129,211 research outputs found
Efficient implementation of the adaptive scale pixel decomposition algorithm
Context. Most popular algorithms in use to remove the effects of a
telescope's point spread function (PSF) in radio astronomy are variants of the
CLEAN algorithm. Most of these algorithms model the sky brightness using the
delta-function basis, which results in undesired artefacts when used on image
extended emission. The adaptive scale pixel decomposition (Asp-Clean) algorithm
models the sky brightness on a scale-sensitive basis and thus gives a
significantly better imaging performance when imaging fields that contain both
resolved and unresolved emission.
Aims. However, the runtime cost of Asp-Clean is higher than that of
scale-insensitive algorithms. In this paper, we identify the most expensive
step in the original Asp-Clean algorithm and present an efficient
implementation of it, which significantly reduces the computational cost while
keeping the imaging performance comparable to the original algorithm. The PSF
sidelobe levels of modern wide-band telescopes are significantly reduced,
allowing us to make approximations to reduce the computing cost, which in turn
allows for the deconvolution of larger images on reasonable timescales.
Methods. As in the original algorithm, scales in the image are estimated
through function fitting. Here we introduce an analytical method to model
extended emission, and a modified method for estimating the initial values used
for the fitting procedure, which ultimately leads to a lower computational
cost.
Results.The new implementation was tested with simulated EVLA data and the
imaging performance compared well with the original Asp-Clean algorithm. Tests
show that the current algorithm can recover features at different scales with
lower computational cost.Comment: 6 pages; 4 figure
An Analysis of Publication Venues for Automatic Differentiation Research
We present the results of our analysis of publication venues for papers on
automatic differentiation (AD), covering academic journals and conference
proceedings. Our data are collected from the AD publications database
maintained by the autodiff.org community website. The database is purpose-built
for the AD field and is expanding via submissions by AD researchers. Therefore,
it provides a relatively noise-free list of publications relating to the field.
However, it does include noise in the form of variant spellings of journal and
conference names. We handle this by manually correcting and merging these
variants under the official names of corresponding venues. We also share the
raw data we get after these corrections.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure
Firm Size, Technical Efficiency and Productivity Growth in Chinese Industry
Since the mid-1990s, China’s state leadership has adopted a policy of nurturing the competitiveness of large state-owned industrial enterprises. The implications of this policy have been a matter of debate in the literature. This paper seeks to provide some useful input into the debate. With a view of investigating into the potential of long-term development of large enterprises, we estimate the “sequential production technology” in computing the Malmquist productivity index for various size-groups of enterprises in Chinese industry. Our findings indicate that large enterprises did register the fastest productivity growth and improvement in technical efficiency in the 1994-97 period. It thus appears that large-scale, mainly state-owned Chinese enterprises have exhibited the potential of making noticeable improvements and the relevant state policy does have its justification
Agriculture intensifies soil moisture decline in Northern China
Northern China is one of the most densely populated regions in the world. Agricultural activities have intensified since the 1980s to provide food security to the country. However, this intensification has likely contributed to an increasing scarcity in water resources, which may in turn be endangering food security. Based on in-situ measurements of soil moisture collected in agricultural plots during 1983–2012, we find that topsoil (0–50cm) volumetric water content during the growing season has declined significantly (p < 0.01), with a trend of −0.011 to −0.015 m3 m−3 per decade. Observed discharge declines for the three large river basins are consistent with the effects of agricultural intensification, although other factors (e.g. dam constructions) likely have contributed to these trends. Practices like fertilizer application have favoured biomass growth and increased transpiration rates, thus reducing available soil water. In addition, the rapid proliferation of water-expensive crops (e.g., maize) and the expansion of the area dedicated to food production have also contributed to soil drying. Adoption of alternative agricultural practices that can meet the immediate food demand without compromising future water resources seem critical for the sustainability of the food production system
Structural Stability of Lexical Semantic Spaces: Nouns in Chinese and French
Many studies in the neurosciences have dealt with the semantic processing of
words or categories, but few have looked into the semantic organization of the
lexicon thought as a system. The present study was designed to try to move
towards this goal, using both electrophysiological and corpus-based data, and
to compare two languages from different families: French and Mandarin Chinese.
We conducted an EEG-based semantic-decision experiment using 240 words from
eight categories (clothing, parts of a house, tools, vehicles,
fruits/vegetables, animals, body parts, and people) as the material. A
data-analysis method (correspondence analysis) commonly used in computational
linguistics was applied to the electrophysiological signals.
The present cross-language comparison indicated stability for the following
aspects of the languages' lexical semantic organizations: (1) the
living/nonliving distinction, which showed up as a main factor for both
languages; (2) greater dispersion of the living categories as compared to the
nonliving ones; (3) prototypicality of the \emph{animals} category within the
living categories, and with respect to the living/nonliving distinction; and
(4) the existence of a person-centered reference gradient. Our
electrophysiological analysis indicated stability of the networks at play in
each of these processes. Stability was also observed in the data taken from
word usage in the languages (synonyms and associated words obtained from
textual corpora).Comment: 17 pages, 4 figure
Backstepping controller design for a class of stochastic nonlinear systems with Markovian switching
A more general class of stochastic nonlinear systems with irreducible homogenous Markovian switching are considered in this paper. As preliminaries, the stability criteria and the existence theorem of strong solutions are first presented by using the inequality of mathematic expectation of a Lyapunov function. The state-feedback controller is designed by regarding Markovian switching as constant such that the closed-loop system has a unique solution, and the equilibrium is asymptotically stable in probability in the large. The output-feedback controller is designed based on a quadratic-plus-quartic-form Lyapunov function such that the closed-loop system has a unique solution with the equilibrium being asymptotically stable in probability in the large in the unbiased case and has a unique bounded-in-probability solution in the biased case
- …