Goodness-of-Fit Tests to study the Gaussianity of the MAXIMA data

Goodness-of-Fit tests, including Smooth ones, are introduced and applied to detect non-Gaussianity in Cosmic Microwave Background simulations. We study the power of three different tests: the Shapiro-Francia test (1972), the uncategorised smooth test developed by Rayner and Best(1990) and the Neyman's Smooth Goodness-of-fit test for composite hypotheses (Thomas and Pierce 1979). The Smooth Goodness-of-Fit tests are designed to be sensitive to the presence of ``smooth'' deviations from a given distribution. We study the power of these tests based on the discrimination between Gaussian and non-Gaussian simulations. Non-Gaussian cases are simulated using the Edgeworth expansion and assuming pixel-to-pixel independence. Results show these tests behave similarly and are more powerful than tests directly based on cumulants of order 3, 4, 5 and 6. We have applied these tests to the released MAXIMA data. The applied tests are built to be powerful against detecting deviations from univariate Gaussianity. The Cholesky matrix corresponding to signal (based on an assumed cosmological model) plus noise is used to decorrelate the observations previous to the analysis. Results indicate that the MAXIMA data are compatible with Gaussianity.Comment: MNRAS, in pres

Home alone: autonomous extension and correction of spatial representations

In this paper we present an account of the problems faced by a mobile robot given an incomplete tour of an unknown environment, and introduce a collection of techniques which can generate successful behaviour even in the presence of such problems. Underlying our approach is the principle that an autonomous system must be motivated to act to gather new knowledge, and to validate and correct existing knowledge. This principle is embodied in Dora, a mobile robot which features the aforementioned techniques: shared representations, non-monotonic reasoning, and goal generation and management. To demonstrate how well this collection of techniques work in real-world situations we present a comprehensive analysis of the Dora system’s performance over multiple tours in an indoor environment. In this analysis Dora successfully completed 18 of 21 attempted runs, with all but 3 of these successes requiring one or more of the integrated techniques to recover from problems

Cold-water coral reef frameworks, megafaunal communities and evidence for coral carbonate mounds on the Hatton Bank, north east Atlantic

Offshore banks and seamounts sustain diverse megafaunal communities, including framework reefs formed by cold-water corals. Few studies have quantified environmental effects on the alpha or beta diversity of these communities. We adopted an interdisciplinary approach that used historical geophysical data to identify topographic highs on Hatton Bank, which were surveyed visually. The resulting photographic data were used to examine relationships between megafaunal communities and macrohabitat, the latter defined into six categories (mud, sand, cobbles, coral rubble, coral framework, rock). The survey stations revealed considerable small-scale variability in macrohabitat from exposed Late Palaeocene lava flows to quiescent muddy habitats and coral-built carbonate mounds. The first reported evidence for coral carbonate mound development in UK waters is presented, which was most pronounced near present-day or former sites of topographic change, suggesting that local current acceleration favoured coral framework growth and mound initiation. Alpha diversity varied significantly across macrohabitats, but not between rock and coral rubble, or between smaller grain sized categories of cobbles, sand and mud. Community composition differed between most macrohabitats, and variation in beta diversity across Hatton Bank was largely explained by fine-scale substratum. Certain megafauna were clearly associated with particular macrohabitats, with stylasterid corals notably associated with cobble and rock habitats and coral habitats characterized by a diverse community of suspension-feeders. The visual surveys also produced novel images of deep-water megafauna including a new photographic record of the gorgonian coral Paragorgia arborea, a species not previously reported from Rockall Plateau. Further interdisciplinary studies are needed to interpret beta diversity across these and other environmental gradients on Hatton Bank. It is clear that efforts are also needed to improve our understanding of the genetic connectivity and biogeography of vulnerable deep-water ecosystems and to develop predictive models of their occurrence that can help inform future conservation measures

Emotional and Cognitive Responses of Children Attending Summer Camps in Occupied Palestine: A Pilot Study

Background: The current study sought to address the lack of evaluation for summer camps which seek to offer emotional and cognitive support for children in occupied Palestine.Objective: To assess children’s emotional and cognitive response to summer camps, children who attended camps were compared to those who did not attend on a standardised measure of emotion and cognition within situations of adversity.Methods: A mixed methods quasi-experimental post-test only design was used.Children, aged 8-10 years, who attended a summer camp (n=62), were compared to those who had not attended a camp (n=22) on the Child Post-traumatic Cognitions Inventory and on a qualitative summer experience questionnaire. Camp workers (n= 16) also completed a summer experiences questionnaire for comparison of perceptions between workers and children. Statistical analysis involved t-test and ANOVA for within and between group differences and a six-step quasi-qualitative analysis was used to assess summer experience questionnaire responses.Results: Unexpectedly,children who had attended a summer camp presented higher levels of traumatic cognition; however, they also reported more hopefulness for the future than children who did not attend a camp. It is uncertain if camp attendees are a self-selecting group because of higher levels of traumatic exposure and/or cognitions or because summer camps may have unintended negative consequences.Conclusion: The current study, with its unexpected results, emphasises the importance of embedding evaluation into summer camp delivery. More robust experimental designs, however, are necessary in order to be confident that the outcomes are related to program rather than contextual factors. A range of potential summer camp and environmental influencing factors on outcomes were identified for future research

Sequential Selection of Correlated Ads by POMDPs

Online advertising has become a key source of revenue for both web search engines and online publishers. For them, the ability of allocating right ads to right webpages is critical because any mismatched ads would not only harm web users' satisfactions but also lower the ad income. In this paper, we study how online publishers could optimally select ads to maximize their ad incomes over time. The conventional offline, content-based matching between webpages and ads is a fine start but cannot solve the problem completely because good matching does not necessarily lead to good payoff. Moreover, with the limited display impressions, we need to balance the need of selecting ads to learn true ad payoffs (exploration) with that of allocating ads to generate high immediate payoffs based on the current belief (exploitation). In this paper, we address the problem by employing Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) and discuss how to utilize the correlation of ads to improve the efficiency of the exploration and increase ad incomes in a long run. Our mathematical derivation shows that the belief states of correlated ads can be naturally updated using a formula similar to collaborative filtering. To test our model, a real world ad dataset from a major search engine is collected and categorized. Experimenting over the data, we provide an analyse of the effect of the underlying parameters, and demonstrate that our algorithms significantly outperform other strong baselines

Occupational structures, migration, religion and poor relief in nineteenth century urban Ireland

Patterns of poor relief varied greatly amongst nineteenth century Irish cities. To date, however, there has been little examination of the reasons behind these divergences. One possible factor is the divergent occupational and demographic structures of these cities – ranging from the dramatic growth of an industrialising Belfast, to relative (post-Famine) stability in more service-oriented Dublin, to the slow decline of other southern regional capitals. This paper examines the occupational and social class breakdown of the six major Irish cities over the period from 1861 (after the Great Famine) to 1901 and explores whether the difference in these factors can help to explain the differences in poor relief policies adopted in the different poor law unions. It concludes that the aggregate evidence suggests little clear link between occupational structures and poor relief policies. While it would seem unlikely that occupational structures did not have some impact on such policies, it appears that the impact of such structures was mediated through a range of other policies and will only be revealed through detailed local studies. Drawing on broader work, the paper suggests that key influences in the different patterns of poor relief– in addition to overarching factors such as the wealth of a union – may have included both religious factors and the use of poor relief policy to control in-migration in the rapidly growing northern cities.Poor relief; urbanisation; occupational structures; Ireland; nineteenth century

Constraints On Holographic Cosmological Models From Gamma Ray Bursts

We use Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) data from Y. Wang (2008) to put additional constraints on a set of cosmological dark energy models based on the holographic principle. GRBs are among the most complex and energetic astrophysical events known in the universe offering us the opportunity to obtain information from the history of cosmic expansion up to about redshift of $z\sim 6$. These astrophysical objects provide us a complementary observational test to determine the nature of dark energy by complementing the information of data from Supernovas (e.g. Union 2.1 compilation). We found that the $\Lambda CDM$ model gives the best fit to the observational data, although our statistical analysis ($\Delta AIC$ and $\Delta BIC$) shows that the models studied in this work ("Hubble Radius Scale" and "Ricci Scale Q") have a reasonable agreement with respect to the most successful, except for the "Ricci Scale CPL" and "Future Event Horizon" models, which can be ruled out by the present study. However, these results reflect the importance of GRBs measurements to provide additional observational constraints to alternative cosmological models, which are mandatory to clarify the way in which the paradigm of dark energy or any alternative model is correct.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, 7 tables, poster presentation: Congreso Nacional de F\'isica, Manizales, Caldas, Colombia, 201

Interplanetary Coronal Mass Ejections observed by MESSENGER and Venus Express

Interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs) observed by the MESSENGER (MES) and Venus Express (VEX) spacecraft have been catalogued and analysed. The ICMEs were identified by a relatively smooth rotation of the magnetic field direction consistent with a flux rope structure, coinciding with a relatively enhanced magnetic field strength. A total of 35 ICMEs were found in the surveyed MES data (primarily from March 2007 to April 2012), and 84 ICMEs in the surveyed VEX data (from May 2006 to December 2013). The ICME flux rope configurations have been determined. Ropes with northward leading edges were about four times more common than ropes with southward leading edges, in agreement with a previously established solar cycle dependence. Ropes with low inclinations to the solar equatorial plane were about four times more common than ropes with high inclinations, possibly an observational effect. Left and right-handed ropes were observed in almost equal numbers. In addition, data from MES, VEX, STEREO-A, STEREO-B and ACE were examined for multipoint signatures of the catalogued ICMEs. For spacecraft separations below 15{\deg} in heliocentric longitude, the second spacecraft observed the ICME flux rope in 82% of cases; this percentage dropped to 49% for separations between 15 and 30{\deg}, to 18% for separations between 30 and 45{\deg}, and to 12% for separations between 45 and 60{\deg}. As spacecraft separation increased, it became increasingly likely that only the sheath and not the flux rope of the ICME was observed, in agreement with the notion that ICME flux ropes are smaller in longitudinal extent than the shocks or discontinuities that they often drive. Furthermore, this study has identified 23 ICMEs observed by pairs of spacecraft close to radial alignment. A detailed analysis of these events could lead to a better understanding of how ICMEs evolve during propagation.Comment: 28 pages, 7 figure

New psychoactive substances (NPS) on cryptomarket fora: An exploratory study of characteristics of forum activity between NPS buyers and vendors

Background The continual diversification of new psychoactive substances (NPS) circumventing legislation creates a public health and law enforcement challenge, and one particularly challenged by availability on Hidden Web cryptomarkets. Methods This is the first study of its kind which aimed to explore and characterise cryptomarket forum members’ views and perspectives on NPS vendors and products within the context of Hidden Web community dynamics. An internal site search was conducted on two cryptomarkets popular with NPS vendors and hosting fora; Alphabay and Valhalla, using the search terms of 40 popular NPS in the seven categories of stimulant/cathinone; GABA activating; hallucinogen, dissociative, cannabinoid, opioid and other/unspecified/uncategorised NPS. 852 identified threads relating to the discussion of these NPS were generated. Following exclusion of duplicates, 138 threads remained. The Empirical Phenomenological Psychological method of data analysis was applied. Four themes and 32 categories emerged. Results 120 vendors selling NPS were visible on Alphabay, and 21 on Valhalla. Themes were ‘NPS Cryptomarkets and Crypto-community interest in NPS’ ‘Motives for NPS use’ ‘Indigenous Crypto Community Harm Reduction’ and ‘Cryptomarket Characteristics underpinning NPS trafficking’, with two higher levels of abstraction centring on ‘NPS vendor reputation’ and ‘NPS transactioning for personal use’. NPS cryptomarket characteristics centred on generation of trust, honesty and excellent service. Users appeared well informed, with harm reduction and vendor information exchange central to NPS market dynamics. GABA activating substances appeared most popular in terms of buyer interest on cryptomarkets. Interest in sourcing ‘old favorite’ stimulant and dissociative NPS was evident, alongside the sequential and concurrent poly use of NPS, and use of NPS with illicit drugs such as MDMA. Conclusion Continued monitoring of new trends in NPS within Surface Web and cryptomarkets are warranted. A particular focus on the rising market in prescribed benzodiazepine and Z-hypnotic drugs should be included. © 2016 Elsevier B.V