The QUEST Data Processing Software Pipeline

A program that we call the QUEST Data Processing Software Pipeline has been written to process the large volumes of data produced by the QUEST camera on the Samuel Oschin Schmidt Telescope at the Palomar Observatory. The program carries out both aperture and PSF photometry, combines data from different repeated observations of the same portion of sky, and produces a Master Object Catalog. A rough calibration of the data is carried out. This program, as well as the calibration procedures and quality checks on the output are described.Comment: 17 pages, 1 table, 8 figure

Predictable migration and communication in the Quest-V multikernal

Quest-V is a system we have been developing from the ground up, with objectives focusing on safety, predictability and efficiency. It is designed to work on emerging multicore processors with hardware virtualization support. Quest-V is implemented as a ``distributed system on a chip'' and comprises multiple sandbox kernels. Sandbox kernels are isolated from one another in separate regions of physical memory, having access to a subset of processing cores and I/O devices. This partitioning prevents system failures in one sandbox affecting the operation of other sandboxes. Shared memory channels managed by system monitors enable inter-sandbox communication. The distributed nature of Quest-V means each sandbox has a separate physical clock, with all event timings being managed by per-core local timers. Each sandbox is responsible for its own scheduling and I/O management, without requiring intervention of a hypervisor. In this paper, we formulate bounds on inter-sandbox communication in the absence of a global scheduler or global system clock. We also describe how address space migration between sandboxes can be guaranteed without violating service constraints. Experimental results on a working system show the conditions under which Quest-V performs real-time communication and migration.National Science Foundation (1117025

Boards Of Advisors In Small Businesses: An Empirical Profile Of Their Composition And Use

This article discusses the literature coverage on Boards of Advisors to date and provides the results of a study designed to determine the formation and composition of Boards of Advisors and the ways in which small businesses use such boards. Our study surveyed the Chief Executive Officers or Presidents of a large sample of small businesses. We found that there is very limited use of Boards of Advisors in small businesses and that many small business managers are not aware of the concept of a Board of Advisors. However, those small business managers (97%) that use a Board of Advisors characterize their interaction with their Boards of Advisors as good or excellent. When selecting board members, the responding executives seek practical experience, good “common sense” and industry experience as the most important types of expertise. Most board members were male (67%), active in business (90%), have managerial/strategy or law (52%) and are not compensated (53%)

The effect of Future Quest Transition Workshops on high school students

Includes bibliographical references

Targeting Industries, Training Workers and Improving Opportunities: The Final Report from the Sectoral Employment Initiative

Over the past 30 years, American workers have faced daunting challenges, including declines in real wages and dwindling upward mobility. Paths to advance within companies have deteriorated, leaving many low-skilled workers "stuck" indefinitely in low-wage jobs -- and swelling the ranks of the working poor. As opportunities for less-educated workers to access well-paying jobs grow scarce, it is clear that our nation requires new approaches to workforce development.In a departure from traditional strategies, some workforce organizations have begun to implement services and activities that focus on the needs of specific industry sectors. By identifying local sectors that lack workers -- which might range from health care to manufacturing to construction -- these organizations can help low-income workers acquire the specific skills they need to fill available positions. To explore the potential of this approach, P/PV launched the Sectoral Employment Initiative (SEI) in 1998, with support from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. This final report relies on data gathered during interviews with staff members at the SEI organizations and other key players in the targeted sectors, site visits, reviews of program documentation, and baseline and follow-up interviews with program participants focusing on a range of outcomes, including employment, earnings, education, housing and household income. The report presents key findings and explores some of the challenges sectoral programs encountered

The scene superiority effect: object recognition in the context of natural scenes

Four experiments investigate the effect of background scene semantics on object recognition. Although past research has found that semantically consistent scene backgrounds can facilitate recognition of a target object, these claims have been challenged as the result of post-perceptual response bias rather than the perceptual processes of object recognition itself. The current study takes advantage of a paradigm from linguistic processing known as the Word Superiority Effect. Humans can better discriminate letters (e.g., D vs. K) in the context of a word (WORD vs. WORK) than in a non-word context (e.g., WROD vs. WROK) even when the context is non-predictive of the target identity. We apply this paradigm to objects in natural scenes, having subjects discriminate between objects in the context of scenes. Because the target objects were equally semantically consistent with any given scene and could appear in either semantically consistent or inconsistent contexts with equal probability, response bias could not lead to an apparent improvement in object recognition. The current study found a benefit to object recognition from semantically consistent backgrounds, and the effect appeared to be modulated by awareness of background scene semantics

Blazar Optical Variability in the Palomar-QUEST Survey

We study the ensemble optical variability of 276 FSRQs and 86 BL Lacs in the Palomar-QUEST Survey with the goal of searching for common fluctuation properties, examining the range of behavior across the sample, and characterizing the appearance of blazars in such a survey so that future work can more easily identify such objects. The survey, which covers 15,000 square degrees multiple times over 3.5 years, allows for the first ensemble blazar study of this scale. Variability amplitude distributions are shown for the FSRQ and BL Lac samples for numerous time lags, and also studied through structure function analyses. Individual blazars show a wide range of variability amplitudes, timescales, and duty cycles. Of the best sampled objects, 35% are seen to vary by more than 0.4 magnitudes; for these, the fraction of measurements contributing to the high amplitude variability ranges constantly from about 5% to 80%. Blazar variability has some similarities to that of type I quasars but includes larger amplitude fluctuations on all timescales. FSRQ variability amplitudes are particularly similar to those of QSOs on timescales of several months, suggesting significant contributions from the accretion disk to the variable flux at these timescales. Optical variability amplitudes are correlated with the maximum apparent velocities of the radio jet for the subset of FSRQs with MOJAVE VLBA measurements, implying that the optically variable flux's strength is typically related to that of the radio emission. We also study CRATES radio-selected FSRQ candidates, which show similar variability characteristics to known FSRQs; this suggests a high purity for the CRATES sample.Comment: 29 pages, 12 figures. Accepted for publication in Ap

From the buzzing in Turing’s head to machine intelligence contests

This paper presents an analysis of three major contests for machine intelligence. We conclude that a new era for Turing’s test requires a fillip in the guise of a committed sponsor, not unlike DARPA, funders of the successful 2007 Urban Challenge