“O morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in his bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug,” wrote Franz Kafka in The Metamorphosis. “He lay on his armorhard back and saw, as he lifted his head up a little, his brown, arched abdomen divided up into rigid bow-like sections. From this height the blanket, just about ready to slide off completely...

As a community, we (programmers, compiler writers, hardware architects, etc.) often take folklore, e.g. claims in programming guides, for granted. Inspired by Descartes’ methodic doubt, i.e. challenging the truth of one’s beliefs, we question this folklore. Thus, we have developed a tool suite to systematically test the memory ordering behaviour of multiand manycore chips and compared our obser...

Y-branch optical waveguides are analyzed in terms of normalized parameters by means of the usual modal analysis. With these parameters the number of variables of the problem is reduced, and universal plots for the mode conversion are obtained. Our results show that the normalized parameters are useful for the design of branching waveguides more tolerant of fabrication errors.

The CPT theorem implies, except for the sign of various properties such as charge, a particle and its antiparticle should be absolutely identical. The theorem is an essentially inviolable tenet of quantum field theory, and one that follows from the assumption that physics is the same in all inertial frames. The CPT theorem has been tested with baryons—composite particles made up of quarks bound...

A 72-year-old man presented with a short history of headaches with reduced visual acuity in his right eye. His general practitioner then referred him to the ophthalmologist who found Grade IV hypertensive retinopathy with bilateral papilloedema on fundoscopy. He was referred to a medical team for further assessment. Eleven months prior to this current presentation, the patient developed painles...

For hypotheses of the type H0 : θ = θ0 vs H1 : θ 6= θ0 we demonstrate the equivalence of a Bayesian hypothesis test using a Bayes factor and the corresponding classical test, for a large class of models, which are detailed in the paper. In particular, we show that the role of the prior and critical region for the Bayes factor test is only to specify the type I error. This is their only role sin...

Tamarix is one kind of shrub which is widespread species in sand and saline land in arid and semi-arid regions. Tamarix has been paid more attentions for its unique physiological and ecological features, and important socioeconomic effects. In order to study the biomass and growth status of Tamarix, we need to measure the morphological parameters (e.g. height, perimeter of canopy). However, the...