2,465 research outputs found
You never surf alone. Ubiquitous tracking of users' browsing habits
In the early age of the internet users enjoyed a large level of anonymity. At
the time web pages were just hypertext documents; almost no personalisation of
the user experience was o ered. The Web today has evolved as a world wide
distributed system following specific architectural paradigms. On the web now,
an enormous quantity of user generated data is shared and consumed by a network
of applications and services, reasoning upon users expressed preferences and
their social and physical connections. Advertising networks follow users'
browsing habits while they surf the web, continuously collecting their traces
and surfing patterns. We analyse how users tracking happens on the web by
measuring their online footprint and estimating how quickly advertising
networks are able to pro le users by their browsing habits
Learning from observations of the microwave background at small angular scales
In this paper, we focus our attention on the following question: How well can
we recover the power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background from the maps
of a given experiment?. Each experiment is described by a a pixelization scale,
a beam size, a noise level and a sky coverage. We use accurate numerical
simulations of the microwave sky and a cold dark matter model for structure
formation in the universe. Angular scales smaller than those of previous
simulations are included. The spectrum obtained from the simulated maps is
appropriately compared with the theoretical one. Relative deviations between
these spectra are estimated. Various contributions to these deviations are
analyzed. The method used for spectra comparisons is discussed.Comment: 15 pages (LATEX), 2 postcript figures, accepted in Ap
Non-circular rotating beams and CMB experiments
This paper is concerned with small angular scale experiments for the
observation of cosmic microwave background anisotropies. In the absence of
beam, the effects of partial coverage and pixelisation are disentangled and
analyzed (using simulations). Then, appropriate maps involving the CMB signal
plus the synchrotron and dust emissions from the Milky Way are simulated, and
an asymmetric beam --which turns following different strategies-- is used to
smooth the simulated maps. An associated circular beam is defined to estimate
the deviations in the angular power spectrum produced by beam asymmetry without
rotation and, afterwards, the deviations due to beam rotation are calculated.
For a certain large coverage, the deviations due to pure asymmetry and
asymmetry plus rotation appear to be very systematic (very similar in each
simulation). Possible applications of the main results of this paper to data
analysis in large coverage experiments --as PLANCK-- are outlined.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures, to appear in A&
Stability of DON and DON-3-glucoside during baking as affected by the presence of food additives
The mycotoxin deoxynivalenol (DON) is one of the most common mycotoxins of cereals worldwide, and its occurrence has been widely reported in raw wheat. The free mycotoxin form is not the only route of exposure; modified forms can also be present in cereal products. Deoxynivalenol-3-glucoside (DON-3-glucoside) is a common DON plant conjugate. The mycotoxin concentration could be affected by food processing; here, we studied the stability of DON and DON-3-glucoside during baking of small doughs made from white wheat flour and other ingredients. A range of common food additives and ingredients were added to assess possible interference: ascorbic acid (E300), citric acid (E330), sorbic acid (E200), calcium propionate (E282), lecithin (E322), diacetyltartaric acid esters of fatty acid mono- and diglycerides (E472a), calcium phosphate (E341), disodium diphosphate (E450i), xanthan gum (E415), polydextrose (E1200), sorbitol (E420i), sodium bicarbonate (E500i), wheat gluten and malt flour. The DON content was reduced by 40%, and the DON-3-glucoside concentration increased by >100%, after baking for 20 min at 180°C. This confirmed that DON and DON-3-glucoside concentrations can vary during heating, and DON-3-glucoside could even increase after baking. However, DON and DON- 3-glucoside are not affected significantly by the presence of the food additives tested.The authors are grateful to the Spanish government (project AGL2014-55379-P) for providing financial support. A. Vidal thanks the Spanish government (Ministry of Education) for the pre-doctoral grant
Formation of dispersive hybrid bands at an organic-metal interface
An electronic band with quasi-one dimensional dispersion is found at the
interface between a monolayer of a charge-transfer complex (TTF-TCNQ) and a
Au(111) surface. Combined local spectroscopy and numerical calculations show
that the band results from a complex mixing of metal and molecular states. The
molecular layer folds the underlying metal states and mixes with them
selectively, through the TTF component, giving rise to anisotropic hybrid
bands. Our results suggest that, by tuning the components of such molecular
layers, the dimensionality and dispersion of organic-metal interface states can
be engineered
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