Solar Neutrino Results from Super-Kamiokande

Super-Kamiokande-IV (SK-IV) data taking began in September of 2008, after upgrading the electronics and data acquisition system. Due to these upgrades and improvements to water system dynamics, calibration and analysis techniques, a solar neutrino signal could be extracted at recoil electron kinetic energies as low as 3.5 MeV. When the SK-IV data is combined with the previous three SK phases, the SK extracted solar neutrino flux is found to be [2.37\pm0.015\mbox{(stat.)}\pm0.04\mbox{(syst.)}]\times10^6/(cm$^{2}$sec). The combination of the SK recoil electron energy spectra slightly favors distortions due to a changing electron flavor content. Such distortions are predicted when assuming standard solar neutrino oscillation solutions. An extended maximum likelihood fit to the amplitude of the expected solar zenith angle variation of the neutrino-electron elastic scattering rate results in a day-night asymmetry of $[-3.2\pm1.1$(stat.)$\pm0.5$(syst.)]$\%$. A solar neutrino global oscillation analysis including all current solar neutrino data, as well as KamLAND reactor antineutrino data, measures the solar mixing angle as $\sin^2\theta_{12}=0.305\pm0.013$, the solar neutrino mass squared splitting as $\Delta m^2_{21}=7.49^{+0.19}_{-0.17}\times10^{-5}$eV$^2$ and $\sin^2\theta_{13}=0.026^{+0.017}_{-0.012}$

An optimal factor analysis approach to improve the wavelet-based image resolution enhancement techniques

The existing wavelet-based image resolution enhancement techniques have many assumptions, such as limitation of the way to generate low-resolution images and the selection of wavelet functions, which limits their applications in different fields. This paper initially identifies the factors that effectively affect the performance of these techniques and quantitatively evaluates the impact of the existing assumptions. An approach called Optimal Factor Analysis employing the genetic algorithm is then introduced to increase the applicability and fidelity of the existing methods. Moreover, a new Figure of Merit is proposed to assist the selection of parameters and better measure the overall performance. The experimental results show that the proposed approach improves the performance of the selected image resolution enhancement methods and has potential to be extended to other methods