We introduce QSTToolkit, a Python library for performing quantum state tomography (QST) on optical quantum state measurement data. The toolkit integrates traditional Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) with deep learning-based techniques to reconstruct quantum states. It includes comprehensive noise models to simulate both intrinsic state noise and measurement imperfections, enabling the realistic recreation of experimental data. QSTToolkit bridges TensorFlow, a leading deep learning framework, with QuTiP, a widely used quantum physics toolbox for Python. This paper describes the library's features, including its data generation capabilities and the various QST methods implemented. QSTToolkit is available at https://pypi.org/project/qsttoolkit/, with full documentation at https://qsttoolkit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/.
The rapid evolution of the transportation cybersecurity ecosystem, encompassing cybersecurity, automotive, and transportation and logistics sectors, will lead to the formation of distinct spatial clusters and visitor flow patterns across the US. This study examines the spatiotemporal dynamics of visitor flows, analyzing how socioeconomic factors shape industry clustering and workforce distribution within these evolving sectors. To model and predict visitor flow patterns, we develop a BiTransGCN framework, integrating an attention-based Transformer architecture with a Graph Convolutional Network backbone. By integrating AI-enabled forecasting techniques with spatial analysis, this study improves our ability to track, interpret, and anticipate changes in industry clustering and mobility trends, thereby supporting strategic planning for a secure and resilient transportation network. It offers a data-driven foundation for economic planning, workforce development, and targeted investments in the transportation cybersecurity ecosystem.
Granular bentonite (GB), offering better pourability and workability than traditional powder bentonites, has been proposed as a candidate material for engineered barriers in deep geological repositories of radioactive waste. During service, involving complex hydro-mechanical (HM) stress paths, GB barriers are expected to seal technological gaps within the system. However, few studies have examined the HM behaviour of GB related to gap sealing. To address this, a technological gap was initially fabricated within the compacted GB samples used for HM testing. The gap enhanced the compressibility of the sample, promoting a hardening effect under high stress and thereby reducing the volumetric collapse during subsequent wetting. Under low stress, the gap accelerated the hydration swelling, while the final swelling strain depended on the sample’s initial global dry density. Similarly, gap sealing had little effect on the development of swelling pressure when the sample was wetted under constant volume. Furthermore, the water permeability after saturation at a comparable global void ratio was higher in the initially gapped sample than in the intact one. These findings are anticipated to support a long-term safety assessment of GB barriers.
China’s Earth Observation(EO) System has undergone significant development since the 1970s, as China has dedicated substantial efforts to advancing remote sensing technology. With fifty years of development, China has successfully narrowed the remote sensing technology gap with foreign countries through collaborative endeavors of the government and enterprises. At present, China has constructed a comprehensive EO system that has been proven indispensable for driving economic growth and facilitating sustainable development. This paper provides an overview of the development, missions, andapplications of China’s EO system, while also exploring future directions and technical trends of China’s EO system.
This study collects oral histories in intersubjective methods. Grounded methods allowed for themes to emerge that revealed strategies of self‐definition expressed by survivors of ethnic cleansing. The discussion draws on interdisciplinary literature to broaden the scholarly focus from bounded wholes to historical experience. Political scientists convincingly define Silesia as ethnicity and geographical areas in Europe today, yet this anthropological study focuses on the effects of history (sensu Foucault 1972) as experienced, especially emotionally and traumatically, when geopolitical powers divided families into those who stayed and those forced to leave. The discursive field and historical experience of Silesia is vast. An innovative methodology, the ethnography of historical experience, allows for people's experiences of geopolitical boundaries and nation–states to emerge. Themes that emerge distinguish this discursive field in its polyvocality and heteroglossia as creole and multilingual people who experience the imposition of nation–states repeatedly in history. Intersubjective methods change the subjectivity and singing voice of the text author over the long period of this study, and the silent space of trauma is mutually revoiced. Theory from interdisciplinary fields contextualizes the empirical evidence after the themes emerged.
The present paper assesses the availability of woody vegetation in the regional centres of the Carpathian regions of Ukraine (Ivano-Frankivsk, Uzhhorod, Chernivtsi and Lviv) using geographic information technologies. The study was conducted using the Normalised Difference Vegetation Index, or NDVI, to identify areas covered by woody vegetation on satellite images. Multispectral (13 bands) images of the European Space Agency's Sentinel-2A satellite were selected for the study, with the data obtained from the official website of the Copernicus space programme. The social and recreational value of areas covered with woody vegetation is critically important for urbanised areas; however, the actual provision of green areas lags far behind the established standards in all the settlements studied. The analysis of the data revealed that, among the regional centres of the Carpathian region, Lviv demonstrated the highest levels of woody vegetation coverage, followed by Chernivtsi, and Uzhhorod and Ivano-Frankivsk exhibited the lowest. The investigation further revealed that Chernivtsi exhibited the highest level of tree cover within the city, although this was almost half of the recommended standard. The remaining regional centres exhibit a provision of less than 30 per cent of the recommended minimum. Such deviations from the normative values necessitate a re-evaluation and implementation of contemporary approaches to the formation of green areas within the urban context. These areas function as a natural framework for the urban planning structure, performing recreational, sanitary, aesthetic, and social functions aimed at creating a healthy environment for living, working, and recreation. It is imperative to prioritise the augmentation of public green spaces, as this is a pivotal aspect in enhancing the overall quality of life within the city. Keywords: forest recreation area, forested areas, remote sensing, GIS technologies, satellite images, Sentinel-2, NDVI, QGIS.
Television is often seen as a site for subcultural identification and subversive fantasy, including in queer cultures. How might we measure subversion, or the degree to which the depiction of social relationship between a dyad (e.g. two characters who are colleagues) deviates from its typical representation on TV? To explore this question, we introduce the task of stereotypic relationship extraction. Built on cognitive stylistics, linguistic anthropology, and dialogue relation extraction, in this paper, we attempt to model the cognitive process of stereotyping TV characters in dialogic interactions. Given a dyad, we want to predict: what social relationship do the speakers exhibit through their words? Subversion is then characterized by the discrepancy between the distribution of the model's predictions and the ground truth labels. To demonstrate the usefulness of this task and gesture at a methodological intervention, we enclose four case studies to characterize the representation of queer relationalities in the Big Bang Theory, Frasier, and Gilmore Girls, as we explore the suspicious and reparative modes of reading with our computational methods.
Cultural data typically contains a variety of biases. In particular, geographical locations are unequally portrayed in media, creating a distorted representation of the world. Identifying and measuring such biases is crucial to understand both the data and the socio-cultural processes that have produced them. Here we suggest to measure geographical biases in a large historical news media corpus by studying the representation of cities. Leveraging ideas of quantitative urban science, we develop a mixed quantitative-qualitative procedure, which allows us to get robust quantitative estimates of the biases. These biases can be further qualitatively interpreted resulting in a hermeneutic feedback loop. We apply this procedure to a corpus of the Soviet newsreel series 'Novosti Dnya' (News of the Day) and show that city representation grows super-linearly with city size, and is further biased by city specialization and geographical location. This allows to systematically identify geographical regions which are explicitly or sneakily emphasized by Soviet propaganda and quantify their importance.
Premankur Banerjee, Jason Cherin, Jayati Upadhyay
et al.
The paper presents a system for simulating surfing in Virtual Reality (VR), emphasizing the recreation of aquatic motions and user-initiated propulsive forces using a 6-Degree of Freedom (DoF) motion platform. We present an algorithmic approach to accurately render surfboard kinematics and interactive paddling dynamics, validated through experimental evaluation with \(N=17\) participants. Results indicate that the system effectively reproduces various acceleration levels, the perception of which is independent of users' body posture. We additionally found that the presence of ocean ripples amplifies the perception of acceleration. This system aims to enhance the realism and interactivity of VR surfing, laying a foundation for future advancements in surf therapy and interactive aquatic VR experiences.
This paper explains the concept of kinship terminology as an analytical category in anthropology and highlights its importance. Special attention is given to the differences in approach and methodology employed in anthropology compared to comparative philology and historical linguistics when it comes to this type of research. In addition to discussing the typology of kinship terminology systems, the paper addresses current knowledge regarding two longstanding questions: 1. the relationship between kinship terminology and non-linguistic elements (principles of social organisation and kinship behaviour), and 2. historical changes and transformations of kinship terminological systems. From the perspective of contemporary anthropology, when interpreting the prevalence of different types of kinship terminology worldwide, it is necessary to consider and distinguish between two principles of grouping: the ‘principle of propinquity’ and the ‘principle of form.’ The principle of propinquity can be applied when dealing with societies that are linguistically, geographically, and historically connected. When terminologies with the same formal characteristics, including identical rules of kinship classification, exist in geographically, linguistically, and historically distinct and distant societies, the principle of form is applied, which focuses more on logical rather than historical connections between systems. While earlier studies focused on finding logically powerful and empirically efficient analytical means of classification, in recent decades the emphasis has increasingly shifted towards broader social, historical, and cognitive issues and processes. Contemporary approaches to kinship terminology aim to identify and explain variations rather than categorise such systems into one general category or another. Because what matters is not which category fits better, but rather which features can be combined in different ways to form a concrete system in the real world.
Introduction. Hyperostosis frontalis interna (HFI) is a pathological condition characterized by the growth of the inner surface of the frontal bone. Most researchers describe HFI as a symptom associated with hormonal dysfunctions, which prevails in the modern population. This paper provides an analysis of HFI frequency on the craniological material of four adaptive types. Materials and methods. We have examined 2211 skulls (59 craniological collections from the Anuchin Research Institute and Museum of Anthropology, Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, RAS and Federal Research Center of the Tyumen Scientific Center of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences). We have analyzed the total frequency of HFI, used a comparative intergroup analysis, and evaluated the degree of HFI expression and the distribution of the trait. Results and discussion. It was found that the frequency of HFI in groups of arctic, continental and temperate adaptive types ranged from 2.3% to 4.3%, which is significantly less than in the modern population (12-37%). In the group of the tropical adaptive type, HFI was not found. As a result of a comparative study of the severity of cases of frontal hyperostosis, type A was the most common, HFI type B was less common, and type C was recorded only for one individual of the Arctic adaptive type. The reasons for the relatively low prevalence of HFI in representatives of various adaptive types are discussed. Conclusion. According to a low frequency of HFI in studied adaptive types comparing to data in modern population can be considered that adaptation to environment and life style is more important than climate and geographical features. @ 2023. This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license
We present a methodology to support the analysis of culture from text such as news events and demonstrate its usefulness on categorizing news events from different categories (society, business, health, recreation, science, shopping, sports, arts, computers, games and home) across different geographical locations (different places in 117 countries). We group countries based on the culture that they follow and then filter the news events based on their content category. The news events are automatically labelled with the help of Hofstedes cultural dimensions. We present combinations of events across different categories and check the performances of different classification methods. We also presents experimental comparison of different number of features in order to find a suitable set to represent the culture.
The goal of the paper is to develop a regression model under the initial Z-information based on an alternative method to the least squares method, and free from the assumptions regarding probability distributions of initial data. Formalization of input and output information is carried out on the basis of Z-numbers and linguistic variables, followed by the construction of a multidimensional quintile regression model with fuzzy coefficients. The optimization function is defined as the sum of the loss functions for the differences between the weighted output fuzzy numbers and the weighted model fuzzy numbers. To determine the parameters of the unknown regression coefficients, a linear programming problem is solved to find the minimum of the optimization function. The developed Z-regression is free from the shortcomings of existing models and provides new opportunities for solving tasks in problem areas with the active participation of experts, taking into account the reliability of information received from them.
The cyber-physical convergence, the fast expansion of the Internet at its edge, and tighter interactions between human users and their personal mobile devices push towards a data-centric Internet where the human user becomes more central than ever. We argue that this will profoundly impact primarily on the way data should be handled in the Next Generation Internet. It will require a radical change of the Internet data-management paradigm, from the current platform-centric to a human-centric model. In this paper we present a new paradigm for Internet data management that we name Internet of People (IoP) because it embeds human behavior models in its algorithms. To this end, IoP algorithms exploit quantitative models of the humans' individual and social behavior, from sociology, anthropology, psychology, economics, physics. IoP is not a replacement of the current Internet networking infrastructure, but it exploits legacy Internet services as (reliable) primitives to achieve end-to-end connectivity on a global-scale. In this opinion paper, we first discuss the key features of the IoP paradigm along with the underlying research issues and challenges. Then, we present emerging data-management paradigms that are anticipating IoP.
Patricio Gallardo, Gregory Pearlstein, Luca Schaffler
et al.
Smooth minimal surfaces of general type with $K^2=1$, $p_g=2$, and $q=0$ constitute a fundamental example in the geography of algebraic surfaces, and the 28-dimensional moduli space $\mathbf{M}$ of their canonical models admits a modular compactification $\overline{\mathbf{M}}$ via the minimal model program. We describe eight new irreducible boundary divisors in such compactification parametrizing reducible stable surfaces. Additionally, we study the relation with the GIT compactification of $\mathbf{M}$ and the Hodge theory of the degenerate surfaces that the eight divisors parametrize.
One of the aspects of studies of micropopulations of ( Eremias arguta deserti Gmelin, 1789) and ( Phrynocephalus guttatus guttatus Gmelin, 1789) in the conditions of the southeastern part of the Lower Volga region was the observation of inter-seasonal fluctuations in body weight of individuals. Males of Eremias arguta deserti are consistently heavier in the spring than females. In the autumn periods, the results turned out to be contradictory and do not make it possible to conclude which individuals of which sex have the greatest mass. Statistical processing of materials using the Kruskal - Walli’s criterion (H) did not reveal significant differences in Eremias arguta deserti when comparing the mass of all females and males both for all periods and separately in spring and autumn periods. Phrynocephalus g. guttatus also showed no statistical significance when comparing all males and females for the entire period. However, the results obtained when comparing between females and males during the 2018 season, as well as when comparing females of different years, were statistically significant. In addition, the body weight of fingerlings of both groups, between the autumn seasons of 2017 and 2018, revealed statistical significance. Individuals of both Phrynocephalus g. guttatus and Eremias arguta deserti steadily gain body weight, despite the slowdown or complete stop of the growth of individuals in the former and autotomy in the latter. Regeneration of the tail or its absence obviously affects the growth of the trunk of Eremias arguta deserti.