain biochemical information for tissue classification. The guidance is provided via an image segmentation technique aiming to reduce the risk of missing cancer. We present evidence that shape of an AF segment may be useful for ‘trimming’ 6-8% of non-BCC segments in an essentially coordinate free manner, without compromising BCC detection. Byallowing the AF-Raman method to direct the more time consuming Raman analysis toward more relevant regions, the proposed trimming of unnecessary segments should ultimately improve the overall accuracy. The presented shape analysis uses the recently introduced Weighted Euler Curve Transform (WECT). WECT embeds segments in a space of real matrices of fixed dimensions, where a shape is an equivalence class of segments with WECTs matching under a cyclic permutation of columns. The induced rotation invariant distance is non-Hilbertian, which requires special care in using it with kernel methods (e.g. Kernel PCA, Kernel LDA, SVMs). Our currently best results are achieved by L1 SVMs based on the Laplace ‘kernel’
What Changes and Opportunities Does Big Data Analytics Capability Bring to Strategic Alliance Research? A Systematic Literature Review
Get PDFStrategic alliance theories have been studied widely over the past few decades. However, their key arguments may face new limitations and challenges brought by emerging technologies such as big data analytics capability (BDAC). This paper aims to identify the challenges BDAC brings to strategic alliance theories and the associated changes to strategic alliance research. Specifically, this paper systematically reviews and identifies how BDAC challenges the key arguments in the strategic alliances’ theories through the lens of three stages of strategic alliances: formation, governance and achieving alliance performance. Meanwhile, this study also finds some changes in strategic alliance research brought by BDAC. Finally, this study proposes promising directions for future research on strategic alliances under the influences of BDAC
An Augmented Reality Boardgame for Adolescent Wellbeing; Intervention Effects and Mechanisms of Change
Get PDFTHE POLITICS OF COST-SHARING IN HIGHER EDUCATION IN OECD COUNTRIES
Get PDFIn recent decades, higher education systems in OECD countries have expanded significantly. Increase in student numbers coincided with increase in per-student costs of higher education and diminishing fiscal base of welfare state. The subsidisation of higher education was often regressive, leading to transfer of resources from rich to poor. However governments rarely adopted policies designed to reduce the level of subsidisation by shifting costs to students.This thesis examines policy responses to higher education massification and argues that cost-sharing measures were introduced so rarely because of electoral punishment faced by policy makers. By examining survey data from OECD countries, this thesis establishes that after changes in levels of higher education subsidisation, the support for education funding changes, as we would expect if voters noticed changes in funding. Based on an original survey experiment with sample of US residents, I also show that respondents adjust their willingness to vote for policy makers who are responsible for rising fees, provided they know about the link between rising fees and public policies.This thesis claims that electoral responsiveness to changes in higher education funding results in blame avoidance and credit claiming by policy makers implementing changes to higher education funding. I show that, in the wake of massification, governments prefer measures that allow increases in enrolment without attracting blame. Governments were also likely to claim credit for expansion of higher education funding, as such policies were more often introduced by left-wing governments.By presenting evidence for the existence of electoral accountability for rising tuition, this thesis provides a test for important assumptions of literature on the political economy of higher education. By collecting and analysing data on reforms that took place in higher education, this thesis also contributes to our understanding of how systems of higher education changed and why these changes occurred.<br/
Similarity and structured representation in human and nonhuman apes
Get PDFHow we judge the similarity between objects in the world is connected ultimately to how we represent those objects. It has been argued extensively that object representations in humans are ‘structured’ in nature, meaning that both individual features and the relations between them can influence similarity. In contrast, popular models within comparative psychology assume that nonhuman species appreciate only surface-level, featural similarities. By applying psychological models of structural and featural similarity (from conjunctive feature models to Tversky’s contrast model) to visual similarity judgements from adult humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas, we demonstrate a cross-species sensitivity to complex structural information, particularly for stimuli that combine colour and shape. These results shed new light on the representational complexity of nonhuman apes, and the fundamental limits of featural coding in explaining object representation and similarity, which emerge strikingly across both human and nonhuman species
Inhabiting the House: A Poetics of Hauntology
Get PDFThe first part of the thesis, 'Inhabiting the poetry of Carolyn Forché, Alice Notley and Mei Mei Berssenbrugge explores the figure of the house as an image, depicted and deployed in specific poems by Forché, Notley and Berssenbrugge. This part of the thesis asks how the image of the house is used in their work, and explores the poet’s relationship with this image. In what follows, close readings of their poems are informed by Jacques Derrida’s concepts of Hauntology and Hospitality - and by his deconstructive discourse, more generally – to suggest how the image of the house becomes a trope for loss, absence, displacement (but also a welcoming) in the work of these three poets. This part of the thesis is also concerned with the question of how contemporary poetry is read and undertakes what might be described as a phenomenological close reading of the poetry. As a further exploration of how poetry is read, each critical chapter is followed by a creative-critical chapter, each of which responds to the poet and their work through a creative-critical mode. By adopting an interdisciplinary approach, which entails phenomenological and creative perspectives, I suggest a new approach to thinking and reading these specific poems, while also drawing out their different tensions, instabilities and spectral qualities. This part of the thesis unfolds the psychodynamics of my reading of selected poems by these poets through the figure of the house, and presents a creative-critical dialogue with these poets. The second part of the thesis is a selection of 18 poems from my collection, Branches of a House. In their sequence, the poems appropriate the figure of house conceptually to embrace a wider dialogue on displacement and ancestry. In their engagement with the house, the poems foreground Derrida’s notion of hauntology and ask what haunts and what it means to be haunted. <br/
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