Istanbul Technical University

About: Istanbul Technical University is a education organization based out in Istanbul, Turkey. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Fuzzy logic & Large Hadron Collider. The organization has 12889 authors who have published 25081 publications receiving 518242 citations. The organization is also known as: İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi & Technical University of Istanbul.

Twenty-three unsolved problems in hydrology (UPH)–a community perspective

Abstract: This paper is the outcome of a community initiative to identify major unsolved scientific problems in hydrology motivated by a need for stronger harmonisation of research efforts. The procedure involved a public consultation through online media, followed by two workshops through which a large number of potential science questions were collated, prioritised, and synthesised. In spite of the diversity of the participants (230 scientists in total), the process revealed much about community priorities and the state of our science: a preference for continuity in research questions rather than radical departures or redirections from past and current work. Questions remain focused on the process-based understanding of hydrological variability and causality at all space and time scales. Increased attention to environmental change drives a new emphasis on understanding how change propagates across interfaces within the hydrological system and across disciplinary boundaries. In particular, the expansion of the human footprint raises a new set of questions related to human interactions with nature and water cycle feedbacks in the context of complex water management problems. We hope that this reflection and synthesis of the 23 unsolved problems in hydrology will help guide research efforts for some years to come.

Observation of the rare B-s(0)->mu(+)mu(-) decay from the combined analysis of CMS and LHCb data

Abstract: The standard model of particle physics describes the fundamental particles and their interactions via the strong, electromagnetic and weak forces. It provides precise predictions for measurable quantities that can be tested experimentally. The probabilities, or branching fractions, of the strange B meson (B-s(0)) and the B-0 meson decaying into two oppositely charged muons (mu(+) and mu(-)) are especially interesting because of their sensitivity to theories that extend the standard model. The standard model predicts that the B-s(0)->mu(+)mu(-) and B-0 ->mu(+)mu(-) decays are very rare, with about four of the former occurring for every billion B-s(0) mesons produced, and one of the latter occurring for every ten billion B-0 mesons(1). A difference in the observed branching fractions with respect to the predictions of the standard model would provide a direction in which the standard model should be extended. Before the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN2 started operating, no evidence for either decay mode had been found. Upper limits on the branching fractions were an order of magnitude above the standard model predictions. The CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) and LHCb(Large Hadron Collider beauty) collaborations have performed a joint analysis of the data from proton-proton collisions that they collected in 2011 at a centre-of-mass energy of seven teraelectronvolts and in 2012 at eight teraelectronvolts. Here we report the first observation of the B-s(0)->mu(+)mu(-) decay, with a statistical significance exceeding six standard deviations, and the best measurement so far of its branching fraction. Furthermore, we obtained evidence for the B-0 ->mu(+)mu(-) decay with a statistical significance of three standard deviations. Both measurements are statistically compatible with standard model predictions and allow stringent constraints to be placed on theories beyond the standard model. The LHC experiments will resume taking data in 2015, recording proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 teraelectronvolts, which will approximately double the production rates of B-s(0) and B-0 mesons and lead to further improvements in the precision of these crucial tests of the standard model.

Human Semantic Parsing for Person Re-identification

Abstract: Person re-identification is a challenging task mainly due to factors such as background clutter, pose, illumination and camera point of view variations. These elements hinder the process of extracting robust and discriminative representations, hence preventing different identities from being successfully distinguished. To improve the representation learning, usually local features from human body parts are extracted. However, the common practice for such a process has been based on bounding box part detection. In this paper, we propose to adopt human semantic parsing which, due to its pixel-level accuracy and capability of modeling arbitrary contours, is naturally a better alternative. Our proposed SPReID integrates human semantic parsing in person re-identification and not only considerably outperforms its counter baseline, but achieves state-of-the-art performance. We also show that, by employing a simple yet effective training strategy, standard popular deep convolutional architectures such as Inception-V3 and ResNet-152, with no modification, while operating solely on full image, can dramatically outperform current state-of-the-art. Our proposed methods improve state-of-the-art person re-identification on: Market-1501 [48] by ~17% in mAP and ~6% in rank-1, CUHK03 [24] by ~4% in rank-1 and DukeMTMC-reID [50] by ~24% in mAP and ~10% in rank-1.

New evidence and model on the evolution of the southeast Anatolian orogen

Abstract: This paper describes the orogenic evolution of the southeast Anatolian orogenic belt based mostly on new geologic data collected from its constituent tectonic units in the course of new mapping programs of the past decade. The southeast Anatolian orogenic segment of the Alpides may be divided into three approximately east-west-trending zones. From south to north, they are the Arabian Platform, followed by a zone of imbrication, and then a zone of nappes. The Arabian Platform includes a mostly marine, sedimentary succession deposited from early Cambrian to middle Miocene time. The zone of imbrication is a narrow belt sandwiched between the Arabian Platform and the zone of nappes. It consists of imbricated thrust slices emplaced onto a Late Cretaceous to early Miocene sequence. The zone of nappes is the highest tectonic unit, consisting of two stacks of nappes simply designated the lower and upper nappes. The lower nappe is represented by the slices of a polyphase metamorpbic ophiolitic assemblage and the Maden Group. The upper nappe rests on the lower nappe and is represented by the Bitlis and Poturge metamorphic massifs. Southeastern Anatolia underwent two major episodes of Alpide deformation. The first occurred during the Late Cretaceous period, when ophiolite was emplaced on the Arabian Platform. This event was not the consequence of a continental collision. The ophiolite obduction onto the Arabian Platform was followed by a regionwide extension and a new marine transgression over the platform immediately after the ophiolite obduction. The second episode of deformation occurred during middle Eocene-Miocene time in two distinct stages as a result of the progressive elimination and complete closure of the ocean(s) which led to the collision between the zone of nappes located to the north (being a part of Eurasia) and the Arabian plate. The Maden marginal basin formed north of the subduction zone that eliminated the ocean between Eurasia and Arabia, along the southern margin of the Taurus belt, and abutted the Arabian Plate much later, during the final collision. The second episode of deformation formed the present orogenic segment leading to the amalgamation of different tectonic units. These amalgamated nappes collided with the Arabian plate and welded onto it at the latest stage of the orogenic evolution during the Miocene epoch.