Lunar laser ranging in infrfared at hte Grasse laser station

For many years, lunar laser ranging (LLR) observations using a green wavelength have suffered an inhomogeneity problem both temporally and spatially. This paper reports on the implementation of a new infrared detection at the Grasse LLR station and describes how infrared telemetry improves this situation. Our first results show that infrared detection permits us to densify the observations and allows measurements during the new and the full Moon periods. The link budget improvement leads to homogeneous telemetric measurements on each lunar retro-reflector. Finally, a surprising result is obtained on the Lunokhod 2 array which attains the same efficiency as Lunokhod 1 with an infrared laser link, although those two targets exhibit a differential efficiency of six with a green laser link

GYOTO 2.0: a polarized relativistic ray-tracing code

Polarized general-relativistic radiative transfer in the vicinity of black holes and other compact objects has become a crucial tool for probing the properties of relativistic astrophysics plasmas. Instruments like GRAVITY, the Event Horizon telescope, ALMA, or IXPE make it very timely to develop such numerical frameworks. In this article, we present the polarized extension of the public ray-tracing code Gyoto, and offer a python notebook allowing to easily perform a first realistic computation. The code is very modular and allows to conveniently add extensions for the specific needs of the user. It is agnostic about the spacetime and can be used for arbitrary compact objects. We demonstrate the validity of the code by providing tests, and show in particular a perfect agreement with the ipole code. Our article also aims at pedagogically introducing all the relevant formalism in a self-contained manner.Comment: 39 pages, 10 figures, submitted to Classical Quantum Gravit

Event-based Asynchronous Sparse Convolutional Networks

Event cameras are bio-inspired sensors that respond to per-pixel brightness changes in the form of asynchronous and sparse "events". Recently, pattern recognition algorithms, such as learning-based methods, have made significant progress with event cameras by converting events into synchronous dense, image-like representations and applying traditional machine learning methods developed for standard cameras. However, these approaches discard the spatial and temporal sparsity inherent in event data at the cost of higher computational complexity and latency. In this work, we present a general framework for converting models trained on synchronous image-like event representations into asynchronous models with identical output, thus directly leveraging the intrinsic asynchronous and sparse nature of the event data. We show both theoretically and experimentally that this drastically reduces the computational complexity and latency of high-capacity, synchronous neural networks without sacrificing accuracy. In addition, our framework has several desirable characteristics: (i) it exploits spatio-temporal sparsity of events explicitly, (ii) it is agnostic to the event representation, network architecture, and task, and (iii) it does not require any train-time change, since it is compatible with the standard neural networks' training process. We thoroughly validate the proposed framework on two computer vision tasks: object detection and object recognition. In these tasks, we reduce the computational complexity up to 20 times with respect to high-latency neural networks. At the same time, we outperform state-of-the-art asynchronous approaches up to 24% in prediction accuracy

Stronger diversity effects with increased environmental stress : a study of multitrophic interactions between oak, powdery mildew and ladybirds

Recent research has suggested that increasing neighbourhood tree species diversity may mitigate the impact of pests or pathogens by supporting the activities of their natural enemies and/or reducing the density of available hosts. In this study, we attempted to assess these mechanisms in a multitrophic study system of young oak (Quercus), oak powdery mildew (PM, caused by Erysiphe spp.) and a mycophagous ladybird (Psyllobora vigintiduo-punctata). We assessed ladybird mycophagy on oak PM in function of different neighbourhood tree species compositions. We also evaluated whether these species interactions were modulated by environmental conditions as suggested by the Stress Gradient Hypothesis. We adopted a complementary approach of a field experiment where we monitored oak saplings subjected to a reduced rainfall gradient in a young planted forest consisting of different tree species mixtures, as well as a lab experiment where we independently evaluated the effect of different watering treatments on PM infections and ladybird mycophagy. In the field experiment, we found effects of neighbourhood tree species richness on ladybird mycophagy becoming more positive as the target trees received less water. This effect was only found as weather conditions grew drier. In the lab experiment, we found a preference of ladybirds to graze on infected leaves from trees that received less water. We discuss potential mechanisms that might explain this preference, such as emissions of volatile leaf chemicals. Our results are in line with the expectations of the Natural Enemies Hypothesis and support the hypothesis that biodiversity effects become stronger with increased environmental stress

Breeding amphibians in captivity

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/73877/1/j.1748-1090.1977.tb00864.x.pd

Identification of metabolic engineering targets through analysis of optimal and sub-optimal routes

Identification of optimal genetic manipulation strategies for redirecting substrate uptake towards a desired product is a challenging task owing to the complexity of metabolic networks, esp. in terms of large number of routes leading to the desired product. Algorithms that can exploit the whole range of optimal and suboptimal routes for product formation while respecting the biological objective of the cell are therefore much needed. Towards addressing this need, we here introduce the notion of structural flux, which is derived from the enumeration of all pathways in the metabolic network in question and accounts for the contribution towards a given biological objective function. We show that the theoretically estimated structural fluxes are good predictors of experimentally measured intra-cellular fluxes in two model organisms, namely, Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae. For a small number of fluxes for which the predictions were poor, the corresponding enzyme-coding transcripts were also found to be distinctly regulated, showing the ability of structural fluxes in capturing the underlying regulatory principles. Exploiting the observed correspondence between in vivo fluxes and structural fluxes, we propose an in silico metabolic engineering approach, iStruF, which enables the identification of gene deletion strategies that couple the cellular biological objective with the product flux while considering optimal as well as sub-optimal routes and their efficiency.This work was supported by the Portuguese Science Foundation [grant numbers MIT-Pt/BS-BB/0082/2008, SFRH/BPD/44180/2008 to ZS] (http://www.fct.pt/). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

Behavioural determinants of perceived managerial and leadership effectiveness in Argentina

The purpose of this empirical study was to explore the perceptions of Argentinean employees about managerial and leadership effectiveness, and was guided by the following research question: How do people employed in Argentinean companies behaviorally differentiate effective managers from ineffective managers? A total of 42 employees from private and public sector organizations in Cordoba, Argentina, were interviewed using Flanagan’s (1954) critical incident technique. The interviews generated 302 critical incidents of which 155 were examples of positive (effective) managerial behavior, and 147 of negative (least effective/ineffective) managerial behavior. The findings suggest that Argentineans perceive as effective those managers who are supportive, considerate, motivating, caring, good decision makers, approachable, participative, fair-minded, communicative, actively involved, and who act as role models; and this challenges the widely held belief that Argentineans prefer authoritarian managers over democratic ones

Polarimetry and Astrometry of NIR Flares as Event Horizon Scale, Dynamical Probes for the Mass of Sgr A*

We present new astrometric and polarimetric observations of flares from Sgr A* obtained with GRAVITY, the near-infrared interferometer at ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI), bringing the total sample of well-covered astrometric flares to four and polarimetric ones to six, where we have for two flares good coverage in both domains. All astrometric flares show clockwise motion in the plane of the sky with a period of around an hour, and the polarization vector rotates by one full loop in the same time. Given the apparent similarities of the flares, we present a common fit, taking into account the absence of strong Doppler boosting peaks in the light curves and the EHT-measured geometry. Our results are consistent with and significantly strengthen our model from 2018: We find that a) the combination of polarization period and measured flare radius of around nine gravitational radii ($9 R_g \approx 1.5 R_{ISCO}$, innermost stable circular orbit) is consistent with Keplerian orbital motion of hot spots in the innermost accretion zone. The mass inside the flares' radius is consistent with the $4.297 \times 10^6 \; \text{M}_\odot$ measured from stellar orbits at several thousand $R_g$. This finding and the diameter of the millimeter shadow of Sgr A* thus support a single black hole model. Further, b) the magnetic field configuration is predominantly poloidal (vertical), and the flares' orbital plane has a moderate inclination with respect to the plane of the sky, as shown by the non-detection of Doppler-boosting and the fact that we observe one polarization loop per astrometric loop. Moreover, c) both the position angle on sky and the required magnetic field strength suggest that the accretion flow is fueled and controlled by the winds of the massive, young stars of the clockwise stellar disk 1-5 arcsec from Sgr A*, in agreement with recent simulations.Comment: 10 pages, 12 figures. Submitted to A&

Potential theory results for a class of PDOs admitting a global fundamental solution

We outline several results of Potential Theory for a class of linear par-tial differential operators L of the second order in divergence form. Under essentially the sole assumption of hypoellipticity, we present a non-invariant homogeneous Harnack inequality for L; under different geometrical assumptions on L (mainly, under global doubling/Poincar\ue9 assumptions), it is described how to obtainan invariant, non-homogeneous Harnack inequality. When L is equipped with a global fundamental solution \u393, further Potential Theory results are available (such as the Strong Maximum Principle). We present some assumptions on L ensuring that such a \u393 exists

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