China's Foreign Policy Think Tanks: Changing Roles and Structural Conditions

This paper provides an overview of the landscape of Chinese foreign policy think tanks, classifies them according to the activities they pursue, and offers some explanations as to how they have developed their particular characteristics - both at the level of individual institutes as well as in the broader national context. To this end, the paper introduces a new typology for the classification of think tanks and takes an in-depth look at their current activities

What Drives Interstate Balancing? Estimations of Domestic and Systemic Factors

This paper reviews contending realist assumptions about domestic and systemic impulses for balancing behavior, derives a set of corresponding hypotheses for state actions and submits them to a statistical large-n analysis for testing. A total of 18 highly conflict-prone dyads of states are observed over lengthy periods of time in order to gather data for a regression analysis of the effects of different impulses on both the external and internal balancing behavior of the weaker states. In accordance with the results, it is argued that domestic (or unit-level) factors are highly important in explaining the scope of balancing and often exert a stronger influence than do power gaps between states. As moderating factors, they are especially crucial in clarifying apparent cases of over- and underbalancing

Abstraction and underspecification in semantic transfer

This paper introduces the semantic transfer approach MinT (Minimal Transfer) that has been developed in the speech-to-speech MT system VERBMOBIL. As a unification-based and lexicalist semantic transfer model, it relies on some central ideas of the MRS-based transfer approach outlined in [Copestake et al., 1995]. It differs, however, from the latter in certain aspects: in MinT, the idea of abstraction and underspecification is worked out in much more detail and has been applied to a variety of translation phenomena. MinT relates SL and TL semantic descriptions on a maximally abstract level, which results in simultaneously decreasing the number of transfer rules and leaving a considerable amount of options for lexicalization and grammaticalization up to the generator. To preserve ambiguities that hold across the involved languages MinT processes underspecified semantic representations

Transparent conducting oxides for active hybrid metamaterial devices

We present here a study of the combined nonlinear response of plasmonic antenna—transparent conducting oxide hybrids for activation of metamaterial devices. Nanoantenna layers consisting of randomly positioned gold nanodisk dimers are fabricated using hole-mask lithography. The nanoantenna layers are covered with a 20 nm thin layer of transparent conducting oxide (TCO). We investigate the response of atomic layer deposited aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO) next to indium–tin oxide (ITO) produced using sputter coating. We show that our results are in agreement with the hypothesis of fast electron-mediated cooling, facilitated by the Ohmic interface between the gold nanodisks and the TCO substrate, which appears a universal mechanism for providing a new hybrid functionality to active metamaterial device

A minimal transfer conception for Verbmobil

In this paper we introduce the transfer conception MinT that is currently being developed for the prototype of the face-to-face translation system verbmobil. The acronym MinT stands for Minimal Transfer. MinT is a semantic-oriented transfer model that is based on some central ideas of the MRS-based approach outlined in [Copestake et al., 1995], and the Shake-and-Bake approach to machine translation sketched in [Whitelock, 1992]. The central idea of minimal transfer is to relate the source and target language semantic descriptions on a maximal abstract level, without falling back into the well-known problems of the Interlingua approach. Minimal transfer results in simultaneously decreasing the number of transfer rules and leaving a maximal set of options for lexicalization and grammaticalization up to the generator. In sum, MinT can be characterized as a semantic-oriented, unification-based and lexicalist transfer model. Its main knowledge base are transfer statements which provide the correspondences between underspecied semantic predicates of the source and target language. Transfer statements comprise both bilingual and monolingual correspondences. Bilingual correspondences, on the one hand, establish the equivalence between sets of semantic predicates of the source and target languages. They are formulated in a strictly declarative way and can be applied bidirectionally. In order to solve translational ambiguities, the roles and instances of a predicate are typed with fine-grained sorts that are supplied by an elaborated sort hierarchy. Monolingual correspondences, on the other hand, provide a solution to divergences in the logical structure of the languages involved. The idea is to allow the transfer component to initiate further compositional processes if this is motivated by the contrastive situation. Thus, the input structure is transformed into a logically equivalent semantic representation that is shared by the target language. This way, all contrastive knowledge is contained in the transfer component, which allows strict modularity of analysis and generation

Pseudo-classical theory for fidelity of nearly resonant quantum rotors

Using a semiclassical ansatz we analytically predict for the fidelity of delta-kicked rotors the occurrence of revivals and the disappearance of intermediate revival peaks arising from the breaking of a symmetry in the initial conditions. A numerical verification of the predicted effects is given and experimental ramifications are discussed.Comment: Shortened and improved versio

Surface-enhanced infrared spectroscopy using ultra-compact indium tin oxide (ITO) sensor arrays

Reduced cross section and strong plasmon confinement allows ITO antennas to be integrated at extremely high densities with no loss in performance due to long-range transverse interactions and to hold promise for extremely sub-wavelength SEIRS

Cascaded four-wave mixing in tapered plasmonic nanoantenna

We study theoretically the cascaded four-wave mixing (FWM) in broadband tapered plasmonic nanoantennas and demonstrate a 300-fold increase in nonlinear frequency conversion detected in the main lobe of the nanoantenna far-field pattern. This is achieved by tuning the elements of the nanoantenna to resonate frequencies involved into the FWM interaction. Our findings have a potentially broad application in ultrafast nonlinear spectroscopy, sensing, on-chip optical frequency conversion, nonlinear optical metamaterials and photon sources

Optical control of scattering, absorption and lineshape in nanoparticles

We find exact conditions for the enhancement or suppression of internal and/or scattered fields in any smooth particle and the determination of their spatial distribution or angular momentum through the combination of simple fields. The incident fields can be generated by a single monochromatic or broad band light source, or by several sources, which may also be impurities embedded in the nanoparticle. We can design the lineshape of a particle introducing very narrow features in its spectral response