CalFUSE v3: A Data-Reduction Pipeline for the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer

Since its launch in 1999, the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) has made over 4600 observations of some 2500 individual targets. The data are reduced by the Principal Investigator team at the Johns Hopkins University and archived at the Multimission Archive at Space Telescope (MAST). The data-reduction software package, called CalFUSE, has evolved considerably over the lifetime of the mission. The entire FUSE data set has recently been reprocessed with CalFUSE v3.2, the latest version of this software. This paper describes CalFUSE v3.2, the instrument calibrations upon which it is based, and the format of the resulting calibrated data files.Comment: To appear in PASP; 29 pages, 13 figures, uses aastex, emulateap

Efficient dot product over word-size finite fields

We want to achieve efficiency for the exact computation of the dot product of two vectors over word-size finite fields. We therefore compare the practical behaviors of a wide range of implementation techniques using different representations. The techniques used include oating point representations, discrete logarithms, tabulations, Montgomery reduction, delayed modulus

The Determinants of Sovereign Spreads in Emerging Markets

This study analyzes both short-run and long-run determinants of the sovereign spreads in a set of 21 emerging countries over the period 1998-2004 utilizing both daily and monthly data and estimate individual country and panel regressions. Our analysis shows that both domestic and international factors affect spreads, where the most important common determinant of the spreads is found to be the risk appetite of foreign investors. By using an event study methodology we find no evidence of impact of the FOMC announcements on spreads. Finally, we analyze whether news regarding domestic politics and announcements of international organizations play a role in the evolution of spreads. Using the postcrisis data of Turkey, we point out an important effect of such news releases.Bond spreads, emerging markets, Fed announcements, political news

Pipeline-Based Power Reduction in FPGA Applications

This paper shows how temporal parallelism has an important role in the power dissipation reduction in the FPGA field. Glitches propagation is blocked by the flip-flops or registers in the pipeline. Several multiplication structures are implemented over modern FPGAs, StratixII and Virtex4, comparing their results with and without pipeline and hardware duplication

Tracking Report 2010 Hanesbrands, Mexico 7200501109I

This document is part of a digital collection provided by the Martin P. Catherwood Library, ILR School, Cornell University, pertaining to the effects of globalization on the workplace worldwide. Special emphasis is placed on labor rights, working conditions, labor market changes, and union organizing.FLA_2010_Hanes_TR_Mexico_7200501109I.pdf: 11 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

The MACHO Project: Microlensing Detection Efficiency

The MACHO project is a search for dark matter in the form of massive compact halo objects (MACHOs). The project has photometrically monitored tens of millions of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), and Galactic bulge in search of rare gravitational microlensing events caused by these otherwise invisible objects. In 5.7 years of observations toward the LMC some 13-17 microlensing events have been observed by the MACHO survey, allowing powerful statements to be made about the nature of the dark population in the halo of our Galaxy. A critical component of these statements is an accurate determination of the survey's detection efficiency. The detection efficiency is a complicated function of temporal sampling, stellar crowding (the luminosity function), image quality, photometry, time-series analysis, and criteria used to select the microlensing candidates. Such a complex interdependence is most naturally solved using a Monte Carlo approach. Here we describe the details of the Monte Carlo used to calculate the efficiency presented in the MACHO 5.7-year LMC results. Here we correct several shortcomings of past determinations, including (1) adding fainter source stars (2.5 magnitudes below our faintest detected "stars"), (2) an up-to-date luminosity function for the LMC, (3) better sampling of real images in both stellar density and observing conditions, (4) an improved scheme for adding artificial microlensing onto a random sample of real lightcurves, and many other improvements. [Abridged]Comment: 32 pages, Latex with 16 postscript figures, submitted to ApJ

Delaunay Hodge Star

We define signed dual volumes at all dimensions for circumcentric dual meshes. We show that for pairwise Delaunay triangulations with mild boundary assumptions these signed dual volumes are positive. This allows the use of such Delaunay meshes for Discrete Exterior Calculus (DEC) because the discrete Hodge star operator can now be correctly defined for such meshes. This operator is crucial for DEC and is a diagonal matrix with the ratio of primal and dual volumes along the diagonal. A correct definition requires that all entries be positive. DEC is a framework for numerically solving differential equations on meshes and for geometry processing tasks and has had considerable impact in computer graphics and scientific computing. Our result allows the use of DEC with a much larger class of meshes than was previously considered possible.Comment: Corrected error in Figure 1 (columns 3 and 4) and Figure 6 and a formula error in Section 2. All mathematical statements (theorems and lemmas) are unchanged. The previous arXiv version v3 (minus the Appendix) appeared in the journal Computer-Aided Desig

Does the Kyoto Protocol Agreement matters? An environmental efficiency analysis

This paper uses both conditional and unconditional Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models in order to determine different environmental efficiency levels for a sample of 110 countries in 2007. In order to capture the effect of countries compliance with the Kyoto Protocol Agreement (KPA), we condition the years since a country has signed the agreement until 2007. Particularly, various DEA models have been applied alongside with bootstrap techniques in order to determine the effect of Kyoto protocol agreement on countries’ environmental efficiencies. The study illustrates how the recent developments in efficiency analysis and statistical inference can be applied when evaluating environmental performance issues. The results indicate that the first six years after countries signed the Kyoto protocol agreement have a positive effect on their environmental efficiencies. However after that period it appears that countries avoid complying with the actions imposed by the agreement which in turn has an immediate negative effect on their environmental efficiencies.Environmental efficiency; Kyoto protocol agreement; Conditional full frontiers; Statistical inference; DEA

Alignment and signed-intensity anomalies in WMAP data

Significant alignment and signed-intensity anomalies of local features of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) are detected on the three-year WMAP data, through a decomposition of the signal with steerable wavelets on the sphere. Firstly, an alignment analysis identifies two mean preferred planes in the sky, both with normal axes close to the CMB dipole axis. The first plane is defined by the directions toward which local CMB features are anomalously aligned. A mean preferred axis is also identified in this plane, located very close to the ecliptic poles axis. The second plane is defined by the directions anomalously avoided by local CMB features. This alignment anomaly provides further insight on recent results (Wiaux et al. 2006). Secondly, a signed-intensity analysis identifies three mean preferred directions in the southern galactic hemisphere with anomalously high or low temperature of local CMB features: a cold spot essentially identified with a known cold spot (Vielva et al. 2004), a second cold spot lying very close to the southern end of the CMB dipole axis, and a hot spot lying close to the southern end of the ecliptic poles axis. In both analyses, the anomalies are observed at wavelet scales corresponding to angular sizes around 10 degress on the celestial sphere, with global significance levels around 1%. Further investigation reveals that the alignment and signed-intensity anomalies are only very partially related. Instrumental noise, foreground emissions, as well as some form of other systematics, are strongly rejected as possible origins of the detections. An explanation might still be envisaged in terms of a global violation of the isotropy of the Universe, inducing an intrinsic statistical anisotropy of the CMB.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS. Small changes made (including the new subsection 3.4) to match the final versio