The Maine Electronic Document Delivery Project: a Cooperative Project of Maine Hospital Libraries and the NN/LM New England Region

The article discusses an Ariel document delivery project with seven Maine hospital libraries, the University of Massachusetts Medical School Library (UMass), and the New England Regional office of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine. Funding was awarded to six network members to purchase equipment or Ariel software. UMass served as a document provider. During the test, libraries received documents from UMass via Ariel or via the Web as a PDF document. This form of document delivery was faster than standard service with better quality of delivered articles. The column describes the project and outlines possible future steps

Rodó y su Ariel : el Ariel de Rodó

El artículo presenta al autor de Ariel Rodó, como integrante de la promoción literaria uruguaya, como uno de los exponentes del modernismo y como pensador que pertenece a la generación de los Fundadores. Parte de la problemática Ariel- Calibán como símbolo latinoamericano y de la postulación de Ariel como discurso antiimperialista para situar la pregunta respecto de la función de la educación en la constitución del joven latinoamericano como sujeto social portador de sentido del proyecto nacional. Se tratan luego las figuras que se desprenden de los Prósperos, los Calibanes y los Arieles concebidos como la pluralidad de perspectivas desde las que transcurren las vidas de los sujetos y de los espacios desde los cuales las naciones se paran para mirarse unas a otras.This article introduces the author of Ariel, Rodó, as a member of the Uruguayan literary community, as well as one of the figures of expressionism, and as a thinker who belongs to the generation of the founders. It starts off from the Ariel-Calíban conflict as a Latin American symbol and from the postulation of Ariel as an antiilllpenallst discourse to pose the question about the function of education in the formation of the young Latin American as a social subject that bears the true sense of the national project. The study finally arrives at a meeting with the figures that derive themselves from the Prosperos, the Callbans and the Ariels conceived as the pluralism of the perspectives in which the lives of the subjects are Iived in the spaces from which the nations stand up in arder to take a look at one another.Fil: Alvarado, Mariana

ExoClock Project. III. 450 New Exoplanet Ephemerides from Ground and Space Observations

The ExoClock project has been created to increase the efficiency of the Ariel mission. It will achieve this by continuously monitoring and updating the ephemerides of Ariel candidates, in order to produce a consistent catalog of reliable and precise ephemerides. This work presents a homogenous catalog of updated ephemerides for 450 planets, generated by the integration of ∼18,000 data points from multiple sources. These sources include observations from ground-based telescopes (the ExoClock network and the Exoplanet Transit Database), midtime values from the literature, and light curves from space telescopes (Kepler, K2, and TESS). With all the above, we manage to collect observations for half of the postdiscovery years (median), with data that have a median uncertainty less than 1 minute. In comparison with the literature, the ephemerides generated by the project are more precise and less biased. More than 40% of the initial literature ephemerides had to be updated to reach the goals of the project, as they were either of low precision or drifting. Moreover, the integrated approach of the project enables both the monitoring of the majority of the Ariel candidates (95%), and also the identification of missing data. These results highlight the need for continuous monitoring to increase the observing coverage of the candidate planets. Finally, the extended observing coverage of planets allows us to detect trends (transit-timing variations) for a sample of 19 planets. All the products, data, and codes used in this work are open and accessible to the wider scientific community

ExoClock Project III: 450 new exoplanet ephemerides from ground and space observations

The ExoClock project has been created with the aim of increasing the efficiency of the Ariel mission. It will achieve this by continuously monitoring and updating the ephemerides of Ariel candidates over an extended period, in order to produce a consistent catalogue of reliable and precise ephemerides. This work presents a homogenous catalogue of updated ephemerides for 450 planets, generated by the integration of $\sim$18000 data points from multiple sources. These sources include observations from ground-based telescopes (ExoClock network and ETD), mid-time values from the literature and light-curves from space telescopes (Kepler/K2 and TESS). With all the above, we manage to collect observations for half of the post-discovery years (median), with data that have a median uncertainty less than one minute. In comparison with literature, the ephemerides generated by the project are more precise and less biased. More than 40\% of the initial literature ephemerides had to be updated to reach the goals of the project, as they were either of low precision or drifting. Moreover, the integrated approach of the project enables both the monitoring of the majority of the Ariel candidates (95\%), and also the identification of missing data. The dedicated ExoClock network effectively supports this task by contributing additional observations when a gap in the data is identified. These results highlight the need for continuous monitoring to increase the observing coverage of the candidate planets. Finally, the extended observing coverage of planets allows us to detect trends (TTVs - Transit Timing Variations) for a sample of 19 planets. All products, data, and codes used in this work are open and accessible to the wider scientific community.Comment: Recommended for publication to ApJS (reviewer's comments implemented). Main body: 13 pages, total: 77 pages, 7 figures, 7 tables. Data available at http://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/P298

The Ariel II (UK-2) International Satellite Environmental Test Program

An important new aspect of the space sciences is the associated field of reliability. The largest part of this effort on a space flight project is environmental testing. This paper presents, as an example, the successful environmental test program of the International Satellite Ariel II. Several specialized tests and unique techniques were employed to assure the quality necessary to accomplish the spacecraft mission. Valuable background information is provided on the mission, technical description, and launch of Ariel II. United Kingdom scientists have received data from more than 5000 orbits on: (a) galactic noise in the 0.75 to 3.0 Me region, (b) the vertical distribution of ozone in the earth\u27s atmosphere, and (c) micrometeoroid density

Don't Start From Scratch: Leveraging Prior Data to Automate Robotic Reinforcement Learning

Reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms hold the promise of enabling autonomous skill acquisition for robotic systems. However, in practice, real-world robotic RL typically requires time consuming data collection and frequent human intervention to reset the environment. Moreover, robotic policies learned with RL often fail when deployed beyond the carefully controlled setting in which they were learned. In this work, we study how these challenges can all be tackled by effective utilization of diverse offline datasets collected from previously seen tasks. When faced with a new task, our system adapts previously learned skills to quickly learn to both perform the new task and return the environment to an initial state, effectively performing its own environment reset. Our empirical results demonstrate that incorporating prior data into robotic reinforcement learning enables autonomous learning, substantially improves sample-efficiency of learning, and enables better generalization. Project website: https://sites.google.com/view/ariel-berkeley/Comment: 17 pages, project website at https://sites.google.com/view/ariel-berkeley

ExoClock project: an open platform for monitoring the ephemerides of Ariel targets with contributions from the public

The Ariel mission will observe spectroscopically around 1000 exoplanets to further characterise their atmospheres. For the mission to be as efficient as possible, a good knowledge of the planets’ ephemerides is needed before its launch in 2028. While ephemerides for some planets are being refined on a per-case basis, an organised effort to collectively verify or update them when necessary does not exist. In this study, we introduce the ExoClock project, an open, integrated and interactive platform with the purpose of producing a confirmed list of ephemerides for the planets that will be observed by Ariel. The project has been developed in a manner to make the best use of all available resources: observations reported in the literature, observations from space instruments and, mainly, observations from ground-based telescopes, including both professional and amateur observatories. To facilitate inexperienced observers and at the same time achieve homogeneity in the results, we created data collection and validation protocols, educational material and easy to use interfaces, open to everyone. ExoClock was launched in September 2019 and now counts over 140 participants from more than 15 countries around the world. In this release, we report the results of observations obtained until the 15h of April 2020 for 120 Ariel candidate targets. In total, 632 observations were used to either verify or update the ephemerides of 84 planets. Additionally, we developed the Exoplanet Characterisation Catalogue (ECC), a catalogue built in a consistent way to assist the ephemeris refinement process. So far, the collaborative open framework of the ExoClock project has proven to be highly efficient in coordinating scientific efforts involving diverse audiences. Therefore, we believe that it is a paradigm that can be applied in the future for other research purposes, too

ExoClock Project: An open platform for monitoring the ephemerides of Ariel targets with contributions from the public

The Ariel mission will observe spectroscopically around 1000 exoplanets to further characterise their atmospheres. For the mission to be as efficient as possible, a good knowledge of the planets' ephemerides is needed before its launch in 2028. While ephemerides for some planets are being refined on a per-case basis, an organised effort to collectively verify or update them when necessary does not exist. In this study, we introduce the ExoClock project, an open, integrated and interactive platform with the purpose of producing a confirmed list of ephemerides for the planets that will be observed by Ariel. The project has been developed in a manner to make the best use of all available resources: observations reported in the literature, observations from space instruments and, mainly, observations from ground-based telescopes, including both professional and amateur observatories. To facilitate inexperienced observers and at the same time achieve homogeneity in the results, we created data collection and validation protocols, educational material and easy to use interfaces, open to everyone. ExoClock was launched in September 2019 and now counts over 140 participants from more than 15 countries around the world. In this release, we report the results of observations obtained until the 15h of April 2020 for 119 Ariel candidate targets. In total, 632 observations were used to either verify or update the ephemerides of 83 planets. Additionally, we developed the Exoplanet Characterisation Catalogue (ECC), a catalogue built in a consistent way to assist the ephemeris refinement process. So far, the collaborative open framework of the ExoClock project has proven to be highly efficient in coordinating scientific efforts involving diverse audiences. Therefore, we believe that it is a paradigm that can be applied in the future for other research purposes, too

A metaphor called "Mozart"

In the following essay I shall venture on the ocean of metaphor, reducing the rashness of this project by the use of the well-worn boat of philosophy. I shall ask four questions: 1. Is it possible to realise metaphor through thought, action or emotion? 2. What is the opposite of metaphor? 3. Does an alternative to metaphorical thinking exist? 4. Does an alternative metaphorical thinking exist? However, should my project fail, perhaps the raft of metaphor itself might carry me safe to the island ruled by Ariel and Prospero, and where other shipwrecked once were met with soft music