Integrals of psi-classes over double ramification cycles

DR-cycles are certain cycles on the moduli space of curves. Intuitively, they parametrize curves that allow a map to \mathbb{P}^1 with some specified ramification profile over two points. They are known to be tautological classes, but in general there is no known expression in terms of standard tautological classes. In this paper, we compute the intersection numbers of those DR-cycles with any monomials in psi-classes when this intersection is zero-dimensional.Comment: 43 page

On double Hurwitz numbers with completed cycles

In this paper, we collect a number of facts about double Hurwitz numbers, where the simple branch points are replaced by their more general analogues --- completed (r+1)-cycles. In particular, we give a geometric interpretation of these generalised Hurwitz numbers and derive a cut-and-join operator for completed (r+1)-cycles. We also prove a strong piecewise polynomiality property in the sense of Goulden-Jackson-Vakil. In addition, we propose a conjectural ELSV/GJV-type formula, that is, an expression in terms of some intrinsic combinatorial constants that might be related to the intersection theory of some analogues of the moduli space of curves. The structure of these conjectural "intersection numbers" is discussed in detail.Comment: 31 page

ArgoNeuT, a liquid argon time projection chamber in a low energy neutrino beam

ArgoNeuT (Argon Neutrino Test), a NSF/DOE project at Fermilab, is the first LArTPC to go in a low energy neutrino beam and just the second LArTPC to go in a neutrino beam ever. ArgoNeuT sits just upstream of the on-axis MINOS near detector in the NuMI beamline, about 1 km from the target station and 100 m underground. The detector features a 47X40X90 cm (169 L) active volume TPC with a fully contained recirculation and purification system. Among other physics, ArgoNeuT will measure the charged-current quasi-elastic (anti-) neutrino cross section on argon at an energy of ~3 GeV.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures, to appear in the proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Topics in Astroparticle and Underground Physics (TAUP 2009), Rome, Italy, 1-5 July 200

Word Embeddings for Entity-annotated Texts

Learned vector representations of words are useful tools for many information retrieval and natural language processing tasks due to their ability to capture lexical semantics. However, while many such tasks involve or even rely on named entities as central components, popular word embedding models have so far failed to include entities as first-class citizens. While it seems intuitive that annotating named entities in the training corpus should result in more intelligent word features for downstream tasks, performance issues arise when popular embedding approaches are naively applied to entity annotated corpora. Not only are the resulting entity embeddings less useful than expected, but one also finds that the performance of the non-entity word embeddings degrades in comparison to those trained on the raw, unannotated corpus. In this paper, we investigate approaches to jointly train word and entity embeddings on a large corpus with automatically annotated and linked entities. We discuss two distinct approaches to the generation of such embeddings, namely the training of state-of-the-art embeddings on raw-text and annotated versions of the corpus, as well as node embeddings of a co-occurrence graph representation of the annotated corpus. We compare the performance of annotated embeddings and classical word embeddings on a variety of word similarity, analogy, and clustering evaluation tasks, and investigate their performance in entity-specific tasks. Our findings show that it takes more than training popular word embedding models on an annotated corpus to create entity embeddings with acceptable performance on common test cases. Based on these results, we discuss how and when node embeddings of the co-occurrence graph representation of the text can restore the performance.Comment: This paper is accepted in 41st European Conference on Information Retrieva

Against the Odds: Psychomotor Development of Children Under 2 years in a Sudanese Orphanage.

Providing abandoned children the necessary medical and psychological care as possible after their institutionalization may minimize developmental delays. We describe psychomotor development in infants admitted to an orphanage in Khartoum, Sudan, assessed at admission and over an 18-month follow-up. Psychological state and psychomotor quotients were determined using a simplified Neonatal Behavior Assessment Scale (NBAS), the Brunet-Lezine and Alarm distress baby (ADBB) scale. From May-September 2005, 151 children were evaluated 2, 4, 9, 12 and 18 months after inclusion. At admission, ∼15% of children ≤1 month had a regulation impairment according to the NBAS, and 33.8% presented a distress state (ADBB score >5). More than 85% (129/151) recovered normal psychomotor development. The results of the program reinforce the importance of early detection of psychological disorders followed by rapid implementation of psychological case management to improve the development of young children in similar institutions and circumstances

Flavor Singlet Axial Vector Coupling of the Proton with Dynamical Wilson Fermions

We present the results of a full QCD lattice calculation of the flavor singlet axial vector coupling $G_A^1$ of the proton. The simulation has been carried out on a $16^3\times 32$ lattice at $\beta=5.6$ with $n_f=2$ dynamical Wilson fermions. It turns out that the statistical quality of the connected contribution to $G_A^1$ is excellent, whereas the disconnected part is accessible but suffers from large statistical fluctuations. Using a 1st order tadpole improved renormalization constant $Z_A$, we estimate $G_A^1 = 0.20(12)$.Comment: 13 pages, 5 eps figures, minor changes to text and citation