4,025 research outputs found
Data compression using correlations and stochastic processes in the ALICE Time Projection chamber
In this paper lossless and a quasi lossless algorithms for the online
compression of the data generated by the Time Projection Chamber (TPC) detector
of the ALICE experiment at CERN are described. The first algorithm is based on
a lossless source code modelling technique, i.e. the original TPC signal
information can be reconstructed without errors at the decompression stage. The
source model exploits the temporal correlation that is present in the TPC data
to reduce the entropy of the source. The second algorithm is based on a lossy
source code modelling technique. In order to evaluate the consequences of the
error introduced by the lossy compression, the results of the trajectory
tracking algorithms that process data offline are analyzed, in particular, with
respect to the noise introduced by the compression. The offline analysis has
two steps: cluster finder and track finder. The results on how these algorithms
are affected by the lossy compression are reported. In both compression
technique entropy coding is applied to the set of events defined by the source
model to reduce the bit rate to the corresponding source entropy. Using TPC
simulated data, the lossless and the lossy compression achieve a data reduction
to 49.2% of the original data rate and respectively in the range of 35% down to
30% depending on the desired precision.In this study we have focused on methods
which are easy to implement in the frontend TPC electronics.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and
Nuclear Physics (CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, PSN THLT00
Ions in Fluctuating Channels: Transistors Alive
Ion channels are proteins with a hole down the middle embedded in cell
membranes. Membranes form insulating structures and the channels through them
allow and control the movement of charged particles, spherical ions, mostly
Na+, K+, Ca++, and Cl-. Membranes contain hundreds or thousands of types of
channels, fluctuating between open conducting, and closed insulating states.
Channels control an enormous range of biological function by opening and
closing in response to specific stimuli using mechanisms that are not yet
understood in physical language. Open channels conduct current of charged
particles following laws of Brownian movement of charged spheres rather like
the laws of electrodiffusion of quasi-particles in semiconductors. Open
channels select between similar ions using a combination of electrostatic and
'crowded charge' (Lennard-Jones) forces. The specific location of atoms and the
exact atomic structure of the channel protein seems much less important than
certain properties of the structure, namely the volume accessible to ions and
the effective density of fixed and polarization charge. There is no sign of
other chemical effects like delocalization of electron orbitals between ions
and the channel protein. Channels play a role in biology as important as
transistors in computers, and they use rather similar physics to perform part
of that role. Understanding their fluctuations awaits physical insight into the
source of the variance and mathematical analysis of the coupling of the
fluctuations to the other components and forces of the system.Comment: Revised version of earlier submission, as invited, refereed, and
published by journa
MLAPM - a C code for cosmological simulations
We present a computer code written in C that is designed to simulate
structure formation from collisionless matter. The code is purely grid-based
and uses a recursively refined Cartesian grid to solve Poisson's equation for
the potential, rather than obtaining the potential from a Green's function.
Refinements can have arbitrary shapes and in practice closely follow the
complex morphology of the density field that evolves. The timestep shortens by
a factor two with each successive refinement. It is argued that an appropriate
choice of softening length is of great importance and that the softening should
be at all points an appropriate multiple of the local inter-particle
separation. Unlike tree and P3M codes, multigrid codes automatically satisfy
this requirement. We show that at early times and low densities in cosmological
simulations, the softening needs to be significantly smaller relative to the
inter-particle separation than in virialized regions. Tests of the ability of
the code's Poisson solver to recover the gravitational fields of both
virialized halos and Zel'dovich waves are presented, as are tests of the code's
ability to reproduce analytic solutions for plane-wave evolution. The times
required to conduct a LCDM cosmological simulation for various configurations
are compared with the times required to complete the same simulation with the
ART, AP3M and GADGET codes. The power spectra, halo mass functions and
halo-halo correlation functions of simulations conducted with different codes
are compared.Comment: 20 pages, 20 figures, MNRAS in press, the code can be downloaded at
http://www-thphys.physics.ox.ac.uk/users/MLAPM
Adaptive binning of X-ray galaxy cluster images
We present a simple method for adaptively binning the pixels in an image. The
algorithm groups pixels into bins of size such that the fractional error on the
photon count in a bin is less than or equal to a threshold value, and the size
of the bin is as small as possible. The process is particularly useful for
generating surface brightness and colour maps, with clearly defined error maps,
from images with a large dynamic range of counts, for example X-ray images of
galaxy clusters. We demonstrate the method in application to data from Chandra
ACIS-S and ACIS-I observations of the Perseus cluster of galaxies. We use the
algorithm to create intensity maps, and colour images which show the relative
X-ray intensities in different bands. The colour maps can later be converted,
through spectral models, into maps of physical parameters, such as temperature,
column density, etc. The adaptive binning algorithm is applicable to a wide
range of data, from observations or numerical simulations, and is not limited
to two-dimensional data.Comment: 8 pages, 12 figures, accepted by MNRAS (includes changes suggested by
referee), high resolution version at
http://www-xray.ast.cam.ac.uk/~jss/adbin
The organization of soil disposal by ants
Colonies of Pheidole ambigua ants excavate soil and drop it outside the nest entrance. The deposition of thousands of loads leads to the formation of regular ring-shaped piles. How is this pattern generated? This study investigated soil pile formation on level and sloping surfaces, both empirically and using an agent-based model. We found that ants drop soil preferentially in the direction in which the slope is least steeply uphill from the nest entrance, both when adding to an existing pile and when starting a new pile. Ants respond to cues from local slope to choose downhill directions. Ants walking on a slope increase the frequency and magnitude of changes in direction, and more of these changes of direction take them downhill than uphill. Also, ants carrying soil on a slope wait longer before dropping their soil compared to ants on a level plane. These mechanisms combine to focus soil dropping in the downhill direction, without the necessity of a direct relationship between slope and probability of dropping soil. These empirically determined rules were used to simulate soil disposal. The slight preference for turning downhill measured empirically was shown in the model to be sufficient to generate biologically realistic patterns of soil dumping when combined with memory of the direction of previous trips. From simple rules governing individual behaviour an overall pattern emerges, which is appropriate to the environment and allows a rapid response to changes
Spin Glasses on the Hypercube
We present a mean field model for spin glasses with a natural notion of
distance built in, namely, the Edwards-Anderson model on the diluted
D-dimensional unit hypercube in the limit of large D. We show that finite D
effects are strongly dependent on the connectivity, being much smaller for a
fixed coordination number. We solve the non trivial problem of generating these
lattices. Afterwards, we numerically study the nonequilibrium dynamics of the
mean field spin glass. Our three main findings are: (i) the dynamics is ruled
by an infinite number of time-sectors, (ii) the aging dynamics consists on the
growth of coherent domains with a non vanishing surface-volume ratio, and (iii)
the propagator in Fourier space follows the p^4 law. We study as well finite D
effects in the nonequilibrium dynamics, finding that a naive finite size
scaling ansatz works surprisingly well.Comment: 14 pages, 22 figure
A Cosmic Watershed: the WVF Void Detection Technique
On megaparsec scales the Universe is permeated by an intricate filigree of
clusters, filaments, sheets and voids, the Cosmic Web. For the understanding of
its dynamical and hierarchical history it is crucial to identify objectively
its complex morphological components. One of the most characteristic aspects is
that of the dominant underdense Voids, the product of a hierarchical process
driven by the collapse of minor voids in addition to the merging of large ones.
In this study we present an objective void finder technique which involves a
minimum of assumptions about the scale, structure and shape of voids. Our void
finding method, the Watershed Void Finder (WVF), is based upon the Watershed
Transform, a well-known technique for the segmentation of images. Importantly,
the technique has the potential to trace the existing manifestations of a void
hierarchy. The basic watershed transform is augmented by a variety of
correction procedures to remove spurious structure resulting from sampling
noise. This study contains a detailed description of the WVF. We demonstrate
how it is able to trace and identify, relatively parameter free, voids and
their surrounding (filamentary and planar) boundaries. We test the technique on
a set of Kinematic Voronoi models, heuristic spatial models for a cellular
distribution of matter. Comparison of the WVF segmentations of low noise and
high noise Voronoi models with the quantitatively known spatial characteristics
of the intrinsic Voronoi tessellation shows that the size and shape of the
voids are succesfully retrieved. WVF manages to even reproduce the full void
size distribution function.Comment: 24 pages, 15 figures, MNRAS accepted, for full resolution, see
http://www.astro.rug.nl/~weygaert/tim1publication/watershed.pd
- …