Underwater Acoustic Detection of Ultra High Energy Neutrinos

We investigate the acoustic detection method of 10^18-20 eV neutrinos in a Mediterranean Sea environment. The acoustic signal is re-evaluated according to dedicated cascade simulations and a complex phase dependant absorption model, and compared to previous studies. We detail the evolution of the acoustic signal as function of the primary shower characteristics and of the acoustic propagation range. The effective volume of detection for a single hydrophone is given taking into account the limitations due to sea bed and surface boundaries as well as refraction effects. For this 'benchmark detector' we present sensitivity limits to astrophysical neutrino fluxes, from which sensitivity bounds for a larger acoustic detector can be derived. Results suggest that with a limited instrumentation the acoustic method would be more efficient at extreme energies, above 10^20 eV.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figure

On the common origin of cosmic rays across the ankle and diffuse neutrinos at the highest energies from low-luminosity Gamma-Ray Bursts

We demonstrate that the UHECRs produced in the nuclear cascade in the jet of Low-Luminosity Gamma-Ray Bursts (LL-GRBs) can describe the UHECR spectrum and composition and, at the same time, the diffuse neutrino flux at the highest energies. The radiation density in the source simultaneously controls the neutrino production and the development of the nuclear cascade, leading to a flux of nucleons and light nuclei describing even the cosmic-ray ankle at $5 \times 10^{18}$ eV. The derived source parameters are consistent with population studies, indicating a baryonic loading factor of about ten. Our results motivate the continued experimental search of LL-GRBs as a unique GRB population.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

The case for absolute ligand discrimination : modeling information processing and decision by immune T cells

Some cells have to take decision based on the quality of surroundings ligands, almost irrespective of their quantity, a problem we name "absolute discrimination". An example of absolute discrimination is recognition of not-self by immune T Cells. We show how the problem of absolute discrimination can be solved by a process called "adaptive sorting". We review several implementations of adaptive sorting, as well as its generic properties such as antagonism. We show how kinetic proofreading with negative feedback implements an approximate version of adaptive sorting in the immune context. Finally, we revisit the decision problem at the cell population level, showing how phenotypic variability and feedbacks between population and single cells are crucial for proper decision

DeepPose: Human Pose Estimation via Deep Neural Networks

We propose a method for human pose estimation based on Deep Neural Networks (DNNs). The pose estimation is formulated as a DNN-based regression problem towards body joints. We present a cascade of such DNN regressors which results in high precision pose estimates. The approach has the advantage of reasoning about pose in a holistic fashion and has a simple but yet powerful formulation which capitalizes on recent advances in Deep Learning. We present a detailed empirical analysis with state-of-art or better performance on four academic benchmarks of diverse real-world images.Comment: IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 201

A self-validating control system based approach to plant fault detection and diagnosis

An approach is proposed in which fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) tasks are distributed to separate FDD modules associated with each control system located throughout a plant. Intended specifically for those control systems that inherently eliminate steady state error, it is modular, steady state based, requires very little process specific information and therefore should be attractive to control systems implementers who seek economies of scale. The approach is applicable to virtually all types of process plant, whether they are open loop stable or not, have a type or class number of zero or not and so on. Based on qualitative reasoning, the approach is founded on the application of control systems theory to single and cascade control systems with integral action. This results in the derivation of cause-effect knowledge and fault isolation procedures that take into account factors like interactions between control systems, and the availability of non-control-loop-based sensors

A Motif-based Approach for Identifying Controversy

Among the topics discussed in Social Media, some lead to controversy. A number of recent studies have focused on the problem of identifying controversy in social media mostly based on the analysis of textual content or rely on global network structure. Such approaches have strong limitations due to the difficulty of understanding natural language, and of investigating the global network structure. In this work we show that it is possible to detect controversy in social media by exploiting network motifs, i.e., local patterns of user interaction. The proposed approach allows for a language-independent and fine- grained and efficient-to-compute analysis of user discussions and their evolution over time. The supervised model exploiting motif patterns can achieve 85% accuracy, with an improvement of 7% compared to baseline structural, propagation-based and temporal network features

Centaurus A at Ultra-High Energies

We review the importance of Centaurus A in high energy astrophysics as a nearby object with many of the properties expected of a major source of very high energy cosmic rays and gamma-rays. We examine observational techniques and the results so far obtained in the energy range from 200 GeV to above 100 EeV and attempt to fit those data with expectations of Centaurus A as an astrophysical source from VHE to UHE energies.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in PAS

Prospects for Indirect Detection of Sneutrino Dark Matter with IceCube

We investigate the prospects for indirect detection of right-handed sneutrino dark matter at the IceCube neutrino telescope in a $U(1)_{B-L}$ extension of the MSSM. The capture and annihilation of sneutrinos inside the Sun reach equilibrium, and the flux of produced neutrinos is governed by the sneutrino-proton elastic scattering cross section, which has an upper bound of $8 \times 10^{-9}$ pb from the $Z^{\prime}$ mass limits in the $B-L$ model. Despite the absence of any spin-dependent contribution, the muon event rates predicted by this model can be detected at IceCube since sneutrinos mainly annihilate into leptonic final states by virtue of the fermion $B-L$ charges. These subsequently decay to neutrinos with 100% efficiency. The Earth muon event rates are too small to be detected for the standard halo model irrespective of an enhanced sneutrino annihilation cross section that can explain the recent PAMELA data. For modified velocity distributions, the Earth muon events increase substantially and can be greater than the IceCube detection threshold of 12 events $\mathrm{km}^{-2}$ $\mathrm{yr}^{-1}$. However, this only leads to a mild increase of about 30% for the Sun muon events. The number of muon events from the Sun can be as large as roughly 100 events $\mathrm{km}^{-2}$ $\mathrm{yr}^{-1}$ for this model.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures, replaced to match the published version, only minor changes: addition of one reference in section 5, correction of two typo

Probing Rotation of Core-collapse Supernova with Concurrent Analysis of Gravitational Waves and Neutrinos

The next time a core-collapse supernova (SN) explodes in our galaxy, vari- ous detectors will be ready and waiting to detect its emissions of gravitational waves (GWs) and neutrinos. Current numerical simulations have successfully introduced multi-dimensional effects to produce exploding SN models, but thus far the explosion mechanism is not well understood. In this paper, we focus on an investigation of progenitor core rotation via comparison of the start time of GW emission and that of the neutronization burst. The GW and neutrino de- tectors are assumed to be, respectively, the KAGRA detector and a co-located gadolinium-loaded water Cherenkov detector, either EGADS or GADZOOKS!. Our detection simulation studies show that for a nearby supernova (0.2 kpc) we can confirm the lack of core rotation close to 100% of the time, and the presence of core rotation about 90% of the time. Using this approach there is also po- tential to confirm rotation for considerably more distant Milky Way supernova explosions.Comment: 31pages, 15figures, submit to Ap